Saturday Morning Links of Distress

by | May 1, 2021 | Daily Links | 148 comments

It’s getting quite dire here with SP away. Amazon boxes are piling up, dogshit is piling up, unpaid bills are piling up, my dirty laundry pile is… piling up, and the dirty dishes have about reached the ceiling, where they’ll meet the evidence of my pressure cooker experiment. I am shitty at this bachelor thing.

Birthdays today include a guy who definitely did some lines; a woman who would definitely be a Glib if she were alive today; the patron saint of Hallmark; the guy I’d nominate as the most likely perp of the Piltdown hoax; a woman who opened countless sports events; a very successful homophobe; a guy who will forever be 22; the last of the Sixty Minutes guys; one more proof that great talent and brains don’t always correlate; and an absolutely fabulous comic actress.

The news is not exactly fabulous, but it is what it is.

 

I swear, this treasure trove was not created by SugarFree.

 

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!! Funnier than anything else they’re likely to do.

 

HAHAHAHAHA…. wait, I already used that. 

 

Home of the world’s most dangerous parking lot.

 

A related story.

 

The visual is not an attractive one.

 

Old Guy Music today honors a fellow who died this past week, and had really the most interesting story of all the astronauts.

About The Author

Old Man With Candy

Old Man With Candy

Suffer little children, and forbid them not, to come unto me. Wait, wrong book, I'll find something else.

148 Comments

  1. Surly Knott

    Wonderfully appropriate music link from an excellent band.

    • EvilSheldon

      Indeed. Well done, sir!

    • Festus

      Yep. Love Tull!

    • DEG

      Yes!

  2. limey

    the guy I’d nominate as the most likely perp of the Piltdown hoax

    I don’t think he’s the most likely, but perhaps he was incredibly keen to believe. Duped, rather than deceptive?

    Good morning.

    • limey

      *tumbleweed*

      It couldn’t possibly be because he was Catholic clergy that influenced your judgment, Old Man?

      *further tumbleweed*

  3. Sean

    Two sex toy links? Hmmm. Someone might need to clear their browser history before their wife comes home.

    • TARDis

      Not if she has her own computer. ?

  4. The Late P Brooks

    Sober statesmanship

    Former Secretaries of State Hillary Clinton and Condoleezza Rice reportedly said they’re worried about Biden’s withdrawal plan. Rice even went as far as to suggest the U.S. may have to return at some point in the future. Stavridis agreed with Rice during a Friday evening interview on CNBC’s “The News with Shepard Smith.”

    “Let’s remember, we went there to crush terrorism, which had attacked us,” said Stavridis, the former supreme allied commander for NATO. “It’s entirely possible it could reflash, not only Taliban but also Al Qaeda, now the Islamic State. We’d better be prepared to come back in there if we have to.”

    Starvridis told host Shepard Smith that while he understands the sense of Afghan fatigue, it is not unusual to keep U.S. troops abroad. He noted that there are 35,000 troops in South Korea and 50,000 troops stationed in Europe.

    Stavridis suggested keeping between 3,000-2,000 troops in Afghanistan to “maintain what we’ve done” and to “avoid a resurgence of terrorism, which could strike us again.”

    We can’t just pull out and leave them wanting more!

    • Sean

      What if we just flattened the whole fucking country and left a plaque saying “Hey buddy, stop doing that.” ?

      Seems sensible to me.

      • TARDis

        There no money in that though, so no deal.

      • Scruffy Nerfherder

        ???

      • Suthenboy

        Because that wouldn’t allow these fuckheads that have already looted over 1 trillion dollars to keep up the overseas charades and loot another trillion?

      • Animal

        From the very beginning, I’ve been saying that if we had to have a military response, it should have been to go in an flatten every building larger than an outhouse in that shithole of a country. Load up a bunch of B-52s at Diego Garcia and carpet-bomb the whole place, one end to the other.

        The last wave of B-52s would be loaded with leaflets, all reading “This is what happens when you fuck with us.”

