Obsessed Over Outfits

Last month embattled Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy spoke before the U.S. Congress via Zoom while appealing for help in fighting off the invading Russians. That speech received high praises from most people with one major exception. A Wall Street stockbroker named Peter Schiff complained over Zelenskyy’s choice of wearing a t-shirt.

I understand times are hard, but doesn't the President of the #Ukraine own a suit? I don't have much respect for current members of the U.S. Congress either, but I still wouldn't address them wearing a t-shirt. I wouldn't want to disrespect the institution or the Unites States.

— Peter Schiff (@PeterSchiff) March 16, 2022

Notice that he spelled the name of the country as “the Unites States.” In any case that tweet erupted a raging firestorm with many people pointing out that Zelenskyy has literally been dodging bombs that were raining over Kyiv by the Russians and he had been hiding in bomb shelters for several weeks. Who knows when he’ll actually be able to return home and don a regular business suit once again. (Vladimir Putin is still continuing his invasion of Ukraine as of this writing and the 50th day of that invasion came and went last week with no signs of the fighting slowing down.)

I collected this guy’s tweet along with other tweets attacking him and made a short video where I paired it with the song “Shut the Fuck Up.” You can view it on TikTok, Clapper, and YouTube. Enjoy!

Another Crazy Wednesday in January

Every Wednesday in January, 2021 has been accurately summed up by this tweet that I saw on Twitter featuring just four images.

Four Wednesdays in January pic.twitter.com/61EWuxkBsM

— joe biden prayer warrior (@PatrickOfToday) January 27, 2021

The first image is the storming of the U.S. Capitol building on January 6. The second is of the Articles of Impeachment that Congress had issued for President Donald Trump for the second time in his term in office on January 13. The third is the inauguration of President Joe Biden on January 20. The fourth one, featuring GameStop, was a drama that first became news yesterday. It seemed to me to have completely come from out of left field but that’s because I’m currently not on Reddit. It involves a type of stock selling that gives Wall Street firms its deserved horrible reputation.

I read up on this and here is what’s going on that I’m going to try to explain as simply as possible. Ideally a company that wants to grow and expand will need money to pull this off. One way is to take out huge bank loans, which can be a hassle if a company is constantly growing only to hit a ceiling so it has to put its growth plans on hold until it can get more loans. Plus the company will eventually have to find a way of eventually paying off those loans.

Another way is to become a publicly traded company on Wall Street where it issues stocks and shareholders will own a share in the company. If the company does well in terms of profits, the shareholders will get some of the profits that the company has produced. If the company does poorly, then the shareholders will financially suffer. Usually shareholders purchase stocks in a company with the expectation that it will continue to prosper.

There is a type of Wall Street company known as a hedge fund, which is pretty sleazy in nature. They are the opposite of a usual shareholder in that they will invest in a company with the expectation that the company will lose profits. If that happens, then the hedge funds will make money. This is basically little more than glorified gambling with a lot of high risk and these hedge funds are basically financial vultures by taking advantage of a company’s decline while hoping that the company will fall apart.

Here is how they do it. Let’s say I’m a hedge fund manager who wants to bet that a publicly traded company that I’ll call The Joe Blow Company is on the verge of financial collapse. Joe Blow only has so many shares to go around and I don’t want to go through the hassle of buying shares myself. But I know someone who is a Joe Blow stockholder. I go to my friend and ask her if I can borrow her Joe Blow shares for a month or two. My friend agrees so she lends me her shares.

The next thing I do is to sell the Joe Blow shares at the stock exchange for its current value, which I’ll say is worth $10 per share.

Now I spend the next few weeks to see how The Joe Blow Company does on Wall Street. My prediction that Joe Blow will decline has come true because I see that its stock has declined to $6 per share. At that point I buy back the Joe Blow shares that I had previously sold but this time I only pay $6 per share using the money that I had earned when I originally sold those shares at $10 per share. In the long run I end up making $4 profit per share that I can keep. Soon afterwards I give the shares back to my friend while I’m feeling smug over my $4 profit per share.

