What Happened at the ‘Nothingburger’ meeting in Alaska (as characterized by former U.S. Ambassador to Russia John Sullivan, a Trump appointee)
Take a look at CBS’s minute-by-minute, on-going reporting on the meeting between Trump and Putin. Copy and paste https://www.cbsnews.com/live-updates/trump-putin-meeting-alaska-ukraine/ on your browser line, or CLICK HERE. It covers everything that happened, or didn’t happen there. What a waste of jet fuel. And perhaps your time online today as well.
JL
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This Plane is Not Named After a Russian Card Game
Here’s a quick beginning lesson in Russian. Vladimin Putin’s plane was labelled with ‘RUSSIA’ spelled with letters of the Cyrillic alphabet, which is what Russians use. From left to right, the ‘P’ is pronounced like our “R,’ the ‘O’ like our ‘’U,’ the ‘C’s like two letters ‘S,’ and the final two Cyrillic letters represent our ‘I’ and ‘A.’ This might have been helpful to President Trump who doesn’t speak any foreign languages.
JL
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Hurricanes and High-Rises
Hurricane Erin won’t be bothering our followers on the East Coast, as it swerves northward. But this still is the heart of the hurricane season and all of Florida, especially, should remain alert.
There’s one big difference in hurricane preparations compared to the instructions given a couple of decades ago when Florida’s East Coast was last the target of such storms. (The West Coast has had more than its fair share since then.)
For those not living close to the ocean, one of those recommendations was to sit tight, once your home was well secured against the winds with shutters, wind-resistent windows, or plywood, and to stash away a decent supply of essentials, especially those not requiring refrigeration. The proliferation of individual generators has strengthened that recommendation. Getting into your car to flee the storm wasn’t recommended; some that did twenty years ago were stuck in monumental traffic jams on major highways leading to already filled motels and hotels.
Now, two decades later, at least for those living in the high-rise structures that weren’t around then, such evacuation might actually be a recommended course of action.
Being stuck without electricity, including inoperative elevators, on the thirtieth or fortieth floor of such buildings might be worse, especially for senior citizens, than being stuck in traffic on I-95 or the Turnpike, according to some postings I’ve seen online.
Of course, evacuation requires action while one’s automobile is still accessible in the high-rise’s garage.
If you live in a high-rise, you should be seriously considering evacuation as an alternative.
JL
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Jackspotpourri Will Never Ask You to ‘Upgrade to Paid”
Some internet sources that Jackspotpourri accesses have reduced the amount of free material they provide online by urging readers to ‘Subscribe’ or ‘Upgrade to Paid.’ This is disenheartening because it amounts to making voicing opposition to the President, for example, into something that is for sale.
Many sources, however, still provide a lot of information ‘for free.’
Among them are two blogs with which I recommend you keep in contact. You’ll still find a lot of free material on those of Boston College’s Professor Heather Cox Richardson and of University of California – San Diego’s Professor Barbara Walter.
There is a tremendous amount of information available on the internet. In addition to these two sites, the postings of Timothy Snyder, Paul Krugman, Simon Rosenberg (simonwdc@substack.com), and the Free Press (https://www.thefp.com/) are excellent sources, and there are many more that similarly give you a taste of the truth for free, if only as a teaser to get you to ‘Upgrade to Paid.’ Most of those urging you to ‘Upgrade to Paid’ already have well-paying jobs in media, at universities, or foundations and are not hesitating to increase their income at your expense.
Of course, the online encyclopedia, Wikipedia, and the independent, progressive Daily Kos, are still available without your paying anything more than whatever your access to the internet costs. Use them!
Because there are only so many minutes in an hour, so many hours in a day, and so much to access online, you should be discriminating in your use of the internet.
And of course, that’s in addition to reading a printed newspaper delivered to your door each day which I highly recommend. It may be old fashioned but it might be the best path to follow, once you accept the fact that the news content might be a day or so stale.
But I digress. Here is where you can find these two recommended sites:
https://barbarafwalter.substack.com/ (worth an occasional visit)
https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/ (worth visiting daily. Start with her free and all-encompassing August 17 posting)
While both offer more detailed paying subscriptions, much of their content is still available withot paying. Both also offer links to other postings that might appeal to some. There’s a lot out there that you can skip, but try to keep in contact with these two professors.
Five dollars monthly here, eight dollars monthly there, etc., etc. to ‘Upgrade to Paid’ add up to more than delivery at your doorstep every morning of what a real, printed, newspaper subscription costs. And that usually includes access to the publication’s online version. And if you send someone a package, crumpled newspapers can be useful in keeping the contents from rattling around in a box.
JL
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Housekeeping on Jackspotpourri
Your comments on this ‘blog’ would be appreciated. My Email address is jacklippman18@gmail.com.
Forwarding Postings: Please forward this posting to anyone you think might benefit from reading it (Friends, relatives, enemies, etc.) If you want to send someone the blog, you can just tell them to check it out by visiting https://jackspotpourri.blogspot.com or you can provide a link to that address in your email to them.
There’s another, perhaps easier, method of forwarding it though! Google Blogspot, the platform on which Jackspotpourri is prepared, makes that possible. If you click on the tiny envelope with the arrow at the bottom of every posting, you will have the opportunity to list up to ten email addresses to which that blog posting will be forwarded, along with a brief comment from you. Each will receive a link to click on that will directly connect them to the blog. Either way will work, sending them the link to https://jackspotpourri.blogspot.com , or clicking on the envelope at the bottom of this posting.
Email Alerts: If you are NOT receiving emails from me alerting you each time there is a new posting on Jackspotpourri, just send me your email address and we’ll see that you do. And if you are forwarding a posting to someone, you might suggest that they do the same, so they will be similarly alerted. You can pass those email addresses to me by email at jacklippman18@gmail.com
More on the Sources of Information on Jackspotpourri:
The sources of information used by Jackspotpourri include a delivered daily ‘paper’ newspaper (now becoming the South Florida Sun Sentinel) and what appears in my daily email.
Be aware that when I open that email, I take these steps:
1. I quickly scan the sources of the dozen or two emails I still get each day at my old email address to see from where they are being sent. Most are from vendors which I may have used years ago. Without reading 99% of them, I usually immediately delete them.
2. I then go to the email arriving at jacklippman18@gmail.com. Gmail enables ‘Promotion’ emails to be so designated and separated out. I believe their criteria are whether or not they end up asking for donations or if they are no more than advertisements. I ignore most of these ‘Promotion’ emails without reading them, deleting them. A very few, perhaps one or two a day, get moved over to the two or three dozen other emails which I will actually open.
3. Then I read my email.
Besides email, my other source of information is the Google search engine (or other search engines) where I can look up any subject I want.
Lately, these search results have been headed by a very generalized summary clearly labeled as being developed by AI (Artificial Intelligence). On occasion I might use such search results, but when I do, I will say that I am doing so. Generally, however, I try not to use such summaries in preparing Jackspotpourri.
After such ‘AI’ search results, there follows the other results of my search. Unlike the anonymous AI-generated summaries, the sources of these results are clearly indicated, giving them a greater credibility than the AI summary.
I feel that It comes down to who YOU want to be in the driver’s seat in seeking information: yourself or something else (Artificial Intelligence), the structure of which somewhere along the way had to have been created by others, with whose identity I am neither familiar nor comfortable. At least when I read a column by Timothy Snyder, for example, I know from where it comes, and to some extent, what to expect.
Caution should be exercised in using Artificial Intelligence.
JL
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