Check It Out

Links to cool places or things.

There are 1,530 posts filed in Check It Out (this is page 2 of 153).

Even if you can’t trust the data, these 13 warning signs will tell you the economy is in trouble | Fortune

Earlier this month, the Bureau of Labor Statistics job report was released, showing an anemic job market. President PoopyPants, unhappy with numbers deemed by nearly everyone to be accurate, of course pitched a fit and fired the head of BLS.

This won’t fix the problem, obviously, and now no one can trust any numbers anywhere, which breeds uncertainty which breeds caution which grinds the economy to a halt. Now I’m really wondering just how bad a cliff we’re now hurtling torwards which no one apparently in the driver’s seat. My hunch is it may be bad with a capital B.

For decades, statistics that came directly from the U.S. government, especially from agencies like the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), have long been the gold standard for measuring the health of the American economy. But this trust has been shaken by recent events, including substantial downward revisions to jobs data, bruising political accusations, and the unceremonious dismissal of Erika McEntarfer, the BLS’s top official, at the beginning of the month. The resulting uncertainty has left many Americans asking: If official government data can’t be trusted, how can you know if the economy is struggling?

Source: Even if you can’t trust the data, these 13 warning signs will tell you the economy is in trouble | Fortune

Chinese Destroyer Rips Bow Off Chinese Coast Guard Cutter During Intense Harassing Maneuvers

I feel sorry for the Chinese sailors on the forecastle who were apparently injured or killed. That said, the Chinese have been playing a dangerous game and lost. Their riskiness was bound to backfire on them.

For the past several years, Chinese Navy and Coast Guard ships have been harassing Philippine ships in the disputed waters of Scarborough Shoal, a hotly contested grouping of islets and reefs that lie in the northeastern end of the South China Sea. On Monday, these aggressive actions caught up with Beijing when one of its Navy guided missile destroyers collided with one of its Coast Guard cutters, likely rendering the cutter at least temporarily unseaworthy.

The badly damaged vessel had been chasing the Philippine Coast Guard (PCG) cutter BRP Suluan on a resupply mission in the shoal at the time. The collision came during a period of particularly heightened geopolitical friction between China and the Philippines, primarily over Beijing’s widely rejected claims to virtually all of the South China Sea.

Source: Chinese Destroyer Rips Bow Off Chinese Coast Guard Cutter During Intense Harassing Maneuvers

Can North Carolina Bring Back Passenger Rail?

On the station platform in Selma, a dozen passengers line up to board the 1:11 p.m. Palmetto, the daily northbound train that runs from Savannah, Georgia, to New York City. As it whistles into the station, passengers gather at the entrances for the coach and business class cars. The stop is quick–passengers unload, and new riders file on board, heading off to graduations or vacations on this rainy June day.

It seems almost like the old days, when railways connected many more cities across the country. Those days could be coming back in North Carolina as the Federal Railroad Administration evaluates new routes in the region, including high-speed rail between Richmond, Virginia, and Raleigh, and lines connecting the eastern and western ends of the state. It’s part of a national effort looking at potential routes on 69 corridors in 44 states.

Source: Can North Carolina Bring Back Passenger Rail?

VIDEO: Chinese Warship, Cutter Collide in South China Sea – USNI News

When my battle group transited the South China Sea back in the early 1990s, the only Chinese reaction was a surveillance flight from two Chinese YAK-derivative aircraft. The Chinese military has become more foolish and aggressive since then and mistakes like this one are bound to not be the last.

A Chinese cutter and guided-missile destroyer collided with each other in the South China Sea on Monday during a botched blockade attempt of Philippine Coast Guard vessels ten nautical miles off Scarborough Shoal in one of the most severe incidents among Chinese forces to date.

Just before the incident, Philippine Coast Guard patrol vessels responded to reports of harassment and “hazardous maneuvers” against Philippine fishing vessels around the contested maritime feature, according to a statement from Philippine Coast Guard spokesperson Commodore Jay Tarriela. BRP Teresa Magbanua (MRRV-9701) and BRP Suluan (MRRV-4406) escorted fishing carrier MV Pamamalakaya and 35 local fishing vessels in support of Manila’s Kadiwa Operation, a Philippine government-led initiative designed to support and empower fishing communities in the country’s western exclusive economic zone.

Chinese forces failed to water cannon Suluan after Philippine sailors maneuvered away, according to the press release. China Coast Guard cutter 3104, one of several former People’s Liberation Army Navy 056-class corvettes transferred to China’s maritime law enforcement agency, proceeded to chase the Philippine vessel alongside the PLAN 052D-class guided-missile destroyer Guilin (164) in what Tarriela described as a “risky” maneuver.

