Friday, August 29, 2025

Blaugust: Four Tools for Easier Date-Based Searching

 “HR just told me that yelling “I don’t want to play anymore!” is not the proper way to exit a meeting.”

~ the Upper Mountain Human Remains


  • "The greatest fear in the world is of the opinions of others. And the moment you are unafraid of the crowd you are no longer a sheep, you become a lion," from Osho's book Courage. 

Blaugust: Four Tools for Easier Date-Based Searching

Tara Calishain – “Do your Internet research tasks include a lot of date-based searching? I find that date-based searching helps a lot when searching historical (and man do I feel weird saying that about stuff that happened just a couple decades ago) events, companies, people and information. 

The results you’ll find when searching for something in its contemporary context is very different when you search for it in current web sites. 

In today’s article I’ll show you four tools — two general, two specialized — for doing date-based search on Google. All of these tools are part of Search Tweaks, and like all Search Tweaks tools they’re free to use and free of ads. We’ll start with Back That Ask Up…”

Inspector General: IRS Terminated 7,315 Probationary Employees Without Following Proper Procedures And Considering Individual Performance

  “I will always choose a lazy person to do a hard job, because a lazy person will find an easy way to do it.”

– Bill Gates, American business magnate

Inspector General: IRS Terminated 7,315 Probationary Employees Without Following Proper Procedures And Considering Individual Performance


Tit-For-Tat Gerrymandering Wars Won’t End Soon – What Happens in Texas and California Doesn’t Stay There

Welcome to another race to the bottom, where numerous states redraw their maps to benefit one party in response to other states doing the same



Palantir is not just a tech company

Robert Reich, at the age of 79 and just after retiring from university teaching, is one of the most outspoken critics of Trump in the
Read the full article…


Weekly SSRN Tax Article Review And Roundup: Elkins Reviews Behavioral Frictions And Limits Of Tax Advice In Tax Regime Choice


NY Times: The Harvard-Trained Lawyer Behind Trump’s Fight Against Top Universities



The far right, protests and symbols of hate

As The Guardian notes this morning:

Members of a far-right nationalist party are helping to organise protests outside hotels used to house asylum seekers across the UK, according to a series of Facebook posts and groups created in recent weeks.

Activists for the Homeland party, which was formed as a splinter organisation from Patriotic Alternative, Britain's biggest far-right group, have set up a number of online groups in an attempt to spread the protests that recently engulfed a hotel in Epping.

 

Another definition of fascism

John Christensen shared this definition of fascism with me yesterday. The subject has always been of concern to us. In January 2005, we had a
Read the full article…


Why Shop? In Maine, the Library of Things Has It All (Almost) New York Tims. Brunswick! Nearest town to my ancestral home of Bailey Island! One of my brothers is vacationing there now.

Thursday, August 28, 2025

Site Behind Major SSN Leak Returns With Detailed Data on Millions

“I’m looking for employees who have their own unique way of seeing things my way.”

~ David Alien


3 Easy Ways to Organize Your Digital Photos

PCMag – “How awful does it feel to open a digital photo and not remember anything about it? The good news is that you can help yourself avoid that experience by organizing your pictures. And contrary to popular belief, that process doesn’t have to be a pain.


 A new genre has appeared on the book scene: a biography of a biography. Joseph Epstein has  mixed feeling: »

There Are Too Many Overweight Biographies

Whatever happened to Plutarch’s blessed brevity?

Rising despair among young adults in Australia mirrors trends in the US and Anglophone countries, with mental health challenges 



A DOGE AI Tool Called SweetREX Is Coming to Slash US Government Regulation

Wired – no paywall – “Named for its developer, an undergrad who took leave from UChicago to become a DOGE affiliate, a new AI tool automates the review of federal regulations and flags rules it thinks can be eliminated. Efforts to gut regulation across the US government using AI are well underway. 

On Wednesday, the Office of the Chief Information Officer at the Office of Management and Budget hosted a video call to discuss an AI tool being used to cut federal regulations, which the office called SweetREX Deregulation AI. The tool, which is still being developed, is built to identify sections of regulations that aren’t required by statute, then expedite the process for adopting updated regulations. 

The development and rollout of what is being formally called the SweetREX Deregulation AI Plan Builder, or SweetREX DAIP, is meant to help achieve the goals laid out in President Donald Trump’s “Unleashing Prosperity Through Deregulation” executive order, which aims to “promote prudent financial management and alleviate unnecessary regulatory burdens.” Industrial-scale deregulation is a core aim laid out in Project 2025, the document that has served as a playbook for the second Trump administration. 

