The National Portrait Gallery has acquired the oldest photo of a First Lady, an 1846 daguerreotype of Dolly Madison. This is a very cool picture, as it captures some of her personality - people chose very formal poses back then. No smiling. Except for a hint of a smile from Dolly.
A Preference Cascade is when a large portion of the population begins to realize - despite relentless government and/or media propaganda - that a lot of other folks think like they do and that the propaganda is, well propaganda. This is almost always catastrophic for The Powers That Be, because Preference Cascades tend to accelerate. As this progresses, formerly reliable underlings begin to think that TPTB are going to lose, and start to refuse to stick their necks out to protect the current order.
It's one thing to stuff ballot boxes when you think that everyone on your side is on board and your guy is going to win - and any potential investigation will be done in the most slipshod manner. It's quite a different thing when you wonder just how many of the guys on your side are actually going to go through with this, and if the other guy wins will you be facing 20 years in Club Fed.
At the extreme, the security services join the preference cascade. They smell an emerging winner and want to be on side when that happens. At this point, things get pretty grim for TPTB.
I think we're at that stage now - well, not the up against the wall shooting stage - but a cascading loss of confidence and loyalty in the Democratic Party itself for Joe Biden. This will shrink the Margin of Cheat except in the most blue of blue states, and given that it looks like New York and New Jersey may be in play, there may not really be a lot of blue left.
In other words, everyone is starting to realize that the propaganda was just that - propaganda.
Add in the drop in contributions to the Democratic Party (the preference cascade is hitting the donor class, who are realizing that this "investment" may not have a return, and hedge their bets by contributing to Trump).
Now add in the media, who start to see that they are better off trying to help the Democratic Party, rather than mean old Joe Biden.
The question is not whether Trump will win, but whether the Preference Cascade will give him coattails, and how long they will be.
My guess is that the Preference Cascade is in full swing in the Secret Service, as competent and dedicated agents there start to wonder when (not if) to throw their corrupt bosses under the bus. There's a lot coming out about this Charlie Foxtrot in the SS, so that suggests that the lack of loyalty to Joe Biden is advancing nicely there.
Once the Preference Cascade begins, TPTB have precious few tools to counter it. For example, cracking down on leaking from within the Secret Service will do nothing but convince the undecided there that TPTB are untrustworthy and have to go.
Which will make Donald Trump only the second President to serve non-consecutive terms.
BREAKING: Donald Trump calls for Robert F. Kennedy Jr to receive Secret Service pic.twitter.com/vRvxTzghvX
— ALX 🇺🇸 (@alx) July 15, 2024
Well, duh. Kind of makes you wonder why they haven't so far.
So they tried to assassinate Donald Trump. The question is whether they will try again. The next question will be what will be the reaction if they succeed.
It's that second question that made me think of Strauss and his ferocious opera Elektra. That girl had family issues: Her father was Agamemnon, leader of the Greeks against Troy. He sacrificed her sister to the Gods to gain favorable winds for the invasion fleet. Her mother Klytemnestra murdered her father in revenge. Her brother Orest kills their mother in revenge. Mad with fury, Elektra dances in the blood of the guilty.
Quite a story. The Nazis quite admired it, the necessity of bloodletting to purify the family. Yesterday's events made me think on what might befall should they succeed in their manic desires to stop Trump by any means necessary.
If so, you need to replace it right away. There is a critical vulnerability which allows a Bad Guy to dump user accounts and passwords - basically, this lets him take over the box. Because the routers are End Of Life (EOL) there will never be a software update to fix this.
Fortunately, home WiFi routers are pretty cheap these days.
I used to run D-Link in the past (I'm pretty sure I had one at FOB Borepatch, back in the day) but those are long gone now. If you have one then run, don't walk to get a replacement.
Details here for those who are interested.
So Youtube hates guns and is trying to demonitize shooting channels. So one of the channels decided to follow the rules, with hilarious results.
Oops:
Keen meatheads better hope they haven't angered any cybersecurity folk before allowing their Traeger grills to update because a new high-severity vulnerability could be used for all kinds of high jinks.
With summer in full swing in the northern hemisphere, it means BBQ season is upon us, and with Traeger being one of the most trusted brands in grilling and smoking, there's a good chance that many backyard cookouts could be ruined if crafty crims have their way.
Nick Cerne, security consultant at Bishop Fox, discovered a few weaknesses in certain Traeger grills, ones that have the Traeger Grill D2 Wi-Fi Controller installed – an embedded device allowing a grill to be controlled using a mobile app.
Successful exploits could allow a remote attacker to execute day-ruining commands such as temperature change controls or shutting down the grill altogether.
I think that we can all agree that the definition of a Black Hat hacker is someone who changes the temperature on your smoking briskit to 400 degrees ...
But put a computer in it, expect security bugs.
