If you have anger issues, this one is a great tool (h/t mindyourbusiness)
This week’s book:
Discourses and Selected Writings
Disclaimer: I’m not your Supervisor. These are my opinions after reading through these books a few times.
Epictetus was born a slave around 50 ad. His owner was Epaphroditus, a rich freedman who was once a slave of Nero. Though he was a slave Epictetus was sent to study philosophy under Musonius Rufus.
Epictetus was lame and there are some stories it was caused by his master and others that it was caused by disease.
He was a freedman when all philosophers were banished from Rome in 89 by the Emperor Domitian. He then started his school in Greece, and had many students. He did not leave any writings from his lessons, but one of his students, Flavius Arrian, took notes and wrote the Discourses.
Epictetus did not marry, had no children, and lived to be around 80-85.In retirement, he adopted a child that would have been abandoned and raised him with a woman.
He died sometime around AD 135.
He might be my favorite Stoic teacher. I love his bare bones and very straight forward approach.
Following is a paragraph-by-paragraph discussion of one of his lessons. Epictetus’s text appears in bold, my replies are in normal text.
ON PROGRESS
He who is making progress, having learned of the philosophers that desire is for things good and aversion is toward things evil, and having also learned that serenity and calm[1] are not attained by a man save as he succeeds in securing the objects of desire and as he avoids encountering the objects of aversion—such a one has utterly excluded desire from himself, or else deferred it to another time,[2] and feels aversion only toward the things which involve freedom of choice.
At a beginning level of Stoicism, it is easy to decide that if tranquility is a worth while goal, then avoiding unpleasantness is one way to maintain calmness of mind.
For if he avoids anything that is not a matter of free choice, he knows that some time he will encounter something in spite of his aversion to it, and will come to grief.
If in this early stage hard choices had to be made then that would interfere with the student’s tranquility. Freedom is slavery, and ignorance is strength. It probably is easier to not decide things and therefore not have to deal with stress from making wrong choices or having to pay for bad decisions.
Now if it is virtue that holds out the promise thus to create happiness and calm and serenity, then assuredly progress toward virtue is progress toward each of these states of mind. For it is always true that whatsoever the goal toward which perfection in anything definitely leads, progress is an approach thereto.
While this approach might not be the best one in the long run, it can be a building block to learn more about how to maintain tranquility through trying times instead of just conscientiously avoiding stressors.
5How comes it, then, that we acknowledge virtue to be a thing of this sort, and yet seek progress and make a display of it in other things? What is the work[3] of virtue? Serenity.
If the goal of studying Stoicism is serenity, as I believe it to be, then learning small ways to have serenity is still learning how to have serenity.
Who, then, is making progress? The man who has read many treatises of Chrysippus*? What, is virtue no more than this—to have gained a knowledge of Chrysippus? For if it is this, progress is confessedly nothing else than a knowledge of many of the works of Chrysippus. But now, while acknowledging that virtue produces one thing, we are declaring that the approach to virtue, which is progress, produces something else. “So-and-so,” says someone, “is already able to read Chrysippus all by himself.” It is fine headway, by the gods, that you are making, man! Great progress this!
*The third head of the Stoic school, he was very influential, but unfortunately only fragments of his writings remain.
While learning from the earlier Stoics is important, rote memorization without true understanding is not to be emulated. It is easy to impress people with being able to remember quotes, but it is more important to understand the meaning and follow the spirit of the lessons.
10“Why do you mock him? And why do you try to divert him from the consciousness of his own shortcomings? Are you not willing to show him the work of virtue, that he may learn where to look for his progress?” Look for it there, wretch, where your work lies. And where is your work? In desire and aversion, that you may not miss what you desire and encounter what you would avoid; in choice and in refusal, that you may commit no fault therein; in giving and withholding assent of judgement, that you may not be deceived.[4] But first come the first and most necessary points. Yet if you are in a state of fear and grief when you seek to be proof against encountering what you would avoid, how, pray, are you making progress?
It is difficult to merge the person I want to be with the person I act like I want to be. I may have read many Stoic writings and books, but what good are they if I allow myself to get angry over little things? When I got mad at my dog for acting like a dog this week, I felt silly afterwards and while I am making progress, I still slide backwards sometimes.
