Associated Press (AP): Biased to the Left?

September 28, 2019

Associated Press

News agencies and journalists have always been biased to one side of the political spectrum or the other. It’s nothing new. No matter how far back in time one goes, every single media outlet, magazine and newspaper has exhibited some form of bias. So it should come as no shock to anyone, that the media is still biased today. Some like to think one agency is less biased than another, and while that may be true, one must always keep an open mind and apply critical thinking skills when reading…
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Media Bias, Politics

Recession Imminent Due to Liquidity Problem?

September 19, 2019

Federal Reserve Chairman Powell

UPDATE: Since this original post, the Fed has now pumped more than $1T into the banking Repo markets and there is no end in sight. Fed Chairman Powell today indicated the US was not heading into a recession and said the economy is doing quite well. Consumer spending is up, housing starts are good. But in the same breath indicated the Fed was again cutting its lending rate by a quarter of a percentage point. Seems rather contradictory considering the Fed cuts its rate when it needs to spur the…
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Economy

RAW vs JPEG: Which Format is Better?

July 11, 2019

Many photographers don’t fully understand the differences between JPEG and RAW files. Many wonder if one better than the other, and if so, how and why? Quality-wise, there is no difference between a RAW file and a JPEG. In truth, that statement doesn’t really make sense, because a JPEG is created from the RAW data on the camera. Either your camera creates the JPEG from the RAW data, or you the photographer creates the JPEG from the RAW data using software like Adobe Lightroom or Photoshop. Post-processing is the process…
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Photography

Paraglider Caught In Thunderstorm and Survives!

January 1, 2019 0 Comments

Thunderstorms are very powerful events. They can produce grape fruit sized hail, terrifying lightning, strong winds, torrential rains and tornadoes. But another less noticed product of a thunderstorm is the updraft, unless you happen to be caught in one while flying a paraglider. That’s exactly what happened to a German woman who was flying a paraglider in Tamworth, Australia while training for the World Championship. Caught in a powerful updraft, Ewa Wisnierska found out first hand how terrifying and painful a thunderstorm can be. While training in her glider, two…
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Amazing Weather Stories

Deleted My Facebook Account for Good!

December 22, 2018

Delete Facebook

At one time I was addicted to Facebook. Pure and simple. I checked my Facebook account every 5 to 10 minutes looking for that dopamine high one gets when they see people liking their posts. I craved the interaction, the replies, the sympathy, and people agreeing with me. I loved standing on my proverbial soapbox, posting stuff on my timeline that was tantamount to speaking publicly in front to 300+ “friends”. Something I’d never, ever do in a real life public forum. Oh, how I hate public speaking. I felt…
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Ramblings

Block Windows 10 From Tracking You

November 18, 2018

There is no reason an operating system needs to phone home telemetry data in order to function properly. The sole purpose for this capability is so the operating system can report back statistics about computer use, operator habits, and other things which can then be analyzed and/or provided to other third parties to help them develop or improve their products. Unix, Linux, Solaris, OpenVMS, and a multitude of others don’t phone home, so there is no reason Windows 10 needs to either. Good news is, you can block the telemetry…
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pfSense

GPL CHAT Jabber/Google Talk Outgoing Traffic

November 17, 2018

I found a bunch of outgoing consecutive GPL CHAT Jabber/Google Talk Outgoing Traffic packets on my LAN interface in my pfSense Suricata log today and found it rather interesting. Although Suricata doesn’t seem to think it’s suspicious based on the class message it returned, I do. The IP from which the traffic originated from was my iPhone. Moreover, I don’t have Jabber or Google talk installed on it. Still yet, the destination IP address was ec2-54-159-108-26.compute-1.amazonaws.com. The only thing I was doing on the phone around that time was using…
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pfSense