Category Archives: Transhuman News

by James Brooks, Alaska BeaconAugust 27, 2022

In Chris Byes preferred campaign photo, the Libertarian U.S. House candidate is ripping open his dress shirt to reveal a T-shirt that says, Do Good Recklessly.

After Republican fourth-place candidate Tara Sweeney abruptly withdrew from Alaskas November U.S. House race, Bye will fill a spot in the states top-four primary election, an act that will put him alongside Democratic candidate Mary Peltola and Republicans Sarah Palin and Nick Begich III in the race for a two-year term in the House.

Bye, a fishing guide from Fairbanks, spoke about his campaign on Friday while waiting to take his next client fishing. He said his picture encapsulates his message.

I mean, we dont have to be Superman to do good. I mean, I can just be a fishing guide and pick up garbage along the way. This isnt complicated, he said.

Bye, a former U.S. Army officer with deployments in the Afghanistan and Iraq wars, said he isnt wealthy and doesnt have a traditional political background, but that doesnt mean he cant do the job as Alaskas lone delegate in the U.S. House of Representatives.

Born in Oxford, England, to an Air Force family, Bye said he moved every two to three years while growing up and went to two different high schools before joining the U.S. Army and going to college.

He served in a variety of roles, including as an infantryman, in armor, and as a cavalryman before his career took him to Alaska with the 172nd Infantry Brigade.

While deployed to Iraq, he said he wrote to Alaskas congressional delegation frequently.

Id be like, Why am I in Iraq? Like, can someone please tell me why you voted to send us here? Because there is absolutely no constitutional emergency for us to be here, he said.

He said he was disillusioned by the really dumb, canned responses he got.

I just knew that I didnt fit in either (Republican or Democratic) party, he said.

On a subsequent fishing trip with a fellow officer, the other man gave him a copy of Ron Pauls book, Liberty Defined.

Paul was the Libertarian Party nominee for president in 1988 and has espoused a philosophy of limited government intervention. Reading Pauls book absolutely changed the way I look at governance, Bye said. Overnight, I realized I had been part of the problem by settling for the lesser of two evils.

Bye retired from the military in 2017 and stayed in Fairbanks but didnt run for office until this year. The decision came with a high cost: Bye had to give up a civilian job on Fort Wainwright because federal employees arent permitted to run for office.

The inspiration behind his decision, he said, was the passage of the federal infrastructure bill, known as the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act.

Bye was dissatisfied by the cost of that measure, which was supported by former Congressman Don Young. He briefly considered running as a Republican or Democrat but decided to run as a Libertarian after receiving an email from the party.

They welcomed me with wide arms, even though weve got some differences, Bye said.

An example, he said, is drug policy. Bye favors continued restrictions on some controlled substances, such as fentanyl.

Answering a candidate questionnaire from the Beacon, Bye praised the U.S. Supreme Courts decision overturning Roe v. Wade but said contraception and other medicines should be available for all people without a doctors prescription.

He has advocated restrictions on deep-sea trawling and the gradual elimination of the practice in order to reduce salmon bycatch.

Answering questions from Ballotpedia, he said his top goal, if elected, is to accelerate the transfer of federal land to individuals and the state.

On his website, Bye advocates a 10-15% cut in federal spending and a 15% cut in the number of federal employees.

By phone, Bye said that if elected, instead of the hunting trophies and memorabilia that adorned the office of former Congressman Don Young, he would go down to IKEA and were going to get the biggest damn table because we represent Alaska and were going to put as many seats around that table as possible, and everybody, every Alaskan is invited to sit at that table.

Because Im not just a representative for the people that voted for me, but for everybody, even those who have conflicting views, he said. I mean, if we cant be courageous in front of people who have different views, our future generations, theyre going to be sucking.

Bye acknowledged that he faces an uphill campaign toward November. Hes received little media attention to date, his competitors have raised significantly more money for advertising, and hes on pace to finish with less than 1% of the vote in this months primary election.

Still, he said, its important for him to not only run but also be considered a candidate on the level of the Republicans and Democrat who also are finishing in the top four.

