Whale

 

China's New Space Station

China launched a 23-tonne research lab module to its newly built space station Tiangong on Sunday 24 July. The lab Wentian, or "Quest for the Heavens", is expected to carry out biological and life science research.

This is China's latest step to become a leading space power.

What is the Tiangong space station?
Tiangong space station, or "Heavenly Palace", is China's new permanent space station. 

The country has previously launched two temporary trial space stations, named as Tiangong-1 and Tiangong-2.

The new lab Wentian is the second of three key modules to Tiangong. 

The first key module Tianhe - which contains living quarters for crew members - was sent into orbit in April 2021. 

The other key module, Mengtian science lab, is due to be launched by the end of 2022.  READ MORE...

Turning

Tattoos Prevent Employment

A woman claims she can’t secure a job after her tattoo “addiction” took over her body.

Covered in head-to-toe ink, Melissa Sloan, 45, from Wales has “lost count” of how many pieces of body art she has, saying she even covers up old tattoos with new ones due to a lack of bodily real estate.

“I’ve got too many tattoos now, too many to count. I’ve gone over ones I’ve already had,” she told the Mirror. “I’ll never stop, I tattooed over them because I’d ran out of space.”

Her passion for tattoos has soiled her career prospects, as many jobs “won’t have” her. While she’s cleaned toilets before, it didn’t last very long, but she would gladly “go and work” if someone offered her a position.  READ MORE...

Haunted

First Female President in Mexico

MEXICO CITY, Nov 3 (Reuters) - The most historic legacy of President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, a left-leaning resource nationalist who casts his administration as a turning point in the annals of Mexico, may be to pave the way for the country's first woman leader.

Mexico City Mayor Claudia Sheinbaum, a 60-year-old physicist, environmentalist and longstanding ally of Lopez Obrador who has governed as mayor in tandem with his presidency, has emerged as early front-runner to be his party's candidate in 2024, despite hints she could be more moderate than him.  READ MORE...

Mini Dance

 

Summerall Guards

 

Russia Deciding to Use Nuclear in Ukraine

Senior Russian military commanders recently discussed how and when the Kremlin would use tactical nuclear weapons (TNWs) in Ukraine, The New York Times reported on Wednesday.


According to the report, President Vladimir Putin was not part of the conversation. Pentagon Press Secretary Brig. Gen. Pat Ryder said on Tuesday that there were no indications that the Russian leader "has made a decision at this time to employ nuclear weapons."


Also on Tuesday, Security Council of the Russian Federation deputy chairman Dmitry Medvedev said on Telegram that Kyiv's objectives to return all occupied territories to its control constituted an existential threat to Russia and would allow for the use of nuclear weapons.  READ MORE...

Butterfly

$10 Billion Opioid Settlement

CVS Health and Walgreens on Wednesday said they had agreed in principle to pay about $10 billion in total to settle a series of opioid-related lawsuits brought against the pharmacy chains.

CVS said it had agreed to a $5 billion settlement designed to "substantially resolve" the open opioid lawsuits against it.

“We are pleased to resolve these longstanding claims and putting them behind us is in the best interest of all parties, as well as our customers, colleagues and shareholders,” said Thomas Moriarty, CVS's chief policy officer and general counsel, in a statement. 

“We are committed to working with states, municipalities and tribes, and will continue our own important initiatives to help reduce the illegitimate use of prescription opioids.”  READ MORE...

The Jump

North Korea Ships Ammunition to Russia

Soldiers hold weapons while seated on a vehicle carrying rockets as it drives past the stand with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un during a military parade marking the 105th birth anniversary of country's founding father Kim Il Sung in Pyongyang on April 15, 2017.
Damir Sagolj/Reuters

WashingtonCNN —

The US is accusing North Korea of secretly supplying Russia with artillery shells for the Ukraine war by concealing where they are being transported to, according to newly declassified intelligence.

US officials believe that the surreptitious North Korean shipments – along with drones and other weaponry that Russia has acquired from Iran – are further evidence that even Moscow’s conventional artillery arsenals have dwindled during eight months of combat. 

North Korea is trying to hide the shipments by making it appear as if the ammunition is being sent to countries in the Middle East or North Africa, the intelligence says.

The recent intelligence comes about two months after the US intelligence community said that it believed Russia was in the process of buying millions of rockets and artillery shells from North Korea for use on the battlefield, CNN and other outlets reported at the time.  READ MORE...