Source: VIDEO: Chinese Warship, Cutter Collide in South China Sea – USNI News

What happens if Trump starts ignoring court rulings? We break it down | KUNC

In less than a month in office, President Trump has signed dozens of executive orders that are now facing pushback in the courts.Many are wondering: What happens if he simply ignores them?Law professors who spoke to NPR saw warning signs of a constitutional crisis based on a recent court order and comments from the vice president over the weekend.

Source: What happens if Trump starts ignoring court rulings? We break it down | KUNC

The Wiretap: Kamala Harris’ Campaign Staff Suspected iPhones Had Been Hacked. Apple Declined To Give Them The Help They Wanted.

In late October, a week before the presidential election, Kamala Harris’ cybersecurity team called Apple looking for help. A spyware detection tool had flagged anomalies on two iPhones belonging to senior members of the vice president’s team, and staff were worried the devices had been hacked.

The Harris team’s ask was a simple one, sources familiar with the incident told Forbes. It wanted Apple to extract a “raw image” copy of the operating system from one of the devices to better assess what had happened to it.

Though the phone’s owner had consented to its examination, Apple declined to provide the image, sources said. The company did offer to provide iCloud backup information and some telemetry data linked to the device, but neither were of interest to the Harris campaign, which did not press the issue over fears of the issue becoming politicized. The phone continues to be investigated by iVerify, the company whose spyware detection tool first flagged the issues. Both Apple and the Harris campaign declined to comment on the matter. The FBI, which had been investigating the matter, declined to comment.

Source: The Wiretap: Kamala Harris’ Campaign Staff Suspected iPhones Had Been Hacked. Apple Declined To Give Them The Help They Wanted.

Popular rock band forced to turned down tours, can’t make money on them anymore – nj.com

Even as big-scale tours and festivals have resumed, many musicians are still navigating a tumultuous concert landscape four years after the height of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Mastodon guitarist Bill Kelliher discussed how his popular heavy metal band manages these difficulties on YouTube interview series “The Break Down With Nath & Johnny.”

“During COVID, no one toured, a lot of places shut down, and a lot of people changed careers,x said Kelliher. Techs that work for bands went into the real estate business or got regular jobs. Everyone was scrambling for money. And it was a f—ing disaster. So, the trickle-down effect of supply and demand. For instance, petrol and gas. It’s all economics. Everything relies on transportation.”

Source: Popular rock band forced to turned down tours, can’t make money on them anymore – nj.com

YouTube Interview here.

Billionaire cowardice led to The Washington Post, L.A. Times non-endorsements

Once upon a time, after the publisher decided our newspaper would endorse a candidate that those of us on the editorial board didn’t prefer, a colleague circled the date on the calendar and joked that it was “Reminder That We Work for The Man Day.” We knew, even if readers didn’t, that newspaper endorsements don’t always reflect a consensus or the majority opinion of its editorial writers.

At The Los Angeles Times, the man in charge is Patrick Soon-Shiong, the billionaire doctor and founder of the health care software company NantHealth who spent $500 million for the newspaper in 2018. Soon-Shiong’s decision to block the paper from endorsing California’s own Kamala Harris for president, as its board was reportedly planning to do, led to Donald Trump crowing and the paper’s editorials editor quitting. “I am resigning because I want to make it clear that I am not OK with us being silent,” Mariel Garza told the Columbia Journalism Review. “In dangerous times, honest people need to stand up. This is how I’m standing up.” Two more members of the newspaper’s editorial board resigned after Garza did.

At The Washington Post, the world’s third-richest man, Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, is The Man. And his venerable newspaper, which he bought in 2013 for $250 million, will not endorse a presidential candidate this year. And won’t going forward, according to its relatively new publisher and chief executive, Will Lewis. “The Washington Post will not be making an endorsement of a presidential candidate in this election. Nor in any future presidential election,” Lewis wrote on the newspaper’s website Friday. “We are returning to our roots of not endorsing presidential candidates.” The newspaper, Lewis writes, didn’t endorse in presidential races from 1960 to 1972 but did from 1976 to 2020.

Source: Billionaire cowardice led to The Washington Post, L.A. Times non-endorsements

Wealth distribution in the United States

Forbes recently published the Forbes 400 List for 2024, listing the 400 richest people in the United States. This inspired me to make a histogram to show the distribution of wealth in the United States. It turns out that if you put Elon Musk on the graph, almost the entire US population is crammed into a vertical bar, one pixel wide. Each pixel is $500 million wide, illustrating that $500 million essentially rounds to zero from the perspective of the wealthiest Americans.

Source: Wealth distribution in the United States