Category: Unintended Consequences

Man Tries to Grab Trump Flag From His Car, But Then Instant Karma Strikes

I wrote an earlier feel good story that CNN might be sold, because AT&T was in financial trouble, and posited what a great idea it would be if President Donald Trump were to buy it and completely change the network, if he did not prevail ultimately in the election.

But we have another feel good story that just says so much about what Trump Derangement Syndrome can lead Biden supporters to do and how karma can bite back.

Trump supporters were out in force this weekend, supporting Trump and supporting the concerns being raised about the election.

But one man driving by in a car didn’t take kindly to one man who was holding a Trump banner. He allegedly tried to grab the banner and then spit on the man holding it. But talk about instant karma when he tried to speed away.

Modern high technology strikes again

This Hacked Coffee Maker Demands Ransom and Demonstrates a Terrifying Implication About the IoT (Internet of Things)

It’s no secret that the Internet of Things is full of insecure gadgets. All you need is one high profile incident to be flooded with terrifying headlines about how everything from robotic vacuum cleaners to smart sex toys can be hacked to spy on you. However, apparently some devices like Smarter’s IoT coffee machine can also be reprogrammed to go haywire and demand ransom from unsuspecting users.

This week, Martin Hron, a researcher with the security firm Avast, reverse engineered a $250 Smarter coffee maker as part of a thought experiment to potentially uncover an important flaw in the infrastructure of smart devices.

“I was asked to prove a myth, call it a suspicion, that the threat to IoT devices is not just to access them via a weak router or exposure to the internet, but that an IoT device itself is vulnerable and can be easily owned without owning the network or the router,” he wrote in a blog post detailing his methods.

His experiment was a success: After a week of tinkering, he effectively turned the coffee maker into a ransomware machine. When the user tries to connect it to their home network, it triggers the machine to turn on the burner, spew hot water, endlessly spin the bean grinder, and display a pre-programmed ransom message while beeping incessantly……..

Yes. That’s black residents telling BLM to take a hike.

Chicago Neighborhood Ejects BLM Protesters At Police Station

Englewood may set the tone for dealing with rioters for the rest of the summer. After the organized pillaging this weekend on the Magnificent Mile, the city of Chicago toughened up their security stance. Black Lives Matter protesters and others set their sights on the Englewood neighborhood’s police precinct, but residents there pushed them out — literally.

“Those people were opportunist[s],” one leader of the neighborhood pushback told reporters:

Continue reading “”

Trump is using the Rules for Radicals that Saul Alinsky wrote to help leftists.
1,  Rule 4 – Make the enemy live up to its own set of rules
2, Rule 5 – Ridicule is man’s most potent weapon
3, Rule 6 -A good tactic is one your people enjoy

It is enjoyable to see their own tactics used against them.

Trump defends gathering at Bedminster golf club as ‘peaceful protest.’

President Trump defended a gathering of members of his Bedminster, New Jersey, golf club as a “peaceful protest” against the media.

“To me they pretty much look like they all have, pretty much all have masks on,” Trump said, who said the Friday gathering was not in violation of Garden State social distancing regulations.

“You know you have an exclusion in the law. It says peaceful protest or political activity, right?” he added.

“I call it peaceful protest because they heard you were coming up and they know the news is fake, they know it better than anybody,” Trump continued.

For privacy-minded people who are skeptical of public health arguments in favor of face masks, the pandemic may prove to be less of a reason to wear face coverings than an excuse to do just that. And we may as well throw in sunglasses and a hat, just to be sure………

Face Masks Confuse Facial Recognition Technology

Americans can’t agree on whether face masks are a good way to reduce the threat of transmitting COVID-19. We’ve even turned mask-donning into a symbol of partisan affiliation; those who would make them compulsory everywhere face off against those who refuse them under all circumstances. But we should at least be able to agree that face coverings are a great way to defeat the surveillance state—especially now that the U.S. government has conceded that masks confuse the hell out of facial recognition technology.

“Using unmasked images, the most accurate algorithms fail to authenticate a person about 0.3% of the time,” the U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), a federal agency, reported last week. “Masked images raised even these top algorithms’ failure rate to about 5%, while many otherwise competent algorithms failed between 20% to 50% of the time.”

Notably, the NIST test focused on one-to-one matching of a face against a single photo, as you might do to unlock a cellphone or at a passport checkpoint. One-to-one systems are carried out under conditions of near-ideal lighting and camera placement, and so are more reliable than one-to-many matches of faces against databases that are conducted during surveillance of public places. Masks should be expected to be even more effective at increasing failure rates of one-to-many facial recognition systems.

