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"Red Sparrow" Mariia Butina Accused of Being Russian Agent
The gunslinging Russian woman accused of cozying up to American officials to infiltrate the U.S. political system — at the behest of her Kremlin-linked mentor and with the help of her American boyfriend — allegedly tried to trade sex for influence.
The "Red Sparrow" scenario was unveiled Wednesday in a government memorandum that laid out the reasons why prosecutors believe Mariia Butina, 29, should remain jailed until trial.
During a detention hearing in federal court on Wednesday afternoon, Butina pleaded not guilty to being an unregistered foreign agent and was again ordered held without bail.
Herpetology's #MeToo Moment
New Grow Light in Cannada
New Grow Light Technology Being Tested in Canada
A new, broad-spectrum light that mimics sunlight more closely than others is being tested in Canada, the Edmonton Journal reports. The light is manufactured by Edmonton-based G2V Optics and was originally designed to test solar cells at the University of Alberta.
Michael Taschuk, the developer of the light, previously managed a team of researchers at the University of Alberta. The lights have been in use at Endless Sky Canna Corp in British Columbia, Canada.
Endless Sky’s CEO Travis George reports that the lights are twice as effective as other grow lights the company has used.
Beginning to wonder about Ebay
The potential for scamming is reasonably high with any online market. I've liked Ebay for years now, because it usually enables me to beat competitors prices with a nice margin.
Recently, my OBD2 scanner has gone AWOL. The thing is pretty old, and pretty basic, it just gets the codes, and leaves you to figure out what they mean. So, it's AWOL. I asked my brainy son about a good replacement. Among his recommendations was the Autel MaxiLink ML629. It's not a super brainy device, but it does a little more than just read the codes. ABS brake alarms, airbag alarms, and transmission codes, as well as some kind of database to let you know what the codes mean.
I priced the thing as high as $160, Amazon had it for $129, and Ebay gave me about five hits for $109, with several other priced higher.
I didn't buy immediately. I just sat on the information for a few days. Went back to Ebay yesterday, and found that the particular sale that I "watched" had ended. So, do a search for the same item, and I'm faced with a wall of $114 sales.
Now, that price is obviously not "bad", but it seems suspicious that less than a week ago, there were five hits for $109, but now, the lowest "buy it now" price is $114.
Is Ebay running some kind of algorithm (like Amazon is purported to do) that establishes what I might be willing to pay, then gives me that price? It just seems odd, and oddities tend to catch my attention.
Possibly, they are trying to pressure me to buy now, rather than wait a few more days? "Oh, geez, it's gone up 5 dollar in four days, what will it be in five or ten more days?"
All of that, plus, I have an email in my inbox. "Your Ebay rock star report". WTF? Common dumbass television advertising tactics? Maybe that email is punishment for blocking advertising and trackers.
Is anyone else having weird and/or creepy experiences with Ebay? Are they beginning to go downhill?
An additional bit of weirdness:
In a different browser, using a different proxy, I did another search for the same item. There is a similar wall of offers for $114, but I'm also seeing others priced as high as $210, $199, $151, and $147. I'm definitely NOT seeing precisely the same results when using different browsers, or, more accurately, when I'm more anonymous.
I feel like I'm being gamed. Maybe not as badly as Amazon does, but the feeling is still there.
NASA Training 17-Year-Old Girl to DIE ON MARS
HOME / INSPIRING
NASA Is Training This 17-Year-Old Girl to Become One of the First Humans on Mars
Better than dying on the Space Shuttle, I suppose.
ThorCon, Nvidia, 10 Billion Person Cities, Game Bars
Twitch and Other Thots
14m2s video: TWITCH VICTIMS
Polygon article: Streamer Amouranth is latest example of ‘Twitch thot’ harassment problem1
In summary (since you may not be arsed to watch a 14 minute video), (some... many?) girl streamers wear skimpy clothing and cultivate a fanbase on Twitch and other streaming platforms. People, mostly young men (or boys with the parents' credit card), shell out lots of money2 to get attention from these streamers, despite getting far less for their money than what a camgirl would show off. The streamers are often accused of violating Twitch's terms of service by "accidentally" shaking their ass, showing major cleavage, actual nudity, and other on-camera mishaps (you can look for compilations of these on YouTube if you want). However, Twitch tends to overlook these infractions (which are lucrative for Twitch since scantily-clad girl gamers drive traffic and Twitch gets a cut of the stream's ads or revenue), while punishing males more regularly for their bits of nudity and terms of service violations, sometimes including things that are done/said on entirely different platforms.
