The Coming Moment of Truth for the American Experiment

[Prefatory Note: This is not a prediction. This is what is being planned right now]

The drumbeat that the election result will be fraudulent will grow louder and louder and will be the major theme of Trump's campaign (which, unfortunately, Biden is playing into already with his allegations that Trump is trying to steal the election instead of pounding on the mantra that the election results are going to be fair and have to be honored). As the results unveil on November 3, and Biden is declared the presumptive winner, and the Senate looks to have been flipped, Trump along with Fox News and the Republicans will come out with a full-throated attack on the integrity of the election results, and Barr will announce that he has launched a full scale investigation into the bona fides of the election results (both at the presidential level and down-ballot). Shortly thereafter, Barr will reveal the results of his investigation, confirming that Trump won the election, the Senate had not really been flipped, and that Biden had engaged in a treasonous voter fraud scheme, and orders him arrested. Biden seeks a writ of habeas corpus in the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court then either upholds Biden's arrest and the American Experiment has ended or orders Biden released, which Barr refuses to honor, and the American Experiment has ended. Democracies don't die from external assaults. They die from internal corrosion. And everybody knows that: Link to What Everybody Knows

Alternative Scenario: Trump gets COVID-19 and goes on a ventilator; Pence becomes president and then he gets COVID-19 and goes on a ventilator; Pelosi becomes president; Trump and Pence die; the country is saved and the American Experiment lives on.

PS: I am certain if you read this far, or even if you didn't, you are scoffing. Let me know if you still are scoffing when the NYT prints this as a news story or a NYT commentator writes a piece to the same effect.

Great Deal From T-Mobile

T-Mobile is offering 4 lines for $25 per line (and $20 per line up to 6 lines) with unlimited talk, data, and text, including free international texting, and more. And you can bring your phone from AT&T or Verizon, and get up to $450 via virtual prepaid card to help pay it off—so you can keep the device you love.

Link to T-Mobile Website

Robust File Converter

Converter365 is an easy to use tool that can convert over 1000 different file formats. Upload and convert as many files at a time as you like with no wait period between conversions and no links to download a file. Files to be converted can be uploaded from your device or from a URL.

Converter365 supports converting files in all of these formats:

• Audio

• Image

• Video

• Document

• Ebook

• Presentation

• Spreadsheet

• Vector

• Archive

To use, upload your files, convert them from one file format to another, and download. You can convert multiple files simultaneously. Converter365.com is an online tool, as long as you have an Internet connection, you can convert any files, regardless of the type of device you’re using.

Link to Converter365 Website

How to Address Racism With Class

On Wednesday, the Wildlife Conservation Society (which oversees the Bronx Zoo) issued a full-throated, unqualified apology to address as it put it, "two episodes from our history demonstrating unconscionable racial intolerance [that] demand particular attention." This got picked up immediately by the NYT, which had written about one of the matters back in 2006. The class that is demonstrated by the WCS's statement is what one should expect, but does not always get, unless that organization knows how to listen to insightful advice that might require perseverance to deliver and be difficult to hear.

Link to WCS Apology Statement

Link to NYT Article re Apology Statement

Link to 2006 NYT Article 

No Need to Forsake Your Nuts: AA First Class Amenity Still Available

Everyone agrees that one of the great pleasures of flying first class on American Airlines was the mixed nuts they served. Not as great a pleasure as actually watching the flight attendant slice the prime rib roasts right in front of you, which practice was abandoned decades ago, but still, pretty pretty good. As a result of the pandemic and reduction of flight travel, tens of thousands of tons of mixed nuts that had been planned to go to American, are now just sitting there. What's bad news for them is good news for you because you can buy them online. They're not cheap, but then first class travel was not cheap, and heck, you deserve to pamper yourself with these great nuts as you are sipping your quarantini and looking over your menu choices for the upcoming meal.

