Ironically, after being tossed out of my teaching position for saying something (as yet undisclosed) that offended a student (also not disclosed), I was invited to a faculty development training session on “Academic Freedom.” Fuck it, I got the last grades in, did a chemistry demo for high school students as part of a recruitment activity, then submitted the last grades, shut down my computer and packed up my office. Come January, I’ll be on research faculty in the engineering school, where my student interactions are almost exclusively with seniors and grad students. Dinner tonight with NPR Prime (searching for a nickname), and I’ll be ready for 2025.
People turned their year-clock up another tick as of today include a guy who was a rare breed; a guy who was not glad to get stoned; a switch hitter who struck out both ways; a guy who was just someone else’s mouthpiece or vice-versa; a guy for whom “Come to papa” took on a new meaning; a guy who was a massive contributor to the toilet death-spiral of network TV; a specialist in anti-aircraft artillery; arguably the finest American composer of the 20th century; one of the inspirations for San Francisco’s Vibrator Museum; the leading spokesman for the American Academy of Stupid Eyeglasses; TV’s finest MILF; an athlete whose name should have made her an assassin; and someone whose name was truly his destiny.
Oh, the Links Era is still with us.
Nor any here, either. Unpossible.
Man, there just isn’t enough popcorn in this world.
Want to start a pool on how long before this gets vandalized?
Stop, I can only get so erect!
Sorry for a YouTube link but it’s always interesting (in a car wreck kind of way) to see how insufferable mediocrities deal with visionaries. Two for one here; the clenched-teeth cunt and the bloviating Black Bill Nye.
My favorite senator goes out with a bang. Sadly, it wasn’t me.
OK, this is Peak Geekery. And absolutely wonderful.
It’s Terry Gilliam’s world, we’re just living in it.
Huzzah!
Huzzah!
I’m not so good with nicknames. Tot farmer came to mind, in light of her profession and the nature of certain inside jokes.
It should be OPTIMAUS!
Happy birthday Hunter S Thompson?
Happy birthday St. Stephen the Martyr?
Happy birthday Al Franken?
Only 2 1/2 months later than planned.
Hope my mail is all waiting for me.
https://x.com/FishLikesFlicks/status/1870455638129877396?t=hCuNtLDq4-6DrNxYk_DQ7g&s=19
What’s the mountain?
That should be Vesuvius. It wasn’t as clear an angle as I should be able to get from the parking garage at work next week (diff part of the city too)
So…do you park on an upper level to be above the lava flow but not on the roof to minimize the ash coating?
Remember when they at least made the pretense that there was a bidding process before they stuck it in dry?
Texas Instruments still exists?!
Anyway this is the game, I guess. Fascism is hip everywhere. Play along or get lost.
They still do a fairly brisk business in embedded chips for non-consumer appliances, from what I understand.
I still have my TI-83 from high school in a box somewhere. I had to buy one for the SAT, but my school didn’t allow us to use calculators, so I had no real idea how to use it, and we only got one sheet of scratch paper during the math portion. My 790 on the English portion saved the total score, but if I was planning to attend a school with admissions standards higher than “breathing,” a retake would have been a good idea.
My mom picked up a TI home computer at a garage sale somewhere.
“By 1983, the 99/4A was selling at a loss for under US$100. Even with the increased user base created by the heavy discounts, Texas Instruments lost US$330 million in the third quarter of 1983”
Bonkers.
TI is the largest Analog semiconductor company in the world. They kept growing all through out the 2000’s by acquisitions and marked growth.
Rhy, did you not read any of my articles on electronics? The stars of the show were TI parts.
*tugs collar*
How can we justify having a permanent underclass of grey market labor that (ostensibly) contributes to keeping the Ponzi scheme afloat while never having the opportunity to collect if there’s no Ponzi scheme to which they can contribute?