Do you yourself show me, therefore, your own progress in matters like the following. Suppose, for example, that in talking to an athlete I said, “Show me your shoulders,” and then he answered, “Look at my jumping-weights.”[5] Go to, you and your jumping-weights! What I want to see is the effect of the jumping-weights. “Take the treatise Upon Choice[6] and see how I have mastered it.” It is not that I am looking into, you slave, but how you act in your choices and refusals, your desires and aversions, how you go at things, and apply yourself to them, and prepare yourself, whether you are acting in harmony with nature therein, or out of harmony with it.
If asked for proof of my following Stoic principles, and all I had were the fact that I have read some of the books, I would feel and look like a fool. If instead I was able to point to the fact that my anger has diminished noticeably, then I would feel as though progress was still happening.
15For if you are acting in harmony, show me that, and I will tell you that you are making progress; but if out of harmony, begone, and do not confine yourself to expounding your books, but go and write some of the same kind yourself. And what will you gain thereby? Do you not know that the whole book costs only five denarii? Is the expounder of it, then, think you, worth more than five denarii? And so never look for your work in one place and your progress in another.
Instead of memorizing other people’s work, it is helpful to actually write my thoughts down, here and in my notebook. It helps to explain things to myself and that leads to a deeper understanding and a better chance of keeping my own serenity.
Where, then, is progress? If any man among you, withdrawing from external things, has turned his attention to the question of his own moral purpose, cultivating and perfecting it so as to make it finally harmonious with nature, elevated, free, unhindered, untrammeled, faithful, and honorable; and if he has learned that he who craves or shuns the things that are not under his control can be neither faithful nor free, but must himself of necessity be changed and tossed to and fro with them, and must end by subordinating himself to others, those, namely, who are able to procure or prevent these things that he craves or shuns; 20and if, finally, when he rises in the morning he proceeds to keep and observe all this that he has learned; if he bathes as a faithful man, eats as a self-respecting man,—similarly, whatever the subject matter may be with which he has to deal, putting into practice his guiding principles, as the runner does when he applies the principles of running, and the voice-trainer when he applies the principles of voice-training,—this is the man who in all truth is making progress, and the man who has not traveled at random is this one.
I am trying to be this type of man. While I can see that there is a huge gap between that and the man I am today, the gap is not as big as it used to be. The progress I have made, while small, is still progress, and that is better than stagnation or regression.
But if he has striven merely to attain the state which he finds in his books and works only at that, and has made that the goal of his travels, I bid him go home at once and not neglect his concerns there, since the goal to which he has traveled is nothing; but not so that other goal—to study how a man may rid his life of sorrows and lamentations, and of such cries as “Woe is me!” and “Wretch that I am!” and of misfortune and failure, and to learn the meaning of death, exile, prison, hemlock;[7] that he may be able to say in prison, “Dear Crito, if so it pleases the gods, so be it,”[8] rather than, “Alas, poor me, an old man, it is for this that I have kept my grey hairs!” 25Who says such things? Do you think that I will name you some man held in small esteem and of low degree? Does not Priam say it? Does not Oedipus? Nay more, all kings say it! For what are tragedies but the portrayal in tragic verse of the sufferings of men who have admired things external? If indeed one had to be deceived[9] into learning that among things external and independent of our free choice none concerns us, I, for my part, should consent to a deception which would result in my living thereafter serenely and without turmoil; but as for you, you will yourselves see to your own preference.
If memorization of Stoic principles was my only goal, then I would be much further along on my path, because it is a much shorter journey. The true Stoic would not be troubled by some of the things that still irritate me. If I do lose everything I hope not to add to the trouble by being miserable about the things I can’t control.
