Category: Uncategorized

Kinda’ Like Getting Capone On Tax Evasion…

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…but I guess NY AG James is presently doing that anyway, so…

Tangerine has indicated on his platform that he is offering various NFTs / tokens to the public — but in order to use the tokens to purchase the rarer (he says) NFTs which make use of his mugshot image… one must hold, and not sell… for a year.

So there’s a holding period / lockup provision (in truth, I can’t fully believe I typed those last two sentences, about a candidate for 1600 Penn., and “the pen”, as it were!).

But the holding period means definitively that buyers of the tokens/NFTs must rely on the efforts of others to realize a profit.

So, the central learning of Howey comes into play: he is offering unregistered non-exempt securities to the public in violation of federal law, this evening.

Charming. Go get em’ boys!

Out.

Mirengoff Thinks Complying With Treaties And Laws… Is A “Democrats’ Polarizing” Effort. Y A W N.

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This is just… silly.

Paul tells us that on immigration, Democrats (not MAGAts) are the polarizing force.

In point of fact, however — it was Tangerine (dozens of citations available!) who violated US law, and international treaties on immigration so often… that his followers decided the law ought not be… the law. [But tellingly the Congress and the nation’s highest courts, have never shared that view. There was no new law made in Trump’s time on immigration / asylum.]

Mr. Biden has, like Mr. Obama, returned to a lawful course — for the US. This idea — that we might comply with our own federal legal obligations… Paul somehow wants to distort, into a polarizing effort, driven by Democrats.

Geez, Mirengoff — up your evening Ketamine dose.

Your cheese has slid off your cracker.

Out.

Baseless Hinderaker Led Fear-Mongering (Re Europe), To Push Authoritarian Measures At Home…

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And… the guy is churlish in ways that stretch even my fertile imagination.

Tonight, he picks up on some London sourced rags’ gossip — about “what if?” Putin and Russia were to decide to march on most of continental western Europe.

Forget for the moment that Russia is almost out of manpower (prison convicts, mostly) in Ukraine. They literally have no more able bodied young men to send to Ukraine — let alone to launch a land war in Europe.

And never mind that none of it will thus implicate domestic US politics — in the 2024 cycle.

John is clutching at fear — as a basis to argue a totalitarian like Tangerine is needed here at home.

Poppycock.

Shut it — idiot.

Out.

About This Much Hinderaker And I Can Agree — This Is A Sad Day: SI, Now Winking Out Of Existence?

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I used to wait, literally beside the mailbox, bundled up in my ski gear, in my small mountain town… for the mailman, when the next SI was due to be delivered. I’d wait all afternoon, if need be. [I agree with John, this was once a great magazine for athletes of all kinds. And their fans. The local and regional papers carried almost zip about my hero, the French skier, Jean-Claude Killy — he’s depicted at lower right, with the legendary Jim Brown.]

Then, I’d run inside with it, grab a tall glass of cold milk, some fresh chocolate chip cookies my mom had just baked — still steaming from the oven, in the chilly winter air, even indoors in our sweaters and turtlenecks… and look for the stories on our ski- and football- and basketball- heros. But the very best part was the full page, full color photo that accompanied every feature story. What a time that was: no digital media, and only blurry images on a small TV (and only black and white until I reached ninth grade — in our home — with only three stations broadcasting at enough power to clear the high Rockies passes).

So — if this is the end of some 70 years, of SI… it is indeed a sad day (though I am fairly certain some men of my era will lament only the swimsuit issue’s demise — just as some others — men and women — may cheer it):

…On Friday the storied publication Sports Illustrated began laying off staffers en masse as the outlet’s union warned that “possibly all” of its guild-represented staffers could be affected.

“Earlier today the workers of Sports Illustrated were notified that The Arena Group is planning to lay off a significant number, possibly all, of the Guild-represented workers at SI, a result of Authentic Brands Group (ABG) revoking Arena’s license to publish SI,” the NewGuild of New York, which represents about 80 editorial workers at the magazine, and the Sports Illustrated Union said in a statement early on Friday. “This is another difficult day in what has been a difficult four years for Sports Illustrated under Arena Group (previously The Maven) stewardship….”

“We hope to be the company to take SI forward but if not, we are confident that someone will. If it is another business, we will support with the transition so the legacy of Sports Illustrated doesn’t suffer….”

Me? I would not bet the ranch on it. Sadly, so it goes — for many stalwarts of a largely… by-gone era, in sports, and journalism. Onward, with a sad sort of smile. . . this evening.

