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Don’t make promises you can’t keep

It’s generally a good idea for the world’s leaders to do what they say.  I mean, since they’re in politics, they’re all liars to a certain extent.  But if you make it a point to promise death to your enemies, it’s probably best to make sure you’re serious.  Especially before you go shouting revenge in front of, oh, say the family of a man who got murdered.

Don’t get me wrong, I like what Biden’s saying.  I’m all about it.  I wish our leaders talked like this every day.  The problem is that I think he’s made a promise he can’t keep.  Following ISIS to the “gates of hell” requires a level of effort the public is not prepared to currently accept.

For example:

– Dude on Street:  I hate ISIS, let’s kill them all.

– Reality:  Doing that might require 50 thousand American troops back in Iraq, at least for a while.  Are you in?

– Dude on Street:  Whoa there, let’s not get carried away.

– Reality:  Do you want to win or not?

– Dude on Street:  Well, yeah, let’s kick ass, but like, whoa, that sounds kinda extreme.

Everybody’s favorite polished weakling in David Cameron has made similarly belligerent claims.  And yet at this point I don’t think the British military (yes, there apparently still is one) has fired a shot.

There’s a case to be made for caving in the skulls of every ISIS member.  There’s also a case for doing nothing.  There’s no case for saying you’re going to kill them all, and then effectively doing next to nothing.

They’re just spouting generalities, idle threats, or incomprehensible garbage.  No wonder nobody in the West is interested in a real war in the cause of good.  Their leaders can’t even articulate a decent plan to battle evil.

Yet, Joe just made a promise.  Sadly, if I had to bet, I figure he can’t/won’t back it up.  This doesn’t say much for the West’s credibility, again.  This is beyond a trend now, or just a recent theme.  It’s becoming a way of life.  Inaction, empty words, and irrelevance.  Don’t think ISIS hasn’t noticed.  It’s why they feel they can saw a man’s head off, and get away with it._77372315_77355933

Oh Joe, if you actually could back this up you’d be one of history’s greatest orators instead of a joke

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Wake up, friends! Nothing’s secure! You need a plan.

I keep telling folks but they don’t listen. They think the internet is a delightful playground. Well, sorry, but if it’s online:

It’s going to get stolen

The internet was not designed for security. It was designed for openness. This is its structure at the base level. It’s hard coded. Like you’re hard coded to love puppies.

Don’t listen to people (Apple, Microsoft, anti-virus frauds) who swear they’re so smart you can’t get robbed. Such arrogance is foolish. It’s like somebody telling you they’re so smart they can reengineer the sun’s rays to cool instead of sear your flesh. It makes no sense. Sorry, but nobody can secure your data completely.

You need to think not in terms of what will happen if your data is stolen. You need to think in terms of what you’ll do when it is. I recommend this formula:

 

Item: What’s online

Threat: What can happen to that data

Recourse: What you or somebody else will do when your data is stolen

 

For instance:

 

Item: Your online financial account

Threat: Somebody takes your cash

Recourse: If you’re FDIC insured, you’ll be okay, if not, you’re potentially fucked

 

Item: Your cloud sexual pictures

Threat: Some creepy dude steals them and posts them online

Recourse: You could sue, but essentially you’ll have to deal with it

 

Item: Your credit card

Threat: Somebody takes your number and buys fancy jewels or hats

Recourse: Via your credit card company you get a new card, number, and the offender is flagged as fraud in the credit database

 

Item: Your precious bitcoins

Threat: Your bitcoins just became somebody else’s bitcoins by virtue of their actions

Recourse: You’re fucked

 

Item: Your degenerate, pointless blog

Threat: A bunch of grizzled lunatic alien exiles hijack your blog

Recourse: You meekly accept this outcome as reality

 

Item: Your shopping site account

Threat: Somebody steals your password

Recourse: You change your password

 

See how each of these has a different level of awfulness depending on the importance of the data at hand. There are also different mitigation options available to you on each area. Each piece of data you own online is unique. You need to think about each portion of your online life. How much risk are you willing to take?

If the risk of loss is too high for you to deal with? It needs to come offline.

Because I assure you, nobody can defend it. If somebody targets you, if somebody wants your data, they’re going to get it.