The so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) has also estimated that “50 percent of all federal regulations can be eliminated,” according to a July 1, 2025, PowerPoint presentation obtained by The Washington Post. To this end, SweetREX was developed by associates of DOGE operating out of the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). 

The plan is to roll it out to other US agencies. Members of the call included staffers from across the government, including the Environmental Protection Agency, the Department of State, and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, among others. Christopher Sweet, a DOGE affiliate who was initially introduced to colleagues as a “special assistant” and who was until recently a third-year student at the University of Chicago, co-led the call and was identified as the primary developer of SweetREX (thus, its name). He told colleagues that tools from Anthropic and OpenAI will be increasingly utilized by federal workers and that “a lot of the productivity boosts will come from the tools that are built around these platforms.” 

Sweet said that for SweetREX, they are “primarily using the Google family of models, so primarily Gemini.” Neither Sweet nor OMB immediately responded to WIRED’s request for comment. HUD’s press office responded only to say the request was “under review.” Google did not yet respond to a request for comment.

Previously, WIRED reportedon the output of an AI tool for deregulation at HUD. A spreadsheet detailed how many words could be eliminated from individual regulations and gave a percentage figure indicating how noncompliant the regulations were; how that percentage was calculated was unclear. At the time, Sweet did not respond to a request for comment, and a HUD spokesperson said the agency does not comment on individual personnel.

 

Site Behind Major SSN Leak Returns With Detailed Data on Millions

Follow up to previous posts – National Public Data Published Its Own PasswordsIs Your SSN in the National Public Data Breach? Here’s How to Find Out; and How to Remove Your Profile From National Public DataSee also PC Mag – National Public Data, a website infamous for its role in leaking millions of Social Security numbers last year, has returned with the ability to look up anyone’s personal information. The site shut down in December amid a wave of lawsuits against parent company Jericho Pictures after a breach exposed an estimated 272 million unique SSNs and 600 million phone numbers. Since then, the site has been relatively dormant. But today, we spotted the nationalpublicdata.comdomain springing back to life with a new interface. It looks like the domain has changed hands: In a page about last year’s breach, the site’s new owners write: “Important Notice: Jerico Pictures, Inc., the Florida company that suffered a major data breach in 2024, no longer operates this site. We have zero affiliation with them. We’re keeping this page, originally posted by Jerico Pictures, Inc., intact so its history remains traceable.”

The New Status Quo For IRS Leadership Roles

 “Do not underestimate your abilities. That is your boss’s job.” 

– Francis Young, Author


Trump telling Bolton “I’ll show you who’s the boss.” as weak petty men do.


Putin’s dislike of Zelensky is holding up meeting, Trump says


Trump's Plan To Conquer Heaven


Powell Tap Dances on Interest Rate Outlook as Stagflation Starts to Kick In

Powell threw Mr. Market and Trump a bone by hinting the Fed might cut rates in Sept. But the Fed lacks good options with stagflation looming


Jail risk as judge rules on tax office whistleblower


The New Status Quo For IRS Leadership Roles


Five more journalists were killed covering the war in Gaza

Media workers linked to AP, Reuters and Al Jazeera were among 20 killed in Gaza hospital strikes that drew a rare statement of regret from Netanyahu



In New Letters, DOJ Escalates Hunt For State Voter Data, Threatens Legal Action

Democracy Docket: “The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) is escalating its effort to pressure states to hand over sensitive voter data, including by threatening legal action, according to letters from a top department official obtained by Democracy Docket


PC Mag: Privacy Under Fire: Instagram Is Mapping You, Otter Is Recording You, and Smishers Are After Your Amazon Account

…Watch out for this one. If you’re not familiar with the term “smishing,” it’s a portmanteau of “SMS phishing.” It just describes attacks like this one, reported by IT Security Guru, where you get a text message purportedly from Amazon, claiming that your order has been either damaged, delayed, or returned, and you should tap the link in the text message for a full refund. Of course, tapping the link takes you to a convincing-looking login page that is definitely not Amazon. Once you’ve given the site your credentials, the scammers make off with your Amazon account, potentially racking up huge charges under your name and using your stored payment methods before you can do anything about it. And no, the refund never shows up, because it was never real…”



What do intelligence analysts do?

The people who are really good understand sourcing and how important it is for critical thinking. The education should be focused on helping people recognize and refute bullshit. Step one is the critical thinking necessary to say, “This makes no sense,” or “This is just fluff.” The people who are professionally trained to be really good at understanding the quality and history of a source, and to understand the source’s access to information or lack of, are librarians. We should probably steal shamelessly from librarians. Data journalism, same thing. There are lots of parallel professions where we could be learning more to improve our own performance.