What, then, does Chrysippus furnish us? “That you may know,” he says, “that these things are not false from which serenity arises and tranquillity comes to us, take my books and you shall know how conformable and harmonious with nature are the things which render me tranquil.” O the great good fortune! O the great benefactor who points the way! 30To Triptolemus, indeed, all men have established shrines and altars, because he gave us as food the fruits of cultivation, but to him who has discovered, and brought to light, and imparted to all men the truth which deals, not with mere life, but with a good life,[10]—who among you has for that set up an altar in his honour, or dedicated a temple or a statue, or bows down to God in gratitude for him? But because the gods have given us the vine or wheat, for that do we make sacrifice, and yet because they have brought forth such a fruit in a human mind,[11] whereby they purposed to show us the truth touching happiness, shall we fail to render thanks unto God for this?
People would worship ancient heroes, but not philosophers that would teach others how to live with serenity. Today people are excited to see a rapper or movie star, but most of them don’t know how to live well. If I can follow the lessons better, how much value do I get from them compared to the cost?
Music this week is from Crimson Glory’s second album Transcendence.
If you like Queensryche, Helloween, Iron Maiden, or that type, you should listen to Crimson Glory.
Their lead singer, Midnight, had one of the greatest high metal voices of all time.
This one is a little more polished with better production.
I love it, but not quite as much as the 1st one.
Just like the first album, this one opens with a ripper: Lady of Winter
This is probably my 2nd favorite song from them: In Dark Places
From the Edgar Allen Poe story: Masque of the Red Death
I really thought they would be huge, but it was not to be.
Their next album, which I bought as soon as I was able to find it, was a weird acoustic mess.
Shortly after that the singer retired and they were never quite the same.
To me these are two of the best albums from anybody in this style.
I know many people who can quote scripture but appear not to have taken it to heart. Or people who go to the gym 6 days a week and remain out of shape.
You have to do the work, of course, but you also have to find the path that creates actual change. Serenity and tranquility are excellent goals, but man are they elusive.
By the way, these are jumping weights.
Good one again, Ron, thank you. And listening to the songs while I read is a trip!
Fuck. Wrong link.
Jumping weights.
You mean going to the gym for pizza night doesn’t count as a workout?
We used to go to a gym that had functional fitness classes. There was a group of people who would faithfully attend class 5 mornings a week, then binge drink all weekend. They didn’t make much progress, but they weren’t willing to give up that vice.
You just described the first 15 years of my Marine Corps career.
Although we were in really good shape in spite of our diets and being functional alcoholics.
I’ve found that I need to calorie count at least 5 days a week for me to be dropping weight. If I’m at 4 days a week, I’ll generally stay stable. Anything less, and the weight will start creeping up.
I didn’t use to, but after I hit 47 or 48 years old, I started to notice a little flabbiness that I had never had, and I went from 32″waist to 34″ on my jeans.
If I drop booze it’s pretty much effortless.
We’ll have none of that crazy talk around here!
Right?
But it is body comp kryptonite. For me, at least.
I only drink on Saturdays now and what I used to drink on a normal weeknight is a party now.
If I drink 6 beers that’s a lot, and occasionally I will drink 8, but those are nights I stay up too late, and don’t get much done the next day.
Not hungover, just tired.
Drinking rum every now and then is fun, but I need to stick to my limit or I will be hungover on Sunday.
F-off!
Keto allowed me to drop 80+ pounds pretty easily, but still need another 20+; fortunately, it’s all just
love handles so I’ve cleaned up the visceral I think, but it still looks and feels terrible. Just cannot drop it though. I do carnivore (including no booze, no dairy) for a month at a time without really dropping any of it. I’m on a 4 hour feeding window all the time except weekend where I’ll have breakfast. Stubborn crap WILL NOT GO AWAY. Guess I’ll have to combine carnivore with conscious calorie restriction. Sigh.
Are you kidding me?!? 80 lbs is fucking amazing!
The last bit is the most difficult. Personally, I find that fasting has limited utility, especially over time.
I think the tried and true is the most effective: use cronometer, prioritize protein, eat at a deficit, etc. Just make sure you get your body back into fat burning mode.
If you want some macro help, I like Ketogains. They have a macro calculator for whatever goals you have.
At 55, I have those stubborn love handles too. When I get back from vacation it’s time to buckle down and get rid of the shit.
Good luck!
Booze/beer is a large amount of empty calories that can more easily be left out when counting.
Bourbon and Water is my favorite part of keto.
46 pounds down.
Great job, Bob!
