We’ve previously seen “Black Friday” become “Black Month” and now it’s further morphed into “Early Black Month,” starting at the end of October. Stores are trying to stay above water, competing to offer more promotions.
Stores in Costa Rica and globally have been closed due to the covid-19 pandemic for months. This leaves them with excessive products and desperation to sell. Businesses must reduce inventories.
The current situation led to a change in shopping behaviors. Many now shop online. This will likely last long after covid. E-commerce is part of our new way of life. Correos de Costa Rica expects a 50% increase in clothing, footwear, technology, and telephone accessory packages.
Forever 21 has a section on it’s website called “All Special Offers,” with 14 promotions. Amazon launched special holiday deals. Walmart announced three Black Friday sales events. The marketing manager for JetBox noted that there have been much more aggressive online store promotions due to the pandemic.
Deputies have approved, with 43 votes in favor and none against, a bill to reduce the tax on vehicle ownership to vehicles whose fiscal value is less than ₡15 million.
Vehicles with a value of up to ₡7 million will pay 50% of the vehicle tax. Those valued between ₡7 million and ₡10 million will get a 25% discount and those valued between ₡10 million and ₡15 million will get a discount of 15%.
This, unfortunately, leaves a gap of at least ₡50,000 million in income that the Government had expected to use to cover end-of-year expenses, like Christmas bonuses for public officials.
This is a gap of almost 0.15% of the GDP. The 2020 budget reflects a deficit of over 11% of the GDP, a historical figure that is bringing us closer to an economic crisis.
The first and second photos are of Deanna Jaxine Stinson, Psychic Medium. 3rd drawing is Captain America crossover with Wishfire aka Deanna Jaxine Stinson – drawn by Richard Vasseur.
ACCORDING TO COAST TO COAST AM:
Pop star Miley Cyrus claims she was once chased by a UFO and made eye contact with an alien being that was aboard the craft. She revealed the wild tale during a conversation with designer Rick Owens in a recently published article for Interview Magazine. Asked if she believes in extraterrestrials, Cyrus replied “I had an experience, actually. I was driving through San Bernardino with my friend, and I got chased down by some sort of UFO.” In recounting the sighting, she likened the craft to “a flying snowplow” wherein “it had this big plow in the front of it and was glowing yellow.”
Cyrus went on to indicate that her unnamed friend also saw the UFO and that “there were a couple of other cars on the road and they also stopped to look, so I think what I saw was real.” Reflecting on the experience, the pop star said that she was deeply shaken by the event for days afterward and “I couldn’t really look at the sky the same. I thought they might come back.” As if her story was not strange enough, Cyrus indicated that the initial sighting itself did not feel particularly threatening until she looked over and saw a being seemingly piloting the craft.
“It looked at me and we made eye contact,” she recalled, “and I think that’s what really shook me, looking into the eyes of something that I couldn’t quite wrap my head around.” Cyrus is the second pop star to make UFO-related news this week after Demi Lovato shared a video of an unidentified craft on her Instagram page and claimed that she is able to contact ETs via meditation. Special Note: Demi spotted her UFO at Joshua Tree with her friends and Dr. Steven Greer. The two musicians’ willingness to talk about their experiences is rather indicative of how the phenomenon has become a significant part of the zeitgeist in recent years.
SPECIAL NOTE FROM PAUL:
UFOs have been seen all over the Los Angeles Greater Area, so to hear a report from San Bernardino, California is no surprise. Supposedly, there is an underground UFO base off Catalina Island. UFOs have been seen by many witnesses coming out of the water near Catalina Island and going into the water. Reptilian aliens have been seen by many witnesses in the sewer systems of Los Angeles. Tommy Stokes of San Bernardino says that he has lived in San Bernardino all his life and has witnessed up to 23 UFOs on several different occasions. He has seen cigar shaped UFOs, classic disc shaped UFOs and 2 globe shaped UFOs. On one particular night he encountered a small disc shaped UFO the size of a small house pass overhead. The UFO then came back and shined a bluish spotlight on him. The light remained on Tommy for about 2 minutes. Then the light did something odd. The light bent around as if it was looking at something from the back end. The light also stopped midair. The light did not shine all the way through, it stopped mid-air, like a Star Wars light saber, the light does not project out endlessly, it stops mid-air. After the light bent around, it went back into the disc and the disc flew away at a high speed. Tommy would not be surprised to know that Miley Cyrus saw a UFO. Besides all of the UFOs that are seen around Los Angeles and especially Joshua Tree, let’s not forget the Battle of Los Angeles, in which the military engaged with a possible UFO. And if you want to see a UFO at Joshua Tree, then check out this video: www.amazon.com/vdp/587ca11280f84509ba863d3e067875b1 – Many UFO sightseers flock out with Dr. Greer to Joshua Tree to see the many UFOs that gravitate to this intriguing desert area.
