There in’t much happening in the sports world. At least on this side of the pond. The UCL group stage wraps up today with a slew of matches. And with this year’s format, I think it’s gonna get wild around 3:30 or so. And then there’s this. “Sure, our staffers went to illegally record the signals of future opponents at 8 specific games. And sure, multiple staffers knew about it. And maaaaybe our current head coach deleted a ton of text messages the day the story broke, but it was only because he was mad. Other than that, you’ve got nothing!” Jeez, if they’re fighting this, then the only assumption I can make, is that the negotiated settlement offered by the NCAA was gonna be quite severe. Guess we’ll have to wait and see how it turns out. And that’s it for sports.
This makes a lot of sense. Well, if you’re retarded, anyway. I mean…the Cuban Missile Crisis was a real thing. Not to mention their logic behind this move is pure globalist claptrap. But if I’m being honest, I would have to say I expected this move once I was remembered this group still existed.
Hopefully this bears fruit. And by “fruit,” I mean a 10% or greater reduction in the federal workforce. Once we get to that point, the real cuts can start coming.
Why won’t this fruitcake just go away? Hey buddy, you got your message to the American people. They just didn’t like it. Now mince off back to St Paul and worry about your state for a change.
Wooooooooooooooow. This is freaking hilarious.
Is this serious? I only ask because if it were a Tesla recall, the rest of the media would be bleating about it like crazy.
I guess “stranded” means something different to NPR than the rest of the world. “They’re not stranded, they just are stuck up there with no way to get back.” Sure thing, dummies.
More cuckoldry on display by the British populace. In a civilized country, they would have been forcibly removed and hopefully given a wood shampoo after about 3 steps onto the stage.
Wait, he had airplane bottle-sized Molotovs? Lol, I should take this more seriously, but his comically inept attempt at mayhem has me laughing.
This makes no sense. Biden stops enforcing the crime of illegally entering the country, it’s considered executive prioritization. Trump wants to review spending, that’s a no-no. I guess the ratchet is only supposed to go one way in this judge’s world.
I don’t think this is gonna resonate. Well, not with the majority of people anyway. The hardcore base will eat it up.
Here’s a happy little tune. And it’s a lovely one. And here’s another. Enjoy them both.
And enjoy this lovely Wednesday, dear friends.
This is why we need to get rid of computers in cars and return to user-servicable machinery.
I mean, even an ECU could technically be user-serviceable if there was some sort of uniform standard, APIs ,etc, but then that would mean you don’t have to take your $90,000 F-150 to the dealership for $3,000 programming through a proprietary hardware and software interface, and that just won’t do. Vehicles are basically a subscription service now. I can’t imagine why anyone wouldn’t just lease if you have to have something new.
It was fun for a while, but I’m happy to be off the leasing merry-go-round.
Do they really charge $3K to update your ECU software?
Yup — that was my thought as well Pat. I remember distinctly a coworker being into the “reprogramming the engine computers” game around 2002, there was a whole subculture for it. If they standardized the interface (hey there USB-C 😉 — just commenting on that for a second as well, I’m leery of the chargers standardizing on it for the sole reason it makes it harder to tell when they sneak data lines into what should be only power and ground and are a malware vector.) and made things user-patchable / open source it would be a better model.
But then people might bypass smog restrictions or you couldn’t lock down cars for repo or because of
wrongthinkintoxication or whatnot. Can’t have that…. so we move instead to more and more impenetrable black boxes that update over wifi and only the black hats get to hack. Yay.Tbh, I just threw a number out there, but a buddy of mine just spent about $1,800 CAD to have a blind spot sensor reprogrammed on a 10 year old Audi, so for a current model year unit? It’s probably well north of a grand.
Imagine not making your own cables…
But more seriously, even something like OBDII with access to additional functions and a standardized reporting format across multiple systems would be a practicable solution that would still allow the manufacturers to ship vehicles in compliance with our enviro-nazi mandates.
I’m leery of the chargers standardizing on it for the sole reason it makes it harder to tell when they sneak data lines into what should be only power and ground and are a malware vector
Power and data can run on the same wire.
RoaT – Technically, but if you’re trying to deliver malware, the target device has to be able to pick up on the data. Most devices don’t read the signals off the power line.
Book rates are wild. 5 hours x hourly rate to update, depending on which modules need to be done.
At least with Ford there’s Forscan (independent settings tool for a lot of things). Other makes are fucked, except VW.
This reminds me of a question I had a while back – Is there a non-lead fuel additive for cars designed to use leaded gas?
I know there was at one point, but it’s really not an issue anymore. Cars that ran in leaded usually had enough built up on the valve seats that they don’t need lead anymore or the engines in those cars got rebuilt and got the hardened valve seats that were required for use with unleaded. The only car that would need a lead substitute would be a very low mileage original pre-74 engine.
Thank you for indulging my curiousity.
I don’t know as much about cars as I’d like to.
The additive does still exist; the one I use in my old VW is called Motor Medic. The car was engine swapped at some point, so I don’t know it’s mileage or how old it is.
Lots of third party EFI solutions are available in the aftermarket. You can get much better power and efficiency with it so I’m not anti-EFI.
The issue, no surprise, is emissions and certification. But if you want to put EFI on your emissions exempt first gen Mustang you have options. And you’d actually lower emissions too!
Lower emissions, higher horsepower and higher fuel efficiency. EFI is great. That’s where they should have stopped.
WRT Resignation letter. (I got two copies)
Sort of incoherent. All sorts of weasel language. And while there is a “churn” of people retiring and hiring, its not going to get anywhere the 5-10% goal.
Eventually they will get the cuts they want.
Sort of incoherent. All sorts of weasel language.
Sounds like the tax code.
lol
Also, the letter appears to have gone to everyone.
Basically says “Resign, and we’ll give you about seven months of paid vacation.”
You can still retire if you’re eligible in the interim.
I don’t really care, Margaret.
He still has a high-paying job. And he gets a ton of publicity and can get the media to have him on-air any time he wants. How could that possibly qualify as “pure hell.”
His whining is not doing his party any favors either. Then again, I am amazed that they have Kamalamadingdong under wraps, she is even more damaging.
And his NG retirement, now that he’s post 60
I would not be surprised if she’s on a bender.
ZWAK:
I’ve seen stories about both Harris and her husband. She’s going to write the next great American memoir/novel/money laundering object and he’s gone back to corporate law. Oh, and Harris is likely to run for governor of California.
I think the current version of the party is DOA. Some other part will arise, and she will get zero traction running for gov.
“Pure hell” meaning he will miss out on the sweet money laundering operations that are available at that level.
I started to read the article, then he started in on Musk’s nazi salute BS and I tapped out thinking, “why do I miss all these nazi cues?” Then remembered how much the left fetishizes nazis.
But was it necessary to return him back to MN? Couldn’t he have gotten lost like an Amazon Christmas gift?
Maybe his depression will keep him at home for the next couple years.
Sorry, but he’s yours. We aren’t keeping him.
You’re doing the country a service by taking him back. The reverse of California and Earl Warren.
I don’t really care, Margaret.
Ha! Thanks for using that. That was a great response by VP Vance. I’m going to make a point to use that regularly, and encourage others to do so. It’s short, pithy, and sends exactly the right message.
It also resonates back to “frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn.” JD Vance is the bad boy that AWFLs love to hate.
Did he say anything about his fellow partisans staying home and cashing checks instead of showing up to work?
Well, if you’re retarded, anyway.
After 4 years of inching up the real possibility of a nuclear exchange, now suddenly the clock ticks. For a guy that has shown… SHOWN, he has no taste for war. Retarded isn’t sufficient – batshit insane is what that is.
