Off Topic: Which Double Edge Safety Razor Blades Should I Buy?
June 16th, 2023Apologies. I need to briefly go off topic to personal grooming.
After decades of using disposable plastic razors, I decided to switch to a double edge safety razor to save money. I probably wouldn’t have thought much about it, but when the price for ten shitty plastic razors went to NZ$12 here, I refused to buy them again. (They used to be NZ$8 which felt like a ripoff.)
I also thought that it would be good to get my sons to use safety razors instead of plastic razors when they start shaving. Of course, I experimented on myself first.
I found a double edge safety razor that must have been on clearance on Amazon Australia for NZ$22 (delivered), which included five blades. Works great! No nicks at all. Much closer shave than disposables. My wife was astonished at the difference.
A lot of razor blades come in packs of one hundred. Before I buy, I thought I’d ask:
Which double edge razor blades do Cryptogon readers recommend?
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Would you like to support Cryptogon by buying a fine double edge safety razor?
Consider:
Feather AS-D2, stainless steel. Made in Japan.
Rockwell Razors 6S, stainless steel, adjustable shave settings. Made in USA.
Western Razor Premium Safety Razor, chrome. Made in USA.
“Nightmare Scenario”: U.S. Government Has Been Secretly Stockpiling Information on Americans Via Data Brokers
June 15th, 2023I’ll recycle some commentary from, FBI Finally Admits to Buying Location Data on Americans:
In 2013, we learned that law enforcement was “laundering” data collected through U.S. national security intercept systems for use against Americans, U.S. Communications Intelligence Secretly Shared with Law Enforcement for Use Against Americans in Criminal Investigations:
“It’s just like laundering money – you work it backwards to make it clean,” said Finn Selander, a DEA agent from 1991 to 2008 and now a member of a group called Law Enforcement Against Prohibition, which advocates legalizing and regulating narcotics.
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So, this is going to be more about being able to, “Work it backwards to make it clean,” because they already collected it illegally and stored it at the Utah Data Center.
Via: ZeroHedge:
The ODNI’s own panel of advisers makes clear that the government’s static interpretations of what constitutes “publicly available information” poses a significant threat to the public. The advisers decry existing policies that automatically conflate, in the first place, being able to buy information with it being considered “public.” The information being commercially sold about Americans today is “more revealing, available on more people (in bulk), less possible to avoid, and less well understood” than that which is traditionally thought of as being “publicly available.”
Perhaps most controversially, the report states that the government believes it can “persistently” track the phones of “millions of Americans” without a warrant, so long as it pays for the information. Were the government to simply demand access to a device’s location instead, it would be considered a Fourth Amendment “search” and would require a judge’s sign-off. But because companies are willing to sell the information—not only to the US government but to other companies as well—the government considers it “publicly available” and therefore asserts that it “can purchase it.”
Synthetic Human Embryos Created
June 15th, 2023Via: Guardian:
Scientists have created synthetic human embryos using stem cells, in a groundbreaking advance that sidesteps the need for eggs or sperm.
Scientists say these model embryos, which resemble those in the earliest stages of human development, could provide a crucial window on the impact of genetic disorders and the biological causes of recurrent miscarriage.
However, the work also raises serious ethical and legal issues as the lab-grown entities fall outside current legislation in the UK and most other countries.
The structures do not have a beating heart or the beginnings of a brain, but include cells that would typically go on to form the placenta, yolk sac and the embryo itself.
Prof Magdalena ?ernicka-Goetz, of the University of Cambridge and the California Institute of Technology, described the work in a plenary address on Wednesday at the International Society for Stem Cell Research’s annual meeting in Boston.
“We can create human embryo-like models by the reprogramming of [embryonic stem] cells,” she told the meeting.
There is no near-term prospect of the synthetic embryos being used clinically. It would be illegal to implant them into a patient’s womb, and it is not yet clear whether these structures have the potential to continue maturing beyond the earliest stages of development.
10% Of $4.2 Trillion US COVID Relief Was Lost To Fraud, Waste
June 14th, 2023I’d say the chance that it’s only 10% is somewhere around 0%, but since the entire situation was a fraud…
Yeah.
Via: ZeroHedge:
As much as 10 percent of the $4.2 trillion the U.S. government has disbursed in COVID-19 relief aid may have been lost to fraud and waste.
A new analysis of COVID relief spending by The Associated Press estimates that fraudsters collected more than $283 billion, while another $120 billion was wasted or misspent. The news outlet expects estimates of pandemic waste and fraud to grow as investigators continue to review additional potential fraud schemes.