        Message delivered. End of operation.

    • Chafed

      I thought with women in charge there would be only peace?

  5. The Late P Brooks

    Query:

    Does anybody here have experience with the “Vivaldi” browser?

    When my laptop went down, it was evidently a Firefox-specific issue. I uninstalled it, and now I need a new browser. It’s looking like a choice between Vivaldi and Opera.

    • Sean

      Does it work in all seasons?

      • Tejicano

        Are you sure that your version of Firefox is Baroque?

      • leon

        Holst on, have you looked at Ice Weasel?

      • Gender Traitor

        Do you think he can Handel it?

      • egould310

        I’d go with Opera, and use Ice Weasel as a bach up.

    • rhywun

      Never heard of it.

    • Yusef drives a Kia

      It has 254 variations of the same theme,

    • Scruffy Nerfherder

      Brave

      • Tres Cool

        I concur
        Big fan, even on iOS

    • EvilSheldon

      It’s what I use, mostly. Chromium based. Seems to work pretty well.

    • The Gunslinger

      She gets pretty good height.?

    • Old Man With Candy

      More appropriate than you think.

  6. The Late P Brooks

    This is what happens when you prey on the unreasoning fears of the weak-minded

    President Biden spent 30 seconds frantically looking for a mask he left in his pocket before his outdoor rally in Georgia this week — saying he’d be “in trouble” without it — despite being fully vaccinated.

    Footage from Thursday’s drive-in event in Duluth — which marked his 100th day in office — showed the commander-in-chief immediately hunting for his missing mask after arriving at his podium.

    “I can’t find my mask!” he could be heard saying, initially drowned out by the loud welcome music of Jackie Wilson’s “(Your Love Keeps Lifting Me) Higher and Higher.”

    First lady Jill Biden joined him in his desperate search as he repeated his plea, taking the same folder to flick through and also bending down to look on the floor.

    These people are as superstitious as snake handling cultists.

    • The Gunslinger

      It sure is nice that we don’t need to be embarrassed about our president anymore since we got rid of OMB.

    • EvilSheldon

      Or alternately, if Uncle Joe forgets his mask again, he’ll have to go to the Punishment Room…

  7. Nephilium

    Alright all. Enjoy your day, the girlfriend and I are about to head downtown for some brunch, and then to check out some of the draft day festivities.

    • rhywun

      I don’t remember this being a days-long nationally-televised event before. Is this a new thing? TBF, I wasn’t paying attention. Still not, but I found it odd.

      • Nephilium

        First round at least I think was usually aired. Not sure about the other days. The girlfriend has a friend who came into town to watch the draft and is sitting there watching all the picks. I think that’s deserving of a nerd sign.

      • robc

        A few years ago they split it out over 3 days. A few decades ago they split it into 2 days, I think.

    • Master JaimeRoberto (royal we/us)

      At the bar every day is draft day.

  8. The Late P Brooks

    Never heard of it.

    Me neither.

  9. The Late P Brooks

    We hunted around and found a guy willing to say what we wanted to hear

    But a small vocal minority of venture capitalists, with plenty of data to back them up, say they are comfortable with raising the rate. A 2018 study by the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service concluded there was no strong relationship between low capital gains taxes and greater innovation.

    “Although arguments are made that lower gains taxes stimulate innovation and entrepreneurship, there is little evidence in history to connect periods of technical advance with lower taxes or even high rates of return,” the report states.

    However, some investors, like Vinod Khosla, a prominent Silicon Valley billionaire and investor, say they don’t mind if their taxes go up.

    “It’s time lower taxes not be key criteria for ethical folks,” Khosla tweeted earlier this month. “Sharing the benefits of capitalism is not terrible.”

    Ethics, Silicon Valley style.

    • Suthenboy

      Every single word of that is horseshit

    • leon

      “Sharing the benefits of capitalism is not terrible.”

      Then sell all your goods and give the money to the poor. I don’t know why you think that the government is the institution of sharing wealth.