“The more of the nose a mask covers, the lower the algorithm’s accuracy,” the NIST report adds of the digitally simulated coverings used in the study. “The study explored three levels of nose coverage—low, medium and high—finding that accuracy degrades with greater nose coverage.” Continue reading “”

Today is the 12th World Chocolate Day

Invented by the Aztecs, they believed Quetzacoatal gave them the cacao plant they made Xocolātl from. The Spanish conquistadors took the seeds back with them and cooks came up with a confection they called Chocolate.

Not all that long ago these types were having conniptions about people who were using the wrong ‘gender pronoun’.
A real crisis apparently brings things into a clearer perspective, and from the überproggie New Yorker magazine, no less.

Choose Your Weapon

As shoppers stock up for a potential Armageddon, an Oregon gun store has sold out of ARs and .308 rifles, many of which went to first-time liberal buyers.

There was no complimentary hand sanitizer for the concerned customers of Gorge Guns, in Hood River, Oregon, on a recent Friday. Erika Bales, the shop’s twenty-nine-year-old owner, wasn’t worried about the virus. “I figure, just let nature take its course,” she said. Her customers were less nonchalant. Bales, who had a neat manicure and a number of tattoos, said that, days earlier, people had begun realizing that “everyone’s buying things and everything’s gonna be gone.” The resulting rush was, for her, unprecedented. She was out of ARs and .308 rifles. A few shotguns remained, and she told shoppers that they could saw them off, to a legal length. “Obama didn’t even bring in these numbers,” Bales said.

At noon, a woman in her sixties came in. She wore plastic gloves and had a scarf wrapped around her face, and she traced a wide arc around the only other non-employee in the store. “I’ve been doing this since the beginning of March,” she said, referring to her protective gear. “I don’t feel sick at all. I’m self-quarantining.” She left her house only for essential activities. This was one. “I’m buying a gun,” she said. “I can’t believe it.”

She went on, “My son was a little upset about it.” (He preferred his bow and arrow.) “I’m old and I live alone, and we don’t know if there’s going to be civil unrest. The world is not the same.” She added, “It didn’t have to be this way.” Unlike many of the shop’s regulars, she was no fan of Trump: “He’s a divider all the way. First he said, ‘Five people have died, big deal.’ Now he’s saying, ‘I always knew it’d be dangerous.’ ” Talk turned to Portland. “It’s a ghost town,” a young woman said. Her name was Rosemary, and she was helping Bales out, since the restaurant where she waited tables had closed.

“I don’t like to go in cities anymore, anyway,” the customer said.

“But these rumors about them putting this country in full lockdown are inaccurate,” Rosemary said. “It’s a scare tactic. It’s not like all of a sudden we’re gonna wake up one day and everyone is sick and the whole world is ending.”

“I don’t know,” the customer said. “The exponential growth is happening.”

“If anything, we’re definitely repopulating, if nobody is at work,” Rosemary said cheerily. “We won’t have a shortage of humans, that’s for sure.”

Bales helped her customer choose a weapon. (“Pick three,” the customer told her.) As Bales rummaged around, the customer said, “I’m going to have a soldier train me. A friend of my son’s.” Bales returned with the first option. “A .22 Mag,” she said. “Holds thirty rounds.”

The customer peered at the gun.

“It’s a Kel-Tec PMR-30,” Bales said.

“I like the color of it,” the customer said. “It’s not black.” She picked it up. “It feels good. And it’s got a safety. I’m going to take this one. You’ve got ammo for it, right?” Bales nodded and noted a few of the gun’s features. “As long as you’re accurate, it’ll do damage,” she said.

“This is just going to be for close range,” the customer said. “In my house. If it happens.” (Asked what “it” was, she said, “In two months, if the cities are starving, they’re gonna come out. And I understand that.”) Bales piled boxes of ammunition on the counter. “I’ll take them all,” the customer said. She ducked outside to get her wallet from the car.

“I think she’s a liberal,” Bales said, once the door closed. “There’s so many coming in. First-time-gun-owner liberals. I’ve probably seen ten this week. It’s so funny, because I hope it just turns them on to liking the Second Amendment. I mean, the Constitution was created for a reason. To protect us.”

The customer returned. The bill was nearly seven hundred dollars, including electronic ear protection and sixteen boxes of bullets. She could come back and pick up the gun once her digital background check cleared. The customer asked, “If I don’t get approved, what happens?”

“You already got approved,” Bales said, glancing at a computer, with some surprise.

“O.K.! Can I take it?”

“Yeah. Some people go through fast.”

