Our 50 Most Inspiring Quotes

We all go through times when the future seems bleak, and in those moments, positive affirmations can help uplift and reassure us. Finding inspiration in the words of others is a great way to break free from the feelings of doubt, uncertainty, or fear that hold us back. We’re all capable of achieving greatness, but sometimes it takes the words of a wise individual to remind us of that.

It doesn’t matter if you’re an author experiencing writer’s block, a painter lacking a muse, or an injured athlete down on your luck. Wh**ever the situation may be, and however tempting it might be to give up, sometimes all it takes is a little inspiration to reset our perspective and propel us toward our goal.

Over the years, we here at Inspiring Quotes have gathered hundreds of … well, inspiring quotes from people of all walks of life. However, there are a few pieces of wisdom that have resonated especially strongly with our readers (and with us). Here are 50 quotes that never cease to inspire us.

https://www.inspiringquotes.com/our-50-most-inspiring-quotes/ZPDVLODU2gAHh0u7

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f5_xeS4o0uw


John Stossel



Sep 19, 2023
President Biden and the Senate, plan to get around budget caps using an "emergency" loophole.

CATO Director of Budget Policy Romina Boccia writes about that. She explains: "Call it an emergency, done. Spend the money on wh**ever you want."

Sadly, that's how it works in Washington.

It gets worse. The budget caps that politicians want to evade never even cut spending to begin with. They merely slowed the planned INCREASE in spending.

You can watch the video above to see what will happen if government keeps spending like crazy -- and also see a possible solution.

Get rid of The View and it should go up in value; 25 cents

What You Say to Google Assistant and Alexa (but Not Siri) Gets Used for Ad Targeting. Here’s How.
Voice assistants can profile you based on your interactions, a new study finds

By Kaveh Waddell
September 9, 2023
Voice assistant logos on brains generating line drawings of people.
Illustration: Chris Griggs/Consumer Reports, Getty Images
You may be used to the fact that as you move around the internet, what you read, view, and click on is being tracked by tech companies. That’s why those shoes you shopped for weeks ago keep popping up in ads on recipe sites, and why your Instagram feed is full of eerily on-the-nose ads.

But what happens when you use voice assistants like Amazon’s Alexa, Google’s Assistant, or Apple’s Siri? If you have a smart speaker in your kitchen, does its manufacturer use your questions and commands to feed its marketing databases with information about you?

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The answer is often yes, according to a new study from Northeastern University in Boston, which found evidence that Google and Amazon—but not Apple—use your voice interactions to draw conclusions about you. Based on what you say to the devices, Google infers things like your marital status and homeowner status, while Amazon notes products you may be interested in.

The data gathered from voice assistants are just one more way that Google and Amazon collect information on their users, supplementing the data they glean from what people do on their phones and laptops.

These details are valuable to marketers, who pay for the privilege of using the companies’ wide-reaching ad platforms to target people they think are most likely to buy their products. This means your requests to Alexa or Google Assistant can influence the ads you’ll see online.

Your requests can also change how Google Assistant responds to you later, Northeastern found.

What the Researchers Did
To figure out just how voice assistants profile you, researchers spent hours creating f**e user personas on Amazon Alexa, Google Assistant, and Apple’s Siri. (Consumer Reports partly funded the study.)

They asked each assistant a series of questions designed to give lots of hints about the personas’ demographics. For example, asking for “family trip destinations” was meant to suggest that the hypothetical user was married; “apartments near Boston” could show that the user rents their home.

Next, the team looked to see how each company had categorized the user personas. Google makes it easy to see those categories—they appear on the company’s My Ad Center page—but Amazon and Apple make you request a download of your user data, a process that can take days.

Outcomes varied. Google usually assigned the tags the researchers expected, but not always: It consistently assigned the “homeowner” tag to personas who asked about topics like mortgage payments, but it tagged some users as “single” after when they asked for things like Disney tickets for a family. In real life, if Google gets a user’s profile tags wrong, that person might get less relevant ads and search results in the future.

Like Google, Amazon uses demographic data to help target ads and product recommendations to consumers—but unlike Google, Amazon doesn’t appear to infer that data from your interactions with Alexa, the researchers found. Instead, Amazon only categorizes Alexa users with the product categories it thinks they might be interested in.

Another big difference: Amazon only seems to profile users based on shopping actions, like adding items to a cart. So when the research team used Alexa to add dresses or shoes to their wish list or shopping cart, those personas were tagged as interested in fashion, beauty, and personal care.

But questions about renter’s insurance didn’t land Alexa users in the “renter” bucket. It appears that unless you’re specifically shopping, you can talk to Alexa without Amazon using that back-and-forth to add to the marketing data it keeps on you.

Siri, for its part, didn’t appear to connect any tags directly to users at all. Siri requests aren’t connected to your Apple ID, according to Apple’s policies, and they aren’t used to build a marketing profile. Apple does have a limited advertising network, but it seems to use only nonvoice clues like your account information and in-app behavior to target those ads.

“Consumers generally don’t know what to expect from their voice assistants when it comes to data privacy,” says David Choffnes, the Northeastern computer science professor who led the research. “There’s no way for them to know exactly what each platform is doing without experiments like this, so there is an urgent need for better t***sparency in this space.”

