GOOGLE: No sir, Google bought Pizza Hut last month.
CALLER: OK. I would like to order a pizza.
GOOGLE: Do you want your usual, sir?
CALLER: My usual? You know me?
GOOGLE: According to our caller ID data sheet, the last 12 times you called you ordered an extra-large pizza with three cheeses, sausage, pepperoni, mushrooms and meatballs on a thick crust.
CALLER: Super! That’s what I’ll have.
GOOGLE: May I suggest that this time you order a pizza with ricotta, arugula, sun-dried tomatoes and olives on a whole wheat gluten-free thin crust?
CALLER: What? I don’t want a vegetarian pizza!
GOOGLE: Your cholesterol is not good, sir.
CALLER: How the hell do you know that?
GOOGLE: Well, we cross-referenced your home phone number with your medical records. We have the result of your blood tests for the last 7 years.
CALLER: Okay, but I do not want your rotten vegetarian pizza! I already take medication for my cholesterol.
GOOGLE: Excuse me sir, but you have not taken your medication regularly. According to our database, you purchased only a box of 30 cholesterol tablets once at Lloyds Pharmacy, 4 months ago.
CALLER: I bought more from another Pharmacy.
GOOGLE: That doesn’t show on your credit card statement.
GOOGLE: But you did not withdraw enough cash according to your bank statement.
CALLER: I have other sources of cash.
GOOGLE: That doesn’t show on your latest tax returns unless you bought them using an undeclared income source, which is against the law!
GOOGLE: I’m sorry sir, we use such information only with the sole intention of helping you.
CALLER: Enough already! I’m sick to death of Google, Facebook, Twitter, WhatsApp and all the others. I’m going to an island without the internet, TV, where there is no phone service and no one to watch me or spy on me.
GOOGLE: I understand sir, but you need to renew your passport first. It expired 6 weeks ago…
Source: AP Photo/Los Angeles Times, Jay L. Clendenin, Pool
President Joe Biden held a phone call with Chinese President Xi Jinping Thursday afternoon as the communist country continues demands for House Speaker Nancy Pelosi not to visit Taiwan in August.
After the call, the Chinese Communist Party released a readout. It made clear Xi threatened the United States during the call with “fire.”
"Those who play with fire will only get burnt," the Chinese president told Biden during a phone call. "Hope the U.S. side can see this clearly."
China firmly opposes Taiwan independence and the interference of external forces, Xi said.
Meanwhile, Biden’s version of the call was much more tame.
“The call was a part of the Biden Administration’s efforts to maintain and deepen lines of communication between the United States and the PRC and responsibly manage our differences and work together where our interests align. The call follows the two leaders’ conversation on March 18th and a series of conversations between high-level U.S. and PRC officials,” the White House released in a statement. “The two presidents discussed a range of issues important to the bilateral relationship and other regional and global issues, and tasked their teams to continue following up on today’s conversation, in particular to address climate change and health security. On Taiwan, President Biden underscored that the United States policy has not changed and that the United States strongly opposes unilateral efforts to change the status quo or undermine peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait.”
Ultra-processed foods are filled with synthetic and industrialized food additives (including endocrine-disrupting chemicals in the packaging) and contain few (if any) natural food ingredients. Highly-processed or ultra-processed “food” items have been linked in scientific studies to numerous health concerns including weight gain, obesity, diabetes, heart disease, stroke, depression and frailty and an increased risk of early death. The general consensus among experts is that people should avoid–or greatly minimize–their consumption of ultra-processed foods and replace them with unprocessed and minimally processed foods.
Now, the results of a new study have revealed that people who eat the highest amounts of ultra-processed foods like snack food, junk food (soft drinks, chips, cookies, sausage and other processed meats, deep-fried chicken, yogurt, canned baked beans and canned tomatoes/tomato sauce/paste, ketchup, mayonnaise, packaged guacamole and hummus, packaged breads and flavored cereals, etc.) and fast food may have a higher…
Last week the migrating monarch butterfly was added to the “red list” of threatened species and categorized as “endangered” for the first time by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature. That’s two steps from extinct in the wild.
Scientists blame the monarchs’ plummeting numbers on habitat loss, climate change, and pesticide and herbicide use.
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SOLUTIONS
Here is how you can personally help the troubled monarch butterflies:
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♥ PLANT (THE RIGHT KIND!) OF MILKWEED: If everyone reading this planted one milkweed plant, it could make a huge difference in saving these beautiful (and crucial) creatures! Milkweed (Asclepias spp.) is the only plant monarch caterpillars eat, and it is where the adult butterflies lay their eggs. Without it, the species simply could not exist.
The House narrowly passed a bill to ban assault weapons on Friday, with five Democrats and two Republicans bucking their respective parties in their votes on the measure.
The legislation, dubbed the Assault Weapons Ban of 2022, passed in a 217-213 vote. One Republican did not vote.
Five Democrats opposed the bill, despite the fact that an assault weapons ban was a top priority for the party as the year inches closer to the midterm elections.
