Archive of entries posted on 16th January 2024
Her Circus, Her Monkeys
I respect her, but I would give it only to the truly destitute.
Austrian Heiress Marlene Engelhorn Is Giving Away Her $27 Million Fortune
Yahoo | 1/11/24 | Emily Burack
If you inherited $27 million dollars, what would you do? For Austrian heiress Marlene Engelhorn, 31, she’s determined to give it all away.
“I have inherited a fortune, and therefore power, without having done anything for it,” she said in a statement, per BBC. “And the state doesn’t even want taxes on it.” (In 2008, Austria got rid of its inheritance tax.)
Engelhorn is descended from Friedrich Engelhorn, a German industrialist who, in 1865, founded BASF, a chemical and pharmaceutical company. Engelhorn’s grandmother, Traudl Engelhorn-Vechiatto, was estimated to have a net worth of around $4.2 billion.
This week, Engelhorn began inviting people to take part in her initiative for the public to decide what to do with her fortune. Called the Good Council for Redistribution, Austrians can register online or by phone, with 50 people being chosen.
“If politicians don’t do their job and redistribute, then I have to redistribute my wealth myself,” she said. “Many people struggle to make ends meet with a full-time job, and pay taxes on every euro they earn from work. I see this as a failure of politics, and if politics fails, then the citizens have to deal with it themselves.”
In 2021, Engelhorn co-founded Tax Me Now, which the Washington Post describes as “a collective of wealthy people in German-speaking countries, to address extreme inequality resulting from tax policies.”
It’s unclear how much of her fortune Engelhorn will keep, though it is understood she will keep some of it.
A wise comment:
Invest the money and allow the interest to do a million in goodness every year.
Thats what I would do.
You Know That If They Stress That Everything’s Perfectly Normal, It Isn’t
US Says Fuel Delivery to Subic Made Via Proper Channels
Philippine News Agency (Philippine Govt) | Jan 11, 2024 | Joyce Ann L. RocamoraThe United States Embassy in Manila confirmed on Thursday that a fuel shipment is being transported from a US military facility in Hawaii to be stored in a “commercial storage facility” at Subic Bay.
US Embassy spokesperson Kanishka Gangopadhyay told reporters that the delivery was made through proper channels, using established logistics contracts with Philippine commercial entities.
“We can confirm that the Yosemite Trader, a commercial tanker, is currently in the vicinity of Subic Bay, Philippines in order to transfer clean fuel from the US military facility at Red Hill, Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, to a commercial storage facility at Subic Bay,” he said.
“This is one of multiple shipments of safe, clean fuel from the Red Hill facility to other locations in the Pacific,” he added.
Gangopadhyay added that this was also one of the “many regular shipments of fuel” to the Philippines, made through existing logistics contracts in the Philippines.
Please define “clean fuel,” for us peons.
(Insert image of Kevin Bacon from Animal House here: “All is well…”)
The embassy official, however, declined to comment about the future use of said fuel shipment.
“Unfortunately, I can’t speak to future use. I can say that we regularly ship fuel to Subic Bay and various other locations in the region,” he told the PNA.
The clarification came after Senator Imee Marcos called out the “39 million gallons of fuel” being shipped by US Navy from Pearl Harbor to Subic.
Marcos, who chairs the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, earlier said the “inexplicable silence” of both the Philippine and US governments about the delivery raises “suspicions about the pre-positioning of military supplies in the country amid predictions of an eventual war between China and the US over Taiwan”.
The Department of National Defense (DND) also confirmed that the fuel shipment from Pearl Harbor, Hawaii to Subic Bay in the Philippines is just a regular transaction.
“The shipment of fuel from Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, USA to a storage facility in the Subic Bay Freeport in the Philippines via the commercial tanker Yosemite Trader is part of regular commercial transactions between the US government and Philippine companies,” DND spokesperson Arsenio Andolong said in a statement Thursday.
No other details of the shipment are available.
Nothing to explain
Meanwhile, Armed Forces of the Philippines(AFP) spokesperson Col. Medel Aguilar said the military has nothing to explain regarding the issue.
“There is nothing for the AFP to explain. The fuel shipment and the process the US followed, which are all administrative in nature, did not involve the participation of the AFP,” he added.
And the very next day:
SUBIC BAY FREEPORT: A commercial tanker that was supposed to transfer 39 million gallons of fuel from a United States military facility to a commercial storage here has cancelled its application for entry, an official of the Subic Bay Metropolitan Authority (SBMA) said on Thursday (Jan 11).
Armie Llamas, officer in charge of the SBMA’s office of the deputy administrator for corporate communications, said the tanker Yosemite Trader had canceled its request for a port call, based on information coming from the agency’s seaport department.
Llamas did not say the reason for the cancellation, but the disclosure came a day after Sen. Imee Marcos issued a statement questioning the apparent lack of transparency about the shipment, particularly on the part of the Department of National Defense (DND) and the Armed Forces of the Philippines, since it involves dealings with the US military.
It was probably to fuel Al Gore’s yacht.
Armie Llamas?
Kanishka Gangopadhyay? Imee Marcos? I’ve got to say, this story has the most amusing names I’ll ever use in the Witness Protection Program! And then some!