Tired Son

 

Bird & Flower

 

Facebook Monopoly Imploding

Competition, miscalculations, and regulatory scrutiny have all but killed the advertising giant's dreams of diversifying its business and rolling up the digital world into its platform.

For years, the definition of success for many tech employees has been getting a job at a FAANG company (Facebook, Amazon, Apple, Netflix, Google). Amazon, Apple, Microsoft, Facebook, and Google, meanwhile, are often the five major companies people think of when they think of "big tech."

But there is evidence that Facebook—once a dominant monopoly rightly blamed for all sorts of societal ills—is on the precipice of dropping out of this group through years of sheer mismanagement, a failure to innovate, setting money on fire in pursuit of a metaverse that seemingly no one wants, a vulnerable business model that Apple is squarely taking aim at, and upstart competitors like TikTok that the company seemingly has no answer for. 

What seemed impossible just a year or two ago—that Facebook will become just another tech company, more or less—now seems like a very real possibility.  READ MORE...

Down the Hallway

Small Businesses Couldn't Pay Rent in October

The Ohio River stands in front of businesses in Pomeroy, Ohio.  Photographer: Ty Wright/Bloomberg





Rent delinquency rates among US small businesses increased significantly this month, a new report shows.

About 37% of small businesses, which between them employ almost half of all Americans working in the private sector, were unable to pay their rent in full in October. 

That’s according to a survey from Boston-based Alignable, a network of 7 million small business members. It’s up seven percentage points from last month and is now at the highest pace this year, the survey showed.

Chuck Casto, head of research, at Alignable, said that small business owners are resilient but incomes are “basically being eaten away by inflationary pressures.”  READ MORE...

UFO

 

Coffin in Spain Changes History

Researchers excavating Roman ruins at Los Villaricos in southern Spain have discovered a well-preserved coffin adorned with geometric patterns and interlocking ivy leaves. 

As local news outlet Murcia Today reports, the sarcophagus likely dates to the sixth century C.E., when the Visigoths, among other Germanic tribes, invaded territories formerly held by the fallen Roman Empire.

Archaeologists from the University of Murcia found the 6.5-foot-long coffin during a summer dig at Los Villaricos, a large-scale agricultural settlement established by the Romans around the first century C.E. 

Per Heritage Daily, the sarcophagus was buried at a Roman villa repurposed by the Visigoths following its abandonment around the fifth century C.E. The Germanic conquerors used the structure’s central patio area as a necropolis.  READ MORE...

Mountains

 

Big Arms

 

Internet Scam

"But I have to," he groaned through the cracks of my iPhone 4. "It’s in the name of self-care." I was sitting on the edge of my bed, staring fixated at the black mould splattering the ceiling of my third-year university house share. I’d just returned from my then-boyfriend’s house, where we were celebrating his return to our university city after spending some time in his hometown. 

Everything was fine in the time we spent together, but during the half-an-hour bus ride to reach my home, he had suddenly experienced an epiphany where he determined that the right thing to do was to immediately call time on our relationship — but it’s okay, he isn’t the bad guy, because it was all done in the name of "self-care."

Sure, he could’ve communicated his concerns earlier, but under this definition of self-care, you don’t "owe" people anything. Suddenly, every relationship in your life becomes transactional, as you hyperfocus on how the people in your life are serving you, and cutting them off or shutting them down the minute they seem to desire anything in return.

When did self-care become…something else?

Once upon a time, self-care was about striving to be the best version of yourself, because ultimately, how can you look after others if you aren’t looking after yourself?  READ MORE...

Dice

Nation Mourns

Police said they've launched a 475-member task force to invetigate Saturday's disaster, which was concentrated in a sloped, narrow alley.

South Korean police investigated on Monday what caused a crowd surge that killed more than 150 people including 26 foreigners during Halloween festivities in Seoul in the country's worst disaster in years, as President Yoon Suk Yeol and tens of thousands of others paid respects to the dead at special mourning sites.

Saturday's disaster was concentrated in a sloped, narrow alley in Seoul's Itaewon neighborhood, a popular nightlife district, with witnesses and survivors recalling a "hell-like" chaos with people falling on each other like dominoes. They said the entire Itaewon area was jammed with slow-moving vehicles and partygoers clad in Halloween costumes, making it impossible for rescuers and ambulances to reach the crammed alleys in time.    READ MORE...