GameStop was about to become a real-life example of a hedge fund target. GameStop, which sells video games and gaming consoles, is one of those retail chains that are frequently found in malls and shopping centers all over the United States. In fact I remember that GameStop really became big when it not only expanded across the United States but it also purchased other chains like Babbage’s, Funcoland, and Electronics Boutique.

GameStop’s profitability has stalled in recent years because of the rise of online retailers like Amazon along with the rise in mobile gaming where one can directly download games to a smartphone or tablet. On top of that, some of the newer video gaming consoles are also offering downloadable games as an alternative to going to GameStop to purchase a video game disk. In fact there is speculation that there will be a day when video gaming consoles won’t even have a disk slot because all of its games will only be available through downloads.

So these hedge funds have been borrowing GameStop shares and selling them on Wall Street with the expectation that GameStop’s shares will decline further so they will buy back the cheaper GameStop shares, pocket the profits, and give the shares back to their owners.

But a group of people on Reddit have thrown a monkey wrench into the hedge fund schemes. They decided to organize on one of Reddit’s forums (known as a sub-Reddit) to buy GameStop’s shares using the Robinhood app. This sudden surge in purchasing GameStop shares have made those shares suddenly go up in value. So the hedge funds who had previously sold GameStop shares in the hopes that it would lose value are now seeing those same shares go up in value. Since these hedge funds had borrowed someone else’s GameStop shares, they are on the hook for buying those shares back at a higher price per share, which means they have lost money.

And these Reddit members have also moved to purchase shares of other companies that the hedge funds have bet on for losing its value like AMC Theaters and BlackBerry only to see the value of those shares suddenly rise as well.

I haven’t purchased anything from GameStop in about six or seven years (due mainly to tight finances plus I have two outdated consoles that GameStop no longer sells video games for—a Playstation 2 and a Nintendo Wii) but I’m definitely cheering that chain’s sudden good fortune. The people who run these hedge funds are the same kind of people who did financial shenanigans that caused the 2008 economic crash that this country has never quite fully recovered from. What was worse was that President Barack Obama did nothing to prosecute those who tanked the economy while hiring Wall Street types like Tim Geithner in his administration. (That was one of the reasons why I was so disappointed in Barack Obama. He should have done what Iceland did, which prosecuted their citizens who helped to tank that country’s economy in 2008 and they are now serving prison terms.)

By not prosecuting those Americans who tanked the economy in 2008, the U.S. government sent a message to Wall Street that it is okay to engage in financial shenanigans that harm companies and their employees (in the form of layoffs) because they will be richly rewarded and will never have to face the consequence of their actions.

But now individuals on Reddit have organized and decided to strike back against the hedge funds and I’m loving this. These hedge funds have lost $5 billion on the GameStop debacle. The hedge funds are finally facing the consequences of gambling on a company’s downfall and they deserve it. As this article in The Guardian puts it:

Hedge funds aren’t exactly the world’s favourite people, given that they make vast quantities of money, often with ruthless disregard for the businesses that become little more than chips in a financial casino game.

During the financial crisis, shorting became a byword for vulture capitalism. Hedge funds were accused of deliberately driving companies into the ground by taking out billion-dollar short positions, artificially pushing down share prices to the point that they collapsed, when they might otherwise have survived.

To be fair, GameStop does have problems, mainly with the fact that its current business model of selling video games and gaming systems in a bricks and mortar store is becoming more and more obsolete due to the rise of downloadable games. GameStop will have to make some hard decisions on whether to go into downloadable games itself or focus more on selling classic obsolete gaming systems while hyping itself as a “retro” gaming outfit or even to expand into other areas (like board games or toys). It’s quite possible that GameStop may eventually go out of business. But, thanks to its recent surge in its stock price, GameStop will have the luxury of taking more time to make its own decision on what to do next.