The folks that I’ve seen who crush it, they’re like a dog with a bone. They will not let go. They’ve got a question, they’re going to answer the question if it kills them and everybody else around them. It’s a kamikaze thing. Those people, the tenacious ones who care about sources and have critical thinking skills, or at least tools to help them think critically, seem the highest performers to me. As a rule, they all keep score. It’s part of their process.

That is from Santi Ruiz interviewing Rob Johnston, interesting throughout


Palantir is Colorado’s highest-valued company — and at center of controversy — five years after move to Denver Denver Post


SFPD surveillance unit’s close ties to crypto billionaire 48 Hills


Ring of Fire The Baffler



 

Mail-In Voting Is Not Only in America

NewsGuard Reality CheckDebunk: U.S. is One of 33 Countries That Uses Mail-in Ballots, Contrary to Trump and Pro-Kremlin Claims. What happened: Donald Trump and pro-Russian and conservative sources are falsely claiming that the United States is the only country that permits voting by mail, advancing the argument that the method leads to widespread corruption and should be eliminated. 

A closer look: Trump said in an Aug. 18 Truth Social post that he planned to sign an executive order banning all mail-in ballots to “help bring HONESTY to the 2026 Midterm Elections.”

  • In the post, which garnered 68,000 likes and 19,200 reposts, Trump stated: “We are now the only Country in the World that uses Mail-In Voting. All others gave it up because of the MASSIVE VOTER FRAUD ENCOUNTERED.”
  • Trump’s claim was subsequently advanced by Russian news organizations, popular Russian Telegram channels, and conservative social media users in the U.S.
  • Russian-language news site Rumafia.news published a screenshot of Trump’s post under the headline, “Trump pushes for mail-in voting ban, criticizes electronic election systems.” A screenshot of Trump’s post was also published in the Russian Telegram channel Sheyhtamir1974, attracting 101,000 views and 1,780 likes.

Pro-Kremlin sites often promote false claims that can generate political instability in the U.S., including by reducing trust in the democratic election process.

Actually: Many other countries allow voting by mail, and there is no evidence that mail-in voting leads to widespread voter fraud.

  • Thirty-three countries allow voters to use mail-in ballots in some capacity, according to the International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance(IDEA), an intergovernmental organization with 35 member states, including the U.S. The organization’s stated mission is “to promote trust in electoral processes and outcomes.”
  • In a 2021 study examining mail-in voting laws, IDEA reported that 12 nations allow all voters to mail-in ballots and another 21 allow at least some voters to cast ballots by mail. The other vote-by-mail countries include Canada, the U.K., Germany, and Switzerland, according to the IDEA report.

While voter fraud has occurred with mail-in ballots, evidence indicates that it is rare.. The conservative Heritage Foundation maintains a voter fraud database documenting all known voting fraud cases, including those related to mail-in ballots, dating to 1982. 

As of Aug. 21, 2025, the database listed a total of 1,600 cases of voter fraud, 378 of which resulted from a fraudulent use of mail-in absentee ballots. For context, in the 2024 U.S. general election, 46.8 million ballots, or 30.3 percent of votes, were cast by mail, according to the U.S. Election Assistance Commission…”

The higher a monkey climbs, the more you see of its behind

 

Common sense the best defence against fraudsters: forensic auditor 

REGULATION

Basic common sense is one of the best tools to detect fraudulent schemes, a forensic auditor has said.

By Keeli Cambourne    

Sharlene Anderson, a consultant for Veritas Auditing, says on the latest ASF Audits podcast that SMSF trustees and finance professionals should follow the “age-old adage” that, if it looks too good to be true, it probably is.

As another collapse of an investment scheme, Australian Fiducaries, hits the headlines, and the ATO upping its warnings over similar scams, spotting a fraudulent scheme doesn’t require fancy tech or complicated investigation, Anderson said.

Australian Fiduciaries was put into liquidation in July owing 660 investors up to $170 million. Similar to the 12,000 people who sunk more than $1 billion into First Guardian and the Shield Master Fund, investors in Australian Fiduciaries ended up with their superannuation locked in complex and risky illiquid investments, many of which were controlled by related parties.


ASIC has been investigating all three schemes, a collective failure that is bigger than the $1 billion collapse of Storm Financial in 2009, or the $450 million collapse of Dixon Advisory in 2019.

“You're not going to see consistent returns all the time. We all know about Bernie Madoff and his Ponzi scheme that was producing 12 per cent returns year-on-year and it was an FBI algorithm that pointed it out, through a lot of testing,” Anderson said.

