Revenues climbed to $5.7 million, up 41% compared to the first quarter of 2022; Net loss dropped to $0.7 million (Q1.2022: a net loss of $4.7 million); Positive Adjusted EBITDA of $0.06 million (Q1.2022: Adjusted EBITDA loss of $3.2 million) TEL AVIV, Israel, May 30, 2023 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Alarum Technologies Ltd. (Nasdaq, TASE: ALAR) ("Alarum" or the "Company"), a global provider of enterprise and consumers internet access solutions, today announced record financial results for the three months ended March 31, 2023.  Key Financial Highlights for the First Quarter of 2023: Revenues climbed to a record high of $5.7 million, an increase of approximately 41% compared to the first quarter of 2022. Net loss decreased by 85% to $0.7 million, compared to a net loss of $4.7 million during the first quarter of 2022. Achieved positive cashflow from operating activities, and Adjusted EBITDA, for the first time, of $0.06 million, up from an Adjusted EBITDA loss of $3.2 million in the first quarter of 2022. NetNut Ltd. ("NetNut"), the Company's internet access arm for business and enterprise customers, became profitable for the first time. "I am incredibly proud of the entire Alarum team for their contributions to the generation of cashflow from our operating activities and the first-ever positive Adjusted EBITDA this quarter, alongside our ninth consecutive quarter of revenue growth. We've significantly improved our revenue stream, our net loss and the Adjusted EBITDA compared to the previous year as well as the prior quarter. Our key metrics, both financial and non-financial, are moving in the right direction and aligning with our strategic vision. As our enterprise access solutions continue to scale, we believe that we are well positioned for continuous success," said Mr. Shachar Daniel, Chief Executive Officer of Alarum. "Achieving positive cash flow from our operating activities is a significant milestone for Alarum, especially when accompanied by continuously sustaining substantial growth. We believe this is a strong indicator of the financial success of our core business activities.  With another solid quarter behind us and sufficient financial resources to support our growth initiatives, we believe that we remain on path to profitability. Our results showcase our ability to drive revenue growth while maintaining operational efficiency, ultimately creating value for our stakeholders," concluded Mr. Daniel. Mr. Chen Katz, the Company's chairman of the board of directors, added, "We began fiscal year 2023 with a solid foundation, delivering robust top-line growth, primarily by expanding sales of our value-added products. We are also demonstrating operational leverage as we maintain cost discipline across the organization and invest wisely to fuel further growth. The impressive results achieved by Alarum are a testament of the successful efforts by our talented leading teams, and I have full confidence in the Company's ability to continue to thrive." First Quarter of 2023 Operational Highlights and Recent Business Developments: NetNut experienced surging demand and rapid adoption in Asia, with monthly subscriptions tripling NetNut Announced launch of a new white-label consumer internet access privacy solution NetNut expanded into the retail artificial intelligence ("AI") market, securing its first customer for digital technologies and analytics solutions CyberKick Ltd., the Company's Consumer Internet Access subsidiary, extended its $2.0 million revolving line of credit agreement with United Mizrahi-Tefahot Bank Ltd., to support consumer privacy solutions operations, through May 25, 2024 Further to Alarum's February 22, 2023, announcement regarding an investigation into potential illegal short selling of the Company's American Depository Shares, the Company continues to assess suspicious trading activity and will take appropriate corrective actions if necessary Financial Results for the Three Months Ended March 31, 2023: Revenues amounted to $5.7 million (Q1.2022: $4.0 million). The growth is attributed to the organic increase in the enterprise access business revenues. Cost of revenues totaled $1.9 million (Q1.2022: $1.9 million). The additional costs for resources in the enterprise internet access business were offset by lower user acquisition costs in the consumer internet access business and lower amortization of intangible assets. Research and development expenses totaled $1.1 million (Q1.2022: $1.4 million). The decrease is attributed mainly to reduced expenses in the enterprise security segment after outsourcing to TerraZone Ltd., a global security reseller, in 2022. Sales and marketing expenses totaled $2.2 million (Q1.2022: $3.0 million). The decrease resulted mainly from lower media acquisition costs in the consumer internet access business and reduced sales and marketing expenses in the enterprise security business after outsourcing to TerraZone Ltd. in 2022. General and administrative expenses totaled $1.0 million (Q1.2022: $2.25 million). The decrease is largely due to reduced professional consulting fees, particularly legal fees related to resolved patent proceedings in May 2022. As a result, net loss improved to $0.69 million, or $0.02 basic loss per ordinary share (Q1.2022: net loss of $4.7 million, or $0.16 basic loss per ordinary share). Adjusted EBITDA was positive at $0.06 million (Q1.2022: Adjusted EBITDA Loss of $3.2 million). The Company defines Adjusted EBITDA as net loss before depreciation, amortization, interest, tax and impairment of intangible assets, as further adjusted to remove the impact of (i) impairment of goodwill (if any); (ii) share-based compensation expense; and (iii) contingent consideration measurement (if any). The following table presents the reconciled effect of the above on the Company's Adjusted EBITDA or Adjusted EBITDA loss for the year and three months ended March 31, 2023 and 2022, and the years ended December 31, 2022 and 2021:     For the Three-Month Period Ended March 31,   For the Year Ended December 31, (millions of U.S. dollars)   2023   2022   2022   2021                   Net loss for the period   (0.69 )   (4.73 )   (13.15 )   (13.13 ) Adjustments:                 Assets depreciation, amortization and impairment   0.25     0.43     2.21     1.51   Finance expense (income), net   0.20     0.24     0.05     (0.94 ) Tax benefit   *     (0.08 )   (0.33 )   (0.94 ) EBITDA loss from continuing operations   (0.24 )   (4.14 )   (11.22 )   (13.50 ) Adjustments:                 Impairment of goodwill   -     -     0.57     0.70   Contingent consideration measurement   -     -     -     (0.68 ) Share-based compensation   0.30     0.94     1.68     2.36   Adjusted EBITDA (Adjusted EBITDA loss) for the period   0.06     (3.20 )   (8.97 )   (11.12 ) *Less than $0.01 Balance Sheet Highlights: As of March 31, 2023, shareholders' equity totaled $12.9 million, or approximately $3.93 per outstanding American Depository Share, compared to shareholders' equity of $13.3 million on December 31, 2022. The reduction is due mainly to the Company's net loss during the first quarter of 2023. As of March 31, 2023, the Company's cash and cash equivalents balance totaled $3.7 million, compared to $3.3 million on December 31, 2022. The Company's cash balance does not account for up to an additional $2.2 million in funds available under its credit facility and investment financing. Use of Non-IFRS Financial ResultsIn addition to disclosing financial results calculated in accordance with International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS), as issued by the International Accounting Standards Board, this press release contains non-IFRS financial measures of EBITDA, Adjusted EBITDA and Adjusted EBITDA Loss for the periods presented that exclude depreciation and amortization, interest and tax, as further adjusted for the effect of impairment of goodwill, contingent consideration adjustments and share-based compensation expenses. The Company's management believes the non-IFRS financial information provided in this release is useful to investors' understanding and assessment of the Company's ongoing operations. Management also uses both IFRS and non-IFRS information in evaluating and operating its business internally, and as such deemed it important to provide this information to investors. The non-IFRS financial measures disclosed by the Company should not be considered in isolation, or as a substitute for, or superior to, financial measures calculated in accordance with IFRS, and the financial results calculated in accordance with IFRS and reconciliations to those financial statements should be carefully evaluated. Investors are encouraged to review the reconciliations of these non-IFRS measures to their most directly comparable IFRS financial measures provided in the financial statement tables herein. First Quarter 2023 Financial Results Conference Call Mr. Shachar Daniel, Chief Executive Officer of Alarum, and Mr. Shai Avnit, Chief Financial Officer of Alarum, will host a conference call today, on May 30, 2023, at 8:30 a.m. ET, to discuss the first quarter of 2023 financial results, followed by a Q&A session. To attend the conference call, please dial one of the following teleconferencing numbers. Please begin by placing your call five minutes before the conference call commences. If you are unable to connect using the toll-free number, please try the international dial-in number: Date: Tuesday, May 30, 2023 Time: 8:30 a.m. Eastern time, 5:30 a.m. Pacific time Toll-free dial-in number: 1-877-407-0789 or 1-201-689-8562 Israel Toll Free: 1-809-406-247 Participants will be required to state their name and company upon entering the call. If you have any difficulty connecting with the conference call, please contact Michal Efraty on behalf of Alarum at +972-(0)-52-3044404. The conference call will be broadcast live and available for replay here. A replay of the conference call will be available after 11:30 a.m. Eastern time May 30, 2023, through June 27, 2023: Toll-free replay number: 1-844-512-2921 or 1-412-317-6671 Replay ID: 13738915 About Alarum Technologies Ltd. Alarum Technologies Ltd. (Nasdaq, TASE: ALAR) is a global provider of internet access solutions. The Company operates primarily in two distinct segments: solutions for enterprises and solutions for consumers. The solutions by NetNut, our Enterprise Internet Access arm, are based on our world's fastest and most advanced and secured hybrid proxy network, enabling our customers to collect data anonymously at any scale from any public sources over the web. Our network comprises both exit points based on our proprietary reflection technology and hundreds of servers located at our Internet Service Providers partners around the world. The infrastructure is optimally designed to guarantee privacy, quality, stability, and the speed of the service. Our Consumer Internet Access arm offers privacy and cybersecurity solutions to end users. These solutions are designed to allow users to take charge of their online privacy with a powerful, secured and encrypted connection. The solutions are designed for basic and advanced use cases, ensuring complete protection of personal and digital information. For more information about Alarum and its internet access solutions for enterprises and consumers, please visit www.alarum.io. Follow us on Twitter Subscribe to our YouTube channel Forward-Looking Statements This press release contains forward-looking statements within the meaning of the "safe harbor" Words such as "expects," "anticipates," "intends," "plans," "believes," "seeks," "estimates" and similar expressions or variations of such words are intended to identify forward-looking statements. For example, Alarum is using forward-looking statements in this press release when it discusses that its key metrics, both financial and non-financial, are moving in the right direction and aligning with its strategic vision, its belief that it remains on a clear path to profitability, the Company's ...Full story available on Benzinga.com.....»»