Link to Great Nuts Online Ordering Website

  

Systemic Racism

[Prefatory Note: If you find fault in this analysis, it is mine. If you find merit, it is owing to a semi-loyal reader]

If you are White, and college educated, and successful and accomplished, it undoubtedly is due to an enormous amount of work and effort and strain on your part, and you deserve much credit for what you have accomplished. But think for second, and suppose your birth (over which you had no control) had been to a different family in a different place. Just by way of example, suppose you had been the 5th child of a single poor Black uneducated mother in Harlem or the rural South ... what is the likelihood you would learned to read at home, to go to the el-hi schools you did or ones comparable to it, the college you did, and ended up succeeding as you did? Put another way, might it be said that, comparing your birth status to that birth status, as much credit as you deserve for all you've achieved, 99% is the result of the luck of your birth and 1% to your intelligence and drive? Put another way, might it be said that the luck of your birth circumstance versus that other hypothecated birth circumstance, you were the beneficiary of "affirmative action" that favors White people. And, of course, "affirmative action" programs that favor White people don't stop at birth ... legacy college admissions is just one example of another way. Put another way, is it really that hard to understand what systemic or institutional racism means or how it works? 

Three Wonderful Summer Dishes

Noble Grain Bowl: From Noble Eatery. The salad is made up of grains + quinoa + arugula + manchego + beets + wood roasted peppers + pepitas + butternut squash (although ingredients vary due to seasonality). Be sure to buy at least two per person to spread it out as individual meals or side dishes.

Heirloom Salad: This you can make at home. Line the bowl with arugula and basil, then add Heirloom tomato slices, mozzarella slices, a couple of beet slices, some little pieces of cucumber and radish, avocado chunks, and at least two artichoke hearts, and then douse with quality balsami vinegar de modena.

Gazpacho: This should be made at home. Chop into a big bowl celery (alot), carrots (just one or two), cucumber (alot), red pepper (not too much), an ear of corn kernels, diced red onion, and chopped scallions, and garlic pieces. Mix it up and sprinkle with garlic powder and cilantro and mix it up some more, and then douse with organic extra virgin olive oil and red wine vinegar and mix up. Then chop up some grape tomatoes into small pieces and add to bowl and mix it up. Then scoop this into a rectangular glass dish and douse with lemon juice, lime juice, and two 6 oz cans of V-8 (you can use tomato juice but you'll run the risk of head slapping because you could have had a V-8). Cover the dish and put in refrigerator, and you'll have salads for a while as main or side dishes or appetizers. Add a dollop of sour cream just before serving.

Few Musical Notes

1. Hoot rendition of a classic by the Arizona Wildflowers:  Link to Arizona Wildflowers Smash Hit

2. Blackpink Reveals Release Date of New Album: Link to Explanatory Article

3. Chainsmokers Concert Comes Under Fire: Link to Explanatory Article

Foods to Fight Pandemic Stress

From the WSJ (can be enlarged on the blog itself):

Sometimes Amazon Is Not the Best Place to Order From

The G-Defy Ion, with its patented veroshock absorption system, claims to reduce knee pain, back, ankle pain, and foot paid, and they're not bad looking. At least until October 31, 2020 (which promises to be a weird Halloween this year), if you order them from the the G-Defy website, you get free shipping and $30 off with Promo Code NM1GMJ5. If you order them from Amazon, they cost the same ($155, although they qualify for Prime so you get in effect 5% or $7.75 off and perhaps get an easier return) and you don't get the $30 off. Our Foot Underwriting Team (FUT) has not tried or reviewed them yet, but we do note they are not bad looking (looks being the number 1 most important thing when it comes to footwear and most every consumer product) and they do have intriguing features, including: Synthetic soles; breathable mesh fabric upper; web-last technology; and removable insoles for custom orthotic inserts.

