Coolish, probably wet, or at least threatening all day. It was that way all day Wed. except it never actually got wet.
I spent Wed. cleaning and putting away. I got the gennies sorted for the short term. I put all the extension cords away and covered them up. Cleaned and organized on the patio and in the back. Looks nicer now, but I still have to put the gas cans away. Found and put aside some more stuff for the auctions or ebay.
Plan for the day is collecting some auction stuff. It’s mostly stuff for use at home, but there are a couple of resale items as well.
One of the craziest/luckiest items is a Buffalo TeraStation that matches my failed RAID. The pix show it on. If it works, I should be able to pop in my old drives, and recover them. Fingers crossed, and appropriate offerings to the hidden powers… maybe being lazy will have ended up saving me a lot of work. I mean, maybe being too busy to learn about home RAID recovery, might save me the work… *cough*
You almost certainly don’t recall that my TeraStation went belly up with a failed controller board. That is why we back up a RAID to another disc. Too bad I hadn’t done that recently thinking that drive failure was all I had to consider. In the time since, I haven’t really needed anything from the failed discs bad enough to try recovering them so taking a low effort approach worked out so far.
That sort of describes my general approach to prepping and most things, low effort. I try to get the most benefit from the least work. Doesn’t always work out but it does more often than not.
That manifests in different ways. One is that by having a more general idea of what I want, I can be open to getting something similar or equivalent if it becomes available. My solar project is that way. I didn’t go shopping for a specific solar panel, I watched for some in the auctions. When the price was right and there were a bunch all at once, I bought them. Now I have solar panels. If I held out for some exact model or size, I still wouldn’t have any.
I’ve done the same with ham radios. I bought what was available, not what I dreamed about in the catalog. They are good, solid radios that more than meet my need and they were significantly less expensive than even ebay used.
I even stock the pantry with a version of this, buying what is on sale at the time, not rigidly following a list or a plan, believing that I can balance the inventory over time.
There is a downside- you need time. If you are short of time, you absolutely can just determine what you want and get it. Or just buy all the things in a great big hurry (so called ‘panic’ buying.)
Of course, real life is a mix of the approaches. Going into the pandemic I had my pantry pretty well stocked using the low effort approach, but I still went out on the ‘last run’ and bought stuff I felt I was short of, without considering the cost. I also stocked up on a much wider variety of OTC meds, believing that there might be shortages later. I thought it better to spend the money on stuff at full price, regardless of immediate need, rather than not have it at any price later.
The current situation with guns and ammo can be viewed the same way. You wouldn’t normally want to pay current prices, but time and supply may be short and getting something rather than nothing might be your most important consideration.
Whatever approach you prefer, get started if you haven’t already. Don’t let ‘paralysis by analysis’ keep you from starting. Any prep is better than no prep. And if you are already on the path, keep stacking.
nick
Ugg. Something dead in the house somewhere. Probably a rat in the attic. Faint smell yesterday, unmistakable smell today. Guess who gets to hunt for and remove the source of that smell?
n
COVID-19 vaccination got postponed. Incompetent district administration. Apparently they only guessed the vaccine would be available. Not surprised. Their IT staff is incompetent so I expect nothing less from the rest of the staff. Unemployable if it were not for the school district.
And why you import hordes of outsiders.
but when the outsiders don’t spend locally, but instead send remittances home, and spend as little as possible, your strategy fails.
Landlords and Walmart do well.
If remittances sent home are received in the form of a Walmart gift card, the transfer fee for the transaction is waived.
Last night’s “Fear Porn Burlesque” on the local Faux News had the reporter done up in a way implying she was of Latina (Latinx?) heritage interviewing residents of an apartment complex in Austin still without water. Not one of those interviewed spoke any English.
One of the daughters. They’re smaller and so they can more easily fit into tight spaces.
Local news stations pull the same stunt. Anytime there is a story involving
blackpeople of the color that involves low RGB values, the reporter is of the same genre. As if a regular, as in not a token ethnic hire, are incapable of doing the story.It’s always a tradeoff. Time invested to make disaster recovery easy, or time saved by just dealing with a disaster if/when it happens.
