Protest the Royal War on Christmas

The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge have released a Christmas family photo with their two children, taken in the autumnal gardens of Kensington Palace, as they announced Prince George is to attend a nursery specialising in Montessori teaching.

  Guardian

Okay, all you Starbucks denigrators...have at it. Does that look like a Christmas photo to you?

Releasing the festive image, the family said that Prince George will attend the West Acre Montessori school nursery in Norfolk from January, close to their country home, Anmer Hall.

What's "festive" about it? That tiny red choo-choo?  Unbelievable.  Let's see a huge campaign against this sacrilege, Christmas warriors!

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

All Life Is Spectacle for American Consumers

Nothing more.

We know where two of "the cast" are.  But they aren't mentioned in this Vanity Fair "promotion".

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

The Terror Threat Is Real in August County, Virginia

AUGUSTA COUNTY, VA (NEWSPLEX) -- All public schools in Augusta County will be closed Friday.

[...]

Sporting events and other extra curricular activities have also been cancelled for Thursday night and into the weekend.

  Newsplex

Another bomb threat?

No.  A calligraphy assignment.

Following parental objections to the World Geography curriculum and ensuing related media coverage, the school division began receiving voluminous phone calls and electronic mail locally and from outside the area. As a result of those communications, the Sheriff's Office and the school division coordinated to increase police presence at Augusta County schools and to monitor those communications. The communications have significantly increased in volume today and based on concerns regarding the tone and content of those communications, Sheriff Fisher and Dr. Bond mutually decided schools and school offices will be closed on Friday, December 18, 2015. While there has been no specific threat of harm to students, schools and school offices will be closed Friday, December 18, 2015. All extra-curricular activities are likewise cancelled for tonight, Thursday, December 17, through the weekend.

[...]

The calligraphy message was the Shahada, or Muslim statement of faith that translates as "There is no god but Allah, and Muhammad is the messenger of Allah."

[...]

Although students will continue to learn about world religions as required by the state Board of Education and the Commonwealth's Standards of Learning, a different, non-religious sample of Arabic calligraphy will be used in the future.

There will no doubt be a bill introduced into the Virginia state legislature to remove that requirement.

A non-religious sample of calligraphy for a religious subject. Of course.

UPDATE  12/19:

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

That's Entertainment

Spectacle. That's the name of the game.

[I]n the recent NBC/Wall Street Journal poll, Trump was the first choice of 27 percent of the Republican voters who responded. Given the weighted samples in this poll (38 percent identify as Republican or leaning Republican) this translates into Trump capturing the support of about 11 percent of American voters in total.

In the same poll, 37 percent of Democratic voters supported Democratic contender Bernie Sanders. Given the weighted samples (43 percent identify as Democrat or leaning Democrat) that translated into roughly 16 percent of all American voters.

Additionally, in a recent Quinnipiac poll, Sanders beat Trump in a head-to-head matchup – by an even larger margin than Hillary Clinton did.

But in terms of coverage by the mainstream media, Trump is besting Sanders 23 to 1, by some estimates.

  The Intercept

But maybe what we need to know from this is that Hillary Clinton did beat Donald Trump.  Because Bernie Sanders isn't the Crowned Candidate in this game.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Busted

A boyish drug company entrepreneur, who rocketed to infamy by jacking up the price of a life-saving pill from $13.50 to $750, was arrested by federal agents at his Manhattan home early Thursday morning on securities fraud related to a firm he founded.

Martin Shkreli, 32, ignited a firestorm over drug prices in September and became a symbol of defiant greed. The federal case against him has nothing to do with pharmaceutical costs, however. Prosecutors in Brooklyn charged him with illegally taking stock from Retrophin Inc., a biotechnology firm he started in 2011, and using it to pay off debts from unrelated business dealings. He was later ousted from the company, where he’d been chief executive officer, and sued by its board.

[...]

[Retrophin] alleged in a complaint filed in Manhattan federal court that, through a disastrous trade with Merrill Lynch in 2011, Shkreli cost MSMB more than $7 million, leaving it virtually bankrupt.

