Showing posts with label Profiteering. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Profiteering. Show all posts

April 12, 2020

Reopening The Country WITHOUT Endangering The Masses

I understand the absolute need to reopen the country from this Coronavirus. 

We can't shelter in place forever and watch our economy go into the toilet and our national debt bankrupt us!

Therefore, once we have the mechanisms to control the deadly spread, we must open up offices and stores again gradually to get people working and our economy going again. 

At the same time, I am pissed by those corporate executives that actually have the chutzpah and are pushing for us to open up crowded theaters, stadiums, and other such entertainment or other venues that are NOT critical and pose a greater risk for contagion to masses of people. 

Instead of these CEOs understanding the need to hold off on this pending a vaccination or adequate disease control measures, these greedy corporate chieftain seem to care little to nothing about the health of their customers, and only about lining their fat pocketbooks with more ticket sales. 

I think it's criminal type behavior to push our government to open prematurely and irresponsibly those venues that are of greatest risk to potentially millions of people to get sick or dead in order for them to profit from it!  ;-)

Note: It's reported that COVID-19 compared to the flu in 22 fewer days infected 11x as many people and killed 60 times as many

(Credit Photo: Andy Blumenthal)
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November 22, 2019

Tuna Salad - Eating Healthy

Intermittent fasting is going, thank G-d well. 

When I broke my fast today, I had a healthy salad with tuna fish. 

Dieting and eating healthy, and feeling good about it!

All the processed food is completely addictive and 100% poison!

Broke the addiction and I don't plan to go back to the corrupt food industry fools that don't care for atom about the people, but rather just the profits. 

Fruit, vegetables fish, nuts, seeds, and tea. 

The fleecing of America by all the processed food players--it's disgusting.

I'm detoxing and I am grateful to G-d for helping me through this and showing me the way! ;-)

(Credit Photo: Andy Blumenthal)
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July 26, 2018

Pet Rock 2018

So when I saw this colored rock last evening, it made me think two things:

One, cool idea, looks nice and fun to make.

Two, it reminded me of the Pet Rocks in the 1970s that made millions (this one was hippie even though those back then weren't actually even colored).

A business guy came up with the idea to sell smooth rocks from Mexico beach and market them as pets.

Yeah, they are so lovable and easy to care for!

It was one of the great branding and marketing events of the 20th century.

Who would think people would actually spend money on a plain dumb rock that you could basically pick up off the street?

But incredibly, putting the rock in a box with holes (so the rock could breath) and sitting it on a little stack of hay with an joke of instruction book for caring for your rock, SOLD. 

And in fact, over 1,500,000 rocks were sold at a pop of $4 each.

The guy became a millionaire and got rid of a truckload of worthless rocks.

Yes, "One man's garbage is another man's treasure!"

But surely this was getting a little ridiculous.

Hey, I'll give you a nickle for the shinny painted rock in the photo here. ;-)

(Source Photo: Andy Blumenthal)
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June 19, 2018

Terrible TV

So we bought a new big screen television. 

That's exciting, right?

We brought it home from Costco. 

And we gave our prior model away to a family member. 

It was a shlep to move that $2,000 Panasonic behemoth from 2007!

By the time we got back home and connected our new LG TV, oy vey what a disappointment. 

It had this brilliant display in "test mode" that when hooked up to the cable box looked dark and worse than lackluster. 

Even when fidgeting with the settings to offset the dark screen, the gorgeous test display mode still came out looking like crap in actual tv mode. 

But the worst part was that there was a black line down the middle right of the screen. 

When we looked it up on the Internet, it was a known error. 

The instructions said to call LG and make a service appointment. 

WTF!  To heck with this sh*tty TV--it's supposed to be brand new and actually work--so it's going back to Costco where this crappy product came from. 

I dragged this widescreen TV back to the store and put it on one of their flat wide carts. 

The problem was that the wheels on one side of the cart were busted, and it kept turning into the fence, store shelves, and wall.

When the lady behind the returns desk called me for my turn, I tried to push the cart and it wouldn't move. 

Not being able to budge this thing,  I gave it shove forward and the TV went flying from upright to horizontal--SMASH!

The lady behind the returns counter goes to me sarcastically:

"So what was wrong with it BEFORE you just knocked it over???"

Well to make a long story short, I returned the lousy LG television and got a refund. 

And instead ordered a new Samsung curved TV from Amazon--hope this one works!

As for the horrible quality control of today's electronics--it's a shame that they can't seem to make them without problems--they've only been making televisions for like 100 years or so. 