In this case, the streamer repeatedly lied on camera to portray herself as single, fueling the fevered dreams of her fans. She also revealed that she lived in Houston, TX (making doxxing her an easy task), and filmed inside of a gym (identifying it, since it was getting phone calls) and lied about it to the gym's employees and manager until she decided to leave. None of this is justification for being harassed or really so bad at all (lying to grift some horny kids and acting like an asshole in a private establishment aren't exactly crimes), but after being called out on her deception by fans and apparently harassed/"doxxed", she found a ready-made ally in the form of a lazy gaming media outlet.
1. Polygon appears to have made itself resistant to archive.is, but not archive.org.
2. Apparently, lots more money than I expected. One of Amouranth's fans donated about $10-13k. Yikes.
Why you should care: You don't have to, but it's another fascinating look at how millennials make a buck online these days.
Similar drama:
Pewdiepie vs. Twitch streamer Alinity
TanaCon (one big unmentioned detail is that the venue was intended to hold about a thousand, not the ~5,000 that tickets were sold to, so the event was doomed from the start and there are layers of lies involved)
Come to think of it, I keep on forgetting that Twitch is a subsidiary of Amazon now.
It's Finally Time...
To go really highbrow here in my journal.
Yo mama so fat that when she sits around the house, she sits around the house!
Yo mama so ugly that they need to tie a steak on to get the dog to play with her!
Yo mama so fat, she got her own zip code!
Yo mama so stank, she's her own superfund site!
Yo mama so stupid, when I told her I had to take a piss, she asked for it back!
Yo mama so ugly, she crashed Facebook's facial recognition software!
Yo mama so fat, her blood type is Ragu!
There's a good start. Please tell us more about 'Yo mama'!
ScarJo Cast as a Transgender Man, Outrage Ensues
Scarlett Johansson’s Casting as Transgender Man Draws a Backlash
Scarlett Johansson faced a storm of criticism this week after it was reported that she would play a transgender man in a movie, a year after she drew scrutiny for taking on a role that was originally Japanese.
The newly announced film, “Rub & Tug,” is based on the real-life story of Dante “Tex” Gill, who ran a string of massage parlors that were fronts for prostitution dens in the 1970s and ’80s.
The online backlash was led by transgender actors, who argued that such casting decisions take opportunities away from members of marginalized communities.
[...] The actress faced further anger online after the website Bustle published a statement from an unidentified representative for Ms. Johansson that said, “Tell them that they can be directed to Jeffrey Tambor, Jared Leto, and Felicity Huffman’s reps for comment.”
Scarlett Johansson faces firestorm amid news she will play a transgender man
Trans Actors Slam Scarlett Johansson Rub & Tug Casting
Scarlett Johansson's Defense of Her New Role as a Trans Man Is Only Fueling Critics
children at the border in my email
Guy,
Detaining and separating families at the border isn’t just horrific – for some tech companies, it’s profitable.
Microsoft is one of those companies. They sell Azure, a cloud computing service that does everything from file storage to facial recognition, to ICE and make millions – $19.4 million to be exact – off of ICE’s deportation machine.
Tell Microsoft to divest from ICE immediately and to quit profiting off of deportation-industrial complex.
When the news hit that families were being separated at the border, and children were being held alone in cages at secret ICE facilities, Microsoft was quick to walk back their role in equipping ICE with technology. But make no mistake, they touted that their Azure service was “mission critical” to ICE’s operations.1
Now Microsoft wants to distance themselves from ICE’s cruel detention policies, but that’s hard to do when they’re making millions off of Trump's inhumane immigration crisis.
If Microsoft is truly morally outraged2 by ICE’s actions, they’ll walk the walk and cancel their contract with the agency and stop profiting on deportations. Tell Microsoft to divest from ICE immediately.
Thanks for taking action,
Reuben and the team at Watchdog.net
My reply to Reuben:
You guys are deluded. Microsoft and Evil Corp are synonymous. Bill Gates worships the Almighty Dollar, and so does the corporation he founded. Like IBM before them, Microsoft would have collated data for Adolph Hitler and his Third Reich.
Besides which, I approve of detaining unwanted invaders at the border. If you insist, I suppose we can throw the kids into the same prison in which we detain the adults. Your call.
