Archive for 2023
April 6, 2023
LIGHTNING DEAL: Crirax Raised Garden Beds Outdoor. #CommissionEarned
SOMETIMES THE GOOD GUYS PUSH THE POINT HOME: Fairness in Women’s Sports Act becomes law.
READER FAVORITE: GTHUNDER Digital Night Vision Goggles Binoculars. #CommissionEarned
SAD: $250 million up in flames: The infamous crime that scarred California’s Wine Country. “It was the largest crime involving wine in history. And from the start, officials had only one suspect in their sights: Mark C. Anderson, a Sausalito businessman who ran a private wine storage business inside Wines Central. Not only had he been spotted in the warehouse right before flames erupted, but he had recently been criminally charged with stealing his clients’ wine. Officials thought Anderson might have been trying to cover his tracks.”
PRETEND VICTIMHOOD HAS BEEN A PROFITABLE PROFESSION FOR A LONG WHILE: Stormy Daniels Made Far More as Trump ‘Victim’ Than She Ever Did as a Porn Actress.
CHANGE: Ozempic Is About to Be Old News: A “huge explosion” in obesity drugs is on the horizon. “The next generation of drugs is reaching for more. The first leap forward is Mounjaro, known generically as tirzepatide, a diabetes drug from Eli Lilly that the FDA is expected to approve for weight loss this year. In one study, it led to 20 percent or more weight loss in up to 57 percent of people who took the highest dose; The Wall Street Journal recently called it the ‘King Kong’ of weight-loss drugs. People on Mounjaro tend to lose more weight more quickly and generally have a ‘better experience’ than those on Wegovy, Keith Tapper, a biotech analyst at BMO Capital Markets, told me.”
If weight loss becomes easy, will slimness be less prized?
GET WOKE, GO BROKE: PR Expert: ‘Bud Light Lit Brand on Fire, People Pouring Beer Down Their Sink.’
Gareth Boyd, the marketing & PR director at Forte Analytica, says Bud Light lit its brand on fire and has lost touch with its core audience with the ad campaign.
“I really cannot understand their approach for this because their core audience just cannot relate,” Boyd said.
“Cutting your core audience in the hope you can draw a completely new audience in, who haven’t been exposed before, doesn’t make sense.
“Most U.S. families are exposed to their father drinking the beer, or other family members, but it has never been seen as the cool beer.
“In terms of what they did this year was good, with the Superbowl, but now they’ve come off the back of something really good and lit it on fire.
“Kid Rock is the poster boy for Bud Light, and for someone like him to come out and shoot cans it tells you a lot about the reaction from their core base customers.
On the plus side, maybe Bud Light drinkers will give better beers a try.
MEANWHILE, OVER AT VODKAPUNDIT: Finally, a Way Forward for Peace in Ukraine?
MORE PAPERWORK, LESS AUTONOMY: U.S. healthcare workers face rising levels of burnout.
PRIVACY: Google will soon restrict loan apps from accessing users’ photos and contacts.
Google will implement a new rule for apps providing personal loans starting on May 31st that could help protect users from abuse and harassment. The tech giant has updated its policy (via TechCrunch) to prohibit cash lending applications from being able to access users’ contacts list. They will no longer be able to access people’s photos and videos, as well, whether they’re saved on the phone itself or an external storage.
This is but one of the changes Google has implemented over the past year, following multiple reports of harassment from certain markets, such as India, Pakistan, Kenya and the Philippines. It’s common for loan apps to require access to users’ phonebooks and media before they lend money. The fact that people can easily install these apps on their phones makes them look like a pretty convenient solution for sudden monetary issues. But since they typically charge exorbitant interest rates, a lot of borrowers end up having difficulties keeping up with payments. That’s when the abuse begins.
Agents for these services would mass send profanity-laden texts to all the borrower’s contacts, including random acquaintances and co-workers, in an attempt to humiliate them into paying. Some would even go as far as to threaten them and their family bodily harm. As TechCrunch previously reported, the abuse got so bad for some people that it had driven them to suicide.
Most users have no idea the access Android often allows third-party apps to pretty much everything on their phones.
IT’S GOOD TO BE THE NOMENKLATURA: Anthony Fauci Quietly Takes New Job as ‘Strategic Adviser’ at Italian Bio Lab.
DEAL OF THE DAY: Under Armour Men’s Charged Assert 9 Running Shoes. #CommissionEarned
DISPATCHES FROM THE BLUE ZONES: Teen guilty in shooting of Commanders player has absconded, judge says. “D.C. Superior Court Judge Robert A. Salerno said the teen — whom he had ordered to remain in his parents’ home with GPS monitoring while he was awaiting sentencing — had absconded. The teen, 17 at the time of his arrest, had pleaded guilty in January to assault with a dangerous weapon and carrying a pistol without a license as part of a deal in which prosecutors agreed to ask that the teen be placed in the custody of the city’s youth services until he turns 20.”
I REMEMBER WHEN HIGHER EDUCATION WAS SOLD AS PROMOTING FREE AND INDEPENDENT THOUGHT: Most college students won’t discuss controversial topics for fear of peer backlash: survey.
I REALLY WISH HE’D BEEN ON BOARD WITH THIS IN 2017: Great Idea! Trump Calls for Defunding the FBI and DOJ.
HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Hamline President retires after art prof ousted for showing portrait of Muhammad.
It wasn’t immediately clear if the move would lead to more layoffs at the country’s biggest private employer, with about 1.7 million U.S. workers and another 60,000 abroad.
The company did however say that the moves would reduce the need for lower-paid roles.
‘As the changes are implemented across the business, one of the outcomes is roles that require less physical labor but have a higher rate of pay,’ the Bentonville, Arkansas-based retailer said in a filing.
More and more entry-level jobs are going away and that can’t be good for young people looking for their first jobs. Not just for the income it brings in, but for the experience.