Four financial experts share which items are worth every penny and the mistakes you should avoid. CEOs of startups are taking a pay cut this year due to a slump in venture capital funding.nicoletaionescu/Getty Images Financial experts say there are eight things worth every penny that you shouldn't stop spending on. During a recession, don't skimp on mental healthcare, insurance coverage, and medical expenses. You should also prioritize building up your emergency fund and paying down debt. One of the biggest financial worries that's on the top of people's mind this year is the threat of a looming recession. According to a recent survey, there's a 61% chance that a recession will happen in 2023. As people are planning their budgets and setting up financial goals for the coming months, they might start looking into different areas of their life where they can limit spending and stockpile cash in case of an emergency.If you're starting to plan what items you should cut back on, take a look at what these financial experts say are worth every penny — even during a recession. 1. Internet and phone serviceAs you're sorting through your monthly fixed expenses, you might get tempted to call up your phone or internet provider and cancel or downgrade your plan to save money. However, certified financial planner Gabriel Lalonde told Insider doing that might end up costing you in the future."With the increased reliance on technology and the internet for communication and access to information, it is essential to have reliable internet and phone service," Lalonde said. "Plus, not having this can also limit your access to job opportunities and other resources."If you're struggling to afford your internet or phone service during a recession, Lalonde recommends calling your current provider and asking for discounts or looking for lower-cost options with other providers out there. 2. Medical expenses and healthcareIf you're trying to find ways to cut costs, you might decide to postpone or skip doctor visits or prescription medications in an effort to avoid any out-of-pocket costs or pay for your insurance monthly premium. Lalonde said investing in your health is always worthwhile, even during a recession, since skipping treatments or appointments could lead to the progression of an illness or injury, and make it more expensive or difficult to treat later on."Even with possible financial difficulties, you should still try to maintain your insurance coverage and look for ways to minimize costs, like asking for generic drugs or shopping around for better prices," Lalonde said. To prepare for a looming recession, Lalonde recommends making sure your coverage is up-to-date and researching if there are any government or community programs that can assist you with the cost of healthcare costs. 3. Mental healthcareCertified financial planner Stephanie Genkin adds that mental healthcare should also not be neglected during a recession. "There's a reason why a person sought out therapy," Genkin told Insider. "An economic downturn can magnify those reasons."If your current therapist doesn't accept insurance, Genkin recommends finding a different mental health professional who does so that if you need to cut spending, this isn't a cost that you have to worry about paying for.4. Certain types of insurance coverageAs you audit your expenses, you might notice you're paying for a handful of different types of insurances. Before you cut back on any, certified financial planner Marcus Miller suggests keeping the policies that cover rare and costly occurrences and not ones that cover low-dollar expenses.For example, Miller recommends keeping health insurance to cover unexpected medical bills or treatments, life insurance to ensure financial security for loved ones in the event of the policyholder's death, homeowners or renters insurance to cover personal property and liability from any injury or damages, and auto insurance so that you're covered in case of an accident. If you want to cut back on insurance costs, he does suggest that you can cut pet insurance, home warranty, travel insurance, and identity theft insurance, since the costs might not be worth the limited benefits you receive. 5. Food and groceries If you're someone who spends a lot of their budget on food, certified financial planner Jay Nelson said rather than cutting back in this area, become more strategic about the food you're buying.He says you can cut back on eating out or grabbing fast food, but when it comes to grocery shopping, he recommends stocking up on the basics and staples of what you need for meals at home, especially when discounts or deals are available on those items.Other tips he recommends for saving money on groceries, without limiting how much you're buying, is grabbing store-brand items over name brands, purchasing what you know you'll eat that week, and getting frozen items that won't spoil or expire. 6. TransportationIf you're noticing that you're spending a lot of money trying to get around your city, for work or errands, Nelson said this might not be something you can realistically cut completely out of your budget during a recession. Whether you have recurring expenses related to your vehicle, auto insurance, gas, or you use ride sharing services or public transportation, Nelson recommends finding ways to plan ahead so that you can still use that mode of transportation without overspending.He recommends doing a few things, like being mindful of where you're going and how often you can make multiple stops in one trip, and also filling up your car with the lowest-priced gas in your neighborhood. Also, if it's an option, Nelson said to find ways to carpool to work with a coworker to reduce expenses when needed.7. Emergency Fund While a recession might make it tempting to want to switch around your financial planning and pause contributions to your retirement account, Nelson says that if it's not fully funded with up to six months worth of expenses, it's important to prioritize this savings account."Cut other expenses, like clothing and coffee, and put that money into an emergency fund so you have the freedom to pay for life's unexpected events, rather than taking on debt," he said. 8. Debt payments Another financial mistake that Nelson often sees in a recession are clients who stop making payments on outstanding debt that they have. He said that this isn't a cost to cut back on during an economic downturn because you might end up getting hit with more interest and penalties, making those payments heftier in the future.If you're prioritizing what to cut back on, Nelson recommends cutting spending elsewhere to ensure debts are being paid off first.Read the original article on Business Insider.....»»

In today's edition: HR is torn on job applicants using AI, Elon Musk gets government approval for putting brain chips in humans, and more headlines. It's Tech Tuesday, friends. I'm Diamond Naga Siu. Have you ever thought about quitting your job to pursue your dreams? That's what one former Googler did — and they failed miserably. But it wasn't all bad. She learned a lot of lessons along the way, including how having no goals and zero expectations resulted in "a lot of fun." Check out her story here. Now, let's dive into today's tech.If this was forwarded to you, sign up here. Download Insider's app here.Amazon Employees for Climate Justice lead a walk out and rally at the company's headquarters to demand that leaders take action on climate change in Seattle, Washington on September 20, 2019. (Jason Redmond/AFP/Getty Images1. Employees accuse Amazon of 'actively accelerating' the climate crisis. They plan to walk off the job on Wednesday, according to an internal email leaked to Insider. The action is part of a broader protest over layoffs and return-to-office.Amazon employees listed five areas of concern over the company's climate impact: rising emissions, deception in reporting, partnering with Big Oil, killing clean energy legislation, and disproportionate harm to communities of color.The company committed to a Climate Pledge in 2019 to reach net-zero carbon emissions by 2040. But employees claim the company has increased emissions by 40% since making the promise.My colleague Eugene Kim obtained the entire email outlining employee concerns and shared it in full.Dive into the walkout email here.In other news:Tech workers are searching for low stress jobs on social media.Getty stock illustration2. Tech workers are looking for less stressful jobs. They're done with the grind. Many said they're even willing to take lower pay for lower stress. But one Amazon worker said there's "no such thing as [a] high pay low stress job in tech." More on the job search here. 3. HR is torn on applicants using AI during the job search. For some, it's a "definite dealbreaker." But others don't really care. Check out what hiring managers think about AI here.4. Earth's neighboring (and dying) star Betelgeuse got really bright. It's 50% brighter than normal after recently dimming its shine, so scientists are now closely monitoring it. The convalescing star will likely explode into a supernova. More on the starpower here.5. AI can make or break the workforce. Generative AI like ChatGPT could turbocharge the workforce by making us a lot more productive. Or it could cause troves of people to lose their jobs. Look into the contrasting AI futures here.6. Elon Musk got government approval to put chips in people's brains. His company Neuralink was previously only allowed to test on animals. But the Food and Drug Administration just gave it the greenlight for human implants. More on the milestone here.7. Amazon's guide on how every industry will use AI. A leaked document revealed Amazon's predictions for nine different industries. Automakers could use it for vehicle concept design, while healthcare could use it for personalized medicine. Get all the predictions here.8. Things you're probably wrong about when it comes to your car. Buying cars at the end of the month or year might have been clever at one point. But the automotive industry has changed a lot in recent years. Drive over for the nine vehicle misconceptions you might have.Odds and ends:Kaboo Bill. Kaboo Photography. Monterey Bay AquariumKaboo Bill/Kaboo Photography9. Love Love Love: Award-winning engagement photos from around the world. The images are meant to reflect love in all forms. Winners hail from New York City, Bali, and many places in between. View all 50 lovely photos here.10. Students list their high school on Zillow as a prank. The 20-bedroom, 15-bathroom Maryland property features a spacious kitchen and private basketball court. But the $42,069 listing was unfortunately too good to be true. More on the prank here.What we're watching today:Elizabeth Holmes is expected to surrender to federal prison.China is launching its Long March 2F rocket. It will carry three taikonauts (aka Chinese astronauts).Quarterly earnings for HP and other companies. Keep up with earnings here.Happy birthday, Remy Ma! Hope you're All the Way Up.Curated by Diamond Naga Siu in San Diego. (Feedback or tips? Email dsiu@insider.com or tweet @diamondnagasiu) Edited by Alistair Barr (tweet @alistairmbarr) in San Francisco and Hallam Bullock (tweet @hallam_bullock) in London.Read the original article on Business Insider.....»»

Yevgeny Prigozhin, known as "Putin's chef", argued that his Wagner army is not large enough to start a mutiny, according to think tank The Institute for the Study of War. Yevgeny Prigozhin, the owner of the Wagner Group military company, on April 8, 2023.AP Photo Wagner Group chief Yevgeny Prigozhin denied planning a coup.  Kremlin ally Igor Girkin had claimed that Prigozhin may be preparing to topple Vladimir Putin.  Prigozhin's forces have played a key role in the Russian invasion of Ukraine.  Yevgeny Prigozhin, commander of the Wagner mercenary army, has denied claims that he is planning a military coup against Russia's President Vladimir Putin, according to a report.The Wagner chief, known as "Putin's chef", argued that his Wagner army is not large enough to start a mutiny, a report by Washington, DC, think tank The Institute for the Study of War (ISW) said.Prigozhin instead implied that Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu could stage a coup because he has access to the Russian Special Forces, the ISW added. Wagner, Prigozhin said on Telegram, simply wants reforms in Russia, according to the report. Prigozhin's comments come after Igor Girkin, a former commander of separatist militants in east Ukraine, accused the Wagner founder of stirring unrest in a video Saturday.Girkin said insults Prigozhin has made about top Russian officials in expletive filled videos indicate he is planning to seize power. "A coup attempt has been declared...What will happen next, I don't know, especially as Wagner is urgently withdrawn to rear bases...The danger of a looming coup is clear," said Girkin, Insider reported. As top Russian and Kremlin allies officials jostle for position amid the chaotic fallout of the war, Girkin has issued a series of warnings about the perilous state of Russian society and recently set up a pro-war party, The Club of Angry Patriots, aimed at bolstering Putin's power, reported Reuters.US officials estimate that Wagner has about 50,000 soldiers fighting in Ukraine.More than 30,000 Wagner fighters, often regarded as Putin's de facto private army, have been killed or injured since the invasion of Ukraine began, according to US officials. Prigozhin has previously accused Russian military leaders, including Shoigu, of failing to back his forces. Some of his remarks were interpreted as a direct criticism of Putin himself, prompting questions about his loyalty.Mark Galeotti, a Russian security expert and honorary professor at the University College London's School of Slavonic and East European Studies, recently wrote in The Spectator that Putin has long encouraged brutal competition among his aides. "A culture of mutual suspicion, cannibalistic competition and opportunistic self-interest has kept Putin in power for more than two decades," Galeotti wrote, but warned the method is risky in wartime when "the need is for unity, discipline and mutual support."Last week, Russia declared victory in the battle for Bakhmut and Prigozhin said his forces would be pulling back from the city on June 1. Read the original article on Business Insider.....»»