Im just a fishing guide, but if we dont have normal people in there, Alaskans are stuck with the status quo, he said. And the status quo so far has failed us, failed miserably.

Alaska Beacon is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Alaska Beacon maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Andrew Kitchenman for questions: [emailprotected]. Follow Alaska Beacon on Facebook and Twitter.

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A fishing guide from Fairbanks is poised to fill a spot in Alaskas U.S. House election - The Midnight Sun

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What do you need to succeed in business? It might depend on where you set up shop and were not just talking about the right street corner either.

The truth is, tax laws, cost of living, and median household income can all play a role in how your business fares in the long run, says Looka, an artificial intelligence-powered graphic design company that recently released an analysis of the best states for entrepreneurs.

Those factors were combined with data on how often businesses succeed and what percentage of businesses are new in each state to establish the ranking.

Heres a look at the top states to start a business.

California can be an expensive place to live, but its also where small businesses are most likely to survive, Looka says. We previously noted two California metros among the 10 Top Cities for Women Entrepreneurs.

Everythings bigger in Texas, except apparently the cost of living and personal income tax. If youre looking for a more specific area to earn your first dollar, Austin and McAllen are two of the top picks in the country.

New Jerseys high median household income vaults it high up on this list, despite the states high tax rates. Its median household income is second only to California on this list, Looka notes.

These are the remaining states in the top 10 best states for starting a business, according to Lookas analysis:

Disclosure: The information you read here is always objective. However, we sometimes receive compensation when you click links within our stories.

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The 10 Best States to Start Your Own Business - Money Talks News

Years before Cliffside Parks Mehmet Oz decided to seek a U.S. Senate seat in Pennsylvania, another Bergen County man had moved to Florida and challenged Marco Rubio and Ron DeSantis in their first major campaigns.

In his first bid for Congress in 2012, Ron DeSantis faced Billy Kogut, a former three-term councilman from Wallington.

Billy Kogut was 29 when he won a Wallington Borough Council seat in 1984, on his third try. A local liquor store owner, he came with 79 votes of winning in 1981 and lost again in 1982.

He became council president after Republicans took control of the council in 1985, for the first time in decades. Kogut had a contentious relationship with the Democratic mayor, Walter Slomienski, but didnt run against him in 1986.

In 1989, Kogut sought a seat in the New Jersey State Assembly in the old 36th district, which included part of South Bergen and the City of Passaic.

He ran on a ticket with former Assemblyman Paul DiGaetano (R-Passaic).

The two Democratic incumbents easily won second terms. Louis Gill (D-Passaic) and Thomas Duch (D-Garfield) defeated DiGaetano by over 4,700 votes, with Kogut losing by about 7,100.

Still, Kogut remained popular in Wallington, where he easily won re-election to a third term in 1990.

But in 1991, despite the Republican tidal wave that followed Democratic Gov. Jim Florios $2.8 billion tax hike, Kogut was not able to win a mayoral race after Slomienski stepped down after 16 years. Democrat Walter Wargacki defeated him by about 300 votes and ten percentage points.

He did not seek re-election to the council in 1993 and later moved to Florida in the 1990s. Kogut sold real estate in Ormand Beach and ran for office.

He became a candidate for the Republican nomination for U.S. Senate in 2004. Former U.S. Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Mel Martinez defeated former Rep. Bill McCollum by a 45%-41% margin, with Kogut last with 3,605 votes statewide, 0.32% of the vote, in a field of eight candidates.

After Martinez left the Senate in 2010, Kogut challenged Marco Rubio in the Republican U.S. Senate primary. He lost by 957,856 votes, 85%-9%, finishing second in a three-way race.

After Floridas congressional map was redraws in 2012 to create an open seat in the 6th district.

This was the first foray into politics for DeSantis, who joined the U.S. Navy JAG Corps after graduating Harvard Law School. He was deployed to Iraq and later worked as a federal prosecutor.

As a candidate for Congress, Kogut was one of his first opponents.

DeSantis won the Republican primary by a 39%-23% margin against State Rep. Fred Costello. Kogut, the former Wallington councilman, finished last in a field of seven candidates with 628 votes (1%).