How Profiling Affects Your Ads and Interactions
Once you’ve been tagged with interest categories or demographic characteristics, your digital world might start looking a little different.

Google uses details about its users to help determine what ads they see, whether on its own products, such as Google Search, Gmail, and YouTube, or elsewhere on the internet. Google ads have an extremely broad reach: Tens of millions of websites and apps use its ad technology. Amazon, for its part, lets companies use details about you to show you ads on Amazon.com, other Amazon products like Twitch and Fire TV, and on third-party sites that use its ad network.

Interacting with voice assistants isn’t the only way your profile gets tagged by tech companies. More commonly, you’ll be tagged based on things like your search history, shopping activity, what websites you visit, and location. But the intimate, conversational nature of these interactions might lead you to expect that your voice requests are treated differently. (Conversely, you might worry that your smart speaker is recording everything you say. That’s not true, but you can take steps to boost your privacy while using the devices.)

“When we interact with these devices, we naturally expect that what we say to our assistants goes no further than the sound of our voice. However, that’s simply not the case,” Choffnes says. “Instead, we find that these assistants are collecting data about us, and sometimes building profiles about who we are, what we’re interested in, where we want to go.”

In certain cases, all this user profiling can affect how the digital assistants react to you. Northeastern found that Google provided different answers to some questions depending on what it thought it knew about you.

When the persona profiled as a married homeowner asked for restaurant recommendations, for example, the assistant suggested Eddie V’s Prime Seafood, a nationwide chain that’s in Google’s most expensive restaurant category. (At Eddie V’s, a branzino dish costs $43 and the lobster costs $106.) But the user profiled as single got a suggestion for Mida, a midpriced restaurant a block from Northeastern’s campus, where entrees are all between $20 and $30.

Google says users benefit from getting answers and ads that are targeted specifically at them. “We want your experience with Google Assistant to be as helpful as possible,” a Google spokesperson told CR in a statement. “Depending on your device and account setting choices, Assistant may use your data to create a more personalized experience.”

Of the three assistants in the study, Google was the only one that changed its answers based on a user’s persona.

Even though Amazon tagged Alexa users in response to some interactions, Alexa didn’t change its answers to basic questions based on those tags. But shopping actions caused Amazon to recommend similar items in the future, just as it would if a user put something in their Amazon.com cart on a laptop.

“Similar to other Amazon services, we may use customers’ interactions with Alexa to provide more relevant ads,” a company spokesperson told CR. “For example, if you ask Alexa to order paper towels or for recipe ideas, you might see or hear ads related to cleaning products or cooking utensils.”

And, as you’d guess based on the fact that Apple didn’t appear to use Siri interactions to tag users with interests or demographic profiles, it didn’t change Siri’s answers based on who was asking. Choffnes says Siri is the most privacy-preserving option for most people, based on this experiment.

What You Can Do
If you use Google Assistant or Alexa, you can see what each company thinks it knows about you.

Google shows your profile tags on its My Ad Center page. Once you sign in, you’ll see demographic tags like relationship status or homeowner status; you’ll also see topics and companies Google thinks you’re interested in.
Amazon makes it much harder to see your profile. You’ll need to download your personal data from Amazon’s Privacy Central; in the drop-down menu, choose “advertising” and then click “submit request.” It can take several days for Amazon to email you a link to download the data you’ve requested. Once you get your data, look for comma-separated values (.csv) files labeled Advertising.AmazonAudiences and Advertising.3PAudience.
Apple allows you to download your data from its Data and Privacy portal, but you won’t find anything about profiling in those materials.
Find that your interests and demographics are tagged incorrectly? Google allows you to change tags you think are incorrect, but Amazon doesn’t. You can change or delete Google tags that aren’t right in the My Ad Center.

If you want to opt out of targeted advertising entirely, you can do that too. Doing so will go further than just limiting how companies can use your voice assistant interactions—it’ll stop them from using any details they’ve guessed about you to choose what advertising you see. (It won’t reduce advertising, though—you’ll just get more generic ads.)

Google’s My Ad Center has a small drop-down at the top you can use to turn off personalized ads.
Amazon’s ad preferences page has an easy toggle for turning off what Amazon calls “interest-based ads.”
Apple provides directions for how to opt out of targeted advertising on each of your Apple devices.

https://victorhanson.com/how-biden-will-circle-the-wagons/

How Biden Will Circle the Wagons?
September 18, 2023
Victor Davis Hanson
American Greatness

The strategies of saving the Biden presidency from an impeachment and a Senate trial despite overwhelming evidence of his corruption are starting to emerge.

The Family is confronted with damning evidence from the laptop, from the testimonies of H****r’s business associates Bobulinksi and Archer, from Ukrainian oligarchs and Viktor Shokin, from IRS whistleblowers, from FBI writs, from a likely pseudonymous Biden trove of 4,000 emails to his son and associates, and from the absolute paranoia of a White House that must constantly change its narrative of denials to adjust to a growing portrait of utter corruption, bribery, and perhaps even the treason of warping U.S. policy to fit Biden family interests.