I have our files on an absolutely ancient QNAP. The disks have all been replaced once, but the box itself just keeps on chugging. Shockingly, they still regularly issue firmware updates for it; a year or two ago it got a whole new (and really nice!) user interface. Most companies would stop maintaining old hardware, to try and force you to buy new. I’ll definitely by QNAP again, just because of this.
Anyway: if/when it fails, things may be messy. Such is life. The time required to do more than semi-regular backups…nah, it just isn’t worth it. Deal with the mess when it comes, and maybe it never will. Maybe I’ll replace the box for other reasons. Time saved.
Meandering thoughts…
I was cleaning up and re-organizing some files the other day, and it really struck me just how much *stuff* we keep, because it’s easier than deleting it. Maybe 1 in 10 photos is actually worth looking at. Do I really need a letter I wrote to my kid’s school 10 years ago? Correspondence with the hospital, when our kid had an accident 15 years ago? My job applications from 25 years ago? I’ve got it all: 90% of what’s filling up my disks is trash.
Back in the days of physical files, I used to file stuff by the date it could be thrown away. Not active projects, obviously, but all the correspondence and documents that you keep either because you have to, or “just in case”. I had files for the twelve coming months, as well as a couple of years into the future. When the month (or year) arrived, I could throw out the entire file without even looking at it.
I wonder if I could make that work for computer files…
Nick is talking about prepping, but I think this is true on a wider scale.
It’s surprising how often things we worry about don’t happen. Meaning: we don’t need to expend effort unnecessarily. It’s surprising how often things just work out, without any effort from us.
Small example: I have two people asking for an appointment on the same day. I’m not going to contact them in advance to try and avoid a conflict. Either they will ask for different times, or one person will cancel. Most likely things will work out all by themselves.
Meanwhile, with the time saved, I can do really important things, like read this blog 🙂
Moderna 2nd dose follow-up report
11AM – Injection was painless
6PM – Noticed pain at the injection site
9PM – Whole body muscle aches and pain at the injection site – took Tylenol PM and went to bed
8AM – Muscle aches have lessened but have pronounced lethargy and lack of energy, going back to bed
To keep the birth rate up and provide young, cheap labor to support a growing elderly population. Nations that do not allow much immigration, like Japan, are already seeing the results of a rapidly aging workforce and larger burden of supporting the elderly.
I concur. It sounds like an excellent opportunity to demonstrate your support of equality of the sexes and send the wife or daughters looking for it. 🙂
I’ve noted this too. In the days of film and physical photos you maybe had 3 or 4 good photos of a kid’s birthday celebration in the family photo albums (maybe it started off as a roll of 12 or 24 photos before being paired down to the best 3 or 4 to fit in an album). Now, you have 349 photos all uploaded to social media, on the hard drive, and on your phone. Most of which will never be viewed. “Here’s a photo of Susie opening her gift from Aunt Betty, and here’s a photo of Susie opening her gift from her big brother, and here’s a photo of Susie opening a gift from her friend Jenny, and here’s a photo of Susie opening a gift from…” My God. Why?! Put the camera/phone down and “Be Present.”
Quoted for truth.
It deserves to be quoted for truth daily. And tattooed on both hands of the women who can’t put their phones down long enough to pay attention to and to enjoy anything.
“the US is officially back in the Paris Agreement”
So, the treaty has been ratified by the Senate? No?
No. Treaty ratifications requre a 2/3 vote in the Senate.
The last time the Dems had that kind of majority was 2009, from the beginning of the Congressional session until Ted Kennedy assumed room temperature in … September (?).
I suppose any/all tRump supporters will be ferreted out and get *unflavored* soy as punishment.
If you like Stargate:SG1
The *grey* aliens on Stargate: SG1 had an underpopulation problem since they lost the ability to reproduce. They solved that by cloning their bodies and transferring their consciousness to it. Later in the show, after a robotic pest invaded their world, they offed themselves to take out the threat to the galaxy. They decided their race wasn’t sustainable so it didn’t matter.