Now, let’s step away from popstars seeing UFOs and let’s get some chills with Melon Heads in Michigan and in Ohio, see below:
MELON HEADS
The melon heads of Michigan are said to reside around Felt Mansion, although they have also been reportedly seen in southern forested areas of Ottawa County. According to one story, they were originally children with hydrocephalus who lived at the Junction Insane Asylum near Felt Mansion. The story explains that, after enduring physical and emotional abuse, they became feral and were released into the forests surrounding the asylum. The Allegan County Historical Society asserts that the asylum never existed, although it was at one point a prison; however, the story has been part of the local folklore for several decades. Laketown Township Manager Al Meshkin told the Holland Sentinel that he had heard the tales as a teenager, noting that his friends referred to the beings as “wobbleheads”. Some versions of the legend say that the children once lived in the mansion itself but later retreated to a system of caverns (or caves in a nearby hill left over from an abandoned zoo). Some versions of this legend say that the children devised a plan to escape and kill the doctor that abused them. It is said that the children had no place to hide the body, so they cut it up in small pieces which they hid around the mansion. Rumors exist that teenagers who had broken into the mansion saw ghosts of the children and claimed to see shadows of the doctor’s murder through the light coming from an open door. The legend has spread throughout the region, even becoming the subject of a 2011 film simply titled The Melonheads, which is based around the West Michigan legend.
Legend in Ohio
The melon head stories of Ohio are primarily associated with the Cleveland suburb of Kirtland. According to local lore, the melon heads were originally orphans under the watch of a mysterious figure known as Dr. Crow (sometimes spelled Crowe, Krohe or Kroh or known as Dr. Melonhead. Crow is said to have performed unusual experiments on the children, who developed large, hairless heads and malformed bodies. Some accounts claim that the children were already suffering from hydrocephalus and that Crow injected even more fluid into their brains.
Eventually, the legend continues, the children killed Crow, burned the orphanage, and retreated to the surrounding forests and supposedly feed on babies. Legend holds that the melon heads may be sighted along Wisner Road in Kirtland, and Chardon Township. The melon head legend has been popularized on the Internet, particularly on the websites Creepy Cleveland and DeadOhio, where users offer their own versions of the story. A movie, “Legend of the Melonheads”, released in 2010, is based on the Ohio legend and various other legends in the Kirtland area.
SPECIAL NOTE FROM PAUL:
An interesting twist to the Melon Head story is that Stephen Hathrow from Michigan says that he was chased, along with his two camping friends by a so-called Melon Head. The Melon Head had a large melon shaped head, that reminded Stephen of a big white honey dew melon. The Melon Head was 3 ½ feet tall, thin arms and hands, thin legs. The Melon Head seemed at times to glide and float. Stephen was not able to make out any facial features. As the Melon Head chased Stephen and his friends, it came upon a deer. The deer was frozen in its tracks and the Melon Head touched its snout. The deer then collapsed. The Melon Head then seemed preoccupied with the deer and no longer was chasing Stephen and his friends. About 30 minutes later Stephen and his friends saw a small triangular shaped UFO hovering in the sky and then zip away. Could Melon Heads actually be extraterrestrial humanoids that now have a bad reputation as being fugitives from a mental ward? Special Note: Stephen Hathrow mentioned that his Melon Head incident occurred at Isle Royale National Park.
Melon Heads probably gave you goosebumps. Let’s take those goosebumps away by listening to a melon song, that should bring a smile on your face, please see link below:
An internal audit found emails in which a Logistics Manager requests that a supplier of masks make an advanced payment of a sanction for a delay in delivering five million masks. An intimidating phone call about the issue was also reported.
The CCSS assures that this is against protocol and is not an endorsed procedure. Therefore, it asks the Prosecutor’s Office to investigate.
