intuitive ink

Today was a day for the books, at least in terms of environmental activism.  The Fennica, an icebreaker employed by Shell Oil, received a police and coast guard escort as it exited the Port of Portland early Thursday evening. A police and coast-guard escort .  Protesters from Greenpeace who'd dangled suspended from mountaineering equipment under the St. John's Bridge ~40 hours or so prior to this escort were ready to attempt to slow down this boat's as it was in a hurry.  Three of the 13 dangling protesters were forcibly removed from the bridge, so this boat could go underneath, and make its way back to the Arctic, where it will stand by in case one of the cap stacks blows a gasket.    Fennica got an escort because it was in a hurry, and under a deadline.  Yup.  Break out the big guns in law enforcement to ensure that corporate interests get where they're needing to go, when they need to get there. Atrocious.     ...

Was your student loan debt acquired illegally?  How malicious is KwikPay?  The $133 Billion Dollar Questions... If your student loan balance is going nowhere, and if you use or have been enticed by your loan "servicer" to use a little piece of software called KwikPay -- you may wish to read ahead.  Especially if your intentions are to minimize the actual dollar amount of interest (or interest + principle) paid.  See:  http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/02/04/cfpb-student-loan-payment_n_4726052.html Background: doing a little research on something only tangentially related to student loans, I happened across a couple intriguing posts on reddit... have a read  here, here and here .  Immediately my intuitive hackles went up:  something is not right.   And thus the "little" research led to more research, and some pretty interesting discoveries.  First and foremost: be informed that any company that uses KwikPay or Renweb is, ...

"You're rocking the boat.  They don't like that."   A comment I heard just this week... one woman chatting with another woman about how she did it... how was she able to overcome the overwhelming gender bias in this industry and join a team with an employer who actually cares? How did she do it?  By not rocking the boat. I've had this ... I guess we could call it a "conversation" with myself at various points in my life.  Usually it's when I'm getting washed ashore and clinging to dear land, gasping for air:  Oh, geeze. I rocked the boat too hard, again!  And everybody, like, freaked out.   They threw me overboard!  How dare they! ?   Why did they do that?  Because I rocked the boat. Yes, rather than risk their boat getting toppled by little me, they decided that the smartest thing to do is just throw the boat rocker overboard.  Gee thanks.  But the interesting thing is that never has any team membe...