      Or is it because you want to force everyone else to share.

  10. The Late P Brooks

    “For investors and VCs, it’s time to pay up,” said Nihal Mehta, a founding general partner at Eniac Ventures. “The investment in human capital is going to outweigh the delta in the tax that we are paying.”

    Lisa Calhoun, the founding general partner of Valor Ventures and the first woman to start a venture capital firm in Georgia, echoed the same view.

    “For myself, I didn’t start a VC firm because I would have a tax privilege,” she said. “I got into venture capital to change the world. For those that lobby that the best and brightest are going to leave over a tax rate, I say goodbye. Generating wealth is a byproduct of wealth of hard work and opportunity, not a tax rate.”

    Unfortunately, those same best and brightest world-changers are incapable of imagining any solution not provided by the government. It makes one wonder how they managed to succeed at anything.

    • rhywun

      I say goodbye

      Don’t worry, Biden and Friends are doing their absolute best to chase away innovation and wealth.

      WTF is wrong with everyone?!

      • WTF

        They are illiterates when it comes to economics and history?

      • Suthenboy

        No, it is worse than that. It is some kind of collective insanity.

    • Tres Cool

      Anytime I hear someone use the “delta” in a sentence, (‘whats the delta on that ?”)
      I want to hit them in the face.

      • Sean

        *Hands Tres a tire iron*

        If you’re going to do something, do it right.

      • trshmnstr the terrible

        I wanted to fly on the delta, but they wouldn’t let me bring my lambda.

    • Old Man With Candy

      My take is different. This is the equivalent of a hostage video. When the government can squash you like a bug and is in the process of pulling off a shoe, it’s best to say that O’Brien is holding up 5 fingers (if I may mix my metaphors and allusions).

      • egould310

        (if I may mix my metaphors and allusions)

        Sure. But don’t mix your liquor.

    • Scruffy Nerfherder

      She’s an idiot that is blinded by the fact she lives in an era of uberloose monetary policy.

      When capital becomes scarce, reality will set in.

    • Scruffy Nerfherder

      “I got into venture capital to change the world”

      Hubris combined with a lack of actual talent. I’m beginning to think venture capital is the privatized version of the administrative state.

  11. The Late P Brooks

    Omri Marian, a tax law professor at the University of California, Irvine, said the political hurdles remain very real. He also said he didn’t buy claims that venture capital and other types of investment would slow if Biden’s new tax plan were to be enacted.

    “These people are not going to stop being entrepreneurs just because they’re going to keep less of their profit,” Marian said.

    But they might decide to domicile themselves elsewhere, Better get to work, and build the wall!

    • leon

      “These people are not going to stop being entrepreneurs just because they’re going to keep less of their profit,”

      So it’s fine if we expropriate them. Not to mention that this will emaciate investment

    • Drake

      How would she know? Has she asked?

      I was in B-School during the Clinton tax hikes. Met an entrepreneur guest lecturer who casually mentioned in April that he was done working for the year as it wasn’t worth it to him. He was just doing things like talking to us, playing golf, and planning for next year.

  12. trshmnstr the terrible

    Home of the world’s most dangerous parking lot.

    I always park a couple stores over when I go to Ranch 99. The extra walk is worth it to find an unviolated parking space.

  13. The Late P Brooks

    What if we just talk about it some more?

    As a potentially historic fire season threatens the West, wildfire survivors and experts urged Congress on Thursday to act quickly to prevent more devastation amid a worsening drought and rising temperatures.

    Members of the House Natural Resources subcommittee on national parks, forests and public lands heard sometimes emotional testimony about how to better manage forests, fight climate change and equip federal firefighters for what is likely to be another record wildfire season.

    The virtual hearing wrapped up a few hours before a brush fire erupted in Southern California, forcing some residents of Ventura County to evacuate their homes.

    ——-

    Despite warnings from experts, congressional leaders remain split over how to address the crisis. While some point to climate change, others blame forest management. Some lawmakers are pushing for federal agencies to hire more wildland firefighters, but others want states to take proactive roles in securing communities.

