Archive for 2020

WIDESPREAD REPORTS OF 911 SYSTEM OUTAGES, CAUSE NOT IMMEDIATELY CLEAR: “Law enforcement agencies across the country reported brief outages of their 911 systems Monday night, and it was not immediately clear if there was a connection with a major Microsoft system outage… On a status page for its cloud services, the software giant acknowledged a widespread systems issue and said ‘Any user may experience access problems for Microsoft 365 services.’ (The city government of Microsoft’s own hometown of Redmond, Washington said municipal phones were down due to the company’s outage.)”

A TURKEY/RUSSIA PROXY WAR? Armenia and Azerbaijan fight over disputed Nagorno-Karabakh region.

UPDATE: A friend on Facebook comments: “I have Azerbaijani friends and Armenian friends on FB, and suddenly both began to hang pictures with fists painted in the colors of national flags and calls of war until the victory end. I don’t know what other nightmare to expect from this damn year.”

MICROSOFT OFFICE 365 SERVICES INACCESSIBLE AFTER CODE CHANGE: “Microsoft Office 365 users are unable to access services with the cloud provider confirming an outage of its Azure Active Directory service. The company’s official health status page said that users ‘may be unable to access multiple Microsoft 365 services’. It later listed the outage is ‘non regional’, meaning it is affecting customers worldwide.”

HMM:

#HIMTOO? Former New Mexico Democratic Governor Bill Richardson is accused of raking in hundreds of thousands in bribes and kickbacks to fund debauched lifestyle including ‘sexual services and favors.’

Plus: “Richardson, a career politician, was previously accused of having sex with Jeffrey Epstein victim Virginia Roberts when she was underage. Roberts named Richardson among several others as men Ghislaine Maxwell told her to have sex with in court documents.”

Let me just get out ahead of the story and say that Ghislaine Maxwell did not commit suicide, to coin an Instaphrase.

ANNALS OF LEFTIST AUTOPHAGY: “The Biden campaign accused progressive firebrand Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D., N.Y.) of undermining the Democratic Party by pulling out of an upcoming event meant to honor Israeli peacemaker Yitzhak Rabin. A Biden campaign associate called Ocasio-Cortez’s decision ‘problematic’ and told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency that ‘if she agrees [to participate in the event] and then pulls out, she’s creating problems for her own party.’”

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ELON MUSK MOST EXCITED: Multiple ‘water bodies’ found under surface of Mars. “The findings give extra credence to previous research that suggested there could be a large saltwater lake underneath the Martian surface, the researchers claim – and also led to them discovering a number of other wet areas.”

DEBATE PREP: What Trump and Biden Need to Do at the First Debate. “There’s really no telling when dealing with candidates like Donald Trump and Joe Biden. One man throws out the script as soon as it suits him, and the other left the script in the pants he forgot to put on.”

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2020 TOYOTA HIGHLANDER: Nice, but “ponderous,” and overshadowed by Koreans. “The Highlander is a pretty damn good three-row crossover, with nice interior materials. It’s not as strong all-around as the Palisade or Telluride, mainly because it’s not quite as attractive, inside or out, and it’s not quite as engaging on-road.”

I had a first-gen Highlander Hybrid, and that generation was deliberately designed to feel sporty and carlike. When I drove the next-gen Highlander, I found it ponderous enough that I didn’t buy one.