This is true.
It helps to have a calm home life, but even then, I can find a way to upset myself.
“Epictetus was lame”
Harsh, bro!
Sick.
… Some times I like getting more information than I was looking for, but some times I just want a simple number, not all the equations needed to figure it out.
I am just looking for the frequency at which any particular spot on the earth’s surface will see a lunar eclipse. I can find data on eclipses for anywhere on the surface, but just because the moon passes through Earth’s shadow doesn’t mean that it will be visible from a given spot. I know we have records for this sort of information, but the articles on orbital dynamics drown out the simple number.
There are somewhere between 140 and 160 lunar eclipses a century visible from somewhere. So that’s an upper bound. Am I to assume half of those will be visible from a defined location? Or is one hemisphere luckier?
I don’t have direct knowledge or an article to point to, but pretty sure half/half is not correct due to a number of factors including that the sun isn’t perfectly centered in earth’s orbit nor is the earth in the moons orbit, axial tilt of the earth, etc.
You know what would be perfect but which probably doesn’t exist? A heat map of eclipse frequencies around the world.
Funny you mention that. That data can come from unlikely places. The vendor for our EMR/EHR has an outage heatmap and a usage heatmap and definitively showed the path of the eclipse that was visible in most of North America 4-5 years ago. Use of the app declined enough from users going out to watch the eclipse that the use heatmap alarms went off.
Take that, sandbaggers
Bad news for anyone who appreciates a flexible work arrangement: Hard data reveals that remote workers are less productive.
That’s according to a working paper circulated by the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) and written by economists Dave Atkin and Antoinette Schoar at MIT and Sumit Shinde at UCLA. The researchers observed data entry workers in Chennai, India, who were working either in an office or at home, and found that those randomly assigned to working from home were 18% less productive than office workers. Most of that productivity difference was clear from the first day of work, they wrote; the rest was a result of slowed learning for the remote group over the course of two months.
——-
This data only adds fuel to the fire for bosses who are unwavering in their stance that being physically together is vital for productivity, collaboration, and teamwork. Elon Musk has said workers are “pretending to work”; Morgan Stanley CEO James Gorman has worried that the price of remote work is productivity; Mark Zuckerberg suggested that new hires fare better with three days of in-person work alongside colleagues each week; and Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff said that new hires “do better if they’re in the office.” Meanwhile, remote workers largely insist they’re more productive in their own environments; they certainly work more hours.
But the latest data points in favor of bosses. “Workers who most need to be around the house during the workday are exactly the workers who are most distracted working from home,” Atkin explained to Fortune. The extent of that distraction can vary based on the differences in amenities between one’s home and office, commuting challenges, house size, or in each country’s access to childcare.
Sweeping generalities are always never true.
Data entry workers??
And the researchers observed them in their homes? I seriously doubt that.
Universities no longer do this kind of “research” without FedGov handing them piles of money to do it. So it’s all fraud all the time.
With data entry, it’s dead easy to track productivity. I’m more wondering how much you can generalize from Chennai, India.
Data entry should be piecework. That way the faster and more accurate you are, the better you are paid. So sandbagging will be disincentivized. If you don’t feel like working as much, you won’t get paid as much.
“data entry workers in Chennai, India, ”
So, clearly applicable to everyone in America.
Got the callback yesterday.
Being in a windowless box will not improve my productivity.
The new hires that are floundering may benefit from being able to find me in an office. But it won’t improve my productivity in any way.
That’s the spirit!
I have a Window Cube!
Admittedly, the view out the window is a sidewalk and a parking spot I’ll never have the seniority to qualify for. But still, it’s a window.
I look forward to being continuously sick throughout the winter months.
That sucks. Sorry to hear that. I’m still on a hybrid (home four days, office one day). If that were to change, my causal perusals of Indeed would likely get much more serious.
Not chiseled in stone yet. But they are laying out the text on the stone.
“Resolved – Kinnath is forbidden from retiring without prior managerial approval.”
That is the only actual leverage I have at this point.
“How much do you want me to work here?”
“I can fill out the paperwork and retire in a month or so.”
My neighbor got the call back this week. 33 people out of 800 have to return full time. She’s one of the 33.
