Monday, January 16
Sunday, January 15
US Renames Five Places That Use Racist Slur
The US government has announced name changes for five places whose designations included a racist term for Native American women.
The sites are in the states of California, North Dakota, Tennessee and Texas. The decision came after a year-long process to remove the racial slur from federal use, the government said. The sites are the last of almost 650 locations selected by the Department of the Interior to be renamed.
"Words matter, particularly in our work to ensure our nation's public lands and waters are accessible and welcoming to people of all backgrounds," said Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland (photo above), who is the first Native American cabinet secretary in US history.
The word 'squaw' has historically been used as "an offensive ethnic, racial and sexist slur, particularly for Indigenous women", the department said. Nearly a year ago, Ms Haaland created a task force to replace derogatory names of the nation's geographic features.
She said the panel would serve as a "big step forward in our efforts to remove derogatory terms whose expiration dates are long overdue".
In September, the Department of the Interior - which oversees public lands and is the federal agency that most closely oversees Native affairs - announced a final vote to change the names of hundreds of locations, but left seven places that it said needed to be further reviewed. READ MORE...
An Alternative Theory
Here is something to ponder about today...
Jesus said: "My kingdom is not of this world."
what do you think he meant by that?
Not of earth perhaps...
But, if not of earth, then where?
The heavens...
This seems more reasonable but again what is considered the heavens?
I would submit to you that the heavens are OUTER SPACE or the UNIVERSE...
The Universe is frigging huge... If we traveled at LIGHT SPEED, we would die before we went from one side to the other side of our own SOLAR SYSTEM...
And, there are billions of solar systems in our universe...
So... is this what Jesus meant?
We have no way of knowing exactly because we were not there and could not ask him questions as to what he meant... TODAY... we can only speculate...
However... if Jesus' kingdom is not of this world (that is to say earth) then Jesus was an EXTRATERRESRTRIAL... an ALIEN... perhaps some kind of space traveler that ended up on earth as a result of the Virgin Mary giving birth to him...
How did that happen?
GOD had Mary impregnated with Jesus without the need of fornication or sexual intercourse.
Again... how did that happen?
GOD must also be an Extraterrestrial... I mean isn't the trinity: God - Jesus - Holy Ghost
We have always consider God and Jesus to be HUMAN BEINGS... well at least Jesus is... since GOD is something else that we have no way of describing or understanding completely since he has never been met by anyone outside of a metaphorical meeting.
Perhaps Jesus is how GOD would look, if he had been transformed... But then, mankind was created in GOD's image... except this is also a metaphorical statement and could mean anything depending upon one's interpretation.
STILL... there is a creator... I believe that... there is no other logical explanation for life.
But then, who created GOD?
And who created the UNIVERSE?
Are these two creators one and the same?
French Court Orders Removal of Virgin Mary Statue
A French court ordered on Friday the removal of a statue of the Virgin Mary from a small town on the grounds that its display violates the separation of church and state.
The court’s order ended four decades of the statue’s display at a crossroads in La Flotte, France, a town of about 2,800 people, according to Agence France Presse (AFP). A local family originally erected the statue after World War II in gratitude for a father and son’s safe return from the war, the outlet reported. A private garden first housed the statue, until the family gifted it to the town and saw its placement at the crossroads in 1983.
The statue sustained damage after it was struck by a passing car in 2020, the outlet noted. Its restoration included the addition of a platform, a move which drew the attention of of an organization that advocates for the defense of secularity. La Libre Pensee 17 filed a complaint, citing a 1905 French law that forbids the display of religious monuments in public places.
Mayor Jean-Paul Heraudeau appealed instead to the statue’s “historical heritage,” calling the complaint “ridiculous,” AFP quoted. It should be regarded as “more of a memorial than a religious statue,” the mayor said.
While the court acknowledged the town’s intentions, its ruling favored the argument of the Virgin Mary as an “important figure in Christian religion,” giving it “an inherently religious character,” according to AFP. In accordance with the court’s order, the town has six months to remove the statue.
Saturday, January 14
Tik Tok Banned In Kentucky
WASHINGTON, Jan 13 (Reuters) - Kentucky is joining more than 20 U.S. states in banning the popular video app TikTok on government devices citing cybersecurity concerns.
The state said it had updated its employee handbook to bar state employees from using government-managed devices to access the Chinese-owned app "other than for a law enforcement purpose." On Thursday, the governors of Wisconsin and North Carolina signed orders banning TikTok on government devices. Ohio, New Jersey and Arkansas also took similar actions earlier this week.
