SoylentNews

For a while now there's been a Truly Righteous Donut Shop just one block from my home. "Righteous" in that they serve espresso drinks and ice cream as well, and have free WiFi.

But I'm their _only_ regular.

I'd go every morning but I've been busted because I've had no clients for several months. But whenever I sing on the street I make a point of spending some of my tips there, usually a medium coffee but sometimes a scoop of ice cream with a shot of espresso poured over it - try that yourself, it's Truly Righteous as well.

They've had quite a lot of trouble finding enough employees. Their location behind a large bus shelter makes them difficult to see from the street, and their sign does not light up at night. They sadly told me they'd be closing soon. Their saving grace is that their other location sells donuts like hotcakes.

I'm friends with most of the people who work there. Most weekends I'll take the bus to that other location, when Spring comes I'll ride my bike.

One Monday I clued in to that I have a clear path to earning more money by singing on the street than by contract programming. That's not at all because I'm such a bad coder but because I've gotten to be a Truly Righteous singer - my best song is Somewhere Over The Rainbow followed closely by The Start Spangled Banner.

All but a very few of the clients I've ever signed have taken at least a month to close, quite commonly three months. I have not the first clue as to how to estimate software cost and time, so throughout this whole time I've commonly underbid jobs.

What's the very most Righteous about busking is that I get paid on the spot.

The gating factors to my singing full-time are that a congenital deformity in my hips leads it to being painful to stand in one place for an extended period of time, however I'm hopeful that having a Podiatrist make me a custom pair of Shoe Orthotics would fix that - my insurance will cover it if I'm referred by my Primary Care Physician.

Also an obstacle is my small set list. I don't sing it repeatedly at any one venue so as to avoid driving my neighbors bananas while they're at their places of employment in Downtown Portland. I have a really, really hard time with memorizing new lyrics; the only way I can do so is to read from printed lyrics that I hold in my hand as I sing. Strangely no one objects to this aside from one Useless Bint who pointed out that if I can afford an iPad to read lyrics from, then surely I don't really need my tips.

Strangely she would not have objected to my $1,500 Fatar MIDI Controller - no sound, I use an Emu sound module for that - nor my $250 Busker's Roland Busker's Amp, so-called because it can run off batteries.

But I don't want to catch crap like that so always I read from hardcopies. But that leads to my plan to license in-copyright song lyrics and sheet music - ORLY? RLY! - then sell songbooks as I sing.

Finally, there remain some serious problems with my voice, most serious that that singing high notes often make me cough uncontrollably. But I've had enough professional Voice Lessons that I know how to fix that problem all on my own:

Sing Vocal Exercises accompanied by my keyboard, mostly successively higher scales - I can play all twelve Western music Major Scales as well as all three variations of the Minor Scales with both hands in parallel motion, up and down.

Mick Jagger is well into his eighties, even _he_ still singles scales every single day. I'll go do so right now.

A second woman has come forward claiming that a Bladen County, N.C., electioneer paid her to collect absentee ballots for last month's midterm elections.

Cheryl Kinlaw told WSOCTV, a local news station in Charlotte, N.C., that Leslie McCrae Dowless Jr. paid her $100 to collect ballots in their district, adding that Dowless “has been doing it for years."

Kinlaw said that she never mailed the ballots she collected and that she instead handed them over to Dowless. She said she was unaware that what she was doing was illegal.

Dowless has been named twice in sworn affidavits as someone who worked for Republican candidate Mark Harris's campaign as an independent contractor and has been at the center of an investigation into the results of the election in North Carolina's 9th District.

In November, Democrat Dan McCready conceded to Harris in their House race when he was down by approximately 700 votes.

But the elections board decided not to certify the results, citing “claims of irregularities and fraudulent activities related to absentee by-mail voting.”

WSOCTV reported that it has discovered what appears to be a targeted effort to illegally pick up ballots in Bladen County.

Second woman says she was paid to collect absentee ballots in North Carolina House race

UPDATE:

Over a thousand absentee ballots possibly destroyed in controversial North Carolina House race: report

Politically connected sex offender Jeffrey Epstein settles suit, averting victim testimony

A last-minute settlement has been reached in Florida in a long-running lawsuit involving a politically connected financier accused of sexually abusing dozens of teenage girls.

