Author: Blazingcatfur

Touchscreens, conveyor belts: McDonald’s opens first largely automated location

The first mostly non-human-run McDonald’s is open for business just outside Fort Worth, Texas.

At just one location so far, customers can drive to the golden arches and expect to be served a Big Mac or a Happy Meal by a food and beverage conveyor instead of an actual, real-life human being.

A spokesperson for McDonald’s told the Guardian that the test concept “is not fully automated”, emphasizing that the restaurant does employ a team comparable to that of a traditional store.

My local Shoppers Drug Mart is making it so inconvenient to use the only cashier they ever have on duty that people are walking out in frustration as they can’t or won’t transact their business with the automated tellers.

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by Blazingcatfur••0•Posted inThe Future

Did The FBI Violate The First Amendment When It Colluded With Twitter?

The FBI has repeatedly flagged Twitter accounts for the social media platform to review and censor over the last few years, raising questions as to whether the agency violated the First Amendment rights of Twitter users, legal experts told the Daily Caller News Foundation.

The Twitter Files, a series of revelations by several journalists based on internal Twitter communications, revealed that FBI agents colluded with Twitter executives to censor users and suppress information, while the agency paid Twitter $3.5 million to compensate them for their time processing the FBI’s requests. This partnership raises questions as to whether the FBI may have violated user’s constitutional rights, legal experts told the DCNF, with some arguing the agency’s involvement in Twitter censorship constitutes a First Amendment violation.

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by Blazingcatfur••0•Posted inFBI, Twitter

There’s No Shortage of Immigrant Workers

… Some may respond, “If Americans won’t work, let’s bring in immigrants who will.” But consider the implications of this argument. It’s well established that the decline in labor-force participation is associated with a host of undesirable outcomes: substance abuse, welfare dependency, poor mental health, crime, lack of family formation, and early death. The fiscal costs associated with all these problems are paid for by taxpayers. Furthermore, the social disorder that plagues communities where many men do not work isn’t confined to those areas. To be sure, a significant share of the millions of the less-educated Americans who have dropped out of the labor force have made poor choices in life. But they are our fellow Americans, and we have a greater responsibility for them than for prospective immigrants overseas who want to come here.

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by Blazingcatfur••0•Posted in"Mass Immigration - Follow the money", Canada, USA

‘Social cost of carbon’ rates human life around the globe

A lost life in Haiti represents a smaller cost than a lost life in Canada. In fact, a Canadian life saved is worth over 16 times as much as a Haitian life saved in the EPA’s calculus… Canada’s GDP per capita is more than 16 times that of Haiti.

There are several things that stand out about the composition of Democrats, but one trait remains the most recognized: they love to flap their jaws about how much Black lives matter, and the endless ways in which racism against the BIPOC community (Blacks, Indienous, People of Color) permeates every facet of conservative, republican, or pro-American philosophy. Yet, shocker, it’s just a massive load of malarkey.

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by Blazingcatfur••0•Posted inWTF?

Chicago and Philadelphia deadlier for young men than Afghan war front-lines

Young men in Chicago and Philadelphia’s worst neighborhoods are more likely to be shot and killed than those who fought on the bloodiest front-lines in Afghanistan and Iraq, a new study shows.

Brandon del Pozo, a former New York City cop and now Brown University scholar, says gun deaths among young men in those city’s ghettos are worse than seen by troops deployed in America’s war on terror.

Del Pozo, who started out in law enforcement patrolling streets in East Flatbush, Brooklyn, called his research an ‘urgent wake-up call’ for tackling gun crime and murder rates in the grittiest cities.

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by Blazingcatfur••0•Posted inCrime

A showtrial of populism: The pawnshop McCarthyism of the January 6 Committee is a menace to democracy.