It Pays To Enhance Your Worried Power
A Geofence Warrant Typo Cast a Location Dragnet Spanning Two Miles Over San Francisco
tech crunch | 1/11/24 | Zack Whittaker
Geofence warrants, also known as reverse location warrants, allow law enforcement agencies to seek a court order requesting data from tech companies that store vast amounts of location data on its users, like Google, to demand information on which devices were in a particular geographic area at a certain point in time, such as when and where a crime was carried out. Google revealed in 2021 that geofence warrants made up about one-quarter of all U.S. legal demands it received in the space of a few years.
…
Attorneys at the ACLU of Northern California found what they called an “alarming error” in a geofence warrant application that “resulted in a warrant stretching nearly two miles across San Francisco.” The error, likely caused by a typo, allowed the requesting law enforcement agency to capture information on anyone who entered the stretch of San Francisco erroneously marked on the search warrant.
“Many private homes were also captured in the massive sweep,” wrote Jake Snow, ACLU staff attorney, in a blog post about the findings.
It’s not known which law enforcement agency requested the nearly two-mile-long geofence warrant, or for how long the warrant was in effect. The attorneys questioned how many other geofence warrant application mistakes had slipped through and resulted in the return of vastly more data in error.
The attorneys warned that the reach of geofence warrants when surveilling in busy urban areas — San Francisco is one of the most densely populated U.S. cities — often include homes and apartment buildings, busy thoroughfares and places of worship.
The attorneys said they also found a geofence warrant that included four places of worship over a couple of streets in San Francisco’s Bret Harte neighborhood, allowing police to determine “where you were and who you were with” during the time that the warrant was in effect.
Another geofence warrant over a three-block area in downtown San Francisco captured anyone who was in the Le Méridien hotel or three nearby banks despite having no connection to the alleged criminal sought in the warrant. A review of the area by TechCrunch shows the geofence area also includes the headquarters of software giant Oracle and several busy pubs and restaurants.
“Whether you were in your hotel room or grabbing a salad at Mixt Greens on Commercial Street — with no connection at all to any criminal activity — your location information might well have been shared with the police,” ACLU’s Snow wrote.
BREAKING NEWS! Denmark: King Frederik X succeeds Queen Margrethe II
The Trill of Victory, the Acne of Defeat
ESPN Returns Emmys and Disciplines Staff After Submitting for Awards Under Fake Names
CNN via KRDO | 1-12-24 | Oliver Darcy and Liam ReillyESPN returned dozens of Emmy statues and “disciplined” employees after an investigation disclosed Thursday found that the sports network had submitted fake names to the awards organization in a bid to secure trophies for on-air personalities who had been ineligible to receive them.
Hey, Walrus: are we allowed to “discipline” staff?
The apparent fraud stretched back to 1997, ESPN said in a statement, acknowledging that members of its team “were clearly wrong” for concocting the scheme.
“Some members of our team were clearly wrong in submitting certain names that may go back to 1997 in Emmy categories where they were not eligible for recognition or statuettes,” an ESPN spokesperson said in a statement. “This was a misguided attempt to recognize on-air individuals who were important members of our production team. Once current leadership was made aware, we apologized to NATAS for violating guidelines and worked closely with them to completely overhaul our submission process to safeguard against anything like this happening again.”
IMAO statement:
“This was a Miss-guided attempt to recognize airhead individuals who were important members of our reproduction team. Once current leadership was made aware, we apologized to Miss Welch and the rest for violating guidelines and worked too closely with them to completely overhaul our submission process (if you know what we mean) to safeguard against anything like this happening or becoming public again.”
Global Warming Because Shut Up
And It Wouldn’t Be Cold It You Didn’t Drive an SUV. Eat Your Bugs!
He’s Not Only a Marshall; He’s Also a Shepherd:
Warming Climate And Cold Days Explained
Forbes | January 14, 2024 | Marshall ShepherdThe Kansas City Chiefs and Miami Dolphins played in brutally cold conditions Saturday night. The Buffalo Bills game against the Pittsburgh Steelers was postponed until at least Monday due lake effect snow. I am writing this piece on a particularly chilly Sunday morning in Georgia. Scrolling through social media on cold or snowy days, it is common to see comments like, “well so much for global warming” or “Ha, I have 10 inches of climate change in my yard.” When I see such statements, a blaring science literacy siren with accompanying flashing lights comes to mind. I have written on this topic before, but another quick refresher on warming climate and cold days is always needed.
The “Captain Obvious” point to make is that we are in the midst of winter. We will always have winter even as our climate continues to warm.
The current cold snap associated with the aforemetioned NFL game and my current discomfort is associated with extremely cold air oozing into the United States.
While not settled science yet, there are studies which suggest that climate warming is causing more Polar Vortex disruptions and that jet streams are becoming more “wavy.”
The Fifth National Climate Assessment reports, “….Arctic air, while still cold in absolute terms, is warmer than it used to be four decades ago.” Record high temperature days outpace record cold days, and the number of extreme cold days is declining.
In summary, yes we have cold days, and yes climate warming is happening too. Bundle up today.
Except they proclaimed that snow was a thing of the past.