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Torches and Pitchforks
The inexorable rise of property prices in the UK, especially London, due to a lack of supply of new builds, buy-to-let investments, the selling off of social housing and large numbers of new builds being bought by foreign speculators is finally causing the torches and pitchforks to come out.
In places like London, it's becoming nearly impossible for a "normal" person on an average income to live since renting even the smallest of properties (e.g. a studio flat or a room in a house share) is out of reach, Forget being a teacher, nurse, police officer or fire fighter and living there. It's just not going to happen. Social housing has mostly gone, so the poor renting privately are finding their monthly rents doubling over night and having to leave.
The good Christian Irritable Duncan Syndrome brought in cuts to housing benefit just to remind the poor, sick and disabled that they're a filthy burden on the rest of us. And they can jolly well cut back on food and heating to pay their rent.
So some "motivated" protesters have got out the torches and pitchforks and completely got it wrong.
You couldn't make it up.
What a miserable society it is that can't look after its poor, sick and disabled. Let the bleeding hearts amongst the Little People look out for them, we'll just take our money away and laugh.
Mind you, the other side have got a new leader and they're thinking about changing things.
Persecuted for Being Athiest
The BBC has an article about ex-Muslim Britons who are being persecuted for becoming atheists.
The persecution often comes from close family and friends.
Ayisha (not her real name) from Lancashire was just 14 when she began to question Islam after reading the Koran. She started rebelling over wearing the hijab, but eventually decided she wasn't a Muslim and the situation at home rapidly got worse.
"My dad threatened to kill me by getting a knife and holding it against my neck and saying: 'We might as well do it if you're going to bring this much shame to the family.'"
He used to beat her so badly that eventually she called the police and he was convicted of child cruelty. Ayisha hadn't anticipated the shock of being immediately cut off from her mother and siblings.
Many of the victims are young, vulnerable and powerless. The local authorities where the victims live are often wary of offending Muslim culture and belief which may have hindered efforts to help people in this situation.
London Cereal Café Attacked By Anti-Gentrification Protest
online fonts aka webfonts aka remote fonts
So - you open a web page, and it takes a while to load. Sometimes, a long while. You get curious about just WHAT takes so long, and start looking at the page code, fire up wireshark, and watch things. Everyone with a little savvy blocks ads, blocks trackers, streamlines the browser, tweaks under the hood settings.
One thing that I've personally not keyed on until recently, are online fonts, or web fonts. WTF? I've installed a boatload of fonts on my system. I only use a few fonts, but I've installed all kinds of fonts, to ensure that I could read stuff that just might require some outlandish font.
But, everytime I load a page, I'm DOWNLOADING a new font? WTF? Time to investigate . . .
So the author demands that if I read his content, it must use some special font, that is hosted online? Really? Oh - it's a PROPRIETARY font. Ahhh, I see. Someone is making MONEY off of this waste of bandwidth. Makes sense now! "Download ze fonts, Old Man, or we'll break the REST OF YOUR FINGERS!"
Fuck them all.
Some of us hate downloadable web fonts so here's how you can stop websites (including techpowerup) from forcing their glorious fonts down your throat.
1) Mozilla Firefox
Open about:config
Set "gfx.downloadable_fonts.enabled" to false.
2) Google Chrome
Right Click Chrome's launcher icon, click "Properties".
At the end of the launcher string add the following:
" --disable-remote-fonts" (without quotes).
You're done.
https://www.techpowerup.com/forums/threads/disabling-web-fonts-in-mozilla-firefox-and-google-chrome.184198/
Saudi prince arrested at LA mansion for alleged sex crime
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-34358380
Los Angeles police said Majed Abdulaziz al-Saud, 28, was arrested on Wednesday and released the following day after posting a $300,000 (£197,000) bond. He is scheduled to appear in court on October 19 to face a charge of "forced oral copulation". Al-Saud does not have diplomatic immunity, police said.
HR department
HR. Supposed to mean "human relations" or some such a thing. Bullshit.
I just came from a "meeting". I've never liked that broad, but I'm beginning to really DISLIKE her. The presumptuous creature has the nerve to talk down to me. She presumes to tell me how to type out a memo or letter. "Some people are offended by what you write." I called her on that - "Show me what is offensive!" She points to a couple words that I typed in caps for emphasis. WTF? Someone is OFFENDED by a word highlighted in caps? WTF? Sure, I can choose to use italics to draw attention to a word. I can choose to use bold print. Fuck that - I've been typing for about 40 - uhhh 44 years now. I didn't grow up with italics or bold on my typewriter. You could choose to use red ribbon to highlight something, but that was REALLY frowned upon. Red means a hell of a lot more that bold, or italics, or CAPITAL LETTERS. Red was reserved for very special purposes.
This is age discrimination. As well as discrimination against military veterans. USING ALL CAPS WAS ROUTINE, AND REQUIRED WHEN I TYPED OUT VARIOUS REPORTS IN THE NAVY. Not all of the report of course, but there were fields which were expected to be all caps.
This ditzy broad uses the word "inappropriate" - one of those damned SJW code words. "I don't like what you're doing, so it's tantamount to criminal conduct!"
I'm offended. I'm offended that busy body women who have no real work to do can call working men and working women into their offices, to whine and snivel about some imagined slight. And, I'm offended that these women have the AUDACITY to pretend that their way is the only way.
The broad doesn't like old bastards? Tough shit. I've been on the verge of quitting for some time now. Supid assed "human relations" may be the straw that broke the camels back. Hell, I'd rather talk to the camel . . .
Republican Debate #2
http://www.cnn.com/ (right on the front page, no Fox BS)
Or an audio stream.
