• “THE MORE WE DEPEND ON SMARTPHONES, THE MORE ATTRACTIVE AN ATTACK VECTOR THEY BECOME for cybercriminals.” Primary signs that your Android or iOS devices have been hacked are: (1) sudden loss of battery life; (2) spike in data usage; (3) excessive App permissions; (4) suspicious texts or unknown websites; (5) key passwords stop working.  Recommendations: Utilize antimalware/antivirus apps, keep apps up to date, and don’t reuse passwords.  [DARK READING – 7/16/20]
  • “DRINKING IN MODERATION CAN BE BENEFICIAL TO THE BRAIN, according to a nine-year study following nearly 20,000 middle-aged and elder people which found that “up to 14 drinks weekly for men and 8 weekly for women showed higher cognition scores in mental status, word recall and vocabulary, with significantly lower rates of mental decline, compared to those who never drank… suggesting that small amounts of alcohol can have a positive effect on the brain’s small blood vessels.” [THE WEEK – 7/24/20]
  • “JOURNALISTIC ‘OBJECTIVITY’ HAS BEEN TURNED INTO A CARTOON,” replaced by a new ideal: ‘moral clarity,’ about making ‘clearer’ calls on matters (particularly as relating to ‘racism,’ ironically a word having lost all clear definition), with focus ostensibly on “being ‘fair’ and telling the ‘truth’ – as deemed so by orthodoxy already known to an enlightened few whose job is to inform everyone else… The nature & purpose of journalism is now deemed by a new generation to be rejection of objectivity – i.e. detachment, clear & free of unexamined pre-judgements in observing, understanding & presenting the news – in favor of a personal, opinionated approach,” as utilized online (where an Associated press poll found 57% of consumers saying they cannot tell News from Opinion). Additionally influencing this trend, is the fact that ad revenues have increasingly shifted from print media to search engines and social networks, so “newspapers have come to rely more on paying readers who, unlike advertisers, love Opinion.”  [ECONOMIST – 7/18/20]
  • SCHOOL REOPENING ISSUES ARE UNLIKELY TO BE RESOLVED BY FALL. Beyond concerns for safety protection from Covid-19, Teacher Unions demands now include strategies “to save the world.” Los Angeles public teachers union now demands “closure of competing Charter Schools, defunding of local police, taxation of wealthy, Medicare for all, and funding by the federal government… Other districts across the country stipulate demands including moratoriums on rent & mortgage, universal health care, direct income support regardless of immigration status, and reparations for black communities.” Concern for the welfare of children is far from the agenda (to ‘never waste a crisis’ in negotiation) anymore. [RED STATE – 7/18/20]
  • THE ACLU HAS UNSURPRISINGLY FILED A LAWSUIT to support the mobs, by preventing Federal agents who’ve been attempting to suppress a month’s continuous nightly riots and violent attacks on federal facilities in Portland, from ‘interfering’ with the activities of ‘journalists’ and ‘legal observers’ – who are identifiable by their blue ACLU vest or green NLG hat (Nat’l Lawyers Guild). With no feasible way to control or confirm issuance of such ‘credentials’ (much less, copycats) you can bet what the next mobs will be wearing.
  • PPP TAXPAYER-BACKED FORGIVABLE LOANS were legislated to help small businesses and non-profit organizations with fewer than 500 employees survive economic impacts of the pandemic, but religious groups were exempted from that limitation. Associated Press now reports that “jobs of over 400,000 employees of Catholic institutions – dioceses, parishes, schools & other church entities – were covered by PPP funds of between $1.4 and $3.5 billion, including dioceses that have paid out hundreds of millions to victims of sexual abuse in recent years.” [LBN EXAMINER – 7/19/20]
  • THOUGHTS FOR THE WEEK:

    “Ours may become the first civilization destroyed not by the power of our enemies but by the ignorance of our teachers and the dangerous nonsense they are teaching our children. In an age of artificial intelligence, they are creating artificial stupidity.“

          Very cool black and white pics which turn gloriously colorful when tapped: https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/cj2hkTMugQvaGFvw_MsAzg

 ALTERNATIVE LIVING WILL FOR THE TIMES:

        I, ____________, being of sound mind and body, do not wish to be kept alive indefinitely by artificial means. Under no circumstances should my fate be put in the hands of pinhead partisan politicians who couldn’t pass ninth-grade biology if their lives depended on it, or lawyers/doctors/hospitals interested in simply running up the bills. If a reasonable amount of time passes, and I fail to ask for at least one of the following:  alcohol/ edibles/ steak/ beer/ wine/ chocolate/ or sex, it should be presumed that I won’t ever get any better. When such a determination is reached, I hereby instruct my appointed person and attending physicians to pull the plug, reel in the tubes and call it a day, with some kind of a memorial goodbye inviting all of my family & friends to raise their glasses to toast the good years & times we’ve shared.        Signature:____   Date: ___                   [INTERNET ANON]