The deal came Tuesday just before jury selection was to begin, and for now, it means none of the victims of Jeffrey Epstein will be able to testify.

Article text replaced:

A last-minute settlement was reached Tuesday in a long-running Florida lawsuit involving a politically connected financier accused of sexually abusing dozens of teenage girls, clearing the way for the victims’ lawyers to try to unravel a once-secret agreement that prevented federal criminal prosecution of the financier.

[...] Epstein could have faced a possible life sentence if federal prosecutors had pursued a draft 57-page indictment that was never filed. Now, Scarola and Edwards say that possibility still exists, and the victims — some of whom were only 13 or 14 when they were molested — may yet get their day in federal court amid a national #metoo movement that seeks to hold sexual harassers and abusers to account.

[...] The settlement reached Tuesday involved a lawsuit Epstein filed against Edwards almost a decade ago. Edwards filed a counterclaim, contending that Epstein sued him maliciously, trying to harm Edwards’ reputation and derail his work with Epstein’s own abuse victims.

Jeffrey Epstein apology deprives accusers of day in court

Until his disgrace, Epstein rubbed shoulders with the likes of former President Bill Clinton, Donald Trump and Prince Andrew.

The money manager - the subject of a bombshell Miami Herald investigation last week - was accused of trafficking some 40 teenage girls.

Epstein eventually agreed a plea deal widely seen as extraordinarily lenient. His accusers never got the chance to testify.

The prosecutor criticised for letting Epstein off the hook was Alexander Acosta, who is now labour secretary in the Trump administration.

Lawmakers call for investigation into Labor Secretary Acosta for sex offender plea deal

The lawmakers, which include 10 representatives from Florida, are asking the Justice Department's Office of the Inspector General to investigate the "circumstances" surrounding the nonprosecution agreement Acosta entered into with Jeffrey Epstein, a wealthy Florida investor who was convicted on two counts of prostitution in 2007.

A new Miami Herald investigation provides details into the deal Acosta and Epstein struck after Epstein was accused of sexually abusing dozens of young girls, many of whom were minors. Epstein was facing a life sentence in federal prison but only served 13 months in county jail as a result of the plea deal with Acosta.

Don't worry - I won't.

I won't tell a human soul other than those in a position to fix it, however it's a systemic weakness, and cannot be fixed by issuing patches. This problem won't get fixed until the IETF issues some future RFCs - more than one of them - and even then, not until those new standards are _widely_ implemented.

I've never mentioned this in a public way - this is the very _first_ time I've done so - and I've only told one other person that I know how, but not how it would be done.

If you're in a position to implement new RFCs at your company, or in your contributions to a Free Software or Open Source codebase that you are a _commiter_ to, please fetch my OpenPGP key from a keyserver, if your key isn't already there, please submit it then _email_ your key fingerprint - I think that's 16 digits of hex or so - then I'll add it to my keyring.

$ gpg --keyserver pgp.mit.edu --list-keys 69297A03F84E2022
pub rsa4096 2018-11-18 [SC] [expires: 2023-11-17]
            87741D160E80D4F860A192FE69297A03F84E2022
uid [ultimate] Michael David Crawford
sub rsa4096 2018-11-18 [E] [expires: 2023-11-17]

Note that I do not yet have a key for mike@soggywizards.com.

$ gpg --keyserver pgp.mit.edu --receive-key 69297A03F84E2022

Please do _not_ sign my key - nor anyone else's - unless I show your my _passport_ in your direct presence. That my technical articles are so popular led a few complete strangers who I'd never met to sign my old key. The key I've got now is _only_ self-signed.

Please keep it that way until we meet for coffee. But not a beer; I only get drunk when a close friend has been unlucky in love. Then we both Pray To The Porcelain God.

I must be purposefully oblique about the details I provide until I can feel certain not just that those who I share this with will keep a lid on it but also until I've found enough RFC-implementors that once I do provide the details, they'll be able to apply the fixes expeditiously.

It happens that I know some primary developers of some stacks. I also know some leading security experts. I'll explain this to a few of them first. I'm on good terms with some vendors' security people, I'll explain it to them as well.

