yallerdawg
yallerdawg's JournalA jobs threat worse than mass store closures could fire more than 7 million retail workers
When robots replace slave wages, then what do we do?Source: Business Insider, by Hayley Peterson
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Roughly 6 million to 7.5 million retail jobs "likely will be automated out of existence in the coming years, leaving a large portion of the retail workforce at risk of becoming 'stranded workers,'" according to the 56-page report by investment advisory firm Cornerstone Capital Group.
Retail cashiers, 73% of whom are women, will suffer the most job losses, the study found.
The losses will also disproportionately affect the working poor, since most hourly retail workers live below the poverty line.
Most hourly retail workers live below the poverty line.
"This in-depth examination of retail automation gives investors insights as they consider investment risks and opportunities," Lukomnik said in a news release. "While the findings are important to investors, they should sound the alarm for economists and political leaders. The shrinking of retail jobs in many ways threatens to mirror the decline in manufacturing in the US. Moreover, in this case, workers at risk are already disproportionately working poor, so any disruption may cause strains in the social safety net and stresses on local tax revenues."
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Read it all at: http://www.businessinsider.com/how-automation-will-impact-the-retail-industry-2017-5
Living with a target on your back.
Coming soon! 'Blade of the Immortal'
Cannes 2017 28 Ways to Die in Takashi Miike’s New Film Blade of the Immortal By Jada Yuan
"...you don’t come to a samurai bloodbath for plot. You come to watch the screen turn red..."
1. Gutted by sword.
2. Impaled in heart by sword.
3. Slashed across the chest diagonally by sword.
4. Beheaded by sword.
5. Stabbed through eye by sword.
6. Cleaved in two by sword, at the waist.
7. Cleaved in two by sword, head to toe.
8. Torn apart by chain wielded by very evil dude in mohawk and tattoos.
9. Torn apart by very huge double-bladed sword where one blade is like a hook that rips open your jugular, that is also attached to chain.
10. Shot by your own arrows.
11. Shuriken. (Throwing star.)
12. Flying spear.
13. Flying spear attached to chain.
14. Ten knives thrown at once.
15. Falling off a building.
16. Being thrown off a building.
17. Poison.
18. Falling off a cliff.
19. Beheaded by saw-toothed sword (very messy).
20. Slashed in half by super-awesome sword where the handles attach to become one longer, double sword.
21. Getting smashed in the face with an axe the size of an anvil.
22. Quicksand.
23. Being stabbed in the torso with seven swords at once and then pulling them out one sickening suction sound at a time because you’re immortal, for now.
24. Bleeding to death because one or more of your limbs has been cut off.
25. All of your limbs falling off at once.
26. Chopping off your own hand because it’s been impaled by a flying metal weapon attached to a rope and you’re being dragged up a tree by it.
27. Getting impaled by the sharpened, exposed bones in the arm-stump of an enemy whose hand you cut off.
28. Boring ol’ seppuku.
The scariest thing about 'Twin Peaks' is the Pacific Northwest
Starts Sunday night on Showtime!
Source: http://theweek.com/articles/699012/scariest-thing-about-twin-peaks-pacific-northwest
"There's a sort of evil out there," Sheriff Harry S. Truman warns Agent Dale Cooper early on. "Something very, very strange in these old woods. Call it what you want. A darkness, a presence. It takes many forms but ... it's been out there for as long as anyone can remember and we've always been here to fight it."
The Northwest fosters its own real-life nightmares, from its seemingly disproportionate number of serial killers to mysterious disembodied feet washing up on its shores to myths about Bigfoot and UFOs over Mt. Rainier. Having grown up 20 miles from the town of North Bend, Washington — where the waterfall from the opening credits and the RR Diner are located — I was as afraid of the gloomy woods and mountains as a child as I was magnetized to them.
In the Log Lady's introduction to the pilot, viewers are similarly clued in to search beyond the town itself for the answers to questions: "There are many stories in Twin Peaks," the Log Lady says. "Some of them are sad, some funny. Some are stories of madness, of violence. Some are ordinary. Yet they all have about them a sense of mystery. The mystery of life, sometimes the mystery of death. The mystery of the woods, the woods surrounding Twin Peaks. To introduce this story, let me just say it encompasses the all."
The new STREAMING 'Star Trek' show.
Fareed: 'The president who cried wolf'
Source: WaPO, by Fareed Zakaria
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And his fibs are not over small matters. Before being elected, Trump claimed that Barack Obama was not born in the United States; that he had met Vladimir Putin, who “could not have been nicer”; that he opposed the U.S. invasion of Iraq “from the beginning”; that he watched Arabs in Jersey City, N.J., cheer when the World Trade Center was attacked; that America’s unemployment rate (just last year) might be as high as 42 percent; and that its murder rate was the highest in 45 years. Since his election, he has claimed that his electoral vote margin was larger than anyone’s since Ronald Reagan, that China stopped manipulating its currency in response to his criticism and that Obama had his Trump Tower phones tapped. Every one of these claims is categorically false, and yet Trump has never retracted one of them.
