• “RANSOMWARE HAS “BECOME SO INGRAINED IN THE WORLD OF CRYPTOCURRENCIES that companies are now even buying Bitcoins so that, if attacked, they have it available… Over 65,000 attacks last year – over seven per hour – are increasing because they work, and now become a National Security risk… Many insurance companies no longer cover Ransomware, with blanket exclusion of health care, public sector and private education… Criminals can easily find malware on the Dark Web, including essentially a customer service contact to deal with questions from their targets, and can easily evade law enforcement & financial regulators by money laundering & shifting funds across national boundaries in seconds, through hundreds of cryptocurrencies that are untraceable & uncontrollable, to hackers with hundreds of anonymous accounts and virtually no chance of getting caught… The White House and Congress are starting to talk about regulating cryptos, but so far it’s just talk.”   [NPR – 6/9-10/21]
  • VENICE BEACH IN L.A. IS NOW “KNOWN WORLDWIDE for its flourishing homeless encampments, burgeoning filth, skyrocketing crime rate, and increasingly violent transients.  Residents say the place where ten million tourists yearly visited the boardwalk to commingle with artists/musicians/entertainers from all over the country is falling to ruins – overwhelmed by the homeless that making their lives a living hell, while politicians and police have done nothing… Beach & sidewalk encampment prohibitions, along with street-sweeping crews, were rolled back during the pandemic, then ‘declared’ a Sanctuary Zone by an LA Council member whose district includes the beach… Already this year, stats show robberies tripled, deadly weapon assaults up 118%, and felony arrests up 68%; Misdemeanor arrests have grown 350% but are irrelevant, since almost all are released back into the community within hours… Combined with fires from encampment tents (housing BBQ pits, dressers & motorbikes), trash & needles in plain sight piled on top of each other, and rampant violent assaults, the tragic demise of Venice Beach is like Hell went to Hell.”  [EPOCH TIMES – 6/14/21]
  • WHILE THE INTENSITY OF POLITICAL BICKERING WILL CONTINUE TO GROW DRAMATICALLY, it’s important (and stress-reducing to some degree) to remember that false reporting, especially ‘fact-checking,’ by ‘mainstream media’ continually & consistently prove to be outright lies and propaganda. Anyone with common sense who accepts ‘Headline News’ as always urgent crisis & reality, has been duped and diverted from other profound issues in the evolution of America. Just a few of the fake stories that went viral in the last several years and later proved false included: (1) Russian election ‘collusion’ and offer of ‘bounties’ on killing U.S. troops; (2) That FBI spying & lying never happened; (3) President Trump ‘mocked dead war vets’; (4) Promising Covid vaccine in one year was impossible ; (5) ‘Storm-troopers’ blasted tear gas at peaceful protesters for a photo-op in front of a church; (6) Possibility of a Wuhan Lab coronavirus leak was fictitious; (7) Covid risk to children in school is high; (8) Demands for photo ID before voting are ‘jim crow’ discrimination against blacks; and possibly the scariest, supporting the President’s statements that (9) White Supremacy is the most lethal threat to America; and (10) Global Warming is the greatest physical threat facing America. Irrespective of personal political positions, just bear these in mind for future sanity. 
  • FOR THOSE CONFUSED & AGHAST AT CURRENT EVENTS AND DIRECTION, a positively profound analysis contends that America is now “fractured into separate countries – four parts, split by two narratives: Smart and Just on one side, Free and Real on the other… Each narrative rises from a single society and they continually shape/ absorb/ morph into one another. But their tendency is to also divide us, pitting tribe against tribe, impoverishing each narrative into a cramped and ever more extreme version of itself… with neither separation nor conquest a tenable future and the tension in each country persisting even as the cold civil war between them rages on.” Very lengthy but worthy if you care.  https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2021/07/george-packer-four-americas/619012/
  • THOUGHTS FOR THE WEEK:

       “Every form of addiction is bad, no matter whether the narcotic be alcohol or morphine or idealism.” – Carl Jung

       True baseball buffs are investing up to $60,000 to own 1% (at $3 per share for .0005%) of a 1914 Babe Ruth baseball card, when he pitched for Baltimore Orioles, through a ‘fractional investing’ platform, Collectable, at valuation of $6 million. For a paper card.