Look, scientists did some serious sciencing to calculate that adjustment. Who am I to argue against science?
Right…and back during the cold war when the clock was 17 minutes to armageddon we didn’t have the sensitive measuring tools of today. That’s how we’re now able to differentiate between 90 and 89 seconds until lights out.
But once they switch to milliseconds I think we start bumping into Zeno’s paradox.
Buyouts are a nice perk. I would just lay them off, as they have shown the job is no longer needed.
My guess is that you can do that in the private sector but not the govsec.
If the RIF process for Fed is anything like new york, you’d end up with a cascade of people bouncing back to old titles, still not wanting to come into the office, and the bright-eyed newbies being pushed out the door.
This is more likely to remove the people they want to target.
At a certain point, they wont give a shit if they lose “top” employees. If you think you are so special as to not need to show up to work, then you get fired for job abandonment.
A lot of people seem to misunderstand what the word employee means.
what the word employee means
It is a synonym for sinecure, isn’t it?
That which cannot go on will not go on.
The question is: are we there yet? Survey says…
UCS is exactly right.
You only need to be notionally qualified to eventually push out those junior to you.
It’s not a complete buyout. Before I retired, my org would occasionally offer buyouts where they would let certain older employees retire early (with under 30 years of service), but would incentivize them with full pension and sometimes a lump sum.
These people are not being offered early retirement, or lifetime benefits. They are only being offered eight months of salary and benefit, and will have to wait until retirement age to start drawing their federal pensions. Those pensions will not be the full pensions they would get for 30-year retirement (unless their scheduled retirement would occur before Sep 30, 2025).
While it is distasteful to pay these people to do nothing, I remember that most of what they do has negative consequences for the American people.
Around here, whenever there’s talk of reducing headcount (hasn’t been for years 🙁 ) people pine for a 55/25 incentive, that is permitting people 55 or older with 25 or more years to retire without an early retirement penalty. (You lose a good 20% of your pension if you don’t hit 30 years unless you’ve gotten to 65)
No federal pensions these days Tonio. I worked with some of the last holdovers of the fixed benefit plan. Everyone in the federal civilian workforce today is on the Thrift Savings Plan (govt 401k).
I’m a retired fed. I think you are confusing the two retirement savings plans – CSRS for ppl hired up through I think 1985, and TSP thereafter. Those are separate from federal pensions. CSRS employees don’t get Social Security. TSP employees get pension and social security. There are a few details I’m eliding, but that’s how it is.
Wait, thought they “FIXED” that SS problem?
Hmm Tonio comes out of the closet and reveals his shameful secret!
No, we’re agreeing – I worked with some CivServ that started before the change, that’s what I mean by the last of the holdovers. Since then it is not a pension, it is an IRA/401k like vehicle – no fixed payments based on last salary, it’s withdrawals from their own accounts.
There are absolutely still federal pensions, but FERS, the current system is in no way as robust as the old CSRS.
FERS does also include matching funds for your investment into the TSP.
That is why.
Has he considered the possibility that they are soulless?
I laughed at the people grabbing their coats and slipping out as the Tiffany fight started.
I can only assume her entire defense of this will come down to “racism.”
The inherent violence of the black community?
“Tricknology” hasn’t been used in a while. Maybe she’ll dust that one off and give it a go.
This makes no sense.
No, no, I get it. What Trump needed to do was announce that Vance was going to be his Spending Czar and then with that, you can go wild!!
No, I think Sloopy clearly gets it. That’s the One Rule — only increasing the FedGov is legal according to courts beholden to…. said FedGov. Shock. Gasp.
Those paychecks won’t sign themselves!
Just do what the Biden Administration would have done – ignore the judge.
LOL never change, sfgate dot com.
I suspect that Donald knew this order would not stand but making every “progressive” go apeshit for a couple days does draw attention to the scandalous situation of every state and locality being kept hostage by Fedbucks.
To most of the people out there, the federal funding is the purpose of the government. It’s frankly appalling to see the screaming and wailing about a pause in the spigots.
While I too want to see the cuts, this is crazy. The government stops paying schools, transportation and construction projects, funding of colleges and universities, medical and military research with no warning for an indefinite period of time.
If you don’t think that is going to cause massive unemployment and pretty much gut the chances of Republicans winning in purple districts, I don’t know what to tell you.
I want to see the spending go, but going cold turkey with no warning and no guidelines for the agencies to review, and no staff to review the grantees is reckless. He literally just turned off about 2 Trillion of congressionally appropriated GDP with the stroke of a pen. This needed to be done methodically, and with a plan. Now he causes a chaotic shitshow and all but ensured a blue wave in 2026. Most Americans don’t care about a bloated federal workforce or too many illegal aliens getting deported. They do care when their school has to go be closed 2 days a week because the federal largesse got turned off.
Good job of Trump to cut off his nose to spite his face.
Slash and burn baby, slash and burn! We aren’t in a situation where our credit cards have a growing balance and we need to calmly look at our budget to decide where to cut a few bucks a month. We have maxed out cards, a maxed out HELOC, and our family has stopped answering the phone when we call, drastic cuts are needed. The interest on the National Debt is close to a trillion dollars, SS and Medicare are well over $2 trillion a year, meaning that we have $3 trillion in spending that CANNOT be cut. that by the way is about the same as the total Fed spending in 2008.
Typical Gov answer, try again
Today’s youth have never exploded anything outside of video games and it shows.
No shit. What a maroon.
That he then turned himself in makes me classify this as “a pathetic cry for mental help”. Seriously — he had to know even if all went perfectly, there wasn’t much that would actually happen and he’d be arrested. So he skipped ahead a bit.
Serious, serious mental health issues being fostered by our society over the last 20 years and little actual help beyond “Drug them up!”… I foresee many more chickens coming home to roost as these kids grow up, especially as the older generations bow out and these poor lunatics have to face the pressure of actually keeping things running.
Yeah, but think of all the kitty he will get at Columbia!
As if Trigglypuff pussy would make you firm and resolute instead of nauseous.
Odds that the guy could throw hard enough to break those bottles?
Even better when you realize that most airplane bottles are made of plastic…
Or far enough to hit anything but the floor near his own feet?
That makes perfect sense as far as weight savings goes.
Unfortunately I live on a street that drunks walk down so I get bottles thrown in my yard and can confirm that the glass minis still exist.
Neph, a quick search says Absolut minis are still glass.
“If they step outside — they’ll get back eventually maaaan!”
They’re just mobility impaired.
That’s mobility challenged, bigot!
Need a handicap ramp, Stairway to the Stars so to speak
Mobility challenged? It’s “differently mobile,” you shitlord!
That’s shitlady, thankyouverymuch!
Better than dungdame, I suppose.
“There were unconfirmed reports, too, that the mayor lost her wig during the fight.”
Best line ever. Fantastic article!
I wish US politics more often descended into the sort of fisticuffs you used to see in South American parliaments on those cable specials.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ptEzeGpWo7k
Relevant.
This is that whole “knife fights are just their culture” thing again?
I don’t think this is gonna resonate.
Why haven’t you fixed in days the problems we created over years?
“I was raised on Harry Potter — why can’t Trump cast the right spell! Waaaah!”
Pricefixium Fuckitallupsa
Daily Ray of Sunshine
That infectious infant laugh; always fresh, never frozen. It probably provides health benefits.
Sorry Conan — that’s what’s best in life to me. Thanks, Your Holiness!
I do remember those days, find out what makes the baby laugh, and keep doing it. The good old days, the spontaneous laugh
Even their cries and screams must provide some benefit, or else Biden would probably be dead.
We have videos of all the Altar Kids getting into that zone. Where they were laughing and giggling at anything.
The best was when the two Altar Boys got into that zone at the same time. One would trigger the other.