I’m looking forward to seeing what these Reddit investors will do next. It would be poetic justice to see these hedge funds lose a lot of money. It’s not like these hedge funds are creating anything of value that people would want to buy. They aren’t working with their hands doing jobs like tilling the fields or clearing the streets of garbage. They aren’t doing necessary things like serving as fire fighters or school teachers. All they are doing is just spending their days gambling on the stock market while hoping that companies will fail and not even caring that real people tend to lose their jobs when the companies they work for suddenly fail so much that they end up going out of business.

I’d rather see a wealthy hedge fund manager stripped of his money than see a single mother and her children become suddenly homeless because the mother had suddenly lost her job and she wasn’t able to find another one nor could she afford to continue paying rent on her apartment.

All that I know is that things on Wall Street are going to get very wild.

A New Normal in Coronavirusland

DC Mayor Muriel Bowser has ordered the closure of all nonessential businesses and has also banned all gatherings of more than 10 people. This comes on the heels of the closure of all movie theaters, nightclubs, gyms, libraries, and senior citizen centers in the District of Columbia. Bars and restaurants are now closed to in-person dining but they can still offer food and beverages only as takeout and delivery. It’s basically the same thing that Maryland did recently. It’s also the same situation in Virginia with bars and restaurants being allowed to offer only takeout and delivery while all recreational facilities (such as bowling alleys and movie theaters) are now closed.

Both Maryland and Washington, DC have decided to extend all school closures through April 24. Virginia has decided to just end the school year early. Meanwhile the DC Metro system is closing down more subway stations while cutting back on Metrobus service.

Everyone in the Baltimore-DC area is urged to stay home and not even go out unless it’s necessary (such as going grocery shopping). Even the playgrounds in my neighborhood have been roped off with signs warning people not to enter. With most places closed and Metro being seriously curtailed, it’s not even worth going out anywhere with the exception of local parks, where the playground equipment have been closed off and people are urged to maintain social distancing of a minimum of six feet from each other. I’m hoping that enough people will comply with social distancing so that the parks won’t be closed next.

So far there have been an uptick in the number of Coronavirus cases (including even a few deaths) but it’s nothing compared to what I’m reading about in New York City, which is now literally the epicenter of that pandemic. New York Mayor Bill De Blasio is warning that half of all New Yorkers will get the Coronavirus. This situation has gotten so bad that there is now an article about The Growing Chaos Inside New York’s Hospitals.

I have a friend whom I originally met years ago through my church. A couple of years ago she got a new job which required her to move to New York City. While I missed seeing her on a weekly basis at church, I’m Facebook friends with her so I was still able to keep track of her new life in the Big Apple. Yesterday I learned on Facebook that my friend has returned to Maryland after she got laid off from her job and she saw that things were getting incredibly bleak where she was living. She is currently staying with her sister and brother-in-law while she is also voluntarily undergoing a 14-day isolation due to the fact that she arrived from New York City. Since my church is only having Sunday services via Zoom, I probably won’t be seeing her in person anytime soon.

So far I don’t know anyone in my neighborhood who has been diagnosed with the Coronavirus. I think it helps that my neighbors have been very diligent about maintaining social distancing when they go out in public while minimizing unnecessary trips.

In fact, I really don’t know anyone among my circle of family and friends who have the Coronavirus. It was just as well that my mother died last month because had she lived a little bit longer, she would have been at high risk for getting that virus due to the fact that she had been struggling with multiple sclerosis along with the occasional bouts of urinary tract infection for the past 12 years so she had a compromised immune system. In fact I remember when she was still able to talk on the phone (before her illness had left her unable to to handle any kind of phone conversations) she used to ask me to please cancel any scheduled visits with her if I even had a minor cold because her immune system was so badly compromised thanks to MS.