By mid-afternoon Tuesday of this last week I was completely convinced that my only hope was to go on Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI).

However, starting early Wednesday morning I wrote a few Walls Of Text. While at first I made lots of unconscious word substitutions, eventually those cleared up.

A couple hours I recorded myself reading out loud the last section of Living with Schizoaffective Disorder. I repeatedly substituted just one word and mispronounced a few others. Later this morning I'll record myself reading the whole thing, each section in a separate file then will compare my first attempt at that last section with my second.

Whether I qualify for SSDI and how much I would get both depend quite a lot on when my disability commenced. I will argue that it was in May 2010, and could come up with documentation for that in the form of shrink and mental hospital records.

To apply, one needs to have been employed a certain minimum number of calendar quarters for the ten years preceding the onset of one's disability. One's payout is based on the average over those ten years.

I earned oodles of money from 2000 through 2008, so I'd be set for life if I can demonstrated that my onset was really in 2010. I have some reason to believe that in late May of that year I left my witch doctor a voice mail in the form of Word Salad, an exceedingly rare symptom of Psychosis. His receptionist replied also with a voice mail; clearly she was unable to understand what I said, but recommended that I admit myself, which I actually did.

But the Social Security Administration will argue that it would have been on the day I applied - Wednesday.

To be approved for Disability at all depends on the report from a doctor that the SSA will send me to (and pay for themselves). Whether that doctor supports my claim will depend on whether my Broca's Aphasia - also called Expressive Aphasia - is giving me trouble that particular day.

Navy Admiral Scott Stearney Is Found Dead in Bahrain Home

The admiral overseeing American naval operations in the Middle East and Southwest Asia was found dead in Bahrain on Saturday, the Navy said.

[...] Admiral Stearney, 58, took charge in May of the Navy’s Fifth Fleet in Bahrain, as well as a broader naval coalition there that includes more than 20,000 United States and allied maritime forces.

[...] The American-led naval forces play an important role in safeguarding such vital regional waterways as the Persian Gulf, the Strait of Hormuz and the Red Sea. In recent years, the naval forces have confronted threats including marauding pirates, harassing Iranian revolutionary guard attack boats, weapons smugglers, and Iranian-aligned Houthi rebels in Yemen firing missiles at commercial ships.

Senior U.S. admiral found dead in Bahrain, no foul play suspected

Top Navy admiral was found dead in 'apparent suicide'

Vice Adm. Scott Stearney, the Navy’s top officer overseeing forces in the Middle East, died Saturday in what defense officials now call an “apparent suicide," CBS News reports.

Pinging just about anything, for me, just about always has no less then ten percent echo request timeouts. For the most part it's quite a lot more, like twenty five percent. Exceedingly rare is that I sometimes get as low as eight percent timeouts.

Now, this is at home, using my iOS 10.0.1 iPhone 7's Personal HotSpot via WiFi from my macOS Sierra 10.12.6 on my Mid 2015 MacBook Pro. It's reasonable to expect there'd be some lossage but I have by now convinced myself that it's not actually my phone's nor my box' fault.

(Note that GeoLocating my IP puts me in Seattle, so every fucking day I get all the local Seattle traffic reports, city council coverage, the occasional Crime Of The Century taking place in Redmond &c.)

There's a data center just upstairs from NedSpace so we get very, very good WiFi there but even so there are more lost packets than I regard as reasonable to expect.

Surely There Is Some Reason?

No aphasia in my writing; I'm still at home so I haven't spoken yet. It doesn't work to detect spoken Aphasia unless I'm addressing a specific person.

That I was quite definitely Manic starting early Monday morning led me to take 15 mg of Zyprexa (olanzapine) Monday night.

I worked overnight Tuesday with the plan to sleep starting mid afternoon but both types of aphasia were so severe Tuesday that I at first planned to go to the Urgent Care Clinic but upon realizing I had been experiencing quite severe short term memory loss that I called my case manager Michelle to ask that she drive me to the Emergency Room instead.