Pure sugar into the bloodstream. Stuff like that is probably what keeps parents from killing them after 4 hours of non-stop crying or exploding diapers.
Cute. I especially like the clean-up crew waiting for something, anything, to hit the floor.
Yesterday while my wife was picking up our kid, I took over babysitting my 1.5 yo niece. That child is a wild mess and gets into everything, but damn is she cute. We had a dance party, and she found that shoving baby wipes into my armpit was hilarious. Those baby laughs will make your troubles go away pretty quick.
Glad you got her back home, hope she can readjust smoothly.
So they still haven’t learned a thing from the election.
Anybody besides me so goddamn tired of of the term “folks” they want to bludgeon the next person who says it to death with a frozen ham? I remember 20 odd years ago thinking how nauseatingly condescending and patronizing it was when Bill O’Reilly used to constantly use it when my parents would watch Fox News, and it’s even less charming as a lefty shibboleth to refer to their pet “communities.”
Add “reform” and “concerns” and a hundred other weasel words that fall out of their mouths.
Go ahead and try using the word people. Don’t blame me when you get accused of bigotry.
People is too close to “you people”. Folks is acceptable as friendly.
I call everyone dudes, whether they are men or women.
Try erecting an altar, maybe some animal sacrifice. Since you’re asking for acts from god and not changes in policy.
You have to serve the animals with vegetables after you sacrifice them.
The finest Abrahamic barbecue traditions. Just make sure to use the ram and not your son.
Band name or album name?
“What’s your proposal?”
I note the article says: “The letter comes as food prices continue to rise. The cost of groceries rose 1.8 percent from December 2023 to December 2024,” Gosh, who was President that entire time?
FRAU DOKTOR JILL? Obama? Some mix of staffers?
In 20 years after declassification we might have some idea. It sure as shootin’ wasn’t Corrupt Joe.
(but yes, I agree with your point…)
I think we already have an idea; look at every person who was pardoned, and start there.
The grocery prices are the left’s latest “gotcha” talking point. You will remember a year ago that they didn’t care about this and were scolding the rest of us for worrying about “bank accounts” or “paying a few more cents at the register.” Two years ago they were all in a tizzy about child hunger and the absolute need to provide free school lunches (breakfasts, and dinners) to all children.
I recently called out a leftist acquaintance in this. “So, the problem isn’t the previous administration which had four years to fix this, but the current administration not fixing this in the first week?” As you can all imagine, it didn’t go over well. But I enjoyed the incoherent spluttering.
They, including pols in office and running for office, said that inflation had been tamed and that prices were not higher. Remember the 4th of July picnic math? It’s a big reason why Trump is in the White House.
“Akshully the economy is stronger than ever!”
Well, duh. Donald is cooking the planet with his giveaways to Big Fossil Fuel.
Pay no attention to Joe stoking WWIII for the last three years or anything.
“It was one thing when the guys were fighting, but when she jumped in it, I was taken aback. I was floored,” resident Alicia Nichole added in an interview with ABC7.
So I guess in Illinois brawls at public meetings are just a thing that happens.
“ There were unconfirmed reports, too, that the mayor lost her wig during the fight.”
For some reason, this made me laugh.
To be fair, NPR and its readership do live in an alternate reality. It is not surprising that they have their own language there.
Uffda. This story hits on a lot of your points.
King Walz is apoplectic about the Feds not delivering the trainloads of cash.
Huh. Amateurs are running things in DC and you are sitting back on the Minnesoda prairie.
Silly fucking me, but which part of the constitution authorizes the federal government to provide billions of dollars to the states for intrastate “transportation, policing, social programs?”
If pressed, I expect they’d trot out “General Welfare”. As if the Founders would have written a government limiting Constitution with that big of an intentional loophole in it (since you can argue the merits of just about any government policy to be promoting the general welfare and all). Right up there with “eminent domain if we think it will make the town a few more bucks to give it to a different private owner” in legal logic.
If pressed, I expect they’d trot out “General Welfare”.
But it clearly says Promote the general welfare. Right after it says Provide for the common defense. So I think that would be a hard one to fall back on since the language for the two concepts is quite different.
IME, it says the government shall provide the nation’s defense and should cheerlead for general well-being. And with that in mind, I propose we marginally increase the funding for Schoolhouse Rock/AdCouncil commercials and eliminate about 95% of the administrative state.
Don’t you even FDR, Sloopy?
a government limiting Constitution
TBF, the Constitution vastly expanded the federal government over that under the AoC. That was the point.
Oh, cool a chance to trot out my minilecture about the General Welfare clause. That is not a grant of power; it is either an overall limitation on the enumerated powers e.g. those powers are to be used to promote the general welfare rather than special interests, or it is a simple statement of purpose.
People don’t understand what “general welfare” is. It basically means things that benefit everybody, not just particular people or groups of people. It was intended to block what the Founders knew was the main pitfall of democracies – the majority voting themselves money out of the public treasury, to be taken from the minority. The General Welfare clause appears in the section governing Congress’s authority to tax and spend for a reason.
The “general welfare” is definitely not transfer payments or charity to individuals – the Founders were crystal clear on that. Which is why, among other things, SocSec is unconstitutional. It also does not include transfer payments to states.
We need to bring back all those taxpayers that left for overseas jobs and make them pay their “fair share”.
We already tax some foreigners who didn’t realize they were U.S. citizens (born here but raised and currently residing elsewhere).
So in his world, the new admin not bailing out the fiscally irresponsible state to the tune of $24B a year is amateurish. The state digging that big of an annual hole in its budget is not.
To be fair, the $2B deficit is if Medicare payments were also included.
So basically, he’s going back to the basics. At the beginning of Covid, he trotted out a model that said 70K people would die unless there were huge lockdown. Then only 50K would die. Turns out the model was developed by an undergrad at The U of M.
So King Walz lies through his teeth about the impact. Luckily he’s back in Minnesoda and doesn’t have to worry about the meanies in the National Press calling him out.
Medicaid and Medicare were specifically excluded from the memo.
Correct. Any individual payment is excluded. Waltz is lying, and then will engage in malicious compliance.
King Walz also doesn’t want to talk about the giant constitutional crisis his party has dumped on Minnesoda.
No lynx, but the synopsis:
1) After the elections the DFL and GOP end up tied in the Minnesoda House*. So the DFL can’t ramrod shit straight down the throats of the GOP anymore.
2) Turns out that in one race, the DFL candidate didn’t even live in the district. In another race the DFL candidate won by 14 votes, but turns out at least 20 votes were thrown out before being counted and no way to recover them.
3) This results in a technical 1 vote lead for the GOP in the House.
4) Lawyers descend and lots of arguments about what an actual quorum is. GOP says that since they have 68 votes which is more than half of the 135 legally seated members of the House, they have a quorum. DFL says that there are potentially 136 members of the House and that means 68 ain’t a quorum so nothing legally can be done.
5) The DFL has a secret swearing in ceremony by a retired DFL judge 2 days early in a random spot. Not the constitutionally mandated date/time/spot. Why? So they can draw their salary.
6) King Walz issues a proclamation to hold a special election lickety-split to fill the seat of Rep. Doesn’t live in the District.
7) DFL members refuse to show up to the official House proceedings. This – they say – denies a quorum and nothing can be done.
8) The GOP actually has the stones to say BS and starts work.
9) The DFL boycotts the start o the House session.
10) Courts agree that Walz can’t fast track the special election. Unless the House agrees. The DFL is fucked now. They want the early election, but if they show up to vote for it, then there is a quorum and the GOP has the majority.
11) The MN Supreme Court feels bad after thwarting King Walz and – despite almost every legal expert saying the GOP does have a quorum – agrees that the GOP doesn’t have a quorum.