Maybe the opportunity for a new Girl Scout merit badge?
Oof:
The U.S. Air Force Just Admitted The F-35 Stealth Fighter Has Failed
This is clearly plugs’ fault. He should just scrap everything but the drones, ala, Obola.
LOL!
What happened to the flu:
The missing flu riddle: ‘Influenza has been renamed COVID,’ maverick epidemiologist says
This guy is about to get “cancelled”.
Maverick epidemiologist? LMFAO!
Mind Food
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tJtEbvSOd_E&t=13s
Wow. I thought the Democrats wanted cap and trade. Why cap and trade? Because that has much more opportunity for graft when you hand out the cap certificates. Every economist that has studied it says that a carbon tax is much more efficient and fair than cap and trade.
Cap and trade works well for a small, finite set of discrete emissions sources. It did quite well for the acid rain problem on the east coast. It would be a nightmare for CO2.
With both kids home from school and littlest now with symptoms, I didn’t have to chivvy anyone along. So I went back to bed too.
Awake now though. Well, upright. feels like I could use about 10 hours more sleep.
n
SCAM ALERT
Hey guys, wife and I both got very good looking emails purporting to be from paypal, saying an unrecognized device logged on…..
The clickable links start out looking good but are REALLY long with a bunch of stuff in them.
Neither of us too the bait, both logging in directly from different machines, but they ALMOST got us and we’re wary. Went ahead and changed pw from the site directly.
MUCH higher standard than most of the attempts. Could have been legit, even had full name included, but always safer to NOT click links in email
n
@Nick: thanks for the scam warning. I haven’t seen that one yet, but there has been a *lot* of spam getting through lately, lots of it deceptively believable.
“Every economist that has studied it says that a carbon tax is much more efficient and fair than cap and trade.”
–did they look at the desirability of the carbon tax itself? Taxes are bad. Taxes on essential things, things that are the bedrock of our economy, culture, civilization are worse. Watch the Carbon episode of Modern Marvels online to see why taxing carbon is a really bad idea. Literally everything we do involves carbon.
Using ‘carbon footprint’ as a loose proxy for energy use or pollution was sloppy. Using an idea like that for taxation is rapacious.
The carbon credits trading market is another way for the rentiers and money mosquitos to turn productive money into their money. The unintended consequences are literally deadly- they were paying people to keep other people tied to the land, and limited to manual processes for growing food.
No thanks. starve the leviathan don’t feed it.
n
Thanks for the update, my second is tomorrow at 8am. Not that my week has been that good. Aquired a case of gout in the left foot last Thursday night. My first time and I kept up a weekend of yard work. On Monday I had trouble getting around. Monday afternoon Dr Google and I had it all figured out. Discovered Naproxon helps but had also made an appt for an Urgent Care the next morning. Just seeking some relief treatment. A nice nurse-practitioner confirmed my diagnosis and got a steroid shot and a five day course of pills. Yesterday was pretty good but started acting up again late in the day. This morning very good so far. Man that is painful stuff when it flares.
Going to my barber this morning. Been two months+ and pretty shaggy. Does it out on his patio at home.
and having changed my ppal password, I got a confirmation email from then that looks almost identical to the (possibly) fake one. PP’s links are just as ugly, although there seem to be a lot fewer non-alpha characters.
IDK, seems unlikely that someone did access my account without taking advantage of the fact, but man, that email looks real. Or that my wife would have the same thing happen at the same time…
n
@dlreck– I take vitamin B-12 for neuropathy pain but it stops the pain that I attribute to gout too.
I can tell if I miss a dose, my big toe joint swells and is so painful wearing shoes hurts (and then it will stop completely for a while). Heck I’ve gotten rid of shoes and now check every new pair to be sure it won’t aggravate the toe.
n
n
Allopurinol.
My dr says most people tolerate it well. It controls the Uric acid levels in your blood. I had my first and only attack in 08 or 09. Had a steroid shot in the affected toe (worst pain ever!) and started on allopurinol. Have never had another attack, and uric acid levels are normal. Besides causing gout, elevated uric acid is bad for the heart…
That’s hate speech. Every shape is beautiful. The only sure prevention is wearing four masks at all times, including in the shower. And impeaching Trump. Can’t forget that part.
