From the Observer.

Entitled To Profit: In Texas, Title Insurance Is a “Total Scam”

From Pro Publica:

Lord of the Roths: How Tech Mogul Peter Thiel Turned a Retirement Account for the Middle Class Into a $5 Billion Tax-Free Piggy Bank

There has been lots of attention on the 100th anniversary of the Tulsa Race Massacre in 1921. What isn’t widely known is this was not an isolated event. After WW I, in the early part of the 20th century, there were dozens of similar events in what is know as the Red Summer.

Red Summer is the period from late winter through early autumn of 1919 during which white supremacist terrorism and racial riots took place in more than three dozen cities across the United States, as well as in one rural county in Arkansas.

Red Summer

Ah, my old field of study. I spent decades doing work on FPGA computing. An area that refuses to die (but also refuses to be successful). This would be the old Altera FPGAs, which Intel has been selling for quite some time, but aimed at the data center. I like this idea and I think it could be taken much further. I will note that the URL calls this a “smart NIC” which, I suppose, is one way to look at it.

Infrastructure Processing Units (IPUs)

While Texas hasn’t made much progress toward universal Access to healthcare, today the governor signed a bill that should provide universal Access to firearms.

Texas’ GOP governor signs permit-free gun carrying legislation

it seems to me that one group of Texans are excluded from this group, and they are a group that suffers some of them highest rates of personal violence. Of course I’m talking about the Homeless. Without the money necessary to pay for a place to live, most homeless Texans certainly don’t have the ability to afford a firearm. I believe there should be a government program to bridge this gap and provide guns to the homeless in Texas. In the meantime, I hope the private sector and non-profits will step in to help Texas achieve Universal Gun Access. I’m thinking of getting involved myself.

With the Group of Seven (G7) meeting in the UK this week it is interesting to look at the relative sizes of the economies of these countries. The part I always find interesting is that Russia isn’t even in the top 10. As a country it’s GDP is somewhere below Italy and South Korea.

Not content will killing hundreds of Texans and causing hundreds of billions in damage to the Texas economy, the failing, flailing Texas energy providers are sticking it to places like food banks. Yes, really.

Tarrant Area Food Bank Hit With $58,000 Energy Bill From Winter Storm

For a while the UK had the distinction of the highest Covid-19 death rate, but the US has taken the lead. But this race isn’t over yet. Half of the US is unvaccinated and there is a good chance of more significant waves of Covid-19 in the unvaccinated population.

US overtakes UK as hardest hit by Covid deaths in G7