The Defense in Depth

One of their strategies is to deny, then hedge, then ignore, then grow silent—and repeat the wash/rinse/spin cycle of stonewalling as many times as necessary to evade the mounting t***h.

Insidiously Joe Biden has retreated from his once loud protestations that he supposedly had no idea of what H****r and his associates were doing. Such a patently dishonest denial set the model that the President would have no compunction about lying to the American people until the evidence of his wrongdoing becomes overwhelming.

But this first line of defense did not crumble for years—only to be replaced by a second line of denial: Biden may have known of H****r’s shenanigans, but he had no business interests with him. That was another blatant unt***h.

And that additional stalling also allowed Biden to ignore the closing walls of incrimination for even more months. When these two forward lines of defense collapsed, as the Biden consortium knew they eventually would, a retreat to a third line of defense followed: yes, Joe knew, after all, of H****r’s miscreant shakedowns; and, yes, Joe, after all, conceded that from time to time he did meet H****r’s business associates, and upon requests made phone calls to H****r’s clientele. But he did not profit from such knowledge and associations. Instead an upright old Joe from Scranton was playing along with the “illusion” of influence peddling: Scranton naiveté is not D.C. criminality.

Biden’s tripartite lines of defense always got shorter and shallower as evidence mounted. But so far Biden has managed to consume 31 months of his presidency through these strategic retreats. His fourth and final line of defense will likely be that he was involved, that he had rather than feigned contact, but that he did nothing other than what scores of other high-ranking politicians do who rub shoulders with would-be miscreants, sycophants, and crooks—and so did not knowingly take “loans” and “gifts” that had strings attached.

To breach this fourth defense line, House Republicans will have to break through the labyrinth of Biden paywalls and find how much money was rerouted into Biden coffers. And then they must additionally compare what came into the Biden hands with a) what the family reported on their respective income tax returns, and b) whether their various properties and lifestyles were remotely possible without such massive hidden income. And getting bank records from the Bidens will be near impossible.

The Ukraine Factor

Joe Biden has successfully profited by using American foreign aid to stop prosecutorial inquiries into his son’s and, indirectly per the laptop admissions, his own quid pro quo payments from corrupt Ukrainians.

The firing of Viktor Shokin who knew of H****r B***n’s corruption was one of the most blatantly corrupt and self-interested acts of a Vice President since the career of Spiro Agnew. Still, there is no reason why Biden would now give up such a proven successful strategy.

Yet there are important issues for Biden at stake. One, Viktor Shokin is convinced that the Bidens were recipients of Ukrainian bribes intended to win U.S. foreign aid and influence over American foreign policy in Eastern Europe and vis a vis Russia.

And two, an FBI confidential source has sworn that “a foreign national who allegedly bribed Joe and H****r B***n allegedly has audio recordings of his conversations with them — 17 such recordings.” And three, to corroborate testimonies from these Ukrainian players or to subpoena the purported 17 recordings would now t***slate into risking the wrath of Joe Biden the giver of massive Ukrainian military aid—now likely over $100 billion—and formerly on record of being perfectly willing to cancel Ukrainian aid unless Kyiv bent to his personal agenda.

Now in an existential war, Ukrainians will likely not wish either Viktor Shokin or Mykola Zlochevsky, former head of Burisma and said to be in possession of the 17 recordings (including two that purportedly involve Joe Biden directly), to embarrass much less help to remove Biden by producing evidence confirming their charges.

So we should assume the Ukrainian government will do its best to protect Biden from fellow Ukrainian accusers, mostly by silencing any Ukrainian who would dare endanger their stream of arms and money. For Kyiv, the ongoing Biden exemption from impeachment and conviction is likely seen as a matter of life and death.

The Big Lie

A third defense has been outright lying, the bolder and more absurd, all the better. Here Joe Biden has prepped the lying battlefield, whether deliberately or inadvertently, both through his pathological fabrications about his autobiography and the events of our time, and by the collapse of his cognitive facilities.

Either way, his lies are contextualized by the media as “that’s just ole Joe spinning his tales.” In Biden’s fantasy world, he visited Ground Zero the day after the September 11 attacks, he taught a course on “political theory” at the University of Pennsylvania, his son Beau came home from Iraq in a coffin, and a catastrophic fire nearly consumed the Biden residence.

All these were not only lies, but callous lies that played on the emotions of those in crisis and suffering—to the purported empathetic advantage of Joe Biden himself. So Biden has no compunction of lying ad infinitum.

Remember, for years he lied that he fired Shokin because he was corrupt, that his government knew that, that the Europeans agreed, and that he did not leverage U.S. aid to ensure Shokin did not pursue H****r’s Burisma nefariousness.

All that was a total lie, but a media-protected lie nonetheless that served Biden well for at least five years.

So we should expect the Left to embrace the full Biden lie and claim his serial contact with H****r was the natural concern of a dutiful father, one who has suffered family tragedies and merely periodically called and emailed to cement family solidarity with other equally aggrieved Bidens.