So now we are at an impasse. The DFL won’t show up. The court has said that there is no quorum so there isn’t a legal session going on.
* The DFL only has a one vote advantage in the Senate because they haven’t disciplined the DFL Senator who was caught breaking into her step mother’s house.
Sorry for the wall of text, but shit is nutty as fuck in Minnesoda now.
I forgot to mention that the MN Supreme Court is 100% appointed by DFL govs.
Amazing that King Walz would show his face anywhere now with the state in such a cluster fuck.
So, what you are saying my good Pope, is that with these Eleven Simple Tricks (Number 8 Will Shock you!) MiniSoda has created a Libertarian Paradise?
Maybe question why it is acceptable to launder billions of your subjects’ tax dollars that were intended for local needs through the FedGov first?
Do you even Govern?
If there is a bridge in your district that needs to be repaired do you?:
1) Tell the locals that it will cost $1M and raise their taxes?
2) Tell the locals you went down to Washington and demanded that they pay for it! And by golly they will!!! (oh yeah, the national deficit went up by $2M).
The right answer keeps you in your phony-boloney job.
I keep saying the people get the govt they asked for and everyone here tells me I’m wrong.
I didn’t ask for this shit, JI.
You aren’t the people, you is one person.
Unfortunately, it’s persons who suffer, not People.
Why come President Trump grocery czar not lower prices? Are people really this retarded? Elizabeth Warren obviously thinks her base is a bunch of morons, and she may be correct.
Yes, people really are that retarded.
See also the idea of “greedflation”.
Warren has some “slightly used” blankets to sell to her voters.
Living up to my expectation of Chinese respect for IP…
OpenAI Is Probing Whether DeepSeek Used Its Models to Train New Chatbot
Silicon Valley-based company says Chinese entities have tried to exfiltrate data from its tools
https://www.wsj.com/tech/ai/openai-is-probing-whether-deepseek-used-its-models-to-train-new-chatbot-ce6b864e?st=f8wruA&reflink=desktopwebshare_permalink
So, what you’re saying is, the ChiComs and libertarians have some points of agreement?
Given China’s record of misrepresentation, I just assumed DeepSeek was a translation layer between the user and ChatGPT anyway.
Based on the reports of badthink answers appearing and then being erased and replaced, I was thinking it’s a large scale Mechanical Turk.
Only because it is supposedly open sourced (I’m not in that field so I didn’t try to look at the source repos) was I willing to believe it wasn’t really going to a slave labor camp that was fielding the questions. Of course, that I watched this recently may have biased my initial reaction.
I just figured the backend was a bunch of dataslaves shackled to their terminals typing responses to user queries.
Three way jinx?
Jinx, jinx on you two!
WSJ has received its marching orders from the RINO faction.
As a Rising Political Star, Gabbard Paid to Mask Her Sect’s Ties to Alleged Scheme
Years before Tulsi Gabbard became Trump’s pick to coordinate U.S. spy agencies, she tried to evade unwanted scrutiny
https://www.wsj.com/politics/policy/tulsi-gabbard-science-of-identity-qi-group-ed51c890?st=k8WBsM&reflink=desktopwebshare_permalink
Followed by this editorial.
https://www.wsj.com/opinion/tulsi-gabbard-senate-hearing-director-of-national-intelligence-edward-snowden-julian-assange-3e7b2476?st=Fb4Uzm&reflink=desktopwebshare_permalink
“Gabbard’s parents are followers of Butler, a former Hare Krishna disciple who founded Science of Identity Foundation in Hawaii in the 1970s. They raised Gabbard in the group, said former followers, who described Butler’s demands of fealty. Some adherents mixed Butler’s toenail clippings into their meals, two former followers said, as a sign of devotion. Others used his shoes as prayer totems, they said.”
And followers of the Catholic faith eat the body, and drink the blood, of Christ – weekly!
Yes I want an intelligence director that supports the leaking of ILLEGAL DOMESTIC SURVEILLANCE. That should be exposed, and those culpable for it – terminated from their jobs, possibly with extreme prejudice.
Man charged with carrying Molotov cocktails into the Capitol was targeting Johnson, Hegseth, Bessent
Scott Bessent is the openly gay Treasury Secretary. Where is the legacy media outrage over this blatant hate crime?
He’s a Republican so he’s obviously not gay-gay.
did anyone see him sucking dick?
You no I had no idea, nor did I care. I just cared how he was going to do his job.
Was that wrong?
know…
“I just wanted to be sure he was flaming, your honor!”
(Sorry Tonio… the ball was just hovering over the plate there…)
Boo!
👻
What happened to Richard Grennel?
He was the gay dude in Trump’s first term who seemed like a competent diplomat. Did he get a role in this administration?
Special Missions Envoy.
So I guess he’s gonna get all the shit diplomatic situations dropped in his lap.
*cracks knuckles, looks around*
“Nice little country you have here. Be a shame if anything were to happen to it.”
I thought that was Dennis Rodman’s job.
Where are the ACTIVISTS!?? The howling mob? They’d rather love them a stupid, weakass, cis-man leftie than a successful homo?
9rnz4k
@9rnz4k
… you’re proving my point for me.
Trump is a massive statist, but he’s a reactionary statist so the Dave Smiths of the world give him a pass to own the libs.
Michael Malice
@michaelmalice
*Daves Smith
https://x.com/michaelmalice/status/1884374515591045181
So… Dave Smiths or Daves Smith?
Are we talking smiths named Dave or men who smith Daves?
He obviously meant car dealership.
WORLD’S LARGEST JEEP RAM DEALER – sound like a crime against Gaia.
It’s a huge regional dealership, so I grew up seeing their commercials every half hour on our local stations in Spokane, WA. Now it’s one of the dealerships for which I take leads at my job, and one of the biggest pains in the ass we deal with, with dozens of custom protocols that override our usual procedures.
You have usual protocols? Every sales group I ever dealt with had PIA custom protocols.
For domestic dealerships, they pay a flat fee to get as many leads as we can generate, and we only do digital platforms (website chat, social, SMS, email, etc), so we have pretty straightforward templates for qualifying leads. It’s high-volume blow and go screening, basically. The entire thing will be done by bots in probably 5-10 years, but our “AI” assistant as it currently sits still can’t do things like differentiate a trade-in from a vehicle of interest, or differentiate a sales appointment from a service appointment, so it’s still cheaper and more efficient to hire a non-linear servo-mechanism weighing only 150 pounds and having great adaptability, that can be produced cheaply by completely unskilled labor to do the job. Our international dealerships pay per lead through a third party broker, so they typically have very specific protocols in place, and are a lot more choosy about the leads they want. Dave Smith’s protocols are basically like an international dealership, so when prospects engage from there it’s a pain in the ass to shift gears from our standard domestic templates.
– Switzerland’s government on Wednesday approved new climate targets, proposing a cut in greenhouse gas emissions by 2035 of at least 65% compared to 1990 levels.
Switzerland’s efforts to counteract global warming came under close scrutiny last year when a top European court ruled that the country was not doing enough to tackle climate change.
The government said in a statement that the new objectives, set out under its commitments to the Paris Agreement, are to be primarily achieved via domestic measures.
https://www.reuters.com/business/environment/swiss-government-approves-new-climate-goals-after-court-rebuke-2025-01-29/
I had higher hopes for Switzerland to remain the only not completely shithole on this continent.
It’s shocking to me that the entirety of Europe, aside from France, aren’t looking at that nation’s current power generation and cost situation relative to theirs and then storming their government offices with pitchforks.
I have talked to many german engineers with 20+ years of experience who fear nuclear like medieval peasant witchcraft…
People tend to keep the religion they were raised in.