Is it just me or is the article not mentioning the fact that pubsec vultures already get their own pensions unrelated to SS? I had to take a couple vomit breaks in between the sob stories so maybe I missed it.
Wife was asking about our SS benefits when one of us dies. I told her it doesn’t matter who goes, her benefit lapses (since mine is the greater). So yeah, if you had an exempt plan, like nearly all public employees, you didn’t get to sugar it up when the spouse passed.
The entire discussion of this abomination has carefully avoided mentioning that fact. It’s been pitched as the poor pubsec workers losing years of SS credits for no reason at all.
Ensure there is a proper accounting of the number of dead once the scene of the crime has been vacated by the perpetrator?
“NYPD is on high alert in the wake of _________” is an honored tradition when something interesting happens somewhere else and the rest of the world wants to know what NYC’s reaction is. I mean, come on.
It’s as dumb as all the stantions they installed at other building around NYC immediately after 9/11. They didn’t make any of them near tall enough.
And put more cops in the path of destruction.
Man, there just isn’t enough popcorn in this world.
C’mon, this one is easy – (((they))) are to blame.
Wut?
That does rather complicate the narrative.
I wonder if it’s bullshit.
OK, early for the sarcasm, but with any Saudi – who else would they blame?
Apparently he said he renounced Islam and hated the royal family in order to get in Germany as a refugee. Chances of that being his true thoughts? I’m taking odds now.
So an anti-Islamist would of course attack a Christian festival to kill as many non-Muslims as he can.
Or something.
Hasn’t he been there for like 20 years?
Yes. Very odd.
I’m not on X, so I don’t know if this link will work. It comes from Mark Steyn’s piece this morning. The good doctor helps bring migrants to Germany.
https://x.com/Inevitablewest/status/1870272038461411475
Aw, what a hero.
But, in a surprise twist, not an hero
The good doctor helps bring migrants to Germany.
I’d like to see that clip in context. The short bit presented is very consistent with an anti-saudi dissident helping asylum seekers get to Germany. Where here, asylum-seeker is a true asylum seeker, as in a Saudi dissident fearing retribution from an authoritarian government. It’s cut to try to imply he’s all in on mass immigration/invasion if you don’t think about it or think about it in the current context of ‘activist’ and ‘asylum seeker’, but it’s perfectly consistent with the ‘story’ thus far.
On the other hand, why a ‘anti-islam’ Saudi dissident would be crashing a Christmas celebration is an exercise left to the reader…
Very good points PM.
Osama bin Laden also hated the Saudi royal family; in fact, overthrowing the House of Saud was first on his list of demands.
The problem with seeking narrative consistency in mass murderers is that they tend to be fucking insane, because sane people generally speaking do not try to kill dozens of people.
Heads of state notwithstanding.
I am not convinced that most heads of state are what I would call sane. Sociopathy may be a survival trait, but it still counts as crazy in my book.
That’s fair.
repeal the Windfall Elimination Provision (WEP), enacted in 1983 and repeal the Government Pension Offset, enacted in 1977, which reduces benefits for spouses, widows and widowers whose spouses receive public sector pensions
Hmm, which party was in charge of Congress in those years – that didn’t want people already served by other old age income double dipping?
The Nazis, obviously. No one else could be so cruel.
The party that is sure to take care of those on the plantation.
Now that is the kind of holiday I can get behind.
Rolling over to give the Democrats what they want is another Great Republican Victory? Donnie may have really grasped what it is to be an establishment Republican after all!
The German police know how to handle terrorists.
https://x.com/RMXnews/status/1868975514658234485
The cops must be so proud.
Well, they wouldn’t want to get close to someone that might actually be dangerous.
My thoughts exactly. Useless cowards and bullyboys.
A society which does not promote manly men will noy have competent police or military
Or… the voters get what they wish for.
The rot goes up to the top.
