Lee.org

Is USDirectory.com legit? No. No it is not.

I first blogged about them 18 years ago. Wow, 18 years?! And just today I got another review reaffirming their scammy spamminess.

Stay away from USDirectory.com.

Pope Francis passed away 2 weeks ago. Would it be strange and deeply offensive if I put on a pope hat, robes, and a cross around my neck and posted a photo here? Well, that is what Donald Trump did. I am loathe to repost it but proof of this offense needed.

What if a week after the pope passed away, I said I thought I should be the next pope? Would that be strange and offensive? That’s what Donald Trump did.

It is disturbing in the extreme that anyone would seriously support such a notion. That is what the “Honorable” Republican senator from South Carolina did with his sycophantic remarks.

This is a followup to my long running work on getting people to understand the proper medical symbol, the Rod of Asclepius. Read.

I finally reached someone at Mayo Clinic Proceedings, Dr. Alfredo Sansone, Executive Publisher at Elsevier and STM Journals.

Right now,  it appears that Dr. Sansone doesn’t appear interested in making sure good and correct articles are published and visible, but to… I don’t know! He responded to my first message having obviously not read it thoughtfully. For example, I made a summative statement and backed it up with a detailed reasoning along with several hundred citations (yes, several hundred). But his response was to attack the summative statement in a sideways manner, ignoring all the rest. His other disagreements with my thesis just don’t make sense. I followed up with a long clarifying letter, hoping to further progress but while he has definitely viewed it, and another message I sent, he hasn’t responded. I’m considering publishing our weird interaction and just giving up on this part of the project.

I had pursued this because when you google “medical symbol” an article on Dr. Sansone’s Mayo Clinic Proceedings (MCP) site came up first. Today I note that the MCP article doesn’t come up first any more! Google still gets the answer wrong in summary, but EVERY article it links to reports that the Rod of Asclepius is the more appropriate symbol.

Donald Trump sent Abrego Garcia from the United States to an El Salvador prison despite a long standing United State’s court order prohibiting his deportation to El Salvador. Trump says that the characters “MS13” tattooed on Mr. Garcia’s fingers are the reason enough to believe he is a gang member. To be clear, Trump doesn’t believe the letters were put onto the image as callouts showing how the image of the marijuana leaf on his finger may represent the letter “M” etc. He believes that the completely obviously “photoshop” applied callouts are tattoos on the man’s hand. What do you think?

(via)

Here is Trump saying, and arguing strongly that he believes the text was plainly written on his hand. Trump, “He had ‘M’ ‘S’ as clear as you can be, not interpreted…”

I also note that Trump wrote on that X (Twitter) post, “…two Highly Respected Courts found that he was a member of MS-13”. While every news report I’ve found says that Abrego Garcia has no criminal record.

Update 4-30-25: I found this news report released today where there was talk by police of him being a gang member in 2021 and having domestic dispute issues. It still stands that the Supreme Court told Trump to get him back from El Salvador and Trump completely refuses. See the the previous 10 minutes or so of the interview above

In brief: I get my news from NPR, The Washington Post, and Fox News Online. Where do you get yours?

A bit more: A few months ago, I decided to get a subscription to a newspaper. I wasn’t sure what to get, but I ended up with the Washington Post.  I was a little worried that since the Post is owned by Bezos is connected to the Trump oligarchy, possibly making the reporting unfair. That doesn’t seem to be the case! Here are today’s headlines in the Washington post, a pretty typical day.

Here’s new research on what to eat so you it is more likely that you will age better.

Put the photo below on your fridge. It’s simple, eat more of what’s at the top of the list, less of what’s at the bottom and you’ll be more likely to have good things like “intact cognitive function”, and “survived to 70 years of age”.

Medscape pointed me to this article on the correlation between what people eat and how well they age: Optimal dietary patterns for healthy aging, in Nature Medicine. (local copy)

Here’s the money-shot page as a PDF

The list isn’t perfect. It has “creamy soup” near the bottom. Do they mean that creamy soups kill you? No, but it’s hard to tease the data with all of our daily lifestyle choices!

Laura’s Facebook account kept getting messed with despite me installing 2 Factor Authentication! I finally found that the baddy had been hiding their access to her account under a Facebook “Connected Experiences” account. I show you exactly how I found them and removed the baddy.

In brief, go to accountscenter.facebook.com and look for Connected Experiences | Logging in with accounts. If you see any names there, especially if they are logged in from an unexpected place (in my case they were logged in from Vietnam!) it’s probably a bad actor who has access to your account that shouldn’t!

To fix it, go back to accountscenter.facebook.com and look for Accounts. Remove the offending accounts!

Megan and I went to a wonderful magic show last night, Kevin Blake, The Illusionist at the Palace Theater.

It was a very enjoyable evening with my wife. Oh and dinner beforehand at a restaurant down the street… “606” I think it was called, was a real treat!

Particularly memorable parts of the show include the first moments of the show when he threw a paper airplane and after a few feet, it just hovered in the air impossibly!

He talked eloquently about neuroliguistic programming and the debunked “magic” behind it and then proceeded to magically force people to take numbers and sit where he wanted them to in order to manifest a perfect arrangement of people, numbers, and chairs.