Joe and Hunter Biden Caught on 17 Recordings with Burisma Owner
June 13th, 2023Via: Washington Examiner:
A top Senate Republican revealed Monday that an FBI informant said the Ukrainian oligarch involved in an alleged “criminal bribery scheme” with Joe and Hunter Biden also claimed to have 17 recordings of his conversations with the president and his son.
Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) revealed on the Senate floor that a largely unredacted version of the bureau’s FD-1023 confidential human source form said that “the foreign national who allegedly bribed Joe and Hunter Biden allegedly has audio recordings of his conversations with them — 17 such recordings.”
The Republican senator said, “These recordings were allegedly kept as a sort of insurance policy for the foreign national in case he got into a tight spot.”
United States: Fifty Little Dictatorships
June 13th, 2023Via: Brownstone Institute:
Just as a respiratory virus became the pretext for unrelated political aims like student debt relief and eviction moratoriums, leaders already seek to impose unrelated cultural change through fear-mongering and deception.
But while the smoke clears, a more insidious development is taking place. The largely unknown Uniform Law Commission (ULC) has proposed a law that would drastically increase executive power in the United States and reduce citizens’ legal right to resist unconstitutional edicts.
The ULC is an influential interstate organization that works to make state laws more uniform. Since 2021, the group has worked to draft a “Model Public Health Emergency Authority Act.”
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Now, the ULC proposes granting governors more power for when the next emergency arrives. There is no reason to expect angelic behavior in the next crisis. The attempt here is to end what most annoyed the ruling elites during the Covid crisis: the relatively decentralized response due to American federalism. One state (South Dakota) did not go along at all. Others bailed on the lockdown agenda after a few weeks. As time dragged on, some states tried to hang on to the crisis for as long as possible while others moved on with life as normal.
In all the postgaming in the elite narratives, this point sticks out the most. The next time, they want an all-of-society response, no stragglers and refuseniks. The efforts by the ULC are part of rigging the system toward that end. Instead of 50 “laboratories of democracy” they want 50 mini-dictatorships carrying out the orders of the elites in Washington, DC.
Westfield Stops Making Loan Payments on Massive San Francisco Mall
June 13th, 2023Via: Daily Mail:
San Francisco’s struggling downtown has been dealt another blow as Westfield has stopped making mortgage payments on its massive mall due to crime and tanking sales.
The firm has defaulted on the $558million loan and is handing it back to the lender, which will appoint a receiver. The mall will remain open for now.
The decision was sparked by the decision from Nordstrom, the mall’s anchor tenant, to close in August.
White House Set To Approve Depleted Uranium Munitions For Ukraine
June 13th, 2023More escalation.
Via: ZeroHedge:
The Biden administration is set to transfer depleted uranium shells to Ukraine for the first time since the Russian invasion began The Wall Street Journal reports Tuesday.
Internal administration debate over the controversial munitions has been ongoing for several months, but an admin official quoted in WSJ says at this point there are “no major obstacles” to sending it, which will be used to equip M1 Abrams tanks provided by Washington.
Covid-19 Created In Wuhan Lab Through Classified Bioweapons Program
June 12th, 2023Via: ZeroHedge:
Researchers in Wuhan, China working with the Chinese military were genetically manipulating the world’s deadliest coronaviruses to create a new mutant virus right around the time that the Covid-19 pandemic began, according to the Sunday Times, which has reviewed hundreds of documents, “Including previously confidential reports, internal memos, scientific papers and email correspondence that has been obtained through sources or by freedom of information campaigners in the three years since the pandemic started.”
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Meanwhile, a separate analysis reveals that the epicenter of the original Covid-19 outbreak was close to the WIV, not Wuhan’s “wet” wildlife market as previously thought.
“I interviewed scientists in Asia who have close relationships with the Wuhan Institute of Virology,” said one of the investigators, who said they had evidence that the WIV was also working on a Covid-19 vaccine before the pandemic. “They told me it is their belief that there was vaccine research going on in the fall of 2019, pertinent to Covid-19 vaccination.”
Rutgers University microbiologist, Richard Ebright, called the experiments “by far the most reckless and dangerous research on coronaviruses — or indeed on any viruses — known to have been undertaken at any time in any location.”
JPMorgan to Settle with Epstein Victims for $290 Million
June 12th, 2023Via: Reuters:
JPMorgan Chase agreed to pay about $290 million to settle a class action lawsuit by Jeffrey Epstein’s victims, a person familiar with the matter said, resolving a large part of litigation over the bank’s relationship with the disgraced financier.
Monday’s settlement follows months of embarrassing disclosures that JPMorgan ignored internal warnings and overlooked red flags about Epstein because he had been a valuable client over a 15-year period.
Epstein was a JPMorgan client from 1998 to 2013, and was kept on even after being arrested in 2006 on prostitution-related charges and pleading guilty two years later.
