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I don’t need to stress how hard dating is and finding “the one” for you, we all know that. What’s going to happen at the point where artificial intelligence and robotics are so advanced that a company starts selling android husbands/wives who will automatically be 100% compatible with you mentally and physically. 

And when its time for a baby you go to the surrogate center or something so a human can bear you a child. Or better yet, your android gets implanted with an egg thats fertilized with your sperm and delivers the child.

So we’re going to be essentially leasing or mortgaging the loves of our lives. There’s going to be instances where someone loses their job and the company has to foreclose on someone’s husband/wife and take them back because you can’t pay for it anymore. 

How would the foreclosure/repossession happen?

A.) The company sends 4 employees to your place to physically take the unit back

B.) The company remotely shuts down your husband/wife and they just crumple to the floor, lifeless

C.) the company programs your husband/wife to just walk out of the door and come back to the factory

You know how Amazon sells “Kindles With Special Offers”, that display advertisements on the screen? You have the option of buying kindles at a discounted price if you dont mind ads every now and then.

Given that these Androids are so costly. What if you can buy your husband or wife With Special Offers at a discounted rate, but that means your spouse will try to get you to spend money on products from certain companies?

The advertisements will occur naturally and flow seamlessly with the course of your conversations with them. If you say you’re hungry and want Chinese, your spouse may mention a new restaurant that just opened and is advertising to pick up business. 

What if companies make Androids that exist purely to go out into the world and get people to buy shit?

Like, everywhere you go in public there’s gonna be a woman with huge tits who seem really interested in you and they’re just raving about Winterfresh Gum or something. 

Net Neutrality is in DEEP Trouble

Reposted from Facebook’s PBS Newshour.

Now that I got your attention with this video…

The FCC decided to go ahead with the vote to remove the Net Neutrality rules that the Obama administration set up. 

As you can see, this is what the major ISPs wants to do if they have their way. This can do a few things:

Stiff new innovations, making it harder for smaller companies to compete.

Silence independent voices. 

Potentially putting up a “walled garden” on a wide scale.

Make distribution of information harder for low-income people.

Imagine this website, if you will, only working on Verizon networks while AT&T customers are charged a little extra, or have slower access to the same information.

Remember, your ISP owns content providers and may give top-shelf, VIP treatment to their own things while stiffing everyone else. We need to address this.

Now, some of you may recall earlier this year that John Oliver and a lot of other people, companies (and yours truly) did a rallying cry to tell the FCC to back off the Net Neutrality rules, which resulted in millions of comments on their proposal. 

However, there’s been a few problems… in short, it seems that the FCC chose to not listen due to “inconsistancies”.

Sidenote: Tumblr isn’t the best place to talk “long-form” so if you’re interested in looking at these notes, here are some places to go to.

https://medium.com/@AGSchneiderman/an-open-letter-to-the-fcc-b867a763850a - “ Specifically, for six months my office has been investigating who perpetrated a massive scheme to corrupt the FCC’s notice and comment process through the misuse of enormous numbers of real New Yorkers’ and other Americans’ identities. Such conduct likely violates state law — yet the FCC has refused multiple requests for crucial evidence in its sole possession that is vital to permit that law enforcement investigation to proceed.”

https://twitter.com/BanditRandom/status/933066570741383169 - A twitter thread about how the Wall Street Journal collected someone’s information to sign in FAVOR of Net Neutrality. 

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2017/09/fake-net-neutrality-comments-at-heart-of-lawsuit-filed-against-fcc/ - “Fake” net neutrality comments at heart of lawsuit filed against FCC

So, what can we do about this?

There are a few things you can do to help slow down this nightmare situation.

You can’t just “like” this note, you have to reblog to spread, but more importantly, you have to TAKE action!

1) Make calls to your representatives - https://5calls.org/issue/defend-fcc-net-neutrality - this website will tell you who to call and an easy-to-follow script so that you know exactly what to say.

2) You can support groups like the Electronic Frontier Foundation and the ACLU and Free Press who are fighting to keep Net Neutrality:

https://www.eff.org/

https://www.aclu.org/

https://www.freepress.net/

https://www.fightforthefuture.org/

https://www.publicknowledge.org/

https://www.demandprogress.org/

3) You can add a comment to the proposal using John Oliver’s URL at http://www.gofccyourself.com

4) Write a letter to your representative. Not an email, an actual, snail mail letter. 

Let’s all band together and do something about this. Our future of sharing information, building innovation, nurturing voices and creativity depends on your actions now! 