She’s gonna jump ship, of course.
Been there for a while – in office 3 days a week. The bad news is that my new commute is about to suck. Yesterday I realized I drove past a high school and a middle school. Both start classes on Monday morning.
Ugh, that sucks.
I’m fortunate that I’ve been WFH for over a decade now, so a recall was never in question.
To their credit, upper management saw our productivity go up and just bit the bullet – most people (e.g., those outside the NOCC or SCIF) can work from home 0-5 days a week. The average is 1 day a week in the office. The fact we’re already doing video conferences with Bangalore, Krakow, etc. likely helped with that decision as well – we’re already spread out all over.
They’ve already sublet most of the office space in our new (opened in 2019) headquarters building.
And here’s the pitch.
All told, the current state of disagreement between bosses and workers on where to work results in a “significant loss” in workforce productivity, they write. One major potential solution: a legitimate social safety net. Policies that address constraints like childcare and eldercare stand to have “substantial effects on aggregate productivity.”
That could certainly be a big takeaway for the U.S., where, unlike countries such as Sweden, Switzerland, or Spain, a social safety net is nonexistent. Just one in four private-sector workers has paid family leave, per the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, and the U.S. is the only first-world country without paid maternity leave. Public spending for childcare in Norway and in Iceland is nearly $30,000; in the U.S., it’s $500.
These statistics leave little doubt that greater investments in social support—rather than a mandated office return—would free up workers to do their jobs more effectively. Women, the ones disproportionately saddled with caregiving responsibilities, probably could have told you as much.
A global socialist dictatorship would fix this.
“a social safety net is nonexistent”
Keep on lying until someone is stupid enough to believe it.
Or just keep changing the definition: “Just one in four private-sector workers has paid family leave.” Because now, getting time off when your partner has a child is part of the safety net.
Right. I wonder what the percentage is if you limit it to
womenbirthing people.No matter what lie they tell, there is a large portion of the population either stupid enough to believe it, or dishonest enough to pretend they do.
Moving on.
They likely have literal water and power cuts (happens in middle class neighborhoods in Mumbai). Most households are multigenerational, etc… Basically nothing alike to the US.
Even if you grant the increased productivity from a bigger social safety net, is it a net gain given the cost of that bigger safety net?
Nope.
I’m increasingly convinced that Stoicism is applicable to interactions in your daily life and how you react to them – and that’s not nothing, maybe it’s the most important thing – but it doesn’t provide a concrete philosophical base. Sort of parallel to science which can give you the “is”, but not the “ought”. I don’t see any sort of ‘axiomatic’ (?) principle from which you can derive right and wrong, something like the NAP from which you can try to derive a morality. Maybe Stoicism would work better for me as a sort of implementation superstructure on top of a more defined substructure that provides the moral framework.
“Lady of Winter” also sort of struck me as a hard pop song. Not that there’s anything wrong with that either, great tune. Actually a lot of “Transcendence” is in that ‘hard pop’ sort of space. I won’t turn it off (I actually own the album!), but they never ‘grabbed’ me the way some other bands do.
Maybe not, “living in accordance with nature” can be interpreted many ways.
If you don’t have a concrete understanding of right and wrong, that could mean it’s OK to steal, because that feels natural.
As far as Transcendence, I really enjoy it, but the first one has harder edges.
They did a video for Painted Skies that was pure 80’s cringe. I like the song, but not the video.
They did a video for Painted Skies that was pure 80’s cringe.
Queue up just about any 80’s hard rock/metal video; I’m not sure I ever recovered from “Time Stand Still” (just do performance videos you dorks!). But even that might not be worse than “Holy Diver” – WTF RJD?
This was more like a Poison video than anything RJD did.
I was wrong, it wasn’t Painted Skies, it was Lonely
Check it out:
Lonely
I think they were trying to do what Queensryche did withJet City Woman.
Time Stands Still is when Rush was trying to sound like everyone else instead of Rush.
I saw them during that tour.
Yes…
“Maybe Stoicism would work better for me as a sort of implementation superstructure on top of a more defined substructure that provides the moral framework.”
