Archive of entries posted on September 2023

Keep in Mind, He’s Running for President

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Gavin Newsom Reflects On California’s Covid Approach: “We Would’ve Done Everything Differently
deadline | 09/10/2023 | Denise Petski

Hindsight is 20/20. California Governor Gavin Newsom, who took considerable heat from constituents and a recall attempt over the state’s tough Covid-19 restrictions and vaccine rollout, acknowledges the criticism was valid.

In a taped interview which aired on Sunday’s NBC news magazine Meet The Press, Newsom said given what he knows now, “I think we would’ve done everything differently.”

Later in the interview Newsom responded to criticism of his state’s decisions saying: “All of it’s legitimate in terms of reflection.”

“I think all of us in terms of our collective wisdom, we’ve evolved,” Newsom added. “We didn’t know what we didn’t know. We’re experts in hindsight. We’re all geniuses now.”

Details, please. What specifically would you have done differently? What wisdom has evolved?

Say, for instance, sending police to arrest unmasked surfers off a beach. Or going to a restaurant unmasked while everyone else was forbidden to. What mistakes were made?

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Fan Fiction Friday

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Bob B invented this concept, and I’m running with it.

Dear Fan Fiction Friday:

Mika spoke to me in very familiar terms, while she unbuttoned her satin blouse and unhooked her delicate undergarments. Her gyrations caused a most embarrassing situation. Her shouts did not help — but did not hurt, either! It has been fourteen days now, and I think I have gotten her out of my system.

The FBI Will Just Keep the Functions In-House

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Google Is Laying Off Hundreds in Its Recruitment Division
Channel 3000 News/CNN | September 13, 2023 | CNN Staff

Google confirmed it will lay off hundreds of staff members who helped recruit and hire employees, as Silicon Valley continues its cost-cutting efforts.

The latest cuts come after Google parent Alphabet in January eliminated 12,000 jobs, or about 6% of its workforce, across the company as it grappled with economic uncertainty that hit the company’s bottom line last year, especially its core advertising business.

During Google’s July earnings call, CEO Sundar Pichai said the company was continuing to slow its “expense growth and pace of hiring.”

“We continue to invest in top engineering and technical talent while also meaningfully slowing the pace of our overall hiring,” Google spokesperson Courtenay Mencini said in a statement Wednesday, adding that the workload for recruiters has declined as hiring slows. “To ensure we operate efficiently, we’ve made the hard decision to reduce the size of our recruiting team.”

The layoffs were earlier reported by Semafor and CNBC.

The cuts will affect a few hundred members of Google’s recruiting organization globally; most of the team will remain and continue hiring for critical roles such as top engineering talent, according to Google. The company did not specify the exact number of layoffs in the department.

Google also said the recruiting cuts are not part of any wider layoffs, and that affected employees will be supported with severance offers and other benefits.

Some Google recruiters for the company’s cloud, user experience, software engineering and other teams posted on LinkedIn, noting they had been affected by the layoffs.

“My heart is heavy for everyone that was impacted alongside me, and I know better days are ahead for all of us as much as today doesn’t feel like it,” one affected Google recruiter wrote.

A Sexy Adddition

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In response to my fantasy about Mika contemplating my … male attributes,

… which I’m sure she does, constantly, . . .

Kinda Sorta Bob B-Like Bot suggested “Shoulda saved this one for Fantasy Fiction Friday…“

Which he invented out of thin air, and which I have now done.

She love me longtime.

Here is Fantasy Fiction Friday:

Interns

Mind you, these are under probation , . . they haven’t secured a place on the IMAO roster yet . . .

and . .

Walrus is a very discriminating judge. Almost none of these will make it to the finals.

… and one for DamnCat:

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I’ve Got It! Get Dylan Mulvaney To Be the Spokesmodel

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When even MSN ceases to be your cheerleader . . .

Ford’s EV Plan in Trouble
MSN | 09/13/2023 | Douglas A. McIntyre

Ford was supposed to be able to build 600,000 electric vehicles (EVs) this year. Then, it wasn’t. The date was pushed back to the end of 2024. Now, Ford may be unable to sell all those EVs, even if it hits that production number. Too few people want an F-150 Lightning, Ford’s electric flagship. According to Bloomberg, Ford has raised production of the hybrid F-150, a watered-down version that helps save gasoline and the environment. Jim Farley, [ a watered down version of a ] Ford CEO, says he is surprised by the demand for the hybrid version. He failed to mention that it is a sunsetting of his plan for Ford’s future and aspirations.