I’m the Original Poster and I did my best to keep this brief with sources you can see for yourself.

However, with misinformation being a thing, I decided to amend to this to give you some extra pointers as to why I was specific about these steps and not recommend things like strictly writing to the FCC. 

1) Calling your reps and writing them is more effective than doing it via email. It’s been stated over, and over, and over again. Sadly, letters and phone calls are more effective.

2) Signing a petition can help, but without a way to verify you, it can be just as useful as shouting on Twitter (and will they look at Twitter? Nope.) It’s not totally useless, but it will not totally do the job.

See, if the FCC can use “bots” as an excuse (look at the sources in the original post), what makes you think a senator and representatives won’t? This is why “calling your rep” is the first action step and “writing your reps” is the last. 

3) Regardless, the non-profit organizations’ job (the one I posted about) is to spread awareness BEYOND YOUR NETWORK. Think of them as a private army you’re recruiting for this one mission. You can only tell so many people and some of you don’t live in the United States, which makes it even harder! 

4) BTW, you’re not just talking about this on Tumblr, are you? You have to talk to people on your other social networks as well. They are affected by things as well. Don’t want to talk? Post a link to here and let me do the talking for you. 

5) While I have done the research for you, please do your own in conjunction with this. That way, you can be better informed, especially when talking about this to other people.

6) Oh and one more thing since I did neglect this in my last post. I forgot to post the “deadline” - the actual day they will vote. Well…

We have until December 14, 2017!

So, let’s mobilize! Organize! Transform and roll out!

Okay, maybe not the last one…

But make the calls to your reps! Scroll up and do your part, no matter which side you’re on!

A teacher joined students bullying a Muslim student and caught on tape pulling her hijab off to see her “pretty hair”

A video was posted on social media earlier this week showing a student wearing a hijab and hiding her face as someone took the headscarf off her head, exposing her hair to the classroom.

As she tries to readjust the religious head covering other students can be seen playing with her hair.

This week Derek talks with Ronald Wimberly, Josh O’Neill, and Maëlle Doliveux about their Kickstarter project LAAB Magazine #0: Dark Matter. Published by Beehive Books, this will be a tabloid-sized newspaper annual filled with comics, interviews, artwork, cultural criticism, and writings on identity as played out in popular culture. This inaugural #0 issue will include

An interview with musician and actor Saul Williams

A conversation with graphic artist Trenton Doyle Hancock

James Romberger on Jean-Michel Basquiat

A discussion with the poster artist Alexandra Bell

A critical analysis of George Lucas’s THX 1138

Ronald Wimberly’s visual tribute to Sun Ra

A review of BLACK, the new comic from Black Mask Studios

Over a dozen pages of comics and illustration by Ronald Wimberly

A fascinating (yet completely predictable) article about a small Pennsylvania town of Trump supporters who blindly support him despite him not delivering on anything he promised leading up to the election.

When I asked Del Signore about the past year here, he said he “didn’t see any change because we got a new president.” He nonetheless remains an ardent proponent. “He’s our answer.”

I asked Schilling what would happen if the next three years go the way the last one has.

“I’m not going to blame him,” Schilling said. “Absolutely not.”

Is there anything that could change her mind about Trump?

“Nope,” she said.

——-

“Everybody I talk to,” he said, “realizes it’s not Trump who’s dragging his feet. Trump’s probably the most diligent, hardest-working president we’ve ever had in our lifetimes. It’s not like he sleeps in till noon and goes golfing every weekend, like the last president did.”

I stopped him, informing him that, yes, Barack Obama liked to golf, but Trump in fact does golf a lot, too—more, in fact.

Del Signore was surprised to hear this.

“Does he?” he said.

“Yes,” I said.

He did not linger on this topic, smiling and changing the subject with a quip. “If I was married to his wife,” Del Signore said, “I don’t think I’d go anywhere.”

———-

He said he was going to bring back the steel mills.

“You’re never going to get those steel mills back,” she said.

“But he said he was going to,” I said.

“Yeah, but how’s he going to bring them back?”

“I don’t know,” I said, “but it’s what he said, last year, and people voted for him because of it.”

“They always say they want to bring the steel mills back,” Frear said, “but they’re going to have to do a lot of work to bring the steel mills back.”

He hasn’t built the wall yet, either. “I don’t care about his wall,” said Frear, 76. “I mean, if he gets his wall—I don’t give a shit, you know? But he has a good idea: Keep ‘em out.”

He also hasn’t repealed Obamacare. “That’s Congress,” she said.