As someone endeavoring to follow stoicism, I absolutely agree.
OT: Biden administration really wants a war. I guess wars are good for the incumbent.
https://news.yahoo.com/us-military-may-put-armed-164251846.html
If Iran is harassing and seizing commercial ships, I would say the response is an appropriate use of the military. That doesn’t seem like the US is the instigator here.
Erasing the Mulluhs in nuclear hellfire?
This is tit-for-tat action. We’ve been seizing Iranian tankers on suspicion of carrying Russian oil.
Fuck DC.
Not to mention, how many marines are you going to put on each ship? How low does that become an incentive vs. a deterrence?
That was Trump’s mistake. He probably could have won if he’d started something instead of ending it.
Call me crazy, but shouldn’t we reserve this sort of protection for US -flagged ships?
It’s past time we start charging for protection.
Are there any US Flagged ships left?
A few. But that could change if we let other nations deal with their issues themselves.
The thing I never know in these stories – Iranian waters or international? And like Nerfherder said, aren’t we doing the same shit?
The problem with the straits of Hormuz is that they are so narrow that I don’t think any qualifies as international, and you get the situation where there’s like a dispute over where the territorial waters change. I forget which side the shipping channel is closer to.
Maybe the Chinese can invite everyone to sit down with maps and settle this nonsense. It certainly won’t be us.
They’lll probably just build one of their fake islands and claim its Chinese waters now.
I’m increasingly convinced that Stoicism is applicable to interactions in your daily life and how you react to them – and that’s not nothing, maybe it’s the most important thing – but it doesn’t provide a concrete philosophical base.
A long time ago, I was talking to a friend who was vastly more well versed in this stuff than I, and we got on a very similar line of thinking about Zen Buddhism. He said there was a sort of trap one could fall into where it was possible to justify virtually anything to oneself. He had a specific term for it- possibly “devil Zen” but I can’t say for sure. It basically boiled down to a species of nihilism. The same could be done in Stoicism.
I’ve said the same thing in previous comments here regarding stoicism without limit.
Not to mention, how many marines are you going to put on each ship? How low does that become an incentive vs. a deterrence?
Human shields, or bait? What difference does it make?
Wouldn’t it be smarter to just end the stupid de facto prohibition on merchants ships being armed?
As if everyone is equal under the law.
“You know the worst thing about this indictment, under the terms of this indictment, Jack Smith can be indicted. Let me explain to you why,” Dershowitz said. “The statute says the following, two or more persons conspire to injure and deny somebody the free exercise or enjoyment of any right or privilege secured him by the constitution. What if a court ultimately rules that Donald Trump had a right under the First Amendment to make his Jan. 6 speech and to do what he did? Then Jack Smith will have conspired to deny him of that right. That’s how serious this is.”
“Jack Smith … deliberately, willfully and maliciously leaves out the words that President Trump spoke on Jan. 6 in his terrible speech. which I disagree with, but what he said was, ‘I want you to assemble peacefully and patriotically,’” Dershowitz added. “Jack [Smith] leaves that out. That is a lie, a lie, an omission lie and if you’re going to indict somebody for telling lies, don’t tell lies in the indictment. If you’re going to indict somebody for denying people their constitutional rights, don’t deny them their constitutional rights by indicting them for free speech. That’s how hypocritical this is.”
Doesn’t matter.
A jury in DC will likely convict Trump.
Even if it doesn’t, no prosecutor in DC or at Justice would prosecute Smith.
We have become a full-on banana republic.
Yes. And the purpose of this whole farce is to drive home the lesson that there will be no voting our way out of it.
What if a court ultimately rules that Donald Trump had a right under the First Amendment to make his Jan. 6 speech and to do what he did? Then Jack Smith will have conspired to deny him of that right. That’s how serious this is.”
Preposterous hogwash.
This guy is good!
Fraudster, 58, is finally busted five years after escaping prison following $7M Ponzi scheme – as it’s revealed he flaunted his life of luxury on social media and lived in a $1.5M Florida mansion
My first day waking up in Glibs’ official central time zone and there’s no afternoon links. Just as well, I still have to unload this whole ass U-Haul truck. I don’t know what was worse, the trip or the destination.
you are two hours early for afternoon links.