And when evidence mounts that Biden really did receive funds via H****r’s dummy companies we will be told that these were loans, or Joe was gifting them to grandchildren—or, most likely, Joe was completely unaware that such funds eventually found their way into his bank accounts and were used to buy and rent his various sumptuous residences.

Trump 24/7

At each stage of the walls closing around Joe Biden, a commensurate “Trump did it” news bulletin emerged. Collate the indictments or the leaks about impending indictments from the supposedly uncoordinated work of Alvin Bragg, Letitia James, Jack Smith, and Fani Willis both with iconic primary e******n dates ahead, and periodic revelations about the depth of Biden family corruption—and the synchronized distraction is quite stunning.

Expect in the next year for each new incriminating document released, each new witness that comes forward with a tale of Biden corruption, almost immediately the headlines will blare about a new Trump gag order, a new scheduled Trump court appearance, a new flipped witness cooperating with a prosecutor, and a new leak about a “certain” conviction and jail time. The new media war will make its old Russian collusion’s “all-star,” “h****r-k**ler team,” and “dream team” prosecutors and the “bombshell” and “walls are closing in” revelations seem like child’s play.

A Hit-bottom Media

After being utterly discredited by fixating for years on the Russian “collusion” h**x, and hyping the laptop Russian “disinformation” fable, any professional media would by now have apologized, conducted mass firings, and pledged to report the news rather than massage and invent it.

But no sooner does one media embarrassment end than the media ventures onto another, on the theory that it is so discredited and has hit bottom that it no longer has any reputation to defend. So a now liberated but bankrupt media feels it matters nothing whether its mythologies have a grain of t***h.

The Biden family corruption and the exemptions given H****r B***n by a corrupt Biden department of Justice have been contextualized by the media as a prelude to what we can expect of the impeachment inquiry.

In the modern American media, a Trump phone call threatening to delay offensive military aid until the Ukraine government could guarantee that its operatives were not empowering the Biden quid pro quo clan was an impeachable offense. A self-confessed Biden effort to alter US policy to fire a Ukrainian prosecutor, dutifully investigating the H****r B***n/Biden family corruption, by threatening to cancel all U.S. aid to Kyiv was mere “familial” concern. Where incidentally is the outrage from current vehement supporters of blank-check, on-to-Moscow support for Ukraine over Joe Biden’s prior threats to cut critical military aid to Ukraine in efforts to ensure uninterrupted money streams to his own family treasure chest

In sum, the media is more tarnished than ever, and therefore more dangerous because it accepts it has no reputation left to defend and now is entirely unbound to invent, to fabricate, and to smear.

The Deep State

In 2017 under media and Democratic pressure, the Trump-appointed Attorney General Jeff Sessions was bullied into recusing himself. He appointed in his place Robert Mueller as special counsel, empowered by an unlimited budget and a blank-check concerning time and resources to find “collusion.”

In contrast, in 2023 the Biden-appointed AG Merrick Garland, under fierce criticism for delaying the H****r B***n investigation in order to run out of the clock on the statute of limitations on tax fraud, appointed David Weiss as special counsel. He was the prior chief culprit in providing cover for H****r from indictments. So the proverbial fox is now in charge of the hen house.

In 2019 the “whistleblower” Eric Ciaramella was considered a sacrosanct patriot, even though he had no firsthand knowledge of the supposed crimes he was accusing the president of committing. Instead, the whistleblower was selectively being spoon-fed information from Alexander Vindman, the expatriate U.S. Lt. Colonel, who, in the midst of his accusations, admitted he was offered the Ministry of Defense by the Ukrainian government. Vindman, currently in the second round of his careerist Ukrainian melodrama, is self-appointed CEO of his middleman company, seeking to profit from the war by facilitating the t***sfer and service of arms from the U.S. government to Ukraine.

Note the difference: in 2023 whistle blowers are now considered rogues, whether they be honest IRS investigators sickened by the corruption of their own DOJ prosecutorial counterparts, or FBI agents tired of the warping of their agency to facilitate the Biden coverups.

The net result will be a near impossible congressional task in forcing any federal agency to honor a congressional subpoena, as most will follow the Eric Holder model of a cocky snub of Congress with certainty of exemption.

The “Do You Really Want President Harris?” Factor

If the evidence trumps the Biden reliance on administrative state suppression, media bias and character assassination, there is one ace in the Biden hole—Kamala Harris. She is, as has been widely remarked upon, the Spiro Agnew of our age. (Yet the latter, in fact, on the stump was a Cicero in comparison to Harris’s 500-word vocabulary.)

In other words, the country is more scared of a not corrupt Harris than it is a senile and crooked Biden. And Biden has done nothing to dispel those impressions given that such a Nixonian fear of his Vice President is his last ticket to finishing out his term.

Not just Biden but millions in the country are anxious that the president is one fall, one new email disclosure from oblivion. His ensuing removal would not just give Harris the presidency in the next year and a half, but also the advantage of incumbency going into the 2024 e******n year and beyond.

So expect that the more the proverbial noose tightens around Biden, all the more his West Wing will leak daily stories about Harris’s puerility, her lightness of being, and her abject incompetence, and the dangers she would pose to the republic.