The new gun owner asked if there was a shooting range nearby. She asked if she needed a concealed-carry permit. She asked how to carry the gun out. “I can’t believe this!” she said, stepping into the world with her brand-new gun.

Econuts get the cluebat upside the head….again.

Plastic Bag Bans Are the Latest Regulations to Get Tossed During Coronavirus Pandemic

As states rush to lift, waive, or delay regulations that might impede their ability to respond to the COVID-19 pandemic, plastic bag bans are being tossed aside.

On Tuesday, Maine’s legislature voted to put off enforcement of their state’s plastic bag prohibition—which was set to go into effect April 22—until next year. The day before, New York’s Department of Environmental Conservation agreed to delay any enforcement of that state’s bag ban until May 15.

The New York ban was supposed to go into effect on March 1. But because a lawsuit challenging the bag ban has been delayed over coronavirus, the state was forced to pull back until that case can resume.

The reusable bags these bans are supposed to encourage—and which were considered an unmitigated social good just a few weeks ago—have come under fresh scrutiny from a newly germophobic nation that fears they might aid the spread of COVID-19.

Businesses have been leading the way on this front. Starbucks suspended its policy of filling up customers’ reusable mugs in early March, and Dunkin Donuts and Tim Hortons (a Canadian coffee chain) have done the same.

“Until this pandemic passes, state and local officials should discourage shoppers from bringing their potentially virus-laden reusable bags out in public. Restore single-use bags, including the plastic kind,” wrote the Wall Street Journal’s editorial board on Monday.

The mayor of a town in Maine has actually called for a ban on reusable bags.

How likely is it that reusable bags will give you Covid-19? That’s still something of an open question. John Tierney, writing in City Journal, notes that numerous studies have shown reusable bags’ potential to transmit bacteria and viruses. And recent research has shown that the virus can live on plastic surfaces for up to three days. So single-use bags might be better for avoiding the spread of the disease, as they will be tossed immediately and not left lying around the house where multiple people migh come into repeat contact with it.

That said, the Centers for Disease Control downplay the risk of surface transmission on their website, saying that while it is possible to catch COVID-19 from touching objects and then touching your face, “this is not thought to be the main way the virus spreads.”

Two epidemiologists interviewed by Slate about grocery store best practices also said reusable bags did not pose much of added risk. “I doubt it’s going to be a problem,” said Stephen Morse, a professor of epidemiology at the Columbia University Medical Center. “If you’re really worried, you can always wipe down the bag with mild detergent or a disinfecting wipe, but that shouldn’t be necessary unless the bag gets some unexpected exposure to contaminated material.”

Virginia gun control fight sparks rush to join 2nd Amendment sanctuaries movement

Virginia gun control fight sparks rush to join 2nd Amendment sanctuaries movement

A contentious fight over gun control measures in Virginia is prompting hundreds of counties and localities around the country to declare themselves “Second Amendment sanctuaries.”

The national movement is growing momentum as the newly-elected Democratic legislature in Virginia plans stricter actions against guns, including universal background checks and “red flag” laws that would allow officials to seize guns from people considered to pose a threat.

The push has sparked a strong reaction by those who support gun rights. Tens of thousands gathered in Richmond last week to protest against the planned action, while at least 91 out of 95 counties in Virginia have declared themselves “sanctuaries” against gun control laws passed by the state.

A contentious fight over gun control measures in Virginia is prompting hundreds of counties and localities around the country to declare themselves “Second Amendment sanctuaries.”

The national movement is growing momentum as the newly-elected Democratic legislature in Virginia plans stricter actions against guns, including universal background checks and “red flag” laws that would allow officials to seize guns from people considered to pose a threat.

The push has sparked a strong reaction by those who support gun rights. Tens of thousands gathered in Richmond last week to protest against the planned action, while at least 91 out of 95 counties in Virginia have declared themselves “sanctuaries” against gun control laws passed by the state.

Other localities around the country are now joining Virginia, even in states such as Mississippi that are not contemplating gun control measures. At least 83 counties nationwide have declared themselves as Second Amendment sanctuaries this month, following at least 131 last month, according to a count of local media reports conducted by The Hill.

They join hundreds of other localities that have already made the declaration, growing a movement that takes its name from cities that have declared themselves as “sanctuaries” for undocumented immigrants, providing protection against the stricter immigration laws enforced by the Trump administration.

“When a state starts denying the constitutionally protected rights of its citizens, then it is completely legitimate for officials at lower levels to step in and protect citizens,” said Erich Pratt, the senior vice president of Guns Owners of America.

Gun Owners has served as a leading national organization of the movement, helping localities draft legislation as well as organizing citizen petitions.

