Will & Disgrace
Wednesday, December 24, 2020
It’s the night before Christmas and all through the House, not a legislative aid was given, not even an ounce. The writings were penned by law drafters with detail, in hopes that stimulus soon would provide bail.
Well SWMer’s if you’ve made it to the end of the year, bully for you! It’s been a rough year for everyone around. From wearing facial diapers all day long to having to celebrate life events like graduation, weddings and birthdays at home with the people that drive you up the wall, it’s a miracle most of society isn’t half nutty and blowing spit bubbles while wagging their index finger in front of their mouths.
So here’s some of the more interesting parts of the week. Wait? Is there a viral pandemic going on? Probably so. Can you sense some cynicism and sarcasm in our articles more than usual? Hope so. But life is way too serious lately and people need to lighten up and relax when tensions are running high everywhere. Relax, cool it, chill out. Sometimes you just have to know when to clam up and move along to the next topic at hand.
So here’s some tidbits of what we gleaned from the net. There’s so much to digest in the last few weeks that we had to take a break from it all and break out a muscle relaxer ourselves.
But as we were saying, here’s the last few weeks of December in recap:
- First off, money is the name of the game.
“Disgrace”. That sums up what is going on with the aid situation. In one of the biggest most powerful countries in the world (that got there through ‘might and right’) their aid package is set so far at a (what’s the word or le mot juste to use?) paltry, measley, or minimalistic $600 for individuals in the upcoming weeks.
The country that prides itself on being great and the proud example for the world to see can’t get its act together with a pandemic aid package for its people. For many months out of work employees either layed off due to coronavirus restrictions had to suffer economic devastation, career elimination, and emotional humiliation after many upper echelon governing individuals at the local and state legislatures had to do damage control to figure how to best keep its people safe while protecting their own families, while also avoiding widespead societal panic.
Civil society and discourse has steadily eroded as savvy internet-connected individuals take to the internet to share malcontent, social inequities and injustices of the financial disparities, as well as outted the Marie Antoinett-ish double standards of the ruling class to impose regulations but not follow through when a light is shined on them. “Do as I say, not as I do” as the adage goes. Mask up? Sure, but I must stop by the salon first. Stay at home and don’t do Thanksgiving? Sure, but I’m going to plan to drive to see my mother in another state. It’s all laughable and ironic that people can clearly see it’s become that we’re all going through the motions because society has lost control and everyone has Covid fatigue. We’ve entered the coronapocalypse and it’s flu season at the high school dance, Morty.
Even with all the hoopla about voting and conspiracies circulating and leadership or lack of it, there’s a small beacon of hope still for struggling families that are just trying to make rent and pay bills and not go homeless. It’s that someone is still making the hard line stance and trying to stop the buck and get the anticipated stimulus package to be $2000 or $4000 for married couples. Sure there may have been a lot of policy differences throughout the years and people have been heavily divided, civil discourse has eroded and emotional and financial anguish erupted in renewed racial tension protests this year, but one thing is for sure:
More money is usually good news. That’s unless you’re trying to balance a budget and imaginary debt ceiling, a fiscal cliff. But who is anyone kidding? The gloves are off, the secret is out and we’re just going to print ourselves out of this dual financial economic and health mess we’re in.
There’s a point to be had if you’re living in the land of the free and the brave. Many countries have aid packages and assistance throughout the pandemic as early as March when this new order of world events started transpiring. Canada for instance has several assistance packages to help people that had been unemployed and out of work. And these are monthly amounts as well! But while those in the heartland are eagerly awaiting the chicken feed, other countries that actually care about their folks and not about quibbling over details till later have actually doled out larger assistance packages. Even Denmark has provided several aid packages in the months after Covid first hit.
Disgraceful? Indeed. The package will probably stall or have issues. There’s said to be a vote on Monday for a possible increase but don’t hold your breath or you’ll likely suffer oxygenation issues through the mask you’re already wearing. Help is not on the way, be your own bank and fiscal saviour.
