TEACH WOMEN NOT TO STAB: Firefighter attacked by knife-wielding woman; is saved by coat.
Archive for 2017
October 11, 2017
Heh, indeed.™
Incidentally, as the Huffington Post notes, Weinstein’s Miramax* was the first American distributor of the Woodman’s post-Mia Farrow movies after his early ’90s three-picture deal with Columbia-TriStar was complete: “Weinstein Helped Woody Allen Save His Career After Abuse Allegations.”
Exit quote: Allen being “‘Shunned by Hollywood means nothing to Miramax,’ Weinstein told the L.A. Times. ‘We’re talking about a comic genius.'”
* Then-owned by the Walt Disney Corporation, to add to the full horror.
GOOD LUCK WITH THAT: Texas Dem Introduces Articles of Impeachment, But Doesn’t Force Vote.
HEAVEN OR HELL?: A glimpse at what life might be like when lived on the blockchain.
LONG-TERM REVIEW UPDATE: 2017 Ford F-150 Raptor.
AT AMAZON, Hot New Releases – Updated Every Hour.
HYPOCRISY IS JUST ANOTHER WORD FOR THE CRIMES WE CHOOSE TO COVER UP TOGETHER: Hollywood Actors Who Condemn Trump but Were Silent on Weinstein.
POWER LINE: Notes on the Ken Burns version of Vietnam, and a deconstruction of its first draft — Stanley Karnow’s 1983 PBS Vietnam series.
THE SINGULARITY HAS BEEN REACHED: Hitler Learns About Harvey Weinstein.
YOU’D BETTER PRAY FOR THIS REGARDLESS: In a Cashless World, You’d Better Pray the Power Never Goes Out.
And remember, you can always pray and prep.
REMEMBER, IT’S ONLY SEXIST TO SUGGEST THAT HORMONES MAKE WOMEN BEHAVE IRRATIONALLY: Raging Bull: First study to find link between testosterone and stock market instability.
Of course, as InstaPundit co-blogger John Tierney wrote almost 20 years ago, too little testosterone can be bad for the markets too.
BUT OF COURSE: Dinesh D’Souza Is Being Targeted by the Liberal Media Again.
SINGLE PAYER, SINGLE DECIDER: VA conceals shoddy care and health workers’ mistakes.
Medical experts from the Department of Veterans Affairs blamed one botched surgery after another on a lone podiatrist.
They said Thomas Franchini drilled the wrong screw into the bone of one veteran. He severed a critical tendon in another. He cut into patients who didn’t need surgeries at all. Twice, he failed to properly fuse the ankle of a woman, who chose to have her leg amputated rather than endure the pain.
In 88 cases, the VA concluded, Franchini made mistakes that harmed veterans at the Togus hospital in Maine. The findings reached the highest levels of the agency.
“We found that he was a dangerous surgeon,” former hospital surgery chief Robert Sampson said during a deposition in an ongoing federal lawsuit against the VA.
Agency officials didn’t fire Franchini or report him to a national database that tracks problem doctors.
They let him quietly resign and move on to private practice, then failed for years to disclose his past to his patients and state regulators who licensed him.
He now works as a podiatrist in New York City.
A USA TODAY investigation found the VA — the nation’s largest employer of health care workers — has for years concealed mistakes and misdeeds by staff members entrusted with the care of veterans.
If you can stomach it, read the whole thing.
THE INTERNET OF THINGS: Google’s Home Mini needed a software patch to stop some of them from recording everything.
Smart speakers like the Google Home Mini are designed to only listen for a specific wake word — in this case it’s “Hey Google” or “Ok Google.” Only then do their microphones record what you’re saying it, transmit it to the cloud, and try to answer your question. But there is usually a way to just hit a button and ask the embedded assistant a question. On the Mini, it’s holding your finger down on the top of it.
That seems to be the rub (pardon the pun) with Russakovskii’s Mini: it thought that somebody was holding its finger down on the top and so was randomly activating and recording. The good news is that the lights turned on to indicate it was listening, but the bad news is that it didn’t make an audible tone, so it took a trip through the Home’s search history to discover the error.
To Google’s credit, it seems to have scrambled the engineering jets to figure out the issue and create a fix. The fix, though, is removing a feature from the Mini. Google has altered the software so a simple touch won’t activate the Assistant, you have to say the wake word instead.
Putting one of these things in your home requires an awful lot of trust in Google or Amazon.
MICHELLE MALKIN: Obama Lied. My FOURTH Health Plan Died.
Two weeks ago, my husband and I received yet another cancellation notice for our private, individual health insurance coverage. It’s our fourth Obamacare-induced obituary in four years. Our first death notice, from Anthem Blue Cross and Blue Shield, arrived in the fall of 2013. The insurer informed us that because of “changes from health care reform (also called the Affordable Care Act or ACA),” our plan no longer met the federal government’s requirements.
Never mind our needs and desires as consumers who were quite satisfied with a high-deductible PPO that included a wide network of doctors for ourselves and our two children.
Read the whole thing.
HMM: A Full-Blooded Separatist Retreat in Catalonia.
After rowdy demonstrations, a covert referendum (which drew a violent response from Spanish police) and vows to set up a new republic, Catalan President Carles Puigdemont blinked.
Many lawmakers gathered for a special session of the regional legislature were hoping to hear a declaration of independence. Instead, he put the process on hold to make another appeal for talks with the Spanish government. No deadline. No leverage. And Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy’s response was powerful: he started the process that could see Puigdemont’s administration stripped of its powers.
Already last night cracks were opening up in the separatist coalition, suggesting a regional election may be necessary next year.
That line about stripping the Puigdemont administration of its powers is more fully explained in this report:
Mariano Rajoy said he had asked Catalan leader Carles Puigdemont to confirm whether or not he has declared independence.
The move is a first step towards activating Article 155 to suspend Catalonia’s autonomy.
On Tuesday Mr Puigdemont signed a declaration of independence, but halted implementation to allow negotiations.
Mr Rajoy accused Mr Puigdemont of creating “deliberate confusion” and said he wanted to restore “certainty”.
“This call – ahead of any of the measures that the government may adopt under Article 155 of our constitution – seeks to offer citizens the clarity and security that a question of such importance requires,” Mr Rajoy said.
The BBC goes on to report that “Article 155 has never been used before and there are disagreements about how it would work in practise,” but it has been described elsewhere as the “nuclear option” for stripping Spain’s constitutionally powerful regions of their autonomy.
THIS WILL NOT PLAY OUT WELL FOR THEM: Pledge to Impeach Trump, a Key Donor Demands of Democrats.
Tom Steyer, a billionaire California investor who spent more than $91 million supporting Democrats in the 2016 elections, issued the demand to his party in a letter on Wednesday. In his message, Mr. Steyer described Mr. Trump as a “clear and present danger to the republic” and called on Democrats to pledge that they would seek to remove him from office if they take control of Congress next year.
Mr. Steyer — who is considering a run for Senate, perhaps against Senator Dianne Feinstein, a fellow Democrat — cited a range of acts by Mr. Trump to justify impeachment, including the president’s “relationship with Vladimir Putin and Russia,” allegations that Mr. Trump has used the presidency to “promote his own business interests” and his “seeming determination to go to war.”
Democrats helped cover for Harvey Weinstein for years, and he doesn’t have anything like Steyer’s money.