I have to admit. Sometimes I see this around me more than I would like.
Indiana Extortion
I have absolutely no trouble in calling out extortion. Excess taxes and fees are simply extortion. The money doesn’t really belong to you. You aren’t in actual possession of it but someone else has it and you decide that you want it. So, through various manipulations including but not limited to taxes and fees you gain money that wasn’t yours to begin with. That is extortion. Wikipedia has a pretty good page on the subject.
Must be learning it from the Europeans.
Google on Patrol
I’m not sure how I feel about this one.
Google may have shared identifying information of certain users with law enforcement, according to a report from The Guardian. Leaked documents indicate that the company’s CyberCrime Investigation Group (CIG) has been forwarding data like real names, street addresses, credit card numbers, Gmail and recovery emails, as well as IP addresses from recent logins. In some cases, the CIG reportedly also included copies of comments made on Google’s platforms like YouTube, which include threats of racist and terrorist violence.
I like the idea of weeding these types of bad actors out but it comes with a price. The price is the perceived idea of personal privacy but the internet is not a private place.
If you don’t want someone to know something about you, don’t post it anywhere on the internet. It is literally that simple.
Uber’s One Finger Salute to California
I love the fact that Uber appears to be refusing to be bullied.
This all started last fall, when California Governor Gavin Newsom signed the state’s Assembly Bill 5 labor law. The legislation was meant to fix the gig economy by reclassifying workers as employees, but companies like Uber and Postmates quickly filed lawsuits calling the move unconstitutional.
Assembly Bill 5 was supposed to go into effect on January 1st, 2020. While Uber says it made changes and believes it’s in compliance, the state feels otherwise. Earlier this week, California won a preliminary injunction against Uber and Lyft. The court order could block the companies from classifying drivers as independent contractors. Uber and Lyft were given 10 days to appeal the ruling, and if things do not go in their favor, Khosrowshahi says Uber will temporarily suspend service in the state.
The whole story can be found here.
Fun Facts – Landslide Elections
This is a post for fun reasons. I always remember the 1984 landslide of the Ronald Reagan era but I recently discovered that wasn’t the biggest landslide election in history.
The biggest occurred in the election of 1936 involving FDR (Franklin Delano Roosevelt). Additionally, FDR was so popular that he is the reason they created a presidential term limit.
This is Reagan in 1984.
This is Roosevelt in 1936,
Alf Landon won 2 states but the electoral votes added up to less than what Walter Mondale got in 1984.
Details are over at willrabbe.com
Noise Pollution – Its a Thing
The sheer number of cars that pass my house on a daily basis is staggering. Most of them are relatively quiet but a bunch of them are downright loud.
Whether the noise is the engine or the loud music playing in the car the decibel meter gets pegged.
I have a problem with this when that noise makes it into my house. I don’t have single pane glass windows. I have triple pane windows and the noise still gets in. There was a car that passed by this morning with music so loud, you’d swear I was playing it myself inside my house.
NPR and WITF have an article about this very thing.
When I was 16, noisy cars were cool. Now that I am older, noisy cars make me dream of a personal EMP gun that you can aim at a vehicle and well, it dies. Something like this but bigger.
