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| See item below suggesting somethint to chew on |
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Hackers Among UsOn two occasions within the past few weeks, I have received emailed invitations to non-existent parties that were really ‘phishing’ expeditions by scammers who had hacked into the supposed party-giver’s email lists where my email address appeared. I opened neither.
If you get such an invitation, do not open it without first confirming its authenticity with a carefully phrased phone call to the person involved or someone close to them. If it smells fishy, it probably is.
The internet will never fully replace the telephone or the United States Postal Service.
JL
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A Very Serious Question – Where Will You Be?
Jackspotpourri definitely has a point of view. But it also wonders what can be done to remedy obvious problems and challenges in our culture. How long do you think Americans will just sit on their hands doing nothing? When will they decide that it is worth putting their lives on the line? That is beginning to happen in Minneapolis where the number of ICE invaders, operating far, far, beyond the purpose of that agency, 'Immigration Control and Enforcement,' actually exceeds the size of that city’s police force.
There is a limit to the toleration of domestic problems, most of which can be traced to President Trump's desire to be a dictator like his buddy Vladimir, well described in the nation’s newspapers, in TV news, and online in postings such as those of Simon Rosenberg’s ‘Hopium Chronicles,’ Barbara Walters’ ‘Here Be Dragons,’ and Heather Cox Richardson’s ‘Letters from an American,’ before there is an explosion. Check out all three!
Where will you be when it happens? And will you be part of it?
JL
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Procrastination
Don’t put off until ‘later’ what you could do ‘right now’ because ‘right now’ is probably what was yesterday’s ‘later.’
JL
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Something to Chew On
When something occurs to me, I suspect that I am not the only person who might be harboring such thoughts. They float around and are grasped by perhaps many of us independently. Here’s one to chew on.
Without listing or enumerating them, President Trump is doing some pretty awful things. All seem to be directed on consolidating the nation’s political, military, and economic power with him, his closest associates, and family.
He is not doing it all at once but incrementally, often with others acting for him, like JD Vance, Pam Bondi, Kristi Noem or Stephen Miller.
He might take a step forward but when he senses resistance, he follows it with half a step backward, just to keep his followers and likely successors in line, but his aims remain the same, the personal accumulation of power. The point is that he fully knows that what he is doing is borderline illegal, probably unconstitutional, and even criminal in nature.
Anyone behaving in that manner should know that they ultimately will be caught and punished for their actions. That is why many assassins and mass murderers take their own lives. Doing so might be unnecessary if for other reasons, they do not expect to still be alive to pay the price for what they are doing. At the President’s advanced age, that is a reasonable assumption to make. (It also might be a good argument for imposing age limits on those holding public office.)
On top of that, if his physicians have given him a more specific timetable concerning his health, that would be more in line with his not fearing having to bear accountbilty for his actions. By that unknown date, he knows that he won’t be around, so what does he have to worry about. Would anyone expecting to live for more than just another year or two behave the way President Trump does? I don’t think so. And those who will be around to succeed him are fearful of opening their mouths about what he will leave for us all.
As I said, this is something to chew on. And spit out.
JL
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Economics 001- From Craftsmen to Employees
As mankind emerged from caves and tents, there was no such thing as getting a job. No one worked for anyone else; everyone did their own thing. The hunter killed game, the weaver wove cloth, and the tinsmith made utensils. When there was more work than they could handle, they took on one or more apprentices to whom they taught their skills, and who helped them until they went out on their own, but were never considered the employees of the craftsman to whom they were apprenticed and with whom they perhaps lived.
Eventually the skills of craftsmen became divided into separate tasks, which were assigned to others, a new class of workers who were paid for their labor. Unlike apprentices, they never were involved with the finished product, but only ‘employed’ with a piece of its creation.
As tools and machinery developed, the tasks of these workers changed and with what was called the ‘industrial revolution,’ sometimes disappeared entirely.
Eventually, the vast majority of workers became such employees, paid by and dependant on the entrepreneur who hired them, initially former craftsmen themselves. Soon such entrepreneurs came to include investors whose hands never got dirty and whose only involvement was financing what became a businees.
Outside of this framework developed ‘professions’ in which those with sufficient resources, expertise and training practiced medicine, law, accounting, banking, teaching and such disciplines. Usually they did not hire employees. They did, however, if their workload demanded it but the independence of such professionals did not extend to any such employees they might hire.
As the number of employees grew, such workers recognized the strength of the roles they played and formed unions or turned to governments to protect their interests, which were centered on the nature of their ‘jobs’ and the remuneration they received. These alliances sometimes worked and sometimes failed, as they became enmeshed with politics.
Today, some employees take on the identity of ‘independent contractors,’ giving them more independence than someone who merely has a job. In doing so, they give up the security, however minimally guaranteed, that a ‘job’ would provide.
That’s where we are today.
Employment now comprises working in separate segments of businesses run by entrepreneurs, such as sales, engineering, and manufacturing, as well as in ‘services’ where no tangible products are involved. They can be as varied as were the jobs provided centuries ago when the creation of things left the hands of individual craftsmen and were passed on to employees.
JL
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Fifteenth Century Punishment Revisited
For art connisseurs, this is a full depiction of the ‘Hell” portion of Hieronymus Bosch’s ‘Garden of Earthly Delights,’ a Fifteenth Century triptique which you can visit at the Prado museum in Madrid. The version used in the previous Jackspotpourri suggesting the possible future of President Trump’s soul cut off the bottom portion.
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| The two other panels of the triptique pictured such 'delights' more favorably, if not lewdly, in a style made famous centuries later by Jeffrey Epstein |
JL
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Housekeeping on Jackspotpourri
Your comments on this ‘blog’ would be appreciated. My Email address is jacklippman18@gmail.com.
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More on the Sources of Information on Jackspotpourri: The sources of information used by Jackspotpourri include a delivered local daily ‘paper’ newspaper (now becoming the South Florida Sun Sentinel) and what appears in my daily email; that includes the views of many contributors. Be aware that when I open that email, I first quickly glance at and screen out those sent to my very old former email address and those considered ‘promotional’ by Gmail’s system as no more than advertisements or requests for donations.
Besides these sources, I also utilize the Google search engine 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 any 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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