    “We must dispel the notion that there is nothing we can do,” Fulcher said. “Too frequently many of my friends on the other side of the aisle have blamed climate change for an ever-growing multitude of sins, including wildfires, while ignoring the real culprit of our present disaster: Decades of insufficient forest management, not climate change, have led to led to overgrown, diseased and dying forests.”

    Rep. Joe Neguse, D-Colo., countered that Congress must stop the “drain” of federal resources to land agencies and increase the federal wildland workforce. But at the heart of the issue, Neguse said, is climate change.

    It’s not “red tape”. It’s people who work their asses off trying to prevent practical solutions because they think they can maintain nature in some sort of beautiful pristine stasis.

    • BakedPenguin

      Tony Heller on historic fires.

    • Festus

      Haven’t got to links or anything yet. Head office appointed a Supervisor and robbed me of my supply privilege. From here on out I’ll be ordering through a third-party with a five week lead time. This ain’t good. I’ve got maybe two weeks of moonfloss on hand. I’m fucking livid. Do they want me out?

      • Festus

        Oh yeah, the powers out. FML

      • Gender Traitor

        moonfloss

        ::blank stare::

        Is that like… a g-string or thong?

      • Festus

        Toilet tissue, you goose!

      • Toxteth O'Grady

        Any backup plan if the worst is true?

      • Toxteth O'Grady

        (rereads) Oh, your electricity (hydro?). If you need to go…

      • Festus

        If they heave me I’m fucked. I could hire on with another firm if they’d have me. Being this old in this game ain’t no bed of roses.

      • Mojeaux

        Oh, wow, Festus. I’ll keep my fingers crossed for you!

    • KSuellington

      California is now cutting about one quarter as many trees as were cut in the early 80’s. Now instead of being made into wood products they are burning down each summer. This is much more environmentally sound for some mysterious reason.

  14. BakedPenguin

    Rhywun – (and anyone else who might be interested) there will be a couple of AFL games on FS1 . The first is a couple weeks from now (Tigers v Giants), the second is three weeks from now. (Demons v Crows, woot!)

    I was up early this morning and just happened to catch Port Adelaide v Brisbane.

    • rhywun

      I’ll be damned. I didn’t see that coming. Wonderful!

      I get FS2 also. I may have misstated that before. It’s FS+ that is now extra-pay, so I don’t get those matches.

      Still, a nice selection.

  15. The Late P Brooks

    Brave

    I tried. Apparently this laptop us too ancient to meet the hardware requirements. I have been using Brave on the windows box.

    • rhywun

      Brave is ugly AF. And I don’t care for all the pushing crypto.

  16. Drake

    The creepiest thing about the kegel machine ad is the Sulu voice over.

    • Timeloose

      “ It don’t require your eyes or your hands, so you can make Flying Chicken Pro part of your workout routine without taking time away from anything else. ”

      Nice grammar Flying Chicken.

    • Fatty Bolger

      Oh my.

  17. Muzzled Woodchipper

    Man, fuck this vaccine.

    Yesterday I felt like someone took a running start and hit me in the arm with a 2×4.

    Today I wake up with chills and full body aches. No fever, at least, though that doesn’t change the fact that I feel like dog shit.

    • Scruffy Nerfherder

      I don’t think you’re supposed to fuck it. Maybe that’s your problem.

      • Drake

        It fucks you!

    • Festus

      Feel better,Friend!

    • Gender Traitor

      So sorry to hear that. Matches what I’ve been hearing from multiple co-workers who’ve been jabbed. Of course, they also get paid time off that isn’t counted against their usual annual allotment. I believe that they felt horrible…but some of them have taken as many as four days off afterward.

      I hope you feel better MUCH sooner than that!

    • Toxteth O'Grady

      I often overhear similar reports in public.