“Sorry, I left my knife at home. However, you may find a SIG P226…”
Stupid taphouse. 24 taps and not what i wanted a lower abv dark beer… 11 taps are sours which is ridiculous. who the fuck drinks sours? It is winter there should be mostly porters and stouts and stuff. But not imperial too much abv.
I blame hipsters.
Me too.
Been there. If you don’t have a decent brown ale or porter, I’ll go elsewhere.
The video of Sabine talking about Musk and Mars and science communicators like Degrasse-Tyson is a very good example of how these people work.
Tyson in particular loves to construct strawman versions of his opponents arguments and imagined steel-man versions of people he agrees with.
On mars, he (and others) don’t bother to even listen to what Musk says he is up to and why. He has only been talking about it for 30 years.
So Tyson just plugs in his 1980s understanding of space programs and says “we only go to mars if geopolitics pushes the government to pay for it”.
This is exactly the same as his entry into the Trans sports debate where he initially thought the argument was some 1993 screed about letting people live how they want. He had never even heard “trans women are women”. Once entrenched in “the other side are bigots”, he just keeps rationalizing their position as wrong and his as right, even though he has no understanding of the issues or positions of the various parties.
In this case, Musk is talking about a self-sustaining colony on Mars as a protection against global catastrophes here on earth wiping out humanity. But these guys morphed that into “running away from polution”, arguing that efforts would be better spent cleaning up earth.
The dude is talking about supervolcanoes or a comet wiping out all large animal life on earth, including humans, and they counter with “just clean up polution here”.
They aren’t that stupid. It is really odd that they just reject the reality of what other people say and insert their own strawman version so they can make an easy argument.
Sabine is not bad on every topic but is rather limited outside her very narrow physics specialty, like most people. Though i think OMWC is a bit harsh on her.
Given the percent of.earths resources at the disposal if Musk it is silly to thing his efforts disyracts from something else, especially to the massive amount of government waste there is.
It’s all about ‘winning’ debate points. Very few people actually care about pursuing Truth.
I am firmly of the opinion that much of the left operates exactly like this – they don’t actually understand what they are arguing for and only do it for show. As long as they are seen to be on the “right” side of every issue – the “right” side being the opposite of whatever the troglodytes are saying today – that’s all that matters.
Covid is a killer! Get your vaccine today and a booster as required (weekly if Science says so)
Stop, I can only get so erect!
Thing is in a normal world AFD would be seen and full of a l9t of bullshit but the others are so much worse it seems good by comparison
seems good by comparison
The nature of all politics.
As I understand it they are center to far left in economic terms having shifted that direction when they realized that much of their support was in the east.
They are silly populist on economics, lower taxes taise expenses and lower the deficit. A bit for everyone.
They have the bit ov lowering waste and coruption, but that will not be enough unless entitelment are reined in
Good question and I have no idea how to get an unbiased answer to that. I don’t trust anything I read about them in the MSM.
Alls I really know is that the only two parties that matter are firmly left. The so-called “right” party (the one that let in millions of fake asylum seekers) makes all the right noises and promptly does the opposite. Yes, that sounds familiar.
They sound like Bill Clinton Democrats – you know, radical right-wingers.
A song for OMWC
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=qNLZk9f2i0I&pp=ygUhUGxlYXNlIGJlIGNvbnNlcnZhdGl2ZSB3b21hbiBzb25n
That’s hilarious.
What is your fave potato form
https://x.com/GrampsToolshed/status/1869077992888209494
Scalloped or Au Gratin obviously.
Funeral.
There is no wrong answer.
All of the pictured
Anna, too much work to do often, but the platonic ideal of potato when done correctly.
Pommes fondant, but I don’t make them often.
Salad (ideally from red potatoes and with a sour cream-y dressing) or skins.
Raw.
*backs away from Grumbletarian*
It’s good. Peel them and eat them like an apple. Maybe a little salt.
Gratin topped with truffles.
Is Terry Schiavo ?
Is it wrong I’m laughing?