Plan accordingly.

internets

If they’d designed the internet to be secure, it would look absolutely nothing like it does today

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I’m going to meddle in Hong Kong’s politics

So if I don’t make it back?  Avenge my death.

How will you know if I don’t make it back?  Well, I guess you’d notice I’m not posting anymore.  But if you’re reading this, you already know nobody reads this blog.  So it’ll be real hard for anybody to notice I’ve stopped posting because the People’s Armed Police strangled me in a Kowloon back alley using a sharpened violin string.

Read the BBC article to get the background if you don’t know the story:

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-28994123

But in short, what’s the story?  Beijing wants political and cultural control of Hong Kong.  Because dominance is the Communist Party’s thing.  It’s what they do.  And fortunately for the Reds, there’s just enough turncoat rich assholes that grew up in Hong Kong who’ve realized they can make a shit ton of money helping Beijing by screwing their fellow Hong Kong citizens out of their freedom.

What’s that?  The Reds don’t want foreign countries “meddling” in China’s internal affairs?  Ah, I see.

Good news Ukraine!  China’s in your corner!  On the next UN Security Council vote, you can bet China’s got your back against Russia’s “meddling” inside your sovereign nation.

Oh, wait, no.  Uh, …

_77273763_77272180

A titanic symbol of global capitalism, ironically garnished

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This invasion is boring

I want to see raw mayhem. Where’s the burning cities? The millions of refugees streaming down a road, masks of suffering and terror, from one end of the horizon to the other? Where’s the expenditure of millions of rounds of steel followed by retreat followed by mass executions? Somewhere in Valhalla there’s two drunken Nazi and Red Army officers arm-in-arm screaming, “That’s not how you do it, pig!”

All ambiguity’s gone now. There’s no doubt. Russia’s invaded Ukraine. You could make excuses earlier, whatever you found most convenient: The rebellion started in Donetsk with ethnic Russians, but they’re Ukrainian citizens so it’s not an invasion; Russia only provided equipment, or volunteers to fight, not the actual army; and so on.

Well, the excuses are over now. Thousands of rebels armed with heavy equipment didn’t just magically appear more than fifty miles from the Donetsk front. They came across the border and I’ll bet my dog’s favorite toy that every single one of them is regular Russian army.

train_ukraine

Russian invasion of Ukraine circa 1944

It has to really suck being history’s invasion doormat. Just ask your Middle East or Balkans neighbor. Ukraine’s had the joy of getting run over by Scythians, Persians, Greeks, Romans, Goths, Mongols, Turks, Russians, Nazis, Russians again, and now Russians again.

But by the standards of any of the aforementioned dance parties, this invasion is positively lightweight. Vlad’s not looking to sack Kiev for the twelfth time.  So what’s he up to? Well, that’s the strange part.

You know, trying to determine what Vlad’s going to do next is probably just about the most interesting and frustrating thing you can do. He keeps you guessing. It’s one of the things that allows him to run circles around his weaker, indecisive Euro-trash counterparts.

But honestly, I think most of the time Vlad doesn’t know what he’s going to do either. And not just because he’s totally insane, although that’s certainly the case. I think he’s a master of the wait-and-see approach to all of life’s challenges. He takes a major step, evaluates how his enemies respond, and then determines what his next move is.

Western leaders used to be very good at this strategy too, remember Bismarck, Roosevelt, or De Gaulle. But the West’s leaders are now willingly enslaved by this afternoon’s three second sound bite and next Tuesday’s polls. So this kind of deep thinking is beyond their meager brains. Please remember kids, Western politics is a “game played by smart people”. Smart being defined as never thinking more than twelve seconds into the future, unless it’s about the next election. Either way, Vlad doesn’t have that problem.

So what’s Vlad likely to do? Probably for the first time since this all began, I think it completely depends on what Europe does. Because Vlad no longer seems to care what Ukraine does. He’s confident he can manage Ukraine alone.

He launched this invasion while he was in Belarus talking “peace” face-to-face with Poroshenko. It wouldn’t surprise me if a few minutes into these talks Vlad had sipped his vodka, shrugged, and blurted out, “Oh, Petro, by the way, I’m taking Novoazovsk as we speak. You’re fucked. Want a drink?”