It was on May 27 that MR Political Communications won the emergency contract for $1.9 million to supply masks for the protection of health personnel. The masks were to enter the CCSS warehouses the first week of June. None have been delivered, to date.
The CCSS never collects fines in advance. The procedure is to deduct fines from future payments. The supplier never sends payment of fines. In the event of delays by a contractor, public entities can charge fines per day up to a maximum of 25% of the total value of the contract.
Six officials face administrative investigations in regards to this issue, which is in the hands of the Public Ministry.
Eleven people died in Costa Rica, from 2006 to 2015, from causes related to cosmetic surgeries. One case is still in court. On this October 12, a 27-year-old teacher, mother, and sister lost her life at a clinic not equipped to revive her.
Because of blockades in recent days, she decided to have the procedure at a place close to home that a friend had gone to. It was in an ordinary house in which they created a room for operations. The doctor is listed as a general surgeon in the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Costa Rica.
The woman’s sister dropped her and the friend off and went to get her car washed with plans to return in two hours. After an hour she had a bad feeling and returned to the clinic to find her sister convulsing.
The friend reported hearing the patient yell “Oh, it hurts!” She didn’t undergo the procedure because the complication happened at the very beginning. When the sister arrived she heard the friend saying “You can do it Arelys, you have to fight, you cannot die.” 9-1-1 hadn’t yet been called. Everyone was running. There was no anesthesiologist or specialist. There was not even oxygen. There was nothing with which to resuscitate or intubate her.
She was in pain and agony for two more hours until the ambulance finally arrived. By then, she had almost no signs of life. She was given oxygen and taken to the hospital but she died after attempts to revive her.
App development is a must in today’s mobile innovative business environment. From social media to ecommerce, there are applications for nearly every use case. Many companies are relying on remote DevOps teams to fill the skills gap when it comes to app development and deployment. Which means you need to have your processes in order for a successful launch.
For instance, utilizing Docker container files and a Docker registry can streamline a number of application development and deployment processes for your remote DevOps team. Giving you more time to manage your business without worrying about managing your company’s DevOps.
This can equate to big time increases in efficiency, productivity, and profits. But how can you serve up simplified processes to get the results you want and need to stay competitive? Let’s take a closer look at the key app development tips for your remote DevOps team.
Utilize DevOps Tools Like Docker
Giving your remote DevOps team the tools to be efficient and more productive when it comes to app development is essential. Docker is one DevOps tool that can make this happen.
How? Docker makes it easier for developers and engineers to develop, deploy, run, and update applications via containers. The containers allow DevOps teams to package an app, including the app’s dependencies and libraries, for deployment in a single lean package.
This allows the app to run on any machine, regardless of settings. This eliminates the need for virtual machines and virtual operating systems. Thus increasing performance while decreasing application size.
Application Functionality And Performance Trumps Beauty
This is a major app development tip that many remote DevOps teams forget about. A sleek beautiful application is certainly great, but if the functionality and performance lacks, users will be sure to abandon the app, regardless of how pretty it is.
Can you have your app cake and eat it too? Absolutely. In some ways, this is where container images come into play again. However, focusing on performance and functionality first, and then tidying up the application after, may prove far more valuable.
Look to remind your remote developers and ops pros that functionality and performance wins over beauty. Let them focus on making the best product first, and leave the best looking product for later. This is when updates can serve purpose.
Ensure Top Notch App User Experience
This is critical for your app development team, especially if they are remote. Give them the autonomy to build out a powerful user experience, because they are the experts after all.
The application your remote DevOps team is building needs to be responsive, highly intuitive, provide an ease of use, as well as simplified navigation. Empower your DevOps team to think like users, and let them take the app for test spins during development.
And don’t forget about the offline user experience. Depending on what type of application your team is developing, an offline experience may serve up even more value to users. When there is no internet connection, or if the internet connection is lost, have offline functionality that doesn’t disrupt the overall user experience.
Testing Is Very Important To App Development Success
Another top app development tip is all about testing. First, your remote DevOps team should be testing the application with a large number of user skills. Having a variety of skill levels during testing can help your DevOps team tweak UI to ensure development success.
From the first time app user to expert app-smiths, test the application with users of different mobile device comfort, educational levels, backgrounds, and location. If the UI is good for all, the app will be sure to make waves after launch.
What about devices? Great question. Testing doesn’t end with UI. You also need to encourage your remote DevOps team to test the application across multiple devices. And not only iOS and Android devices either. Test on everything under the sun.