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What do John Fetterman and Ron DeSantis have in common? They both ran against Bergen County guys - New Jersey Globe | New Jersey Politics

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Editor's Note: This story originally appeared on NewRetirement.

With retirement, most people worry about having enough money and funding health care, but did you know that your heart health should really be at the top of your list of retirement concerns?

Humans often worry about the wrong things. And there is significant evidence that heart health doesnt get anywhere near enough attention from retirees or anyone.

Putting the COVID-19 pandemic aside, research has shown that the media puts far too much attention on causes of death like terrorism and homicide and not nearly enough on the actual No. 1 killer in the U.S.: heart disease.

Information from Our World in Data clearly shows the significant disconnect between what we are worried about and what will actually kill us.

In 2016, over 30% of all deaths were caused by heart disease. However, heart disease made up only 2% of all Google searches and around 2.5% of media coverage.

It really does appear that we are worrying about the wrong things. But thats not the worst of it.

A study by researchers at the Harvard School of Public Health found that retirees within a year of transitioning from work were 40% more likely to have had a heart attack or stroke than those who were still working. The increase was more pronounced during the first year after retirement and leveled off after that.

The researchers gave several reasons why they saw a dramatic jump in heart attacks after people left work.

For people who had a stressful job or whose job was emotionally unfulfilling or draining, retirement may come as a relief. But for people that identified themselves closely with their jobs, like university professors or doctors, leaving work can be extremely stressful.

People who spend decades in the same job, whether they identify with the job or not, will socialize with the people at their jobs more than anyone else. Leaving that environment is like losing your entire social circle at once.

And strong friendships and personal connections can be a necessary aspect of being healthy.

Work engages our minds as well as our bodies. For professionals, leaving work leaves a hole that used to be filled by mental challenges. Work also structures your life with goals and milestones. Once thats gone, it is possible to feel like your boat has lost its rudder.

These stressful life changes are why retirement is listed as a top indicator of health breakdown in the Holmes-Rahe Stress Inventory test. Heart disease in its many forms, from chronic high blood pressure to heart attacks, can be exacerbated by the shock of transitioning from working to retirement. Part of your retirement plan should be saving for health-related expenses, but an equal part should be preventing health problems now.

A good retirement will be one in which youre active as well as free from money stress. Just like you put aside some money from every paycheck for retirement, you should take steps today to make sure you avoid poor health in the future.

This is easier said than done, but there is absolutely nothing you can do (with the exception of our next tip) that will prepare you for a healthy retirement better than establishing good eating habits now.

A lot of common wisdom and official advice has changed over the last 20 years, which means old advice about how much alcohol you should drink and how much sugar is OK may not be what you learned as a young adult.

This isnt breaking news either, but the key to regular exercise is less the exercise than the regular.

Dr. Harvey Simon, an associate professor of medicine at Harvard-affiliated Massachusetts General Hospital did a meta-analysis of 22 studies that showed moderate exercise like walking at your normal pace for an hour a day reduces the risk of heart disease considerably.

In one study, just 15 minutes of moderate exercise led to an average increase in life expectancy of three years.

The University of Michigan Health and Retirement Study found that higher purpose in life may play an important role in protecting against myocardial infarction among older American adults with coronary heart disease.

In English, that says the more purpose you find in daily activities like volunteering, starting (and finishing!) new projects, and cultivating new friendships, the lower your chance of heart attack is.

Only 30% of Americans have a long-term financial plan that includes savings and investment goals. However, research finds that people who have a formal written retirement plan are more likely to feel confident and less stressed. In fact, they are more than twice as likely to feel very prepared for retirement than those without a written plan.

Less stress equals better health. A well-written retirement plan equals better health and wealth.

The NewRetirement Planner is the best most comprehensive way to plan your retirement online. It is easy to create and maintain a reliable plan for your future security.

Heart disease is both the leading cause of death in the U.S. and the most preventable. If you have taken the time to think about caring for yourself and your loved ones after you stop working, you should also think about how to protect your health particularly your heart health for them as well.