UKRAINE--2-master675

Vlad the Unmerciful, Catherine Ashton (the decent but powerless hack of Europe), Lukashenko (Overload & Dictator of All Belarus), and Poroshenko (current holder of the second hardest job on the planet after bear baiter.

Ukraine can beat the rebels given time, but Vlad won’t allow that to happen. He’ll let them get just close enough to victory to ensure the rebels can’t completely ruin his idea of peace. But he won’t let Ukraine achieve total victory. He can’t allow them to do that for a whole slew of reasons we’ve previously discussed in other posts.

So he’ll keep messing with Ukraine until Poroshenko gives in and cuts some kind of one-on-one deal with Vlad. On terms that broadly favor Russia. I think the whole Belarus meeting, plus the simultaneous invasion, was meant to beat Petro over the head with this reality. This invasion is meant to bring about that end state.

But, no seriously but, Vlad’s also going to wait and see what Europe does. Don’t be surprised when if Europe mostly does nothing, that Vlad might try and keep the army advancing until Russia controls Novoazovsk, Mariupol, and ultimately creates a Russian land link all the way to Crimea.

If Vlad can get away with that, why wouldn’t he do it? As far as victories go, he’d be hailed in Russia as Peter the Great’s militant ghost. Because, hell, nothing can better distract Russia’s citizens from the reality that they’re living in an open sewer, fueled by Vlad, than one of Vlad’s immortal victories.

Will Europe allow it? Honestly, I have no idea. I’m not optimistic. But on the other hand, Europe’s been talking tough lately. Maybe they’ll pass another round of sanctions fierce enough to scare Vlad off. Or maybe they’ll do nothing because they’ll realize that winter’s coming and Vlad still has his hands on the gas pipeline valve. We’ll see.

But no matter what happens, even though this crisis has been shit to the goodness of humanity from the start? We should still take comfort that this invasion is boring. We’re still playing the same old silly games, but the overall body count is 0.0001% of what it once was. So at least there’s that. It’s not much, but we should take it.

Still, here’s hoping the Ukrainian army keeps doing its thing. Here’s hoping Europe steps up and proves they’re still alive. And here’s hoping one of Vlad’s belligerent mistresses cracks a bottle over his head on Saturday night. So that he’ll get mixed up inside his brain and make a cruelly dumb decision. Like ordering the army to invade Mongolia. Because why not?

We just need Vlad to make a mistake, one major mistake, that might be enough. Although maybe it won’t be enough. Apparently shooting down an airliner wasn’t a major mistake. So maybe we’re all just screwed. We’ll see.

ukrainian_covoy

To understand how far they’ve come, I submit the discipline of this convoy would have been beyond the Ukrainian army even two months ago, let’s hope it’s enough

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Blow up Space! And other wise ideas.

We’re problem solvers here. We help people with problems. Which is unwise. Because we a lot of problems. I can’t get through a cup of coffee without getting bashed with a problem.

Like what do you do when you wake up and find one of your dogs has vomited on the carpet, but you can’t figure out which one did it to check to see if they’re okay?

Or how do you respond when sunrise hasn’t occurred but one of your guests has already threatened another guest with fatal bodily harm?

Well, typically I just shrug and resign myself to the faceless existence that is all our lives. Then go to work. Sweet.

Anyways, so we’re going to take all that in context and then help all of humanity with a problem. It’s what we do. Even though we shouldn’t. No really, we shouldn’t.

There’s been a lot of news articles lately about a topic people don’t care about: all that space junk that’s floating around in Earth’s low and high orbits.

What’s that you say? You don’t care? I know. But you should care. Because everything you use during your day somehow depends on said junk not ruining everything.

Soon, if it’s already not in progress somewhere, you’re not going to be able to brush your teeth without establishing a firm satellite connection that notes your location, plaque removal status, and overall dental health intent.

This information will get reported to a government agency for evaluation to establish you’re within set standards. Do you find such a wired future unappealing? Your recourse is to flee to the mountains & unplug. Or obey. Either way.

But at the very least if you currently use some form of GPS or television or like to know the weather, you’d better hope we figure out space debris. Because sooner or later it’s going to get out of control and then we’re really going to have a problem. Because satellites will blow up ten days after they’re emplaced.