Mars has no magnetosphere. I can see creating a magnetic field around a ship or even a city but it would be expensive, require constant maintenance and if it failed even for a short time, catastrophic.
I dont see a mars colony as feasible or desirable.
When our ability to travel increases there may be planets out there, ok there surely is, but they would certainly have life on them already and that is a big problem too. By going there we would cause a cascade of host/pathogen interactions that we would likely not survive and many extraterrestrial life forms would not survive. Again, catastrophe.
I would love to be wrong but I dont think I am.
I hope we get the Star Trek disease that turns people to piles of white powder.
I was hoping for hot green chicks but no telling what kind of cooties they have.
Didn’t Zappa write a song about that?
“In France! They got fancy diseases that turn your peter green!”
@ Suthen
Perhaps relevant.
It seems to me, and I admit I am lacking badly in the hard science knowledge involved, that it would be easier to build self sustaining space station colonies than to build them on Mars, or the Jovian or Saturnian moons. You’re not getting Mars to a point where you can live outside a fully contained, either dome or fully underground, without technological improvements that are likely millennia away.
Another problem: Has anyone noticed the moon’s surface? If you dont have an atmosphere to shield you it is only. a matter of time before you get hit as well. I dont think many people realize how frequently the moon is struck by 17,000 fps projectiles from the size of sand grains to the size of cars. Without a robust atmosphere, well, you get the idea.
Space is not what I would call dangerous. It is what I would call an environment that in no way whatsoever is friendly to humans. The niche we evolved to live in is the earth’s surface. The land part of it and not even all of that.
There are problems with space and we likely will solve them one step at a time but I dont see it in my lifetime.
Let me be clear that my objections to the practicality/profitability of permanent bases/colonies off Earth should not be taken as objections to doing them. It’s a big universe and we won’t get out there to see it unless we start taking the first steps.
IIRC, Musk had a plan to brute-force an atmosphere on Mars by exploding nuclear ordnance at the poles to distribute captive CO2 and and H2O. I can’t weigh in on the practicality of doing so, but there you have it.
She’s the one who can tell the consummate story.
199 ghostwriters pounding 100 typewriters for 100 years.
Stupid fingers.
Close enough.
Has anyone lately calculated how much income a person would have today if they had put their SS contributions in an index fund for the last 30 years compounding?
Most people collecting SS today can barely pay their light bill with it from what I gather.
SocSec benefits pay out more than was contributed (including interest), but that’s the wrong lens anyway. You aren’t getting out what you put in, because what you put in was what paid out to beneficiaries at that time. It is pay as you go and that’s why the demographic changes have been the real death of it. Longer lived retirees and fewer workers supporting them.
I get it…a collapsing Ponzi scheme.
That doesnt answer my question. Suppose no SS program but rather a private one. Of all possible retirement plans SS seems to be the worst possible one, so of course that is the one we have.
https://www.epi.org/blog/social-security-is-looking-like-a-pretty-good-investment-these-days/
2 to 6% depending on the period.
Mind you annuitize that at retirement so you should probably add another 1 to 2% for that benefit.
Based on that roughly 50% of what you could have earned on the sp500. But that’s with significantly more risk. Risk being defined as standard deviation of returns.
I think index funds average out in the long term to 10%. I may have that wrong.
Depends on the time period and start and end dates.
8 to 14 percent if you want to capture a good range.
10 would be a fine point estimate that is relatively conservative.
Don’t forget you also get lifetime income so you have to “buy” an annuity to make a more valid comparison.
It easily pays my light bill but is less than half what my annual annuity payment would be if s.s. had been invested in S&P 500 for last 50 years.
Of course that amount of money hitting the equity markets might just dilute returns a bit.
In addition, your investment funds can be transferred in case of premature death.
In today’s world, I continue to pay tax on my mil ret, SS, IRA, capitol gains. Free lunch, uh huh, uh huh.