    • KSuellington

      I got the first moderna dose on Wednesday afternoon as the pressure from my family was building and I was fairly ambivalent about it. My sister had a baby a few weeks ago and I figured if I ever wanted to see him I should just go ahead and get the magic shot. Only side effect was the sore arm, that was really sore the next day but today is about 98% back to normal. Let’s see how the second one goes. I’m pretty fucking pissed that due to SlowJoe I’m gonna have to get a negative COVID test to return back to the land of the formerly free when we visit Mexico in 6 weeks.

    • Smilin' Joe Fission

      I have an appointment for the 1st Pfizer shot up here in Toronto this Tuesday. I’m really on the fence over getting it. The unknown risk of possible long term health issues is making me quite apprehensive.

      My wife is in the third trimester and the doctors are pushing it hard on her. We have decided she will not get the jab while carrying. That is too much unknown risk for me. I personally find it unethical for doctors to be pushing this experimental drug on pregnant women, but it seems I’m in the minority.

      • trshmnstr the terrible

        Wife knows a person who lost her (nursing) baby to a blood clotting issue after she got the shot. We’re a hard “no” on the shots right now.

  18. EvilSheldon

    I guess I’m not surprised that Judy Collins was born on May Day.

    Yeah, she’s a huge commie scumbag, but man, did she have a voice…

  19. The Other Kevin

    Maybe I’m missing something, but has Musk done anything that controversial besides a few snarky tweets? Guy doesn’t even tweet every day. People ate wound pretty tight lately.

    This is where we really miss the queen’s husband. He’d have been perfect to present that award.

    • Scruffy Nerfherder

      He doesn’t bow to the mob.

      Therefore, he must be a bad person.

    • Fatty Bolger

      They used to like him, but his heterodoxy has made him “controversial.” Also, he’s rich. Well, so are the SNL people. But they’re just 1 percenter rich, not rich people’s rich like Musk. Plus they make money doing bad skits in the cause of the left, which is far more honorable than making cars and rocket ships and other useless shit like that.

    • DEG

      He talked about restarting one of his factories that had been shut down during the height of the Lil Rona Panic because it wasn’t “essential” under the Lil Rona Panic orders. The usual suspects were…. unhappy. I think he did reopen the factory but I can’t remember.

    • Toxteth O'Grady

      Moved to Texas?

      Philip was more compos mentis than Biden, 20 years his junior.

  20. The Late P Brooks

    Vigilante justice

    Sparks, 31, a Mississippi-based lactation consultant and doctor of pharmacy who is also a mother of a 2-year-old daughter, has become a prolific watchdog on TikTok for those she says are trying to spread misinformation — especially health care workers spreading bogus information about Covid-19.

    “In the past, I have been a little more reserved with how aggressive I have gone after these people, but the longer this pandemic went on, and the more and more misinformation we started seeing as health care workers on social media, the less I started caring about my tone and coming across a certain way,” Sparks said.

    ——-

    She said the videos began as a way to thwart general health care misinformation from spreading on the app, but soon morphed to be more specific as she said she realized some health care workers were not only propagating misinformation about the pandemic, but also teaching their followers how they could get around Covid restrictions.

    Using public information and social media, Sparks said she would identify the TikTokers making dubious claims or bragging about skirting rules and contact their employers or, in the most egregious cases, their respective field’s licensing board in an attempt to hold them accountable.

    ——-

    Karen North, a professor of digital social media at the University of Southern California’s Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism, said one reason viewers are drawn to this type of content is because it’s like a catharsis for their real-life frustration around rule breakers.

    “We all know people who have done things that step over the lines in terms of what we think is right during a pandemic, whether it’s not wearing a mask or being anti-vaxxers or jumping the line to get a vaccine … to the extent we’re frustrated by people we know in our own social circles who are breaking our rules. We can now go online and not only watch someone break a rule but watch someone attack someone for breaking a rule,” North said.

    Misinformation like masks are superstitious nonsense? This virus works just like all the other viruses in history? It has been sold as incredibly contagious and lethal based on a bunch of egregiously wrong (and intentionally so) computer modes?