AI is posing a threat to job security, but workers may need to get acquainted with tools like ChatGPT as fast they can to remain employable. Workers may need to get familiar with tools like ChatGPT.Iparraguirre Recio via Getty Workers will probably need to go all in on artificial intelligence. Companies are looking at ways to implement tools like ChatGPT into their products and workflows. Employees who are slow to adapt may risk being superseded by more adventurous colleagues. Anxiety about AI is pretty commonplace right now in tech as workers see their jobs threatened by it and senior industry figures warn of its impact.But pretty much anyone with a job, beyond just tech, will need to get to grips with AI and its potential.On Monday, Jensen Huang, the CEO of chip giant Nvidia, suggested workers should find a way to make AI work to their favor. "Everyone is a programmer now. You just have to say something to the computer," he said. It's a new era of computing where producing high-quality work and code with the support of AI is as simple as writing a few lines of instructions into a text box.With such tools becoming easier to use and more widely available than ever before, understanding the technology may well no longer be a choice but a necessity — and your next job may depend on it. ChatGPT shifted priorities for corporatesThe release of OpenAI's ChatGPT in November has coincided with a shift in priorities for companies across the board. In the tech sector and beyond, efficiency has fast become the guiding ethos as leaders put AI to use for productivity gains and cost savings.  Here's a recent example. Advertising conglomerate WPP is set to partner with Nvidia to bring generative AI into its workflow to accelerate the speed with which campaigns are put together for clients, per the Financial Times. That means non-tech workers at the likes of WPP will need to quickly become acquainted with new AI-related capabilities such as prompt engineering — telling an AI tool what they want it to do.And just take a look at how often CEOs talk about AI right now. An Insider analysis of earnings transcripts in May alone found that around 50 US companies mentioned ChatGPT in their quarterly financial updates. José Neves, founder and CEO of e-commerce firm Farfetch, noted in an earnings call this month how his "tech teams have been developing several concrete applications of ChatGPT." Others, like Udemy and LegalZoom, specifically talked about ChatGPT's impact on their respective businesses. The value put on AI-related skills like this is changing quickly too. Prompt engineer jobs can reportedly pay up to $375,000 a year, and don't necessarily require a background in computer science. Despite this obvious direction of travel, workers aren't necessarily rushing to learn about generative AI as yet.Figures from the Pew Research Center published this month – based on a survey conducted in March – found that although around six in 10 adults are familiar with ChatGPT in the US, just 14% have tried out the chatbot themselves.Meanwhile a survey of 3,000 employed Americans by HR software firm Checkr found that 79% of workers are feeling the pressure to learn more about AI tools.Pew notes that the lack of uptake reflected previous findings about Americans being "more likely to express concerns than excitement" about increased AI use in daily life. That's no surprise given the likes of Elon Musk have warned of AI's potential to pose an existential threat. But for workers still feeling cautious about getting to grips with AI, it may be worth swallowing those fears. At a time of mass layoffs, it looks like one of the few ways to stay competitive.Read the original article on Business Insider.....»»

Goldman Sachs Group Inc. GS senior executive Dina Powell McCormick is joining merchant bank BDT & MSD Partners, The Wall Street Journal reported Tuesday. Citing people familiar with the situation, the newspaper reported that McCormick will take on the newly-created positions of vice chairman and president of global client services at BDT & MSD Partners. Powell has been the global head of the sovereign business for Goldman Sachs, as well as heading up the bank’s sustainability efforts and serving on the bank’s committees on management and client and business standards. BDT is run by ex-Goldman bankers Gregg Lemkau and Byron Trott. As one of the most senior women working on Wall Street, McCormick started working for Goldman Sachs in 2007 and left in 2017 to be deputy national security adviser for strategy under President Donald Trump. In 2018, she returned to Goldman Sachs.Market Pulse Stories are Rapid-fire, short news bursts on stocks and markets as they move. Visit MarketWatch.com for more information on this news......»»

IIST Intelligent Information Security Technology, a pioneering startup at the forefront of hardware security innovation, is proud to announce its official launch and entry into the global market. Leveraging cutting-edge technologies, IIST aims to address the pressing challenges of data security in the digital age......»»

VDH: It Was Always Only About Power With The Left Authored by Victor Davis Hanson via American Greatness, Why do so many liberal climate-activist grandees fly on private jets? Or why do those who profited from Black Lives Matter have a propensity for estate living? Or why do the community-activist Obamas prefer to live in not one, but three mansions?  The answer is that calls for radical equity, “power for the people,” and mandated equality are usually mostly sloganeering for those who enjoy power and the lucre it brings, and their wish is to augment both for themselves. The result is that the issue du jour of mandated equality often becomes secondary if not irrelevant. There is neither fear of inconstancy nor hypocrisy, given the central theme that governs a leftist party line is political utility—or the ends of power always more than justify the hypocritical means used to obtain it.  Spout racialist nonsense for 40 years? Harass women and young girls by blowing in their hair and squeezing them too tightly? Create a family grifting syndicate to leverage foreign cash in quid pro quo fashion? Praise racial segregationists?   Joe Biden did all those things and more. But he also did them in service to a supposed noble cause, sort of like the current board president of the NAACP promoting a black travel ban on Florida, while he lives—in Florida! Keep political utility in mind and the baffling hypocrisy of the Left makes all too perfect sense.  January 6 vs. the “Summer of Love”  From all the tens of thousands of January 6 Capitol protesters a small percentage entered the Capitol itself. Of that group, an even smaller number committed violent acts. Most of those seriously injured that day were among the protesters themselves. Despite official propaganda, there were not five police officers killed on January 6 as alleged by the Left.  Instead, the only likely death at the hand of another was the diminutive, 5’2’’, 14-year-military veteran and unarmed Ashli Babbitt. She was lethally shot by a Capitol officer Michael Byrd for the likely misdemeanor of trespassing and—illegally entering a broken window to the Capitol.  Yet over a thousand protesters were arrested, tried, and mostly convicted of various charges from parading without a permit to insurrection. Many of them were sentenced to long prison sentences. Some may spend most of their remaining lives in prison.   The Left has justified long sentences on three grounds: One, the protesters targeted iconic government buildings as the object of their attacks. Two, the protesters were ideologically motivated and seemed bent on insurrection to warp the political process. Three, the protesters were attempting to nullify an election by their massing at the Capitol and therefore questioned the very integrity of the 2020 election.   In theory these were legitimate reasons to treat harshly any convicted of such insurrectionary crimes. But in reality, the Left cared little about its pretexts justifying harsh responses, much less proving their charges. What mattered were the political opportunities offered by January 6, and the chance to leverage the occasion to consolidate power.   Why and how can one assume that?  In 2020, for 120 days, left-wing mobs led by Antifa and Black Lives Matter wrought far greater destruction in nonstop rioting, arson, looting, and assault. Over 35 people died. Two billion dollars in property damage followed. Some 1,500 officers were assaulted and injured. Over 14,000 protesters were arrested.  Yet few were convicted of any serious crimes; fewer were sentenced to long sentences—given prosecutors, state and federal, claimed the violence was merely a result of protesters exercising their “constitutional right” of dissent.   Left-wing politicians and activists from then-vice presidential candidate Kamala Harris (“They’re not going to let up, and they should not, and we should not.”) to Nikole Hannah Jones (“Destroying property, which can be replaced, is not violence.”) either excused the often violent protests or urged that they continue.   Far from sending in 20,000 federal troops, as occurred after January 6, the Left demanded that then President Trump not resort to such Draconian measures.   Note that there were lots of government properties deliberately targeted in iconic fashion. A Seattle police precinct (with officers inside ) was set afire. A mob in Washington, D.C. tried to storm the White House grounds in a fashion that sent the president and secret service agents into a subterranean bunker. A historic Washington, D.C. church was torched. Violent mobs set federal and state courthouses on fire in Las Vegas, Minneapolis, and Portland.  Second, note these riots and violence were not random. They were coordinated and seemed to wax and wane with some sort of precise coordination—a fact deemed useful in an election year by the Democratic Left.   In her now notorious self-confessional Time essay, Molly Ball bragged that, “There was a conspiracy unfolding behind the scenes, one that both curtailed the protests and coordinated the resistance from CEOs.”  “The conversation that followed was a difficult one,” Ball explained, “led by the activists charged with the protest strategy . . . We wanted to be mindful of when was the right time to call for moving masses of people into the street.”  Third, had Trump won the 2020 election, the Left was gearing up for yet another round of violence under the pretense that the election had been stolen, in the fashion of its coordinated Washington, D.C. violence on the day of Trump’s 2017 inauguration.  Left-wing election denialism—and real efforts to overturn a presidential election—were certainly not new. After the 2016 election, wealthy leftists and celebrities ran television ads begging electors to reject their constitutional fidelity and the popular vote counts in their states, and instead, in insurrectionary style, cast electoral ballots for Hillary Clinton.  Prominent leftists from Jimmy Carter to Hillary Clinton also had been on record following the 2016 election claiming that Trump was an illegitimate president and the 2016 election had been rigged in Trump’s favor due to the hoax of Russian collusion.   Hillary Clinton—who paid Christopher Steele to use Clinton-related fake sources to compile fabrications and destroy her 2016 rival—later even bragged she was joining “La Résistance.” The chairman of the January 6 committee that damned Trump’s supposed election denialism, Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.), himself was an election denialist par excellence, who absurdly voted in the Congress to reject George Bush’s popular vote victory in Ohio that decided the 2004 election.  By any fair measure the violence of 2020 was a far greater and more deadly threat to the republic than anything occurring on January 6, 2021. But most of the 14,000 arrested perpetrators who were responsible for that incredible summer of violence were exempted because their mayhem was deemed politically useful—in the same fashion it was advantageous to turn the buffoonish Capitol protesters into seasoned revolutionaries. The common denominator was only the Left’s efforts to warp events to achieve power.  Liberalism That Loses Utility is Left Behind  California has been building massive solar farms in pristine deserts and rural areas. Many spread over thousands of acres and require disruptive supporting infrastructure. In the American Midwest, these new generations of solar farms are unlike anything in our recent past. Often in size larger than Manhattan, they take out of production tens of thousands of acres of prime farmland. What is curious about all these next-generation projects is the relative silence of environmentalists to the radical disruptions and dangers they pose to fragile and pristine natural landscapes, rare species of flora and fauna, and quality of life for surrounding rural communities.   In the case of hundreds of thousands of lost farm acres, prior liberal advocacy for preserving America’s heartland, and its precious family farm acreage and those who work it, likewise go out the window.  Yet if any clean-burning natural gas plant, affordable housing development, a border wall, retirement community, or farming operation caused as much havoc to the environment as solar—and often wind—farms, there would arise leftist outrage replete with environmentalist-driven court injunctions. In other words, left-wing environmentalism is calibrated only by whether the Left or the Right is reengineering the landscape.   Irina and Tamara Press, c1960s. Schirner/ullstein bild via Getty Images Title IX was an addendum to the 1964 Civil Rights Act that prohibited discrimination on the basis of sex. Through liberal lawsuits and the intervention of activist courts, the statute soon was transmogrified into a sports equity act. Title IX then began to revolutionize high school and college sports programs by demanding equity—in the sense of mandating equal budgets and facilities for women’s and men’s sports.   The rationale was that women’s athletics could only achieve parity with male sports if they were gifted the same sorts of budgets, infrastructure, and institutional support. Whatever the intent of the original statute, whatever the effects of activist court intervention, the result was that women’s sports did achieve a much higher social and cultural profile.   So how ironic, then, that a half-century of athletic transformation has been completely undermined by the current ritual takeover of the sport by biological men declaring themselves transgendered women. The transgendered have done more damage in three years to women’s sports than a century of chauvinist pigs.  In almost every category of competition—track and field, swimming, team sports—prior women’s records have been shattered by athletes who enjoy huge advantages in natural musculoskeletal mass, body size and weight, and innate strength. In the Cold War past, males competing as females were largely a Soviet or Eastern European phenomenon—most notably the Ukrainian sisters, Tamara and Irina Press. The communist bloc, as the Third Reich had earlier in the case of Heinrich Ratjen, scored propaganda points by using males to win “women’s” events.  Soon in reaction, hormonal testing and eventually DNA tests were used to ensure an equal playing field for biological women. No matter. What was once a feminist issue is now considered a right-wing hate crime of insisting that biological males not be allowed simply to redefine an entire segment of American life and culture.   Note that the Left has sided against feminism in its near hysterical promotion of its newest cause célèbre, transgenderism. Note further that biological women do not win many, if any, events as transgendered males, despite the shibboleth that one can construct one’s own sexual identity that will be equivalent to a biological one.  Finally, note that there is no transgendered effort to create a separate category of transgendered sports. Apparently a transgendered Olympics or NCAA event would not offer transgendered contestants and champions the attention and lucre they now achieve by dominating women’s sports. Again, “equity” and feminism were never left-wing positions, but simply useful malleable issues to embrace or reject depending on where and how contemporary political advantage was calibrated.  From Reining in Government Abuse to Cheering It  Read the contemporary news accounts of the 1975-76 so-called “Church Committee,” a select Senate committee formed to expose and rectify dangerous abuses of civil rights and constitutional norms by the CIA, NSA, and at times the FBI.   Most Democrats cheered the post-Watergate committee on, eager to virtue signal as civil libertarians and to stop the rogue and often politically weaponized antics of our investigatory and intelligence agencies.   But while there were true civil libertarians, Left and Right, who weighed in on the committee, the general left-wing giddiness over the investigations was predicated on the post-Watergate Democratic revival—one that ensued from ridding the nation of Richard Nixon and using his disgrace to discredit what were considered conservative institutions.   Fast forward to 2015-23. Over the last eight years it is hard to imagine any illegal act that the CIA, NSA, or FBI would not commit. Their directors—James Clapper, John Brennan, and Andrew McCabe—have all confessed to lying under oath. A more insidious Robert Mueller, James Comey, and Christopher Wray simply invoke amnesiac excuses or plead ignorance when asked directly about the wrongdoing of their agencies or investigations.   The U.S. government, along with the Hillary Clinton presidential campaign, paid a foreign national to spy on a rival campaign, compile lies about a rival candidate, and then spread them through government and the media. The FBI arguably sought to alter both the 2016 and 2020 elections.  In this same eight-year period, a FISA court was deluded, and an FBI lawyer altered court documents. Phone records were wiped clean. Subpoenaed devices were destroyed. Key evidence that affected a current campaign was put under FBI wraps. Agents openly texted their intent to ensure a predetermined presidential election result. Americans in general were routinely spied upon. Many were framed by FBI skullduggery and had their lives ruined.   The extent of the lawbreaking and the warping of elections dwarfs anything discovered during Watergate. And yet the Left never objected to these violations of civil rights or the illegal freelancing of intelligence agencies. Far from it—the Left cheered on the illegality.   Why? Because for them hating or worshiping the CIA, NSA, and FBI—or for that matter the Pentagon, IRS, and Justice Department—was never a matter of consistent principle. Instead these bureaucracies were deemed pathological when associated with conservatism and traditionalism, and angelic when their extralegal efforts were put to use for the progressive agenda.  There are some grassroots leftists who are deluded into sincerely believing “equity” can be achieved by government confiscation and redistribution. But for most of the elite, the cause is a means to personal and professional power, a fact that explains why one day walking only on four leftist legs is alone correct, the next day just two. Tyler Durden Mon, 05/29/2023 - 19:30.....»»