That’s great, Pie. I’m going to steal that.
Clearly all of the heavy industry of Switzerland must be shut down.
Who knows what they do down in those tunnels? Maybe that’s where they hide their heavy industry. Hopefully they don’t delve too deep or to greedily.
And, if the freeze hadn’t started yet, how do they have standing? I thought that was the end all be all.
NPR said AIDS clinics in Africa that prevents a quarter million people from spreading HIV have already been closed.
I had no idea the money pipeline was so fast moving. Nor that drugs were the only way to not spread AIDS.
“That? Oh, it’s the trans-center. We block AIDS by castrating people and mutilating their bodies.”
Silly fucking me, but which part of the constitution authorizes the federal government to provide billions of dollars to African AIDS clinics to prevent the spread of HIV?
NPR warned that even a small delay would let the virus mutate and turn into drug-resistant super-AIDS.
Apparently the money is funneled through the State Department of all places.
So, COVAIDS?
You can thank Bush for that by way of PEPFAR. Once he was safely out of office and became the sane elder statesman to Mittens Romney’s Adolph Hitler, it became the one thing the left praised him for.
Not Adahn:
Maybe they could fix it like monkey pox. They simply named it mpox and things were better.
Remove the stigma of super aids by renaming it “a-pox”?
If these NGOs are shutting down their overseas ops, you can guarantee it’s performative so the left can demonize Trump. Because not-giving is the same as taking.
A retired State Department (or more likely “State Department”) acquaintance posted a sob story about an unnamed aid organization having their funding cut when they had people in the air. In the air, do you hear!
Now, you would think that they would have had the foresight to have bought their workers round-trip tickets, or to have enough reserve funds to cover that. You would also think that the org would have been named so that right-thinkful ppl could contribute funds to bring those aid workers back. But the story is probably complete bullshit.
Extreme opinion: government employees should not be allowed to either donate or vote in election. To much conflict of interest.
Incompatible with our first amendment, but by no means a bad idea in principle.
Incompatible with our first amendment,
People in the military give up certain rights and that’s been deemed constitutional. I don’t see why it couldn’t be applied to all federal employees.
True enough, which in and of itself is questionable. However, just as the antifederalists warned, the rights delineated in the BOR have been elevated above those not enumerated, so curtailing speech and voting rights would be a dicier proposition.
There are already restrictions on what they can do support campaigns and candidates (even beyond the restrictions imposed on the peasantry). The courts have determined that campaign contributions are not a 1A issue (I disagree with that, but hey, them’s the rules).
Voting restrictions would be a non-starter, unless and until we redo the voting franchise from the ground up.
I would counter that that bloc of votes just needs to be kept small by not hiring too many federal employees (or contractors). Sure it will have an interest counter to the rest of us, but it should be as consequential as the libertarian vote.
I’m so pissed about that jackass and his mini-molotovs.
Pre 9/11 you used to be able to put a bottle of your preferred hooch into your carryon. If you were polite and didn’t act up, the stew would give you a glass and keep it full of ice.
After the fucking shoe bomber asshole fucked shit up, you had to put your preferred hooch into small 3 oz bottles. The TSA didn’t care how many you had. If they fit in the baggie, you were good (as things relaxed, you didn’t even have to have them in the baggie)
Now, they even get on the squawker of the plane and tell you that you can’t drink your own booze. My old business partner blames me directly for this development. When we traveled, we coined the term “brugal” to mean Booze Frugal. Why pay the insane amounts of $$ the airlines want for shitty booze? Just bring your own.
The yutes have learned of this “hack”. Most of the people I saw carrying their own pre-mixed them in the waiting area before boarding.
Like I said, they don’t even really care about the quart bag rule anymore. As long as it is in a bottle less than 3.4 oz, TSA doesn’t give a shit. (Everyone knows that terrorists are too dumb to divvy their bomb explosives into multiple bottles).
When they started cracking down on simply pouring your own drinks* on the flight, I was reduced to buying some big bottle of some tea/coffe/drink in the airport geedunk and then replacing it with my own booze (like your link). Then the stews could look the other way as I nursed my “tea” for the entire flight.
* The drunkest flight I was ever on was the Freedom Bird home from Okinawa. First off, there were a lot of Marines on there who had been stationed for a year away from their wife and were looking forward to their “reunification”. Secondly, there were no taxes on booze in Okinawa so shit was ridiculously cheap (qt. of Bacardi was $1.85). Lastly, naval traditions required the imbibing of booze. The 12 hour flight was three sections. The first 3-4 hours was the insane drinking period. The next 5 hours (started when some senior SNCO’s and officers came back to tell all of us to tone it down) was drunken passing out. The last few hours were Hair of the Dog time.
When I left Okinawa the first time, a friend of mine was on the same flight.
It was a United plane and at the time, beer was free on overseas flights (Oct 1991).
We drank a lot. He got off in San Fransisco and I continued on to Pittsburgh, that flight was only half full so I had a whole aisle to myself.
When the stewardess woke me up in Pittsburgh, I didn’t know where I was or how I got there for a minute.
–“The TSA didn’t care how many you had. If they fit in the baggie, you were good (as things relaxed, you didn’t even have to have them in the baggie)”–
I have put my items in the little baggie exactly once, at the Paris airport for the return flight to the US. I had a small knife (very sharp) in my shaving kit and was only questioned once, at the Munich airport for my return flight. They told me I could toss it or mail it home. I tossed it, since I was travelling to Taiwan (where I bought the knife) the following week. I replaced it and was never questioned again. I even expensed the knife, since it was business travel.
So…
https://thenationalpulse.com/2025/01/28/border-patrol-officers-killing-by-transgender-duo-was-possible-act-of-terrorism/
Apparently these guys were from a Rationalist Berkeley cult calling xemselves the “vegan sith.” The “respectable” Bay Area Rationalists are not happy with xem.
Rationalist trans terrorism? I understand that reason will give odd answers if it starts with odd axioms, but this stretches the concept of rationalism some.
Rationalism:Yudowsky::Scientioogy:Hubbard
HHS employee is furious she has to go back to work and get rid of DEI policies.
“Literally all of our programs encompass AND ARE BUILT on DEI policies.”
https://x.com/reddit_lies/status/1884397854233395262
Removing DEI is evil and inhumane it seems.,..
Remarkable, since I was reliably told as few as 2 years ago that DEI simultaneously wasn’t happening, was a right wing conspiracy theory, and was just a fancy term for being polite.
When you aren’t telling the truth, one lie is as good as another.
What JI says. They are pure machiavellians. They absolutely never, under and circumstances, argue in good faith. Ignore them.
Are you telling me Donald DIDN’T literally STEAL the election??
ESR getting pretty spicy in his old age:
https://x.com/esrtweet/status/1884470148733755694
ISTR he was cancelled already, so he’s in IDGAF mode.
This funding of NGO’s seems a lot like voter ID to me.
I was pretty sure that requiring a voter to show ID to prove that they were who they said they were, had citizenship and lived in the area was a no brainer. Completely surprised by the vehemence against any measures by the Dems. Made me think that a lot more cheating had been going on than I had thought.
Same with the NGO’s. I figured they were in some shady laundering crap with the Dems, but based on the freak out, I didn’t suspect them enough.
Only 10 days in, and I’m finding the Dems and the deep state were doing things that were much worse than I thought, as well. They haven’t even dug below the surface yet.
The Apocalypse is a terrible guest. It never actually shows up. Always one nanosecond away from knocking on the door.
Considering who we are dealing with I like Trump’s approach to negotiations. He takes a mile and they have to argue back in inches.
Doesnt Walz have a youth camp somewhere to lead? I am still expecting some dudes to come out and show us on the doll where Timmy touched them.