Gentle Water

 

Death Sentence

Family members of students killed in the mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla., including Linda Beigel Schulman, Michael Schulman, Patricia Padauy-Oliver, Fred Guttenberg and others, arrived to hear the sentencing verdict in the trial of Nikolas Cruz. POOL PHOTO BY AMY BETH BENNETT





After a Florida jury voted to sentence Nikolas Cruz to life in prison earlier this month for the murders of 17 people at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, news coverage focused on the disappointment and rage of his victims’ families. Many of them wanted the death penalty, and some will speak in court at his sentencing on Nov. 1.

Cruz’s trial featured days of defense testimony about his adversities, including his mother’s drug and alcohol use while he was developing in utero. That was his right — the Supreme Court long ago said, when the death penalty is on the table, juries must consider the whole person, not just the single crime — but it left the impression that Cruz had won a sympathy contest. 

“This jury failed our families today,” Fred Guttenberg, the father of Jaime Guttenberg, told reporters. Soon after, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis suggested that state law, which requires a unanimous jury vote for death, might be changed to “be better serving victims of crime, and the families of victims.”  READ MORE...

Windy

 

Cost of Goods Sold or Manufactured

What is involved in the cost of goods sold or manufactured?

• Direct Labor
• Indirect Labor
• Cost of Materials
• Cost of Storing Materials
• Overhead Costs like
• Electricity
• Gas
• Water
• Telephones
• Office Supplies
• Building Maintenance
• Maintenance Supplies
• Equipment Purchases
• Quality Control
• Training

Two areas of which you may not be aware are Quality Control and Training...

Training

1. Employees must be training on company policies and procedures including safety standards and sexual harassment.
2. Employees must also be trained in how to operate any machines they are using and how to maintain and repair those machines.
3. Employees must be trained in simple math in order to make the calculation that are part of machine operations.(Because these employees did not learn algebra I and II in high school, the industry must do what the school systems did not do)
4. Statistical Process Control classes need to be taught to employees so that quality products can be made with reliability.

Quality Control

According to government regulations, all companies are required to make sure that they produce a quality product that is ultimately sold to the general public.  Ralph Nader was originally responsible back in the 1960s for this happening.

Without quality control, the public has no guarantees that what they are buying is actually reliable and works the way it is supposed to work.

If a company is 99.9% accurate, it is still producing 1500 out of spec parts per million.

How many of those out of spec parts would you like to have in the automobile you are riding in or the washing machine you are using?

Those 1500 parts have to be found and pulled out of production so that they are not inadvertantly sold.

SO...  if the high schools do not do their jobs with teaching students, then that burden and cost falls on industries and companies...  which causes them to increase their prices...

AND...  if our federal government imposes rules and regulations on our industries and companies for whatever reason, then that costs money which is then passed on to the consumer.

DON'T FORGET...  when employees demand more money, those increased costs are passed along to the consumer as well...

If a company pays an employee $50,000 a year, it ultimately costs that company $150,000 in benefits which include insurance, retirement, holidays, vacation and sick leave.

AWARENESS IS KNOWLEDGE

KNOWLEDGE IS POWER

Shareholders Always Win

Employees want:

Increased wages

Increased benefits

Every 3 months, publically traded companies distribute dividends to shareholders for the privilege of using their money to operate the company.  Therefore, Presidents, General Managers, CEOs, COOs, and others retain their positions as long as those dividends are being paid and in the amount the shareholders have anticipated. Earnings per share calculations to determine dividends is based upon number of shares outstanding and Net Income.

Any variation of this must be explained and accepted in order for the Upper Management team to retain their employment status and/or be paid bonuses.

What does this mean for:

• Employees
• Vendors
• Customers
• Community

For the employees, this means any increase in hourly wages or annual salaries DECREASES NET INCOME as does increases in benefits paid to employees like:

1. health insurance
2. retirement or 401Ks
3. vacation leave
4. sick leave
5. paid holidays
6. disability

For the vendors, any increase they have on what they sell to companys impacts the cost of goods manufactured and causes the company to increase prices to compensate for the vendor's increase...  otherwise, not to do this WOULD DECREASE NET INCOME.

For the customer, if a company increases their prices, they must decided to pay the increase or substitute another product for the one that has an increase price.  If a product is substituted, then this WOULD DECREASES NET INCOME.

For the community, companys pay taxes which enables the local government to provide services to its residents like fire, police protection, as well as garbage pickup, and allows the local govt to keep their tax base low for their residents.

Additionally, for every dollar in payroll, $8-$10 in economic impact is created which allows the community to grow ecnomically and attract other businesses.