Book Reviews and Money Saving Tips

Reposted from Facebook A Mighty Girl   2 days ago   · For years, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has said that women couldn't keep up. Women "cannot physically meet the same standards as men," he wrote in his book -- and last fall he made the military's fitness test for combat troops tougher, scrapping the scoring scale for women so they'd have to clear the men's bar. Now the results are in -- and to Hegseth's likely chagrin, more than 9 in 10 female Marines have met or exceeded the new physical fitness standard. Kris Fuhr, co-founder of the Women in the Service Coalition, wasn't surprised: "The women prepare and they train and they're ready." Hegseth manufactured a problem that didn't exist. Women in combat roles had been meeting the same standards as men all along -- he simply refused to believe it. For a decade, every woman in the infantry, artillery, or armor has had to meet the identical job requirements as the men beside her -- ...

New scams appear every day.  Now AI enters the picture, and the sophistication jumps exponentially.  This week, I received a very flattering email from the Acquisition Editor of a major publishing house.  The letter spoke glowingly of my work and my interest in the welfare of children.  Then a query as to whether we could have a chat about my upcoming work.    The email was polished, very polished.  The amusing part was that I received an email at the same time for another author with similar glowing remarks.   So the clues were flawless flattery with the level of depth that it is characteristic of AI-generated text, a mis-mailed email to another author with an identical approach, and finally emailing the support people at the publishing house, who confirmed it was a scam.   As many authors feel underappreciated and have wishes to be discovered by a publishing house with the resources to truly market our glowing words, this was a wisely...