The only positive news is that today I got word from my day job at the Census Bureau that we would all receive part-time pay for the time being until the field offices reopen and we can resume training for the second phase of the 2020 Census. Between that, my money from my late mother’s life insurance, and the lack of shopping opportunities, I can at least relax on the financial instability for the time being.

I have no problem with obeying the message of practicing self-isolation at home because my housemate had moved out a few weeks ago (before this Coronavirus pandemic really hit in a bad way) so I’m home alone anyway.

Now that I’m essentially stuck in my house most of the time, I have decided to make a concerted effort to spend at least a few hours per day focused specifically on decluttering the house and doing some yard work outside. I’m hoping that by the time that this Coronavirus pandemic begins to decline enough that most businesses can reopen, I will have enough space in my home to do some shopping for furniture at IKEA. I don’t really want to go into too many details about my home improvement project at the moment other than to say that having no other distractions to tempt me have given me the rare opportunity to really focus 100% on my home and how I want to live for the next few years.

Living alone with nothing else to do has given me the opportunity to do whatever I want with my house. Right now the issue of finding a new roommate has to be put on the back burner due to the Coronavirus. (With my luck, I would have someone move in only to find out soon afterwards that my new roommate has the Coronavirus.) If I decide to get another roommate in the future, I want to have the house reflect my own personal standards and esthetic before anyone else moves in. My last housemate was a big financial help to me when I needed it but I was so desperate for whatever income he provided that I had let him tell me what to do with my own home and there were times when I followed his suggestions that ended up being better for him than for me.

I felt that it was great that he was so adamant about getting rid of the old broken couch in the living room that he helped me with doing this. That couch had broken down so badly that it was beyond repair that it needed to be tossed because it had become so sunken in that sitting up from that couch was very difficult for anyone of even average physical ability.  The negative thing was that he talked me into getting rid of a coffee table because he strongly felt that it was taking up too much space in the living room, which interfered with his ability to store his excess computer stuff. I now regret letting him talk me into getting rid of that coffee table because it was a decent table that my then-husband had originally purchased from IKEA and it was still in pretty good shape. Soon after we got rid of the broken couch and coffee table my housemate replaced that furniture with various computer equipment that he purchased cheap from eBay and Craigslist because his big passion is bridging the digital divide among low income people and he would either give the equipment outright to a low income family or sell it for a price of less than $50. At times my living room resembled a computer store.

At least with my housemate gone along with the computer equipment, I can now take back my own living room. I also don’t want my home to resemble a computer store ever again. If I ever decide to get another housemate again and that person is also someone who deals with a lot of excess computer equipment to give to low income families, I would tell that person to go rent a storage space. Having so many laptops, printers, cables, and various other equipment cluttering up a home is so incredibly challenging and draining at times. It got so tiresome at times to be tripping over a cable or accidentally kicking over a keyboard.

I also want to spend some time each day on making arts and crafts. I haven’t done as much creativity in the past few years due mainly to the fact that I was so stressed out over being constantly cash-strapped that it had literally affected my ability to create anything other than the occasional amigurumi or getting involved with Inktober. Now that I feel more financially stable, I can relax enough to try making things without having those racing thoughts in my head that I was on the verge of completely falling into poverty. (The only silver lining to living on the financial edge is that it had inspired me to write my first and, so far, only book The Cash-Strapped Person’s Guide to Thriving in the Digital Age and also get involved with the local chapter of the Poor People’s Campaign. While I now have first-hand knowledge of what it’s like to be constantly short on cash, that knowledge came at the expense of my career as an arts and crafts person.)

With the warm spring weather coming and with the fact that, as of this writing, there aren’t anyone in my neighborhood who have the Coronavirus, I wouldn’t mind doing some walking around the neighborhood. Keeping myself in decent physical shape will build up my immune system along with taking supplements that contain Vitamins B and C.

I also want to spend some time to learn some new skills online (such as taking any free tutorials on YouTube on how to code or use certain software) while using Duolingo to brush up on my Spanish.