"Trans Rights" Means Trans Entitlements And The End Of Civil Society Authored by Wendy McElroy via The Mises Institute, A “civil society” is a community of individuals who are linked together by common interests and activities. Common interests include being able to walk the streets safely (peace) and to exercise such rights as freedom of speech (individual freedom). These shared interests allow common activities to flourish, including commerce and the education of children. Civil society is possible only because most people want to live securely, protect their loved ones, and prosper. This laissez-faire attitude used to be a defining characteristic of Americans, but an engineered and well-financed cultural war is destroying America’s renowned tolerance. If the common interests of society break down and peace and freedom are replaced by violence and privilege, then common activities like free-market commerce and education cannot function. One movement captures the raw destruction of this culture war against civil society - a demand for “Trans rights!” blasts across America. But a sharp backlash against it has also developed, epitomized by the boycott of Bud Light beer over the company’s use of trans activist Dylan Mulvaney as a new “woman” ambassador for its brand. The media characterizes this backlash as antitrans hatred by conservatives, Christians, and other troglodytes. But few people care about the sexual or gender orientation of their neighbors. Critics of the trans movement are rebelling against the forced redefinition of biology, the destruction of women’s sports by trans athletes, the hijacking of children’s education, the medical experiment of gender-transitioning children, and the intrusion of penises in women-only spaces like bathrooms, locker rooms, prisons, and shelters. Critics don’t want to oppress anyone; they want a return to civil society of peace and individual rights. To understand why the “trans rights” movement has caused such damage, it is necessary to ask three questions. What is a “transgendered” person? What are “rights”? What is produced by the actions the movement takes? What is a transgendered person? Already we’re in trouble. Many prominent intellectuals today can’t even answer the simpler question, What is a woman? This article uses a common definition: “Transgender describes people whose gender identity does not match their assigned gender at birth.” It is one of many gender categories being advanced by social justice. There are as many as eighty-one distinct categories, all of which are said to be fluid or constructed over time. Politically speaking, transgenderism and the other gender categories are a continuation of identity politics. This is a fairly standard definition of identity politics: “The politics of group-based movements claiming to represent the interests and identity of a particular group, rather than policy issues relating to all members of the community. The group identity may be based on ethnicity, class, religion, sex, sexuality, or other criteria” (emphasis added). It is an attempt to splinter society into groups and categories, all of which are at war with each other because their interests are said to conflict. What does this war look like? Consider a controversial example: gender transitioning. This is when a person uses reassignment therapy, hormone replacement, and sex reassignment surgery to change their birth sex. Few argue against the gender transition of adults who pay for the process themselves. But the trans movement demands the gender transitioning of children, often at taxpayer expense; that is, a tomboy might become a “boy” through methods that include irreversible surgery. There are at least two flash points here. One is the minimum age at which a person should transition. The World Professional Association for Transgender Health claims hormones can start at age fourteen and some surgeries at fifteen—in other words, at the height of a teenager’s sexual confusion. Recently, a licensed social worker at a children’s medical center in Austin, Texas, was reportedly recorded as saying the center provided gender modification to children as young as eight. On April 25, Senator Ted Cruz and Representative Chip Roy submitted a formal request to the center for information on how gender dysphoria is diagnosed, how federal dollars are spent in the process, and whether patients under eighteen underwent “experimental medical procedures.” The group war here is between a child’s right against physical abuse and trans activists’ demands for children’s access to transition. The other flash point is that transitions are often performed without parental consent or despite parental objections. The rights war here—trans activists are usurping traditional parental rights, and parents are outraged. The idea that the rights of one group conflict with those of another is perverse because it destroys the very basis of human rights. Human rights are universal because they are rooted in human nature. All human beings possess the same rights to the same degree. Rights are not based on secondary characteristics such as gender; they rest on a shared humanity. In other words, a trans person has the same rights to the same degree as every other person in society. No more, no less. The “rights” demanded by trans activists are actually entitlements or group privileges. This is made clear by the claim of historical oppression, which is used to justify many demands. What is really being claimed is victimhood, upon which their entitlements are based. For trans activists to sustain their victimhood status, however, those who oppose them must be cast as oppressors and endless haters. Conveniently, this characterization removes the need to deal with any argument the “haters” present, such as the need for real human rights. Again, this trans stance is a perversion. If the trans movement has been historically oppressed—and I do not argue against this—then the movement should value individual rights more than the average person. These freedoms are how an aggrieved individual rises to his or her feet. But trans activists do not want to be treated as equal individuals; they want to be a privileged group that imposes huge costs on the majority of society to their great benefit. Individual rights are an obstacle. Gender transition is one area in which civil society is being replaced with civil warfare, but there are many others: Trans “women” housed in women-only venues, like prisons and shelters, put biological women there at risk of sexual assault. Rapes are already happening. Trans curricula in American public schools indoctrinate children at the expense of teaching basic life skills, like math and literacy. A prominent doctor on Fox News warned, “First-year medical students [are] exposed to woke ‘sex and gender primer’ lesson.” This shifts the focus away from medical problems; it could also damage relationships with patients who do not share woke ideology or are not in a privileged group. The same is happening in law schools. The trans agenda violates constitutionally guaranteed freedom of speech in myriad ways, from forcing schools to use pronouns like “xe” and “hir” to shouting down speakers or violently attacking them. Draconian hate speech laws are destroying meaningful public discourse. A new bill passing through the Irish parliament, for example, outlaws communication or the possession of material that might incite hatred against “protected” classes, including gender. This is punishable by up to five years in prison. The demand to include trans athletes in women’s sports is destroying the entire field. Transitioned children who deeply regret transitioning are generally silenced or dismissed. One way detransitioners are dismissed is through studies and statistics into which little trust can be invested. An article in the Associated Press claims, “In a review of 27 studies” of transgender surgeries, “1 percent on average expressed regret.” If this is true, it is good news. But is it true? The incessant ideology pumped through academia and the airwaves is yet another cost to civil society. Academics, journalists, and so-called experts have earned the public’s scorn. Studies and research have become just one more front in this war of all against all. The media and authorities richly deserve this summary judgment from the public. Consider how they handle acts of violence. Every act of violence against a trans person seems to be widely reported and condemned, as it should be. But trans violence against biological women or other outsiders seems to be ignored or excused. Even the trans shooter in Nashville who killed three nine-year-old school children and three adults is protected by authorities who refuse to release the shooter’s manifesto. And media reports often expressed more concern about a backlash against trans people than about the dead children. SAVE Services, an agency that works to assure due process and fairness in schools, has an interesting page called “Stop the Wave of Transgender Violence” where many cases of trans violence are documented. In this environment, it is simply not possible to know what’s true about the levels of violence and against whom. I would end by asking, can a more general violence—a savage civil unrest—be far behind? I believe it is already here. Tyler Durden Mon, 05/29/2023 - 21:50.....»»