- Speaking of being your own bank…
In other global news, crypto is where everything is hot and muy caliente. Daddy crypto hit $24k briefly a few days ago before peeling back and paring gains. Not to worry though. If you’re an early adopter like any other industry you made off like a bandit with flying colors. Did we mention also those that were in Elon Musk’s company this year also made quite a financial killing thise year without batting an eye. Thanks to many parabolic gains and what-in-the-world moments including stock splits and tweets and moments showing off the company’s new space toys, the stock price lifted to new highs. Both crypto and the companies have literally mooned this year.
And as always regulators and other salivating money-lusty moguls are trying to get a piece of the action like hungry teens sliding into a social media cammer’s DM’s. Mark Z of FB fame (or notoriety) is back at the crypto train’s door. Ever since his company came under intense stifling scrutiny when he testified about the Libra digital coin attempt, his ideas have steadily been beaten back until most of his original bank posse and digital coin alliance financiers left the scene. Better for them to find an easier route then trying to on ramp onto something that was dead out of the gate. Paypal never rejoined the mix and many went on to their own projects. But as seen below:
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/mark-zuckerberg-another-answer-bitcoin-060020261.html
The Zuckster is trying another attempt of bringing crypto to the masses with Diem and a platter offering of various stable coins pegged one to one to fiat. Whether that remains successful will be left to see.
- Flying cars are coming
The obvious comparison is the Jetsons and other movies. But according to Fedscoop, Biz Journal, MSN and Govtech, the Air Force will be testing new flying vehicles in the early part of 2021. This is part of the Agility Prime program to provide a way for vehicles to navigate and transport people quickly. This program has large interest from venture capitalists and applications for military and civilian use.
The vehicles combine various elements such as helicopter-style rotors but can also use eVTOL or electric vertical takeoff and landing sstems. LIFT Aircraft has some Hexa aircraft headed to Dayton, Ohio’s Wright Patterson AFB to help test Phase II flight testing. It is described as one of the world’s first personal eVTOL flying vehicles for testing and it doesn’t need FAA certification or a pilot license to fly. A person can quickly learn how to fly it within an hour worth of training. The aircraft can be used to give city tours for entertainment purposes as well as EMS and first responders, and maybe even one day used to help fight forest wildfires. Springfield-Beckley Municipal Airport will also start getting technology that will make progress to having electric flying cars and building add-ons and charging stations. These were highlighter at AFWERX to showcase cutting edge technology. - Hacks everywhere
In the most recent weeks, not only has FireEye been pawned. But also SolarWinds and many other gov agencies. The company Ledger which deals with crypto hardware wallets was hacked several months. State sponsored hacks seem to be all the rage to get personal information and uncover your personal details. And ironically a lot of regulation to fight “laundering” of funds seems to open up other problems.
The more information that’s put out there, the more entrenched people are in these interrelated and correlated systems. For example when the talks of stimulus and “free money” was coming out scams came out of the wood work. Also when crypto started to take off this year you see hackers working to break into these companies and phish for information.
A lot of people don’t realize that information that’s available on social media, customer reward surveys and offering purchase point rewards in exchange for customer data and simple things like your email, and address and phone number while seemingly innocuous and innocent now may open your information to identity theft and chance of a data breach later when a company’s customer data base is breached. There’s a lot of push to know-who-your-customer is nowadays. On the one hand it’s to hold certain bad actors accountable in case of a bad transaction, but on the other hand what happens when all the information is leaked, or the centralized agency in charge of oversight is corrupted or misuses the information such as data harvesting to profit and resell your information or worse.
Right now, if you are an internet user and millennial or anybody really, you should really be afraid of your data being kept safe. Because if your own gov, and the top security firms can’t even safeguard your data, what hope do small guys like you and I have? None. And there weren’t even zero-day exploits involved in the Red-Team hacks that were breached. The whistleblowers that told us about the data surveillance and journalistic watchdogs did us a favor. We’re in a society where we may have won world wars but have become to powerful for our own good.
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Still here? Do us a favor, and go out and patronize and buy from a local restaurant or store in your community. A lot of places have closed down due to the pandemic and forced social distancing measures. Your local businesses need people like you and me to go and keep them running to serve the community so that years from now, our kids can still enjoy the local shops and entertainment venues long after 2020 is over. We appreciate it.
Articles mentioned:
https://www.bizjournals.com/dayton/news/2020/12/18/lift-aircraft-testing-dayton.html