I came up with a basic schedule on how I want to deal with doing what I want and need to do given my new circumstances. I plan on spending the bulk of my time in my neighborhood since there is currently no one that I know of who have the Coronavirus. During that time I will take walks, spend time on housecleaning, and spend time on arts and crafts. I will only leave my neighborhood two days a week. One day would be to focus on grocery shopping. The other day would be reserved to running any errands that I need to do but I can’t do via the Internet (such as if someone sends me a certified letter for some reason and I would have to go to the post office to sign for it). For my out-of-my-neighborhood excursions, I would still try to stay in the local area as much as possible (meaning no more than traveling 10 miles from home). Basically I will allocate Monday and Friday to traveling outside of my neighborhood while the other five days will be spent either at home or as close to home as possible.

I’m hoping that I will achieve everything that I think I need to do while, at the same time, do my part to flatten the Coronavirus pandemic curve. At the same time I hope that I don’t come down with that dreaded disease.

I’m also going to try to go on a social media diet because most people are pretty much talking mostly about the Coronavirus and that can get pretty draining to read after a while. I’m finding it dismaying that there is now this new horrible right-wing Republican trend that is frequently being expressed on social media and it’s one that I personally find disturbing: The idea that old people need to get the Coronavirus and die so that younger people can help with making Wall Street profitable again. It was bad enough when I wrote in last night’s blog post about how Texas Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick essentially said that grandparents need to get the Coronavirus and die so the younger people (especially the ones who work on Wall Street) will save the country from an economic collapse.

Today I saw that Fox News’ Britt Hume said that it’s reasonable for grandparents to sacrifice themselves for the benefit of boosting the stock market. Then I saw Glenn Beck telling older Americans over 50 to go back to work and risk their health in order to keep the economy going. Even though Beck himself is 56 years old, he said “Even if we all get sick, I’d rather die than kill the country.”

These are the same people who protest that an early-term abortion is murder yet are okay with pressuring Americans over 50 go to back to work while the pandemic is still going strong and risk getting exposure to the Coronavirus because Wall Street profits are more important than the lives of already-born humans. After hearing this appalling stance against older people over the last few days, I never again want to hear these people say that they are pro-life because they are against aborting even a newly-fertilized egg while advocating for older Americans to die of the Coronavirus for the sake of the profits of Wall Street and big business because advocating for the latter does not make you pro-life at all. (Nor does keeping immigrant children in cages or ignoring reliable evidence that human life-threatening climate change is real, but those are other stories.)

Then there is Donald Trump’s frequent daily press conferences that are more about him and less than the Coronavirus. Here is a video from today’s press conference where he went off on a reporter yet again.

"I think it's very clear that there are people in profession that write fake news. You do" — asked about public health experts saying his push to reopen the country by Easter is a bad idea, Trump goes on the attack against a reporter pic.twitter.com/R04DBCuQxT

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) March 25, 2020

I’m just going to end this rant with Weird Al Yankovic’s Twitter post. He decided to take advantage of staying home by playing a really cool version of “Classical Gas” on the accordion.

pic.twitter.com/C6ORJoLov1

— Al Yankovic (@alyankovic) March 25, 2020

More Coronavirus Assholes

I’m not feeling very optimistic regarding official U.S. policy towards the Coronavirus pandemic. It turned out that way back in January German scientists had developed one of the first tests for the COVID-19 (which is the Coronavirus’ official name) and they allowed the World Health Organization to offer the test to over 60 nations for free. Except the United States decided to reject WHO’s offer.

So that was the Trump Administration’s first major blunder and they decided to follow up with an even bigger blunder. Donald Trump attempted to buy the exclusive rights to a German company’s research into a vaccine for the Coronavirus. In the process that attempt had angered the German government while the German company turned down Trump’s offer.