    Breaking arbitrary and capricious rules based on a broad bureaucratic power grab needs to be ruthlessly punished, you say.

    Okay, Karen.

    • Scruffy Nerfherder

      “My name’s Savannah. I’m a doctor at a pharmacy, and I’m about to absolutely wreck your s—,” Sparks says in the video before launching into a fact-check of the pharmacy technician’s claims.

      But Sparks didn’t stop there. She then contacted the woman’s supervisor.

      “Her scope of practice doesn’t allow her … to counsel on medications so, especially coming from the realm of pharmacy, which is my wheelhouse, I really went in on that individual and I was like, ‘You really should not be talking about this,'” Sparks said.

      Anybody who uses “wreck your shit” and “in my wheelhouse” in any type of conversation is almost guaranteed to be an asshole.

      • Scruffy Nerfherder

        And I’m laughing at the “I want to talk to your supervisor”. It’s too on the nose.

      • Toxteth O'Grady

        Porny name. More attractive than she sounds.

  21. The Late P Brooks

    The subjects of callout culture are not the only ones who have had to pay a price for having the eyes of the internet locked on them.

    On March 28, Sparks posted a video announcing she was stepping away from TikTok because of an onslaught of harassment.

    She said her address and phone number were posted online, and that her direct messages on Instagram were flooded with death threats directed both at her and her young daughter. Her business pages were bombed with negative reviews. And links to her TikTok account were posted to extremist forum 4chan.

    “They posted aerial photos of my mom’s house on 4chan, which they paired next to a video of me and my sister dancing in her backyard to confirm that I was still at her house so they could plan to murder, rape, and kill me,” Sparks said.

    Witch hunting is a dangerous business. Not for the faint of heart.

    • EvilSheldon

      Cry-bullying – it’s not just for cops anymore!

  22. trshmnstr the terrible

    On March 28, Sparks posted a video announcing she was stepping away from TikTok because of an onslaught of harassment.

    She said her address and phone number were posted online

    Good, I hope her employer gets harassed to the point where they’re forced to fire her. A little taste of her won medicine.

    • leon

      You mean harrasing people leads to backlash of harassment? Leave Brittany alone!!

    • leon

      If she wants sympathy she can look it up in the dictionary

  23. BakedPenguin

    I thought this was funny. Still, they should probably charge less for it if they don’t want accusations of hypocrisy.

    • Mojeaux

      Coffin dodging dementia riddled tyrant

      LOL “coffin dodging”

  24. leon

    As I was teasing my daughter this morning, I realized that father’s in languages with two forms of the verb “to be”, miss out on the “I’m Hungry” dad joke.

  25. UnCivilServant

    *sigh*

    In addition to the transfer-only postings, they’ve decided to give us a week to move to new cubes on a different floor of the same building. Whatever, cube moves happen. I came in on a saturday to move my cube because it means I won’t have to deal with anyone wanting to enforce any stupid mask mandates. I’m the only person in the building. Fine, my choice to do it today. Guess what I find under the cubes in the new location?

    Mouse traps.

    The area they moved us to us infested.

    I feel so loved. /end sarc

  26. DEG

    However this core stage is now also in orbit and is likely to make an uncontrolled reentry over the next days or week as growing interaction with the atmosphere drags it to Earth. If so, it will be one of the largest instances of uncontrolled reentry of a spacecraft and could potentially land on an inhabited area.

    We should lock everything down. After all, if it saves just one life, it’s worth it!

    • Toxteth O'Grady

      Heh. I was trying to find you a clip or still of “I’m feeling mighty low” but I couldn’t remember which of Bugs’s enemies that was. Boxer? Jackhammerer?

    • Gender Traitor

      Sent that link to Tom T. Something he needs to keep handy. (Coulda used it when the microwave crapped out this morning.)

