Sonic attacks on diplomats in Cuba: lots of questions, few answers | Miami Herald

The dark arts of intelligence and diplomacy are often compared to a chess match. But a former U.S. diplomat this week turned to a less sophisticated, but perhaps more apt, pastime as a metaphor for the weird, murky confrontation going on between the United States and Cuba.

“Remember that old board game Clue?” mused a former U.S. diplomat earlier this week. “You had to solve a murder by identifying the killer, the weapon and the venue: It was Colonel Mustard, with a knife, in the ballroom.“Well, we’ve got a victim — U.S.-Cuban relations — and a venue, various houses and hotel rooms in Havana. But we haven’t got a suspect or a weapon yet. Not to make a pun, but we don’t have a clue.”

The expulsion of 15 Cuban diplomats from Washington announced on Tuesday, following a State Department decision to pull most personnel out of the American embassy in Havana, leaves diplomatic relations between the countries at half-staff.

Source: Sonic attacks on diplomats in Cuba: lots of questions, few answers | Miami Herald

The Proud Pain of Tom Petty | The New Yorker

More Tom Petty from his biographer, musician Warren Zanes.

In 1979, I was an undersized FM-generation high-school junior with a voice that wouldn’t change, a stressed single mom, and a bedroom in a rented gray two-family house in which I had to play my stereo low so I wouldn’t disturb all the people living close around me. And then my daily affront at this complete lack of agency found validation when some skinny blond dude calling his album “Damn the Torpedoes” uplifted my evenings with a simple phrase about being cut down to size on a regular basis: “Don’t do me like that.” He wasn’t celebrating humiliation—he understood the condition, which is, foremost, the inability to make the humiliation stop. There was nothing to do except to say to hell with annoying Mom and the neighbors and, in my alarmingly pitched treble that sounded like a radio veering between frequencies, to sing out that ambrosial phrase right along with Petty: “Don’t do me like that.”

Source: The Proud Pain of Tom Petty | The New Yorker

Tom Petty’s final interview: There was supposed to have been so much more – LA Times

During my three years on the USS Elliot (DD-967) I listened to a lot of music. When we were in-port San Diego I was getting introduced to alternative music through 91X. At sea, the collective CD collection of my shipmates was the soundtrack. I heard many artists I wouldn’t otherwise have heard. Nirvana, De La Soul, Big Daddy Kane. Some I hated. Others I hated but later learned to love. And then there was Tom Petty.

Of course, you couldn’t grow up as a radio listener in the South without knowing Tom Petty so I’d been a fan from way back. Full Moon Fever came out just before I went on deployment, though and it earned a special place in my preferred music rotation. I don’t even remember which one of my shipmates owned it, but we played the hell out of that CD. And I never got tired of it.

Thanks for the music, Tom. You were one hell of a rocker and a great guy.

This is not the way things were supposed to happen.

When I sat down with Petty in the outer room of the cozy but fully equipped recording studio at his home above Malibu beach, the idea was for him to reflect on the wildly successful 40th anniversary tour he and the Heartbreakers had wrapped less than 48 hours earlier at the end of three sold-out nights at the Hollywood Bowl.

It was a triumphant stand particularly rewarding to Petty, a Florida transplant who considered himself and his band mates California adoptees. He said as much from the stage each night, noting how the Heartbreakers, although composed entirely of musicians born or raised in and around Gainesville, Fla., had been born at the Village Studios in West Los Angeles.

Source: Tom Petty’s final interview: There was supposed to have been so much more – LA Times

Google Fiber not even offering TV in new rollouts

TV networks are as obsolete as rabbit ears

Google Fiber, noting America’s accelerating cord-cutting trend, today announced that it will not be offering television as part of its Louisville and San Antonio rollouts.

