Brand loyalty. Discuss.
- Bounty paper towels
- Post-its
- Scotch tape
- Pilot pens
- Sharpie pens
- Angel Soft toilet paper
- Crest toothpaste
- Heinz ketchup
- Hellman’s mayonnaise
I have been to Europe and all over the US, but I have never “traveled the world.” I may not ever. That’s almost okay—for ME (see: Pripyat; also, Spain; and now, thanks to a client, Pakistan). I’m totes okay with puttering around my house and city, not going anywhere else. But…my family has not had the advantages of a family that valued traveling, and I feel bad for them. Then I read articles like this and get an itchy foot. Oh, hey, honey, look! ? We can’t buy anything, remember? ? Oh, damn. ?
Heroic Mulatto sent me down a path I have trod well. Click the link, it’s okay. Don’t be afraid. Now, I’m not all fancy schmancy, but I do write in different colors. I don’t write in cursive anymore, but I love being able to do so because when I want to talk about my kids in front of their back, I just write notes in cursive saying exactly what I want to say and they can’t read it.
Related: there was some chatter about a manual transmission being an anti-theft device.
I could learn another language if I had enough motivation (alas, I’m never going to get to Spain and even then, I wouldn’t be able to stay long, much less long enough to go native). But I don’t, and I’ve almost made peace with it, kinda like my crush on higher math. I could do it (not this; this defeated me), but…why? When I was in Paris, the second I tried to speak my very bad one year of high school French, they smiled sweetly and spoke English for me. We did not run into one rude Parisian. So I very much admire those who can speak more than one language (looking at you especially, Pie and grrizzly).
But! I speak English very well, albeit with a redneck accent.
English rules English speakers know but don’t know they know, part 1.
English rules English speakers know but don’t know they know, part 2.
tl;dr English rules.
Finally, a little-known (I think?) handy-dandy tool for bookmarking.
Here, have a little blue-eyed soul and its kissing cousin.
The first noble truth
is that most people don’t care
that you exist.
Pilot Uniball Micro. Nothing better.
Mo on the links! Thanks 🙂
Lance Armstrong’s go-to pen.
^^^This guy gets it.
Pilot precise for me.
I miss my schoolboy (i.e. cheap) Pelikan fountain pens but I don’t write enough anymore so they go bad.
Yep. Pilot Precise V5, to be precise.
I like it in Fine.
Extra Fine doesn’t allow any variation in line width. Fine behaves like an old nib: flowing however much ink you ask for. People who use their brakes on the interstate won’t understand, but if you grew up feathering a throttle, this is your pen.
#metoo
So you routinely collide with the people who drive at the same speed as the person they’re ‘passing’?
like I said: some folks won’t understand
Wipe the whitetail off your windshield and you might see my point.
CRIPPLE FIGHT !!!!
Until you’ve used it for a week or two and then the nib widens and you’ve suddenly got a V5 that behaves like a V7, which…is not why I switched from V7 to V5.
Also, I want my different colors with no line width variation.
And then your clutch starts getting squishy.
For writing, agreed.
For doodling, sketching absentmindedly, I prefer extra fine, just because I tend to do detailed sketches of things like airplanes, spaceships, and other geek stuff.
When I sit down to sketch, I actually use a crow quill pen.
One a penny,
Two a penny,
hot Cross pens.
Luv my Cross pen! Had it for many years.
Their poor roller point refill quality drove me away: I had carried a Cross for 20 years
Exactly this.
*once again reminded SP and OMWC are not my neighbors* ?
Pentel energel
This is mine, too. Hilarious that it’s the first one mentioned here.
I have no pen brand loyalty for a few reasons A: I lose them too often. B: I rarely have to write anything out. C: most of the pens I get are freebies handed out as ads.
Fischer space pen. It can write in space. QED
I am triggered by the giant Miracle Whip.
So am I and I LIKE MW!
I was raised on it but have since converted to mayonnaise.
#MeToo
Hellman’s is the superior form of mayo; Duke’s is a reasonable substitute in an emergency situation. Store-brands (Kroger is so-so) and Kraft are only to be used in times of dire need.
I just noticed the jar says salad dressing? That’s even more disgusting than using it as a mayo-substitute.
Miracle Whip is an abomination straight from the sweaty heat of Satan’s asshole.
How they used to advertise it
can you imagine putting weird fake mayo on a salad by itself? *shudder*
I’ve experienced that. Also, Jello moulds containing things they ought not to. American food was very different in the sixties. Much bland.
In the restaurant business, many places get gallon jars of “Salad Dressing” that they use for mayo. I worked at a sandwich place that only used Hellmans to make tuna salad. All the other “mayo” was no-name salad dressing.
What did the Miracle Whip® say to the refrigerator?
“Close the door. I am dressing.”
I’m a Duke’s loyalist.
I’m amazed that it doesn’t expire until April 3 8703.
In six thousand years we’ll be brains living inside the jars.
I grew up on that stuff. Probably didn’t have mayo until college. Tried the Whip a couple years ago and threw it out.
I too grew up on Miracle Whip (Spin Blend when I was a young child). Never had mayonnaise (actually, I thought mayonnaise was a more expensive Miracle Whip) until I was a freshman at BYU. Cafeteria had a “make up your sack lunch” option for your meal plan and they did not have packets of Miracle Whip, so I was forced into mayonnaise. It took a couple of days, but I acquired the taste for it.
It’s DIFFERENT. It’s not a REPLACEMENT. And they go with different things. When my ulcer is acting up, I can’t eat mayo, but I can eat MW, so I only eat things that I put MW on.
Can someone with edit powers take out the giant jar of Miracle Whip at the top of the post? Thank ewe!
Coward. Stick to your guns.
Yes. Yes, I am.
Looks like they emptied it but left the jar.
EDIT FAIRY heard ye.
Thank you!!!!!
It’s the “Hide Featured Image on Post” checkbox. I’ve got a forthcoming article on how to navigate the tricks and traps in WordPress.
+1 carelessness and rushing. I just forgot to do it.
Totes respect for being a linkster. It’s the only hard deadline we have here.
Meh, I just submit it like an article and let SP decide what to do with it. Links get lost in comments.
No, it was posted this morning, but I said NO OFF TOPIC COMMENTS, so people skipped right over it.
It’s linked on the Contributing Writers page, too.
Oops. Thanks.
Nice to know it’s good until the year 8703.
Even further out than that — 87C3, which means it’s at least in base 13…
Brand loyalty – none.
The only thing I can think of is Oreos. I will not buy the store brand.
Otherwise, whatever is on sale.
I have a handful – Bounty and Hellmans are among them. Planters nuts. Jif peanut butter. Adidas footwear. De Cecco dried pasta is a recent addition. Can’t think of any others.
Ok I lied, Rhywun added a few more of mine. I have settled in to only wearing Sambas and just buying a new pair when the old ones wear out.
My wife has also been buying natural peanut butter, which I thought I was okay with until I brought some JIF back into the house.
I have settled in to only wearing Sambas
When you ask your wife to grab your shoes for you, do you ask “can you bring me my little black Sambas?”
Surprised that’s not already an issue on some website.
My wife always insists on Bounty, and didn’t like the Brawny I brought home recently (pre-virus recently, of course), which I liked because it is perforated so you can tear it into little quarter-sheets, and tears really easily as well. She has not liked Brawny since they got rid of the 70s porn star-looking dude on the label and replaced him with a cuck.
I dunno if that’s different from Bounty’s “Select-a-Size” but I refuse to go back to full-size sheets.
Yes! I love the select-a-size thing!
I can’t stand those “select-a-size.” Give me full-size sheets, dammit.
Rhy, you and I are usually on the same page. I am disappoint.
LOL
The reason is I use them more for napkins and wiping sweat off my face than anything else.
I don’t spill 😉
Why do you hate Mother Earth?
Because she is one vicious bitch
Mojeaux or Mother Earth?
I am a vicious bitch, but I’m not anywhere near Mother Earth’s proficiency, sadly.
Pretty sure Mother Earth is rolling her eyes and saying, “Bitch please. I can take care of myself.”
Yes, it goes one beyond select-a-size which turns a full sheet into two; this has another perforation down the middle, turning the old sheets potentially into four equivalent, square quarter-sheets. Great for mini-napkins.
?
*takes notes for after the apocalypse*
Bounty has a new version of select a size that let’s you have full, half, or quarter size. I’m okay with the half size for almost everything. Cleanup and patting rinsed foods (defrosted shrimp) I use 2 half size folded at the perforation.
My wife insists on Viva.
^^^
“I just write notes in cursive saying exactly what I want to say and they can’t read it.”
They don’t teach that in school anymore?
Apparently not universally. It’s a big debate in the teechur community (most are “for”).
I personally think it’s a waste of time to teach how to write cursive given that most of them will be keying or doing speech-to-text, BUT I definitely believe you should have to transcribe and display basic understanding of the Constitution, BoR, and Declaration in their original manuscript form.
Also sign your name?
Judging by most signatures I see, the ability to write cursive is not a requirement.
My son, born in 2002, was never taught cursive in his reportedly high-quality public school system.
He really struggles to read letters written by his grandma, who has excellent penmanship; I usually have to read them to him.
Cursive is a lost art that probably will never return, kids these days don’t even see what use pens and pencils are unless they are drawing a picture, certainly not for anything you can punch on a keyboard.
When did cursive stop being the sloppy writing for people who didn’t want to keep lifting their pen off the page and become some sort of elevated art?
Penmanship/calligraphy has been an art since forever.
Calligraphy and cursive are not synonyms. At some point with the improving pen and ink technology, the lazy way of writting slipped in, then tried to take over.
I’ve long been of the opinon that cursive is just a tool for people who have horrible penmenship to hide it better than printing. because Even the worst penmanship in print is more legible than cursive.
who else here had the lower grade level teachers lie and say that everything in the higher grades would be cursive, only to get there and find no sign of that script whatsoever?
Youngster.
For me, everything was cursive well into college and even then the only exception was a couple papers in my last year for which we had to use a typewriter.
1986 was my first intro to WordPerfect/word processing. I’d been playing with a Commodore 64 in high school and doing primitive coding, and a girl in my dorm hall had an Apple II. I had a nifty new slimline typewriter. A couple of my professors wanted our papers done *on the computer* so my typewriter was out. I don’t remember when I stopped hand-writing papers, but it wasn’t long after that.
Yep. I can do very nice calligraphy. My cursive handwriting is sometimes illegible to even myself.
who else here had the lower grade level teachers lie and say that everything in the higher grades would be cursive, only to get there and find no sign of that script whatsoever?
I had that experience. Of course, I also had a sixth grade teacher who taught us how to diagram sentences while everybody else was abandoning it.
I got to a point where I could read cursive and understand grammar better than most people my age.
I had an entire junior-level semester of just diagramming sentences.