Classy Mayor: No comment.
Honda: Also no comment.
Didnt Musk already offer to get the stranded astronaughts and was rebuffed….NASA has this! We got it!
Fucking clowns.
I dont know what to say about the Just Stop Oil people. They are communist agitators intent on destroying civilization and will be the very first ones shot if they get their way. It is amazing really.
He had two 50ml Molotov cocktails and two knives? These knives – https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fi.redd.it%2Fdkxxqv5ayyp81.jpg&rdt=58161. ?
As for the judge telling Trump he cant, lets see how Trump responds.
The food price thing. More insanity. Trump has been president for a week.
LOL
The issue is the incompatibility between the Boeing pressure suits and the Dragon life support systems.
Basically, every pressure suit is custom fitted to the wearer. These pressure suits do not have self contained life support systems. Rather, the spacecraft itself provides the air, electricity, water and coolant.
The stranded astronauts were fitted for suits that were intended to fly on the Boeing capsule. The two platforms are incompatible. So their pressure suits cannot connect to the life support systems on the Dragon.
So, they can return in shirt sleeves and hope the capsule doesn’t have an event where it depressurizes, or they can wait for Dragon compatible space suits to be manufactured for them using the tailoring data from the Boeing guys and hope they fit well enough.
If ever there was a comment meant to be made by Gilmore – space fashion would be it.
Wouldn’t developing an adapter for the connectors be simpler and easier than tailoring a new suit? Plus it provides future utility and interoperability.
You are now the target of my ire…unfairly. Yesterday I was subjected by three different people to appeals for assistance. When I pointed out the simple solution they each one started with “Well, here’s the thing….” , “Uh…there is a problem with that…” and then went on rambling explanations with lots of details all designed to paint me into a corner and only leave one path out…to be forced to do what they wanted me to do but knew I did not want to do. It also involved me paying for their messes. It is the oldest manipulation tactic in the world, people do that all of the time and it enrages me.
*disclaimer: I am not angry at you and that is not what you are doing*
The problem with the space station crew is starting to look like what I described. Through their own lack of foresight and bumblefuckery they have people stranded in space. They are asking for help yet at the same time have been demanding things be done their way. Put two Dragon-compatible generic space suits aboard, fly up there, get them in the suits, drag them back onto the Dragon like a couple of helium balloons and tell them to sit down. No fuckin’ around. Bring them home.
I keep hearing explanations why that cant be done. How about this? Do it anyway.
Suthenboy:
There’s no generic spacesuits, they’re all custom tailored to the person they’re supposed to fit.
🙂
To be honest, when the decision was made to launch them I was appalled. IIRC the thruster problem was known on the ground, and it hadn’t been solved yet.
Essentially what NASA did on that flight was an “Abort to Orbit” with no option to deorbit.
Day one of the great FedGov “purge”
The bodies are starting to pile up. I can’t get to the coffeemaker, I assume I have little time left
Golly. It’s a shame that we didn’t hand the lawbreakers a drink and a first class plane ticket home. What happens when they tell their friends? Will this decrease illegal immigration?
Deported Colombian Migrants Complain of ‘Despotic, Humiliating’ Treatment
https://www.wsj.com/world/americas/deported-colombian-migrants-complain-of-despotic-humiliating-treatment-20a6bf17?st=QbnEPz&reflink=desktopwebshare_permalink
Alonso said he arrived Jan. 15 in California after crossing over from Tijuana, Mexico, and turned himself over to Customs and Border Protection agents, hoping he could apply for asylum and begin working in the U.S. while his case was decided. He was quickly detained.
“They made us take off everything,” he said. “They only let us keep the clothes we had on, even though they knew there was air conditioning inside and it was extremely cold.”
“They insulted us,” Alonso said.
You’d think after the torture of having to sit in a room with the air conditioning too low, being sent back would be a relief.
Sounds like something an NGO would direct himself to say.
They dug this grave with the shit they have done over the years.
So Columbia admits:
So why do these nice, wonderful people need asylum?
And why didn’t you want them back?
“Those Welfare Paracites? The dole would collapse!”
No criminal activity, besides illegal entry to another country?
Oh no, illegals are leaving 1 star yelp reviews “Terribly unwelcoming, I was insulted, kept in a cold room and there was no meal service on the deportation flight! I do not recommend!” Whatever will we do?
Good music choices, Sloopy!
I played the hell out of ‘Human’s Lib’ & ‘Dream Into Action’ when I was a lad.
https://youtu.be/4vJiF1eYHpM?si=vNoeyqEgGqhVdIqw&t=210
“He keeps putting his testicles all over me”
So today in Pie asks Stupid Questions
I asked yesterday about 250k a year in your area of residence. Here is today:
You get a gift of 10 million dollars after tax, all your money to do as you please, cash in the bank.
Do you
a) move house
b) how much do you spend on a new house if a
and c) by how many years would this move up your retirement (though what is life without work)
$10M isn’t enough to retire, but it is enough to change residences.
I would still seek the least expensive property which met my criteria, since it will inevitably need customization or refurbishment to meet my needs. And besides, tucking the remainder away in one of my retirement accounts would make it more likely that I’d actually get to retire instead of just working for someone else indefinately.
If a genie offers you $10 million but the catch is you can never write a book again do you take it? I assume for you writing books is more than financial in scope.
If $10M isn’t enough to retire, New York must pay better than I thought.
I write to entertain myself. If I were in it for the money, I’d have bailed after Shadowdemon flopped.
Jar – I do not trust the returns on that sum to cover cost of living and inflation.
$10M isn’t enough to retire, but it is enough to change residences.
If you put it in an account drawing 5% interest, you’d be making $500k a year without touching the principal. And you don’t think you could retire on $500k/year?
No such thing exists.
Even a measly 3% return gets you $300k/year.
You must be planning on a pretty lavish retirement for a single man if $10m couldn’t get the job done.
I’ve been watching the way inflation has gone over my lifetime and realized that those numbers, while impressive today, will be a pittance tomorrow.
I plan to live as long as I can get away with.
Where can you lock in 5% for any length of time? At my (very healthy) CU, the best you can do is 4.5% APY on an IRA certificate for…6 months. The longer the term, the lower the rate.
You could invest $10M in a conservative portfolio paying dividends of 2-4% that would grow with inflation, but I understand risk aversion. I retired with a lot less than that, but I had grown to hate my work.
I write to entertain myself. – yes this is why I asked. would you give that up for 10 mil
I mean, it’s not 5%, but compared to my mother’s savings account in a savings bank at 1%, it’s nothing to sneeze at.
And my mother also took out a CD at 4.25% when she could have just dumped it all in Smartypig, which is what I suggested she do.
You gotta go outside the US to get the best rates, but 4.5 in a savings acct in the US is doable with that size of a deposit.
I enjoyed it.
my conclusion is take the 10 mil and put them all in dogecoin or maybe shiba inu
Santander bank is currently the highest at 4.75% for a savings account.
I read Santander wants to leave the UK because of too many shitty regulations. But that is besides the point.
If I’m being totally honest, I’d probably spend a few hundred grand paying off our two homes, buy a 991.1 GT3RS for a few hundred grand more (at most), spend about $50-60k a year racing a different car in Lemons/ChampCar, going to football games, and other traveling, and let Banjos manage the rest.
And by the time I was 80, I might be running out of the principal.
If you are worried about inflation, CDs are not the way to go (I’d argue they are not the way to go for anyone but I get that people are scared of equities for some reason).
@Ron – it didn’t sell anywhere near enough copies, and sales on books since have dropped further. I haven’t broken triple digits in lifetime sales on any title since Lucid Blue. Shadowboy was the only title to move thousands of units.