Think about that. A major, next-generation telecommunications provider has chosen to skip the video offerings, acknowledging that its customers just aren’t interested. Says Google:

If you’ve been reading the business news lately, you know that more and more people are moving away from traditional methods of viewing television content. Customers today want to control what, where, when, and how they get content. They want to do it their way, and we want to help them.

[…]

For our existing markets with TV as a part of their product offerings, nothing is changing — although more and more of you are choosing Internet-only options from Google Fiber. We’ve seen this over and over again in our Fiber cities.

I predicted back in 2009 (and again, and again, and again, and again, and again) that television networks and cable companies that don’t embrace Internet delivery are doomed:

Last week, I was describing to a friend who was new to Tivo how Tivo changes television. Through the magic of Tivo, MythTV, and similar DVRs, viewers have no use for TV networks anymore. We will watch (or stream) only the show they want and leave the rest. TV networks spend time assembling programming into a “channel” only to have that programming disassembled by Tivo. Eventually viewers will get wise and cut out the network middleman.

The traditional way of watching television is dead.
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Breathtaking cluelessness

I just went a few rounds with a friend of a friend on Facebook and it left me aghast. This woman was defending Trump’s Puerto Rico response all the while not knowing what she was talking about. Several times she referred to Puerto Rico as “that country” and mentioned that Trump had “lifted the sanctions” to get the aid flowing.

I couldn’t help but point out that Puerto Rico is, in fact, part of America and that the “sanctions” are actually the Jones Act, the 1920s-era protectionist law that protects the U.S. shipping industry. Her only response was ad hominem attacks which I easily deflected.

I am flabbergasted by her utter cluelessness, coupled with the rabid conviction that she was correct. This is why we can’t have nice things.

Look, it’s okay to not know everything! It takes time to learn stuff. When you’re presented with facts that reveal the gaps in your knowledge, however, you should take the time to fill those gaps. There’s a giant Internet out there and plenty of good, reputable sources that can bring you up to speed. If you don’t trust what you find on the Internet, wander into your local library and ask the nice folks behind the counter for reference materials about your topic. You’d be surprised how far that can get you.

But please try. The country depends on it.

State Department pulls out diplomats, families in wake of Cuba sonic attacks – CNNPolitics

So … who would most benefit from a breakdown in US-Cuba relations? Anyone know? Anyone?

If you said Vladimir Putin, you might be on your way to solving this mystery!

In November, following the US presidential election, American diplomats began to experience a series of strange incidents. As CNN first reported in August, diplomats were awoken late at night in their homes feeling unwell and hearing sounds that resembled insects or metal dragging across the floor.

They were unable to determine the source of the sound, but when they left the room or area they were in the incidents stopped immediately, two US government officials said.

By February, the State Department had concluded their diplomats were the targets of a campaign of harassment and they needed to raise the issue with Cuban officials.

The devices used in the incidents have never been found, two US officials said, but appeared to be a type of sonic weapon that emitted sound waves capable of inflicting physical harm.

But the physical symptoms that people exhibited varied greatly, preventing doctors consulted in the United States from reaching a conclusion about what caused the trauma, two US officials said.

US government technical experts were also baffled. Some affected diplomats had lines of sight to the street in their homes, while others had shrubbery and walls that blocked views of their homes. Some heard loud sounds when the incidents took place, while others heard nothing.

Source: State Department pulls out diplomats, families in wake of Cuba sonic attacks – CNNPolitics

Running pays off


I took my “biometric health screening” this week so I could get my 20% discount off of next year’s health insurance (a “workplace wellness” program that is, in fact, a sham) and I’m happy to say I crushed it. HDL Cholesterol up four points since last August, Triglycerides down 12 points. Total cholesterol the same.

What really surprised me were my vital signs. My blood pressure was so good the phlebotomist opted to check it again. I recorded 119/59. My resting heart rate was an astounding 42 BPM! All my life I’ve had good heart rates, sometimes dipping into the 40s when I was a healthy teenager, but I’d never seen one as low as 42 before.