They barely teach how to print. XX gets a pass because she’s a southpaw, but XY– I tried to teach him first how to print so I could read it by having him write Bart Simpson sentences, but he and I both quickly tired of that. Never mind cursive.
I’ve also given up trying to teach him how to read an analog clock. He’s just not interested in learning.
Same on the analog clock. I got the son a nice watch for HS graduation; he won’t wear it because it’s so hard for him to tell time from it.
Wow.
I am absolutely amazed, hearing the current tales of what passes for education. Its like waking up after a forty year (or more) nap.
I am left handed, had a tremendous grade school teacher that taught me to write cursive with pretty darned good hand writing. We didn’t even call it cursive. There was printing and there was writing. We couldn’t wait to get to third grade, we had to bring our own pen but the teacher had like a gallon jug of blue ink, came around and filled our ink wells (Not full but enough to dip the pen in) and we started writing with ink! About 1945 or so. We were on our way to adulthood!
Then a couple years later ball point pens came on the market, about a dollar each. I saved two weeks allowance, had my Dad drive me down to Hiawatha and Lake in Mpls and got one, one of the first kids in school, cutting edge, I was. The piece of crap smeared, blotted, and skipped but I didn’t care, I had a ball point. They slowly got better, now even the giveaways and those the Missus steals write well, dry up and get pitched, 10 for a buck or something.
Today when I write I am still complimented on my hand writing, though admittedly its getting shaky. The changes in education have been convenient for the teachers, since they didn’t learn cursive either.
Don’t ask me about time telling, same as C.A above.
I keep an analog watch precisely to avert this problem. However, when I’m really tired, I can’t always tell the time right away.
Wow. I find it hard to believe. I guess I’m too old.
Along with manual transmissions, analog watchers are another thing millennials won’t steal.
For extra security, get one without numbers. Movado Museum watch FTW!
‘Brand loyalty. Discuss.’
How much of ‘brand loyalty’ is ‘brand habit’?
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/unthinking/201101/are-people-actually-brand-loyal
I don’t care for mayo.
I don’t like mayo, ketchup, or mustard.
*pulls pin & tosses grenade*
*throws relish at Sean*
^^ add that to the list too.
*Throws horseradish sauce at Sean*
I’m good with that. ?
The only thing relish belongs on is a Fatburger. Other than that, it is a terrible condiment.
Relish belongs in my tuna salad #1, but not tuna salad #2.
My favorite tuna salad is Subway’s – AFAIK, it’s tuna & mayo & nothing else. It’s also my favorite Subway sammich.
I used to do just tuna and mayo and nothing else, and then I started experimenting with things like spices and whatnot.
Needs celery and onion.
Pickle, onion, lemon juice, and spices.
Celery works too but I rarely buy it.
You don’t care for mayo??
I knew that was coming…
Blue-eyed soul
More blue-eyed soul
Bounty paper towels – yes
Post-its – yes
Scotch tape -yes
Pilot pens – G2 yes
Sharpie pens – yes
Angel Soft toilet paper – Always been a Mr Whipple man myself
Crest toothpaste – yes
Heinz ketchup – yes
Hellman’s mayonnaise – yes
…
Low cost hot sauce – Tapatio
Chain saws – Stihl
Camera – Nikon
Kroger sells Bufalo hot sauce for 99 cents a bottle, which is outstanding in both price and taste.
I think I have some of that here. They used to have a teriyaki that was really good, but I think its discontinued (at least in SW Ohio)
They also had a garlic ranch dressing that was very good. Uber garlic-y
Huh, never tried it. Have to get a bottle.
Angel Soft toilet paper – Always been a Mr Whipple man myself
Please don’t squeeze Mr. Whipple.
Harley-Davidson-yes
Chevrolet-yes
Snapon tools-yes
Smith and Wesson revolvers-yes
Glenfiddich scotch-Yes
Schwinn (Chicago) Bicycles-yes
Why anyone would ever care about brand loyalty for tissue paper? IDFK.
Sorry,
Gibson guitars-yes
Bounty paper towels – Don’t really care. I like the Costco Kirkland brand.
Post-its – Yes
Scotch tape – As long as it’s the transparent Scotch tape yes.
Pilot pens – Prefer Zebra F-301, 1.0, both black and ink.
Sharpie pens – Yes, both fine and thick.
Angel Soft toilet paper – Kirkland brand.
Crest toothpaste – Sensodyne
Heinz ketchup – As long as there’s no HFC, or added sugars, any reputable brand is fine.
Hellman’s mayonnaise – almost never use mayo. My wife & stepson have a tasty mac & cheese recipe which calls for some mayo. It’s a nice touch.
Lagavulin 16 and Laphroaig 10 cask strength scotch – yes
Ruger revolvers and Springfield Armory pistols – yes
Oppo SACD-Blu-ray players – yes
Creek integrated amp & Genesis Physics loudspeakers (the older company out of New Hampshire) – yes
La La Land records – yes (I make no apologies for being a big film score geek)
Criterion blu-rays – yes
El Segundo Mayberry IPA – yes
Stone Double Bastard Ale – yes
I just realized that almost all of these include the caveat ” the older the better.”
Cottonelle toilet paper.
Miracle Whip (which I can no longer eat, to my dismay).
I used to be agnostic about ketchup, but now it’s only the specialty brand (no onion or garlic permitted, again to my dismay).
Otherwise, perfect agreement 😉
You would probably enjoy a Bill Bryson’s The Mother Tongue. Did you know the word ‘dog’ appeared in English, literally out of nowhere? No relationship to any other word in any language. He’s a fun writer to read.
I love Bill Bryson.
Me too. He’s a fun read, no matter the subject.
Somebody misspelled Duke’s.
For those looking for an outlet for outrage from the last thread.
Activists To Protest Coronavirus Restrictions With Rally On National Mall In D.C.
Jacob Wohl and Jack Burkman, two well known conservative activists, told The Washington Times they are organizing the event.
Ughh…. I thought that kid was in jail. Can we get someone else to organize these things…
I nominate Leon. All in favor…
I thought Jacob Wohl was the guy who played Newbomb Turk in Hollywood Knights?
China’s virus pandemic epicenter Wuhan ends 76-day lockdown
Yay!
Oh…
and no mention of welding people into their apartments…
English rules English speakers know but don’t know they know
How to pronounce plurals
* z for dogs (English z, not Deutsch z (ts) or Italian zz (ts))
* s for cats (English s like Deutsch ß, not Deutsch s)
I don’t know how we know
I think its the beatings from the catholic school teachers.
It depends on whether the last consonant before “s” is voiced or voiceless.
Damn your nimble fingers!
Learned a lot about voiced vs. devoiced consonants when I learned Russian.
I knew you were a Russkie spy!
Yeap. Try each one the other way and you’ll get doks and cadz. Assimilation FTW.
I only have a few brand loyalties – Dawn, for one. In keeping with my general skinflint philosophy, I bought store brand dish soap for a while, or cheap brands like Ajax. They’re just not very good. Dawn costs more per bottle, but because it’s more effective and longer-lasting I think it ends up being a wash. I was using more of the cheap brands to wash a sinkful of pots and pans than I do Dawn.
Duke’s mayonnaise is another. It just tastes better.
Kerrygold butter – again, it’s noticeably better, enough so that I don’t mind paying almost twice as much for it.
Bar Keeper’s Friend is great stuff and it’s not particularly expensive.
Dawn, yes. My husband converted me from Palmolive. Also, one time my bestie, who is black, was convinced that I have the hair texture of a black woman and thus must use black hair products. Yeah, no. Whatever she did made my scalp spurt oil like a rig. Shampoo wouldn’t cut it. I must have washed my hair twice before she handed me the Dawn and said, “Here. It’s supposed to cut grease. What can it hurt?” Stopped it cold. Also, I think about the fact that they wash ducks with it in oil spills.
Barkeeper’s Friend is teh shit. I love it.
My hair is naturally greasy as hell. If I don’t wash my hair every day (something my wife insists I shouldn’t do), it looks like I dunked my head in a vat of oil. Even with washing it every morning, by the evening it will have started looking greasy. That is, when I washed it with whatever frou-frou shampoo she is buying at any particular time. Then I discovered Suave Daily Clarifying shampoo. That stuff is some deep cleaning shampoo. So I guess that’s another brand I’m loyal too. Best of all, it’s dirt cheap, less than two bucks a bottle.
Try the Dawn, at least once.
My hair is very dry and coarse. If I washed it every day it’d be a tangle of split ends. At one point, I was “conditioning” my hair with liquid fabric softener, till I found out that too contained a small amount of a very harsh detergent.
I once read someone to the effect that your body/hair/scalp is overcompensating for the daily stripping of healthy oils and takes some amount of time to chill out after you stop washing away all the natural oil daily. Probably all crap, idk.
I *rarely* use shampoo. Only conditioner daily. I only use shampoo if my hair is actually soiled by dirt/grime. And with my office>home lifestyle, that doesn’t happen. Probably use shampoo 10 times or less per year, conditioner and hot shower does the job.
My hair is fantastic, super soft and all the ladies love it. If not for my gorgeous hair, I’d have nothing going for me 😉
Dry shampoo was a thing for a while. It still may be.
I can go without shampooing my hair for a long time before it starts getting to me (2 weeks). However, it starts to smell “bad” (IMO, the natural smell is not bad; it’s just not perfumed) so I wash it about once a week to keep my husband from grimacing when he hugs me.
“I once read someone to the effect that your body/hair/scalp is overcompensating for the daily stripping of healthy oils and takes some amount of time to chill out after you stop washing away all the natural oil daily. Probably all crap, idk”
Nope. My teenage stepson saw something about that on “Adam Ruins Everything” (I know, I know). While the factual info was correct, he’s used as an excuse to only shower every few days from time to time (especially now that his college is doing all classes via Zoom), because he’s lazy about that stuff. Drives his Filipina mother crazy.
Birds washed in Dawn don’t survive. They go hypothermic.
Prell FTW!
I use the hard stuff….100 proof
Archie Bell and the Prells
I thought you were linking to this Archie Bell and the Drells
This hits some many appropriation and stereotype points.
https://youtu.be/CT1st0QZPNE
Oh, and two others I forgot – Boars Head deli meats and Proraso shaving cream.
Same. In fact, you can’t get anything else at most delis here.
My allegiance is a vestige of my NY birth. Mom grew up on them and went out of her way to continue buying them here in VA after we moved – and back in the ’80s, there were only a couple of stores you could buy them at in Richmond.
They’re expensive, but Tom Leonard’s (owned by the son of Stew Leonard, whose eponymous stores you may know….they’re in the Tri-State area, though not in NYC proper) has all BH meats for $7.99 a pound.
has all BH meats for $7.99 a pound.
Maybe it’s a California thing, but I can’t see the abbreviation BH and think it stands for anything except “bong hit”.
https://www.bhphotovideo.com/
I worship that store. If New York City slid into the ocean tomorrow, I’d miss Rhywun and B&H Photo, not necessarily in that order. ;-)
l0b0t has a sad.