On top of that, four U.S. senators (three Republican and one Democrat) sold stock in companies related to the Coronavirus shortly before the markets on Wall Street started to drop. So we now have public servants involved with insider trading who view the Coronavirus as strictly a money-making opportunity. That is totally disgusting and gross!

But the big kicker was Donald Trump’s behavior at a press conference today. He started off with claiming that there is a cause for optimism regarding new treatments, even though none of them have been proven effective yet.

Then NBC News reporter Peter Alexander asked what I thought was a reasonable question. He asked Trump to talk directly to Americans who are scared of this pandemic. This was an opportunity for a president to assure the American people to calm down, to tell them that he has a team of experts who are working on the problem, and to tell them that everyone can play their part in minimizing this pandemic by practicing social distancing and washing hands. Trump had a chance to shine in the spotlight had he said something to calm the American people. But that’s too easy. Instead he had a major hissy fit where he called Alexander a “terrible reporter.”

Traditionally the president is the one who speaks to the American people at a time of crisis, whether it’s a terrorist attack or a natural disaster or, in this case, a pandemic. Generally the president is supposed to assure the American people that he and his administration is on top of the crisis and they will get to the bottom of this crisis and ultimately prevail. Donald Trump totally failed at this. Peter Alexander offered him the perfect opportunity to calm people’s fears and, instead, Trump made it all about him and his grudge against Alexander. This is totally unacceptable.

I had briefly thought about going to the Tidal Basin (where the cherry blossom trees are in full bloom at the moment) to see if it is less crowded than other years (like last year when I didn’t last too long because the crowd was so huge that it was nearly impossible to even walk around the Tidal Basin). But then I saw that the DC Metro system had decided to close down the stations at Smithsonian and Arlington plus run the trains only once every 30 minutes in order to deter people from visiting the Tidal Basin. It just looks too much trouble to even go to the Tidal Basin this year plus it looks like there aren’t too many people who are even practicing social distancing at the Tidal Basin and the nearby West Potomac Park, as these photos that were posted on Twitter recently attest.

I know peak bloom is beautiful and the weather couldn’t be any nicer, but can’t help thinking about social distancing when looking at these crowds. Let’s be safe!! #CherryBlossoms #coronavirus pic.twitter.com/EnkCeuW78l

— Josh Rosenthal (@JoshRosenthalTV) March 20, 2020

Today in DC. The #CherryBlossom festival was cancelled, but these people didn't get the memo, apparently. How many of them will be around next year for it?#coronavirus #reallystupidpeople #notsixfeetapart pic.twitter.com/hZqMrXkvKm

— Carol Miller 🍄 (@clmclm12321) March 20, 2020

https://twitter.com/ZhaoyinFeng/status/1240979237122818048

@MayorBowser @NationalGuard DC West Potomac Park is packed with cherry blossom on-lookers #covid19 pic.twitter.com/vkUQBTyF6D

— Smartie Pants (@SmartiePantz007) March 19, 2020

The good news is that there are alternatives to the Tidal Basin. I’ve been to the trees in the National Arboretum and they are quite lovely plus there are usually fewer people than at the Tidal Basin. There are two additional places that aren’t even mentioned at this link that I’ve visited before and you should know about. One is in the Kenwood section of Bethesda, which I last visited five years ago and you can see the photographs right here. The other is on Crofton Parkway in Crofton, Maryland and you can see the pictures I shot in 2016 and 2018.

My only advice is that if you see huge crowds around a bunch of cherry blossom trees anywhere in the Baltimore-DC area, get away from that area ASAP! Yes, the cherry blossom flowers are beautiful to see but they really aren’t worth risking your health and (possibly) your life over.

As for the annual National Cherry Blossom Festival, most of the events (including the annual Cherry Blossom Parade) have been cancelled so you won’t see much entertainment this year.

Link-O-Rama

Le Creuset launches cast-iron Star Wars cookware.

Elizabeth Keckly was born a slave but she later ended up working in the White House as a dressmaker for First Lady Mary Todd Lincoln.