Its just as easy as putting money in your 401(k) or IRA, and the dividends you get are priceless.

Disclosure: The information you read here is always objective. However, we sometimes receive compensation when you click links within our stories.

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10 Tips for Taking Care of Your Heart in Retirement - Money Talks News

Less than two hours before we spoke on the phone last week, Jeremy Kauffman tweeted that if voters elected him as New Hampshires next U.S. senator, his goal would be for America to never launch another drone strike in the Middle East. It was a sentiment shared by many self-identified libertarians, who have long opposed U.S. military incursions abroad. But then came the next line of Kauffmans post: Failing that, my fallback goal is to have Liz Cheney strapped to the next bomb.

A 37-year-old computer scientist, blockchain CEO and dark-horse Senate candidate from Manchester, N.H., Kauffman considers himself a dissident, one whos living under a government regime of soft totalitarianism. But he also likes to keep things light: I play a little bit, at times, this character of a bombastic, over-the-top libertarian. But thats what social media is. This is the game that we're playing.

But the primary focus of our call was not Kauffmans controversial tweets, or his long-shot campaign to oust Sen. Maggie Hassan, D-N.H., from Congress this November, or even his red-pilledcampaign site. It was his ongoing fight against the Securities and Exchange Commission, which sued Kauffmans blockchain startup LBRY in March 2021, nearly three years after the agency began investigating the company for securities violations. The case is being closely watched by crypto executives and investors, as well as by regulators in Washington, D.C., as a potential watershed moment in the industrys history. When a judgment is issued sometime in the coming weeks, it could mark a significant step forward for cryptoor a dramatic leap backward, depending on where you stand.

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The SEC v. LBRY: How a New Hampshire Court Battle Could Rewrite the Rules of Crypto - The Information

Gov. Ron DeSantis has been campaigning for brave warriors like anti-Drag Queen crusader Kari Lake, the next governor of the great state of Arizona, and Ohios J.D. Vance, who grew up so poor his family couldnt afford to give him a REAL name but later made millions the old-fashioned way: getting Peter Thiel to be his sugar daddy.

The governor has also Pennsylvania gubernatorial candidate and mega-MAGA Camo Jesus-guy Doug Mastriano, a proud veteran of Jan. 6, a man who stepped up with the patriots hollering Hang Mike Pence! and valiantly recruited an alternative slate of electors for President Trump in 2020.

Just because Biden got 80,000 more votes doesnt mean he won the state.

Now that hes back, the governor needs to set up an Office of Educational Crimes to investigate and prosecute any egghead caught violating the Stop Woke Act. Floridians would feel so much safer if we had armed education officers to root out harmful campus experiences. We cant rely solely on football and fraternity parties to protect innocent 19-year-olds from thinking.

So give it up, wokester profs: Ron DeSantis will no longer tolerate your anti-American spin on our history, your critical race theorizing, your LGBTQ weirdo agenda, and your communist indoctrination of our kids in Floridas great state universities.

Youre busted.

We already have a model our crack Elections Police unit and anybody wondering if we really need sworn officers to enforce intellectual hygiene, well, people said the 2020 elections in Florida were the safest, fairest, and best-managed in the nation.

But we now know that at least 20 TWENTY! very bad people probably committed voter fraud.

OK, some libs are going, Yeah, 20 out of more than 11 million voters. But according to Gov. DeSantis, theres bound to be a lot more, like, probably up to 30 or 40!

So it is with college. You think there are merely a handful of professors making students read porny novels like Moby Dick, teaching them that the Fathers of Our Country also fathered children on their slaves, and that the War of Northern Aggression was not fought over states rights?

Wake up, people! There are entire university departments pushing evolution and climate change as fact!

The governor is doing his best to protect our youth from dangerous ideas that might cause them to think dangerous thoughts about Americas glorious past. The wise white men of history would be the first to tell you some of their best friends had dusky complexions: there was Sacagawea, that lady who gave Lewis and Clark a tour of the West so good the U.S. soon decided to take all that land from the Indians its not like they were developing it or anything.