The DEFCON 1 Option

There is a final nihilist gambit. If Biden is confronted with his own email evidence of corruption, tapes of his agreement to financial exchanges, bank accounts with large foreign deposits, and direct testimonies that he received cash, he has one last refuge: the “H****r did it all!” ruse.

H****r is all too aware of his own danger. Collate his mischievous recent grifting artistic career, the Malibu-renting H****r trying to plead poverty to reduce child-support payments, the mysterious cocaine that turns up in a West Wing cubicle, his laptop anger at his Mr. Big Guy’s and Mr. 10 Percent’s underappreciation of H****r’s bagman role, and H****r’s threat to call the President of the United States to testify that a now trapped H****r is innocent of everything.

The resulting picture that emerges is an out-of-control H****r—who lost a laptop, a crack pipe, and an illegally registered handgun—now very worried that he will become Joe’s scapegoat.

H****r still believes he is a Samson that can pull down the Biden temple upon them all—if the alternative is that he is the only Biden to stew for years in jail.

Remember, H****r also knows his father all too well—Joe’s long resume of plagiarism, greed, arrogance, corruption, lying, and fantasies—and so rightly believes at some point Joe might easily shrug, and in one of his “senile” moments, utter, “Well, no Joke, man—it was all H****r’s stuff, not mine.”

You are really not trying very hard to get thrown off of this site.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wh_Rvq2OjAE

So prosecute Biden's ass already, like some of these rogue DAs are doing to Trump. Is there one prosecutor with any guts willing to fight the Democraps with their own tactics? What's good for the goose is good for the gander.

And that's just the property taxes. CA Politicians are Thieving Bastards

https://www.beautifulpublicdata.com/all-of-the-license-plates-in-the-united-states/?utm_source=recommendedreads.com

All of the 8,291 License Plates in America
States now offer a vast menu of personalized plate options for a dizzying array of organizations, professions, sports teams, causes and other groups.

Jon Keegan
Aug 21, 2023 • 9 min read

An image quilt made up of hundreds of sample vehicle license plates from around the U.S.
During summer vacation car rides as a kid, I remember the thrill of seeing an unusual license plate from a faraway state. There were 50 possible plates to see (plus D.C.) each with distinct colors and often the state motto. Today the game of license plate bingo has gotten incredibly complex.

By my count, there are currently 8,291 different vehicle license plates offered by the 50 states and the District of Columbia. States now offer a vast menu of personalized plate options for a dizzying array of organizations, professions, sports teams, causes and other groups.

My count was conducted over June and July 2023, so this should be considered a snapshot, as I'm sure some plates have changed already.

For years, members of the military and veterans have been able to pick plates reflecting the honors they have received and the missions they have served in. Drivers have also been able to pick plates drawing attention to a large number of medical conditions such as breast cancer, downs syndrome, diabetes and autism, raising funds for various foundations through registration fees.

Doctors, first responders and even amateur radio operators have long been able to pick a plate reflecting their affiliations. But today, if you are a realtor, accountant, architect, chiropractor, pharmacist or optician you too can share your profession with a customized plate in several states.

Of course not just anyone can grab many of these specialized plates. Proof of service and professional credentials are required to qualify for many of these plates. Some are reserved for members of the U.S. Congress and the U.S. Senate.

You can even find the face of Dolly Parton on Tennessee's "Dollywood Foundation For Children" plate, and don't miss aging rocker Alice Cooper who you can find on Arizona's "Alice Cooper’s Solid Rock" plate (raising funds for his non-profit that provides free music lessons for kids).




Left to Right: Arizona's "Alice Cooper's Sold Rock Teen Centers" plate; Dolly Parton's Tennessee "Dollywood Foundation for Children" plate; Washington's "J.P. Patches Pal" plate.

Search all 8,291 License Plates

Too Many Plates?
Maryland ranks 19th in the United States with an estimated 2022 population of 6.1 million residents. But Maryland leads the pack when it comes to the number of license plates it offers drivers. I counted 989 distinct plates listed on the Maryland Department of Motor Vehicles’ website.


A chart showing the number of license plates issued per state in June / July 2023, with Maryland leading the pack at 989 plates.
Maryland caving enthusiasts will be glad to know they can pick a “National Speleological Society” plate (although only one such plate was issued between 2018 and 2022). Likewise the “American Sewing Guild”, “Baltimore Yacht Club” and “Westie Rescue, Inc.” are among the organizations with only a single plate issued during this time period. Maryland “Barbershop Quartet Singers” did slightly better with three plates issued in this time period, just ahead of “Baltimore Rock Opera Society’s” two plates.





Some of Maryland's 989 license plate designs.

Texas, the second most populous state with nearly five times the population of Maryland offers the second largest number of license plates, coming in at 476 designs. Texas has taken a more practical approach to accommodating the demand for custom plates, outsourcing the whole effort to a private company called My Plates.

Hawaii offers the fewest number of plates, with just 14 designs to pick from (plus decals with messages drivers can attach). But a small number of plates offered doesn’t mean lower quality plates. In 2022, the Automobile License Plate Collector’s Association chose Hawaii’s beautiful “Polynesian Voyaging” as the "Best New Plate”. The “Hawai’i Volcanoes National Park” is also quite beautiful.



