The cameraman discovers the 2-shot roughly 80% of the way through.
This week has a few things going for it. The first being that MERCURY RETROGRADE goes away. Rember those alignments last week with the Mars retrograde indicating either a war ending or a war having a major fuckup? We get another one of those this week. On Thursday, There’s Mars retrograde with the moon in Leo, with Venus on the opposite side of the sky in Aquarius. Again, it could mean peace breaking out or it could mean a maritime/naval calamity. Foor more specifics, Africa is involved.
Sagittarius: Queen of Cups reversed – Instead of copying over what the Key to the Tarot has to say, I’ll break and say that it is the representation of the Perfect Woman and the qualities thereof. A. E. Waite used this understanding when he wrote out his interpretation, which doesn’t always mesh with our ideas. This “perfect woman” is because it’s a Queen and the cup represents a hoo-ha.
Capricorn: Queen of Swords reversed – Like the above, the written interpretation of this card suffers in modern times. Unlike the suit of the above, the Sword represents the evil type of penis, so you’ve got a woman with bad male qualities, but in womanly variants.
Aquarius: 2 of Coins – Having fun, but the cheap kind. Also sustainable, low-grade fun.
Pisces: The World Reversed – This is the final Major Arcanum and as such represents completion, end of cycle etc. Reversed it indicates that things refuse to move, change doesn’t happen and the like.
Aries: Page of Coins – subordinates that do what they’re supposed to.
Taurus: 5 of Swords – This one got its own write up some years back, but it’s basically ROTFLstomp.
Gemini: The Fool – It’s interesting that this one got drawn the same week as The World, because it’s the card “outside the cycle” (Number 0). It why it gets the connotation of unpredictability, unconsidered element, irrationality and the like. Officially: Folly, mania, extravagance, intoxication, delirium, frenzy, bewrayment.
Cancer: 5 of Coins – Not a terribly pleasant card, it either indicates that you will not keep up with the joneses, or that you will be spared a calamity that affects your neighbors, or that y’all need Jesus.
Leo: The Blank Card – I still don’t know if this is an extra card in the deck or if I’m missing one.
Virgo: Ace of Coins – Money and the good things that money can buy.
Libra: 10 of Coins reversed – This card shows a three-generation domestic scene, with dogs and ten coins arranged in a particular (((pattern))). The reversal indicates the flow of Good Stuff among them via bad events — inheritance, medical bills, tuition payments, etc.
Scorpio: 6 of Swords reversed – A plan that gets wrecked because of baggage. Usually metaphorical baggage, but literal is possible.
I still don’t know if this is an extra card in the deck or if I’m missing one.
Seems not sufficiently shitty.
Agreed.
*stares vacantly into space for the week*
I’ll take it.
Good riddance!
I hope it doesn’t mean all those gifts I just bought from Amazon get lost in shipping. 😟
“A plan that gets wrecked because of baggage.”
So, business as usual.
Sagittarius: Queen of Cups reversed – Instead of copying over what the Key to the Tarot has to say, I’ll break and say that it is the representation of the Perfect Woman and the qualities thereof. A. E. Waite used this understanding when he wrote out his interpretation, which doesn’t always mesh with our ideas. This “perfect woman” is because it’s a Queen and the cup represents a hoo-ha.
A serving wench will poison me?
MERCURY RETROGRADE goes away
What if you like Mercurys?
And I was expecting Alan Jackson.
Also, I am old. I may as well come to terms with that.
All of the entertainment greats I grew up with are dead. Even their children are old.
I went to buy shotgun shells a while back and the guy who sold them to me is an old fat man with a long grey beard. I remember him as a fresh faced kid working in his daddy’s store and he hated it. One of my lawyers is thinking of retirement. I helped him prep for the bar exam. His father was one of my lawyers for years.
I recently spoke with one of my professors. I remember when he got his position. He has retired. He told me he just doesnt connect with the kids these days – that is why he retired.
Seeing Mary’s Danish is what made me think of that. Geeez, that was 40 years ago. In ’87 I was wasting my time trying to save the world.
I fully sympathize with you. Everybody I started work with are either retired or dead. Almost all of my parents’ generation and their younger siblings are dead. And many of the musicians are gone as well.
Which reminds me of this song, from days gone by:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cMDfKhUlY8w
Younger than you but 87 still seems like yesterday. Maybe day before yesterday.
I’m getting close to retirement which doesn’t make sense to me. If I’d stayed in the Guard, I’d be retired once already last decade.
I was the grocery store last night and the two of the baggers looked like high school kids (but from the conversation they were in college). I was trying hard not to start laughing because they were flirting hard but in that innocent chatting while at work phase. I don’t think either realized how obvious it was.