Preacher stops to check his phone while speaking in tongues.

How an “Arts and Culture Economy” rebuilt a former coal town.

Inscription reveals final years of life in Pompeii before the city was buried in ash.

Man knits sweaters of places then visits those places wearing sweater.

Job applicant outraged after the company shares her bikini photo on Instagram as “PSA”: “This is not doing you any favors.”

Elsa Koditschek cleverly hid in her own house from the Nazis.

Inside the wildly popular forum where landlords plot to screw you over.

Stock buybacks: how Wall Street has created “profits without prosperity.”

Spirit bird: “One-in-a-million” yellow cardinal seen in Alabama.

Link-O-Rama

Take a virtual tour of the Uffizi Gallery in Florence and its world-famous collection of Renaissance art.

A look at the Girls Auto Clinic, a repair shop in Upper Darby, Pennsylvania that is staffed by female auto mechanics.

A doll lover turned her hobby into opening Maxine’s Doll Museum and Gift Shop in Hutchinson, Kansas.

Google’s free app analyzes your selfie then finds your doppelgänger in museum portraits.

Watching birds near your home is good for your mental health.

Napoleon’s heirs include a Wall Street banker, the founder of the FBI, and a Star Trek actor.

Custom hand-knit sweaters blend subjects into urban environments.

The world’s smallest species of wildcat could fit in the palm of your hand.

How automation will change work, purpose and meaning.

A look at the film posters that were designed by Russian avant-garde artists in the early years of the Soviet Union.

Here is what it is like to visit Whittier, Alaska, billed as “the town under one roof.”

The many different uses of cinnamon in both outdoor and indoor gardening.

A 2018 global study has revealed that the quest for extreme selfies have killed 259 people between 2011 and 2017.

My story as a homeless developer.

34 illustrations of how people in the past envisioned the future.

The six best classic board games.

The surprising creativity killer that we all want more of.

The history of the Internet’s first viral video.

Workplace bullying affects nearly half of U.S. workers. It’s time we did something about it.

The oddly-mesmerizing, often eye-bleeding art of hotel carpeting.

Link-O-Rama

Their ancestors were on opposite sides of a lynching. Now they are friends.

Why is the West praising Malala but ignoring Ahed?

A look at how Barack Obama chose Wall Street over Main Street.

Dolls’ heads were used to lobby pothole repairs in the British town of Swindon.

The next financial crisis will be worse than the last one.

Millions of poor rural voters now hate Trump and millions of rich voters still support him, but the press only profiles poor people who remain Trumpists.

The last slave ship survivor gave an interview to anthropologist Zora Neal Hurston in the 1930s.

How the GOP tax cut will also shrink your paycheck.

Survey of top U.S. evangelical churches reveals three explosive insights.

An interview with 98-year-old Ben Ferencz, the last surviving prosecutor from the Nuremberg trials.

How poverty changes the brain.

Hedge funds killed the newspaper industry, not the web.

The black Baltimore arabber tradition is on its last leg. For the city’s sake, it should continue.

Trump voters, he’s taking you for suckers.

The right is waging war on academic freedom.

The Last Day of Toys R Us

Today is the last day that Toys R Us is in business. When it closes its doors at the end of the day today, the entire store chain will be history after being in business for 70 years. When Toys R Us began closing a huge amount of its stores in January, I took photos of the one in Annapolis because, at the time, it was among the stores that were NOT slated to be closed. I had heard rumors that the entire chain would eventually go kaput so I decided to take photos of what an average Toys R Us store was like on a typical business day. I purchased a Fingerlings monkey and I was given this free frequent rewards card.

I ended up never needing to use that card because soon after that trip Toys R Us decided to close all of its stores at once. I went back to the Annapolis store during the early phase of that going out of business sale in late March. I made one more trip to that same store in early April, mainly because I was visiting another place in the same area at the time and I decided to drop by the store. I made one impulse purchase on that trip—a 12-inch plush version of the store’s mascot, Geoffrey Giraffe.

