Over 1,000 Humans Who Identify as Dogs Meet Up in Berlin, Prompt Calls For “Animal Control” The Pet Zealot | September 20, 2023 | James Alain L.
A horde of individuals, who identify themselves as dogs rather than humans, has sparked a clamor for “animal control” following the widespread circulation of a video capturing their bizarre meet-up in Berlin.
Approximately 1,000 people, who prefer to be acknowledged as canines, orchestrated a remarkable gathering at Germany’s Berlin Potsdamer Platz railroad station. Astonishingly, their sole means of communication was through primal howls and barks exchanged amongst themselves.
Why MGM in Vegas Is Losing Millions of Dollars Per Day Right Now Townhall | 9/19/23 | Matt Vespa
If you visit Las Vegas, you might want to avoid at least one location: MGM Resorts. It got hit by a cyber-attack, creating chaos that’s been felt from the casino floor to the hotel rooms. Booking and checking in are now arduous tasks. Hotel key cards at the resort are also reportedly twitchy due to the hack. For eight days, MGM Resorts has been in a state of paralysis that’s costing them over $8 million daily, thanks to the hackers shutting down all the slot machines.
They’re not the only ones: Caesars was also targeted, but they allegedly paid the ransom between $15-30 million. MGM told these thugs to pound sand. Reports on the ground are that virtually every electronic device in the entire complex, including kiosks used for food and beverage orders, are virtually unworkable (via NY Post):
MGM Resorts has officially entered its eighth day of “cybersecurity issues” that have silenced slot machines and shut down internal computer systems, costing the hotel and casino chain as much as $8.4 million per day in daily revenue.
David Katz, a gaming industry analyst with Jefferies Group, issued a note estimating that MGM could take a hit of between 10% and 20% on revenue and cash flow.
The company generates some $42 million in revenue and $8 million in cash flow daily, according to Katz.
Paychecks to employees are now delayed. Strip clubs are now offering free lap dances to those impacted by the MGM hack. As for Caesars, it’s not confirmed that they paid the ransom, though if they did, experts warn more hacks like this are coming.
. . . not at all like Iran with its $6 billion ransom from Joe Biden.
The name No. 44 for young Satan was one Twain had first used in the unfinished “Schoolhouse Hill” version:
“My wonderful scholar, tell me your name.”
The school crowded forward in a body to devour the stranger at close quarters with their envying eyes; all except Bascom, who remained apart and sulked.
“Quarante-quatre, sir. Forty-four.”
“Why–why–that is only a number, you know, not a name.”
In his explanatory notes for the book, editor William Gibson conceded that Twain’s number name was challenging and “it ought to mean something.” But what? Over the past decades, several noted Mark Twain scholars have presented their theories as to what may have been the inspiration or meaning of Twain’s number 44.
HENRY B. WONHAM’S THEORY, 2008 Minstrel Imagery
In his article “Mark Twain’s Last Cakewalk: Racialized Performance in No. 44, The Mysterious Stranger,” in American Literary Realism, Spring 2008, pp. 262-271, Henry Wonham commented on the multiple identities represented by No. 44. “44 punctuates the novel with appearances as a break-dancer, a cakewalker, and a minstrel type” and thereby “upsets our own assumptions about the simple differentiability of an essential self from its manifold representations … the original self and its burlesque representation have become entangled, conjoined.”
DAVID F. NOLAN’S THEORY, 2010 The Gaussian Bell Curve Distribution
David F. Nolan, an alumni of Massachusetts Institute of Technology writes that in some cultures, calling a person “number 44” is an insult, based on the belief that one person in 44 falls outside the norm. This corresponds to the fact that in a normal Gaussian (bell curve) distribution, 1/44 of a population falls outside the two-sigma point on the curve. The Gaussian theory of distribution was developed by Johann Carl Friedrich Gauss (1777 – 1855), a German mathematician who applied it to theories of astronomy, a field in which Mark Twain was deelply interested. Nolan writes, “I first heard the phrase ‘you number 44’ in my student days at MIT; I don’t think it referred to Twain’s story in any way.”
Just What Chicago Needs, Government-Owned Grocery Stores NRO | 18 Sep 2023 | Jim Geraghty
The city of Chicago — already doing such a terrific job on handling crime, poverty, homelessness, and unemployment — is exploring the possibility of establishing municipally owned grocery stores.
City officials contend that a city-run grocery store would be better because they wouldn’t have to worry about making money. And Mayor Brandon Johnson is enthusiastically embracing the idea…