Look at Mr. Moneybags here who shops at a store with orphans to bag his groceries instead of having to scan his own like the rest of us plebs.
Euphemism?
“Not a terribly pleasant card, it either indicates that you will not keep up with the joneses, or that you will be spared a calamity that affects your neighbors, or that y’all need Jesus.”
The neighbors are gonna hear us, huh?
No maritime calamities, please. I am at sea.
RJ:
At Sea
Heh.
I have the drink package, and the casino is wishing this green headed bastard was never born.
I was giving blackjack lessons to the underage at breakfast. I am some kind of alien superhero now.
“Foor more specifics, Africa is involved.”
Sounds like you’re screwed. Not much a chance of peace breaking out… Stay away from pirates.
That vid was recorded exactly seven months after my birth. Think about it.
Whippersnapper!
I have scars older than you.
Hell, I probably have socks older than you.
You’re ooold.
😉
Regarding the flat tax idiot, this is what I’m referring to.
Math is clearly not their strong suit.
The thing is, his flat tax assertion is kind of a non sequitur. It’s like, what does a flat tax have to do with a fine that would be the same for anybody?
I figured he just didn’t know how to caclulate percentages – because you already covered the conceptual ignorance.
I did help him with the math.
2.3%*
Fuck. I got the math wrong????
Fixed it.
Hmm, a straight capitation is the flattest tax you can have. To pay this year’s total outlays it would take about $18,500 per person, to retire the debt it would take a a bit under $110,000 per person.
You’ve said much more than I can parse at the moment. Statistics, debt, tax policies, collection, societal impact …
I get your point, but a “flat tax” in layspeak is a percentage of income.
@mojeaux
Is it? You might be ascribing too much intelligence to the average person.
*hangs head in shame*
it’s an easy concept to understand
but it is impossible for them to want to understand it
this is the standard mechanism destroying our culture today:
the Age of Reason is over, and we are left with mob rule;
social media have weaponized a new French Revolution
Actually if you read my entire posts instead of cherry picking clauses I am arguing for a massive reduction in spending before we even discuss changes in tax policies, which I think I was pretty clear I consider less important than reducing the size and scope of government.
That was meant for down thread. The reply button roulette once you get a couple tiers into a conversation gets annoying.
So he thinks a flat tax is everybody pays the same amount? Divide the federal budget by the number of taxpayers, and send each of them a bill?
Hmm, now that I put it that way . . . .
Well, that’s @jarflax’s argument.
I have never understood the argument for progressive taxation as anything other than people wanting someone else to pay a bigger share. Even a flat tax in the sense of a single rate is a case of some people paying more than others without any regard for what services those people use. There is a reason the founders wrote Article I, Section 9, Clause 4, and that reason was an attempt to avoid the curse of Democracy, where a majority discovers that it can vote itself a share of other people’s wealth. The debate about tax systems always founders when you point out the real numbers because the debate is looking at the wrong problem, or more accurately looking at a serious problem, which cannot be solved until we solve the problem of insane levels of government activity and spending.
once you believe that rich people should pay for poor people’s needs,
the logic of what ratios should be assigned easily follows
for my money (har har I crack myself up)
it’s easier to say that no one deserves anyone else’s money
than it is to argue about how the load ought be distributed
That is pretty much the point I am trying to make. Strip government down to its valid functions, then figure out the least harmful way to pay for those functions. I don’t even insist that fairness be the primary consideration in defining harmful, although I think it needs to be a factor.
oops, you made the point clearly if I had just read carefully
One of the core functions of govt is to protect your property rights. The more you have at stake, the more you should pay. That much is like insurance and shouldn’t be that difficult to understand.
But the temptation is always to use taxation as punishment for political enemies.
Government is not insurance. Insurance rates are based on the degree of risk, and the amount which they are obligated to pay out if the risk occurs. Maintaining a police force, courts, and defending the country from foreign invasion don’t really benefit the wealthy more than the poor, any additional benefit gained by having more to protect is offset by needing the general protection less because you are able to afford your own security.
No of course govt isn’t insurance, I didn’t say it was. I said that you pay more to protect more. The only reason you would need private security is that the public isn’t doing the job (and then there is no reason for govt at all).
Public goods simply can’t be funded on the presumption that all equally benefit. The benefits always skew. If I am never robbed, then all of the national defense, police and criminal justice functions I fund in part are superfluous, to me.
Funding really isn’t the hard part. The harder part is justifying the monopoly on force, since it can’t actually come from people that don’t have the legitimate use of force to impose their own will.