But be sure to test your app on devices that fit your target demographic. THis can be easily found using key analytics, you should have from your market research.
In Conclusion …
App development can be very profitable if done right. Especially if you’re utilizing the skills of remote DevOps teams to get the project done. Communication is the top rule of thumb when working with remote teams. But always be sure to give your team the tools and guidance they need to be successful. Have you used a remote app development team? Tell us your story.
Twenty-first century nationalism is just atavistic tribalism with cell phones. After two world wars spewed from nationalistic sewers in the 20th century, yet another scourge of jingoism infects the world. What will it take to finally purge the scourge of tribalism from human consciousness?
On the left, American sentimental nationalists like Roger Cohen make one last stab at progressive spiritual and metaphysical denial:
“The essence of America is openness. History, geography, immigration and fate have established that. The shrinking of the American mind under Trump therefore amounts, for Americans, to a dangerous denial of themselves.”
American nationalists on the right, like Ross Douthat, have schizoid dialogues between their dark side and their darkest side. The lesser of two evils wins in Ross by surrendering the man-made chaos that Trump epitomizes and maximizes to Christianity’s Father God:
“It wouldn’t entirely surprise me if, by some miracle, Trump won one more time — if his presidency is part of a bipartisan chastisement, and God isn’t finished with us yet.”
The “us” that “God isn’t finished with” is, abnormally, America. To white nationalists on the right, and ‘right’ nationalists on the left, the United States remains the center of the world.
All nationalists feel their nations are the center the world of course. The difference is no empire since the Roman Empire, which encompassed the known world surrounding the Mediterranean, has spread its rapacious culture like America has.
And no other nation in history has its tentacles in three-quarters of the nations of the world through its obscenely bloated military, which sucks up a trillion dollars a year just to keep it unquestioningly afloat.
Therefore if Trump wins again, miracles will have no more to do with it than they did the last time. Democrats will just have a harder time blaming a screwy electoral system, even with Republican voter suppression, and President Trump’s ‘fluke’ will become as immaterial as Senator Flake.
So if we define God as immanent intelligence, what is She up to? It is an awfully small-minded God that’s concerned with the fate of one nation, especially a nation of such military strength and spiritual weakness as America.
To say the least, I doubt that another “Trump presidency is part of a bipartisan chastisement.” It seems Douthat’s God is a nationalist, albeit one that stands above the fray in divine comity (and comedy) even during the nastiest of times.
People old enough to remember the dizzying events of 1989 (the Tiananmen massacre, the fall of the Berlin Wall) know what a ‘hinge of history’ feels like.
Though it seems the hinges of history have rusted shut (or rather rusted open, seeing how wide the gates of hell have opened), do we stand at another hinge of history, the second in even a 50-year lifespan?
Given there is some kind of Intelligence beyond the unintelligence of man, clearly the Donald is playing a bit part in a much larger drama involving, though certainly not revolving around the shrunken stature of the United States of America.
That said, Douthat’s self-comforting notion that “Trump is too incompetent to pull off anything so ambitious as stealing an election” is dangerous as hell. Both Democrats and Never (Again) Trump Republicans have continually been taken in by the incompetence of the man, while underestimating the evil the man channels.
Going from the slime to the sublime, it’s a risky business exploring the mind of God. If God isimmanent however, rather than above and apart, then potentially at least, God is, to some degree, within us.
And if that’s true, “Nosce te ipsum” is not just the dubiously cumulative journey of self-knowledge, or even the pathless path of self-knowing, but via negativa (the negational way) to the sacred.
Just as there is no fixed entity as a “Supreme Being,” there is no fixed providential plan external to us. The plan, if we can even call it a plan, can only unfold with our participation, unwitting or witting (preferably witting).
Clearly any cosmic intelligence worth its stars would want potentially intelligent life, wherever it evolved in the universe, to live in harmony with its planet, itself and the cosmos. But let’s face it; Homo sap is still heading headlong in the opposite direction.
This ‘context’ throws an entirely different light on the darkness that is pan-Trumpism, and on the more-annoying-than-destroying global plague that is Covid-19.
So what is the future of humanity, even the near future of humanity?
Looking into the vacant, dead eyes of the narcissistically mask-less one can see one future; looking into the searching, empathic eyes of the masked one can see another.