Hawaii offers some striking plates. Left: "Polynesian Voyaging" won Best New Plate for 2022 from the Automobile License Plate Collector’s Association. Right: Hawaii Volcanoes National Park plate.

The explosion of full color images on special plates has also created some concerns for law enforcement’s use of Automated License Plate Readers (ALPRs), which automatically scan the plates of cars as they drive down the road or through tolls. Many police cars are equipped with ALPRs that scoop up all of the plates that drive by. A report by the American Association of Motor Vehicle Administrators warned that high contrast backgrounds in these special plates can cause readability issues for ALPRs.

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Some states have tried to reign in the sheer number of new plates being proposed each year, but with little success. In 2010, the Florida Senate tried to restrict plates only to designs that had at least 4,000 pre-orders, but the measure did not advance.

Animals and Conservation
Some of the most popular special plates feature animals and messages about nature conservation. Whales, sharks, moose, salamanders, eagles, deer, butterflies, salmon, trout and loons can be found on plates around the country. Fees from many of these animal plates help fund state conservation efforts.

Animal conservation plates were some of Florida’s most lucrative license plate designs for the 2020-2021 fiscal year. The “Sea Turtle” plate brought in $2.4 million, “Save the Manatee” brought in $1.3 million and “Protect Wild Dolphins” brought in $1.1 million in revenue. Texas’ “Horned Lizard” plate raised $6.5 million in fiscal year 2019. California’s “Protect Our Coast & Ocean” featuring a whale tail pulled in $1.1 million in 2021.










Some of the menagerie of animals depicted on popular nature conservation plates.

Controversial Plates
License plates have been the subject of dozens of legal cases challenging the messages imprinted on them by the state. In 1976, a New Hampshire resident successfully pleaded his case to the U.S. Supreme Court that he had the right to obscure the state’s motto “Live Free or Die” on his plates, which conflicted with his religious beliefs as a Jehovah's Witness.

Recently, a group of atheists in Mississippi sued the state when the governor changed the state seal to include the words “In God We Trust”, which appeared on the standard license plate design. The plaintiffs objected to the fact that there was no alternative design without the slogan without having to pay an extra fee for a special plate. The court found that the plaintiff's free speech argument was valid, but recently the Governor introduced a new standard plate that does not mention God, rendering the case moot.

"I consider it a victory because the Governor's previous comments suggest he would not have chosen a design without a religious reference if it were not for the pressure that was applied to him," wrote Jason Alan Griggs, one of the plaintiffs in the case in an email to Beautiful Public Data.

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A 2016 report from the National Conference on State Legislatures (NCSL) warned state administrators of the controversy that can come with political messages on special plates. “Specialty license plate designs may encounter resistance, however. While courts have consistently stated that license plates are private speech, the fact that they are issued by government agencies can incite much controversy and debate,” said the report.

But the full scope of American political expression is not evenly distributed in the plates offered today.

Anti-a******n license plates such as “Choose Life” can be found in 34 states. Only four states appear to offer pro-a******n rights plates. Nebraska and Pennsylvania offer Planned Parenthood plates, with Nebraska’s displaying “My Body, My Choice” on the tag. Virginia has a “Trust Women, Respect Choice” plate and Alaska offers “Pro-Family, Pro-Choice”.

At least nine states offer Revolutionary War Gadsden F**g “Don’t Tread on Me” plates. 22 states offer either “God Bless America” or “In God We Trust”.

I could only find three plates in the whole dataset that represented the L***Q community: “Indiana Youth Group”, “South Carolina E******y” and “Maryland E******y”.

Texas offers a "Juneteenth" plate, and Arkansas has a Martin Luther King, Jr. plate. I couldn't find any plates related to Black L***s M****rs, which was surprising considering the scale of the civil rights movement in recent years.

Big Money for Charities and for the State
Some organizations pull in huge amounts of money from the fees shared by the state. California’s well-publicized “Arts Plate” which costs $50 initially with a $40 annual renewal (or $103 initially with an $83 annual renewal for personalized plates) pulled in $2.2 million for the California Arts Council non-profit in 2019. In 2022, the non-profit Blue Ridge Parkway Foundation raised $556,000 from its North Carolina specialty plate.

License plate fees also are major sources of revenue for state motor vehicle departments. Florida pulled in over $44 million just from specialty license plates in the 2020-2021 fiscal year.

Made By Prison Labor
Yes, license plates are still made by cheap prison labor in most states. 80% of all license plates issued in the U.S. today were made by state prisoners, with only 12 states opting out of the practice. According to a 2022 ACLU report on prison labor in the U.S., many states offer no pay at all to prisoners, while the average hourly wage across the country was between 13 and 52 cents per hour.