Here’s a closeup of his hoof with the backwards letter “R”, which was part of the Toys R Us logo.

You can see more photos of Geoffrey in my April post.

That purchase of Geoffrey Giraffe turned out to be the last thing I ever purchased from Toys R Us. I wasn’t able to make any more return trips to any Toys R Us store after April due mainly to the fact that all of the last remaining Toys R Us stores are located at least a half-an-hour’s drive away from where I live and money was too tight for me to make too many long-distance trips. (It wasn’t always like this. At one point there were three Toys R Us stores located closer to my home but—one by one—they gradually closed until my only Toy R Us shopping options depended on taking long car trips.) So I’ve ended up experiencing the last day of Toys R Us virtually, thanks to YouTube videos like these.

 

 

Given what happened, I think it’s very appropriate that the Geoffrey Giraffe plush toy was the last thing I ever purchased from Toys R Us since he was the corporate mascot. He even appears on this latest melancholy update of Toys R Us.com’s website, which announced its farewell.

Toys R Us got killed off by Wall Street corporate greed while its workers are now out of a job. Adding insult to injury, Toys R Us has refused to give their employees any kind of a severance package and they are now organizing to fight that chain for what should be rightfully theirs. It’s a horrible situation no matter how you look at it. Too bad, so sad.

Link-O-Rama

A look at the digital ruins of a forgotten future called Second Life.

U.S. mints coins for Donald Trump-Kim Jong Un summit that might not happen.

Fewer tourists are coming to the U.S. and experts say that it’s largely Trump’s fault.

Barbie “Shero” doll with a hijab honors Olympian Ibtihaj Muhammad.

Martin Luther King may have been killed by a Memphis police officer, not James Earl Ray.

How white Americans used lynchings to terrorize and control black people.

Laminated jewelry crafted from vintage books by Jeremy May.

A look at the guerrilla grafting movement—secretly grafting fruit-bearing trees onto ornamental city trees in order to feed the poor.

A Princeton sociologist spent 8 years asking rural Americans why they are so pissed off. Hint: It’s not about the economy.

The surprising secret to aging well.

New York City has genetically distinct “uptown” and “downtown” rats.

Why the DNC is fighting WikiLeaks and not Wall Street.

How Australia all but ended gun violence.

83,500 vintage sewing patterns put into online database from Vogue, McCall’s, Butterick, and Simplicity.

Stunning images of pagan costumes worn at winter celebrations around the world.

Watch the illustrated version of “Alice’s Restaurant,” Arlo Guthrie’s Thanksgiving Counterculture Classic.

The bots that are changing politics.

Link-O-Rama

A free tutorial on how to make your own DIY safe from common household items like a can of shaving cream.

Democrats paid a huge price for letting unions die.

Sexism, remembered and forgotten.

Remembering the life and music of labor agitator Joe Hill.

The 10 greatest films of all time according to 846 film critics.

15 gay Founding Fathers and Mothers.

How to make America more like Scandinavia.

Hey, Nicki Minaj, Pocahontas was a rape survivor, not a sex symbol.

Before buying a Kindle, consider the physical book’s benefits.

The Internet is enabling a new kind of poorly paid hell.

One person’s opinion after visiting the Museum of the Bible.

Closing malls and bankrupt stores: blame Wall Street predation for the “retail apocalypse.”

An Etsy seller specializes in papercraft dollhouse-sized miniatures of furniture, housewares, and decor.

Your brain on poverty or why poor people seem to make bad decisions.

Yeah, sure, #Resistance, let’s pretend that Bill Clinton isn’t a sexual predator. 

Forget the Nordic Diet. Try the Nordic Tax Plan.

Behind the scenes of the new Museum of Selfies in Los Angeles.

The secretive family making billions from the opioid crisis.

Harvey Weinstein, Hugh Hefner and the poor excuse that explains a lot.