And Martin Luther King Jr., who told us in his great speeches that it was OK to ignore race in favor of whatever was in your character, especially if it was kind of white.

Aided and abetted by anti-American outfits such as the ACLU, a gaggle of academic malcontents are suing on the grounds that the Stop Woke Act will prevent them from teaching minor topics in history such as the Atlantic slave trade, Native American genocide and those so-called marchers in Selma, Ala., who refused to comply with law enforcement.

And some socialist-inflected judge recently struck downthe diversity training part of the law, but never fear: a real judge, one appointed by our president-in-exile Donald J. Trump, will soon put a stop to this lib overreach.

The University of Florida brass has the right idea. President Kent Fuchs put out a cute video warning his faculty that theyd better not offend the governor or Legislature or their trustees or anybodys mama and daddy by even mentioning that evil Marxist critical race theory or the university could lose $106 million.

Students dont need instruction on race and gender. They already know what race they are and if they dont know what gender they are, their parents should send them to a good Christian re-education camp to get that thing straightened out.

Floridas already taken an important step, letting students film their profs if one of them endorses some divisive concept or says something that hurts young peoples feelings, and turn that deviant in!

But we need a leader who can spearhead the effort to cleanse our colleges of noisome notions. The obvious choice to run the Educational Crimes Unit is Pete Antonacci, new head of the Elections Crimes bureau. Hes so good at repression he can do both!

Antonaccis already kicking butt, taking names, and cuffing ex-cons who should have known that just because some county official sent them a voter card or some government office worker helped them register or they thought that since theyd paid their debt to society it was OK for them to participate in democracy like they were actual citizens, these losers were actually committing fraud and should go back to prison where they belong.

He has all the chops. Sure, he worked for some Democrats back in the day, but hes more than atoned for it by joining the Federalist Society and helping Gov. Rick Scott fire a supposedly above politics FDLE chief who failed to get with the Republican program.

More importantly for an education crimes czar, he has a proven track record of taking no crap from know-it-all academics. As executive director of the South Florida Water Management District, he kicked the National Academies of Science out of his Everglades restoration plans, what with their scare stories about rising sea levels and their stupid scientific data and their stupid scientific recommendations. He told them, Tend to your knitting.

These experts think that just because theyve studied hydrology or environmental chemistry or whatever for 20 years they know more about it than regular folks.

Thats elitism.

It would be awesome to see crack education cops kick down the door to some feminist theory class where our precious children are being force-fed intersectionality. Or charge some English professor with causing distress to affluent young white men by assigning them to read novels by Toni Morrison or William Faulkner which insinuate a link between, say, the Fugitive Slave Act, segregation laws, Plessy v. Ferguson, and what these wokesters like to call systemic racism.

Itll be great to see the radicals at FSU, USF, UCF, UF and the rest of the states leftist learning factories get their comeuppance. Some of them still publicly proclaim their intention to teach books Moms for (White Peoples) Liberty (from Knowledge) wants banned, garbage like The Grapes of Wrath (socialist), Slaughterhouse Five (inflammatory religious commentary), and Antiracist Baby (does not give equal time to racist babies).

Obviously, we have to get rid of the corrupt system of tenure. It allows these so-called scholars to have so-called academic freedom. Gov. DeSantis has begun the process of taking tenure down, which will help the education cops punish thought crimes in our ivy-covered halls.

They could start with this history professor at UF, Paul Ortiz. He says hes going to keep teaching about slavery and Native American genocide and womens reproductive freedom (its a fact that even mentioning such things encourages our girls to become sluts) no matter what the governor wants.

Ortiz claims that otherwise Florida will end up a society where following Ralph Waldo Emersons famous dictum to go upright and vital and speak the rude truth in all ways is punished by the state.

You see the problem here: Outright defiance. Insubordination. Disrespect. Such a rebellious attitude needs to be wiped out lest we lose our freedoms.

And who is this Ralph Waldo Emerson? Somebody needs to check if hes legally registered to vote in Florida.

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Who will rescue our tender youth from deviant professors and their noisome notions? - Florida Phoenix