Knew I missed someone.
I thought l0b0t had gotten the hell out of dodge
Where I grew up (western NY) the supermarkets were vastly superior to anything here in NYC so there were always multiple price-points to choose from. We were poor so naturally I got used to the cheapest crap available. Then I moved to NYC and other than the downscale supermarket I lived near in Queens as I continued to be poor for some years, I’ve never seen anything other than Boar’s Head since, at least at the deli counter. There’s pre-packaged that is both cheaper and more expensive.
I wish Boars Head around here was as good as it apparently is elsewhere.
No doubt there is better. Especially if you order online.
Proraso – THIS!
Both the tube you use a shaving brush with (love using the double edge safety razor), and the green can shaving cream.
I also use their preshave lotion and after shave. Worth the money.
only strong brand loyalties are Bounty and JIF – JIF because it tastes and spreads the best (and doesn’t separate!), Bounty because it really is the most absorbent, and doesn’t leave lint.
the non-linting is useful from everything to cleaning glass to wiping down freshly honed cylinders
oh, I forgot Garnier Fructis Anti-Dandruff.
I have to import it from Canada now since they stopped selling it here – it’s the only stuff that works for me
I buy Jif, Peter Pan, or Skippy. Natural creamy – whichever is on sale.
My main color is blue.
I only buy blue pens. Dislike black and have no use for all those other weirdo colors.
I do a lot of writing in my journal (aka vomit book, where I vomit out all the words in my head so I can have some room in there), and I color code stuff. Blue is my main color. Orange is the to-do list. Green is the “dun-did” list. Pink is ideas and proverbs/sayings/affirmations. Red is to keep track of my son’s behavior (useful for therapist). Black is for rehashing the last notebook I filled and to see where I’ve pro/regressed. My Getting Shit Done board.
It’s the only way I can have clarity and keep myself on track: get the words/thoughts/feelings out of my head, think about what must be done, be more mindful of what I did get done/how my time was sucked up so I don’t sink into a “I didn’t get anything done today!” when I actually did–just not the stuff I wanted. With colors, I can see at a glance.
*backs slowly out of room*
j/k
LOL It’s not as crazy as it sounds when you hang out with people who write journals, but I’ll never be a bullet journal type and nobody I know journals like I do. I basically act like my brain is a cluttered room. I stand in the threshold and assess, then start clearing out the trash, starting from my right and working my way around the room. Trash gone? Start putting things where they belong.
Wrangler Jeans
If it’s good enough for Mike Rowe, it’s good enough for me.
C is for Cookie, that’s good enough for me.
I was committed to (((Levi)))’s 501s for decades, but purchased a pair of Wrangler jeans a few monst ago Very comfortable with room to move. Will not go back to (((Levi’s))).
My wife bought me a bunch or Arizona jeans, and now I really like them.
Used to only wear Levi 501s when I was in high school and college.
Button-fly 501s were the fashion for boys and Jordache straight-legs for girls.
Yep. I recall really liking the way girls looked in Jordache jeans. Ah, growing up in the 80s.
Bounty paper towels — don’t care
Post-its — someone else makes them?
Scotch tape — don’t care
Pilot pens — what?
Sharpie pens — don’t care, but it’s what I buy
Angel Soft toilet paper — can’t even imagine caring
Crest toothpaste — Colgate
Heinz ketchup — don’t care
Hellman’s mayonnaise — yes
Colgate?
And here I thought we could be friends.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W5FfJ89rGPc
“29 life lessons learned in travelling the world” – Benny the Irish Polyglot.
You realize you’ve just lit the HM signal. Benny tried and failed to learn Japanese in 3 months and failed miserably. After which he proceeded to spin and spin and spin some more.
He tried and failed.
That’s more than I’ve done.
It’s more the issue that he gives people false expectations. And after that people feel like they are stupid and failed for no good reason.
In turn I think that discourages people instead of encouraging them. Sadly the internet is loaded with these “learn a foreign language in 6 weeks with this one trick” type sites and articles.
Agreed. It’s kinda like 6-week women’s self-defense classes. Unless it involves a gun, it’s not going to be that useful in real life.
My old boss was learning Hapkido “come at me he says” I do and promptly start him towards the ground. “No, do it this way” I don’t think your attacker is going to give you options was my reply.
I kinda learned Spanish in 9 weeks.
Granted i was dropped off in Latin America with a “Good Luck”, so i kinda had to learn. And i wasn’t nearly fluent. That took a few more months of being there.
It also helps that fewer people speak English in Latin America than in Europe. The natives have to work with your Spanish or Portuguese instead of switching to English after the first mistake or sign of hesitation.
^^^ very helpful. Perhaps my happiest moment when i was first learning is when i was asked if i was from Chile.
If the euro switches to english, in perfect english, say “I don’t speak english,” and keep trying the euro language.
I tried that when I was in Russia.
Well, not quite that. Somebody trying to sell me shit (this was 1992) started talking English to me, so I responded… in German. The guy kept speaking English.
Capitalism’s Response to Coronavirus Makes a Strong Case for Socialism
Stillness is lethal for a capitalist economy. That vulnerability of our economic engine is why the GOP has dropped its odes to rugged individualism and self-reliance and emerged as a champion of big government in a matter of weeks. Republicans have been happy to dispense government handouts, spearheaded the largest stimulus measure in modern American history, and signed off on free medical testing. Trump panned the Defense Production Act, which requires private companies to prioritize any federal government orders for products, as a socialist policy—and then went ahead and used it.
For evangelists of laissez faire capitalism, the jig is up. The $6 trillion package of loans and grants for corporations, businesses and individuals has shown that the issue has never been whether the government can afford to spend a great deal of money to deal with the shortcomings of a market economy, but rather whether those in power wanted to spend it.
Responding in the wrong way means socialism is good.
Even Keynes is rolling over in his grave.
Yep. That is one of the more economically stupid things I’ve ever read, even considering the source is vice.
Government killed the economy to begin with.
“The government is good at one thing. It knows how to break your legs, and then hand you a crutch and say, ‘See if it weren’t for the government, you wouldn’t be able to walk.” – Harry Browne
Love that quote. Borrowing it to post of FB later and see what kind of derp I get.
Stillness is lethal for a capitalist economy.
I mean, it doesn’t matter where you are, if you don’t work you don’t eat.
That vulnerability of our economic engine is why the GOP has dropped its odes to rugged individualism and self-reliance and emerged as a champion of big government in a matter of weeks.
A lot of socialists have been using the bailout running circles around libertarians saying “Look even the Republicans abandoned the free market, clearly it doesn’t work”. Which presupposes that the republicans ever cared about the Free Market. Also I think it’s a strange reaction from the socialists when… you know this is a bailout for big buisness.
For evangelists of laissez faire capitalism, the jig is up. The $6 trillion package of loans and grants for corporations, businesses and individuals has shown that the issue has never been whether the government can afford to spend a great deal of money to deal with the shortcomings of a market economy, but rather whether those in power wanted to spend it.
LOOK i drank the Hemlock and i haven’t died yet. You fools were so stupid to say i couldn’t do it.
The Soviets got pretty good at doing nothing.
They got good at starving too….
I bet he’s shocked to find out this situation seems to have validated everything he already believed beforehand. Who could have expected that?
That’s stupid even by the standards of Vice.
Presumptively Corona’d?
The problem with that fraud, of course, was that i was too obvious to see that the “climate” isn’t in “crisis.” It wasn’t getting traction as the latest Fear Sell to get the public to buy a radical diminishment of their lives and a radical increase in the power over the life of the public . . . by the very people making the “sale.”
Well, it wasn’t working. The Green New Deal was going nowhere. And the Orange Man appeared to be on track to going back to the White House for four more years long enough to undo most of the manufactured “crisis.”
So a new one had to be invented – one that you can’t see.
Corona!
It is everywhere! It can strike anyone! Therefore, everyone must accept the most extreme measures – else we’ll all die from Corona! This brilliant because it is possible – in the same sense that we might all die from a Coronal Mass Ejection. But is it actual? Is it likely?
There is another problem.
Bodies must be produced to support the narrative – enough of them to make it credible. One very good way to do that is to exaggerate the numbers, by conflating them with the numbers of pretty much everyone who dies, from whatever reason.
They are presumptively Corona’d.
Hospital workers, grocery store workers, auto mechanics, pharmacy workers, gas station workers, restaurant workers, Grubhub workers, Instacart workers, liquor store workers, bus drivers, Uber drivers and a host of other workers are all allowed to go back to work, but office workers are not permitted to do so. I’m a shit-ton safer in my office than in a CVS. All of this shit is a scam.
Heinz or die.
Scott’s TP – yeah it’s not the softest but won’t do a damn to your toilet/plumbing (as other brands tend to clog)
Coke no fucking Pepsi
Express jeans (softest I can find, but pricey)
Vans (too many shoes, too little expendable income)
Heinz or die.
Die like John Heinz?
Teresa Heinz ?
I used to be a Vans man but their quality has declined noticeably. Those things used to last forever, appropriately so given their origins as skate shoes, but the last few pairs I owned started falling apart fairly quickly, and since they have gotten more expensive at the same time I don’t buy em anymore.
Vans suck ever since the early nineties. There’s ads for people who want to buy pre-90’s Vans. I have a recent pair and they suck. I’ll never buy another pair. Back to the cheap (?) imitations from big 5 for me.
I think the last pair I bought was late Aughts.
I find Express has good deals and a rewards system that also chips away at prices occasionally. Probably my closest thing to a brand loyalty, but that’s because I don’t have the patience to try to game a handful of rewards programs & discounts from various stores.
Brand loyalty? Best Buy is good enough.
Exceptions:
Work pants = Carhartt
Dress pants = Newest pair of Carhartt’s
“Work pants = Carhartt
Dress pants = Newest pair of Carhartt’s”
+1
+2
Bounty paper towels
I mounted a commercial paper towel dispenser to the wall in the kitchen. I just got tired off constantly buying and replacing regular kitchen paper towels. The wife made a stink at first about how I trashed up the kitchen but jumped onboard after a couple weeks. I can’t see ever going back. I just get the commercial rolls at Costco.
As for the rest, only two matter. Charmin toilet paper and Heinz ketchup.
I prefer Duke’s mayo, but have no problem going with Hellman’s or Kirkland brand.
raisin bran: Kellogg >> Post
I don’t know why. Post just has a bland and flat quality, no texture, with the faint hint of machine oil from the roller/reducer wheels
Heinz >>>> all others; I don’t use ketchup except on fries which I only eat a few times a year, but the sugar/salt/acid of any other brands is a deal killer
No one should be loyal to raisin bran.
The best ketchup for fries is gravy.
OMG yes.
Yes.
Ranchup isnt half bad either.
Aquafresh toothpaste or GTFO.