Found the rat stuck in a trap. Hosed it down with bleach. Smell is still lingering. We’ll see in a few hours, and then look for more rats. I didn’t see any others though. Water is condensing on the cold water supply line in the attic, which is an attractant for pests. Not sure what to do about that. Insulation maybe.
off on my errands.
n
Based on recent news, I have discovered that insulation of any type is strictly forbidden in the state of Texas. Sorry.
Depends. Some were just evaluating the relative merits of the two. Some were saying, “If we need a carbon tax for CO2 level reduction, carbon tax is the way to go.” At least one of the carbon tax proposals would be revenue neutral – it would set up a refundable tax credit. If you don’t have a big carbon footprint, it would be a net gain.
There are a couple of points that make a carbon tax better:
– there are only a few places where the tax needs to be applied, and by and large they are already known (i.e. gasoline/diesel, coal production, natural gas for power, etc.)
– the cap and trade favors existing companies and the politically connected in handing out the cap certificates. A startup would have no certificate in hand, an incumbent would not.
– you need to set up a bureaucracy to administer it. Carbon taxes are mostly have existing taxing regimes set up.
Hmmm. Just got my Frontier bill….$97.50, up from $80.50 the month before. That’s a 21% increase.
A lot to pay for nominal 12Mb DSL (actual about 8.5Mb).
Hurry up Starlink…
@Ed
Read somewhere that Starlink is starting to allow signups in TX. I did an address search for Katy, TX, and got this message:
Deposit to get it is $99. Go to the Starlink site and enter your address.
Interesting. I got the same message, late 2021.
What about those that are allergic to diet and exercise?!
From Jeff Dunteman (via FB):
Article – long read, but worth the time: https://capitolism.thedispatch.com/p/its-time-to-start-being-optimistic
Fat is beautiful, didn’t you know?
Visiting the US is always a bit shocking. There are so many morbidly obese people, and they obviously don’t care. More, they expect accommodation. Sorry, but no. If you eat yourself to 400lbs, the last thing you need is handicapped parking next to the restaurant door. Maybe having to stagger those extra few feet would send a message…
I have a couple of cousins in this category. One used to be a diver and swimming instructor. Now, well, it would take a lot of lead to sink her. Why did she do this to herself?
I know, it’s not PC, but she did, in fact, do it to herself. I went out to eat with her, and she packs away the food. Of course, blaming outside forces makes it easier to keep eating.
the US is officially back in the Paris Agreement
So, the treaty has been ratified by the Senate? No?
That is a mere detail.
He posits that the population of Earth will be 100 billion in 2120. … Am I the only person who finds this implausible?
Very implausible. Yes, Africa is exploding, but the rest of the world has pretty much stabilized. Anyway, 100 billion? I don’t think that would be even remotely supportable.
While it won’t happen in our lifetimes, I think overpopulation will ultimately be solved. It may be solved naturally, if living standards everywhere eventually reach a Western level. Or it may be solved in a less nice way: forced sterilization, ethnic cleansing, etc..
Sure the Earth could support 100 billion people. Just stop eating meat. We would all be a bunch of starving scarecrows. Except for the 1% eating their million dollar steaks.
One of the craziest/luckiest items is a Buffalo TeraStation that matches my failed RAID. The pix show it on. If it works, I should be able to pop in my old drives, and recover them. Fingers crossed, and appropriate offerings to the hidden powers… maybe being lazy will have ended up saving me a lot of work. I mean, maybe being too busy to learn about home RAID recovery, might save me the work… *cough*
You almost certainly don’t recall that my TeraStation went belly up with a failed controller board. That is why we back up a RAID to another disc. Too bad I hadn’t done that recently thinking that drive failure was all I had to consider. In the time since, I haven’t really needed anything from the failed discs bad enough to try recovering them so taking a low effort approach worked out so far.
Good luck !
I do not like RAID and refuse to have anything to do with it.