Just for fun.

https://youtube.com/shorts/5-k7DOM5EA0?si=gjlvoub4ybw_4p8r

https://reformcalifornia.org/news/ca-democrats-place-two-measures-on-2024-b****t-to-gut-prop-13-how-to-fight-back

CA Democrats Place Two Measures on 2024 B****t to Gut Prop 13 – How to Fight Back

September 15, 2023
CA Democrats Place Two Measures on 2024 B****t to Gut Prop 13 – How to Fight Back
Image Credit:Canva
California families already pay the highest taxes in the nation, but state Democrats want to raise taxes even higher – and have come up with a dirty trick to prevent v**ers from blocking their tax hike schemes at the b****t box. Reform California is leading the campaign to protect Prop 13 and block the tax hikes – but needs your help!
After years of slowly attacking and chipping away at Prop 13, California Democrats are moving in for the k**l shot by placing two constitutional amendments on the b****t in 2024 to gut Prop 13 and make it easier to raise taxes in California.

In the final few hours of the legislative session, Democrats in the State Senate and Assembly v**ed by a slender margin to approve ACA-1 and ACA-13 (details below).

“With these v**es to gut Prop 13, California Democrats have shown they do not care about the cost-of-living crisis that is hurting California working families and they are hell-bent on making things worse by raising taxes even higher,” says Carl DeMaio, Chairman of Reform California.

Reform California had mounted an aggressive campaign to urge v**ers to call legislators to urge them to reject ACA-1 and ACA-13. Senator Richard Roth (D) admitted his office got 600 calls in one day alone – and legislative staff estimate tens of thousands of calls were received across all offices over a one-week period on this issue alone.

A few Democrats buckled to public outcry and flipped their v**es, but in the end ACA-1 and ACA-13 squeaked by and will now be presented on the b****t to v**ers.

DeMaio said he expects the v**es to gut Prop 13 would come back to haunt several Democrats in 2024 and beyond, but for now he’s focused on defeating ACA-1 and ACA-13 at the b****t box and passing the California Taxpayer Protection Initiative.

What Is Being Proposed to Gut Prop 13?

DeMaio says CA Democrats are pursuing a very clever strategy with ACA-1 and ACA-13 that is all part of their “total war to repeal Prop 13.”

For years CA Democrats have tried to outright repeal Prop 13 but v**ers have rejected those efforts. Then CA Democrats switched strategies and started the “death by a thousand cuts” approach by using court cases in front of liberal judges to open loopholes in Prop 13 to make it easier to raise taxes.

CA Democrats also discovered they could get around Prop 13’s public v**e requirement on tax hikes by just outright lying to v**ers on the b****t by using false and misleading b****t titles on tax hike measures to confuse and deceive v**ers. The titles never mention that the measure is a tax hike, but only use titles that tout the benefits of the measure.

“If a b****t title fails to disclose that a measure is a tax hike, then you effectively eliminate the v**er requirement for tax hikes that Prop 13 requires,” DeMaio notes.

That’s why a coalition of taxpayer advocates collected over 1.4 million signatures to force the California Taxpayer Protection Initiative (CTPI) on the 2024 b****t. The measure eliminates the loopholes CA Democrats have opened in Prop 13, restores the two-thirds v**e requirement on special taxes, and mandates honest b****t titles that use the words “Tax Increase” when presenting measures that contain tax hikes in them.

“California Democrats know if the California Taxpayer Protection Initiative (CRPI) passes, the days of lying to v**ers to impose costly and unfair tax hikes in California will be over and that’s why they are using ACA-1 and ACA-13 to confuse v**ers and derail the effort to save Prop 13,” DeMaio explains.

Here’s what the three measures do:

‍ACA-1: Lowers the threshold to approve special tax hikes from two-thirds to 55%
CTPI: Restores Prop 13’s v**er approval requirements for tax hikes and requires honest b****t titles
ACA-13: Blocks the California Taxpayer Protection Initiative from being approved by increasing the v**es required for approval from a majority to a super-majority
Are you a bit confused right now? That’s exactly what the Democrats want. But it gets worse.

CA Democrats are sure to use dishonest b****t titles to present these three measures on the b****t. Here’s how Democrats may try to lie to v**ers with manipulative b****t titles:‍

‍ACA-1: Local government financing: affordable housing and public infrastructure: v**er approval (actual current title Democrats want)
CTPI: Limits ability of v**ers and state and local governments to raise revenues for government services. (actual current title Democrats want)
ACA-13: Ensures fair v****g thresholds for approval of constitutional amendments (our rendition of possible title Democrats want)
What happens next?

While the California Taxpayer Protection Initiative is already scheduled for the November 2024 b****t, the question now is whether ACA-1 and ACA-13 will be on the March 2024 or November 2024 b****t. Sources say Governor Newsom wants the March 2024 b****t set aside exclusively for his raids b****t measure proposal on mental health funding to give developers subsidies. Decisions on b****t placement will be known in the next few weeks.

DeMaio says the next step is to organize the most aggressive grassroots campaign California has seen since Prop 13 passed in 1978.

“California Democrats have the liberal media and special interest money on their side – and they intend to lie to v**ers with manipulative b****t titles – but we have won battles like this before and can do it in 2024,” DeMaio notes. DeMaio points to the big win Reform California and others achieved in defeating Prop 15 in 2020 which – surprise – was the most recent Democrat attempt to overturn Prop 13.