Trump’s approach has never been to apologize because it wouldn’t make sense to him. In his view, he wasn’t fibbing. As his sometime rival and now friend Steve Wynn, a casino tycoon, put it, Trump’s statements on virtually everything “have no relation to truth or fact.” That’s not really how Trump thinks of words. For him, words are performance art. It’s what sounds right in the moment and gets him through the crisis. So when describing his economic policy to the Economist, he explained that he had just invented the term “prime the pump” a few days earlier. Never mind that the phrase was coined a century ago, has been used countless times since and was in fact used by Trump repeatedly in the past year. At that moment, it seemed the right thing to say.
But Trump is now more than just a real estate developer, a franchise marketer, or a celebrity TV star. He is president, and he is dealing with matters of war and peace, law and justice. Words matter, and in a wholly different way than he has ever understood. They build national credibility, deter enemies, reassure allies and execute the law. In high office, in public life, words are not so different from actions. They are everything.
It would be the ultimate irony if Trump now faces a crisis in which his lifelong strength turns into a fatal weakness. His rich and checkered history of salesmanship, his exaggerations, fudges and falsehoods, leave him in a situation now where, even if he is right on this one, people will have a hard time believing that this one time Donald Trump is finally telling the truth.
Read it all at: washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-presidents-unsteady-relationship-with-facts
Anthony Bourdain and Asia Argento? I had no idea!
This happened? 
Souce: HuffPo, by Brittany Wong
Imagine how great date night would be if Anthony Bourdain was your boyfriend and cooked for you on the regular. Actress Asia Argento doesn’t have to imagine ― it’s her life.
On Tuesday, the recently divorced Bourdain and Argento made their relationship Instagram official with his-and-her versions of the same pic on their personal accounts. The pair have been rumored to be dating since February.
Tonight on 'Real Time' - watch DUer's heads explode!
Former Trump adviser, Russian-born Boris Epshteyn.
David Frum - OK, he seems to be a pretty convincing Never Trumper.
Dr. Cornel West. That's right! 
Not spacey enough? Neil deGrasse Tyson.
http://www.hbo.com/schedule?focusId=800618
Low-income patients report better care and health after ACA passage, study finds
Source: ABC News, by Gillian Mohney and Dr. Crystal Tan
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A new study published today (5/17/17) in Health Affairs shows that the Affordable Care Act’s Medicaid expansion not only increased insurance coverage rates but also improved access and affordability among low-income patients over the last three years. The study's findings come out at a critical time as the Senate works on passing its version of the AHCA, which could change Medicaid, insurance premiums and a number of other aspects of the healthcare system.
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The researchers collected responses from low-income people in three states: Kentucky, which expanded Medicaid; Arkansas, which expanded private insurance in the federal Marketplace; and Texas, which opted for no expansion.
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All three states included in this study had similar rates of uninsurance – around 40 percent – before the ACA. By 2016 the uninsurance rate dropped to 7.4 percent in Kentucky and 11.7 percent in Arkansas while plateauing at 28.2 percent in Texas.
Cost and quality of care also improved Kentucky and Arkansas, where patients were 41 percent more likely to have a regular source of care, spent $337 less out of pocket annually, and were nearly 23 percent more likely to rate themselves as being in “excellent” health.
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Read it all at: http://abcnews.go.com/Health/low-income-patients-report-care-health-aca-passage/story?id=47460906
After Chris Cornell's death: 'Only Eddie Vedder is left. Let that sink in.'
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2017/05/19/after-chris-cornells-death-only-eddie-vedder-is-left-let-that-sink-in/?utm_term=.61d5430a22a7&wpisrc=nl_mix&wpmm=1[img]
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Ivey's Chief of Staff hid hospitalization after stroke-like symptoms
It can't happen here?
al.com!
Source: Alabama Political Reporter, by Bill Britt
In April 2015, then Lt. Gov. Kay Ivey was admitted to a hospital in Colorado due to a series of stroke-like attacks, according to two high-ranking former government officials. Ivey had flown to the Aerospace State Association Annual Meeting held in Colorado Springs that year. She was accompanied by Chief of Staff Steve Pelham and Security Officer Thomas Andrew “Drew” Brooks.
After several attacks, Ivey was taken to the hospital where she allegedly spent four days recovering, before returning to Alabama. According to reports, Pelham threatened Trooper Brooks, not to report the incident to anyone. However, under security protocol, Brooks was bound to tell his supervisor, Jack Clark. The event generated buzz around ALEA but was quashed according to those at the agency at the time of the incident. “We all knew what happened, but because she was scheduled to be out of town for the conference, it was easy for them [Ivey’s people] to keep a lid on it,” recalled a former Trooper.
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Concerns about Ivey’s health were widely circulated by her security personnel, which saw reoccurring episodes of slurred speech, incoherent ramblings, and a inability to focus for extended periods, according to former troopers.
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Those with knowledge of Ivey’s recent appearance at the Republican Senate Caucus meeting this week say Ivey gave a short meandering presentation concerning legislation she is supporting. Caucus members would not confirm to APR what was said in the meeting, but her behavior was described as “shaky and rambling.”
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Read it all at: http://www.alreporter.com/2017/05/17/iveys-chief-staff-hid-hospitalization-stroke-like-symptoms/
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