  27. The Late P Brooks

    You’re not gonna believe this

    The research team at the St. Louis Fed recently got its hands on some fresher data, which the team crunched to reveal what had happened to millennials in the years since 2016. The team found shockingly different trends within our generation. Some of us have rebounded dramatically in recent years. Others have fallen further behind. Black millennials have had it worst of all: They aren’t just falling further and further behind white millennials in building wealth for their families — they’re falling further and further behind what previous Black generations amassed in wealth.

    ——-

    Kent and her colleagues found that the typical millennial without a college degree has 19% less family wealth than what previous generations without a degree had when they were the same age. Millennials who graduated from college, on the other hand, have just 4% less wealth than their similarly educated equivalents in generations past had. This growing inequality between college and non-college-educated millennials fits into a ginormous amount of other research that shows that today’s blue-collar and low-income workers have less upward mobility than they did in previous generations.

    But the most disturbing finding in their data concerns Black millennials. While the typical white millennial family has about $88,000 in wealth, the typical Black millennial family has only about $5,000 in wealth.

    Systemic racism, no doubt.

    I wonder what proportion of the blue collar work force falls under the heading of sole proprietorships, as opposed to the past.

    Also- “ginormous”? Come on, NPR.

    • trshmnstr the terrible

      The team found shockingly different trends within our generation.

      This is what ive noticed, too. Even within the same birth year, there’s a binary divide between the ready to launch crowd and the failure to launch crowd. Some old high school classmates are just now getting out of the nest in their early 30s. Others like me have been fending for ourselves for a decade plus.

      Coddling your children ends poorly.

      • Mojeaux

        My brother’s two oldest are 20 and 21. They live at home, don’t go to college, and have no real occupation. By his own admission, his kids are “aimless”. One is drifting toward programming, but he doesn’t seem to want it badly enough to crunch out some learning.

        Mine aren’t aimless exactly, and XX is trying to get out of the house as soon as she turns 18, but I’m kind of afraid for her future, as I have no idea what she is going to do or even what she wants to do. I don’t think she knows. At least she has a job she can make full time if she wants, but then again, Walmart isn’t known for its decency to its employees.

        XY…I don’t know. If he can’t make a living mowing lawns (which is a real passion), I don’t know where he’s going to land. We are trying to get him to think of the future, but kids their age have no concept of time. He has spoken of going to college for some landscaping/plant-related thing (I can’t remember now), but that was a while ago. If he does that, I have no problem letting him live at home until he’s 22, at which point he should be graduating.

      • R C Dean

        “I have no idea what she is going to do or even what she wants to do. I don’t think she knowsl

        At her age, I wouldn’t worry about dialing in a 50 year plan. She sounds motivated, which is the main thing.

      • Toxteth O'Grady

        And versatile and flexible.

        Wasn’t she learning coding?

      • Mojeaux

        She was learning networking and other stuff I’m not quite sure of. She has that internship at Cerner, which ends soon and Cerner doesn’t hire anyone for those positions without an Associate’s degree (which she adamantly refuses to do) or 2 years’ experience. She’s going to send out resumes, but an 18-year-old with no experience?

      • Toxteth O'Grady

        What does she have against an AA? Two years / 18 months isn’t so long.

      • Mojeaux

        She loathes school and isn’t really very good at it, to be honest.

      • Mojeaux

        I also did not like school, but I was good at it. A degree was the goal (not mine, though) so I stuck it out. I graduated with 50 credit hours more than I needed because of religion classes at BYU AND I took a whole lot of classes just for fun (like costume history). I’m going back because I want to learn something that interests me and is a lifelong dream, and the only way I can do that is in person.

      • DEG

        Yes.

      • Mojeaux

        I’ll be honest. Since she’s not going to college, I’m at a loss as to how people just … go out into the world at 18 with … nothing.

        She is motivated. She has her car that is all paid for and she has a job that will turn almost full time when she graduates and then full time when she turns 18 and she can do other stuff minors are not allowed to do now. She has her own bank account and a Walmart debit card (her spending money gets sent to that automatically).