“No matter where you put your money, you couldn't get that return. I'm not suggesting that any SMSF professional is going to have those sorts of algorithms, but we've got common sense.”

Anderson continued that SMSF professionals can do some basic analytical procedures to determine if fraud is occurring, and one of those is just looking for something that is consistently the same.

“[Ask the question] should it be? And how does that compare to the other funds you may be working with.”


“That's the first part. The next part really comes back to using common sense and looking at the documents in front of you and ticking them off.”

Anderson gave an example of a recent CommSec bank statement she had been asked to review from the Melissa Caddick case, which was dated 24 December as the period end for the statements.

“Now, I'm yet to see any sort of statements that end, unless they're weekly statements which CommSec don't issue on Christmas Eve, so that straight away should have been a red flag to anybody looking at that document.”

“You have got to do your general checks and balances. Check for signatures, check for last year's documents compared to this year's documents, maybe even something for you to use as a bit of a benchmark.

“Or have you got another fund with a similar investment? Do the documents look the same? Just follow your nose and be sceptical because that professional scepticism really needs to come in at this point, and when you're doing your audits, and make sure that you focus on not what looks right, but what perhaps looks wrong.”

Shelley Banton, head of technical for ASF Audits, said the Caddick case is a good example of things being too good to be true.

“I think the clever or tragic aspect of that case, apart from everybody losing their money, is that she really just targeted her friends and family and that brought that up to an extra level of trust as well,” Banton said.

Anderson said schemes like Trio Capital are far more sophisticated scams and harder to detect.

“Hindsight is a great thing. When you look back and go, I can't believe they were able to do that, but it was a failure by the regulators in so far as the scammers were able to buy a small country financial planning business and take control of that, and with that came the AFSL license,” she said.

“So it was legitimate, unlike Melissa Caddick, who didn't have an AFSL license and just had a bogus number on her paperwork. Trio Capital's AFSL license was valid, so if you had a check site, you wouldn't have picked it up.”

In that case, Anderson said the scammers targeted accountants and “wined and dined” them so they would then start referring their clients.

“And people trust their accountants, which they should. So when your accountant says, ‘this is safe and it's a good investment,’ they jump in.”

“From a fraudster’s perspective, they just sat back. They'd found a hole in the system that allowed them to get a legitimate business, then they targeted accountants as the weakest link between SMSF and superannuation funds.”

Anderson said in the Trio Capital case, the scam netted in excess of $180 million, none of which was ever recovered.

“That's a level of sophistication that we haven't seen before, and hopefully we won't see again.”


  1. ‘Never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake.’ – Napoleon Bonaparte

  1. ‘It’s just a job. Grass grows, birds fly, waves pound the sand. I beat people up.’ – Muhammad Ali

  1. I think Smithers picked me because of my motivational skills. Everyone says they have to work a lot harder when I’m around. – Homer Simpsonu

  1. ‘Hard work never killed anybody, but why take a chance? – Edgar Bergen




  1. ‘Oh, you hate your job? Why didn’t you say so? There’s a support group for that. It’s called EVERYBODY, and they meet at the bar. – Drew Carey

  1. ‘Sometimes the best part of my job is that the chair swivels’ –Unknown

  1. ‘What I don’t like about office Christmas parties is looking for a job the next day.’- Phyllis Diller

  1. ‘The brain is a wonderful organ; it starts working the moment you get up in the morning and does not stop until you get into the office.’ –Robert Frost

  1. ‘The easiest job in the world has to be coroner. Surgery on dead people. What’s the worst thing that could happen? If everything went wrong, maybe you’d get a pulse.’ – Denise Miller

  1. ‘Going to work for a large company is like getting on a train. Are you going sixty miles an hour or is the train going sixty miles an hour and you’re just sitting still?’ – J. Paul Getty

  1. ‘Son, if you really want something in this life, you have to work for it. Now quiet! They’re about to announce the lottery numbers.’ – Homer Simpson

  1. ‘Work is a necessity for man. Man invented the alarm clock.’ –Pablo Picass0

  1. ‘Why join the navy if you can be a pirate?’ – Steve Jobs

  1. ‘Failure is not an option-it comes bundled with the software.’ – Unknown

  1. ‘The higher a monkey climbs, the more you see of its behind.’ – Joseph Stilwell