It’s 2pm. Afternoon links drop at 4pm.
/One True Time Zone
2000 UTC in summer, 2100 UTC in winter.
/the *real* true time zone
None of that crap.
Yeah, sounds faggy and European.
I like that UTC isn’t really an initialism – they couldn’t agree between the English (CUT – “Coordinated Universal Time”) and French initialism (TUC – “Temps Universel Coordonné”), so they split the baby in half and just went with UTC.
Excuse me, but Rolex never made a Pepsi bezel UTC Master. It’ll always be
BurmaGMT to me./One True Time Zone
Word.
3:00 central.
Congrats on the move!
Oh shit, my NTP server didn’t sync. That explains it.
Well, that and just being jet lagged and mildly retarded. How is it hotter here than the Mojave?
I needed this dose of stoicism btw. Worst 19 hour road trip of my life.
I’d wager that it’s not hotter but more humid.
It’s a little of both. Our national weather service “excessive heat advisory” in NV finally ended on Tuesday, just in time for the national weather service to declare an excessive heat advisory in this part of TX. According to wunderground.com it’s 4 degrees warmer here right now, with the index making for a perceived difference of 11 degrees.
Congrats on your move.
Glad you made it to the new home safely.
Danke. I woke up at 9:30 AM Wednesday on 6 hours of sleep planning to take off in the afternoon with a brief stop overnight for a nap, but ended up not finishing up my last minute packing and getting my truck loaded until midnight. So I said fuck it, I’ll take off now and just pull over at a rest stop or park at a Walmart somewhere along the way in a few hours. Got on the road, got wired as all hell, said fuck it again and just drove the full 19 hours straight through. Parked in front of the house 36 hours almost to the minute since I started getting ready to leave, turned on the window AC and ceiling fan in the kitchen, dragged my foam bed topper into the house, threw it on the kitchen floor, and passed the fuck out.
2 glibs down, 1 more to go for Leaving Las Vegas. Gratz you made it safe.
I’d say I hope your move goes better than mine, but it’d almost have to.
I unfortunately will have at minimum 2 cross-country trips to make, with animals both times since the Mrs isn’t immediately going with me
, with animals both times
I thought the boys were staying in LV?
😀
Bwahaha! If our old dog would just get along with our old cat, it would be one trip. But Mrs OBE also wants me to not be lonely so I get the loudest and most active animal (the old dog) to keep me company.
Well, that’s a bummer. Godspeed and safe travels when the time comes.
White House Says Bidenomics So Successful The Average American Has Twice As Many Jobs As They Had Two Years Ago
I know this isn’t a real quote, but if this was actually something she said, I don’t think I’d be surprised:
Shut up, Mike.
Mike Pence:
“The President specifically asked me and his gaggle of crackpot lawyers asked me to literally reject votes…”
There is plenty of precedent for 1) postponing the count in order to investigate and 2) accepting alternate electors.
Its criminalizing our electoral/political process from State to Federal. Dark road we are on
Pence is a not too bright sanctimonious jagoff, a preachy douchebag if you will.
Fuck that guy.
Yet another dismal Trump hire, not as bad as Barr or Bolton but still.
Mikey is going to ride this rollercoaster right into the sun.
Who is he trying to impress? Is he trying to do the Romney/McCain thing where he makes nice with the Dems? Because that doesn’t work out that well.
Epictetus is my favorite of the Stoics, btw (or possibly Arrian, I guess, since he’s the one who bothered writing down what Epictetus is supposed to have taught). I just re-read the Discourses a couple years ago. It would probably upset him, but I consider Augustine an honorary Stoic as well.
I wish we had more writings, I would love to know which writings of Chrysippus he was impressed with.
Pfizer exec admits under oath that their mRNA jabs were never tested for transmission before being rolled out to the public.
https://twitter.com/BuzzedBeard/status/1686473123762229250
IT’S GOT ANTIBODIES. IT’S WHAT PLANTS CRAVE!
He has to say that, because they always said they had no data on transmission, going way back at the beginning. Everybody just “assumed” that it would work. I kind of wonder if they did have some tests, and they didn’t look great so they buried them. I guess we’ll find out in 75 years.
