Watching our “officials” deny the undeniable — with the head of Homeland Security saying she hadn’t seen or heard anything about snatching children from their parents while on the split screen you could see it happening — America isn’t American.
Like most countries, we have plenty of dirty laundry. Slaughters of our Native Americans which was for many long years the actual policy of the U.S. government and its armed forces. Homemade concentration camps for Japanese citizens in World War II.
Then, there was slavery, the huge, bloody war we fought to (supposedly) end it. The neverending inequality and hatred that still remains and is still growing.
In an image provided by U.S. Customs and Border Protection, immigrants taken into custody at the border sit in one of the cages at a facility in McAllen, Texas, on Sunday. (U.S. Customs and Border Protection / AP)
But what we are doing today, tearing kids away from their families and locking them in cages — especially after having fought our way through World War 2 to end such monstrous behavior — this is as evil as anything else we’ve ever done and I am ashamed to be American.
Someone else asked it this morning in a post: “So when do we start loading parents and kids on trains to those final camps?”
Because that’s what’s left. If we accept this as “Just Trump being Trump and it’s all a media lie,” then we are as bad as they are, as evil as they come.
The authorities released this image of illegal migrants inside a large cage – reporters said they saw unaccompanied children in similar conditions.
If you have a line in the sand, some kind of conscience that screams “this is the line I cannot cross,” now would be a good time to look down at your feet and stop.
I don’t know how to live in this country anymore. I’m not sure I even want to — and I was born here as was my mother and father.
If I thought that maybe I had finally gotten my online life under control, I was wrong. Again. It’s just getting worse and worse and there is no end in sight.
I just got this message.
Dear Marilyn,
As one of our registered users, we bring to your attention that on June 4, 2018, at 1pm EST we became aware of a data breach involving 92.3 million email addresses of MyHeritage users, and their hashed passwords (these are not actual passwords).
We learned about the breach when MyHeritage’s Chief Information Security Officer received a message from a security researcher that he had found a file named MyHeritage containing email addresses and hashed passwords, on a private server outside of MyHeritage. Our Information Security Team received the file from the security researcher, reviewed it, and confirmed that its contents originated from MyHeritage and included all the email addresses of users who signed up to MyHeritage up to October 26, 2017, and their hashed passwords. We made a public announcement about the breach within 8 hours of learning about it.
Your email address was one of the accounts in the data breach.
Immediately upon receipt of the file, MyHeritage’s Information Security Team analyzed the file and began an investigation to determine how its contents were obtained and to identify any potential exploitation of the MyHeritage system. We determined that the file was legitimate and included the email addresses and hashed passwords of 92,283,889 users who had signed up to MyHeritage up to and including Oct 26, 2017 which is the date of the breach. MyHeritage does not store user passwords, but rather a one-way hash of each password, in which the hash key differs for each customer. This means that anyone gaining access to the hashed passwords does not have the actual passwords.
That is more than 92 MILLION PEOPLE whose email addresses — at the least — have been breached. There is more to this information including that they are sure no one really got passwords. I’d like to believe them, but since this hack was way back last October and I’m only hearing about it NOW, I don’t know what to believe. At least they don’t store credit card numbers. I suppose I should be grateful at least for that … but do they now have my DNA results? They say not, but they could. AND my husband’s.
You want to know how we get hacked? This is it. Companies get hacked. Half the time, they don’t know they’ve been hacked until months later, after which they do everything in their power to cover it up.
Hackers don’t need to breach our personal computers. All they need is information they get from hacking the companies with whom we work. I’m beginning to wonder who has NOT been hacked. Which company I use has thus far been spared.
Has any large company been spared?
Anything that sounds too good to be true isn’t true. Anyone giving you something for free is lying. Calls from Microsoft or the make of your computer (Dell, for example, or Mac for another)?
It’s a hack.
I got a call from “Dell Customer Service” this morning. Although Dell hasn’t announced a breach, I’m guessing there has been one yet to be announced because hackers have my computers basic serial numbers– which unlike a password, are embedded in the computer. As are numbers for every computer made. That’s how we can identify where the information came from and to whence it is going.
teravivos.com
There IS no safety as far as I can tell. Don’t talk to anyone on the phone if you have no reason to expect the call. If you have not contacted them and asked for a return call and given them a code word so you know it is actually the real people calling, HANG UP. No conversation. Don’t be cute. Don’t play mind games. Hang up. Immediately.
On another — yet somehow parallel concept — Donald Trump, our erstwhile national leader, seems to think he can trust Kim Jun On to “do the right thing” vis-à-vis nuclear arms. Right.
Living on the “right coast,” the Caribbean has been our go-to tropical islands. Garry was addicted to Bimini. I didn’t go as often as he did, but I loved St. Martin and later, St. Thomas, Aruba, Antigua … and most particularly, I really loved Jamaica.
Maybe it was the coffee? By the time Garry and I were able to spend time in the Caribbean, I had pretty much given up buying souvenir tee-shirts, but on the other hand, I came back from Jamaica with four pounds of pure Blue Mountain coffee beans. It was the best coffee I ever had in my life and I still dream about it. Well, you know what I mean. Daydream. Not night dreams. My night dreams are way more complicated than coffee.
Also, there was something about that island. When we landed (by cruise ship) in Jamaica, we had already learned to not buy the pre-packaged tours from the ship. Go ashore and find a guy. Because there was always a guy who would pop you into his cab and if he liked you (we were always very likable on cruises), he introduced us to his mother, family, the places at which he really ate. The food was amazing and served in someone’s backyard on an old wooden table with folding chairs.