In fact, we recently bought a Dell laptop and within like 5-6 weeks, the motherboard died.  

As you can see, the vendors are wringing profits from the products they are making at the customer's expense. 

There is no quality control to speak of--instead be ready to return the junk electronics to the garbage vendors that make them. ;-)

(Source Photo: Andy Blumenthal)
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March 9, 2017

Who Are The Real Animals

So if you want to know who are the real animals in this world...

It's people!

If you can stomach it, watch this graphic video of elephant taming

The elephant is caged, chained, poked, prodded, beaten, spiked in all the sensitive areas. 

It is tortured and left with festering sores and then made to do sickening slave labor. 

While animals generally kill for food, people abuse, torture and kill for profit and maniacal enjoyment. 

Sometimes, we wonder why G-d punishes the world. 

But look at how the world behaves. 

Is there no heart or soul in some people? 

G-d forgive us for our sins and evil inclinations, and have mercy, and make your people better than this, much better. ;-)

(Source Photo: Andy Blumenthal)
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November 28, 2016

Who You Gonna Trust?

We start out life as innocent children with inherent trust in those that care for us. 

It is nice to feel safe, loved, and cared for by people who dote over your every gurgle, smirk, fart, and spaghetti sauce smear on the face. 

As people grow older and have negative experiences however, they become more guarded and jaded by what they learn about other people's motives and agendas and how vulnerable and hurt they can get. 

Unfortunately, these days kids have to fear from pedophiles, parents that are addicts and wildly abusive, and teachers that let out their emotional problems on children that look up to them for guidance and education. 

As we get older, there are bullies in school and thugs on the street. 

And even in the office, there are those that abuse their positions of power and can make life miserable for the regular hard-working Joes not looking for any problems.

In relationships, spouses that cheat on one another and the resulting breakups have heart-wrenching effects on families. 

But perhaps, what is even worse than individual people that can hurt us are when the very institutions that are the bedrock of our society become corrupt and abusive of their authority and result in our loss of trust in them.

Already in 2010, trust in government was reaching new lows of 19%.

By 2014, trust in corporate America had eroded to just 36%.

Similarly, in 2016, trust in the news media fell to all time lows of 32%.

Reading about the clutching unto power of Fidel Castro's dictatorship for half a century in Cuba did not seem that far a stretch after seeing the powerful and dangerous political machine here in our own U.S.A. working to keep people in the seat of power almost at any cost to the country and the people. 

What was good for people was clearly last place to what was good for the ruling elites not just in Cuba anymore!

Similarly, the notion of a fair and balanced media went out the window with this last election, where investigative journalism became an oxymoronic term and idea. 

As for corporate America, outsourcing, shoddy goods, inflated advertising, short-term profiteering, rigged governance, and oversized pay packages to the C-suite left a handful of socially-conscious corporations stranded on a desert island of greed and raw capitalism.

Neither children nor adults are victims or sheep to be bullied or manipulated by abusers and manipulators in society. 

A free press so needed to keep corruption in check in the rest of public and private sector society has itself been infected by the bug of bias, bigotry, and personal agendas. 

Who can we trust when evil can overtake good temporarily to break bodies and souls of it's victims?

Ultimately, the people have the final say in keeping the wrongs in society from taking deep root and not letting nasty "big brothers" do the really bad things and take us down the wrong paths.

There are good people with integrity that we can trust, maybe just not everyone we'd like to. ;-)

(Source Photo: Andy Blumenthal)

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May 31, 2016

Only Our History Is Colored

Last night, my daughter and I watched the premier of the new miniseries, Roots (on the History Channel). 

The story of American Slavery like all tales of racism, oppression, terrorism, and genocide is completely appalling. 

It represents the worst of human nature whether for motives of profiteering, power, or plain unadulterated hatred. 

We watched, my youngest daughter (in college), literally in tears.

And frankly, we watched until we literally couldn't watch the suffering on the screen any more (but to be continued another evening). 

What people can do to other people...beyond words, comprehension. 

Is it people doing these things or is it a vicious animal or evil within?

Either way, humankind has a lot to be sorry for...whether for slavery or the Holocaust. 

I can't imagine what G-d must think or how we can in any rational sort of way explain these things to our children. 

The stain is marked on the souls of the aggressors, and the only thing colored is our history. ;-)

(Source Photo: Andy Blumenthal)
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April 15, 2016

Versioning Gone Wild

So software versioning is supposed to be a way to manage change control. 

However, many vendors have gone out of control with versioning. 