Retrophin also asserts that Shkreli entered into payoff agreements with as many as 10 MSMB investors who lost money when the hedge fund became insolvent. Shkreli paid some investors through fake consulting agreements and others through unauthorized appropriations of stock and cash, the company alleged.

  Bloomberg

Because nobody cares if you're greedy on behalf of either yourself or your company. Just don't fuck with the company's money or attract the attention of the feds.

Shkreli spoke cavalierly of the company’s lawsuit, saying, “The $65 million Retrophin wants from me would not dent me. I feel great. I’m licking my chops over the suits I’m going to file against them.”

[...]

At a Forbes summit in New York this month, wearing a hooded sweatshirt, he said if he could have done it over, “I probably would have raised the price higher,” adding, “my investors expect me to maximize profits.”

Yes. Yes, they do.

And the title of this article clearly indicates the problem. It wasn't price gouging - that only earned Shkreli disdain,

Price gouge sick people and the general public all you want. But don't fuck with the company's profits or the feds.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

UPDATE 12/18:  (click pic for story)

UPDATE 3/9:

I bet he's not licking his chops now.

What?!?

But...but...but...

She did it privately.  What's the diff?  Besides, she was Muslim.

Brilliant

He must be making the government nervous, though. Not to mention automobile manufacturers.

A few days before Thanksgiving, George Hotz, a 26-year-old hacker, invites me to his house in San Francisco to check out a project he’s been working on. He says it’s a self-driving car that he had built in about a month. The claim seems absurd. But when I turn up that morning, in his garage there’s a white 2016 Acura ILX outfitted with a laser-based radar (lidar) system on the roof and a camera mounted near the rearview mirror. A tangle of electronics is attached to a wooden board where the glove compartment used to be, a joystick protrudes where you’d usually find a gearshift, and a 21.5-inch screen is attached to the center of the dash. “Tesla only has a 17-inch screen,” Hotz says.

[...]

He says the usual practice has been to manually code rules that handle specific situations. There’s code that helps cars follow other vehicles on the highway, and more code to deal with a deer that leaps into the road. Hotz’s car has no such built-in rules. It learns what drivers typically do in various situations and then tries to mimic and perfect that behavior. If his Acura cruises by a bicyclist, for example, it gives the biker some extra room, because it’s seen Hotz do that in the past. His system has a more general-purpose kind of intelligence than a long series of if/then rules. As Hotz puts it in developer parlance, “ ‘If’ statements kill.” They’re unreliable and imprecise in a real world full of vagaries and nuance. It’s better to teach the computer to be like a human, who constantly processes all kinds of visual clues and uses experience, to deal with the unexpected rather than teach it a hard-and-fast policy.

[...]

“Hold this,” he says, dumping a wireless keyboard in my lap before backing out of the garage. “But don’t touch any buttons, or we’ll die.” Hotz explains that his self-driving setup, like the autopilot feature on a Tesla, is meant for highways, not chaotic city streets. He drives through San Francisco’s Potrero Hill neighborhood and then onto Interstate 280.

  Bloomberg

You'll have to click the link to read how that goes.  Read the whole article, though.  And be sure to watch the embedded video.

If you've never wondered whether humans are actually complex machines built by some other intelligence (or maybe even other humans), you might begin now.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Did You Watch the "Debate"?

I don't think these things can actually be considered debates after the League of Women Voters stopped hosting them.

Anyway, I didn't watch.  So here's a few takes from  Twitter folk:

    

         

He also apparently called the RNC chair Reince Priebus "Reince Pubis".  What was Dr. Carson thinking of last night?

And, the post-debate wrap up...

Not a problem for Cruz, though.  How many of the GOP voting public realize that's a contradiction in terms?  Not many, I'd wager.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Michael Brown Legacy

St. Louis has developed a plan to change:


PIER "Making a Safe City"

Another GOP Offical Debate

If you're inclined to watch it, here's Rolling Stone's Drinking Rules for tonight.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.