 KRE Group and National Real Estate Advisors, LLC (National), an investment manager developing and managing large-scale real estate projects, today announced the topping out of the third and final tower at Journal Squared, the visionary mixed-use development that has paved the way for a new era of investment, economic growth and vitality in... The post Third and Final Tower Tops Out at Journal Squared in Jersey City appeared first on Real Estate Weekly.  KRE Group and National Real Estate Advisors, LLC (National), an investment manager developing and managing large-scale real estate projects, today announced the topping out of the third and final tower at Journal Squared, the visionary mixed-use development that has paved the way for a new era of investment, economic growth and vitality in Jersey City’s historic Journal Square neighborhood. The construction milestone marks the 60-story building reaching its maximum height of 639 feet, bringing the full scope of the 2.3 million-square-foot residential and retail project closer to completion and cementing its status as a beacon of progress and renewal.  Expected to be completed in the first quarter of 2024, the new tower will add 598 rental residences and 18,000 square feet of amenities to Journal Squared. Already completed are two 53- and 70-story towers and a sweeping public plaza hosting community events and pedestrian connections.  Located at the intersection of Pavonia and Summit Avenues, with direct access to the Journal Square PATH Station, Journal Squared will ultimately comprise 1,840 rental residences and 36,000 square feet of retail and restaurant space. Principals of KRE Group and National joined AJD Construction and hundreds of building tradespeople at a recent topping out ceremony. “We are thrilled to celebrate the topping out of the final tower at Journal Squared, a project that has served as the linchpin in the revitalization of this important and well-connected neighborhood,” said Jonathan Kushner, President of KRE Group.  “This skyline-defining development has delivered iconic architectural design that can be viewed for miles from both New Jersey and New York City, modern residences and amenities, and public space that has sparked renewed interest in the area. We would not be able to achieve these results without the contributions from our talented team of architects, engineers, designers and building trades, and are excited to see the positive impact that Journal Squared will continue to have on the community.” “We are delighted to mark the completion of vertical construction of the third tower at Journal Squared and commend the collective efforts of everyone who contributed to this remarkable achievement,” affirmed Jeffrey Kanne, President and CEO, National. “National takes pride in fostering job opportunities in the communities where we operate and seeks to deliver favorable returns to our institutional clients. This iconic building is made possible by the unwavering commitment and expertise of our labor force, and we are immensely grateful for their contributions.” Designed by Hollwich  Kushner and Handel Architects, the third tower at Journal Squared is rising above the Jersey City skyline, providing dramatic views of the Hudson River, Statue of Liberty, Ellis Island, and downtown Manhattan.  The new building will feature 18,000 square feet of amenities that will bolster the nearly 100,000 square feet of indoor and outdoor amenities spread throughout the first two towers and shared by all residents. The new social spaces will showcase a creative theme highlighted by a performance lounge, karaoke room, and recording spaces.  Residents will also enjoy a makerspace area, co-working lounge, lobby café and a sky lounge.    The Marketing Directors, which directed successful leasing programs for the first two phases, will serve as the building’s exclusive marketing and leasing agent. For additional information on Journal Squared, visit www.journalsquared.com or call 201-210-5997. Follow @JournalSquared on Instagram. The post Third and Final Tower Tops Out at Journal Squared in Jersey City appeared first on Real Estate Weekly......»»

Hoffmann Architects + Engineers, a design firm specializing in the rehabilitation of building exteriors, has been awarded the Construction Institute’s Special Industry Recognition Award for outstanding contributions to the industry and community, specifically honoring the firm’s work advancing diversity, equity, and inclusion. The Construction Institute’s awards program recognizes professionals whose... The post The Construction Institute Honors Hoffmann Architects + Engineers with Special Industry Recognition Award appeared first on Real Estate Weekly. Hoffmann Architects + Engineers, a design firm specializing in the rehabilitation of building exteriors, has been awarded the Construction Institute’s Special Industry Recognition Award for outstanding contributions to the industry and community, specifically honoring the firm’s work advancing diversity, equity, and inclusion. The Construction Institute’s awards program recognizes professionals whose actionsstrengthen the Institute and the architecture, engineering, and construction fields. TheSpecial Industry Recognition Award honors a firm, organization, or institution, recognizingimpactful actions that enrich not only the AEC industry, but also the larger community. “Hoffmann Architects + Engineers is a trailblazer in promoting equity and inclusion in the design and construction industry,” said Nancy Greenwald, Executive Director of the Construction Institute. “The Board was impressed with the depth of Hoffmann’s commitment and actions to make the AEC industry more inclusive. Hoffmann’s many initiatives in this area evidence the kind of leadership we want to recognize. In addition, Hoffmann’s commitment to mentoring and supporting students, especially those underrepresented in our industry, is worthy of recognition through this award.” The Special Industry Recognition Award will be presented at the Construction Institute Annual Dinner on June 8, 2023 at Saint Clements Castle & Marina in Portland, Connecticut. Advocacy and Leadership An active member of the Construction Institute for 30 years, Hoffmann was recognized with the Institute’s Champions of Change Award in 2021 for commitment to advancing women in the design and construction field. That same year, the firm was honored with the inaugural Justice, Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion Award from the Connecticut chapter of the American Institute of Architects. In April 2023, John J. Hoffmann, FAIA, founder and Executive Chairman, received the Community Kindness Heroes Award from Liberty Bank/Hartford Yard Goats, which recognizes community members who are making a difference in the space of diversity, equity, and inclusion. In awarding Hoffmann the Special Industry Recognition Award, the Construction Institute noted the active role the firm’s Diversity and Inclusion Committee plays in the company culture, organizing team-building and service initiatives and hosting educational programs with DEI consultants. Moreover, the Institute recognized Hoffmann’s contributions to the community, particularly through the establishment of the Hoffmann Diversity Advancement Scholarship, in partnership with the Connecticut Architecture Foundation. Through this program, a promising student from an underrepresented racial or ethnic group will not onlyreceive funds toward tuition in an architecture or engineering program, but also the opportunity for a paid internship in one of Hoffmann’s offices. In addition to the scholarship, Hoffmann established a pioneering Student Loan Repayment Benefit to assist employees in paying down student debt, which disproportionately impacts people of color. Other initiatives include Habitat for Humanity build days, mentorship through the ACE Mentor Program, career fairs, a staff DEI book and film club, a diversity and inclusion blog, school supply/clothing/toy drives, community service at food banks/schools/community gardens, and all-staff DEI trainings. Hoffmann team members serve in leadership roles in advocacy organizations such as the National Organization of Minority Architects (NOMA), Women United, AIA Women in Architecture, and the Builders of Color Coalition. A Pipeline for the Future In a statement on social media about the award, the Construction Institute expressed their appreciation for the work Hoffmann Architects + Engineers has done to create possibilities for the next generation of AEC professionals. “The Construction Institute is pleased to award [Hoffmann] the Special Industry Award for their advocacy and leadership, in expanding opportunities for underrepresented groups in the industry, increasing representation, and fostering meaningful dialog around equity and belonging.” The post The Construction Institute Honors Hoffmann Architects + Engineers with Special Industry Recognition Award appeared first on Real Estate Weekly......»»