Dice rolling: He rolled dice down a clear acrylic dice rolling tower and audience members got to call out what number they would roll. His showmanship was excellent and the whole room cheered on as each die came up with the roll that was called out!

Mentalism: when we walked in at the beginning of the evening, we found envelopes on our chairs, asking us to write down a personal question, and then answer it. Just before intermission, Kevin asked us to put the envelopes into a box on the stage. The box sat there under a spotlight during intermission. After intermission, he came out, and did the impossible!

First, he talked about and showed that he didn’t have some insanely sophisticated technology to watch and listen to people during intermission, and he didn’t have an earpiece. And then he began…

He picked up the first envelope without opening it and read off the initials on it. He set the envelope down and started addressing the person with slowly increasing certainty… sounding out their name, details about the question and answer. He nailed it. For the next person, he didn’t pick up an envelope, he just called out some initials and started in. For the next, he pointed to the person in the audience as he said the next initials, gave details about the person, what zodiac sign they were, brought up the question and the answer in what was a beautifully creepy mentalism! Most astoundingly, he talked about more than 50 people as if he KNEW them and all of their secrets. But how!?! At a minimum, he needed to MEMORIZE ALL THAT INFORMATION after IMPOSSIBLY extricating it from the cards that we put in the envelopes! Or, the most obvious answer would be that he just knew everything… EVERYTHING! It was awesome!

Multiplication Board: after he was done with the envelopes, he rolled a board out. He had asked people to fill in the board during intermission, each of the 24 cells were to be filled in by a patron with a 2 digit number and their initials. He looked over the board for a few moments and then did the impossible! He turned to the audience and did things like reciting ALL of the numbers, all of the 10’s place numbers, adding up all the numbers of a row, adding up ALL of the numbers. Then, still without looking at the board, he rattled off all the initials!! Had people stand up and then sit down as he recited their initials! It was insane! He did everything with such speed and precision, there is no way he was listening to a secret prompter. He must have memorized the entire board and done all the math! He must have!

Cards: A fun, elaborate card trick where he dealt cards and gave one person a royal flush, and yet he ended up with a higher hand!

I think it’s totally awesome that Ken Brown’s art, that I’ve mentioned here before is for sale again!

Check out the charismatically psychedelic, Ken Brown Stuff Shop Page!

Avelo airlines took a contract with the federal government to deport people for Trump. There is a petition against it. I signed and made a 30 second video about why I signed:
Petition: https://chng.it/hKCYQ9BpLR
Video: https://www.change.org/p/we-won-t-fly-avelo-until-they-stop-ice-flights-no-volaremos-con-avelo/v/854540219

“I’ll go further than signing this petition about these illegal and un-American deportations. If Avelo airlines engages in deportation flights, I promise to never use Avelo or any of the board members’ products ever again. So, to the CEO, Andrew Levy and every other board member, you had had better make a lot of money RIGHT NOW because after the Trump administration forgets about you, you may have a much harder time getting work.”

(via) (archive.org link)

Leadership
Our Avelo leadership team represents more than 400 years of collective aviation experience. We would love you to meet a few of us.

Andrew Levy
Founder, Chairman and CEO
Andrew Levy brings three decades of corporate and entrepreneurial experience in the aviation and tel…

Greg Baden
Chief Operating Officer
Greg Baden is the Chief Operating Officer for Avelo, where he oversees and coordinates all aspects o…

Brian Davis
Chief Commercial Officer
Brian Davis is the Chief Commercial Officer at Avelo Airlines. In this role, he is responsible for l…

Hayden Goldberg
Head of Financial Planning and Analysis / Assistant Treasurer
As Head of Financial Planning and Analysis, Hayden is responsible for spearheading Avelo’s financial…

Scott Hall
Head of Flight Operations
Scott Hall is the Head of Flight Operations and the FAR Part 119 Director of Operations for Avelo. I…

Sean Hopkins
Head of Contracts
Sean is the Head of Contracts for Avelo, bringing four decades of experience in major contract negot…

Aaron Hynes
Chief Information Officer
As Chief Information Officer, Aaron leads the development and management of Avelo’s information tech…

Hunter Keay
Chief Financial Officer
Hunter Keay is Avelo’s Chief Financial Officer. In his role, he is responsible for overseeing the co…

Jeff Koonce
Head of Accounting
Jeff brings a wealth of expertise to Avelo as Head of Accounting. In this role, he oversees all aspe…

Gary Martin
Head of Technical Operations
As Head of Technical Operations at Avelo, Gary oversees aircraft maintenance, quality, regulatory co…

Jim Olson
Head of Brand and Communications
Jim is responsible for building and protecting Avelo’s brand, bolstering Crewmember engagement, and …

Jeff Painter
Head of Inflight
As Head of Inflight, Jeff is responsible for attracting, training, and leading Avelo’s Flight Attend…

Margaret Plummer
Head of People
In her role as Head of People, Margaret is responsible for Avelo’s payroll, benefits, Crewmember rel…

Michael Quiello
Head of Safety, Security and Operational Excellence
As Head of Safety, Security and Operational Excellence, Michael brings over 40 years of commercial a…

Trevor Yealy
Head of Revenue
As Head of Revenue, Trevor’s oversight spans all things revenue generation, including: Avelo’s Netwo…