Amazon has come under fire in the past for its lackluster approach to handling counterfeit products. Now, the online retailer is facing a broader problem, with counterfeiters going as far as to take over a company’s legitimate product listing… BuzzFeed News highlights the problem in a report, explaining how a counterfeit maker of the popular from Elevation Labs overtook the company’s own Amazon listing.
Category: Read
📖 Read pages 141-163 of Ramona the Brave by Beverly Cleary
📖 Read pages 141-163, Chapter 8: Ramona Says a Bad Word, of Ramona The Brave by (William Morrow and Company, , ISBN: 0-688-22015-0)
Guts is the bad word? Ha!
📖 Murilla Gorilla and the Lost Parasol by Jennifer Lloyd
A rainstorm has passed through Mango Market. Parrot is upset by a missing parasol at his parasol stand. It is up to Murilla, the disorganized, messy and seemingly hopeless detective to solve the case. Can she do it? Of course she wants to help her friend, but first Murilla needs to find her magnifying glass.
The world Murilla lives in its pretty consistent. We see a lot of characters and things we saw in the first book. Messy Murilla looks for a mop in her stove with with reasonable comic effect.
Here there are no footprints on the ground and it’s a good clue about what happened to the missing parasol.
Rating: 3 of 5 stars
📖 The Thank You Book by Mo Willems
Gerald is careful. Piggie is not. Piggie cannot help smiling. Gerald can. Gerald worries so that Piggie does not have to. Gerald and Piggie are best friends. In The Thank You Book!, Piggie wants to thank EVERYONE. But Gerald is worried Piggie will forget someone . . . someone important.
They’re were some interesting misdirections here with a few cute reveals. Only the sharpest reader will anticipate the last one.
How are there already 25 of these books?! It was nice to have some crossover with Willems’ other books.
Rating: 4 of 5 stars
👓 Coming Soon: Reclaim Video | bavatuesdays
The idea of running a video rental store has been bouncing around at Reclaim Hosting for over a year now. When we started renovating the CoWork space/Reclaim Headquarters over a year ago we realized we would soon have a vacant strip mall storefront at our disposal. I started floating the idea of a video rental store to Tim, but given he was knee-deep in actually designing and building CoWork with Lauren, those discussions were postponed. At this point it was not clear how it related to anything else we already do, namely run Reclaim Hosting and CoWork—it was just a fun idea.
This is an awesome sounding idea. I’d love to hear more about it. I know that folks like Kevin Smokler and David Dylan Thomas are going to flip over it.
Despite the fact that it seems like a lot of fun, I’m curious how they’re going to make sure it doesn’t bring down the bottom line and put anything else in jeopardy. I certainly get the fun part, but the minimal break even portion doesn’t sound like it’s quite there to me.
The tough part of the physical media game is that these are magnetic tapes. While many of my 90’s VHS tapes are relatively fine, my VHS from the early 80’s are in worse shape. Tougher is having machines to play these successfully on. This post reminds me a lot of the difficulties I’ve heard from UCLA Film & Television archivists doing work on tapes themselves.
👓 We Want Your VHS! | bavatuesdays
If you have some old VHS hanging around the house, yet have gotten rid of your VCR long ago—it might be high time to let Reclaim Video take them off your hands. Rather than letting them sit around collecting dust...
Interesting…
👓 Trump spends 100th day at golf club as president | CNN
President Donald Trump reached a presidential milestone at his Palm Beach County, Florida, golf club on Saturday: One hundred days in office at a golf club that bears his name.
👓 Trump was angry and ‘unglued’ when he started a trade war, officials say | NBC News
Frustration on several fronts aided the president's tariff decision
A bit of a click-bait headline, but the general coverage of the lack of planning around this is astoundingly inept. Stories like this shouldn’t exist in the opening days of an administration much less a year in. His one primary campaign platform was that he was such a great leader and it seems to be his worst possible attribute.
👓 ‘I Live Paycheck to Paycheck’: A West Virginia Teacher Explains Why She’s on Strike | New York Times
We spoke to Katie Endicott, a high school English teacher, about why teachers are not returning to the classroom, despite a deal that offered them a 5 percent raise.
This is just painful to hear. We really need to double teachers’ salaries and create some competition in the market to improve schools. We really can’t afford any more uneducated people in this country.
👓 IMF warns Trump tariff would hurt US | BBC
Others could follow Washington's example to justify tough trade restrictions, it says.
📖 Read Murilla Gorilla, Jungle Detective by Jennifer Lloyd
Murilla Gorilla, the jungle detective, is woken up by a new case: Ms. Chimpanzee’s muffins were stolen. But who did it? It’s up to Murilla to find out... as long as she can find her badge first! Murilla may seem like a hopeless detective—disorganized, messy and always thinking about her next snack—but out of her mess come some pretty good ideas, and some pretty funny moments too.
Simple but entertaining. Great illustrations with a lovely pallette. I’d read others in the series.
It’s a pseudo chapter book with incredibly short chapters for kids on the border of moving from short story books to chapter books.
Rating: 3 of 5 stars
It’s a pseudo chapter book with incredibly short chapters for kids on the border of moving from short story books to chapter books.
Rating: 3 of 5 stars
📖 Read pages 58-60 of Japanese from Zero! 1
📖 Read pages 58-60, Lesson 2: New Hiragana かきくけこ and がぎぐげご, of Japanese from Zero! 1: Proven Techniques to Learn Japanese for Students and Professionals (Volume 1) 6th Edition by and (From Zero!, , ISBN: 978-0976998129)
Also did a fair amount of writing practice of these new hiragana.
👓 The Academy Awards Scandal That First Got PwC Its Job Counting Oscars Votes | Time
Years before PricewaterhouseCoopers caused a scandal for mixing up Oscars envelopes, another controversy got the firm that gig.
📖 Read pages 30-39 and 48-57 of Japanese from Zero! 1
📖 Read pages 30-39 and 48-57, Pre-Lesson D: Coming and Going, Lesson 1 Activities, and Lesson 2, of Japanese from Zero! 1: Proven Techniques to Learn Japanese for Students and Professionals (Volume 1) 6th Edition by and (From Zero!, , ISBN: 978-0976998129)
Went back and picked up a prior section because I was more curious to begin practicing writing my hiragana. There’s some interesting linguistics material and beginning grammar in this section. I’ll have to come back to it and practice some more to absorb both the vocabulary and the grammar.
📖 Read pages 97-119 of Ramona the Brave by Beverly Cleary
📖 Read pages 97-119, Chapter 6: Parent’s Night, of Ramona The Brave by (William Morrow and Company, , ISBN: 0-688-22015-0)
Ramona broods at home with a baby sitter while her parents learn about the Owl Incident. Ramona spends the first night in her new room.
Highlights, Quotes, & Marginalia
Chapter 6: Parent’s Night
“Oh, I see,” said Mrs. Kemp, a remark Ramona knew grown-ups made when they were not interested in conversation with children.
Highlight (yellow) – Chapter 6: Parent’s Night > Page 103
Added on Thursday, March 1, 2018 morning
… although fathers, Ramona knew, did not spend as much time as mothers thinking up ways to improve their children.
Highlight (yellow) – Chapter 6: Parent’s Night > Page 106
Sadly probably true, but awfully sexist nonetheless.
Added on Thursday, March 1, 2018 morning
Ramona lay in bed with her thoughts as jumbled as a bag of jacks.
Highlight (yellow) – Chapter 6: Parent’s Night > Page 113
What a great little simile here.
Added on Thursday, March 1, 2018 morning