Really? Tbill rates are 2-3%… at 2% of 10Mil that is 200,000 per year. (fed tax exempt).
you can retire on that, and can of course invest in higher yield investments.
I’d argue they are not the way to go for anyone but I get that people are scared of equities for some reason
I have my e-fund shoved into CDs. One is a no-penalty 7 monther. One is a 6 monther that I just reinvested after the 14 month 5% promo CD matured.
CDs are great for “I may need the money quickly and I can’t take the risk of it declining in value, but I hate watching it earn 1% in a savings account.”
SPAXX option on your Fidelity sweep account is just under 5%. Money market on funds above FDIC limits are at 4%. That’s before setting up a conservative portfolio.
Jarflax: CDs are for my six-month emergency savings.
SPAXX option on your Fidelity sweep account is just under 5%
I just went through the trouble of opening a Fido Cash Management account that sweeps into SPAXX – you just treat the account like a checking account (checks, debit card, bill pay, etc.).
I like Schwab a lot but their checking account pays essentially nothing. I got tired of having to make sure I sold enough off to transfer into checking before various bills were due. With Fido, I don’t stress that I have “too much” in checking.
a) no, I hate moving
b) I might eventually buy a second house in Idaho, Montana, or Wyoming using some of the income from the investments I would make with the $10,000,000
c) Already retired
Already planning on moving back to the house. Would pay for some needed repairs/renovations on said house, then 100% I retire, pay all outstanding debts and try to figure out an investment strategy with the rest to pay myself an annuity to live on. Then proceed to live a quiet life (because honestly, 10 million isn’t all that much and it would likely be needed to stretch out over the retirement years the way inflation has gone).
My whimsical lottery fantasies (which are more in the 100+ million range) would at most be “buy a lake lot near my parents while living in the existing house [because with that sort of money, I could lose some on a pontoon boat for relaxation], hire an architect and design a house per mine and my wife’s requirements. No more than a couple of million in building costs tops. But with only 10? I’d need to save that to live on, I think.
I saw that, but got to the thread long after it had died. Some of you people are very badly confused about what constitutes “middle class.” If you don’t live in NYC, Hartford, San Francisco, or Orange County, $250k has you well into the top 10%. Real median household income was $80,610 in 2023. An individual income of $250k is well outside the center of the distribution.
a. Yes, immediately
b. Probably in the $750k, to $1M range, more than half of which would go towards the copious amount of land on which the house would sit, and connecting it to adequate infrastructure; the house itself would probably be no larger than 2,000 square feet. I’m single and don’t need the maintenance hassles.
c. I’d quit working for money the day after the check cleared and park probably ~2.5 million in annuities and money market accounts to maintain a comfortable income off the interest ($100k/yr at a 4% return), then piss away the rest of my life dabbling in some of the academic fields I passed on in my youth, and probably launch a few business ventures. Saving back a million or so to bankroll those frivolities, I’d likely give the rest away to partially assuage my Christian guilt about wealth.
Some of you people are very badly confused about what constitutes “middle class.”
Yes and no. There’s an “is/ought” problem here. 250k ought to be upper class. However, in many cases, people making that level of bank are so financially illiterate and slaves to so much debt that they’re forced to live like they’re middle class. Often their upper class income is used solely to buy convenience at the expense of actual substance. They doordash Chipotle when they could be eating at the high end steakhouse. They have 6 cars worth of negative equity rolled up in their lease when they could have bought 4 cars outright if they had even a semblance of delayed gratification.
What Trashy says.
Financially illiterate describes 90% of the population and poor impulse control is the biggest factor in people being poor.
There is good debt (debt that creates income) and bad debt (debt that simply eats away at you). Most people today love them some bad debt and collect as much of it as they can.
With $10M?
I’d be getting a new house built with a reasonable layout, and retiring.
A comfortable house, one does not need all the frills, that’s for show. When one is retired it’s far more important to live where you want. I’ve been retired 32 years, far, far less than 10M. Some like the city but that’s not my life style. Lake living is more similar to living in town with neighbors, HOA type rules often.
My friend lived nearby, on the lake, actually on a river between to lakes. When health demanded more help he moved into senior apartments in town. He still has the 10M or a very large portion of it. His beautiful, custom log home was sold.
Time passes quickly after 50. Now I’m getting ready to sell some excess property because these are decisions I don’t want to leave to my wife. At a certain point, different for each of us, the dream home becomes a liability.
We’d probably move, although net of what we would get for our current house, probably wouldn’t spend more than $500K or so of the windfall.
$10MM is easily enough to retire if you are, say 40-45 years old or more and aren’t planning a lavish retirement. $8MM in lifetime annuity for a 45 years old will pay over $20K/month.
Quoted out a $25k annuity for a 45 year old at $5M (max amount). $8-10M would be more than comfortable.
A- eventually. I love my house, but as I get older…
B-500K to 1M.
C- already retired.
We’d stay in our house, maybe add another garage and definitely get a new roof. I’d like to get a solar system for emergency backup power.
That much would get us debt free and allow us to do some things to get the gym moving (marketing, install a shower, etc.). I’d probably work for another 5 years and be done.
TOK, I reroofed with metal on all my buildings, 50 year guarantee. I probably will not have to do it again but who knows?
A) no. If a good option (<$750k) opened up in the right location (15 miles east of here), we'd jump at it, but aside from that we're happy where we are.
B) I'd spend a few mil on buying some acreage in the area. 2-3M would get me a few hundred acres of hunting/recreation/ranching land.
C) I'd immediately pay off the house (our only remaining debt), invest a heaping chunk into a charitable trust, invest most of the rest in various retirement and investment accounts, and quit my main job. I'd be a full time farmer/rancher with my law firm staying as a side gig. Spend all day tending farm and a few hours per month to earn some spending money and help folks out with their small businesses? Sure.
Blood pheasants and Buddhist nuns – Tibet
https://x.com/Paracelsus1092/status/1884380456180715918
“Just realized”? My libtard in gitmo you spent your whole election campaign arguing with him about why your district needs to be flooded with somalis
https://x.com/RichPianian/status/1884491734136283188
new way to address lefties dropped on righty twitter
Where can you lock in 5% for any length of time? At my (very healthy) CU, the best you can do is 4.5% APY on an IRA certificate for…6 months. The longer the term, the lower the rate.
I thought the yield curve un-inverted.
Based on my limited understanding, I’m pretty sure this is what happens in a “falling rate environment.”
That reminds me – I have to sit in on (and then write up the minutes of) a quarterly Asset-Liability Management meeting next week. 😖
This is the Revanchist ‘Greater Rwanda’ Map that legitimises Eastern Congo Territorial Claims
https://x.com/kunley_drukpa/status/1884415410109571341
Make Rwanda great again
PintsO’Guinness
@PintsO_Guinness
Smugglers Creek. Rossnowlagh Beach, Donegal
https://x.com/PintsO_Guinness/status/1884321755956928817
Rate My Plate
@ratemyplatenow
Beef Brisket Out The Tin by Simon R
https://x.com/ratemyplatenow/status/1880607686729089042
Throw that in a pool to freak every out.
Taibbi is in blistering form:
The place I work is well on its way to being gutted. Rand Paul will be pleased!
What’s the status of your position?
My sister is a social worker at the VA and she’s been keeping me updated about the executive orders and changes. Her job is safe because she’s pretty good at it and always goes the extra mile for the veterans.
Oh no!!!
RFK hearing is underway. He just (accurately) called Ron Wyden a liar.
https://x.com/DerrickEvans4WV/status/1884627345346121803
This one’s getting spicy already. But every nominee knows that if confirmed, they’ll have to deal with Democrat attacks like this for four years. So this is a test they have to pass. Only the strong survive.