He showed us where to find the best coffee beans for a couple of dollars a pound, rum so strong no one could drink it — not even Garry and he could really drink! — and the beaches only local people knew about.
We spent two days on Jamaica and when we had to leave, I stood at the railing and watched Jamaica disappear around the curve of the earth. I wanted to go back and never leave.
I still want to go back. Jamaica was the island that called to me.
Owen called. He asked me if I could print a return label for him as this is his official Amazon address.
“No problem,” I said. I forgot that last week I did a completely new installation of my computer, an upgrade to the latest weirdest version of Windows 10, and bought a new router. We installed the router and once I got it set up, everything has been working fine, except for the things I haven’t gotten around to rebooting, like my mini iPad which I haven’t used at all, much less rebooted.
It’s so simple …
iPads for me are things you own and never figure out why you own one. I have a friend who has three of them and he hasn’t figured out what to do with them either.
“So why,” I asked, “Do you have three?”
“I keep updating them,” he said.
Garry actually uses his. I figured he would. It’s a lot like the Blackberry he had, the only mobile phone he loved. Instead of opening up the Big Computer, if he just wants to check email, it works great. Mine, on the other hand, has no real purpose in my scheme of things. It’s just there. In case.
I had totally forgotten about the printer. I haven’t printed anything and I don’t print often. Mostly, I print directions on how to get somewhere because I do not trust the GPS — with good reason. And return labels.
I realized I didn’t see any sign of a printer on this computer. I went into the other room and turned it on. Always a good start. But it still wasn’t there. Ran lots of software that was supposed to find it, but it didn’t. I eventually realized my ethernet connection wasn’t working because the cable wasn’t connected. You don’t need to connect it to the computer, but it does need to be plugged into the wall and the router. Or so they kept telling me.
Eureka! Installed!
Having accomplished that, I still didn’t have a printer. So I did what those of us with real strength of character do. I located the original installation DVD, hooked it up in the DVD player, and undertook the reinstallation of the printer.
I hate hooking up printers. I’m very savvy about computers and software, but printers are largely a complete mystery to me. Also, copy machines. I think it’s personal. They don’t like me and I don’t like them back.
The printer is in my old office down the hall and I was not there. It became quickly obvious that I was going to have to take the computer to the printer because it wasn’t going to work the other way. Can’t haul the printer. Too big.
Garry graciously offered to open the door so I could drag me and the computer in there. Up came the instructions and I found the itty bitty tiny print that told me: “When nothing else works, do this.”
Just ONE more thing …
I had to press one button until it blinked twice, then pull my hands away and wait for it to start blinking furiously. Then I had to press another button and wait, followed by the third button and more waiting. Do something on the computer. Wait. A paper began printing and eventually, lo and behold, the printer appeared on the screen.
Fifteen minutes later, during which time I took a few pictures since there wasn’t much else to do, the printer was almost working. Just a few settings to change … and I printed Owen’s stupid return label. Since he had just bought the SAME router, he didn’t have printing either.
So much for plug-and-play.
It was so simple. It only took me an hour or two, although almost all that time was spent trying to convince my computer to find it by itself, which it clearly was NOT going to do.
It really was simple, if you could figure out what the instructions were trying to tell you. That was the hard part — along with hauling my computer around. It weighs like two cinder blocks.
Picayune – The news that money can’t buy, has been around a long time. The oldest and probably most famous one was born and is still being raised in New Orleans. They’ve got three Pulitzer prizes and many more awards for quality writing and reporting. It’s one of those names that’s been picked up by lots of people who were or looked like John Wayne.
“Saw your wanted poster in the Picayune,” he said.
Oh no! Anything but the Picayune. Everyone reads the Picayune. Or at least they did in The Old West of Hollywood. The real Picayune, actually “The Times-Picayune” is still on the market and is often lovingly referred to as the news money can’t buy.
The Times-Picayune is an American newspaper published in New Orleans, Louisiana, since January 25, 1837. Wikipedia
Editor: Mark Lorando
Headquarters: 365 Canal Street; New Orleans, Louisiana 70130; United States
Famous, but still, not the New York Times — which, by the way, is going to be a 4-part series on Showtime. I saw the advertisement last night. We don’t get Showtime, but I figure it’ll show up on Netflix eventually. Everything else does. Or reruns, somewhere.
Mrs. Nicholson was the owner and publisher of the New Orleans Daily Picayune named after a Spanish coin called a “picayune”. She chose to name the city after her beloved newspaper. Today the paper is still published but is now called the Times-Picayune.
I’m not sure why “the Picayune” keeps buzzing around my head as something importantly Old Western. Garry says it was not the name of the paper in “Liberty Valence” or any particular movie he can think of.
The front page of The Times-Picayune of Nov. 15, 1960. (The Times-Picayune archives)
If Garry can’t name that Western, there probably wasn’t any. He is an encyclopedia of Western movie trivia, bar none. If you think you’re good, have a go at Garry and see who wins. There’s nothing he likes better than a good mental game of minor supporting character in minor westerns barely anyone can remember.
And he doesn’t look them up on Google, either. He says that’s cheating.
Somehow, for some reason, the Picayune is stuck in my head as an important Western newspaper. I’m going to have to spend some more time researching this. Does anyone have some kind of memory about this?
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Like most countries, we have plenty of dirty laundry. Slaughters of our Native Americans which was for many long years the actual policy of the U.S. government and its armed forces. Homemade concentration camps for Japanese citizens in World War II.