1) Incompatibility--It isn't backward compatible, so if you try to work with an older version file/data, you may be sh*t of out of luck getting it to work. 

2) Alphabet-Numerical Soup--We have so many versions of the same/similar thing, we can make your head spin with buyer envy. 

3) Functionally Indistinct--Version changes are so minute or insignificant that there is virtually no difference to the end-user, but you'll love it anyway. 

4) Long And Meaningless--Some versions just seem to go on and on into the weeds...like version 2.10.3.97--ah, let's compare that to the new version of the week of 2.10.3.98, and don't forget the 2.10.4 will be a completely different platform, so you better remember to order the right one. 

5) Upgrade Pathless--You want to be on the current version, well your version is so legacy and ancient, there's no (easy) upgrade path--you have to install 26 patches, hot fixes, and 9 new versions and then you'll be on the right one!

6) Maintaining Multiple Versions--You'll need to maintain multiple versions of the same product, because your data on the older version can't be migrated to the new one. Can anyone say multiple maintenance fees?

7) Out Of Support--Your older version that you spent a lot of money on is no longer current  and is now out of support--so scr*w you unless you pay us again for the next money maker version. 

If you want to kill your brand and possibly your customers' sanity, keep on going mindless version crazy. ;-)

(Source Graphic: Andy Blumenthal)
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January 26, 2016

Plastic Pigs

So you've probably heard about this mammoth island of plastic garbage in the Pacific Ocean.

It's between the West Coast and Hawaii. 

And it's called the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. 

Get this...

It's about twice the size of Texas.

Now researchers are predicting that by 2050, our oceans will hold more plastic than fish!

"More than 8 million tons of plastics end up entering our oceans each year." 

And we're dumping the equivalent of one garbage truck of plastic into the ocean every minute.  

Just 5% of plastic waste gets recycled. 

So far there is a 165 million tons of plastic trash in the ocean right now. 

The plastic pieces can survive hundreds of years. 

We are making a darn mess of this planet. 

The 5 cent surcharge for plastic bags is a joke in this respect. 

Maybe ISIS actually won't be the end of Western civilization, but plastic will be. 

Who's paying off whom to keep this plastic money wagon going to poison our planet?  ;-)

(Source Photo: Andy Blumenthal)
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December 28, 2014

Kidneys By The Pound

So this gallery in Santa Fe had a warped sense of what art is...

They had packages of styrofoam wrapped in cellophane with what looked like meat from the supermarket.

However in the packages, they had these disturbing plastic molds of human organs priced by the pound.

Pictured here is one labeled with a human kidney selling for $1,100.

They also had others hanging from the wall for human lungs and liver.

Considering there are a lot of sick people out there in needs of transplants, I did not think this "art" was in the best of taste. 

Also, with many who traffic in human organs and take advantage of those in poverty or otherwise at risk for selling on the black market, these pieces were more than a little troubling.

Perhaps, there are some who just think of human as just another type of planetary animal whose body parts are another form of meat that can be put up for sale or taken by force to make a profit.

The only thing is they are forgetting that humans have a soul and that can't be sold in the supermarket or black market except to the devil and there is no art in that. ;-)

(Source Photo: Andy Blumenthal)
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October 10, 2014

What Is The World Coming To?

This sign from a business on trendy Las Olas in Fort Lauderdale...for real.

Pay for the water you drink, the air you breath, and the doings you leave behind. 

Money makes the world go round, but what happened to love, friendship, and brotherhood. 

It only goes as far as the restroom apparently! ;-)

(Source Photo: Andy Blumenthal)
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October 9, 2014

Mickey Isn't Smiling On Everyone

Orlando, as you know, is home to Disney's amusement park, one of the biggest employers in the area--70,000 people.

That's nice you say...only Bloomberg reports that Orlando has one of the highest poverty rates in the nation @ 20%--and that's not amusing!

Even though Disney just upped their minimum salaries to $10 an hour, they have thousands on the rolls (ride operators, bus drivers, maids, etc.) earning less than $25,000 a year (and that is similar to 40% of all the jobs in Orlando), and for that even Mickey Mouse couldn't buy any cheese.

Funny though that Disney costs a family of 5 about $1,500 for a 4-day pass, and they just earned a profit for the quarter of $2.2 billion.

Maybe next time you go to the fun house at Disney, you'll think for a moment that it's really a house of horror for tens of thousands of hardworking, decent people. 

Mickey Mouse is a louse and Donald Duck is a F-unny character, indeed.  ;-)

(Source Photo: Andy Blumenthal)
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