And the drug scourge here continues unabated. “And it’s not going to improve for a long time,” she said, “until people learn, which they won’t.”

“But I like him,” Frear reiterated. “Because he does what he says.”

——————

“He’s kind of the last best hope, in my opinion,” said Bala, 65, a retired high school Spanish and reading teacher. “I haven’t run into anybody who’s said they’d never vote for him again.”

Next to Bala was a gray-haired man who told me he voted for Trump and was happy so far because “he’s kept his promises.”

I asked which ones.

“Border security.” But there’s no wall yet. “No fault of his,” the man said.

What else? “Getting rid of Obamacare.” But he hasn’t. “Well, he’s tried to.”

What else? “Defunding Planned Parenthood.” But he didn’t. “Not his fault again,” the man said.

I asked for his name. “Bill K.,” he said. He wouldn’t give me his last name. “I don’t trust you,” he said.

—————–

“The thing that irritates me to no end is this NFL shit,” Schilling told me in her living room. “I’m about ready to go over the top with this shit. We do not watch no NFL now.” They’re Dallas Cowboys fans. “We banned ‘em. We don’t watch it.”

Schilling looked at her husband, Dave McCabe, who’s 67 and a retired high school basketball coach. She nodded at me. “Tell him,” she said to McCabe, “what you said the NFL is …”

McCabe looked momentarily wary. He laughed a little. “I don’t remember saying that,” he said unconvincingly.

Schilling was having none of it. “You’re the one that told me, liar,” she said.

She looked at me.

The NFL?

“Niggers for life,” Schilling said.

the flag is an idol in which people literally pledge their allegiance to

patriotic anthems = hymns

the military itself is a treated like a priest class; the “laypeople” are expected to display the utmost respect for their pure existence.

indoctrination of children

displays of patriotism determines how “faithful” the individual is

presence of nationalism at different events (such as sports games, festivals, schools etc…) eerily resembles a theocracy

In recent days Bloom, the daughter of feminist lawyer Gloria Allred, has been struggling desperately to salvage her carefully crafted—and now shattered—image as a crusader for women’s rights.

Especially damaging was a New York Times report that after the newspaper published its Oct. 5 blockbuster about the now-fired studio chief, Bloom had contacted the board of TWC, according to leaked emails, to suggest releasing “photos of several of the accusers in very friendly poses with Harvey after his alleged misconduct.”

She basically takes women who have been harassed or abused and adds another layer of trauma on top of that.

Fox News contributor Jehmu Greene, a longtime Democratic operative and former Rock the Vote president, briefly considered hiring Bloom in April as Bill O’Reilly’s sexual-misconduct scandal was heating up.

Greene, an African American who’d had her own unpleasant encounters with the Fox News star (he’d told her to show more cleavage on the air, and lewdly suggested that he’d like to, as she put it, “break my back”), recalled that she was weighing going public with her O’Reilly experiences, and contacted Bloom at the suggestion of a New York Times reporter who advised that having Bloom as her attorney would enhance her credibility.

At a two-hour-long breakfast meeting at the Grey Dog coffee shop in Manhattan’s West Village, Greene recalled, they discussed how Bloom could help her as an attorney, and Bloom “was eager, very available and very persistent”; the lawyer pressed Greene to sign an agreement (which Bloom let her skim on her iPhone) which called for Bloom to exercise total control over Greene’s media interviews, and to receive one-third of any income she earned from telling her story.

“Why would I give you a percentage of anything I got from me telling my story? Why do I need a media representative? I am in the media,” Greene recalls telling Bloom, who quickly agreed to remove the money clause from Greene’s draft of the agreement, which—much to Greene’s surprise—covered only media representation, not legal services.

Every city in America wants Amazon to locate its second headquarters there. It’s the “trophy deal of the decade,” promising up to 50,000 jobs for a single lucky metro area. According to an NPR report, cities are resorting to desperate measures in order win Jeff Bezos’ heart. Birmingham littered its streets with enormous Amazon boxes. (See above.) The mayor of Kansas City bought a thousand items on Amazon and reviewed them all. Tucson sent Amazon a 21-foot saguaro cactus, which Amazon declined. Places as unlikely as Gary, Indiana and Fargo, North Dakota have gotten their hopes up. The Rochester Democrat and Chronicleproclaimed that “a great case can be made for the Buffalo Rochester Metro Corridor,” since while the region may lack some of Amazon’s stated search criteria, it makes up for it in “moxie.”