  1. ‘Nothing is illegal if a hundred businessmen decide to do it.’ – Andrew Young

  1. There’s no secret about success. Did you ever know a successful man who didn’t tell you about it?’ – Kin Hubbard

  1. There’s no business like show business, but there are several businesses like accounting.’ – David Letterman

  1. There’s an enormous number of managers who have retired on the job.’ – Peter Drucker

  1. ‘By working faithfully eight hours a day you may eventually get to be boss and work twelve hours a day.’ – Robert Frost

  1. ‘Accomplishing the impossible means only the boss will add it to your regular duties.’ – Doug Larson

  1. ‘Lisa, if you don’t like your job you don’t strike. You just go in every day and do it half-assed. That’s the American way. – Homer Simpson

  1. ‘Success is relative. It is what we can make of the mess we have made of things.’ – TS Eliot

  1. ‘If you would like to know the value of money, try to borrow some.’ – Benjamin Franklin

  1. ‘Don’t stay in bed, unless you can make money in bed.’ – George Burns

  1. ‘Artificial intelligence is no match for natural stupidity.’ – Unkmown

  1. ‘If at first you don’t succeed, failure may be your style.’ – Quentin Crisp

  1. ‘If at first you don’t succeed, try management.’ – Unknown 

  1. ‘Aim low, reach your goals, and avoid disappointment.’ – Dilbert

  1. ‘Life is like a dogsled team. If you ain’t the lead dog, the scenery never changes. – Lewis Grizzard

  1. ‘The best way to appreciate your job is to imagine yourself without one. – Oscar Wilde

  1. ‘All paid jobs absorb and degrade the mind.’ – Aristotle

  1. ‘Beware of any enterprise requiring new clothes.’ – Henry Thoreau

  1. ‘Do not underestimate your abilities. That is your boss’s job.’ – Unknown

  1. ‘Right now, this is a job. If I advance any higher, this would be my career. And if this were my career, I’d have to throw myself in front of a train.’ – The Office

  1. ‘Every man has a right to be conceited until he is successful.’ – Benjamin Disraeli

  1. ‘You never become a howling success by just howling.’ – Bob Harrington

  1. ‘Success and failure are both difficult to endure. Along with success come drugs, divorce, fornication, bullying, travel, meditation, medication, depression, neurosis and suicide. With failure comes failure.’ – Joseph Heller

  1. ‘Victory goes to the player who makes the next-to-last mistake.’ – Savielly Tartakower

  1. ‘Success is simply a matter of luck. Ask any failure.’ – Earl Wilson

  1. ‘I’m not the smartest fellow in the world, but I can sure pick smart colleagues.’ – Franklin D. Roosevelt

  1. ‘Make sure you have a vice president in charge of your revolution, to engender ferment among your more conventional colleagues.’ – David Ogilvy

  1. ‘One of the symptoms of an approaching nervous breakdown is the belief that one’s work is terribly important.’ – Bertrand Russel

  1. ‘I will always choose a lazy person to do a hard job, because a lazy person will find an easy way to do it.’- Bill Gates

  1. ‘Good judgment comes from experience, and experience comes from bad judgment.’ – Rita Mae Brown

  1. ‘If you’re not failing every now and again, it’s a sign you’re not doing anything very innovative.’ – Woody Allen

  1. ‘I suppose it is tempting, if the only tool you have is a hammer, to treat everything as if it were a nail.’ – Abraham Maslow

  1. ‘The best computer is a man, and it’s the only one that can be mass-produced by unskilled labour.’ – Wernher von Braun

  1. “Do the best you can until you know better. Then when you know better, do better.” – Maya Angelou

  1. “Create the highest, grandest vision possible for your life because you become what you believe.” – Oprah Winfrey

  1. “The road to success is always under construction.” – Lily Tomlin

  1. If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put the foundations under them.” – Henry David Thoreau

  1. “It is very rare or almost impossible that an event can be negative from all points of view.” – Dalai Lama

  1. “Strive not to be a success, but rather to be of value.” – Albert Einstein

  1. Optimism is the faith that leads to achievement. Nothing can be done without hope and confidence.” – Helen Keller

  1. You don’t have to be great to start, but you have to start to be great. – Zig Ziglar

  1. “Find a job you enjoy doing, and you will never have to work a day in your life.” –Mark Twain

  1. The world of the future is in our making. Tomorrow is now.” – Eleanor Roosevelt

  1. “Our greatest glory is not in never failing, but in rising up every time we fail.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson
 
  1. When life gives you lemons, make lemonade”– Elbert Hubbard

  1. Even if you’re on the right track, you’ll get run over if you just sit there.” – Will Rogers

  1. “People often say that motivation doesn’t last. Well, neither does bathing, that’s why we recommend it daily.” – Zig Ziglar.