But the difference matters here. Government is not obligated to make good your losses, so it is not clear that they are really protecting more in the case of a wealthy person than in the case of a poor one. I should not have used the example of able to afford their own security as it clouds what I was trying to say, which is that the wealthy are in general at less risk from crime than the poor or lower middle classes are. My point is not a strict insistence that no one should pay more or less than anyone else. If I could magically impose a perfectly fair system of taxation it would be as close to a true fee for service as I could make it, but that is a pipedream. My real point in all of this is that the whole debate about tax systems is very much secondary to the much more vital question of reining in spending and government activity
I have never understood the argument for progressive taxation
Variant of noblesse obligé. If you lean Randian you clearly wouldn’t agree.
fee for service
Which is great for many things, but not the class of things that are true public goods.
equal protection under the law
paying more to get the same is horseshit
Noblesse oblige is an odd damn argument for a libertarian to use, are we also granting the wealthy the various rights appurtenant to a patent of nobility? I suppose I lean Randian if we are comparing Rand to the current Libertarian party, but I am pretty solidly in favor of altruism. I question the idea that altruism is properly indulged in with other people’s money, especially using the force of the state to enforce it. Defense probably cannot be paid for using fee for service, courts can be in parts (most civil functions could be), and probably cannot be in other parts (criminal functions mostly). Fire fighting and roads can generally be paid for with use taxes of one sort or another.
Yeah, I’m not much of a libertarian these days. It reads to me as the reductio ad absurdum of the branch of Enlightenment thought better known as liberalism. Winston’s shtick and all. On the other hand, you are arguing for an absolute version of equality, which has a funny way of undermining individualism.
I question the idea that altruism is properly indulged in with other people’s money, especially using the force of the state to enforce it.
Which isn’t altruism at all. It is Christian state welfarism. Perfectly consistent with deeper Western values, if not so much with libertarian ones.
“Christian state welfarism”
Reconciling the forcible confiscation of people’s property to give to others based on power politics with Christianity is, I suppose, an exercise for the reader.
The Christian State as imagined by John Rawls is an interesting concept. Is this the part where we discuss UBI as a ‘necessity’ in a post industrial world where all the formerly menial work people have been made redundant and unemployable?
RC – socialism is just Christian values shorn of the associated theology. Does that help?
I’m flying to Jacksonville for work tomorrow, flying back Sunday. I usually check my bag even if it’s small, but maybe I should just take a carry-on this time?
Also, a review of last week’s horoscope:
Most of my week was taken up by a secondary firewall in an HA pair sputtering for a while and finally dying before we had a chance to get the replacement for the primary (which died last week) up and running. Eventually we discovered that the replacement primary was also bad, and we had to RMA that one too. Getting them both back online – which involved hours and hours of license/firmware/attack signature updates – was followed by hours of fun trying to get VPN clients and peers to accept the new certificates instead of freaking out because they weren’t the old certificates. So, fairly accurate horoscope.
The Love Actually plotlines left on the cutting room floor: Christmas classic originally featured a lesbian couple and scenes shot in Kenya
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/textbased/femail/text-14177713/love-actually-lesbian-romance-kenya.html
Lucia Moniz takes Kiera Knightley to her private pond?
Taurus: 5 of Swords. I get ROTFL, but adding ‘stomp’ to it? Apparently video game slang: “An easy and decisive defeat.” I assume it is those of my foes. Happily accepted. Current nemesis: Unemployment.
I suspect my termination signaled Indeed that the gates are again open. That’s rather convenient. A couple of phlebotomy gigs have popped up, as have a couple of “Medical Assistant” ones that I assuredly am not qualified for. A local kennel is interested, which would be a decent fit. One place wants me as a “Reading Specialist,” which I will make my business to *not* be employed by. A media group expresses interest, and particularly catching my eye is one asking for an “Editorial Assistant.” *twinkle-twinkle*
I’m thinking plasma center phlebotomy isn’t quite my brain’s wheelhouse, for various reasons. Extremely tempted to donate at another location and see if I can talk my way into just doing machine set-ups and disconnects. That would be a swell intermediary step for pay, but I’m quite sure my name is blacklisted. Still, I’d get $100 for the donation alone, and I’d like to think following the rules isn’t of utmost importance to these folk.
Munchkin in MN suggested applying for a similar gig to hers, something (anything) at the courthouse. This isn’t the worst of ideas. ‘Tis time to sort through the rubble in search of pearls.
I missed something.
Did you try sticking the patients with your own needle?
Is that even a euphemism ?
representation of the Perfect Woman and the qualities thereof
Should I take this as a sign?
Isn’t all supposed to be signs?