They still make that shit?
That’s Mr. Mojeaux’s brand of choice.
A man of refined taste.
Well, he did marry me, so I can’t really argue, now, can I?
My wife loves the Aquafresh Deep clean toothpaste, or whatever the heck it’s called.
Freak.
That’s what we called the “fancy” toothpaste when I was a kid.
We got “Aim”.
I’d use the fancy aquafresh mixing bottle at my grandma’s house and then go home to Equate brand “abrasive tooth cleaning solvent”
The best languages are the ones where all syllables are stressed roughly the same or have strict rules about which syllable is stressed.
So you’re saying you love speaking Chinese…
I took two semesters of Mandarin in college before giving up. In some ways, it’s actually a very simple language. There are no verb conjugations, for example. Tense is indicated by adding words that show when the action occurred.
Tones were a bitch, though, and given my atrocious handwriting in Roman letters I was a basket case when it came to attempting characters. I don’t remember much of it now.
I’m pretty sure tones are worse than stresses
Every minute a new minute differential that I miss.
I’ve always wondered: are there “tone deaf” people in China? If so, how do they communicate?
And how does sign language work?
I thought of that, but . . . they’re not deaf. They’re just deaf to differences in tones. Or is it possible that growing up in a society where a tonal language is the baseline for communication “prevents” tone-deafness?
Mandarin tones are relative. IOW you have to listen to someone talk for a bit in order to perceive “their” tones. For example, the first tone uses the speaker’s highest “register”. Fourth is high to low. Etc. I’ve never heard of anyone (not deaf) being unable to perceive such things, but I could be wrong I guess.
Yes, understood. Your question sparked my curiosity about how sign language works for deaf people in a culture with tonal languages.
Shirley:
Maybe they have to signal every tone – goodness, that could get tiresome. (In some transliterations, they use digits 1 to 4 – in almost every word (some words don’t have a tone) to indicate them.)
There is a body of research that suggests the incidence for individuals with “perfect pitch” is higher in populations that speak tonal languages.
Sign languages aren’t designed with a 1 to 1 correspondence with spoken language. A tone (or a toneme or “intonational phoneme”) carries semantic meaning (seme), in a sign language, you already have gesture conveying the seme so marking tone through another gesture would be redundant. As far as fingerspelling pinyin everything I could find suggests that context suggests tone for homographs.
I was wondering about context, too.
And good point about correspondence with the spoken language – there’s no reason the sign has to have any relation to the spoken word. ASL doesn’t.
Thanks HM, that’s helpful. And probably sufficient. It does key in nicely with some of my thoughts on language & meaning.
The Best languages are the ones that don’t have Superlatives.
they’re better than ones that don’t have comparatives.
That’s pretty much all you can say about them.
You don’t like the shifting stresses of Russian nouns? 🙂
Those are easy… for a native speaker. We had one book at home that was published for students of Russian. Every word had its stressed syllable marked. That was one of the first times I realized that learning Russian must be hard.
When I was taking Russian in college all the textbooks had the stressed syllable marked, but it always seemed completely unnecessary to me.
I was very lucky to have one professor teach things in terms of phonetics, so that the various ways of spelling the yot/iota made much more sense, in declensions of words like семья or чей.
Oh, English is a horrible language. It’s like a shanty town that kind of sprung up and is built with whatever’s available. No streets, no straight lines. No landmarks.
“English doesn’t ‘borrow’ from other languages: it follows them down dark alleys, knocks them over, and goes through their pockets for loose grammar and valuable vocabulary.”
And it rules.
[makes heavy-metal salute and nods head rhythmically in MJ’s direction]
Oh, yeah, when you’re able/willing to read for fun again, Bryson’s The Mother Tongue is a must.
Wish-listed.
That’s most languages. English is the oddball that is stress-timed and stress based.
For a long time I knew only two and both of them were like that.
I might be a brand whore about camera/optical equipment. And shoes.
I would think that cameras are one product where brands truly make a difference, so that makes sense. Any fairly sophisticated equipment would seem to fall into that category.
That, too. Network test equipment, particularly. ISDN telephone lineman’s handset, $2k back in the day.
Titty Tuesday will make you want to ignore social distancing.
http://archive.li/zDj8F
8 and 21… *drool*.
#9. Damn, she’s elegant.
Yeah, #9 is elegant.
#21 is Stacey Poole.
All of them are welcome in my bed.
9 definitely has the look of a wealthy guy’s classy trophy wife. Gorgeous.
28 has mesmerizing eyes.
28 has mesmerizing eyes.
I really like the contrast between raven hair and blue eyes.
That’s a long nose on 21. Something about her face seems off, maybe the proportions. To each his own.
9 and 17 are up my alley, though.
Agree on 28’s eyes. Wow.
29 has a little Lara Croft thing going on.
There’s a girl at work who looks just like 22. Hopefully by the time we can return to work, I’ll have forgotten the Chive version of her so I don’t immediately have that image in my head when talking to her. I’m happily married (and old enough to be her dad). Just don’t want the distraction. 😛
I keep trying and getting an error message.
So to piss myself off some more. I downloaded the latest Ohio CV numbers today and I looked at deaths by day for Franklin County (Columbus) together with the surrounding 6 counties. Total pop of 2 million people. Since the first death on 3/17 there have been 18 deaths. Only one day has there been more than 2 deaths. There were 3 over a week ago on 3/29. Out of a population of 2 million. All “non-essential” businesses closed and a stay at home order in place. DeWine is an idiot.
CSV file available here in case anyone’s interested in also getting pissed. Still 99% over 50 yo.
https://coronavirus.ohio.gov/wps/portal/gov/covid-19/dashboards
The newest claim is that NYC has been vastly underreporting coronadeaths because supposedly most people who die from it die at home and never get tested.
Why DeBlasio and Cuomo do this hasn’t been explained yet.
Even though CDC guidance on reporting deaths doesn’t require a positive test, just corona-like symptoms?
Yeah, I call bullshit. This is going to fall short of their doomsday shilling even in NY, and they are already setting up their next lie.
Zero new cases in Pima county reported yesterday.
Eyeball on the percentage increase for AZ is definitely still single digits, maybe even a 5% increase.
The confounding factor, of course, is these are (test) confirmed cases, not actual cases. The rate of testing has been increasing, so even if actual incidence is flat (or declining), the confirmed cases would be going up.
I learned today that the geniuses running the models built them on the assumption that the first confirmed case was the first actual case. No wonder their models have been such crap.
WTF? Srsly?
It’s like they can’t see the forest for the trees.
TurboTax Rebrands As ‘TurboTheft’ For Libertarian Market
AOC Wakes Up And Spins Wheel Of Oppression To Determine What To Complain About Today
TurboTheft. Lol.
LOL@ the TurboTheft one:
“Wheel of oppression turn turn turn, tell us the people we should burn.”
A lot of brand loyalty is evaporating in Canada, because chain stores found out that they could make more margin off of their own house brands. IMNSHO, The Real Canadian Superstore’s “President’s Choice” line of goods is the past master of this strategy (and their stuff’s generally better than the name-brand equivalents, plus they make lots o’ stuff that you can’t find anywhere else easily [or at all]). Safeway, Save-on Foods, Co-op, IGA, Thrifty’s, Walmart, Loblaws, they’ve all gone this route to some extent. In many cases, I can’t even find the name-brands anymore.
Bob Loblaw’s?
Heh.
“Bob Loblaw, to the white courtesy phone, please. Bob Loblaw? Does anyone here know Bob Loblaw?”
And his law blog.
Yeah, we used to get President’s Choice at Wegmans in Rochester. Generally good stuff.
Fred Meyer has it before they were assimilated by the Kroger borg.
Freddy Kroger’s, Nightmare on Grocery Street.
One stop chopping.
😉
You can learn a great deal of a language in three months if you have some aptitude for it and you completely immerse yourself in it. I can speak Portuguese at an advanced level, Spanish at a high intermediate and Dutch at a beginners level. I wouldnt say someone as fluent until they have the same ability in their chosen language as they do their native one. I could have a conversation with a large group of Portuguese speakers and even if they were talking at normal speed and quickly changing subjects I would follow everything and be able to keep up and jump in at any time. I don’t think that is fluency.
I don’t think that is fluency.
I think that’s exactly what fluency is. Most of the time speaking a language fluently doesn’t mean being indistinguishable from a native speaker.
I used to consider myself Fluent in Argentine Spanish (Catellano as they call it), but Now i’m just conversational.
I’ve never been very adept at understanding Mexicans when i try to eavesdrop.
Just rewatched the movie “Amorres Perros” the other nite. I can get about 75% of the dialogue, but it is heavy, heavy Mexican slang Spanish. I rewatched “Y tu mama tambien” a few weeks back and could get 90% of it because even though it still had lots of Mexican slang, it was closer to normal.
Both films are great btw.
Amores Perros is a real bitch of a movie.
Naturally there are actual official fluency measures – but I think it depends to whom and how you want to communicate.
For example, I’d consider myself mostly fluent in everyday Japanese, but for employment purposes I can basically only work in a restaurant or convenience store. Professional work in Japanese would be out of the question for me.
I also think it depends on the language. It makes sense that KSuellington can leverage his Portuguese into Spanish.
Portuguese = Spanish with rocks in your mouth.
There’s enough similarity with English that reading Dutch or German, can usually puzzle out many things. A little less when hearing either.
Voor het zingen de kerk hit.
My favorite idiomatic expression in Dutch (which has loads of good ones). Literally it means get out of church before the singing starts. The singing starts right before the collection plate goes around. But it actually means “don’t come inside her”.
That example is great. Church is kirk in Scottish, which is pretty close to kerk.
kirsch in German
Dunkirk comes to us from Flemish, I think
That should be “uit”
Pinche autocorrect.
As an Ohioan, I hesitate to say this, but Tennessee Pride bulk sausage > Bob Evans.
Ketchup: The correct answer is Brooks.
Sandwich spread: Durkee’s or GTFO.
Oh, yeah – toothpaste: I abandoned the Crest of my upbringing for Colgate to get the wide flip-top cap that lets you stand the tube on end (instead of the little bitty fiddly cap.) Packaging matters.
^THIS
Even the cheap drugstore brands (I’m agnostic on toothpaste) have figured that out.
Not enough grease. If Im making gravy, I buy the ghetto “Heritage Farms” stuff from Kroger.
We just do patties, & TP Mild has a finer texture & good flavor.
Enough words and enough arguing. Just live by example and soon you’ll have people on your side when they see your results and how passionate you are. No need to “convince” them. Just show them that you are there, tell them how you got there, and they will start to realise that maybe you aren’t that crazy after all.
This is good advice.
Now that we know binary numbers, we will learn how to add them. Binary addition is much like your normal everyday addition (decimal addition), except that it carries on a value of 2 instead of a value of 10.