So the ‘January 6’ Committee has spoken. It has decreed that Donald Trump was to blame for the storming of the Capitol building on 6 January 2021. He was the mastermind of a ‘multi-part conspiracy’. He whipped the 2,000-strong mob into a frenzy of insurrectionary behaviour with the aim of overturning the 2020 presidential election result and keeping himself in power. And because he was ‘engaged in an insurrection’ – an insurrection being a violent uprising against government – he should be barred from public office, the committee advises. No Trump 2024. No Trump the politician ever again.

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by Blazingcatfur••0•Posted inPopulism, USA

Zelenskyy Wows Congress but Many Ask Where the $100 Billion in Aid Went

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy addressed a joint session of Congress on Thursday and received several bipartisan standing ovations as he thanked the U.S. Congress for their generosity.

With the $45 billion of proposed spending on Ukraine in the $1.7 trillion omnibus government funding bill, the total given to Mr. Zelenkyy’s government since Russia’s unprovoked invasion will be north of $100 billion. In less than a year. With zero congressional oversight.

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by Blazingcatfur••0•Posted in"Ukraine - Russia"

Alameda’s ex-CEO tells judge she hid billions in loans to FTX execs

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Sam Bankman-Fried and other FTX executives received billions of dollars in secret loans from the crypto mogul’s Alameda Research, the hedge fund’s former chief told a judge in her guilty plea for her role in the exchange’s collapse.

Caroline Ellison, former chief executive of Alameda Research, said she agreed with Bankman-Fried to hide from FTX’s investors, lenders and customers that the hedge fund could borrow unlimited sums from the exchange, according a transcript of her Dec. 19 plea hearing that was unsealed on Friday.

“We prepared certain quarterly balance sheets that concealed the extent of Alameda’s borrowing and the billions of dollars in loans that Alameda had made to FTX executives and to related parties,” Ellison told U.S. District Judge Ronnie Abrams in Manhattan federal court, according to the transcript.

Holy Crap.

More … Chief executive of FTX sister company pleads guilty to seven offences

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by Blazingcatfur••0•Posted in"Digital Currency", Crime

Sabrina Maddeaux: Thanks to nepo baby Trudeau, Canada is now a nepo nation

Practically everybody loves babies — unless they’re nepo babies, that is. The trendy social media term blasted into full-fledged controversy after New York magazine dubbed 2022 the “year of the nepo baby.”

The term, which is short for “nepotism babies,” refers to children of celebrities who have become famous themselves. As it turns out, there’s a lot of them. When it comes to getting a job, it’s often about who you know; but in the entertainment industry, it’s really about who your parents are.

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by Blazingcatfur••0•Posted inJustin Trudeau - Pissant

Reader Fave Christmas Carols – Day 8

Welcome back! I hope you enjoy the night’s offerings. Put your faves in the comments and we’ll play them ASAP.

Thanks.

Vivaldi Four Seasons: Winter – from Norman In New York

And also … Ang Pasko ay Sumapit • Teatro Pilipino Choir

The Kinks – Father Christmas – from canminuteman

And also … Pretenders – 2000 Miles

Frank Sinatra – The Christmas Waltz – from Kiki982

And also … Who Put The Stump

And … Paul Harvey ~ A Christmas Story: The Man And The Birds

And … Alabama – Christmas In Dixie

Also … Andrea Bocelli, Céline Dion – The Prayer

Plus … The Twelve Pains Of Christmas – Twisted Christmas

Sixpence None The Richer – Angels We Have Heard On High – from PaxCan

And also … Cocteau Twins – Winter Wonderland

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by Blazingcatfur••0•Posted inChristmas

The shocking Hunter Biden twists in the Twitter Files

Former New York Post editor Emma-Jo Morris describes how Twitter suppressed her story

Two of the week’s biggest news stories are unfolding in hermetically sealed chambers.

The left half of the country, and the international press, is aghast at the criminal referrals from the January 6 Committee, while the right ignores the panel’s findings as a foregone conclusion, part of a witch hunt against Donald Trump.

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by Blazingcatfur••0•Posted in"Biden Family Sleaze"