I see GM advertising this crab walk feature on the Hummer and GMC trucks. WTF is it good for? They haven’t showed a single instance in their commercials where it would be useful.
related: GM trucks have had the worst turning radius forever*
and went so far 20 years ago as to add rear steer
fixing the root problem was never an option for them,
but charging you for an option to fix it went quickly into production
* I’ve owned three different generations, so it’s not a dealbreaker for a guy who can drive
Nissan trucks would like a word…
hmm….I noticed their debut briefly around 99? anyhoo: proudly built in MS!?!?
I was remembering the heavy/super versions;
lighter pickups have so many configurations we can’t really compare anything
boxes getting shorter have probably be part of improving the steering of the entire class?
The boxes have been getting shorter to accommodate bigger and bigger cabins. I don’t know that the wheelbase has gotten shorter.
Sorry, OMWC – I didn’t christen it with pr0n
https://ibb.co/PGXZQZm
subordinates that do what they’re supposed to.
Splendid, when I am no longer in any leadership position, this is what I get?
Wonder what sign ol’ Georgie is?
seems weird to me: I wouldn’t have thought public personas had any expectation of protection from such characterizations
viz: even had he had never been found liable in the relevant case, I still wouldn’t have thought calling him a rapist wasn’t protected
in the same way that I could call any public person pretty much anything: “worst president ever” or “piece of shite” etc
anyway, here’s another day where I find myself a free speech purist; drawing these lines is at best arbitrary
I’ve never had any trouble reconciling freedom of speech with being responsible for the consequences of your speech, and comfortable calling myself a free speech purist. Just like I am an RKBA purist but think people are responsible for every round they put down range.
The hard issue with libel/defamation isn’t “should there be liability” but “how much should the damages be”. I note that the difficulty of calculating damages doesn’t preclude liability in other situations.
nope nope nope my dear sir
I’ve never had any trouble reconciling freedom of speech with being responsible for the consequences of your speech
neither have I, but you good and well know that the issue is the question of the public persona, not the clear liability of defaming a minor person….let’s stick to the subject
Don, that is an invention of the 1964 Supreme Court, probably not the best grounds on which to normatively stand.
anyone else seeing Sergeant Schulz?
They’re threatening to murder Ms. Lindsey!11!!!111! – Liz Cheney
I see it.
The thing is, his flat tax assertion is kind of a non sequitur. It’s like, what does a flat tax have to do with a fine that would be the same for anybody?
Some place, Finland, maybe, sets ticket amount based on net worth or some such abomination. Too lazy to look.
Five old fashioneds in, the bartender realized I was like Homer Simpson at an all you could eat buffet. I see fear in his eyes.
That Pacheco fine is interesting. I never really paid attention to what the league does, but there are innumerable instances where a ball carrier puts a hit on a tackler which would be flagrantly illegal if delivered by a defensive player.
There was another guy on a different team who got that same fine in the same week on the same $$$ paycheck. Rachaad White.
Yeah, people applaud when a ball carrier jams up somebody’s head with a stiff arm, even to the face, but hoo boy, if a tackler does that . . . .
Virgo: Ace of Coins – Money and the good things that money can buy.
Hey, I thought Sean was a Cancer?
The Honda Prelude was my dream car when I was 19 or thereabouts, but NOW I would love to have another CRX.
My dream car is always full of gas, never breaks down and has honest to God self driving.
I don’t know much, I don’t know too much
But I know this: shit is fucked up!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oObL3Ajmr2Y
Fucking Browns.
Not sorry.
You were expecting something else, I for one am amazed they didn’t get their asses kicked worse. 6 turnovers and it was only 21-7.
My dream car is always full of gas, never breaks down and has honest to God self driving.
What you want is a chauffeur.
I’d need fu money for that, but sure
@Rhy, My husband tells me I want the Lions to win, so, sorry. I actually kinda like your team.
The Lions jerseys are money.
This will be the best game of the weekend.
The Broncos are crapping the bed currently so I’m gonna be watching a bunch of this one.
I know nothing about Detroit. Surprised how well they are doing.
Yeah, it’s funny how tough it is to stay abreast of other divisions. The NFC North has 4 really good teams. The Bears are not as bad as their record suggests. But I know shit about the AFC unless I seek out the games.
Josh Allen > Patrick Mahomes
*grabs popcorn*
Not sure I disagree, but shhhhhhh don’t tell my husband.
Burrow > Allen > Mahomes unfortunately Bengals D < Flaming Dumpster so his hall of fame season is going to end up out of the playoffs
Thank for the Mary’s Danish reminder. I probably haven’t listened in 30 years. I think I first heard them on Radio K at the U of MN. Tasty.