Gaslighting: The American People Are Trapped In A Textbook Abusive Relationship Authored by Daisy Luther via The Organic Prepper blog, Imagine this. A woman, for the sake of my story, is in a marriage with a partner who does not respect her. He insults her regularly, belittles her efforts to improve herself or her situation, and minimizes her feelings. In fact, when she tries to stand up for herself, things get even worse. The partner calls into question her memories of the event. He dismisses the way things made her feel, calling the emotions “ridiculous” or “stupid.” He convinces her she’s overreacting and that he was only trying to do what was best for her. When she brings something up, he completely rewrites the event, causing her to doubt what actually happened because she’s in a vulnerable state due to the constant abuse. In a situation like this, the abused partner often feels powerless, confused, and unable to leave the situation. They are at a disadvantage because they’ve been influenced to doubt their own reality. This leaves them trapped deeper and deeper in the abusive scenario. They feel unable to escape because they’re really not sure what actually happened. Were they blowing things out of proportion? Are they, in fact, stupid, forgetful, and inept? Abusive relationships follow a pattern. There’s a period of breaking the victim down, isolating them from their support systems, and making them dependent on the abuser. Then, the abused partner is maneuvered into the belief that she can’t get by on her own. This master manipulation is how people become trapped in abusive relationships. And, as I’m about to show, not all abusive relationships are one-on-one romantic relationships. What is gaslighting? Medical News Today defines gaslighting. Gaslighting is a form of psychological abuse in which a person or group causes someone to question their own sanity, memories, or perception of reality. People who experience gaslighting may feel confused, anxious, or as though they cannot trust themselves. The term “gaslighting” comes from the 1944 classic film (and before that, the play), Gaslight. In the story, a husband tries to make his wife believe she is suffering from a mental illness. Starring Ingrid Bergman and Charles Boyer, it’s well worth a watch. Gaslighting is a form of narcissistic abuse. For a quick refresher on the definition of a narcissist and the techniques they use, go here. Forbes offers the following signs you are being gaslit: Signs to watch for include: The “Twilight Zone” effect. Victims of gaslighting often report feeling like a situation is surreal—like it’s happening on a different plane from the rest of their life. Language describing you or your behavior as crazy, irrational or overemotional. “When I asked women about their partners’ abusive tactics, they often described being called a ‘crazy bitch,’” Sweet writes in “The Sociology of Gaslighting” in American Sociological Review. “This phrase came up so frequently, I began to think of it as the literal discourse of gaslighting.” Being told you’re exaggerating. Feeling confused and powerless after leaving an interaction. Isolation. Many gaslighters make efforts to isolate victims from friends, family and other support networks. Tone policing. A gaslighter may criticize your tone of voice if you challenge them on something. This is a tactic used to flip the script and make you feel that you’re the one to blame, rather than your abuser. A cycle of warm-cold behavior. To throw a victim off balance, a gaslighter may alternate between verbal abuse and praise, often even in the same conversation. Gaslighting is a deliberate attempt to provoke self-doubt, confusion, and dependence. How does someone gaslight another person? Again, let’s look to the experts. Medical News Today provides these examples of how gaslighting might take place: Countering: This is when someone questions a person’s memory. They may say things such as, “Are you sure about that? You have a bad memory,” or “I think you are forgetting what really happened.” Withholding: This involves someone pretending they do not understand the conversation, or refusing to listen, to make a person doubt themselves. For example, they might say, “Now you are just confusing me,” or “I do not know what you are talking about.” Trivializing: This occurs when a person belittles or disregards how someone else feels. They may accuse them of being “too sensitive” or overreacting in response to valid and reasonable concerns. Denial: Denial involves a person refusing to take responsibility for their actions. They may do this by pretending to forget what happened, saying they did not do it, or blaming their behavior on someone else. Diverting: With this technique, a person changes the focus of a discussion by questioning the other person’s credibility. For example, they might say, “That is just nonsense you read on the internet. It is not real.” Stereotyping: An article in the American Sociological Review says that a person may intentionally use negative stereotypes about someone’s gender, race, ethnicity, sexuality, nationality, or age to gaslight them. For example, they may say that no one will believe a woman if she reports abuse. After a period of time, this emotional barrage results in the target of the gaslighting suffering from confusion, doubt, and self-blame. feeling uncertain of their perceptions frequently questioning if they are remembering things correctly believing they are irrational or “crazy” feeling incompetent, unconfident, or worthless constantly apologizing to the abusive person defending the abusive person’s behavior to others becoming withdrawn or isolated from others The Forbes article offered these specific examples of gaslighting in romantic relationships. “Ebony’s partner would steal her money and then tell her she was ‘careless’ about finances and had lost it herself.” “Adriana’s boyfriend hid her phone and then told her she had lost it, in a dual effort to confuse her and prevent her from communicating with others.” “Jenn described her ex-boyfriend as a ‘chameleon’ who made up small stories to confuse her, like lying about what color shirt he had worn the day before to make her feel disoriented.” “Emily described her ex-husband stealing her keys so she could not leave the house and then insisting she had lost them ‘again.’” But if you think this phenomenon is limited to women being abused by their husbands or boyfriends, you’d be wrong. Gaslighting doesn’t just happen in romantic relationships. Gaslighting is a complicated thing. While it’s common in abusive romantic relationships, it can also occur in unhealthy parent-child relationships, sibling relationships, or even workplaces. But that’s not all. It can also occur on a much broader scale. Racial gaslighting According to an article in Politics, Group, and Identities, racial gaslighting is when people apply gaslighting techniques to an entire racial or ethnic group in order to discredit them. For example, a person or institution may say that an activist campaigning for change is irrational or “crazy.” Political gaslighting Political gaslighting occurs when a political group or figure lies or manipulates information to control people, according to an article in the Buffalo Law Review. For example, the person or political party may downplay things their administration has done, discredit their opponents, imply that critics are mentally unstable, or use controversy to deflect attention away from their mistakes. Institutional gaslighting Institutional gaslighting occurs within a company, organization, or institution, such as a hospital. For example, they may portray whistleblowers who report problems as irrational or incompetent, or deceive employees about their rights. This often occurs to cover up a mistake that could result in the person who erred facing punitive consequences or to keep people “in their place.” It’s a control mechanism, pure and simple. Have we been gaslit by our own government? I don’t think it’s farfetched to say that we, the people of the United States of America, have been gaslit. Does this sound familiar? Lockdowns that keep you away from friends and loved ones? Losing your income and becoming dependent on handouts doled out by the government? Being censored and mocked when you say anything that is not in line with the official narrative? Being treated like a crazy conspiracy theorist who should be punished because of the harm you’re causing to others if you refuse to go along? When you look at it this way, it feels like the entire US government and media have colluded to abuse the people. Many of the Covid-related “truths” that were promoted by the government and the media that we were not allowed to dispute have now been proven to be false. Stories we couldn’t question about the origins of the pandemic have been proven false. In another incident of broad-scale gaslighting unrelated to the pandemic, a lot of evidence has been produced that shows the Biden family may have received money from influence-peddling, but the media tells us not to believe it. And like good little victims, it seems like a hefty portion of the country is refusing to believe the evidence, instead believing in the good intentions of their abusers. They’ve been gaslit, brainwashed, and are unable to break free of the manipulation. And it’s still going on. Recently Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch wrote a scathing opinion of the US government’s handling of the Covid pandemic, saying that we “have experienced the greatest intrusions on civil liberties in the peacetime history of this country.” “Executive officials across the country issued emergency decrees on a breathtaking scale. Governors and local leaders imposed lockdown orders forcing people to remain in their homes. They shuttered businesses and schools, public and private. They closed churches even as they allowed casinos and other favored businesses to carry on. They threatened violators not just with civil penalties but with criminal sanctions too. They surveilled church parking lots, recorded license plates, and issued notices warning that attendance at even outdoor services satisfying all state social-distancing and hygiene requirements could amount to criminal conduct. They divided cities and neighborhoods into color-coded zones, forced individuals to fight for their freedoms in court on emergency timetables, and then changed their color-coded schemes when defeat in court seemed imminent,” he said. At the federal level, he highlighted not only immigration decrees but vaccine mandates, the regulation of landlord-tenant relations and pressure on social media companies to suppress “misinformation.” The gaslighting blowback was immediate, with breathlessly outraged headlines. Slate eloquently opined, “Neil Gorsuch’s List of “Civil Liberties Intrusions” Is, Uh, Missing a Few Things.” making sure to throw plenty of insulting talking points into their introductory paragraph in their attempt to liken a Supreme Court Justice who was educated at Harvard Law, Oxford, Georgetown, and Columbia, to an ignorant relative one merely tolerates. And they insinuated he was a racist. Gorsuch has long railed against such policies, and his opinions have taken on an increasingly shrill tone, like the Fox News–poisoned uncle who hectors you about the plandemic in 3,000-word Facebook comments. The justice’s rant in Arizona v. Mayorkas, however, hits a new low, moving beyond the usual yada-yada grievance parade to issue a thesis statement of sorts… …As Vox’s Ian Millhiser quickly pointed out, this sweeping claim leaves out two “intrusions on civil liberties” that any person with a basic grasp of history and sanity would surely rank as worse than pandemic policies: slavery and Jim Crow. An opinion piece published in the NY Times gasped, “Neil Gorsuch Has Given Himself Away,” made it seem as if the Justice was belittling every other civil rights mishap in the history of America while also blithely disregarding the folks who died during the pandemic. The New Republic condescendingly liberal-splained to the rest of us “What Neil Gorsuch Got Wrong About the Pandemic,” stating that “The justice’s vision of the judiciary’s role in public health may be more dangerous than any Covid-era restriction.” The site Above The Law literally said Gorsuch was stupid in the piece, “For An Originalist, Gorsuch Is Clearly Slacking On His Definitions And Their Historical Meanings.” The subheading reads, “Is what he said stupid? Yes. But let’s be technical here.” Law and Crime website also played the race card and did so right in the headline: Neil Gorsuch implies COVID restrictions were worse than slavery and Jim Crow, and the internet noticed. Let’s look at that definition of political gaslighting again… For example, the person or political party may downplay things their administration has done, discredit their opponents, imply that critics are mentally unstable, or use controversy to deflect attention away from their mistakes. Oof. If that textbook case of gaslighting isn’t embarrassing, it should be.  Then again, narcissists are rarely embarrassed. The gaslighting will escalate. Another thing about narcissists: they just get angry when they’re called out. They will respond by gaslighting you harder or seeking to “ruin” you. (source) They’ll punish you with a loss of “privileges,” money, material goods, and freedom. We’ve watched it happen again and again in our cancel culture media. Some of us have been unfortunate enough to have personal relationships with narcissists and learned this the hard way. The only way to end narcissistic abuse and gaslighting is to recognize it and remove yourself from the situation as much as you can. Obviously, when it’s our entire government and society, that becomes complicated. You may be stuck with just recognizing it. But that in itself gives you a certain amount of freedom and personal power. It helps you get off the hamster wheel, and you begin to spot the manipulations more easily. One thing we can be sure of is that this will escalate as more and more people say, “No, that’s not what happened.” This is something we can expect, and in some small way, maybe we can take comfort in the response. Perhaps we can smile to ourselves because we know those who were trying to manipulate us all are on the defensive. Tyler Durden Mon, 05/29/2023 - 18:20.....»»

Since Russia seized Crimea in 2014, British fighters have scrambled several times to intercept Russian bombers off of Ireland's west coast. A Russian Tu-95 strategic bomber over the Kremlin in Moscow in May 2015.ALEXANDER NEMENOV/AFP via Getty Images Since the 1950s, Ireland has allowed British jets to intercept Russian aircraft near Irish airspace. Ireland's west coast overlooks North Atlantic waters that the Russians and NATO keep a close eye on. The deal allowing the intercepts has long been secret, and Irish lawmakers now want more details. If Russian bombers fly near Ireland, they may be intercepted by fighter jets — but not Irish ones.Under a secret agreement between the UK and the Republic of Ireland that dates back more than 70 years, Britain will defend Irish airspace from intrusions by Russian aircraft and other aerial threats.The deal has been amended by Irish leaders over the years, but it has also been kept secret due to Irish memories of British rule and tensions over Northern Ireland, which remained a part of the UK after Ireland was partitioned in 1921.The deal now faces rising backlash, however. An Irish senator filed a lawsuit last year arguing the deal is unconstitutional. The growing power of Sinn Fein — an Irish republican party historically opposed to British influence — could also affect the future of the agreement.On the other hand, rising tensions between the West and Russia could jeopardize Ireland's traditional neutrality and challenge its meager military, which is primarily oriented for UN peacekeeping missions.There is "growing alarm among the Irish public and its European governmental neighbors at Ireland's woefully neglected defense capabilities," Michael Mulqueen, a professor at Britain's University of Central Lancashire and an expert on Irish national security, told Insider.Irish Air Corps PC-9s fly by an Irish navy patrol vessel in August 2006.Irish Defense ForcesWith barely any warplanes and few anti-aircraft weapons, Ireland has little ability to defend its airspace, whether from Russian bombers, hijacked airliners, or even drug smugglers in private jets. According to the Irish Times, Ireland is probably more dependent on Britain for air defense now "than at any point since the first agreement in 1952."Since 2014, when Russia seized Crimea and set off a new period of tensions, British fighters have scrambled several times to intercept Russian bombers off Ireland's west coast. Russia also conducted live-fire naval exercises off the Irish coast in 2022, despite Irish protests.Ireland has also been lumped in to the Kremlin's threats to the UK: In 2022, Moscow threatened to annihilate the British Isles with a nuclear-induced tsunami, releasing an animated video that showed the bomb detonating off the coast of Northern Ireland.The ire over the deal reflects Britain and Ireland's contentious relationship. There are bitter memories on both sides but also a long history of exchange. Despite Ireland's neutrality in World War II, an estimated 80,000 of its citizens joined the British military, and its government allowed British anti-submarine aircraft to fly over Irish territory to hunt German U-boats.The current Anglo-Irish defense agreement is rooted in mutual practicality. Ireland occupies a strategic position on the UK's western flank and adjacent to the Greenland-Iceland-UK Gap, a vital maritime chokepoint that the British and other NATO militaries are keen to monitor.During the Cold War, British aerial protection spared a small nation — and a poor one in the 1950s — the need to fund expensive air defenses. Beefing those defenses up now would essentially mean starting from scratch.Irish soldiers test-fire RBS-70 short-range air-defense missiles in September 2019.SaabThe Irish military has a few short-range RBS-70 surface-to-air missiles that can reach 16,000 feet, backed by Giraffe search radars. When President Joe Biden visited Ireland in April, there were fears he would be vulnerable because the Giraffes weren't working.In 1998, the Irish Air Corps replaced its only jets — a handful of old French-made Fouga Magister trainers — with eight PC-9M Pilatus propeller-driven trainers that have "speed, height, and agility capabilities broadly equivalent with that of British Hurricanes and Spitfires of World War II," Mulqueen said.The PC-9M has a top speed of 368 mph and a maximum altitude of 25,000 feet and is armed with two .50-caliber machine guns, meaning it's unlikely to catch let alone shoot down a Russian Tu-160 bomber, which can reach speeds of Mach 1.6, or about 1,228 mph, and altitudes of 60,000 feet.A retired Air Corps pilot told the Irish Times that the PC-9M's effective altitude was only about 10,000 feet, making it "very capable of intercepting something slow-moving" like a Cessna but not much else.In 2022, an Irish government commission recommended purchasing 24 jet fighters, but with a 2022 defense budget of just $1.3 billion for a military of only 8,200 active-duty personnel that purchase doesn't seem likely.The issue is complicated by uncertainty about whether British fighters could legally bring down an aircraft in Irish airspace. Mulqueen said that official Irish and British statements suggest British pilots could intercept intruders but not actually shoot at them.A British Typhoon jet intercepts a Russian Tu-95 bomber off of northwest Scotland in March 2020.Royal Air Force"Consequently, actors seeking to attack the UK have a coherent rationale to devise a secondary list of high-value targets over Ireland, so that they can mitigate the risks of RAF interception over Irish airspace," Mulqueen told Insider.Sinn Fein — Ireland's main opposition party — has only said that it wants more information about the defense agreement before deciding whether to oppose it. Should Sinn Fein take power in the future, it would be responsible for Ireland's security, including its air defense.Ultimately, Ireland, an EU member-state, will have to decide whether to participate in European defense. Given the state of the Irish military, that could mean even more cooperation with the UK."It wasn't that long ago that our neighbor was oppressing us," defense correspondent Sean O'Riordan wrote in a recent opinion piece for the Irish Examiner. "Now it's our protector, because we took our eye off the ball and effectively surrendered our neutrality by penny-pinching on our own defense."Michael Peck is a defense writer whose work has appeared in Forbes, Defense News, Foreign Policy magazine, and other publications. He holds a master's in political science. Follow him on Twitter and LinkedIn.Read the original article on Business Insider.....»»