Walter Kirn is in the front row, he’s live tweeting (X’ing?) the hearing.
https://x.com/walterkirn
Democratic Senator == dishonest. No revelation there.
Wyden is a smelly, oozing cunt.
Of course. He’s NY’s third senator.
Elections have consequences
But regardless of how the legal wrangling works it out, the ideology behind this order is clear: a deep sense on the modern right that winning elections grants them a democratic mandate to ignore any constraints on their power.
——-
The counterargument to this critique is straightforward: Trump is doing what he promised. Voters elected him after he promised to claim impoundment powers, and he has a popular mandate to deliver.
“Amidst the liberal outrage, it’s important to remember that this was all spelled out by Trump long in advance,” Politico’s Jack Blanchard wrote in Tuesday’s edition of the influential Playbook newsletter. “Those accusing Trump of being anti-democratic might note that this is largely democracy in action.”
There are vanishingly few voters who cast their ballot based on a principled support for impoundment powers. And even if there were, democracy does not just mean that elected officials can do whatever they want.
“That’s not what the voters really want, because I disagree.”
Trump has declared himself emperor for life by wanting to know where the money goes.
“the modern right that winning elections grants them a democratic mandate to ignore any constraints on their power.”
LOL
Democracy dies without federal spending!
Democracy depends on the rule of law — government officials’ deference to written and duly authorized constitutional and statutory principles. Winning an election doesn’t give you a mandate to rule unfettered, but rather to act as a representative of the people within a broader constitutional order in which written law reigns supreme. That’s the point of a constitution — to set the rules of the democratic game under which parties compete to change policy.
Stop it. You’re killing me.
If you can’t retire on ten million bucks a strong case could be made for conservatorship.
I live within my means. I also have low, low, low risk tolerance. The margins of safety on walking away from existing income streams have to be big.
Quick estimate is that a 20 yr. $10 million annuity would provide about $60 K per month? Anyone here would couldn’t live quite comfortably on that ?
Where are you getting that number?
Initially sure, but with inflation, 15 years down the road?
And after the 20 years, if you haven’t been saving up the monthly payments, what then?
https://www.calculator.net/annuity-payout-calculator.html?cstartingprinciple=10%2C000%2C000&cinterestrate=8&cyearstopayout=20&camounttopayout=5%2C000&cpayfrequency=monthly&ctype=fixlength&x=Calculate#annuity-result
That 8% looks like a rectally sourced numeral.
That’s the whole point of TVM calculations. Pick whatever rate of return you’d like and include your inflation assumptions within that.
It’s straight up math. For me 8% is reasonable. You can pick a negative return if you want.
Good morning!
Take your BP meds and follow this account:
https://x.com/DataRepublican
See what your tax dollars are really doing!
All this talk about legal constraints just shows how terrified the
DemocratsEstablishmentarians are of the American people finding out what a fetid cesspool of corruption their capitol has become.You mean like Nancy Pelosi once again having spectacular timing in the market? She sold NVIDIA just before the DeepSeek news broke.
There’s this tool that you can use to see how much federal funding and grants goes to NGO’s, cities, corporations, and universities. It’s such a black pill but my smallest hope is that the GOP and Trump White House would take the initiative and stop this shit.
https://joeisdone.github.io/award_search/
We just need more money!
https://x.com/AngelaLMorabito/status/1884472000556511544
Why focus on the basics when you can explain why math has a racial component.
Democracy dies without federal spending!
Five years ago, the country was mired in poverty and despair, caused by a penny pinching austerity budget barely sufficient to retrieve the dead and dying from the streets. Starving gangs of feral children roamed the night, hunting homosexuals for amusement.
A nearly 50% increase in baseline spending in one year wasn’t enough.
Oh, someone more familiar with the State Department’s formatting of dates, could I get a clarification.
I got the email notice that my passport approval had been approved, that it was going to printing, and I should have it by 02/03/2025 – are they using the US format where that means Next Week, or the International format where that’s March?
From memory – US standard when I got mine.
My concern comes from the fact that processing times are repeatedly listed a 4-6 weeks, which would line up with early March, where early February would be closer to 2 weeks.
I just don’t expect them to get it done fast one routine processing is all.
Someone in the printing department is overly optimistic of the shipping process?
Mine took two weeks and an additional to get back my docs. Wife renewal was a week. This was all accounting for two holidays in between
You mean they lied to me about how long it might take?
Under promise, rarely over deliver. Don’t you government bro?
I’m a tech guy who thrives on precision.
I’ve gotten very good at estimating realistic project timelines. (The powers that be never line it, insist on shorter, but my estimates usually prove true)
Gas prices up 20¢/gal over a week. Where’s my OMB “I did that” sticker?
They only went up $0.06 at my local station.
It’s back over $3 at some stations. Time for pitchforks?
In my drive down to North Carolina last month, it was over $3 everywhere except my local station where it was $2.999 As long as I didn’t fill up in Pennsylvania, it was closer to $3 than $3.50
*this month.
January was a long month. I drove down the weekend of the 12th to see my grandmother before she passed on the 16th. That was barely over two weeks ago. My brain is just in february already
My condolences on the passing of your grandmother.
Thank you. It had reached the “No treatment options” stage where there were too many medical issues piled up. So while draining and stressful, it was not unexpected.
4.15$ for premium?
Pretty cheap for San diego
I came back to NH from a trip to PA last Thursday.
On that day, gas in the Allentown, PA area was more expensive than gas at a Massachusetts Turnpike Rest Stop.
Down $.30 here but we have bipolar prices in NKY
“So why do these nice, wonderful people need asylum?”
Under even the least scrutiny the open borders arguments fail. They aren’t seeking safety. They aren’t seeking a better life. They are coming here for free handouts.
The people pushing open borders are not offering safety or a better life. They dont give a fuck about the welfare of those people. They are trying to destroy the culture here and replace the voters with a more pliable population.
The whole thing is evil.
Experts baffled
Almost five years have passed since COVID-19 first disrupted America’s schools, and new data, known as the Nation’s Report Card, offers cause for hope — and concern.
The good news: In math, many students have made up at least some of the academic ground they lost during the pandemic.
The bad news: In both reading and math, most fourth- and eighth-graders in 2024 still performed below pre-pandemic 2019 levels.
What’s more, while these achievement declines were exacerbated by the pandemic, they appear to have begun even before COVID-19, raising important questions about why students are still struggling and what educators and policymakers can do about it.
Needs more rodeo clown strip show storytime.
Everything after is bullshit because of this propaganda nonsense. Covid did jack shit, government…government disrupted the schools.
Nobody forced schools to close. Educators had the option to quit. /derp
If you teach reading and math you get students who can read and do math. If you teach genderfluidity and hatred for western civilization you get trigglypuff.
We need new, new, new, … math.
The news arrives as the nation’s public schools have largely spent the $190 billion in federal emergency funding they received from Congress to help pay for, among other things, research-backed interventions, including summer school and tutoring. Previous research suggests that money did lead to modest academic gains, though this new data shows students still have a long way to go.
This vitally important spending must not be questioned! Without these funds our children would be utterly ignorant of important gender and social injustice concepts.
But COVID-19 isn’t all to blame. A longer view of fourth-graders’ math scores — and student achievement more broadly — shows those scores began stagnating and even declining before the pandemic. Math scores peaked around 2013. Multiple education researchers tell NPR they aren’t sure why.
BOOOOOOSH!
No child gets ahead.
Speaking of… My town was impacted here. Fortunately, no kids in the school anymore.
https://techcrunch.com/2025/01/28/powerschool-begins-notifying-students-and-teachers-after-massive-data-breach/
Obviously the answer is “the teachers aren’t getting paid enough!”