All told, I would say my renewed exercise is paying off. 🙂

Workplace wellness programs are a sham.

Throughout the 1990s, federal regulations kept workplace wellness programs in check. Companies were allowed to offer modest financial incentives, but the rewards could be tied only to participation, not to outcomes. In other words, companies could offer workers cash or a discount on their insurance premiums for completing an HRA or a biometric screening, but they had to give all participants the same reward regardless of their health status.

That changed during the George W. Bush administration. In December 2006, Bush’s regulators in the departments of Labor, Treasury, and Health and Human Services—the three agencies that regulate group health plans and enforce HIPAA—finalized a new rule establishing that companies could tie financial rewards to health outcomes. Not only that, they could increase the size of the financial rewards up to 20 percent of the total cost of the health plan.

Put another way, this meant that companies could shift up to 20 percent of the total cost of premiums onto unhealthy employees. Business leaders had told administrators that they’d have “a greater opportunity to encourage healthy behaviors through programs of health promotion and disease prevention if they are allowed flexibility in designing such programs,” as Bush’s staff wrote in the rule.

Source: Workplace wellness programs are a sham.

Four college basketball assistant coaches hit with federal fraud, corruption charges – CBSSports.com

Acting US Attorney of New York, Joon H. Kim.

While the FBI’s charges of bribery and fraud are concerning, I am not at all shocked. In fact, I hope this leads to much-needed reform of college basketball – and why not all of college athletics, while we’re at it? Overlooked in this story is the fact that universities, cable TV networks (and, yes, shoe companies) are literally making billions of dollars off the labor of unpaid “student-athletes.”

College athletics is big business, undeniably. It’s all about the money now, the quaint idea of a “student-athlete” be damned. We shouldn’t be so shocked at the flow of money as we are that none of it flows to those who deserve it most: the athletes. It’s time to stop this farce once and for all.

The United States Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York announced early Tuesday that charges of fraud and corruption have been brought against four current college basketball assistant coaches — namely Arizona’s Emanuel “Book” Richardson, Auburn’s Chuck Person, Oklahoma State’s Lamont Evans and USC’s Tony Bland. Managers, financial advisers and representatives of a major sportswear company have also been charged with federal crimes in a scandal that has rocked the sport.”

The picture of college basketball painted by the charges is not a pretty one,” Joon H. Kim, the acting United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York, said at a Tuesday afternoon press conference. “Coaches at some of the nation’s top programs taking cash bribes, managers and advisers circling blue-chip prospects like coyotes, and employees of a global sportswear company funneling cash to families of high school recruits. … For the 10 charged men, the madness of college basketball went well beyond the Big Dance in March. Month after month, the defendants exploited the hoop dreams of student-athletes around the country, allegedly treating them as little more than opportunities to enrich themselves through bribery and fraud schemes.”

Source: Four college basketball assistant coaches hit with federal fraud, corruption charges – CBSSports.com

Why didn’t Equifax protect your data? Because corporations have all the power. – The Washington Post

My coworker and I were musing about the huge Equifax breach, where 143 million Americans had their personal data exposed to hackers. We wondered if Equifax would pay a price for this loss. Then we wondered who could punish Equifax.

It’s not us, we concluded. We’re not Equifax’s customers, we’re their product!

Here’s a great perspective piece in the Washington Post which discusses how lopsided the tables are towards large corporations and against the little guys like you and me.

No wonder. To be an American consumer these days is to have become numb to signing away your rights so you can buy products and services. If you want to use a smartphone, you have to agree to give your privacy to the company that makes it, and to your Internet provider, which can see every website you visit. If you want to use email, you agree that the provider can scan your messages for certain words to sell ads. And when you sign up for financial services, you give away your rights to negotiate how your money is used or how your information is protected. The people whose Social Security numbers Equifax lost had no say in how the company acquired, uses or guards their financial information.

Source: Why didn’t Equifax protect your data? Because corporations have all the power. – The Washington Post