It might dilute them, but that seems like zero sum thinking to me. Generally speaking large influxes of capital to productive enterprises fuel growth. I know we tend to focus on the unsustainability of the Federal debt, but at least as big of an issue is that we have pulled 36 trillion dollars that could have been invested in productive enterprises into funding non-productive, often destructive, activity.
Colonies in space? Wake me up when we can successfully establish a “settlement” under the ocean on this planet.
@RJ if you’re here, thank you!!!
You are welcome? What did I do?
You said you bought the book and had read ahead and you liked it. 😍
Oh yes! And I do. I read it all vacation. And I pimp your books.
“I pimp your books”
Dunham where my money!
Wowie zowie! Thank you so much!
FWIW, Old Man read the first one (The Proviso) and put it in one of his “what are we reading” posts, but I can’t find the link right now, as did @Jarflax, I believe.
I did and with the caveat that I am not a romance fan liked it.
😍😍😍
@GT and @LemonGrenade have read all my stuff, IIRC.
True! 👍
Most recently, Sinema drew fire from progressives when she voted not to confirm one of President Joe Biden’s nominees to the National Labor Relations Board.
“Millions of working people across the country will pay the price for their actions,” complained Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA)
“Pathetic,” said Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT), who also told Semafor that “she and [Senator Joe] Manchin will be ‘likely remembered for the role they played in’ cutting down Biden’s first-term climate and health care bill, ‘which could have been transformative to this country.’”
She can’t be all bad.
Oh no, how will we survive the lack of “transformative”. 🙄
Cant be all bad….yep. She was derided by a confirmed commie shitbird.
An Xmas tragedy tale
Johnny Zuagar says he’s tried to hide his worries about a potential government shutdown from his three boys as he weighs how much to spend on Christmas presents.
“I’ve got to keep a poker face,” Zuagar, a statistician at the U.S. Census Bureau, said when thinking about his boys, ages 14, 12 and 6. “You’re just trying to take that worry off of your family.”
Like thousands of federal workers, Zuagar is navigating the holidays with the spirit of the season overtaken by an air of gloom and uncertainty.
——-
Zuagar, who is president of the American Federation of Government Employees Local 2782, which represents federal workers at the census, has lived through unexpected shutdowns before — including right before the holidays.
This time, it comes on the heels of promises from Trump and his allies that there will be sweeping cuts in the federal workforce.
“We really don’t know anymore,” Zuagar said during a telephone interview Friday, with hours to go before a midnight deadline to approve a spending measure to avoid furloughs. “Again, the rhetoric out there is that federal employees are the problem.”
The contentiousness of the current debate has left him wondering: “Are we the scapegoat for every ill and grievance in America?”
What, exactly, do you do here?
I. Dont. Care.
The largest business in the world is the US FedGov. It produces nothing and throws productive people’s wealth to the wind with abandon. This shit will come to an end because it cannot not end. Sooner is better.
My dad was a painting contractor in a region of the United States where painting is very much a seasonal job. I remember during lean years how he had to agonize whether he’d have to spend 4 days without a paycheck and get back with with a 20% bonus 🙄️
Suck my ass. Get a real job. Tell your kids your sob story.
“officials said had expressed anti-Islamic views”
And we should trust these corrupt “officials” why exactly?
Everyone is lying. The cops lie. The government lies. The press lies.
I know damned well the people on the scene knew exactly what happened and why. No one wants to say it and we end up having no idea what happened or why. That is by design.
Who was in the crowd? ‘Christmas market’ implies they were christian shopping for Christmas. We dont know that is true. The killer expressed anti-islamic views…what views and what did he say exactly? Once again they are creating a narrative that leads us in a certain direction with lots of blank spaces we can fill in guided by their suggestions.
It seems like there is something nefarious going on because….there is something nefarious going on.
Contemporary Germany means secularists buying things to celebrate a semi-pagan holiday more than Christians (in any active sense).