Link to G-Defy Website

Good News on the Poll Front; Bad News on the Basic Arithmetic (Counting Virus Infections) Front

Good News Front: The AP-NORC poll shows Trump continuing to fall on his approval rating for handling the pandemic--it's down to 32% and the country being on the right track/wrong track now reads 20/80. Even Trump's handling of the economy numbers are sliding into the low 40s and the percentage seeing the economy as good is down to 38%. Still, some of these numbers are head scratchers, but at least their direction is encouraging. See Link to AP-NORC Poll Results

Bad News Front: Arizona today registers as the only state where "reported" infections are shown to be declining. That there is just one such state is not good. But, even worse, it's likely Arizona is not in fact experiencing a declining infection rate given that it's now being reported that the 10,000 or more tests that were performed over a week ago have not reported results and the firm responsible for doing so has given no results and has stated it will not be reporting results.  

Failure to Teach the Children About Deferred Gratification

A loyal reader related to me that, during her walk on the Biltmore golf course this morning, she could hear Lifetime Fitness holding classes at Biltmore Fashion Square in defiance of the order that it remain closed. We then commiserated with each other as to how stupid this country has been, including both its leaders and a huge swath of our population, in refusing to take the steps taken by sane countries such as the European Union countries and South Korea (and even now North Korea) of shutting everything down and only then, after containment and mitigation had flattened the curve, slowly and safely opening up. As we put it, what we are paying for now is the excesses of "a me culture" that is the result of having not been taught, as children are supposed to be taught, the value and benefit of "deferred gratification." Let's hope the parents of today do a better job of teaching their children well: Link to Inspirational Song for Teaching Children Well

PS: This was posted yesterday morning. It's happened too often to be shocked or surprised to see the Failing NYT saw it and fed it to Paul Krugman who immediately wrote a piece called "The Cult of Selfishness Is Killing America." See Link to Klugman Piece

Eating and Shopping Safely

The below is from Monday's WSJ. There's likely nothing in it you don't know, but it has some good cautionary notes on glove use and wiping down groceries, and some re-assuring notes on concerns about COVID-19 infections in food processing plants:

Arizona Vehicle Inspections During the Pandemic

The waiver for having one's vehicle's emissions inspection has expired. However, provision is made for contact-less inspection if you follow certain procedures and pay ahead of time. The following article from the Arizona Republic explains:

The White House Has Expressly Given Up on Containing the Pandemic

Not that the White House has done anything meaningful to contain and mitigate the spread of the novel coronavirus, on Sunday July 26, it expressly and formerly announced its surrendering on that front. As the president was off golfing, Mark Meadows, the White House Chief of Staff, frankly stated on national television: "“We’re not gonna have a solution to this,” he said. “It’s not masks. It’s not shutting down the economy. Hopefully it is American ingenuity that will allow for therapies and vaccines to ultimately conquer this.”

Republican Shibboleth re Unemployment Benefits Unpacked

The Republicans' position on unemployment benefits to cap them at 70% of one's wages. The rationale for this position is that no one should make more money for staying home than they would by going back to work. That has a nice ring to it, and in the good old days, which ended this past March, that makes total sense. BUT, if people in Florida, Texas, California, Arizona, and elsewhere had been paid more to stay home than to prematurely open up their businesses, we likely would not have faced the dire and perhaps apocalyptic consequences of premature openings. The reason the European Union countries, and South Korea, and elsewhere, have put us to shame both in terms of containing COVID-19 and getting their economies going again is they did not short-circuit the process ... they bit the bullet early and they bit it hard, instead of taking, as we did, and shamefully as we continue to do, half-ass measures led by a moronic president and a gaggle of toadie governors. So, when it comes to providing economic help and incentives to people, let's please stop with the shibboleths and focus on why we are providing those incentives and what we want people to do with them.

When It Comes to Watching Movies: Different Personality Types per John Hodgman

Some couples have no problem watching a movie to the end together. For others, whether or not to continue watching once it's clear the movie is garbage can be a friction point. That is because, as John Hodgman explained, some people are "completists" and have to finish any movie they start while others are not "completists" (and which I call "escapists") and find watching a bad movie excruciatingly painful. Where both partners are completists or escapists, no problem. But where one is one and the other the other, there can be friction, especially where the completist pushes the escapist to keep watching. I will keep my views to myself, but John Hodgman says the completist should let the escapist do their thing without any comment or criticism. 

