Pass the ammunition

They could be compared with the crusaders, some of the slaughtering of prots was done under the crusader flag,...

Okay, I give up.  What the hell are "prots," Uncle Ken?  It would help if you provided  definitions for those fake words you like to toss about.  For a minute I thought you may have meant "Protestants" but they woudn't show up for another couple of hundred years, and not in that location.

-----

New topics, eh?  Last week Obama spoke for an hour at a sports analytics conference held at MIT.  It was supposed to be secret, with no recordings, but you know how it is these days.  It wasn't a speech per se, but responses to questions asked by a pair of moderators dealing with data and analytics.  I was amazed at his answers and his ability to speak at length, off the cuff with no canned response; it is impossible to visualize Trump in the same scenario.  You can read a summary here and listen to a poor quality audio recording if you wish.  I never appreciated how smart the guy really is.  Listening to an hour of Obama is much easier than listening to two minutes of Trump, in my opinion.

-----

Although I've seen it mentioned only a few times, the idea of the "reputation economy" seems to be gaining a little steam.  I was first aware of it in a novel by Cory Doctorow, an author I've mentioned before, titled Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom from more than ten years ago.  But the Chinese are really getting into it now, with all their data acquisition and use of AI.  If your "score" is higher you can rent nicer apartments and get better loans.  Some aspects of the reputation economy are mentioned here and further information can be found in the usual places.  There are dark sides, too, and a recent episode of the cable series Black Mirror gives a glimpse of the ramifications of a reputation economy; it is called Nosedive.

-----

There has been plenty of yapping about the differences between liberals and conservatives and now the shrinks have weighed in with this article.

Here's a dilemma for the liberals and/or gun control fanatics: what do you do when you find out your pension plan has investments in firearm companies?

Finally, I've been thinking about the Second Amendment.  Not a word is mentioned about ammunition.  If you can't restrict the weapons you can still restrict the ammo, don't you think?