        She is still going to be on our health insurance whether she’s living with us or not but I told her she was responsible for her own co-pays.

        I wrote her a life manual of basic stuff like getting utilities, going to the doctor, car stuff, addresses and phone numbers she will need to know, etc., something I wish I’d had when I was going off on my own.

      • Animal

        I did it. Lots of kids do. While I did go to college a little later on, I managed through those earlier years (was also married and had a kid before my 21st birthday) by getting a job and following three rules I still follow today, rules which I pass on to every young person who will listen:

        1) Show up a little earlier than the other guys,
        2) Work a little harder than the other guys,
        3) Never pass up a chance to learn something new.

      • Mojeaux

        Thanks, Animal. I’ll add those to her life manual.

      • Toxteth O'Grady

        How thoughtful!

        I wish a book like yours or
        this had been around when I were a lass: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/15791144-adulting

        For an AA doesn’t have to get A’s, she just has to pass. I had to get a tutor for an easy* pass/fail course.

        *once I got the tutor it was easy

      • Mojeaux

        Thank you! It just went into my cart.

      • trshmnstr the terrible

        She sounds motivated, which is the main thing.

        This. I’m a huge outlier in that I knew I wanted to check out patent law when I was in high school. Even so, I took a roundabout way to get there.

        Knowing exactly what you want to do is less important than knowing you want to do something. Many coddled kids haven’t decided whether they ever want to be adults or not.

      • Tejicano

        At 15 I knew exactly what I wanted to do – enlist into the Marines, do 20 years, and retire. Then probably homestead in Alaska. It wasn’t so clear after that.

        So on my 17th birthday I enlisted and took my first step.

        After a little while in my first platoon I noticed that those who had the same plan, at least the ones who had survived past the second or third enlistment, mostly all had livid scars on every part of exposed flesh – and probably more than wasn’t exposed. It didn’t scare me as much as point out that my plan might be flawed.

        I soon came up with Plan B which I’ve followed more or less.

        I would submit that as long as your XX is motivated to make her own way she will probably adjust her plan as required once she gets a chance to hold it up against reality. Most people don’t require anything as dramatic as the spectacle of blood and gore to tell them to adjust their plan. A little reality is usually all it takes.

      • Mojeaux

        Thanks.

        TBH, I would be thrilled if XY enlisted.

      • Drake

        I was in a battalion hq company. Noticed the old Master Sergeants lived on Advil because their bodies were so broken down.

  28. The Late P Brooks

    However this core stage is now also in orbit and is likely to make an uncontrolled reentry over the next days or week as growing interaction with the atmosphere drags it to Earth.

    Target practice.

  29. The Late P Brooks

    It gets even worse when you look at the trends. White millennial families made huge strides between 2016 and 2019, and they now lag previous generations of white families by only about 5%. Between 2007 and 2019, however, Black millennials fell further and further behind — not just compared with white millennials, but compared with previous generations of Black Americans. While white millennials trail the wealth of previous generations of white Americans by only 5%, Black millennials trail previous generations of Black Americans by 52%. The typical Black millennial has $5,700 less in net worth than counterparts in previous generations.

    “That’s incredibly shocking, because Black Americans have made great progress in terms of political representation and other measures — but it doesn’t seem to be translating into wealth gains,” Kent says.

    No shit, Shirley?

    Maybe politics isn’t the solution. Maybe it’s the problem.

  30. Festus

    Is May 1st Commie Day or the one wherein I don billowy clothes and dance around a pole provocatively? Everything’s so confusing, nowadays…

      • Festus

        Perfect, Miss O’Grady! I kind of needed that. I’m retiring to bed now. Have a happy one, Glibs!

      • Toxteth O'Grady

        Come back soon, ya hear?

      • Festus

        DEG gets me.

  31. Festus

    I came back for a second and my thoughts are with you, Mojo. Now I sleep.

    • Mojeaux

      And mine are with you. Good luck.

  32. westernsloper

    BAGAAAAAK! *flaps arms*