The beluga whale first appeared in Norway in 2019 wearing a harness that had the words "Equipment St. Petersburg," leading to the Russian spy theory. A white beluga whale wearing a harness is seen off the coast of northern Norway, April 29, 2019.Jorgen Ree Wiig/Sea Surveillance Service/Handout/NTB Scanpix via REUTERS A beluga whale wearing a harness that read "Equipment St. Petersburg" appeared in Norway in 2019. Officials said they believed the trained whale was a Russian navy asset that may have escaped. On Sunday, the whale appeared in Sweden, moving further away from its natural habitat. A friendly beluga whale that was first observed wearing a harness four years ago and is believed to be a Russian spy reappeared in Sweden this week, puzzling scientists.The beluga first popped up off the coast of Norway in 2019, spotted by fishermen who noticed the whale was wearing a harness equipped with camera mounts. A fisherman alerted Norway's Directorate of Fisheries, who said a clip on the whale's harness read "Equipment St. Petersburg" — indicating it may have come from Russia."The whale seemed playful but our instincts said that it was also asking for help to get out of the harness," Jorgen Ree Wiig, a marine biologist told CNN at the time. He said officials believed the whale had come from Russia and was trained by the Russian navy, which has "been known to train belugas to conduct military operations before."Biologists said belugas in the past had been used to guard naval bases, help divers, and find lost equipment. They also said in the Cold War Russia used beluga whales to sniff out mines and torpedoes.Researchers said it was clear the whale had been trained, noting it was approaching boats, raising its head above water, and opening its mouth, suggesting it was waiting to be fed as a reward. It was unclear how the whale ended up in Norway, but one theory was that it somehow escaped its marine pen.The whale was nicknamed Hvaldimir, a play on the Norwegian word for "whale" and Russian President Vladimir Putin's first name, and the harness was removed by Norwegian officials. Hvaldimir also made headlines for retrieving and returning the phone of a woman who had dropped it in the water.After spending several years traveling south down Norway's coast, the beluga whale sped up to quickly cover the southern half of the coastline and appeared off the southwest coast of Sweden on Sunday, The Guardian reported."We don't know why he has sped up so fast right now," Sebastian Strand, a marine biologist with OneWhale, told the outlet. He also noted it was puzzling because the whale was traveling "very quickly away from his natural environment."The closest beluga whales live farther north, in the Arctic Ocean and the frigid waters north of Norway and around Greenland."It could be hormones driving him to find a mate. Or it could be loneliness, as belugas are a very social species – it could be that he's searching for other beluga whales," Strand said.Russia has never addressed reports that the beluga could be a Kremlin spy.Read the original article on Business Insider.....»»

The Great Silence Authored by Jeffrey Tucker via DailyReckoning.com, The kids are two years behind in education. Inflation still rages. White-collar jobs are disappearing thanks to the reversal of Fed policy. Household finances are a wreck. The medical industry is in upheaval. Trust in government has never been lower. Major media too is discredited. Young people are dying at levels never seen. Populations are still on the move from lockdown states to where it is less likely. Surveillance is everywhere, and so is political persecution. Public health is in a disastrous state, with substance abuse and obesity all at new records. Each one of these, and many more besides, are continued fallout from the pandemic response that began in March 2020. And yet here we are 38 months later and we still don’t have honesty or truth about the experience. Officials have resigned, politicians have tumbled out of office and lifetime civil servants have departed their posts, but they don’t cite the great disaster as the excuse. There is always some other reason. This is the period of the great silence. We’ve all noticed it. The stories in the press recounting all the above are conventionally scrupulous about naming the pandemic response much less naming the individuals responsible. Maybe there is a Freudian explanation: things so obviously terrible and in such recent memory are too painful to mentally process, so we just pretend it didn’t happen. Plenty in power like this solution. Everyone in a position of influence knows the rules. Don’t talk about the lockdowns. Don’t talk about the mask mandates. Don’t talk about the vaccine mandates that proved useless and damaging and led to millions of professional upheavals. Don’t talk about the economics of it. Don’t talk about collateral damage. When the topic comes up, just say, “We did the best we could with the knowledge we had,” even if that is an obvious lie. Above all, don’t seek justice. Where’s the National Commission? There is this document intended to be the “Warren Commission” of COVID slapped together by the old gangsters who advocated for lockdowns. It is called Lessons from the Covid War: An Investigative Report. The authors are people like Michael Callahan (Massachusetts General Hospital), Gary Edson (former deputy national security adviser), Richard Hatchett (Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations), Marc Lipsitch (Harvard University), Carter Mecher (Veterans Affairs), and Rajeev Venkayya (former Gates Foundation and now Aerium Therapeutics). If you have been following this disaster, you might know at least some of the names. Years before 2020, they were pushing lockdowns as the solution for infectious disease. Some claim credit for having invented pandemic planning. The years 2020–2022 were their experiment. As it was ongoing, they became media stars, pushing compliance, condemning as disinformation and misinformation anyone who disagreed with them. They were at the heart of the coup d’etat, as engineers or champions of it, that replaced representative democracy with quasi-martial law run by the administrative state. The first sentence of the report is a complaint: We were supposed to lay the groundwork for a National COVID Commission. The COVID Crisis Group formed at the beginning of 2021, one year into the pandemic. We thought the U.S. government would soon create or facilitate a commission to study the biggest global crisis so far in the 21st century. It has not. That is true. There is no National COVID Commission. You know why? Because they could never get away with it, not with legions of experts and passionate citizens who wouldn’t tolerate a coverup. The public anger is too intense. Lawmakers would be flooded with emails, phone calls and daily expressions of disgust. It would be a disaster. An honest commission would demand answers that the ruling class is not prepared to give. An “official commission” perpetuating a bunch of baloney would be dead on arrival. This by itself is a huge victory and a tribute to indefatigable critics. ‘We Didn’t Crack Down Hard Enough’ Instead, the “COVID Crisis Group” met with funding from the Rockefeller and Charles Koch foundations and slapped together this report. Despite being celebrated as definitive by The New York Times and The Washington Post, it has mostly had no impact at all. It is far from obtaining the status of being some kind of canonical assessment. It reads like they were on deadline, fed up, typed lots of words and called it a day. Of course it is whitewash. It begins with a bang to denounce the U.S. policy response: “Our institutions did not meet the moment. They did not have adequate practical strategies or capabilities to prevent, to warn, to defend their communities or fight back in a coordinated way, in the United States and globally.” Mistakes were made, as they say. Of course the upshot of this kvetching is not to criticize what Justice Neil Gorsuch calls “the greatest intrusions on civil liberties in the peacetime history of this country.” They hardly mention those at all. Instead they conclude that the U.S. should have surveilled more, locked down sooner (“We believe that on Jan. 28 the U.S. government should have started mobilizing for a possible COVID war”), directed more funds to this agency rather than that and centralized the response so that rogue states like South Dakota and Florida could not evade centralized authoritarian diktats next time. The authors propose a series of lessons that are anodyne, bloodless and carefully crafted to be more-or-less true but ultimately structured to minimize the sheer radicalism and destructiveness of what they favored and did. The lessons are clichés such as we need “not just goals but road maps,” and next time we need more “situation awareness.” There is no new information in the book that I could find, unless something is hidden therein that escaped my notice. It’s more interesting for what it does not say. Some words that never appear in the text: Sweden, ivermectin, ventilators, remdesivir and myocarditis. ‘Look, Lockdowns and Mandates Worked!’ Perhaps this gives you a sense of the book and its mission. And on matters of the lockdowns, readers are forced to endure claims such as “all of New England — Massachusetts, the city of Boston, Connecticut, Rhode Island, New Hampshire, Vermont, and Maine — seem to us to have done relatively well, including their ad hoc crisis management setups.” Oh really! Boston destroyed thousands of small businesses and imposed vaccine passports, closed churches, persecuted people for holding house parties, and imposed travel restrictions. There is a reason why the authors don’t elaborate on such preposterous claims. They are simply unsustainable. One amusing feature seems to me to be a foreshadowing of what is coming. They throw Anthony Fauci under the bus with sniffy dismissals: “Fauci was vulnerable to some attacks because he tried to cover the waterfront in briefing the press and public, stretching beyond his core expertise—and sometimes it showed.” Ooooh, burn! “Trump Was a Comorbidity” This is very likely the future. At some point, Fauci will be scapegoated for the whole disaster. He will be assigned to take the fall for what is really the failure of the national security arm of the administrative bureaucracy, which in fact took charge of all rule-making from March 13, 2020, onward, along with their intellectual cheerleaders. The public health people were just there to provide cover. Curious about the political bias of the book? It is summed up in this passing statement: “Trump was a comorbidity.” Oh how highbrow! How clever! No political bias here! Maybe this book by the Covid Crisis Group hopes to be the last word. This will never happen. We are only at the beginning of this. As the economic, social, cultural, and political problems mount, it will become impossible to ignore the incredibly obvious. The masters of lockdowns are influential and well-connected but not even they can invent their own reality. Tyler Durden Mon, 05/29/2023 - 16:00.....»»