And I’m not talking about that stupid movie Gravity. I never saw that piece of trash. I saw enough to know I hated it after the very first teaser. Mostly because I find the idea of putting both George Clooney and Sandra Bullock on screen mentally repulsive. It’s like paying the most machine engineered Hollywood leading man and woman and getting them to shove their hands inside your wallet while you’re in the shower. I can’t stand either of them, on or off screen.

Plus, I’m sick of movies that masquerade as theme park rides. Inside folks’ brains, they’re like: Wow! Look at how much debris was in that movie! All the action and ‘splosions! It’s like you’re floating in space! I love that, I’m floating! In space! I’m floating with George Clooney! This is so awesome!

No, no idiot, you’re not floating with George Clooney and Sandra Bullock. They don’t even know who you are. They have so much money they use $100 bills to clean their dogs’ vomit off the carpet. Now you just gave them more money. Why? Uh, [shakes head] the very thought of all that induces me to start loading a revolver.

Anyways, so humanity’s got to solve space debris. So there’s been some wacky solutions proposed in the news lately. Here are some examples:

– Send a robot up there to capture or push debris into the atmosphere to burn up. [we think this is most legit]

– Use a death ray from ground or space to zap debris. [cool]

– Send a big magnetic bar up there to attract metal and vacuum up the stuff. [really?]

– Ignore the problem. [we think this is most likely]

But all of these options are weak. They don’t fix the issue. We’re going to fix the issue. You’ll love our proposals!

I’m advised by the most belligerent minds this side of the Crab Nebula. So you know my ideas are golden.

When my guests first got here, they told me we had so much garbage in orbit it look like somebody vomited atop our world. It’s embarrassing. Time to get it fixed.

1) Blow up Space!

Currently, nuclear weapons are decommissioned via a complicated, expensive, and dangerous disposal process. Forget that. Instead, we shoot all those nukes into orbit and blow up substantial portions of space to remove debris. Then, we build more nukes and fire them up there too. We clean out the orbits in a sea of fire and armageddon. It’d be like a fireworks display for the whole planet. What’s not to like?

What’s that you say? This idea is horrific? It won’t work? I’ll add more debris or electromagnetic pulse the planet to the dark ages?

No, that kind of short sighted risk adverse thinking is what got us here in the first place. It’s time for action! [throws chair] We’re doing nothing to fix the problem. Time to let me try and recklessly fix it. Even if all I do is make it worse.

2) Blow up Earth!

Space debris will have a real hard time ruining our lives when there’s not an Earth left for it to harass!

PS – We’re already doing this.

3) Blow up Mars!

Hey, those assholes started it! It’s time for some payback.

What’s that you say? This has nothing to do with the problem at hand?
Who cares! We’re going to blow up freaking Mars! How awesome is that.

4) Return to the Stone Age

Without technology, we’ll not need anything functional in orbit. Everybody loves these apocalyptic disaster and/or zombie stories right? We can make it happen. Right now!

Please start by robbing your neighbor’s fridge for provisions. You go first! We’ll watch and then follow you right afterwards. 

5) Plan Arcturus

For a small nominal fee, several specific routine gifts, and the opportunity to become Overlord of All Humanity my guests will design, build, and operate a craft or weapon capable of clearing all non-functional debris from orbit. They say it’s an offer we can’t refuse.

No really, they say we can’t refuse. So seriously, we’ve got to do something. Quick. They’re not joking. They even let me write this post so you’d know they’re serious. But what they don’t understand is that nobody reads this blog. So their threats are futile. And I’m in a heap of future beatings once they find out. I tried to take all the phone books out of the house. And then they went and bought more. Where/how do you buy a freaking phone book!?

spacejunk_geo_2009237_lrg

Behold our beloved planet Earth. Floating open garbage can.

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Don’t demand folks do stupid things just because other people are stupid

As you read modern news, more and more you’re confronted with the irrational. Things that just make no sense. Yesterday we confronted humanity’s downfall via the weirdo act of dumping liquid life over your skull. Now let’s dance the arts of demanding upon pain of torture that folks do stupid things.

So Burger King (home of the whopper) intends to buy Tim Hortons (home of the benign) for a ton of molten gold. This would create the planet’s third largest fast food giant behind Subway, McDonalds, and your local zoo’s cafeteria.