/flashback to undergrad days
/clicks on first music link
Ahhh… the Doobies
There are some brands I won’t buy no matter how low the price is. To name a few: Little Ceasar’s, Kraft Mac and Cheese, Chrysler.
I think all of those come off of the same production line.
That’s how I feel about McD’s and other fast food ‘value’ menus. I don’t really want to eat a cheeseburger that can be made for 59¢.
Kraft Mac n Cheese? That’s the Rolls Royce of mac and cheese. You pay a buck for that box. Aldi store brand is 33 cents.
No, it’s only the Chrysler of mac and cheese. Proper homemade will put you back more than a buck, but it’ll give you the rolls royce, hand-crafted flavor.
When I used to make blue box kraft, I used actual butter and cream instead of margarine and milk
#metoo
Sometimes even sour cream
YES! Just a little dollop of sour cream makes a big improvement.
Daisy is the best sour cream.
Shit, another on my list. Friendship or GTFO. I had to buy Daisy the other day; I don’t like it.
XY likes Aldi’s (49c not 33c) better. Butter and evaporated milk.
I flove Swanson’s frozen mac & cheese and I’m trying to find a good copycat recipe, but I haven’t yet.
Huh….maybe your Aldi has different prices than ours?
Or maybe I haven’t bothered looking at the price in a while, and they raised it. We’ve only had the store for a couple of years, though, and I know it was 33 cents at one point.
Just bought a flat of it 2 days ago.
No.
This is the Rolls-Royce of boxed Mac ‘n Cheese. All others taste like garbage boiled in swill.
And I also just bought a flat of it, two days ago. Synchronicity, man . . .
You people call it Kraft Dinner, anyhow. You dont count.
Canuckistani brand, I see. Does me no good.
It is, to my everlasting surprise, available in some border states of the U.S. I was in a regional chain grocer in Washington state and saw some on the shelf, and I also saw it once in Idaho. I guess PC does side-deals with their stuff.
Homemade is soooo superior.
Cardinal Pell’s conviction quashed
Cardinal George Pell welcomed Australia’s highest court clearing him of child sex crimes Tuesday and said his trial had not been a referendum on the Catholic Church’s handling of the clergy abuse crisis.
Pell, Pope Francis’ former finance minister, had been the most senior Catholic found guilty of sexually abusing children and spent 13 months in prison before seven High Court judges unanimously dismissed his convictions.
“I have consistently maintained my innocence while suffering from a serious injustice,” Pell said in his first public statement since he was convicted in December 2018. It was released before he left prison and was taken to the Carmelite Monastery in Melbourne, where he was greeted by a nun.
I paid just enough attention to the case to not be surprised.
why was the convition dismissed?
From the article:
The High Court referred to the “unchallenged evidence” of witnesses in the trial to Pell’s practice of talking to the congregation on the cathedral stairs after Mass, church practice that required him to be accompanied in the cathedral while robed and the “continuous traffic in and out of the priests’ sacristy” as causes for reasonable doubt.
The High Court statement said, “There is a significant possibility that an innocent person has been convicted because the evidence did not establish guilt to the requisite standard of proof.”
A juror should come and say “Excuse me Mr Judge, but your job is on matters of law, we the jurors decide weather the evidence was requisite to establish guilt”
But maybe they have a different system in Oz.
For @GT, @Cannoli, and possibly @LemonGrenade:
In Dark Knight, when Harvey Dent died, I just burst into tears. Afterward, Mr. Mojeaux went, “WTF?” and I wailed, “They killed Knox!”
*takes pathetic self back to La La Land*
Who’s Knox?
One of my characters. Looks like Aaron Eckhart, a prosecutor, suave when necessary. Totally fit everything about him so I was emotionally invested in seeing him as a character, but NOT as Harvey Dent.
I see.
::makes notes to search for clips on YT::
For no good reason, when I first read Proviso, I got an image of Knox looking like Rob Lowe, and I’ve had a hard time shaking it.
I can see that. I had an image of him being a “prettier” kind of handsome, if that makes sense. Rob Lowe fits.
Knox is not pretty. He’s not even particularly handsome in a traditional sense. He’s rough around the edges and the only thing that makes him handsome is how Justice sees him.
It’s not something I ever thought of, but I can see it. It makes more sense than someone else who said she thought he had black hair. I’m not sure how “he’s a blond” translates to “he’s a brunet,” but whatever.
He ACTUALLY looks like someone I knew IRL (who is obliquely mentioned in the book).
Even though the hair color doesn’t match, I couldn’t help thinking of Harvey Dent as Bryce instead.
I actually love hearing how people cast characters I know (any characters, not just mine).
OTOH, there are abominations such as casting Tom Cruise as Lestat. I will never forget how one day Anne Rice was cursing his mother for having him and the next day she was all, “Oh he’s the perfect choice!” I wonder what threat was powerful enough to get her to go along with the program.
I think having Tom Cruise (5’7″) playing Jack Reacher (6’5″), in TWO movies no less, is the bigger Tom Cruise casting abomination. So much of the Reacher character depends upon his size and presence. Thankfully, Amazon Prime is now in the middle of doing a Reacher series and they have promised to cast someone appropriately sized.
Did film makers forget how to use foreshortening, camera angles, and sets with undersized doorways to make short actors looks big? Or is it that you know that TC is short that throws it off.
Director: “We’ll fix it in post”
Post-production: “Do they want us to re-render the whole darn movie?”
The Jack Reacher books ‘mention’ his size approximately once per page. It is more or less what substitutes for character devlopment, plot, and even a rudimentary familiarity with the country and organizations the author writes about.
Yeah, I read two* Reacher books, I haven’t seen the films, My question is did they not even try to make TC look big or is your knowledge of TC’s real size too much for you to suspend disbelief.
* I have no idea why I read the second one, I guess I just didn’t believe such crap could be so popular, I was naive back in those days.
In the movies he’s just a generic action hero. Tom Cruise plays the same character as in the M:I movies.
The movies simply ignored Cruise’s size. There were no situations where his lack of height was relevant.
So they wrote his height out of the story.
This was basically Ethan Hunt in lumberjack clothing.
A day late and a dollar short.
Cruise’s height never bothered me. He was great in both Reacher films, and Christopher McQuarrie did an excellent job on the first one (Ed Zwick on the second, not so much).
I would never, ever cross Tom Cruise. She’s lucky she wasn’t carried out in a body bag.
Huh. I don’t see him as intimidating. I see him as marginally influential. And gay, but that’s kind of a known, isn’t it?
It’s not about him; it’s about the organization behind him.
Oh, that’s what I was referring to as marginally influential. LOL
They are somewhat notorious for going after e.g. family members of those who leave.
I haven’t read the Proviso yet, but now that I’m about done reading my backlog, it’s time to add new items. But I’ve always had trouble seeing Aaron Eckhart as anyone other than Chad from In The Company of Men.
All you really need to know is he’s blond.
I got a pair of kitchen shears to make it easier to process chicken wings for making buffalo-style wings. This pair can be disassembled at the pivot for easy cleaning. But then I wonder what the name of one half is. A shear? A scissor? A knife?
On the topic of brand loyalty, I think it’s just the known factor. I know what I’m getting, so I’m not going to expend the brain energy to re-evaluate the decision made however long ago. And each decision made in a day does take energy. That’s why habits are so powerful. Repeating is the path of least resistance.
Poultry shears. I use mine for spatchcocking.
I know what they’re called combined (and it took those wings apart like they were nothing.) I was asking about one half when they haves were separated. Because it’s no longer plural, and it can’t shear or scissor on its own.
A blade.
^^^This is the correct answer.
So if the entire half of the shears is a blade, what is the sharpened part of the blade called? The blade-blade?
The edge.
The stabby part.
The edge?
A half a pair of scissors is a scissor. A shearing knife is a single blade with a handle. It’s used to cut plants, such as bushes and small trees — topiary, those things Santa puts presents under, etc. A pair of garden shears is basically two of those put together. (Tree shears are these huge ass mechanical power tools.)
Clausens pickles (hearty garlic sandwich slices)
Ivory bar soap
Dicks for all my sporting goods
Levi’s clothing
Gillette shaving products
run!
they’re gonna hold you down and cut two corners off your Glibs ID card over that list
C+ effort. Trying too hard.
^^^This is the correct response.
I threw in a couple real ones to throw you guys off, you’re smarter than I look.
/giggle.
Hyperbole saucing up the links.
Thought of two more (real one but probably too local)
Smith’s french onion dip
Jones’ Chips , at least until they made them stop using trans fat, now I don’t eat any chips. Also they used to make a hot version of their BBQ chips that actually were hot, a small bagful would cause one to break out in a sweat.
I can’t do 4-8 more weeks of this.
I’m predicting PA will reopen ~May 1st, but NJ & NY will still be shut for another 4 weeks past that.
Well, here in Virginia Coonman has already decreed we’re shut down until June 10.
I can’t believe people will put up with that.
In COVID-19 pandemic, artists hardest hit.
https://twitter.com/DeebsFLA/status/1247340371287445504/photo/1
Bounty paper towels
Charmin toilet paper
Hellmans Mayo (or “Best” as it’s branded here in CA)
Duracell
Crest, Tartar control
Mitchum antiperspirant
Lubriderm (fragrance free) lotion
Looks like someone aint gettin’ laidfor a while. If ever.
His wife is out at a bar late at night in a pandemic (with out him)?
Hrm……
I doubt its a strong marriage.
On the other hand, maybe a girl’s night was planned and she said “they wont do anything…Im the mayor’s wife”
Strong? They’re pols. It’s a business arrangement.
Maybe it was a girl’s night. You’re being more generous than me.
Yep. He hasn’t been getting laid in a while.
But I hear some cucks enjoy that.
If he was getting laid before (and looking at the pic, it seems unlikely), he sure isn’t now.
Closing time on a girls’ night out? She sounds . . . sporty.
Yeah, she likes to party.
https://i.dailymail.co.uk/1s/2020/04/07/15/26912902-8196029-Shannon_Walker_is_pictured_at_an_event_in_2018-a-2_1586269255840.jpg
#KarensGoneWild
Therea a subreddit I wont be visiting.
Who does she think she is, the mayor of Chicago?
He’s a politician. He’s only married for appearances. I guarantee he’s getting laid elsewhere.
#FullHomo
I don’t buy much, so I don’t have any real brand loyalty (with one exception), just brand inertia.
The exception: Stickley furniture.
Speaking of which:
The inlay on our new chairs.
And on the new table.
Owl butt?
Your owls must be different than ours.
Very nice.
Spoons and shrooms?
RC’s on a mission
+1 Leopold Chair
To my surprise, Mrs. Dean is all for it. She claims my barely broken in 20+ year old readin’ chair is dragging down the whole house.
I’d be more excited if the economy taking a giant shit hadn’t put everything that costs money on indefinite hold.
Nice!
I would like Stickley too if I could find any around here for less than the cost of a Tesla.