Bidenomics is working- why don’t people believe it?
Manufacturing activity contracted in July for the ninth consecutive month, while manufacturing employment hit its lowest level since July 2020, according to the Institute for Supply Management.
A recent Fed survey showed banks expect to tighten credit standards across all loan categories in the second half of the year, after they pulled back on commercial and industrial lending. Deutsche Bank Research said the four previous times the survey showed such tightening were all associated with recessions.
The bigger threat in the near term is shaping up to be rising gasoline prices, driven in part by global oil supply cuts and a U.S. heat wave that’s curtailed refinery output (keep in mind refineries are essentially giant, volatile chemistry sets).
The national average gasoline price Friday was $3.83, more than 29 cents higher than a month ago. Oil prices rose Thursday after Saudi Arabia extended production cuts ahead of an Opec+ meeting on Friday.
“We’re going to be going from disinflation potentially back to inflation when we talk about the price of gasoline — that’s something that could happen as soon as September,” GasBuddy analyst Patrick De Haan told POLITICO in a recent interview about what’s happening at the pump. “[Fed officials] shouldn’t put their guard down when it comes to energy prices.”
Just wait ’til those new labor contracts start working their way through the data.
Who are you going to believe, Biden or your bank account?
I mean, I did hire another field tech this week… *shrug*
Strictly coincidental- organized media talking points are a right wing myth
In a research note about Friday’s jobs report, the chief economist at consulting firm RSM US did something surprising: Instead of talking about rate hikes or soft landings, he made the case for universal child care.
Why it matters: Child care for kids under the age of 5 is increasingly an issue for more mainstream economists who are concerned about the prospect of long-term labor shortages in the U.S.
The idea is that a good, affordable child care system — the U.S. has an unaffordable patchwork — would incentivize more mothers of young children to come off the sidelines and into the workforce.
“Universal child care is the most realistic way to help expand the labor force at a time when the economy needs workers the most,” writes RSM’s Joe Brusuelas in a research note titled “Where are we going to find the workers?”
——-
What they’re saying: The president of the San Francisco Fed, Mary Daly, brought up the issue of child care, unprompted, in a conversation with Axios reporters and editors.
When asked if more immigration was needed to meet the increasing demand for workers in the U.S., Daly said she’s hearing less about that issue lately from employers — and more about child care.
“What I’m hearing right now, is ‘We need more child care,'” she said. Her business contacts are telling her they know of potential employees who want to work, but either can’t afford child care or “there simply is no child care.”
Muh social safety net!
It takes a lot of courage to forge ones vision into a bright future. We need a succinct name for this…..a gallant vision? Brave…. brave something…..let me think about it.
I think I have a problem with bad old school candy.
I like every flavor of Chowards candy wafers. The lemon tastes like Lemon Pez, the Violet tastes like lavender, and the Guava tastes like…Guava.
https://chowardcompany.com/
Kagan told the audiences of judges and lawyers in Portland, Oregon: “It just can’t be that the court is the only institution that somehow is not subject to checks and balances from anybody else. We’re not imperial.”
“Can Congress do various things to regulate the Supreme Court? I think the answer is: yes.”
Constitutional scholar.
Since congress can and does defer responsibilities to regulatory agencies, it follows that the president can control how SCOTUS works.
Awesome.
It is subject to checks and balances but rather than submit articles of impeachment against a judge they’d rather place themselves into regulatory chains.
*them, not themselves
Because the powers to appoint, to approve, and to impeach are not checks and balances.
This is probably the first time that I have ever heard a judge say they are all-powerful, pending a review from higher up the judicial food chain.
“Please come put me in hand cuffs.”
say they are not all-powerful,
proof read, proof read, proof read . . . . then post.
That probably means the other justices disagree, and she’s just doing her little “I’m the only one who gets it” routine that she loves so much.
+1 Benjamin Netanyahu
Was she eating her own boogers when she said that? Kagan is the evil dunce that wrote her masters thesis with the premise that communism didn’t work in the US because they didn’t have the right people in charge, isn’t she?
How tiresome the socialists are, my God.