As is now common in massive mergers, the bigger company (Burger King) plans to move its combined headquarters to Canada where corporate taxes are lower. This tactic is called a number of things, but “tax inversion” seems the most common term. In other news, Burger King also announced they’d be passing their future corporate tax cost savings onto the average consumer by lowering their prices [insert appropriate laugh track].

The concept is simple. America’s corporate tax is 35%, depending on where you are in Canada, it could be almost 10% lower. So naturally Burger King wants to exist where they pay less tax. And so naturally the applicable politicians are demanding that the CEO of Burger King be strapped to a chair and fed burgers until he expires.

Fleeing your home country to pay less tax is either greedy (Democrats) or unpatriotic (Republicans). Or maybe your opinion of tax inversion depends on what you personally think of Obama or Boehner or Hollywood or falconry. Or maybe your opinion of tax inversion depends on how many episodes of Ellen you watch every week.

Now the federal government has decided that tax inversion must stop. So they’re looking at steps to end it while simultaneously demonizing the companies that engage in it. Some corporations are clearly beginning to feel the heat.

Walgreens just announced that their merger with Boots won’t involve them leaving the country for Switzerland. Probably because leaving the country for Switzerland for tax purposes is just about the worst public relations move you can make.

It’d be like broadcasting to the planet that you want to funnel your tax funds from the taxpayer and directly into some Iranian cleric’s stripper account. For a small fee, of course.

But what’s this really about? Well, like most things nowadays, you can’t talk about this issue without being labeled a Saint or Satan. So we’ll start with facts.

Facts:

– The corporate tax rate for Burger King at its Florida headquarters is 35%

– The corporate tax rate for Tim Hortons at its Ontario headquarters is 26.5%

– Both Burger King and Tim Hortons are public companies

– As public companies they have an obligation to make money for their shareholders

– Both Burger King and Tim Hortons had their stocks skyrocket yesterday upon news of the deal

– People like money

– Folks will follow the path of least resistance to acquire money

– If you try and fight the prior two bullets, expect to encounter problems

But wait, what’s this really about? Well, like most things nowadays, you can’t talk about this issue without being labeled a Saint or Satan. So we’ll also include a story:

Story:

– Like this blog’s degenerate author, you may have spent a significant portion of your childhood getting subjected to mental and physical torture by bigger or wiser kids

– You have one dollar provided to you each day

– You are a part of the hyper-nerd click

– As part of the hyper-nerd click, the bullies charge you a tax rate of 35¢ before lunch

– The boys in the uber-nerd click are charged a bully tax rate of 25¢

– You’re thinking of joining the uber-nerd click so you can keep that extra dime

– But if you do that, the hyper-nerd click will consider you greedy or a turncoat

– What do you do?

If you said you’d stay with the hyper-nerd click and pay the extra dime you’re a liar or a fool.

Oh, the hyper-nerd folks are pissed off at you? Who cares. They’re not your real friends. Why? Because if they were your real friends they’d help you gang up on the bullies to the point that your lunch tax rate was reduced to 25¢.

If they were your friends, they’d help you work the problem. They would not do nothing. And they certainly wouldn’t call you a traitor or a money hound for leaving them.

Think tax inversion is a coincidence? That corporations are just rotten? Things generally don’t just happen. Canada’s corporate tax rate was reduced 13% by Harper’s administration since it took office in 2006. This merger is exactly why they did it. To steal business and tax dollars from America.

What’s that, you think business can be tamed? That you can construct laws and enforcement mechanisms to the point that a company will willingly pay a higher tax because you made it so? Yeah, good luck with that.

Politicians have tried that since Rome. It never works. Why? See our example above. You can’t fight human nature. Folks will follow the path of least resistance to acquire money. It’s in our blood. Sorry.

America’s politicians can whine all they want. They can shout to the heavens in a cynical attempt to grab your vote in November. But the reality is that they are to blame for this. America doesn’t have a tax inversion problem. America has a leadership problem.

America’s corporate tax rate, structure, and implementation are a mess and have been for decades. This is not news to anybody with a brain in Washington. What have they done to fix it? Nothing. And now they want to demand, yes demand, that Burger King do something against its own self-interest to compensate for their failed political leadership? Apologies, I don’t buy it.

If you personally think Burger King is evil for doing this? Fine, I understand, no worries. Go protest outside your local franchise or eat only at McDonalds. That’s your right.