On the Republican side, leadership recommended that members of the conference vote no on the bill, according to a GOP congressional aide. That urging, however, did not stop Reps. Brian Fitzpatrick (R-Pa.) and Chris Jacobs (R-N.Y.) from supporting the legislation.
Cuellar and Golden’s votes against the measure did not come as a surprise.
Golden voted against the rule for the bill on Friday, a signal that he opposed the legislation. He has also objected to a number of firearm-related bills in the past, including a measure to nationalize red flag laws, a bipartisan gun safety bill that passed through the Senate and was signed into law and a firearm package that, among other measures, would have raised the minimum age to buy a semi-automatic weapon from 18 to 21.
Cuellar last month signaled he would not vote for the bill, saying, “I don’t believe in bans on weapons.”
“Do I believe in certain restrictions? Yes. But a ban on guns? No,” he added.
Gonzalez also voted against the rule for the assault weapons ban on Friday, a signal that he would likely object to the measure when it came to the floor for a final vote.
But even before then, the Texas Democrat expressed concerns regarding the measure.
Last month, Gonzalez said a ban on assault weapons was “definitely something that we need to be careful with.”
“I’m for responsible gun ownership, and there needs to be a balance between responsible gun ownership and just a straight-up ban,” he added.
Schrader was the third Democrat who voted against the rule on Friday, and he voiced reservations about assault weapons bans before then.
He suggested to Politico last week that the bill was on a “death wish list” for Democrats, pointing to the Republican victory in the 1994 midterm elections, after then-President Clinton signed an assault weapons ban.
“This is a bill that destroyed the Democrats in ‘94. I guess, do we really have a death wish list as Democrats?” Schrader said.
The Oregon Democrat also said he was concerned about the assault weapons ban because he felt it would undermine the bipartisan package Congress cleared and Biden signed into law last month.
“It undermines what we already did and reemphasizes to all the people in America that are not hardcore urban Democrats that our party’s out of touch,” he told the outlet.
It was not clear how Kind would vote on the assault weapons ban prior to it being brought to the floor. The congressman previously voted against two provisions in the sweeping gun package the House passed last month — one that would ban civilians from using high capacity magazines, and one that would bolster safe storage of guns in homes where minors can access the weapons.
The Hill reached out to the five Democrats for comment on their votes.
In a statement following Friday’s vote, Jacobs said that while he supports the Second Amendment and the right to self-defense, he is not in favor of “easy access to high-powered semiautomatic weapons and large capacity magazines that have time and time again resulted in mass casualty shootings.”
He referenced the mass shooting that took place in Buffalo, N.Y., in May, in which 10 Black individuals were killed at a grocery store, writing that the weapons banned in the bill “have been proven to cause an immense amount of damage quickly.”
“We have a duty to provide for the safety of all Americans. These weapons do not belong in our communities. While this bill is not perfect, I believe it will save innocent lives,” he said.
During the vote on Friday, Jacobs said House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) approached him in the speaker’s lobby to point out how close the final tally would be. Asked by The Hill if leadership was trying to convince him to change his vote, Jacobs said “it wasn’t like, heavy, heavy duty, they were just pointing out how close it was.”
Fitzpatrick told The Hill Friday night that he ultimately decided to vote for the assault weapons ban after thinking about a family from Parkland, Fla., that experienced a loss following the 2018 shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School.
If the two Republicans had voted with their party in the final vote, they may have tied the vote 215-215, preventing Democrats from getting to the 216-vote threshold they needed to pass the bill. One Republican did not vote.
Fitzpatrick told The Hill that McCarthy and House Minority Whip Steve Scalise (R-La.) did not approach him during the vote.
“They know I do my own thing,” he said. “I’ve developed that reputation.”
There are two ways to be fooled. One is to believe what isn’t true; the other is to refuse to believe what is true. —Soren Kierkegaard. "...truth is true even if nobody believes it, and falsehood is false even if everybody believes it. That is why truth does not yield to opinion, fashion, numbers, office, or sincerity--it is simply true and that is the end of it" - Os Guinness, Time for Truth, pg.39. “He that takes truth for his guide, and duty for his end, may safely trust to God’s providence to lead him aright.” - Blaise Pascal. "There is but one straight course, and that is to seek truth and pursue it steadily" – George Washington letter to Edmund Randolph — 1795. We live in a “post-truth” world. According to the dictionary, “post-truth” means, “relating to or denoting circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief.” Simply put, we now live in a culture that seems to value experience and emotion more than truth. Truth will never go away no matter how hard one might wish. Going beyond the MSM idealogical opinion/bias and their low information tabloid reality show news with a distractional superficial focus on entertainment, sensationalism, emotionalism and activist reporting – this blogs goal is to, in some small way, put a plug in the broken dam of truth and save as many as possible from the consequences—temporal and eternal. "The further a society drifts from truth, the more it will hate those who speak it." – George Orwell “There are two ways to be fooled. One is to believe what isn’t true; the other is to refuse to believe what is true.” ― Soren Kierkegaard
Following in the spirit of Britain's Queen Boudica, Queen of the Iceni. A boudica.us site. I am an opinionator, do your own research, verification. Reposts, reblogs do not neccessarily reflect our views.
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