I like it.
Looks great!
I see Rand Paul is now over the CovID19 and is volunteering at a hospital.
As an opthamologist, there’s probably not much he can actually do, especially with Commie Cough patients.
Well, he’s been through med school, and at least he can do cataract surgeries, etc for folks who’d otherwise have to wait for all the covid scare to end.
Yes, he’s a fully licensed physician and surgeon, he’s certainly not restricted to eyes, and completed very taxing residency and fellowship programs. Without knowing him personally to be familiar with his talents, he’s likely a top-notch general doc as well as his specialty.
Little-known fact: Ophthalmology residency programs are often the most difficult to get into coming out of medical school. Granted I graduated med school 34 years ago, but at my school out of our top 10 ranked grads in the class, eight went into optho, and I don’t think anyone below them was able to get in.
It’s a specialty which combines medicine, surgery, physics and technology, and is really only for the super-smart of the docs.
Plus your patients are unlikely to shit on you.
When I was doing medical transcription, I had an ophthalmology account. Nobody else would do it. Working on eyeballs/listening to somebody talking about working on eyeballs is icky and garners instant revulsion reactions. My husband won’t get contact lenses because he finds it so icky.
I did not know those details—thanks!
I had nothing but praise for the Doc who did my left eye. That is a super delicate operation and I was in awe. Not any ole saw bones can do it.
I was getting ready to schedule one when this idiocy kicked off. I have put it off too long. Now who knows if they will be in business when Governor Shit for Brains lets people start living normally again.
at least he can do cataract surgeries, etc for folks who’d otherwise have to wait for all the covid scare to end
Not until they lift the ban on elective surgery.
The thing about hospitals is, docs can’t do anything unless they have “privileges” to do it based on training and experience. ICU privileges are definitely a thing, and that’s where most of the Commie Coughers are likely to be. An opthamologist won’t have ICU privileges. Because our anesthesiologists are borderline unemployed these days, we’ve been getting them ICU privileges. Anesthesiolgists are experts at airway management, so its not that much of a lift for them. An opthamlogist? I dunno.
16:00 last check of the inbox WFH
I’ve taken off two buildings, a total of three hours’ work in four weeks
dead, dead, dead
Subwoofer told me that some of you guys were asking about me earlier. I’m not dead! It’s been a combination of:
1) chronic health problems flared in a nasty way over the last year and I’ve been dealing with that/trying to figure out how to do the stuff I need to do + the stuff I want to do without making myself even sicker
2) I have been on the Glib Discord Channel and forgot to check the website. ?
So I’m not dead! I’m fine, the chronic stuff has been going on for years so it’s not new. Just still learning how to cope with it. I am a slow learner when it comes to “not being able to do whatever I want whenever I want.” ?
I have been missing Woke Charmed and wanting to finish out the first season in recaps (they retconned everything for the second season and dropped the Woke as well as the cheesiness that made it fun to recap), it’s just a matter of figuring out how to do so without making myself sick or eating too much into my writing-for-profit time, since that’s also limited by my health problems. Something that seems to have been working so far is keeping to a really strict schedule and only allowing myself to do one activity for an hour or two at most. If that keeps working, I should be able to add Woke Charmed back in at an hour or so a day. Maybe it will take me a couple weeks per episode, but that’s better than what it has been with no recaps at all.
Oh, I am so sorry. I remember the post-partum days when I had a 2-store limit, and that was pushing it.
Yeah, I’m cranky about it. But it’s definitely better than doing nothing at all, which is where I was for the last 6 months.
Hopefully your recovery progress increases so you can do more. Glad to hear you’re not dead!
Woke Charmed has fallen asleep? Sad!
Proof that myths never die. Woke Charmed with less wokeness doesn’t sound more charming.
It’s a better show now, but it’s not funny. Now it’s just kind of a run-of-the-mill urban fantasy series rather than some kind of unholy amalgam of Nickelodeon/Disney Channel humor with CW sexcapades and insufferable social justice.
urban fantasy series
I didn’t even think of this as a genre but I know exactly what it is.
Good to see you again. Sorry about your health.
Glad to see you back!
Hope you are feeling better soon.
Paper towels? I used to use only Viva. Now I use Scott blue paper shop towels from Costco.
As an opthamologist, there’s probably not much he can actually do, especially with Commie Cough patients.
I’d rather see Rand hanging out on the floor of the Senate, poking Chuckie Schumer in the eye at regular intervals.
I wish he had been there so we could have gotten at least 1 no Vote on the abomination of a bailout.
OT:. RIP Al Kaline. Mr Tiger. 6
San Diego is going to be washed into the ocean! Non stop torrential rain for days. Makes the quarantine that much more dismal.
It rains in San Diego? Huh.
I bet like most of the California coast it rains for a month straight and then not again for eleven months.
Hmmm. They say in never rains in Southern California.
It fucking rains here. In 1998 (1999?) it rained the whole fucking year! Normally, it rains for about 3 weeks throughout the year, not all in one chunk. Two or three short bits of rain and that’s it. The other parts of the year, there’s huge fires. That’s why we have crazy mudslides, too. The fucked up government is a whole ‘nother story.
It’s raining here right now!
Seems like I’ve often heard that kind of talk before.
“The other parts of the year, there’s huge fires. That’s why we have crazy mudslides, too. The fucked up government is a whole ‘nother story.”
The fucked up government is often WHY we have huge fires and mudslides. They haven’t allowed controlled burns in many, many years. I can’t recall any in the 24 years since moving here.
Good tune.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gmq4WIjQxp0
Rhywun’s pretty much spot on on southern CA rain. We typically get 3 – 4 weeks in the winter (sometimes spread out over two months).
It’s pretty unusual to have several days or rain in the spring. It’s also been much cooler than any spring I can remember (moved to LA in Jan. 1996).
In the winter, yes. Is partly how Norma Desmond nabbed Joe Gillis.
Apparently Trump has donated to Rand’s ophthalmology abroad cause.
French’s ketchup > Heinz ketchup
Fight me.
Tires: I worked at Goodyear as a student. Since then, I’ve always bought Michelins. Until last week, when I got a new set of Pirelli all-seasons. We shall see.
I like Hunt’s the best. My parents buy that one. I don’t think it’s enough of a difference, though, when I can buy the Aldi brand for a buck.
I like Hunts canned tomato products like sauce and diced tomatoes the best.
Agreed. Hunt’s or Unico.
I’m particularly enamoured of Unico’s “no added salt” stuff. Makes it easier to make a sauce they way *I* want to.
Heinz is too damn thick.
My preferred ketchup is Trader Joe’s.
Planter’s peanut butter >>> Kraft peanut butter
Kraft Dinner > Kraft Macaroni and Cheese
Brand names usually don’t mean much to me except for Charmin Toilet paper, Little Debbie and various breakfast cereals. Don’t try to sell me a garbage knockoff nutty buddys or Swiss cake rolls. I can tell the difference.
Back in the 80’s when I was in a road band, we’d tell the audience that we were sponored by Little Debbie snack cakes. And everyone knows, “Nothing tastes better than Little Debbie”.
” And everyone knows, “Nothing tastes better than Little Debbie”. Heh.
When I worked at a local grocery store in Aurora, IL as a teenager, we used to call them Little Debbie Snatch cakes. We thought we were SO clever.
I learned today that the geniuses running the models built them on the assumption that the first confirmed case was the first actual case. No wonder their models have been such crap.
Everyone who is exposed gets it. Everyone who gets it dies. Send more money.
Glad Cling Wrap >>> store brand plastic wrap
This I will agree with. Unless you can get your hands on the commercial grade stuff in a giant roll.
They sell that stuff at Wholesale Club. I’ve always wanted to pull the trigger on one of those, but I’m not sure I want to will it to my god-children when I die.
So worth it. The plastic doesn’t stick to itself, and the box doesn’t try to murder you with that ridiculous saw edge.
Costco sells something like the big commercial rolls. We use it all the time. That coupled with a FoodSaver has made a lot stuff last a long time (especially cheese).
I miss genuine Saran Wrap.
I’ve learned not to mess with generic aluminum foil.
“Oh, you’ll wonder where the yellow went, when you brush your teeth with PEPSODENT!”
I Voted for Tulsi in the uncancelled election.
Are the red stains blood or ketchup?
I’ll never tell.
I, too, voted for Tulsi, but that was back before the world went apeshit and shut down.
A friend of mine in Austria says masks are now required to go food shopping. Hotels and restaurants might stay closed until mid-May: the government will decide later this month. On the other hand, certain small businesses (no restaurants included) will be allowed to reopen after Easter.
They’re stuffing the homeless into hotels here. What could possibly go wrong.
We should force them underground and start growing some CHUDS.
“We should force them underground and start growing some CHUDS.”
Back in my indie film days, the producer I worked for made a deal with an IP/copyright attorney who repped a lot of properties. He hired us to develop and exploit remakes and/or movie adaptations of the properties. One of them was C.H.U.D.
I worked with a couple of writers on a cool script remake of that. Alas, it never got made. The writers went on to write X-Men First Class and the first Thor movie.
The only property that did get made was the Piranha 3D movie. My buddy/co-worker brought in the French director Alex Aja on that project, and we brought in the writers, whom we’d met on another project years before.
Alas, we’d all been fired before the movie got made. It was a blessing in disguise.
The guy who ran the company was a good IP attorney (he got a big settlement from WB for the family of the Superman comic book writers, and got the same studio to settle a big suit ($35 million, if memory serves) that almost prevented the Starsky & Hutch movie with Ben Stiller and Owen Wilson from being released. But, he was a real shitty manager of people, and creatively tone deaf when it came to working with writers.
He refused to pay them, and wanted to set up deals at studios, so the studio would pay. In practice, that meant writers were coming up with pitches and story ideas for free on IP they didn’t control. Needless to say very few writers were wiling to do this.
He was also a real asshole, who cheated on his wife (his secretary told me that juicy bit).
My last 8 new cars were either Audi or VW. That counts as brand loyalty, yes?
Oh yah.
I think it counts as masochism
My last 8 new cars were either Audi or VW. That counts as brand loyalty, yes?
Maybe you’re a slow learner.
I LOLd.
Eh, had a Passat that was quite nice until every single service invoice came back with a comma in the price line. Then we punted it for a RAV4.
Great touring vehicle, though. Did a lot of long-distance drives in that car.
You started using an Eastern European mechanic?
Exact opposite. The invoices came back with commas, we moved from the dealer to an independent service agent, which calmed down the invoices for a few years, and then when those started coming back with commas, we realized it was time to punch out.
I knew what you meant. The joke was based on the decimal separator being a comma in those countries.
Many Western European countries, too.
Off the top rope!
?
The current VW has the 6 year warranty. I ain’t worried.
My undermask arrived today. I was thinking about wearing it to the zoom, but then I remembered I don’t have a webcam anyway. I do have a fairly new TV, so whichever one of you is the narc can turn on the camera in it and stream that, I guess.