But don’t buy into the trash that’s spoon fed to you buy the morons who want your vote in two months. It’s their fault. 

It’s not effective leadership to demand folks do stupid things just because you’re stupid. Instead, Washington should either do its job or close its mouth. But I suspect it will continue to do neither.

Burger_King

Good morning, one safe, benign Canadian cup of coffee please. Milk and sugar, oh, no thanks, that’s too fierce for me, eh.

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I don’t get it

No seriously, I don’t get it. If you get this ice bucket thing, like you actually can wrap your brain around it? Please contact us and describe what’s wrong with you.

So as best as I understand this nonsense [face palm] so like [furrows brow], you get challenged by somebody, and then you can give money to charity or dump ice on your head. I guess?

So the idea is to raise awareness? And to raise money for charity? But if you dump the ice, you don’t have to give any real money? So all you’re doing is increasing awareness?

But awareness can be a substitute for inaction, so what are you actually accomplishing? But what if you do both the ice thing and still give money? Are you like some super internet master, and, so, uh, …

This isn’t a freak phenomenon promoted by wacky cult members. Reasonable human beings are doing this. Folks with jobs, dreams, fears, kids, stalkers, boats, etc. And then they’re challenging their friends to do it.

Because nothing says you care about your friend more than challenging them to conduct a creepy bizarre ritual based upon a nonsense concept invented on social media by people with far, far too much time on their hands.

I’m becoming more and more convinced that my guests are entirely correct when they drunkenly boast:

“We created social media to distract and degenerate humanity’s already shit intellect so that one day we can liquidate and/or enslave you with minimal resistance, pig!” [throws chair]

Hey anybody ever volunteer at a soup kitchen? This simplest and quickest of charitable acts doesn’t cost you a dime. It’s usually over in three hours leaving plenty of time to go get wasted at the bar with your friends (not social media) afterwards.

Plus you’ll get shocked when you look across the table and realize you’re serving your human equivalent who is clearly high, hasn’t slept indoors in days, and given bad choices, a broken home, or just plain dumb luck: You could be them.

It’s a very rough thing to accept. But it propels you to action. Kind of like how dumping ice on your head does not.

Which brings us to the real point of this post. TAP is pleased to announce the Bone Marrow Challenge. Our goal is to end slanted pictures. Folks, we don’t want to alarm you, but scientists say 40% of America’s pictures are hanging crooked. This problem isn’t going to fix itself. We’re going to fix it. You can help us.

When you’re approached with the Bone Marrow Challenge you must either donate money to TAP’s Frame Nudging Charity or you have to shove your non-dominant hand into a pot of flaming coals and hold it there until your flesh is seared off and you have nothing left but bone marrow.

We challenge you! And we promise, our way guarantees you’ll actually donate money.

icebucketbree

A dumber and more bizarre human act than spending an intimate night with a plague infested talking rat named Steve

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It’s gotten much worse in Ferguson

We used this picture many months ago to illustrate Russia’s tyranny prior to the Sochi Olympics.  You may recognize it.  It’s happening right now in Ferguson, Missouri. SpreadingOlympicJoy

Yesterday we touched on the shooting of unarmed men by police officers.

Now we can highlight other things you should never see in America, but that are happening before our eyes:

– Police pointing automatic weapons and sniper rifles at unarmed citizens exercising their right to freedom of speech

– Police covering those holding automatic weapons with armored vehicles originally designed to fight on the battlefield

– The unlawful arrest of two reporters for exercising nothing but their constitutional right

The reporters, Wesley Lowery of The Washington Post and Ryan Reilly of The Huffington Post, say they were arrested.  They were.  But the police have a different word.  They call it “detainment”.  This is the word the police use to cover themselves when they break the law and arrest somebody without probable cause.  They say they “detained” you and then set you free.  Like you’re supposed to be grateful to your government masters that they didn’t actually charge you with a crime.  Even though you committed no crime.

Said Mr Lowery:  “Apparently, in America, in 2014, police can manhandle you, take you into custody, put you in a cell & then open the door like it didn’t happen.”

Yes Mr Lowery, they most certainly can.

SpreadingOlympicJoy

This is the future of America, unless we spread the word, and fight to change it.