The hybrid F-150 is cheaper than the Lightning. Apparently, pickup drivers did not warm to its high price. The hybrid engine is ancient compared to EV engines. Cleverly, Ford did not say the lack of demand for the Lightning may be permanent.

Straight Line of the Day — Music Czar: What Else Could Progressives Investigate in Popular Music?

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Thanks to Scotty T for the idea:

Ladies and Gentlemen and Others, (see list provided on Press briefing table)
The Biden Administration is pleased to announce the creation of the “Office of Investigation of Music Czar”
For far too long the American people, indeed the World have been perplexed by such time-honoured questions as:
Who, yes, Who actually wrote the book of Love and should it be updated with pronouns and other identifiers…
Who put the Bop in the Bop She Bop… and should ”She” be updated to today’s standards…

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Well, Let’s Go Just 10% of the Way to the Moon for the Big Guy

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After Spending Billions of Dollars on SLS, NASA Admits Its Moon Rocket Is ‘Unaffordable’
Gizmodo.com | 09/08/2023 | Passant Rabie

A new report accuses the space agency of a lack of transparency regarding the cost of its SLS program.

NASA has come under heat for the increasing cost of its Space Launch System (SLS) rocket, which space agency officials have finally admitted to being unsustainable and unaffordable, a new report revealed.

Related: Government Has Announced Plans for High-Speed Railroads To Be Built To Criss-Cross the U.S.

The Government Accountability Office (GAO) released a report on Thursday that heavily criticized NASA for its lack of transparency regarding the true cost of the SLS program, which has already gone $6 billion over budget.

The SLS rocket launched on November 16, 2022, for the Artemis 1 mission, sending an uncrewed Orion spacecraft around the Moon and back. The 5.75-million-pound rocket is essential to NASA’s Moon program, with plans to launch Artemis 2 in late 2024 followed by the first crewed landing on the lunar surface as early as 2025 and another one tentatively set for 2028.

“NASA does not plan to measure production costs to monitor the affordability of its most powerful rocket, SLS,”

!

GAO’s report read. “After SLS’ first launch…NASA plans to spend billions of dollars to continue producing multiple SLS components.” Those components include core stages and RS-25 engines currently being built by Aerojet Rocketdyne. Each rocket launch requires four engines and two boosters; one RS-25 engine currently costs around $100 million to manufacture.

In 2014, GAO had recommended that NASA establish cost and schedule baselines for the Artemis program. Instead, the space agency “created a rolling 5-year estimate of production and operations costs to ensure that the costs fit within NASA’s overall budget,” GAO wrote in its report. That initial estimate, however, does not reflect the cost of the SLS program over time. As a result, ongoing production and other costs that followed the launch of Artemis 1 are not monitored.

NASA’s massive Moon rocket has been a budgeting nightmare. The projected cost of each SLS rocket has gone over budget by $144 million through Artemis 4, increasing the overall cost of a single Artemis launch to at least $4.2 billion, according to a report released in May by the office of NASA’s inspector general.

NASA officials that spoke to GAO acknowledged that at current cost levels, the SLS program is “unaffordable,” and “unsustainable and exceeds what NASA officials believe will be available for its Artemis missions.”

I’ve heard that SpaceX has launched 60+ rockets this year and they are landing the boosters each time and reusing them.

I Have Faith That IMAO Viewers Are Smart Enough To Either Leave Valuables at Home or Carry Them in Their Hand

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TSA agents are caught on surveillance camera stealing from passengers’ luggage at Miami International Airport
Daily Mail UK | September 13, 2023 | Rachel Bowman

Surveillance video caught TSA agents at Miami International Airport stealing from passengers as they went through security.

The shocking footage shows Labarrius Williams, 33, and Josue Gonzalez, 20, working together to steal money from passengers’ bags at security checkpoint E on June 29.

Video provided by the Miami-Dade County State Attorney’s office shows Williams shifting around items in a bin and then walking away while Gonzalez puts his hand on the item.

Gonzalez is then seen gripping something in his hand while removing it from the bin, then immediately dropping something in his pocket before returning to the conveyor belt.

Another clip shows Gonzalez starting to unzip a purse as the bin works its way down the belt.

He starts by opening the larger main pocket, then the smaller front pocket when he pulls out a wallet and drags it to the corner of the bin behind a larger bag.

As the bin moves along, he opens the wallet and fingers through the cash that hangs out of it. While the bin goes down the line, he continually comes back to it.

His hands are in the bin touching the bag up until it must go into the x-ray machine. Then he puts his hands into his pockets and walks back to the end of the line.

On July 6, Williams, Gonzalez and a third TSA agent Elizabeth Fuster were arrested for allegedly removing $600 from a passenger’s wallet while they were going through security.