Some states have gone farther than targeting TikTok. New Jersey and Wisconsin for example also banned vendors, products and services from other Chinese companies including Huawei Technologies, Hikvision (002415.SZ), Tencent Holdings (0700.HK) - the owner of WeChat, ZTE Corp (000063.SZ) as well as Russian-based Kaspersky Lab. READ MORE...
Is Fate simply Fate or Is It Intentional?
For me, I see the Democrats as LYING all the time and I see the Republicans as DOING NOTHINg all the time... both behaviors are equally as bad.
While going GREEN does in fact make sense, to save the planet more or less, it is foolish to jump there all at one time... the move have to be gradually while not too slow that it accomplishes nothing.
However, most of the rest of the world, does not give a shit about going GREEN and will be spending very little, if any, of their revenues in an feeble attempt to go there... however, these countries may invest in electric cars down the road, but they will only be available to the wealthy.
Russia and China will look into fusion generators for spacecraft but not necessarily for domestic consumption, so it will only have military applications, so that they can get a head start on outer space which is coming sooner than later.
In the meantime, the USA faces the onslaught of illegal immigration, illegal drugs, crime and violence, and inflation which will change the complexity of the country forever. Even the Democrats will cut back on their spending when they realize inflation is not decreasing over time.
Slow economic growth will put the USA in a subordinate position among the other nations of the world which will have negative implications for years... however, those negative implication will cause the rapid growth of robots to do the work of humans in an effort to reduce cost. The initial cost of robots will be expensed out over 20-30 years so that the annual cost will be minimal... and a reduction of costs will ensue.
However, nothing has been mention about the military and national defense should Russia and China decide that the USA is open for exploitation...
Stranger things have happened in the country... especially, when we never imagined that a day like 9/11 would ever happen... are we still that naive?
Tesla Turns Up The Heat
Jan 13 (Reuters) - Tesla Inc (TSLA.O) has slashed prices globally on its electric vehicles by as much as 20%, extending an aggressive discounting effort and challenging rivals after missing Wall Street delivery estimates for 2022.
The move marks a reversal from the automaker's strategy over the last two years when new vehicle orders exceeded supply. It comes after CEO Elon Musk warned that the prospect of recession and higher interest rates meant it could lower prices to sustain growth at the expense of profit.
Musk acknowledged last year that prices had become "embarrassingly high" and could hurt demand. Shares were down 2.6% on Friday, following the stock's worst year since its inception due to delivery issues and growing competition.
Tesla lowered prices across the United States, Europe, the Middle East and Africa, following a series of cuts last week in Asia, in what analysts saw as a clear shot at both smaller rivals that have been bleeding cash and legacy automakers aggressively ramping up electric vehicle production. READ MORE...
Friday, January 13
TIK TOK Fined in France
TikTok is the latest tech giant to be schooled by France’s data protection watchdog for breaking rules on cookie consent.
The €5 million penalty announced today by the CNIL relates to a cookie consent flow TikTok had used on its website (tiktok.com) until early last year — in which the regulator found it was not as easy for users to refuse cookies as to accept them — so it was essentially manipulating consent by making it easier for site visitors to accept its tracking than to opt out.
This was the case when the watchdog checked in on TikTok’s process, in June 2021, until the implementation of a “Refuse all” button on the site in February 2022 — which appears to have resolved the matter. (And may explain the relatively small fine levied in this case, along with the number of users and minors affected — as well as the enforcement relating only to its website, not its mobile app.)
Tracking cookies are typically used to serve behavioral advertising but can also be used for other site activity, such as analytics.
“During the check carried out in June 2021, the CNIL noted that while the companies TikTok United Kingdom and TikTok Ireland did offer a button allowing cookies to be accepted immediately, they did not put in place an equivalent solution (button or other) to allow the Internet user to refuse their deposit just as easily. Several clicks were necessary to refuse all cookies, against only one to accept them,” the watchdog notes in a press release [translated from French with machine translation].
“The Restricted Committee considered that making the refusal mechanism more complex actually amounts to discouraging users from refusing cookies and encouraging them to favor the ease of the “Accept all” button,” it added, saying it found TikTok had therefore breached a legal requirement for freedom of consent — a violation of Article 82 of the French Data Protection Act “since it was not as simple to refuse cookies as to accept them”.
In addition, the CNIL found that TikTok had not informed users “in a sufficiently precise manner” of the purposes of the cookies — both on the information banner presented at the first level of the cookie consent and within the framework of the “choice interface” that was accessible after clicking on a link presented in the banner. Hence finding several breaches of Article 82.
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