Frank Bruni on the Election

Frank Bruni's piece in this past Sunday NYT is excellent. The link to the full article appears below. Here is the peroration: "[This election] is the tallest tale Trump has ever scaled, the greatest story ever told. It’s a referendum on the reaches of his persuasion. It’s a judgment of the depths of Americans’ gullibility. Have we cut the cord to reality? Then Trump has a chance. And America hasn’t a prayer."

Link to Full Article

Omegle

[Prefatory Note: I'm possibly the last person to have heard of Omegle, but the NYT had an article about it which is reproduced here. In short, Omegle is where you can talk to strangers by text and video chat. Is this a great country or what? See Link to Is This a Great Country or What ]

Link to Omegle Website and App Download

First there was the Zoom boom, followed quickly by Zoom fatigue. Then everyone became a gamer, inviting visitors to their virtual islands and sending friends digital gifts. There were raves, meetings, meditations and movie nights, all of which took place on the internet.

Now, months later and with no sign of the virus’ end in sight, it seems we’ve reached the taking-to-strangers online stage of boredom and isolation.

Omegle, a website that pairs random visitors through video and text chat, has spiked in popularity over the last four months. (“did i miss something why is everyone on omegle?” one person recently tweeted.) The site is similar to the once wildly popular Chatroulette, which is also experiencing a renaissance of sorts, in that it is free, requires no registration and promises a surprising social experience. Visitors can submit keywords to filter for people with shared interests. Those in college can enter a .edu email address, which the site uses for verification, to find other students. There is also, predictably, an “adult” section.

Though the site has been around for more than a decade (it was founded in 2009, a few months before Chatroulette, by the tech entrepreneur Leif K-Brooks, who was 18 at the time and did not respond to a request for an interview), it has recently seen a resurgence, particularly with teenagers feeling alienated by months of remote learning and limited face-to-face socializing.

“I’ve seen the same people for the past several months and done the same things,” said the YouTuber Cole Giannasca, 18. “The newness and the possibility of meeting anyone in the world seemed so much better now than it would have before quarantine.”

Recordings of Omegle videos have helped creators generate content on other platforms and go viral. YouTubers have garnered millions of views on videos about delving into Omegle’s “adult” section (for people 18 and older), fighting bullies on Omegle, cosplaying on Omegle, pretending to be celebrities on Omegle, sitting on Omegle for 24 and even 48 hours straight, and more.


Omegle has been a boon for Gen Z influencers, who have used the site to host impromptu virtual meet-and-greets and events. The YouTube star Emma Chamberlain threw herself an Omegle birthday party in May. Many TikTok stars have been using Omegle to surprise fans who are looking for fellow enthusiasts on the site through its filters. “Everyone started selecting TikTokers,” said Michael Le, a 20-year-old TikTok star with nearly 35 million followers. Often, the influencers live-stream their fans’ reactions on TikTok.

“It’s like a giant speed dating game with your fans,” said Alex Warren, 19, a YouTuber and member of the Hype House.

Nailea Devora, an 18-year-old YouTuber, described Omegle as “like walking around a big mall, trying to see your favorite creator. You can put anyone’s name in and try to find them. It’s been really popular for TikTokers to search their names and see the fans reaction when they see them pop up onscreen. It’s a big trend.”


Mr. Le said he tried Omegle for the first time about a month ago. “You never know what will happen,” he said. “We made jokes with other people and just had fun. We just captured their reactions and edited into a lighthearted video. It was little 9-year-old kids being like, ‘OMG this is you! I’ve seen you on the For You page!’”

Brooke Sabey, 21, a YouTuber who reposts her Omegle content to TikTok, said the platform has gained traction recently in part because recording videos with other people has become difficult during the pandemic. “I take my YouTube Omegle videos and clip them to upload them to TikTok,” said Ms. Sabey. “I’m thinking of doing live Omegle content on TikTok.”