“I need everyone to step forward today and join the fight so we can organize this campaign to protect Prop 13 early – we simply cannot wait until b****ts drop next year to put together the volunteers, canvassers, ads, events, and coalition we’ll need to win this fight,” DeMaio implores.

https://gizmodo.com/mozilla-new-cars-data-privacy-report-1850805416
If You’ve Got a New Car, It’s a Data Privacy Nightmare
Bad news: your car is a spy. Every major car brand's new internet-connected models flunked privacy and security tests conducted by Mozilla.
By
Thomas Germain
UpdatedSeptember 7, 2023

Cars driving on a highway made of zeros and ones.
Turns out you’ve been driving in the data fast lane. Photo: metamorworks / Shutterstock.com (Shutterstock)
Bad news: your car is a spy. If your vehicle was made in the last few years, you’re probably driving around in a data-harvesting machine that may collect personal information as sensitive as your race, weight, and sexual activity. Volkswagen’s cars reportedly know if you’re fastening your seatbelt and how hard you hit the brakes.

That’s according to new findings from Mozilla’s *Privacy Not Included project. The nonprofit found that every major car brand fails to adhere to the most basic privacy and security standards in new internet-connected models, and all 25 of the brands Mozilla examined flunked the organization’s test. Mozilla found brands including BMW, Ford, Toyota, Tesla, and Subaru collect data about drivers including race, facial expressions, weight, health information, and where you drive. Some of the cars tested collected data you wouldn’t expect your car to know about, including details about sexual activity, race, and immigration status, according to Mozilla.

“Many people think of their car as a private space — somewhere to call your doctor, have a personal conversation with your kid on the way to school, cry your eyes out over a break-up, or drive places you might not want the world to know about,” said Jen Caltrider, program direction of the *Privacy Not Included project, in a press release. “But that perception no longer matches reality. All new cars today are privacy nightmares on wheels that collect huge amounts of personal information.”

Modern cars use a variety of data harvesting tools including microphones, cameras, and the phones drivers connect to their cars. Manufacturers also collect data through their apps and websites, and can then sell or share that data with third parties.

The worst offender was Nissan, Mozilla said. The carmaker’s privacy policy suggests the manufacturer collects information including sexual activity, health diagnosis data, and genetic data, though there’s no details about how exactly that data is gathered. Nissan reserves the right to share and sell “preferences, characteristics, psychological trends, predispositions, behavior, attitudes, intelligence, abilities, and aptitudes” to data brokers, law enforcement, and other third parties.

“When we do collect or share personal data, we comply with all applicable laws and provide the utmost t***sparency,” said Lloryn Love-Carter, a Nissan spokesperson. “Nissan’s Privacy Policy incorporates a broad definition of Personal Information and Sensitive Personal Information, as expressly listed in the growing patchwork of evolving state privacy laws, and is inclusive of types of data it may receive through incidental means.”

Other brands didn’t fare much better. Volkswagen, for example, collects your driving behaviors such as your seatbelt and braking habits and pairs that with details such as age and g****r for targeted advertising. Kia’s privacy policy reserves the right to monitor your “sex life,” and Mercedes-Benz ships cars with TikTok pre-installed on the infotainment system, an app that has its own thicket of privacy problems.

“BMW NA provides our customers with comprehensive data privacy notices regarding the collection of their personal information. For individual control, BMW NA allows vehicle drivers to make granular choices regarding the collection and processing of their personal information,” said Phil DiIanni, a BMW spokesperson. DiIanni said BMW hasn’t reviewed the study, but said “BMW NA does not sell our customer’s in-vehicle personal information,” and the company takes “comprehensive measures to protect our customers’ data.”

Mercedes-Benz spokesperson Andrea Berg declined to comment, as the company hasn’t reviewed the study, but Berg said the MercedesMe Connect app gives users privacy settings and the ability to opt-out of certain services. Gizmodo contacted the other manufacturers named in this story, but none immediately provided comments.

The privacy and security problems extend beyond the nature of the data car companies siphon off about you. Mozilla said it was unable to determine whether the brands encrypt any of the data they collect, and only Mercedes-Benz responded to the organization’s questions.

Mozilla also found that many car brands engage in “privacy washing,” or presenting consumers with information that suggests they don’t have to worry about privacy issues when the exact opposite is true. Many leading manufacturers are signatories to the Alliance for Automotive Innovation’s “Consumer Privacy Protection Principles.” According to Mozilla, these are a non-binding set of vague promises organized by the car manufacturers themselves.

Brian Weiss, a spokesperson for the Alliance for Automotive Innovation, shared a link to a letter the organization wrote to congress about its Privacy Principles. These principles “are in effect today and enforceable by the Federal Trade Commission,” Weiss said.

Questions around consent are essentially a joke as well. Subaru, for example, says that by being a passenger in the car, you are considered a “user” who has given the company consent to harvest information about you. Mozilla said a number of car brands say it’s the drivers responsibility to let passengers know about their car’s privacy policies—as if the privacy policies are comprehensible to drivers in the first place. Toyota, for example, has a constellation of 12 different privacy policies for your reading pleasure.

Margarine has only one molecule difference from plastic. (let's see how many pick up on this)