As I was riding home on the bus I was completely overcome with grief and desperately struggling to avoid screaming in agony. I briefly entertained the idea of going back into carpentry as it always brought me great serenity, but I quickly realized that were I to do so there was no doubt in my mind I would slice my thumb off with my circular saw.

Less than one minute after the Triage Nurse drew blood from me I forgot that she had done so, accidentally tore my bandage off then found myself puzzling as to why I was bleeding all over the floor.

That I was repeatedly repeating myself led the ER staff to expedite my treatment: less than twenty minutes after I checked in with their receptionist I was ginven a Cerebral CT Scan - they're not called CAT Scans anymore - then a paper EKG, assigned an Exam Room immediately after that, hooked up to a video EKG, automated blood pressure cuff, blood oxygen monitor then given a Urine Test.

But you looked like a Cyborg with all those wires! You quite reasonably protest, then I adeptly deflect your assertion by requesting that you sorry lot do an image search for "Urinal Jug".

VERY surprising is that I never once felt thirsty despite that I was using my trusted friend the Urinal Jug just like I was a race horse.

That just _never_ happens. Not for twenty-four years due to Psychogenic Polydipsia: "Thirst Of The Mind". It is uncommon and poorly understood but is speculated to be a side effect of Antipsychotic Medication. I don't feel thirsty now either.

I have more to say but want to chill and get ready for work so I will continue in a reply.

But I will say that I still experience mike Aphasia in my writing.

In more Trump corruption news:

President Trump’s former personal attorney Michael Cohen pleaded guilty Thursday in New York to lying to Congress about a Moscow real estate project that Trump and his company pursued at the same time he was running for president.

In a nine-page filing, prosecutors laid out a litany of lies that Cohen admitted he told to congressional lawmakers about the Moscow project — an attempt, Cohen said, to minimize links between the proposed development and Trump as his presidential bid was well underway.

As part of Cohen’s plea, he admitted to falsely claiming that efforts to build a Trump-branded tower in Moscow ended in January 2016, when in fact discussions continued through June of that year, the filing said. Among the people Cohen briefed on the status of the project was Trump himself, on more than three occasions, according to the document.

Trump has repeatedly said that he had no business dealings in Russia, tweeting in July 2016, “For the record, I have ZERO investments in Russia,” and telling reporters in January 2017 that he had no deals there because he had “stayed away.”

Michael Cohen, Trump’s former lawyer, pleads guilty to lying to Congress about Moscow project

NASA Will Announce Its 1st Commercial Partners for the Return to the Moon Thursday

The selected companies will be revealed Thursday (Nov. 29) during a news conference held at NASA's headquarters in Washington, D.C. NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine will lead the news conference. The event will begin at 2 p.m. EST (1900 GMT); you can watch it live on Space.com, courtesy of NASA TV, or directly at the agency's website.

I'll do a sub on it later. Check out the live news conference if you can.

‘Cowboy Bebop’ Live-Action Series Lands at Netflix

The series, which hails from Tomorrow Studios, has been in the works since last year. Netflix has ordered 10 episodes.

Shinichiro Watanabe, director of the original anime, will serve as a consultant on the project. Christopher Yost, who previously penned “Thor: The Dark World” and “Thor: Ragnarok”, will write the first episode and executive produce. Andre Nemec, Josh Appelbaum, Jeff Pinkner, and Scott Rosenberg of Midnight Radio will serve as executive producers. Yasuo Miyakawa, Masayuki Ozaki, and Shin Sasaki of Sunrise Inc.– the studio behind the original series–will also executive produce along with Marty Adelstein and Becky Clements of Tomorrow Studios, Tetsu Fujimura, and Matthew Weinberg. The series is a co-production between Netflix and Tomorrow Studios, with Netflix handling physical production.

The track record for adaptations of anime is not great. Another classic about to be sullied by Netflix?

On a side note, Variety.com has three separate posts about Finland offering incentives to film and TV productions. I guess Variety was offered an incentive, too.

Nubia's latest gaming phone comes with up to 10GB of RAM

Nubia Red Magic Mars announced: Snapdragon 845, 10GB RAM, and shoulder triggers

Not sure if I want to do another submission about a 10 GB of RAM "gaming smartphone". Although it could be amusing.