Global Airlines was founded in July 2021 by travel guru James Asquith, who is also the youngest person to visit every country in the world. Global Airlines purchased an Airbus A380 from German investment first Doric Aviation.Global Airlines European startup carrier Global Airlines has purchased its first plane — the Airbus A380 superjumbo. The carrier plans to equip the plane with "approximately" 471 seats and fly between the US and UK. The plan differs from many other carriers that have been actively retiring the A380 due to high costs. A little-known startup carrier called Global Airlines has bought its first plane — the mammoth Airbus A380.The carrier announced the purchase on Monday, revealing the jet was acquired from German investment firm Doric Aviation. According to Doric, it has 14 A380s in its roster — 13 of which are flying with Emirates and one that is currently being remarketed, meaning it is going to a new operator."Contrary to popular belief, the A380 is widely recognised as the best way to fly, offering unparalleled comfort and features that lead to a unique travel experience," the firm said.While it is more common for new carriers to lease jets at the start of business, Global noted that this was a full purchase."Acquiring our aircraft rather than leasing showcases our commitment to financial security and resilience from day one," Global Airlines CEO and founder James Asquith said in a press release.Asquith is known as the youngest person to ever travel to every sovereign country on the planet and runs the house-swap platform Holiday Swap.With Holiday Swap as the parent company, Asquith's aviation venture started in July 2021 and has earned "significant backing from investors."His plan is to acquire three more A380s "in the coming months" and fly them between the UK and the US starting next spring. The airline has also talked about introducing a "gamer cabin" onboard, but it is not clear if that will ever come to fruition.While the purchase price for the jet — which will be fit with approximately 471 seats across economy, business, and first class — has not been disclosed, Global said it is "understood to be in the eight-figure range.""The purchase of our first aircraft demonstrates that we are well on the way to launching Global," Asquith said. "The next step is to overhaul and refit the aircraft to our high specification, providing our customers with the best experience in the sky today."The idea of used the double-decker plane over more efficient jets like the Boeing 787 is because Global believes the A380 is "the world's most comfortable aircraft" and will be the best option for passengers on long-haul flights."Combining the most advanced aviation technology and an inspired cabin design, it is celebrated for its outstanding quality in every aspect," the company said on its website. "Leading the industry in standards for innovation, experience and efficiency, it is adored by passengers, pilots and crew alike."However, this is not the same sentiment many other carriers have had over the years, especially during the pandemic.With the plane's four engines and immense size, carriers like Air France, Thai Airways, and Malaysia Airways have retired the jet due to its high operating costs. Production of the jet also ended in 2021 due to the lower-than-expected order rate, with Emirates being the only carrier to truly invest in the plane with over 120 purchased. A few other carriers like Singapore Airlines and Lufthansa have also continued flying the A380 post-pandemic."In the end, you have to face facts, and we could see that we were building A380s faster than people were ordering them," Airbus head of business analysis and market forecast Bob Lange said in 2019.Read the original article on Business Insider.....»»

Defining generations helps researchers investigate how history impacts the ways people see the world. Generation Z was shaped by technology. Generation Z is known for its usage of technology like social media.Daniel de la Hoz/Getty Images In 2019, Pew Research Foundation officially established a generation after millennials, Generation Z. Generation Z includes anyone born between 1997 and 2012.  Defining generations helps researchers see how coming of age during certain historical events and technological changes influence the way people see the world. The only generation officially designated by the US Census Bureau is the baby-boomer generation.Yet that hasn't stopped demographers from classifying other cohorts into ranges of birth years. Often this is done to better understand how formative experiences such as world events or technological changes shape the ways people see and interact with the world.The newest addition to today's workforce is Generation Z, born between 1997 and 2012. The generation was established in 2019 by Pew Research Center, which determined that events like the September 11 terrorist attacks and internet access created enough differences between Generation Z and Millennials, born between 1981 and 1996, to constitute a new cohort. Pew president Michael Dimock wrote that generations are better viewed as a tool for understanding how perspectives and views change — not as strict categories that define who people are.Older millennials and younger millennials probably feel differently about a number of topics, but most were between ages 5 and 20 when the 9/11 terrorist attacks happened. That means that those attacks and their aftermath loomed large as those people have become adults. Meanwhile, most of Generation Z doesn't remember the event at all. The economic recession of 2008 — which came at a time when many millennials were entering the workforce — played a significant role too. At the same time, Generation Z's only experience with the workforce was through their parents' eyes. Technology — like the founding of Facebook in 2004, Instagram in 2010, and TikTok in 2016 — has been a constant and regular force even before some members of Gen Z were born. This access to social and other digital platforms has allowed Gen Z to "see the physical and digital worlds as a seamless continuum of experiences that blend offline and online information for entertainment, commerce, and communication," according to Insider Intelligence.Here's how Pew officially categorizes the generations by birth year at this point in time:Silent: 1928-1945Boomers: 1946-1964Generation X: 1965-1980Millennials: 1981-1996Generation Z: 1997-2012*Generation Alpha has not yet been officially categorized as a generation, but is known as those born after 2012.The number of birth years that a generation includes can vary. Millennials span a 16-year range, according to Pew. The Gen X cohort was another 16-year group, but the boomers had a 19-year range and the silent generation an 18-year range.Picking a cutoff year is complicated, of course, as groups change over time."[T]he differences within generations can be just as great as the differences across generations, and the youngest and oldest within a commonly defined cohort may feel more in common with bordering generations than the one to which they are assigned," Dimock wrote.Yet establishing a cutoff point helps researchers investigate how a group has been shaped by similar experiences.Different upbringings have contributed to the varying values and social expectations of the different cohorts. For instance, the workplace has been riddled with Gen Z's recent push for work-life balance and emphasis on mental health, which was ignited at the same time that the oldest Gen Zers entered the workforce amid the global pandemic. Additionally, hobbies-turned-careers such as "influencing" or content creating did not exist as Millennials entered the workforce, yet are highly sought-after opportunities for the youngest generations today."We look forward to spending the next few years studying this generation as it enters adulthood," Dimock wrote of Generation Z, adding that it's always possible that new data could give researchers a reason to reevaluate these generational boundaries.  "All the while, we'll keep in mind that generations are a lens through which to understand societal change, rather than a label with which to oversimplify differences between groups."Read the original article on Business Insider.....»»

The U.S. has an extensive global military network that by far is the world’s largest. The country operates about 750 bases in 80 countries abroad. About 60% of these facilities are larger than 10 acres or worth more than $10 million, and they typically house at least 200 military personnel. Smaller bases, known as “Lily […] The U.S. has an extensive global military network that by far is the world’s largest. The country operates about 750 bases in 80 countries abroad. About 60% of these facilities are larger than 10 acres or worth more than $10 million, and they typically house at least 200 military personnel. Smaller bases, known as “Lily Pads,” make up the rest. To find the countries where America has the most soldiers, 24/7 Wall St. reviewed Aljazeera’s report: Infographic: US military presence around the world. Countries, including one U.S. territory, are ranked by the number of troops, with data as of July 2021. Total bases per country also comes from the report. The number of troops in Iraq were adjusted to reflect more recent information. According to data from the Conflict Management and Peace Science Journal, the U.S. had about 173,000 troops deployed in 159 counties as of 2020. But most of these American active service members — about 160,000 of them — are located in 14 countries and Guam, an unincorporated Pacific island territory of the United States. (While the U.S. military is large, it is not the largest. This is the country with the largest military.) Interestingly, the two countries with the largest U.S. overseas military presences are the ones that initiated World War II: Germany and Japan. What began as U.S. military occupations of these two defeated Axis states in the years after the war has evolved into cooperative relationships between close military, political, and economic allies. The numbers of U.S. troops in any of these bases vary as active service members are regularly redeployed, but these estimates offer a snapshot of where the U.S. prioritizes its global security operations. For example, U.S. troops numbers have been edging downward in Germany but increasing in Italy, which is closer to the Middle East and North Africa. This reflects the shifting focus of the U.S.’s global security operations since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks and the ongoing global war on terror. (This is the year the most americans died in war.) Of the top 15 largest U.S. overseas military presences, seven are located in countries of the North American Treaty Organization; four are in the Asia-Pacific region, including the unincorporated U.S. territory of Guam; three are in the Middle East; and one is located in the Caribbean: the Guantanamo Bay Naval Base in Cuba, America’s oldest overseas naval base. Here is where America has the most soldiers. Sponsored: Tips for Investing A financial advisor can help you understand the advantages and disadvantages of investment properties. Finding a qualified financial advisor doesn’t have to be hard. SmartAsset’s free tool matches you with up to three financial advisors who serve your area, and you can interview your advisor matches at no cost to decide which one is right for you. If you’re ready to find an advisor who can help you achieve your financial goals, get started now. Investing in real estate can diversify your portfolio. But expanding your horizons may add additional costs. If you’re an investor looking to minimize expenses, consider checking out online brokerages. They often offer low investment fees, helping you maximize your profit......»»

As former British Prime Minister Winston Churchill famously said, “democracy is the worst form of government — except for all the others that have been tried.” Since the end of World War II, the democratic societies of the world have thrived, benefitting from relative peace, security, and economic prosperity. But while democracy may be the […] As former British Prime Minister Winston Churchill famously said, “democracy is the worst form of government — except for all the others that have been tried.” Since the end of World War II, the democratic societies of the world have thrived, benefitting from relative peace, security, and economic prosperity. But while democracy may be the most effective means of governance yet conceived, it is also among the most challenging. (Here is a look at the happiest countries in the world.) In a country like the United States, democracy means weighing the individual values and priorities of more than 330 million people. As such, leaders of democratic societies are never able to please everyone. Gallup polling data shows that since John F. Kennedy, no U.S. president has had an average approval rating above 70% – and most had approval ratings below 50%. While rulers of many authoritarian regimes can maintain power through concentrating powers and suppressing anti-regime activities, democratic leaders of the world regularly have to answer to voters and must maintain some level of public support to effectively govern. And according to a recent poll conducted by online public opinion research company Morning Consult, some democratic leaders are much better at this than others.  Using Morning Consult data for 22 democratic countries, 24/7 Wall St. identified the most disliked leaders in the world. Leaders are ranked by the share of their constituency who disapprove of the job they are doing and listed from the most popular to the least. It is important to note that the pole is updated weekly and these are the ratings as for the period of Jan. 11 through Jan. 17, 2023. Population figures came from the World Bank and are for 2021. The nearly two dozen countries on this list span five continents and have populations ranging in size from about 5 million to 1.4 billion. Among the leaders of these countries, disapproval ratings range from as low as 20% to nearly 70%.  According to Morning Consult’s polling, U.S. President Joe Biden has a 52% disapproval rating, the 13th highest on this list. Rishi Sunak, the newly minted British prime minister, is slightly less popular among voters in the U.K., with a disapproval rating of 56%. Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau ranks in between the U.S. and Great Britain with a disapproval rating of 54%.  Of the five leaders on this list with the highest disapproval ratings, two are leaders of Asian countries and the remaining three head European countries. (Here is a look at the countries the U.S. government doesn’t want you to go to.) Click here to see the most disliked world leaders in 2023. Sponsored: Find a Qualified Financial Advisor Finding a qualified financial advisor doesn’t have to be hard. SmartAsset’s free tool matches you with up to 3 fiduciary financial advisors in your area in 5 minutes. Each advisor has been vetted by SmartAsset and is held to a fiduciary standard to act in your best interests. If you’re ready to be matched with local advisors that can help you achieve your financial goals, get started now......»»

I've been monitoring the industry since 1985. An industry leader has said that AI is eating software, and software is replacing hardware. But everyone understands that following the rise of ChatGPT, those in AI research or startup businesses are entering an age of "extinction," as the software sector is characterized by the reality that the winner takes all. The leader in the race will run away with almost all profits, with the rest subsisting on leftovers and most of the startups drowning. But the hardware industry is still strong because their customers are keen to diversify their sources of supplies, and individual companies can seldom take all the profits. And the hardware industry creates huge demand for technical workers. In terms of international coopetition and social justice, the value of hardware manufacturing is being reestablished. The US government's bid to rebuild meaningful control of the supply chain is recasting Taiwan into a more important role......»»