There’s something sad about watching suffering post-industrial cities like Gary plead for an investment from Amazon. (Gary’s mayor issued a heartfelt appeal, on the mistaken assumption that Jeff Bezos possesses a conscience.) It feels like the peasants are coming before the king, bearing whatever meager offerings they can scrape together, and begging him for his favor. Having humbled themselves at Bezos’ feet, praised his products and promoted his brand, nearly all of them will walk away with… nothing. Even though Bezos could single-handedly transform the economic fortunes of a place like Gary, the spoils will almost certainly go to a place that is already prospering.  

Part of trying to lure Amazon, of course, involves bribery: cities are trying to put together a favorable package of financial inducements that will make them appear sufficiently “business-friendly.” As Slate’s Henry Grabar explained, “virtually every city and state will roll out a carpet of tax breaks, plum real estate, and other local incentives. (All for a company dedicated to undermining the local businesses that will pay taxes to support the services Amazon uses.)” It’s a common pattern among municipalities trying to convince large companies to move there. And as Grabar points out, even when a company accepts an offer, they also have a powerful means of extorting the city in the future, by constantly threatening to take their business elsewhere. The whole system  “rewards corporations for being flighty, faithless partners to cities and punishes small and local businesses that cannot make credible threats to secure their own incentive packages.”

This dynamic is commonly called the “race to the bottom”: cities and states must compete with each other to give corporations the lowest taxes, the fewest labor regulations, the largest giveaways of property. The more a place is struggling, the more they need outside investment, and the more they’ll be willing to do in order to bring in new firms. This gives people like Jeff Bezos phenomenal leverage over the weak. If Bezos told the mayor of Detroit that his city would be a top-3 contender if and only ifthe mayor recorded a promo ad for Amazon in which he stood nude singing a song called “Hail To Thee, Amazon” while saluting the company logo, the mayor would have to consider the offer carefully. (A mayor who cared about the economic well-being of his residence probably ought to agree.) Honestly, that’s really not far off from what is happening: mayors are recording ads for Amazon, and the only thing that has kept them from fully debasing themselves is that Bezos hasn’t yet requested it.

This pattern recurs over and over. Louisiana nearly bankrupted its state treasury writing checks to the film industry, as part of a doomed effort to turn New Orleans into the “Hollywood of the South.” (When the checks dried up, the industry left.) The case of sports stadiums is notorious. Sports teams force municipalities to spend a fortune building new stadiums, on the promise that the local economy will be “stimulated.” They can then threaten to leave unless they receive further bribes. (And it turns out that they don’t stimulate much at all, bringing few economic benefits in return for the millions of dollars spent appeasing team owners.)

“I met with the president of the Virgin Islands.”

So Delta flight 302 flew in to San Juan, picked up passengers, and threaded one arm of Irma on the way out. The pilot basically said “hold my beer” and took on a hurricane.

I am not entirely convinced that Poe Dameron was not flying this plane, to be honest.

My dude landed and took off in less than an hour and squeezed between the arm of the hurricane and the core:

1. The fact that this is clearly supposed to be the One Ring from Lord of the Rings

2. “Shakira Law”

3. The implication that children either know arabic or will become muslims by eating a donut.

4. “Free Islamic Donut”

From mid-May to July 2017, Equifax exposed the financial and personal identifying information of 143 million Americans – 44% of the country – to hackers, who made off with credit-card details, Social Security Numbers, sensitive credit history data, driver’s license numbers, birth dates, addresses, and then, in the five weeks between discovering the breach and disclosing it, the company allowed its top execs to sell millions of dollars’ worth of stock in the company, while preparing a risibly defective and ineffective website that provides no useful information to the people whom Equifax has put in grave financial and personal danger through their recklessness.

Equifax is in the business of helping employers and financial institutions punish people for making oversights in their business and financial affairs. Being late with a single payment or missing a single bill can constitute a black mark on your Equifax records that lasts for years or decades, affecting your ability to rent or buy a home or get a job.

By contrast, Equifax expects its stakeholders – whole nations’ worth of people – to overlook its gross misconduct. The website the company has stood up (an unpatched stock WordPress installation with a defective TLS certificate) just tells you to come back in a week to get a coupon good for a year’s worth of Equifax credit monitoring (without specifically disclosing whether your data was breached). Calling the company’s phone hotline connects you to a third-party subcontractor who directs you to the website and provides no details about the breach.

Searching the site for information about your breach subjects you to a clickthrough agreement in which you waive your right to sue the company.

Chief Executive Richard Smith called the breach “disappointing.”