“As a talent manager, my goal is to grow people’s audience,” said Walid Mohammed, a 20-year-old talent manager and content strategist. “One way I think I can do that is with Omegle content, especially right now because it’s so hot.” Influencers sign onto Omegle and pretend to be celebrities, conduct man-on-the-street-style interviews, play guessing games and joke with people, then film their reactions.

The site has a Web 2.0 aesthetic and includes several unsubtle political messages. Omegle’s home page leads with a “public service announcement” comparing President Xi Jinping of China to Winnie the Pooh. And in every chat box, a line appears at the top urging visitors to “say STAND WITH HONG KONG AGAINST THE CCP!”

Much like Chatroulette and other sites that randomly pair visitors, there can be unpleasant surprises of the explicit variety. On its home page, the company states that “predators have been known to use Omegle, so please be careful.”

“There’s the shock factor of it all,” Ms. Devora said. “There’s a lot of sexual porn stuff. We just film our reactions, like, ‘OMG I didn’t want to see that! People are intrigued to see what happens next and what the next stranger might do. I think the majority of us are just teenagers looking to meet people, but it can get weird and dark.”

As a whole, the site offers a sample of the internet’s strange and varied interests. “In one video, I met a lady and she has a duck,” Ms. Devora said. “She’s just holding a duck and the duck has a diaper on.”

Erratum re Maintaining Lustrous Hair

Yesterday, we put up a post about maintaining lustrous hair. Unfortunately, we forgot to give it a subject line so it looked in the email like a unrelated tag-on to the post about Evangelicals. We regret the error and apologize for any inconvenience, confusion, or consternation it might have caused. It now appears correctly on the blog as its own entry with its own subject line. 

Update on Some Blog Stats

Our viewership has been hitting new highs. So we thought two factoids might be of interest both to our loyal readers and what appears to be an even larger number of other readers. First, we are now getting over 150 page views per day (which translates into over 4,500 page views per month), and page views, which now total over 230,000 since our inception, understate our viewership circulation because reading a blog post on the morning email does not count as a page view. And second, from our humble beginning of using the blog only as a way to keep a library of the tech and consumer tips we did now and then (which was so long ago we cannot remember who suggested that we do so), we now have surpassed 5,000 posts, a few of which have departed into areas beyond tech and consumer tips. 

Radioactive (2019 Amazon Prime Original)

This is the amazing story of Marie Curie. Unfortunately, the way it's told, it's not just not amazing--it drags and drags and goes off into tangents and bores. Top Gun was two stories--an action story and a love story. Radioactive starts out as two stores--a science story and a love story and then drifts off into other worlds and the history of the planet and mysticism and who knows what after I stopped watching with a half hour to go. To highlight the profoundness of the movie, as it tells us in an even less subtle way than Tennessee Williams uses symbolism (e.g., the iguana tied to a stake being referred to as "at the end of its rope"), science can be used for good or bad, to cure or to destroy. As our country seems to be careening into a new Dark Age and denial of fact and reality when it comes to science, alas, this may not be the movie that brings the Trump morons back to a world of sanity.  

IMDb Link to Radioactive

Trump's Evangelical Support

According to the WSJ, the one group/demographic that Trump has lost no support from is White Evangelicals. They undoubtedly think Jesus was a one-issue person or Son of God who would vote for Trump. One can only wonder what they think God must think of his one-issue Son. 

Here is the excerpt from the WSJ:

Maintaining Lustrous Hair

We have been flooded for requests for how to keep dyed and processed hair looking lustrous. It's not that difficult: Think Olaplex. While the Olaplex system involves monthly in-salon treatments supplemented by bi-weekly home treatments, Olaplex No. 3 Hair Protector can be used as a stand-alone product to protect the bonds of your hair and maintain its original, beautiful condition. Just some of its fans who have told us they swear by Olaplex No. 3 include Drew (Barrymore), JLo, and Gwyneth (Paltrow).  

Link to Olaplex Website

Was Trump Signaling a Pardon to Maxwell If She Hushed Up?

