So you want to make Google a public utility? What else did you have in mind?
Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost has just filed a lawsuit seeking an interesting remedy: declare Google as a public utility. Huh. Dave Yost is a Republican. He’s making some interesting arguments in favor of such a ruling, according to a news release from his office:
“Google uses its dominance of internet search to steer Ohioans to Google’s own products — that’s discriminatory and anti-competitive,” Yost said. “When you own the railroad or the electric company or the cellphone tower, you have to treat everyone the same and give everybody access.”
Wow. Railroads, power, and cell phone towers? Really? A powerful…
There is a lot of talk about access, so very little talk about increasing the supply of doctors and health care devices.
It’s open enrollment time, and as I worked on my forms for open enrollment, I took note of the differences in costs for each health care insurance plan. Yes, I have a day job, and as I surveyed the plans offered by my employer, I found that there were only two plans offered this year. Your employer may offer more.
I see that there is a PPO insurance plan, which is traditional insurance that most of us are familiar with. With a PPO, we have in-network and out of network providers with their corresponding costs. We have the discouragement enhancing…
It’s not nice to trigger your friendly neighborhood Republican.
It seems like ages since Trump won the election in 2016. It was around that time that I began to notice a new trend. Death threats were becoming more common in elections. During the time between the election in November and the Electoral College vote in December of 2016, electors received a flood of calls and emails, urging them not to vote for Donald Trump. Politico ran a long story on the trend with the following observation:
The nation’s 538 presidential electors have been thrust into the political foreground like never before in American history. In the aftermath of a…
He has a low tolerance for frustration.
Videos of police officers abusing the people they have sworn to serve and protect are easy to find these days. Everyone has a cell phone. And every cell phone has a camera that is capable of taking very high-quality videos on the fly. It seems that some police officers don’t mind posing for a demonstration of their low frustration tolerance. You know, like this one:
If we listen to the conversation in that video, we can hear that the detainee was being very respectful and we see that he did not resist the officer. According to the officer, his…
Isn’t it strange how the Capitol Hill rioters have “agency” until they’re pleading for mercy before a judge?
Gizmodo ran the most curious article the other day, “QAnon Is, Somehow, About to Get Worse, FBI Warns”. The subheading of the article gives a hint, that “The FBI warned Congress some QAnon zealots may take things into their own hands instead of ‘continually awaiting Q’s promised actions which have not occurred.’” Huh. That would suggest a certain sense of agency.
What exactly is “agency”? That word has several meanings depending on the context, but in this particular case, I’m zeroing in on just one of them. In this context, I’m talking about our sense of personal power. …
Oh, how the distribution of income is disconnected from our production of wealth.
So I’m thinking of the minimum wage. I’m thinking of how much time it takes to make a living on the federal minimum wage. You know, those people working 2–3 jobs who don’t have time to help their kids with school. I’m also thinking about how much the minimum wage has moved over the last 40 years. Not. Very. Much.
Presently, the federal minimum wage is $7.25 an hour. Amazingly, the minimum wage for tipped workers is just $2.13 an hour, but that comes with a caveat. From the Department of Labor:
If an employee’s tips combined with the employer’s…
TV makes me sleepy, writing wakes me up.
I’m noticing a rather frustrating trend. I just don’t enjoy TV like I used to do. I watch Lucifer, which I am interested in, and I fall asleep. I know I’m late for the party, but I’m watching Harry Potter and Sorcerer’s Stone, too. HBO has all 8 movies on tap until the end of the month. I was going to watch them all. But even in the first movie, I can hardly last 20–30 minutes without dozing off.
TV puts me to sleep.
I guess TV is supposed to put me to sleep, but I just didn’t realize it…
And isn’t that a good thing?
I dabble in physics. Particle physics. I used to be a consummate reader of articles in Scientific American. I used to love to read about Quantum Chromodynamics to try to understand it. I wanted to know how it is that these particles, of which we’re composed, give us consciousness and perception. I wanted to know why matter wanted to study itself. And I wanted to know why matter can choose to be kind.
Many years ago, I can’t remember exactly where, I read something about reality that just blew my mind:
You cannot observe an experiment without affecting the outcome.
…
Joe Manchin’s opposition to killing the filibuster seems to have more to do with protecting other Democrats than bipartisanship.
Yesterday, I was scanning the headlines about the filibuster again. I know, I’m kind of obsessed about it. I’ve been piecing together a puzzle about it. I’m studying the filibuster because I want to understand why anyone would be in favor of something that was so deeply opposed and even feared, by the people who wrote the Constitution. The filibuster seems to be a ruse for something much deeper, and more onerous than the headlines suggest.
So I started an informal review of some very powerful Republicans and their comments about the filibuster. I live in Utah, so I found…
The modern video game allows us to play God, and not a very nice one at that.
The title of this article is exactly how I replied to a promoted tweet, an ad for a video game that consists of nothing but more and more efficient and effective methods of killing off zombies. Never mind that each zombie was once a human being with a life, dreams, friends, and family. This is something that I have never been attracted to, these games that allow one to pursue destruction on such a scale. Even if it is makebelieve, I think it still has an effect on one’s mind, a very negative effect.
I feel the same way about…
ScottCDunn
Husband, father, worker, philosopher, and observer. Plumbing the depths of consciousness to find the spring of happiness. Write on.