It doesnt matter what it means. Specifically who was in the crowd? Average everyday people shopping? A bunch of islamic thugs intimidating people (they do that, it’s a thing). Anti-immigration people?
It doesnt matter. Who were they?
The problem is that everyone talking about it has an agenda to support and have been caught lying to do so over and over. That seems to be the case with every issue these days.
As with “Insiders” or “people close to the subject” you should trust them when what they say confirms your biases and dismiss them when what they say doesn’t. It’s really rather simple.
The gov’t is behind it.
Article on the background of the Christmas Market terrorist
https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/strange-narrative-emerging-horrific-christmas-market-attack
Good grief. None of that makes any sense.
As intended.
Jesus Soriano, president of the AFGE Local 3403 representing workers at the National Science Foundation and several other agencies, also said the budget difficulties in Congress feel different from those of previous years.
“I think Americans should know that history is being written as we speak,” Soriano said in an interview in Chevy Chase, Maryland, near the state’s border with the nation’s capital. “Americans need to decide what type of services the government should provide, whether we are talking about national security, the safety of our borders, the safety of our food, Social Security or others.”
No kill Nanny!
I thought we had some dusty old piece of paper that goes into some detail on that.
That’s just a goddammed piece of paper.
Mac Johnson, a retired Transportation Security Administration employee who is now an executive vice president for the union’s TSA Council, said TSA employees were on “pins and needles” Friday afternoon.
Good. Kick those worthless parasites to the curb on Day one.
Without the TSA who will keep us safe from the danger of water bottles on planes?
I wonder who in the actual fuck feels any form of sympathy for TSA workers.
Their shop steward?
My wife just made me sit through “Carry-on”, some Netflix movie deck about TSA saving us all. I don’t think she comprehends how worthless they really are.
You couldn’t even get to see one of the Carry On pictures?
“clenched teeth cunt”
Still would.
Still would
Better than “bloviating black Bill Nye” I suppose.
Yeah, she’s a ‘would’ but my god some of her positions are untenable. She is an example, not the best one but one nonetheless, of a very intelligent person who has outsmarted themselves.
Today is my family Christmas. So here are some songs.
All I want for Christmas – Slaves on Dope
Grandma’s Christmas Shirt – The Pimps
Merry early Christmas to you and yours! Have one on me.
And another
God help me when I agree with Gothamist. I hate the “perp” walk and this is approaching peak perp walk.
https://gothamist.com/news/did-the-nypds-perp-walk-of-luigi-mangione-backfire
We live in an insane asylum that celebrates the good kind of cowardly murder – of course it was going to backfire.
You could have stopped after the first six words.
People are saying Trump lost that budget battle. It went from 1500 pages with secret anti-Trump provisions to 130 pages with all of the secret stuff removed. How is that not a win? I’m still not sure why the Dems caved. Was it just for the raise?
Massie and Roy were in opposition – does that tell you nothing? It wasn’t the Dems that caved, and Trump is glorying in that.
Depending on your definition of “free”
This week, President-elect Donald Trump told reporters that “tariff” is “the most beautiful word in the dictionary” and claimed that tariffs would “make our country rich.”
All of that is standard Trump rhetoric on trade, but it also represents a stunning about-face for the party he leads, especially when you look at how past presidential nominees talked about trade.
In 1999, while running for president, George W. Bush framed free trade as a moral good: “In order to promote the peace, I believe we ought to be a free-trading nation in a free-trading world,” he said at a primary debate, “because free trade brings markets, and markets bring hope and prosperity.”
In 2007, Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., proclaimed himself “the biggest free marketer and free trader that you will ever see.”
——-
Free trade is about making it easier to sell goods overseas and easier to buy foreign goods at home. That generally means making trade agreements and reducing tariffs, which are taxes that American importers pay on foreign goods. Economists broadly agree that tariffs therefore raise prices for U.S. consumers, as American businesses pass on the higher costs.