I don't know, but the Lincoln Project did a nice job with his comment: Link to LP Ad

Converting File Formats

Suppose someone sends you a photo and asks you to crop it and the photo is in jfif format which is not recognized by your photo program. So, you need to convert it to jpeg or some other such recognizable format. Convertio.com (which also is a Chrome extension) is free and as easy to use to do just that ... in a matter of second.

Link to Convertio Website

Idea for Biden for a Debate Format

Besides just saying inexplicable things in inexplicable ways, Biden's biggest challenge viz the election is the debates. Unlike Trump where it matters little how he does or what he says, Biden does not enjoy and likely will not be afforded the same liberties. That said, what Biden should propose as a format is the format used in the General Electric College Bowl, which ran on television from 1958-70. Its point format (where points are awarded for answering fact questions correctly) would be a boon for Biden. Thus, while Biden likely will not do particularly well in the sense of racking up the kind of points my team and I did in 1967 when Penn scored 230 points against Texas, he cannot lose: Trump will score 0 points (unless one of the question is: Name the 5 things you aced that test on in order).

Link to GE College Bowl Website

Trump's Profiting From Masks

You can get a MAGA mask from Amazon for $7. If you buy it from the Trump campaign, it will cost you $20.

Vaccine Efficacy

[Prefatory Note: I am not a doctor or, as it seems every doctor on TV is an epidemiologist, but I do know how to listen to Bill Gates and understand what he's saying. What follows is based on what he said]

The mantra is that, to get FDA approval, a vaccine must be safe and efficacious. What safe means is pretty straightforward in terms of not having an undue likelihood of causing undue harm. Efficacy, however, is not so straightforward. There are two elements to efficacy: (i) the ability to protect the individual from getting infected; and (ii) the ability to stop the individual from spreading the disease. Now, here's the key point: Those two elements are not digital in the sense of can protect  or can stop or cannot protect or cannot stop. Rather, they are analog: A vaccine might be able to have a 50% ability or probability to protect an individual or prevent the individual from spreading the disease. Right now, in terms of the vaccines approved by the FDA to go to Phase 3 trials, the FDA has lowered the protection percentage and the spreading percentage than it normally imposes to deem a vaccine efficacious. 

What's the Point of Having Freedom of the Press Part 2

At Thursday's Trump presser, Trump handed the press the biggest softball ever when he explained that he was canceling the GOP convention because of his concern for safety of people who should not be gathering in crowds and to set an example that crowds should be avoided. Do you think there might have been one question as to whether, when all the experts including those on his own task force made the same points months ago, and the mayors of the respective cities begged him to cancel his plans, he gave those considerations any thought before going to Tulsa or Phoenix to hold rallies. Why not amend the first amendment to say freedom of the press is revoked until we find a press corps that has a clue as to what they are doing.

Malware on Android Phones: How to Spot It and How to Deal With It

When it comes to malware, some will say: Just get over it. Others say: It is what it is. And others say: Deal with it. This article from cnet gives an excellent overview of how to recognize malware and how to deal with it. Link to cnet Article

New Taylor Swift Album Coming This Friday

We are so excited, as we know our loyal readers will, to learn that global pop phenom Taylor Swift has announced that her eighth studio album, "Folklore," will debut Friday at midnight. She also released a track list of 16 songs, including "Exile," featuring Bon Iver, "The 1," "Cardigan" and "The Last Great American Dynasty."  MORE

Here is our exclusive interview with Ms. Swift:

Q: Why did you decide to release this album now?

A: "Before this year, I probably would've overthought when to release this music at the 'perfect' time, but the times we're living in keep reminding me that nothing is guaranteed. My gut is telling me that if you make something you love, you should just put it out into the world. That's the side of uncertainty I can get on board with."

Q: How has your summer gone?

A: "Most of the things I had planned for the summer didn't end up happening, but there is something [this album] that DID happen. I'll be releasing my entire brand new album of songs."

Q:  What did it take for you to produce this album?

A: "I've poured all of my whims, dreams, fears and musings into. I wrote and recorded this music in isolation but got to collaborate with some musical heroes of mine."