What’s an undermask?
The clothing you wear under your mask, so your skin doesn’t have to touch that filthy thing.
Something sexy.
I think I’ve gotten baked chicken wings down to a science. Can’t compete with proper fried, but easier to do.
My Mom used to do honey-garlic chicken wings back in the day. Didn’t have any honey in ’em, and certainly weren’t fried, but people hoovered ’em down nevertheless.
garlic wings sound good.
The store only had bulk size packages, so I have some left to work with tomorrow.
*It’s Happening GIF*
Fuck the Police!
MIDDLE-AGED CROWD BREAK COVID-19 STAY-AT-HOME ORDER TO WATCH PINK FLOYD COVER BAND, CHANT ‘F*** THE POLICE’ AS OFFICERS ARRIVE
New Jersey man has been charged after hosting a concert outside his home in violation of the state’s ban on social gatherings amid the coronavirus outbreak.
The guy pretending to be a Roger Waters will swarm
On any motherfucker in a blue uniform
He’s already apologized. 🙁
“‘If you don’t want it to get into your lungs, you’ve got to force yourself to breathe. You’ve got to get up off your ass, you got to walk around. It hurts, you don’t want to do it, everything in your body is telling you not to do it. It’s lying to you, and I know that now, and the more I do, the more I push myself to do, the better I’m getting, so I’m gonna take faith in that for now.’
Cuomo spoke to another doctor who gave him exercises to do including trying to hold his breath for 10 seconds.
‘He said “I saw your X-rays, it’s in your lungs. And you got the right fear and you got the wrong approach. You can’t wait it out.” He said, “You have to fight. And not in some silly metaphorical way… You’ve got to do the things that will beat this virus. You’ve got to breathe deep when it hurts”‘, the doctor told Cuomo.”
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8196807/CNN-host-Chris-Cuomo-shares-scary-X-ray-lungs-showing-excess-fluid-caused-coronavirus.html
Sounds contradictory.
That sounds like bs. Get a new doctor.
If he was a quack, the doctor would have prescribed chloroquin.
No pneumonia, normal blood oxygen levels every day. He’s fine, and just acting like a huge pussy.
Basically this.
Rand Paul beat the shit out of this like a man.
We should all be Rand Paul.
And he was missing part of a lung!
He beat this with one lung tied behind his back.
lol
lmao
and rib fractures !
‘I think we have to be very careful about people preying on desperation,’ [Cuomo] warned
You got that right, buddy.
I’m thinking about wearing a Lone Ranger mask around town.
“They said, ‘Wear a mask, didn’t they? I’m wearing a mask.”
We should all buy burlap sacks and go with entirely ineffective Scarecrow masks
Throw in some torches and pitchfork’s for gatherings in front of Governors mansions around the country and I am in!
https://www.nj.com/coronavirus/2020/04/stop-and-disperse-nj-city-will-use-drones-to-yell-at-people-not-social-distancing.html
https://www.nj.com/coronavirus/2020/04/nj-orders-all-state-and-county-parks-closed-indefinitely-to-fight-coronavirus-outbreak.html
You know what? I’m good shutting down all the bridges over the Delaware.
This guy helped bring us Obamacare, so I think we should value his opinion.
Can you imagine what this country would look like if this shithead’s idea was followed?
https://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2020/04/07/ezekiel_emanuel_us_must_stay_locked_down_for_12-18_months_until_theres_a_vaccine.html
That is completely morally indefensible
But politically useful
Collapsing a society to win politically is not a wise strategy. Chaos is tautologically unpredictible. Interesting times are upon us, if you’ll forgive a Chinese allusion.
I never said he was wise, far from it.
I’d love to see him propose this to Joe Biden as the #1 campaign promise. But I doubt he could find one politician in America to support his crazy idea.
Now that is true commitment to politics over the lives of the citizens.
That motherfucker would have fit in perfectly in the Soviet Union.
It is astonishing anyone can seriously entertain the thought that this goes on another month, let alone over a year. That’s bordering on suicidal, because at some point people are going to start hanging the dumb assholes who keep this up.
It’s amazing that this idiot is actually on the teevee spouting this pure shite. This place would be Mad Max’n it after a few months, let alone 18. It is pure, unadulterated lunacy.
All over what amounts to a bad flu. Maybe a really bad flu! BUT NOT THE KIND OF FLU THAT WOULD RENDER US A THIRD-WORLD COUNTRY EVEN IF IT RAN RAMPANT.
I’m beginning to think these people aren’t even taking cash from China. I’m beginning to think they’re true believers in Chinese imperialism.
That guy is off the charts.
12-18 months? Suck my dick, Ezekiel! What kind of lunatic actually thinks this is a good idea?
A sociopath, I’m guessing.
Tell me snowflake, what other options do we have? These past few weeks of social distancing would be absolutely pointless if everything went back to normal again. With something this contagious, cases would rise exponentially again and hospitals would be swamped again. If we have a suitable medication that works then that’ll help a lot but still. This economy won’t return to normal for another 18 months. People would just be too scared to risk their lives. Millions of uninsured people can’t afford to get sick and pay tens of thousands of dollars in hospital bills.
If we stop now all our pain will be in vain!
These past few weeks of social distancing would be absolutely pointless
Now he’s catching on.
Sunk-cost fallacy.
What a dumbass.
This economy won’t return to normal for another 18 months
As planned. I would venture to guess it will take longer. These people are pure evil.
Millions of uninsured people can’t afford to get sick
So you admit ObamaCare failed.
cases would rise exponentially again
Hey, Zeke, they are already starting to top out. There is zero reason to believe that we would see an “exponential” second wave. And certainly not this spring.
Fuck that sunofabitch. A vaccine? We have a flu vaccine and yet the flu kills how many people every year? That is the stupidest thing I have heard in all the most stupidest of things I have heard in the past month. And that bar has been moved often. Kind of like the model projections. jfc.
It really takes the cake for stupid and that’s a high fricking bar this past month.
Ezekiel Emmanuel.
The guy who published the “bio-ethics” article saying we should deny treatment to people who have the Commie Cough unless they have sufficient “instrumental value to society.”
Woodchipper. Dull blades. Feet first.
Wasn’t he also the guy who said we should all die at 75?
Yup, I believe he was the same that said both. First rate scumbag of the lowest order.
Can you imagine what this country would look like if this shithead’s idea was followed?
I’m kind of surprised we haven’t been hearing more from ol’ Zeke. He’s a geeeeniyuss.
Higher math: I took complex analysis as an elective, it was a breeze. But Fourier transforms ( not the fast kind that computers do, the ones you do by hand) did me on. Only C in a math class in my life.
The Laplace transforms in the first half of the class were easy.
Good ol’ signals and systems. So much of that class was a fog to me. It was one of those classes where you could get a 45/100 on an exam and still end up with a B.
I forget which topic it was (probably some of the Fourier applications), but the mean on the exam was 26/100 and the top score was in the 80s. I forget the exact curving methodology, but it somehow adjusted to the top score before applying a very meager curve. Nobody was very happy with the guy who got the top score.
Sorry about that, dude.
There was a Chinese guy in my undergrad engineering class (same major) who was known as “the curve breaker”. This was 35 – 40 years ago before there were many kids from the PRC in the US. Lots of people would drop the course immediately on the first day if he was in their class. He rarely scored as low as a 98 on any exam.
I feel that pain.
That’s why I went into semantics and pragmatics and not phonetics.
Also because phonetics is boring.
Bounty- haven’t tried anything else
Post-its- Target brand
Scotch tape- sure
Pens- usually something inexpensive so Bic.
Sharpies- yes
TP- Charmin
Toothpaste- Colgate, I think.
Ketchup- Hunt’s. Why are all of you Heinz lovers giving money to John Kerry!!!
Mayonnaise- gross, never, never, never…
Peanut butter- Adams, unsalted, stir my-self. I will eat no other. (Leave the unopened jar upside down for a few days, usually makes it easier to stir.)
Shoes- Converse, New Balance
Laundry- All Free and Clear
Lotion- Aveeno
Overall, I’d say I’m loyal-ish.
Salt? Morton’s obviously!
The salt that promotes patriarchal puppies!
Of course. There is no other.
Sure there is.
I’m skeptical, will take your suggestion with a pinch of…
…organic non-GMO sea salt?
I’m posting this here because it’d be blown over if posted where it belongs – regarding some previous issues:
Miracle Whip is evul. Hellman’s (despite it’s name) is the only good mayonnaise.
Kids today should be introduced to cursive writing, so they know what it is. But they shouldn’t have to spend multiple semesters working on an ancient art form. (When I enrolled in college, there was a new class – English Comp I – on computers! I sprained my arm volunteering to be part of that.)
Y’all pen hi ball pricks. Bic disposable or GTFO.
You’re all aware that paper towels can be ripped into the size you need. right? That said, Bounty… or whatever’s 2 – for – 1.
“You’re all aware that paper towels can be ripped into the size you need. right?”
Heh, heh, I rip them in half all the time and we use the Kirkland ones that are already almost half size. I was raised though to be extremely scrupulous at not wasting anything. My parents considered paper towels a luxury item and we were not poor.
Same here. And judging by the prices on Bounty lately, I still do.
+1
So can toilet paper but I wouldn’t buy any without proper perforations if I had a choice.
I don’t get the theory that if kids aren’t taught to write cursive they won’t be able to read it, Outside of maybe the lowercase b and f The basic letter shapes are still there. Its just like any other stylized font, I can read all kinds of fonts that I couldn’t possibly write.
My son cannot read my writing if I do not carefully print, preferably in block letters. The handwriting sample I posted–he could read that. But full-on Spencerian script*? No way.
*Not mine, but I can do a simplified version of that fairly easily. It just takes longer than my norm.
I have a letter which was written to my grandfather in 1906 from his cousin who was a missionary in Japan. Even though I was taught to write cursive I was not able to read much of it when I was younger. Much later in life, after I had gained basic literacy in Japanese, I happened upon that letter in a box and the script had become clear as block script.
Umm, capital Q? Or should I say, 2?
Okay fine there are 3 letters that are odd, but FFS most people can decipher graffiti, funky fonts, etc. I find it hard to imagine that some kids can only read if the typology is strict times new roman, my guess is that if some otherwise literate kid says they ‘can’t read that’ what they mean is they don’t ‘want to read it’ so they aren’t going to spend the extra few seconds parsing out the odd characters.
Dr. Birx has quite the vocal fryyyyy for her age.
https://www.fox5vegas.com/coronavirus/southern-nevada-going-blue-on-april-7-to-support-front-line-workers/article_ea344e38-786e-11ea-bbdb-57de249f3f16.html
I am wearing anything but blue.
We can’t concern ourselves with a few business failures
Noting that the longer social-distancing measures were in place, the more would be shaved off of global gross domestic product, Jakobsen said policymakers would only be able to mitigate economic losses for another two to three weeks despite “very forceful” stimulus measures being rolled out by central banks and governments.