नमस्ते

I’m Listening To The Astrobotic / Peregrine Press Conference — On Last Week’s Misfire Of The Oxidizer, In Orbit — Of Its Robotic Moon Shot.

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I have the link below, if you want to listen in.

The team is describing end of mission now — the craft was moving too slowly, and was off-kilter (as we reported last week), as to reaching the moon on a second loop. The craft would never reach the moon. And it would soon be out of battery life. So the team scrubbed the mission, and let the craft burn up in Earth’s atmosphere on return… and drop the final bits of it into the South Pacific. That happened around 4 pm Eastern yesterday:

Yes — space is… hard. It does not cooperate.

नमस्ते

[U, X2] Scott Johnson: Trafficking In Lies In Service Of Tangerine — And Racial / Sexual Ones At That — In Georgia.

~ condor ~ 1 Comment

Updated: January 21, 2024 — It is now clear (from Scott’s own linked updates) that the ex- of the junior prosecutor is simply angling for more money, in a no-fault divorce. And in any event, there is zero inference (even if what she alleges was true) that this in any manner affected the prosecution of any MAGAt, or Tangerine himself, for election fraud, in Georgia.

It is simply churlish, and sensational nonsense — to try to embarrass a prosecutor. And Ms. Willis has now labeled the ex-‘s attempt as “attempted obstruction” of a criminal proceeding. Ms. Willis is correct — and the ex- could easily be charged criminally before long, if she persists in this graymail. End updated portion.

The Georgia Bureau of Investigations has issued a press release earlier this week, to the effect that there is “nothing to investigate“. [These are, as a rule, GOP-leaning law enforcement officers in Georgia, btw.]

All there is (upon which Scott hangs about ten paragraphs)… is a MAGA GOP hack’s bare a$$ed lie (literally!), that there was a prior relationship between two adults in Georgia. A sexual one. PRIOR. That’s it — that’s the whole basis upon which Scott makes up… wildly libelous charges, as a would-be distraction from Trump’s INDICTMENTS in Georgia — on felonies, of tampering with elections.

His… election LOSS, to put a fine point on it.

And it now turns out that a two-year old, purportedly “no fault” divorce case — in Georgia, is where the MAGA operative (a lawyer for a Trump co-defendant) sourced this nonsense. The soon to be ex-wife seeks, for financial gain, to depose the sitting prosecutor — as a means to extract a higher divorce payment from her soon to be ex-husband. And the cringe factor of a GOP operative encouraging her, in this gray mail campaign… is pegged off, scale high. But Scott runs with it all.

Mr. Johnson should be concerned that under applicable US law, well settled, it is libel per se, to allege some sexual crime (even a vague one, based on a lie)… against a public official like Fani Willis.

Whatever his house is worth, he is risking it — by telling lies to support Tangerine in public, and obstruct and denigrate solid prosecutors’ efforts — to get to the truth.

What a putz.

Mirengoff: Parcel-Tongued Fabulist.

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Tonight Paul rises to defend rubes in Iowa — rubes duped by Tangerine, about 2020. In doing so, he never blames Trump for the violence done at his behest.

This is deplorable — even if we concur in this bit, with Paul:

…Trump pressed on with his claims of a “steal,” even after his hand-picked Attorney General told him there was no basis for them. He summoned supporters to Washington to protest his defeat and to pressure Mike Pence into preventing its ratification. And to this day, he maintains the election was stolen.

This claim is unsupported. In any case, for the good of the country, Trump should long ago have stopped making it….

But this faint rebuke stops well short of what’s required of a… statesman: Tangerine supporters sought to kill Mike Pence.

The still sitting Veep. Tangerine’s Veep.

So Paul’s dry, academic hair-splitting through clenched teeth, in a false baritone… about “illegitimate” vs. “stolen”… is ultimately… silly.

Silly… and depraved — as it seeks to excuse MAGAts, to this day.

What a tool.

Out.

Gee, John — Most Adults (Jurors) Would Agree: Even A Mistaken Climate Chart Is Not “Equal To” Sexually Assaulting Children.

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Once again, the most charitable assumption one might make here is that Hinderaker is going senile… and is struggling with increasingly severe… dementia.

Tonight, he applauds a guy who is about to lose a libel trial, in part because the guy is defending himself pro se, and in part because he refuses to apologize for equating (what he claims is) an errant climate chart with being a sexual predator — a pedophile.