Just how different is Trump’s trade rhetoric from that of past Republicans? Doug Irwin, a professor of economics at Dartmouth College, says you have to think back almost a century.
“To have a president that across the board thinks trade is bad and thinks that tariffs are really good, you have to go back to Herbert Hoover,” Irwin said.
Wham! Down goes the Herbert Hoover card.
There seems to be a bit of confusion regarding “free” and “managed” trade, and whop’s in favor of what. But just keep those gaslights burning.
To be fair, market economists have been arguing that unilateral trade agreements are an unvarnished good for ~40 years. Which, to be fair, is correct as far as theory goes. And it is a fairly stunning reversal for the GOP, particularly after Reagan and Bush championed NAFTA, so that Clinton could take credit for signing it.
I think it’s become clear that no other country actually believes in anything close to free trade.
We sure don’t, as a nation, not glibs
Theoretically, a country unilaterally allowing unfettered trade from a country with trade restrictions imposes only economic benefits on the free trading nation, and costs on the trade restricting nation.
Of course, that’s a market distortion that creates false comparative advantage, skewing production in all participating countries, leaving aside that there are non-economic factors at play between nation states. Of course, free trade theory neatly dodges that with the proposal that nations that trade together don’t go to war. Because that’s never happened before…
Who wrote that theory, and what were they smoking?
We as a species are a giant troop of monkeys or pack of dogs by nature. We are constantly watching all of the others around us to see who has what and trying to snatch it away from them the instant an opportunity appears.
We invented the word ‘civilized’ but we have yet to practice it.
The theory itself is sound given the nature of ex/im, central banking, and trade deficits/surpluses. It just ignores the aforementioned distortions and certain practicalities entailed thereby which make the benefit much more beneficial to some than others.
I’m not.
I’m working on a project where we are trying to ship some gear to Germany. Trade is far from free. The time it takes to get compliance approval dwarfs the time it takes to purchase and ship the gear.
Free trade has had support from prominent Democrats as well over the years — think President Bill Clinton passing NAFTA or President Barack Obama promoting the Trans-Pacific Partnership (which ultimately failed).
Totally free and unfettered.
WP editorial headline
WTF? Quick Google
https://www.ahajournals.org/doi/10.1161/STROKEAHA.122.041471
30 out of 100,000 or 0.0003.
Yet MSM can’t understand why trust in them continues to decline.
Even better. I finally read the fucking thing and it quotes the same statistic.
If it is End of an Era, then how about nicknaming her NewEra?
I was thinking Baby Doc, but she’s not Haitian.
Given your handle how about the delivery girl?
Candy striper?
Feels so weird being 6 hours ahead of normal – compared to when I was in SD on a 3 hour offset. Only 1 hour off from Pie now.
The days are also shorter here in Naples than Norfolk…but on average warmer – Norfolk is actually a few degrees further south. At the same time, I can see snowcaps just north – about an hour away per my sponsor. Apparently skiing is an option (just not for me). One of the houses I want to look at is somewhere between here and there….hopefully I’ll be able to start talking to someone about some of them next week. Thinking about taking the [2] trains up to take a look (maybe an hour that way if you time it right, but less if you’re commuting by car). (I was interested to see that they pre-advertised the last rail strike on the website in advance…haven’t looked in a couple weeks now).
I also found 3 different “Grand Reserve” variations from Peroni…for $1.70 each in the minimart. For that price I’ll give them a shot, but I doubt they’re “Chimay Grand Reserve” quality.
Of course, that’s a market distortion that creates false comparative advantage, skewing production in all participating countries, leaving aside that there are non-economic factors at play between nation states. Of course, free trade theory neatly dodges that with the proposal that nations that trade together don’t go to war. Because that’s never happened before…
Trade is not a zero-sum competition, in the vast majority of cases. I’m in favor of trade. But- I take exception to the obligatory media distortion of the other side’s arguments.