Today is Amazon Prime Day, BTW. Some huge deals today, including up to 60% off on athletic shoes, 25-40% off on some smartphones and smartwatches, up to 40% off on SanDisk products, and other deals on Roombas, toys, and Doom, and an XBox console. Try Prime absolutely free today and get gigantic amounts whacked off the Prime Day specials. Today only, my regular Amazon link will take you directly to a Prime Deals page where you can see what they’re offering. Gigantic. Seriously. It’s like Black Friday, but in the middle of Summer.
Category: Money
Posts about being frugal, getting out of debt, staying out of debt, spending practically and splurging joyfully. This category may also contain posts about hard money and what the government is doing to all that “soft money” it creates.
Given the state of U.S. poly-ticks, I urge you not to forget the one truly great candidate. You can get your Sweet Meteor O’ Death bumper stickers here and your SMOD yard signs here. NFI on my part. Carl-Bear made and is selling these. —– Nearer to my heart, but also NFI (except in the sense that it helps The Zelman Partisans grow), are these new binoculars in the TZP store. Compact, slick, and so very useful. Limited number available. Get ’em while you can. BTW, thanks to The Amazing Jo Ann, we’ve now made it easier for people who…
“If you’re living a normal life, you have nothing to worry about.”
That quote, which appears in this Atlantic article, seems on its surface a mere variation on the old untrue truism “If you’ve got nothing to hide you’ve got nothing to fear.”
Bad, but not news.
But as the headline and theme of the linked article clearly show, data gathering and selling is now truly beginning to affect every aspect of our lives. And is doing so in ways that are used to judge us as “fit” or “unfit” to function in society — ways that permit no appeal. Often it’s done in ways that permit no knowledge of what’s being done to us. Increasingly, the definition of “normal life” is being judged by secret data and proprietary algorithms.
Last month, after Dave quit paying me to blog, you guys rose grandly to the occasion via Amazon. May was the best non-Christmas month ever. Not enough to make up for the lost income, but it definitely went a good ways in that direction. For which, many smooches. This month? Erm … not so much. I believe the word for it is “sucks.” Amazon has its natural ups and downs, so normally I don’t worry. But nothing’s been normal since that email from BHM. So I’m just asking once again. Whether you’re at a level where you’re Cookin’ With Beans…
Cops have a new machine that lets them grab money off your prepaid cards right at roadside. But it’s not about the money. Really it isn’t. Of course not! It’s about … um … erm, identity theft! Yeah, that’s what it’s really about. The cops aren’t just getting more bold and efficient about stealing from you. They’re protecting you! (H/T Fred in comments) Oopsie. Looks as if that gun “documentary” wasn’t the only one Couric and pals artfully edited to make their opponents look like dumbasses. Great news for people who love both the Web and privacy: WWW creator, Tim…
Sigh. It had to happen. One faction in the cannabis legalization movement sics the cops on another faction that it perceives as cutting into its profits. Piggery all around. “But we’re different, right?” asks Y.B. ben Avraham, on the subject of hating Jews. Well, yes, that’s almost exactly how it is being a writer. Except they forgot to add smoking three packs a day* and finding clever strategems (like counting the perforations on the acoustic tiles in the ceiling) to avoid actual, you know, work. (H/T jed in comments) Seventeen movies that bombed at the box office then went on…
I awoke a few days ago to a project list longer than any I’ve had since before JPFO got sold off to Gottlieb.
Nicki demands: stop trying to shove a false Trump-Clinton dichotomy down my throat! And Charles Murray might agree. Illegal gun marketing? Oh pleeeaase, writes Bear Bussjaeger over at TZP. Couric didn’t just go “the Full Rather.” She went way beyond Rather. Her second feeble apology doesn’t change that. Out with ya, Katie! Begone! “How America Lost its Mojo.” Its geographic and economic mobility mojo, that is. And related: the housing market horror story ain’t over yet. Hm. Too bad this gutsy seven-year-old didn’t have a firearm. OTOH, this man didn’t do too bad without one.
Jim Bovard writes in Reason on the high price of security theater. Then he went on C-Span to talk about it, too. Which takes us to Richard Rahn’s “Kill the regulatory parasite.” Oh, Katie, Katie, Katie. You went the full Rather. You should never go the full Rather. And at least he didn’t make phony-baloney excuses. A recent study says that the threshhold-based blood tests used by states to determine whether legal pot users are impaired or not aren’t based in sound science. This wild-and-crazy pro-pot-user claim comes from those mad radicals at … the American Automobile Association. AAA. John…
You don’t say! “The TSA is failing spectacularly at cybersecurity.” You don’t say! “The economy is running on monetary fumes.” You don’t say! Doctors are overscreening for cancer. You don’t say! Fed prosecutors need ethics lessons. Um … maybe. But those lines at Disneyland generally don’t kill you. If that’s all enough to drive you to drink, here’s a 5,000-year-old beer recipe. Not to mention evidence that beer may have helped kickstart civilization. Why the very poor have become poorer. While technically only a book review, this is jam-packed with interesting data and thoughts. But occasionally good news strikes. Terry…