Malice per se is assumed there, under well settled US press / tort law.

There can be “no objectively reasonable belief” in the speaker’s mind… that his criticism of a climate chart allows him to claim the climate scientist has committed… forcible sex assaults.

That is to say… a knowingly false accusation of sexual felonies… is libel per se.

The guy has not — and cannot — establish even a shred of evidence that the man he defamed has ever had more than a traffic ticket.

He will lose — and John is a red faced old coot, for throwing in with him. [It’s John’s distain for climate scientists under it all.]

What a… bizarre… world, no?

Out.

[Updated — I Can’t Leave It At That.] Hinderaker: Incoherent.

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What in the fresh hell is this?

Updated — 5 pm EDT: I was going to simply ignore the racist’s feckless nonsense here… but it continued to… eat at me, this afternoon, on the train.

Hinderaker links a video by a racist, to suggest that the “problem” with Papua New Guinea’s relatively impoverished per capita annual incomes (compared to near neighbor Australia, no less — and… its plunderer, for ~400 years!)… is… wait for it!… due to poor economic policy “freedoms” — in the post-1970s local Papua- governance.

The nation is a democracy — with a five year election cycle. It is not a socialist state. [So even the premise — bashing a “socialism-first” approach is… false.]

But more directly, for well over a thousand years (into the last century), in serial fashion… the Chinese, then the Dutch, then British expats in Australia, and then the Brits themselves… exploited and almost universally enslaved the indigenous peoples of Papua New Guinea.

In the last century (after the formal end of slavery), British and Australian forces exploited most of the oil and mineral wealth of the nation (for a mere token-style of compensation to the locals — and in many cases, nothing at all), leaving only scraps behind. Then came independence from the British Crown in 1975.

And these feckless a-holes run screens of grass and bamboo huts, and dirt roads… and blame it all on a post 1975 democratic form of self-governance.

This is simply… lunacy.

And a refusal to accept responsibility for plunder, of a weaker neighboring nation.

D A M N A T I O N.

Out.

The Nancy Grace Roman Space ‘Scope: Due To Launch In May Of 2027… To Look For Clumps Of “Dark” Matter… On Unfathomably Vast Scales…

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There is a very sensible argument to the effect that what we now call JWST ought to have been named… for Nancy Grace Roman. But she has her own, launching very shortly… so I will let it go.

Naming spats aside, what her ‘scope might offer… may completely revolutionize our understanding of the unseen “glue” that holds galaxies in place, vis a vis one another, and in fact, is the spider web / scaffolding that underpins the entire Universe. Maybe.

This all turns on what Roman is able to discern, on the galaxy wide scales under which she will fire off images. What an amazing time to be alive, indeed. Here’s the latest, from Goddard Space Sciences — and NASA:

…Some of the finest, smallest details in the universe – the gaps between elongated groups of stars – may soon help astronomers reveal dark matter in greater detail than ever before. After NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope launches, by May 2027, researchers will use its images to explore what exists between looping tendrils of stars that are pulled from globular clusters. Specifically, they will focus on the tidal streams from globular clusters that orbit our neighboring Andromeda galaxy. Their aim is to pinpoint a greater number of examples of these tidal streams, examine gaps between the stars, and ideally determine concrete properties of dark matter.

Globular cluster streams are like ribbons fluttering in the cosmos, both leading and trailing the globular clusters where they originated along their orbits. Their lengths in our Milky Way galaxy vary wildly. Very short stellar streams are relatively young, while those that completely wrap around a galaxy may be almost as old as the universe. A stream that is fully wrapped around the Andromeda galaxy could be more than 300,000 light-years long but less than 3,000 light-years wide….

With Roman, astronomers will be able to search nearby galaxies for globular cluster stellar streams for the first time. Roman’s Wide Field Instrument has 18 detectors that will produce images 200 times the size of the Hubble Space Telescope’s near-infrared camera – at a slightly greater resolution.

“Roman will be able to take a huge snapshot of the Andromeda galaxy, which simply isn’t possible with any other telescope,” shared Christian Aganze, the lead author of a recent paper about this subject and a postdoc at Stanford University in California. “We also project that Roman will be able to detect stars individually….”

Now you know. And I do minimize, to this day, the number of references I make to JWST by a surname. Not to be in any manner, vindictive — but to candidly acknowledge that the collective whyte guy “we” should not have everything named after us. So many have been ignored for so long — due to sexism, racism and anti-LBGTQ+ bias. Onward.

नमस्ते