Starts at 5:10 PM PT, 8:10 PM ET.
The undercard broadcast took place at 3 PM PDT, while the main card broadcast will occur at 5 PM PDT. The candidates in the main debate are Donald Trump, Ben Carson, Carly Fiorina, Jeb Bush, Scott Walker, Ted Cruz, Rand Paul, Marco Rubio, Mike Huckabee, Chris Christie, and John Kasich. The candidates in the undercard debate are Bobby Jindal, Lindsey Graham, Rick Santorum, and George Pataki. Rick Perry suspended his campaign on September 11, effectively ending his candidacy. The two-tiered CNN broadcasts will be consecutive, with the primetime debate planned to immediately follow the second-tier broadcast. The moderator is Jake Tapper of CNN, with side-by-side participation by Hugh Hewitt of Salem Radio.
Other stuff:
Taco Bell to Serve Alcohol
Pushing To Attract Millennials, Taco Bell Will Offer Beer And Wine
On Tuesday, Taco Bell announced it is launching a new concept that "redefines fast food experience." The first of these "experiences" will open in Chicago next week, and another one will follow later this month in San Francisco.
In a statement, the company says:
"Taco Bell Cantina restaurants will be the first and only Taco Bell restaurants to serve alcohol to customers who are of legal drinking age. The San Francisco restaurant will serve beer and wine only, while Wicker Park will serve, beer, wine, sangria and twisted Freezes. Cantina restaurants will also feature a new tapas-style menu of sharable appetizers — including nachos and rolled tacos — during designated hours each evening, in addition to the standard Taco Bell Menu."
These new cantinas won't have drive-throughs and will have open kitchens, according to a press release. They will also have digital menu boards, television monitors and an option for customers to use a mobile app to order and pay for their food.
[...] As USA Today reports:
"The company knows that its Millennial customers increasingly are attracted to urban areas, where real estate is pricey. Company officials think that selling a stiffer drink might pad the receipts — the typical Taco Bell receipt is in the $7 range — and in turn help make their urbanization push more doable.
" 'To put in a drive-thru you need land,' Neil Borkan, the Taco Bell franchisee who will operate the Chicago test location, told USA TODAY. 'Can you imagine buying an acre of land in a neighborhood like [Chicago's] Wicker Park? You couldn't afford it. As real estate becomes more and more expensive, this kind of concept makes more sense.'
"Taco Bell is treading carefully into booze. While quick-service rival Starbucks recently announced it would accelerate its push of its beer and wine program and has applied for liquor licenses for hundreds of stores across the USA in recent months, Taco Bell spokesman Rob Poetsch said the company could potentially open 10 locations selling hard drinks next year."
The drug lord who championed the poor
After his arrest, I wrote to Nem in prison and asked if he would speak to me. He agreed. The story that emerged was fascinating: once he reached the top, Nem was, in effect, mayor, police chief and director of the chamber of commerce for a community estimated at 100,000 residents. With the receipts from the cocaine trade, he ran a business that supported nearly 1,000 people. He also channelled some of his profits into a basic welfare state. He could do this because he paid close attention to accounting and budgetary matters.
“The food baskets and the support we gave to extracurricular school activities, such as the Thai boxing or capoeira classes, were all accounted for as part of our business expenses,” he explained. “But the burials, prescription costs or if anyone who couldn’t afford it needed gas, these were all extra payments.”
In the absence of any regular police, law was maintained by 150 armed men, most in their teens and early 20s. But while the man known locally as Mestre, or master, decided over life or death, he usually opted for the former. Under his rule, homicide rates dropped by more than two-thirds.
This was part-calculation, part-intuition. Rocinha was so profitable for the cocaine trade because it is surrounded by the three richest areas of Rio – Leblon, São Conrado and Gávea. By turning Rocinha into the safest and most attractive favela in Rio, business boomed. “He was not a man of violence,” said Detective Bárbara Lomba, who led the three-strong team that patiently investigated the Rocinha drugs operation for four years. “He had a policy of avoiding confrontation wherever possible and of not facing down the police. Rather the opposite, he was in contact with them in a corrupt relationship.”
Nem’s policy paid off. Rocinha became a fixture on the tourist route; Brazil’s biggest pop stars such as Ivete Sangalo and Claudia Leitte were happy to include the favela on their tours, boosting their popularity with Brazil’s poor. Politicians including former president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and the current incumbent, Dilma Rousseff, were keen to tour, as were members of Brazil’s national football side. Above all, the youngsters from the surrounding middle class areas went to buy coke.
Beltrame knew that he would have to “pacify” Rocinha because of its symbolic power and its location. As the World Cup and the Olympics approached the pressure grew. But by taking Nem out of the equation, Rocinha’s character has changed. The relationship between the police and residents is uneasy at best. In July 2013, a group which included the chief of Rocinha police murdered an innocent bricklayer, and the favela came close to open insurrection.
Since then the drug cartel has been edging its way back and there are sporadic shootouts with the police. Homicides remain at historic low levels but domestic violence, rape, assault and burglary have increased fourfold.
Fermi's paradox solved.
Cixin Liu explains it in his 'Dark Forest'. This has turned into the best book I've read in years - and I still have the third book in the trilogy to read.
http://www.amazon.com/Dark-Forest-Cixin-Liu-ebook/dp/B00R13OYU6/ref=sr_1_1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1440699211&sr=1-1&keywords=cixin+liu+dark+forest
![[Image]](http://media.npr.org/assets/img/2015/09/15/taco-bell-ap_custom-48825c060d56b72574435868acb114f8fc4fc2ad-s800-c85.jpeg){kind=link}