Localities declaring themselves as sanctuaries hail from a broad range of states, from those seen as having stronger protections for gun owners such as Kentucky and Texas to those seen as having stricter gun control laws such as Illinois, New Jersey and Oregon.

Just this week, DeSoto County became the first county in Mississippi to pass a resolution protecting itself against gun control laws, declaring itself a Second Amendment “safe haven” to avoid the connotation of the word sanctuary with the immigration movement.

State Rep. Dana Criswell (R) provided the petition to the DeSoto County government, saying he did so after multiple constituents asked for it.

“It is 100 percent driven by the events that are happening in Virginia,” Criswell said. “That has really scared people that events like that – they see gun owners there under a very direct attack.”…………

Could Scientists ‘Hack’ the Zika Virus to Kill Brain Cancer?

I seem to remember a disaster movie starring Will Smith……….
and a re-engineered virus that cured cancer……..

The mosquito-spread Zika virus known for its links to brain damage in babies born to infected mothers has the potential to target and destroy brain cancer, scientists have found.

New research has revealed that the Zika virus breaks into brain cells by using a special molecular key, and scientists think the virus could be tweaked so that it infects only brain cancer cells, leaving  healthy cells unharmed.

The aggressive brain cancer glioblastoma often defies standard cancer treatment because the disease transforms normal brain cells into stem cells. While typical neurons stop dividing after so many replications, stem cells can reproduce indefinitely and grow a whole new tumor from just a handful of cells. Patients typically survive less than 20 months after being diagnosed with glioblastoma; even if the cancer can be forced into remission, the tumors typically regrow and take the life of the patient within 12 months.

But where standard treatments fail, the Zika virus may offer a new strategy to wipe out the deadly disease, according to a pair of studies published Jan. 16 in the journals Cell Reports and Cell Stem Cell.

“While we would likely need to modify the normal Zika virus to make it safer to treat brain tumors, we may also be able to take advantage of the mechanisms the virus uses to destroy cells to improve the way we treat glioblastoma,” senior author Dr. Jeremy Rich, director of neuro-oncology and of the Brain Tumor Institute at UC San Diego Health, said in a statement. (Rich and his colleagues authored the Cell Stem Cell paper.)

Gov. Northam says localities could face ‘consequences’ if law enforcement officers don’t enforce gun laws

‘The law is the law’: Virginia Democrats float prosecution, National Guard deployment if police don’t enforce gun control

Democratic lawmakers on Capitol Hill say local police who do not enforce gun control measures likely to pass in Virginia should face prosecution and even threats of the National Guard.

After November’s Virginia Legislature elections that led to Democrats taking control of both chambers, the gun control legislation proposed by some Democrats moved forward, including universal background checks, an “assault weapons” ban, and a red flag law.

Legal firearm owners in the state, however, joined with their sheriffs to form Second Amendment sanctuary counties, which declare the authorities in these municipalities uphold the Second Amendment in the face of any gun control measure passed by Richmond.

Over 75 counties in Virginia have so far adopted such Second Amendment sanctuary resolutions in the commonwealth, the latest being Spotsylvania County. The board of supervisors voted unanimously to approve a resolution declaring that county police will not enforce state-level gun laws that violate Second Amendment rights.

Virginia Democratic officials, however, already say local law enforcement supporting these resolutions will face consequences if they do not carry out any law the state Legislature passes.

“I would hope they either resign in good conscience, because they cannot uphold the law which they are sworn to uphold, or they’re prosecuted for failure to fulfill their oath,” Democratic Virginia Rep. Gerry Connolly told the Washington Examiner of local county police who may refuse to enforce future gun control measures. “The law is the law. If that becomes the law, you don’t have a choice, not if you’re a sworn officer of the law.”

Democratic Virginia Rep. Donald McEachin suggested cutting off state funds to counties that do not comply with any gun control measures that pass in Richmond.

“They certainly risk funding, because if the sheriff’s department is not going to enforce the law, they’re going to lose money. The counties’ attorneys offices are not going to have the money to prosecute because their prosecutions are going to go down,” he said.

McEachin also noted that Democratic Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam could call the National Guard, if necessary.

“And ultimately, I’m not the governor, but the governor may have to nationalize the National Guard to enforce the law,” he said. “That’s his call, because I don’t know how serious these counties are and how severe the violations of law will be. But that’s obviously an option he has.”

Virginia Attorney General Mark Herring blamed the numerous Second Amendment resolutions in the state on the “gun lobby” as a tactic to frighten state residents.

“The resolutions that are being passed are being ginned up by the gun lobby to try to scare people. What we’re talking about here are laws that will make our communities and our streets safer,” Herring told CBS 6.