Month: May 2020

OK, I Get Why Some People are Saying, “End of Times”

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So in addition to a global pandemic with a virus that may not be amenable to a vaccine, we are now seeing an influx of giant killer hornets.

This is firmly in the area of things that give me the SERIOUS heebie jeebies:

Researchers and citizens in Washington state are on a careful hunt for invasive “murder hornets”, after the insect made its first appearance in the US.

The Asian giant hornet is the world’s largest and can kill humans. But it is most dangerous for the European honeybee, which is defenseless in the face of the hornet’s spiky mandibles, long stinger and potent venom.

Washington state verified four reports of Asian giant hornets in two north-western cities in December. The species becomes more active in April, prompting local officials to invite the public to help beekeepers by creating their own hornet traps.

“It’s a shockingly large hornet,” Todd Murray, Washington State University Extension entomologist and invasive species specialist, said in a statement. “It’s a health hazard, and more importantly, a significant predator of honeybees.”

Excuse me while I try to stop shaking like a leaf.

The Protests Worked

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The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, the non-profit organization that oversees the Internet’s domain name system, has rejected a controversial proposal to sell the .org domain to a private equity group for more than $1 billion. It’s a serious—quite possibly fatal—blow to a proposal that had few supporters besides the organizations that proposed it.

Currently, the .org domain registry is run by the Public Interest Registry, a non-profit subsidiary of another non-profit called the Internet Society. PIR was created in 2002 to run the .org domain and has been doing so ever since. But last fall, the Internet Society stunned the non-profit world by announcing it would sell the PIR—and, effectively, ownership of the .org domain—to a new and secretive private equity firm called Ethos Capital for more than $1 billion.

The announcement created a swift and powerful backlash. In its resolution formally rejecting the transaction, ICANN says it received its first letter opposing the deal just two days after it was announced. The group would eventually receive letters from at least 30 groups opposing the deal, as well as numerous negative comments during public hearings. Meanwhile, ICANN says, the deal has received “virtually no counterbalancing support except from the parties involved in the transaction and their advisors.”

Also, the California Attorney General strongly implied that there might be a criminal investigation to follow if they approved this.

A Well Deserved Comeuppance

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One of the results of Airbnb is that there have been a whole bunch of people who have overextended to acquite properties for short term rentals, either by purchasing them, or by renting long term and subleasing short term for a premium.

This has had the effect of driving the costs of rentals up. (See here)

The pandemic lock-down is wiping out the people speculating on properties as pricey short term rentals:

For years, Cheryl Dopp considered the ding on her phone from a new Airbnb Inc. booking to be the sound of what she called “magical money.” A property she rented out in Jersey City, N.J., on Airbnb could gross more than $8,000 a month, she said, double what long-term tenants would pay.

Now, Ms. Dopp associates the dings with cancellations and financial misery. The 54-year-old information-technology contractor said she had about $10,000 in bookings evaporate overnight in March. She has $22,000 in monthly expenses for a largely Airbnb portfolio, she said, that included another Jersey City home and a house in Miami.

In her mind, the promise of more rental income offset the growing debt, she said. “I made a bargain with the devil.”

Ms. Dopp is part of an upper-crust dimension of the gig economy: property owners and speculators who bought or leased real estate in pursuit of Airbnb profits. Airbnb spawned a cottage industry of homeowners running their own property empires, turning the startup into a hotelier without any hotels.

………

In Nashville, Tenn., which grants permits to hosts, about a dozen of the city’s 3,600 nonowner-occupied listings—which include Airbnb properties—surfaced in the first days of April as advertisements for one-year leases on Zillow or Craigslist, according to Host Compliance LLC, a software provider tracking permits for the city. City leaders said they feared more would follow.

One of the apartments is in City View, a development with a swimming pool and rooftop views of downtown. When City View was completed in 2015, councilman Freddie O’Connell, who represents the district and has worked to rein in short-term rentals, hoped it would lure young professionals and families and help ease the city’s housing shortage. Instead, he said, it became a haven for short-term rentals.

Airbnb thought that they would help people rent out spare rooms or basement apartments, and instead it has become a vehicle for unproductive real estate arbitrage, because everything in the United States becomes a vehicle for unproductive arbitrage.

Hopefully, the pandemic, and the collapse of Airbnb, will result in a reduction in long term rents that have priced people out of housing.

Please, Pry Their Guns from Their Cold Dead Hands

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Following an attempt by armed gunmen to rush the state legislature, Michigan Governor Whitmer allows her state of emergency to expire, then restarts the state of emergency a few hours later, resetting the 28 day clock that the ‘Phants in the state legislature refused to extend.

If these ammosexual lunatics had been black, they already would have been shot to death by police:

Confronted with armed protesters at the state capitol and a lawsuit threat from GOP lawmakers over her executive orders, Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer (D) was unmoved, deciding to extend Michigan’s state-of-emergency declaration against the legislature’s wishes and without its approval.

Whitmer’s executive actions on Thursday, which extend various business closures and the emergency declaration to May 28, capped a remarkable day at the Michigan State Capitol, complete with gun-toting protesters and impassioned speeches on the House floor by Republican lawmakers trying to curtail Whitmer’s power.

Outside the House chamber, the protesters crammed into the hallway and stairwell, periodically chanting, “Lock her up!” and “Let us in!” Their chanting could be heard faintly from the House floor — and ultimately, the Republicans gave the protesters what they wanted: a refusal to extend Whitmer’s emergency declaration. In Michigan, legislative approval is required to extend emergency declarations beyond 28 days; Whitmer’s expired Thursday night, with no such approval to renew.

But at the end of the night, that didn’t stop Whitmer from issuing a new set of executive orders anyway, citing even broader emergency powers.

They were brandishing their guns in an attempt to intimidate.  This is assault with a deadly weapon, and they should have been arrested.

Tweets of the Day

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HTML was originally developed as a mark up language for non-programmers. It was highly successful as democratizing web development. And then it was replaced with more powerful tools that exclude non-programmers.

This change was as predictable as it was bad.

— Nikkita Bourbaki (@futurebird) April 30, 2020

The real reason we have brogrammers creating more obscure and syntactically incomprehensible languages is that they want to preserve their priesthood. The results are as negative as they are inevitable:

C was created by legendary male hackers and 40+ years later it is still impossible to write safe C code. COBOL was created by women who were pioneers in computer science, runs the world financial system, and you only hear about it when the world breaks.

— woolie (@woolie) April 10, 2020