“We’ll come to a point very, very soon where we need to decide whether we’re going to keep society at a social-distancing model or we need to reopen,” he said. “We are talking about unemployment in the U.S. (getting as high as) 20%. The highest unemployment we’ve seen in the U.S. was 10.7% in 2008.”
On Monday, a study published by MIT Sloan School of Management claimed cities with strong social-distancing measures in place would see stronger economic recoveries.
“Lifting restrictions too early could make the economy worse by leading to a resurgence of the virus in an even more destructive pandemic,” said Emil Verner, an MIT Sloan assistant professor and co-author of the paper. “We have to defeat the disease before the economy can go back to normal.”
It came after the WHO warned last week that countries rushing to lift quarantine restrictions risked “even more severe and prolonged” economic downturns as a result of the pandemic.
Since the coronavirus was first reported to the WHO in late 2019, more than 1.3 million people have been infected globally, with the virus leading to over 76,000 deaths to date.
Where is the WHO? New York? Brussells?
Can we just bomb their headquarters?
Geneva, Switzerland
So I guess Sweden is entirely depopulated?
Perhaps because their economies will be even deeper in the shitter?
Gosh, why would a ChiCom front organization be urging the West to damage their economies even more?
“We have to defeat the disease before the economy can go back to normal.”
Yet we have never “defeated” the flu, and the economy does just fine. Huh.
Government loans. Yay!
*the news is on.
Bullock says you don’t need your freedom for another three weeks. Or more.
Circling WAY back to Moje’s comments about travel: The entire extent of my international travel has been a few hours driving from Sarnia, ONT (across from Port Huron, MI) down to wherever you catch the Pelee Island Ferry across Lake Erie. I would have liked to see some of Europe before it degenerated into a culture I can’t respect, but my last best chance to do that would have required me to stay with the first Mr. (Rev.) GT.
Now I’d really just like to see more of my own country. I’ve now been to CO and northern NM, so I’d like to see the Northern Rockies and some of the natural wonders in Utah. All the way to the west coast? Maybe, but just to pass through to see the land, not the cities so much. Loved the UP of MI and would go back in a heartbeat. Seen a fair amount of the northeast, including a couple of trips to NYC and Boston.
Once we’re free to travel again (hope springs eternal,) where should we go next? Sell it to me!
* The Ozark mountains in the fall.
* Yellowstone (but you will bankrupt yourself in Jackson Hole)
* Gulf coast, New Orleans
* Anasazi cliff dwellings (yeah, okay, you said you’ve been to CO and NM)
* Washington DC, most definitely
* Charleston SC and Savannah GA
(that was just a quick jaunt through my memory)
say Hi, if heading thru Charleston.
Mr. GT spent many happy times at Lake of the Ozarks as a kid, and I think his favorite cousin MAY have a cottage there, so…
We hit Mesa Verde Nat. Pk. on the CO/NM trip, but had to bail out of the tour of the cliff dwellings. There are exactly NO guardrails or barriers of any kind at the actual dwellings, and somebody kinda had a borderline panic attack.
Oh, yeah – went to DC once as a kid, but could certainly stand a return trip, if only to check out the Smithsonian.
Gettysburg battlefield.
Take a couple days to do the drive up from Phoenix, via Sedona, Oak Creek Canyon, Flagstaff, the up to the Grand Canyon. Driving through the forest north of Flagstaff, the Grand Canyon will be the biggest thing that will ever surprise you.
I felt much the same way you do about European culture, but when I went there, I realized that, like everything else, there’s no such thing as a “monolithic” response to the impositions of government on the lives of citizens. Italy, for example, is a place that absolutely adores entrepreneurs — the average Italian firm has only around 4 employees, and some absurdly large percentage of firms in Italy (above 95%!) have 19 employees or less. In France, the average citizen (and certainly all of my relatives) regard avoiding the paying of taxes and various ways of screwing over the Federal government as a kind of national sport which they laugh about at parties. Et cetera, et cetera.
Don’t give up on international travel because of your preconceived notions. The number of people I’ve met world-wide who have an attitude of “fuck off, slaver” is surprisingly large, and gives me hope for tomorrow.
Oh, and everywhere I’ve been in New Mexico and Colorado rocked.
As we drove from Denver to Farmington, NM, we came around a mountain and saw Buena Vista, CO in the valley below. It about took my breath away. Its name is very fitting.
GT, One thing I’ve noticed on both planning and executing my road trips is that wherever you go, you’re bound to find something interesting if you look. So all I say is factor in some meandering time.
Bee’s doing straight up news again.
Liberal Treated With Hydroxychloroquine Hopes He Still Dies Of COVID-19 To Prove Trump Is Stupid
Judging from my facebook feed, there’s plenty of lefties who would rather die than help Drumpf make money selling his filthy snake oil.
The HCQ fell out of his ass.
The rules you know but don’t know you know are the actual grammar of the language. The rules you have to be consciously taught are stylistics, which pretends it is grammar.
So Ted is actually a stylistics Nazi?
Let it be recorded that you said it and not me….
But, yes.
Ahem. Some of us prefer “grammar enthusiast.”
So Ted is actually a stylistics Nazi?
Betcha by golly yes
Don’t be so dramatic, Ted.
Thank you.
Or, as one of my linguistics pros said about every other class, “Language is descriptive, not prescriptive.”
He hated the 19th century english teachers who tried to force latin rules onto english.
Profs, not pros, but I guess he was that too.
#MeToo
So much pain and misery trying to pound the square peg of a morphologically fusional language into the round hole of a morphologically analytic language.
I want to say “that’s neat,” but it reads as dismissive.
I think that’s a REALLY REALLY neat-o distinction.
I normally get paid around 2,000 dollars per credit hour for such gems! This is how much I love you all.
Two large per credit hour? D00d, you’re getting reamed by your Uni. You should organize some kinda strike. Mebbe on Twitter. That’s where all the cool kids do it.
This reminds me of when I edit my wife’s writing. She’s Filipina and very fluent, but still needs editing, especially with prepositions (sa!). I don’t know why it’s right, I just know it is.
Just looked at the Twitter and replies to Polis about his mask recommendation. JFC, I hate people.
Just looked at the Twitter
I think I see where you went wrong.
I’m really tempted to write an addition to Monocle that includes the Indiana jones face melting gif any time Twitter is mentioned or linked.
YES!
Or how about am addition that just hides any post containing a twitter link?
I was gonna do that for NSFW content for those who browse while at work (it would require a second click to navigate to suspected NSFW links), but it would be easier to implement for Twitter links instead.
It is a good window into the souls of people. Too many people calling for mask in public to be an order from the governor and ratting out of neighbors going to parks and what not. Calls for uniformed enforcement of this order should be everywhere. Anyone who disagreed gets the usual you must be a Trump supporter…blah blah blah. Not many disagreements. I had a few responses typed up but deleted. Waste of energy arguing with authoritarians. And I think they were about three months late with the mask recommendations. It is kind of common sense if you want to stop people from passing on a virus recommend they wear a mask. Not that the government should be ordering anybody to wear anything.
Stupid Americans
Germany hasn’t released its number of unemployment claims recently enough for us to compare it to the huge U.S. surge, but they are likely to be way lower. That’s because Germany is handling the same crisis differently. Germany has a system aimed at preventing mass layoffs. It’s called Kurzarbeit, which translates to “short-time work.” Under the program, when companies declare they’re under financial distress, the government helps them pay their workers. The workers reduce their work week, and the government pays them typically about two-thirds of their lost wages. In this way, everyone shares the pain of the downturn and the system safeguards employment.
Using the short-time work program, which has existed for more than a century, Germans have weathered everything from world wars to financial crises. “Unemployment did not rise in Germany after the 2008 financial crisis like it did in other advanced economies,” says Anke Hassel, an economist at the Hertie School in Berlin. “It was definitely due in large part to the Kurzarbeit because companies did not have to fire their workers.”
——-
France, Denmark, Britain and other nations have adopted similar programs. One economist even called Kurzarbeit one of Germany’s “most successful exports.” Hassel is based in Berlin, and when she reads about the massive spike of unemployment in the United States, she’s a bit perplexed that the U.S. is doing it this way. “Well, from a European perspective, it doesn’t look good,” she says. Even though unemployed Americans are getting checks from the government, she says, they’re still dealing with the immense insecurity, anxiety and vulnerability that comes from being jobless. This mass of unemployed people will end up costing taxpayers in numerous ways.
The U.S. may not be that far away from developing a Kurzarbeit system. The $2 trillion coronavirus relief package doubles down on traditional unemployment insurance, but it also includes a measure that might be considered Kurzarbeit-lite. The act created a $349 billion “Paycheck Protection Program.” Under this program, small businesses can apply for loans at private banks, and these loans are forgivable if companies keep their employees on the payroll.
Bachmann believes this is a step in the right direction, but he questions why this is being administered through private banks, as opposed to directly from the government, and why it’s limited to only small businesses. He thinks this will only slow down and reduce the benefits of the system. But it may be the start of a different way of thinking about how to weather an economic shock.
Now go look at the union contracts, and talk to the NLRB about arbitrary and capricious wage and hour cuts. I’d be fascinated to hear what they say.
It’s also pretty easy to throw money at companies for make-work when another country is footing the bill for your defense from the Russian bear.
Yep, good point.
But it may be the start of a different way of thinking about how to weather an economic shock.
Perhaps we should start at step zero, and not create artificial economic shocks for no good reason.
What good is it having this authority boner if you won’t let me stick it in anywhere?
The Secretary of the Navy resigned for calling the carrier captain stupid:
https://www.zerohedge.com/health/navy-secretary-apologizes-calling-carrier-captain-too-stupid-230-sailors-now-infected
He should have kept his subjective opinion to himself but that’s a pretty tame reaming.
What a total shitshow.
Sounds like a “know you are but what am I?” situation.
I thought he made a pretty good case with “He’s either stupid or should have known better, and I don’t think he’s stupid,” but I guess we’re done with nuance and Americans are either dumb as stumps, or we’re terribly Machiavellian in how we weaponize affected stupidity. And I don’t think we’re as dumb as we pretend.
Ortega taco sauce,
Personal care products by Old spice.
I once would have said Parker Bros over Milton Bradley and Converse over Nike or Reebok, but times have changed.
I like Dr. Pepper, but I consume soft drinks as the whim takes me.
Fiskar scissors.
Wrangler jeans.
McDonald’s is my favorite fast food place, even though the burgers are better at Hardee’s and Wendy’s. Since Burger King intro’d the “impossible Whopper, I dont trust the meat, excuse me, “meat” there.
Schwan’s chicken over Tyson or Pilgrim’s. The Schwan’s #505 breaded (uncooked) chicken breast tenderloin strips have no equivalent, that I can find.