I got my second shingles vaccine shot Tuesday and the wife got her first Shingrix shot yesterday. Man she was hurting and nauseous last night. I felt like I had the flu yesterday but a nice long hot shower really helped the aches and pains.
Let me see if I understand this:
Democrats: Obama put the USA in the Paris accords to save the world, evil Trump took us out, and King Joe 1st put us back in.
Reality: The treaty was never ratified, therefore Trump never took us out of it, and King Joe is only grandstanding.
Wow. That is a lot of people. And a lot of flavored soy.
I suppose any/all tRump supporters will be ferreted out and get *unflavored* soy as punishment.
Dirt. Any soy is reserved for the true believers.
More trouble for Cuomo…
https://nypost.com/2021/02/24/ex-aide-details-sexual-harassment-allegations-against-cuomo/
Oof:
The U.S. Air Force Just Admitted The F-35 Stealth Fighter Has Failed
https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidaxe/2021/02/23/the-us-air-force-just-admitted-the-f-35-stealth-fighter-has-failed/?sh=6cae1c961b16
This is clearly plugs’ fault. He should just scrap everything but the drones, ala, Obola.
LOL!
As an engineer, we have too many sensors that can trip equipment offline. For instance, it is rare that sensors are tripled (see the 737 MAX crashes). Yet, the failure of a single sensor is usual and common.
I think that any sensor that can trip a process, a jet airplane or a nuclear power plant, should be tripled (the tell me three times system). Trips due to bad sensors should be rare and have warnings before the trip happens if possible.
Got my first Shingrix shot a couple of months back – much more painful (significant arm soreness) that any vaccination I can recall.
I figure that we will have a carbon tax shortly.
Wow. I thought the Democrats wanted cap and trade. Why cap and trade? Because that has much more opportunity for graft when you hand out the cap certificates. Every economist that has studied it says that a carbon tax is much more efficient and fair than cap and trade.
Cap and trade works well for a small, finite set of discrete emissions sources. It did quite well for the acid rain problem on the east coast. It would be a nightmare for CO2.
Cap and Trade for CO2 would be just like the VAT system in Europe and the other socalled woke countries. Incredible amounts of paperwork. And we need more paperwork, not.
And getting a Cap and Trade for CO2 or a Carbon Tax for Co2 through Congress is not going happen. The first year of the Carbon Tax for Co2 is somewhere between a half trillion dollars and a trillion dollars. Very few congresscritters are going to vote for a tax of that magnitude.
The only way to get one in is through the unused fining provision in the Clean Air Act. John Roberts can be counted on to pass it along.
Were 600K COVID hospitalizations preventable simply through diet and exercise? TWO THIRDS of people hospitalized for COVID were obese or had diabetes, high blood pressure or heart failure, study finds
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-9299725/Two-thirds-COVID-19-hospitalizations-preventable.html
All four conditions are largely preventable through diet and exercise – meaning two thirds of 906,000 hospitalizations likely would have been too, the Tufts University researchers write.
n
Wow.
The carbon tax will fix fatness in people. After all, the carbon tax will fix global warming so it can fix anything.
I’ve always responded really well to shots. Worst I ever got was probably Anthrax. It didn’t make me sick or lethargic, but the shot site had a very sensitive golf ball size knot under the skin for a month afterwards and the shot felt like battery acid going in.
@Nick: thanks for the scam warning. I haven’t seen that one yet, but there has been a *lot* of spam getting through lately, lots of it deceptively believable.
I am not seeing very much scam email. This is why I pass all of our corporate email and my personal email through gmail. Yes, they scan my email. So does the NSA and China. Don’t put anything in your email that you do not want to see on the front page of the New York Times tomorrow.
SpamSieve works really well for me on the client end. My email host does some spam filtering of their own that’s excellent too. I host my email in Norway and made sure the server it’s on is physically in Norway. It’s hard to beat their privacy laws. Honestly, it’s no more cost than any hosting solution but if you can choose which country your hosting service is based in and which country their servers are physically located in then why not choose one with good privacy laws? I have no control over the email hosting used by people sending to me or receiving from me, but I try and control what I can control.
I also have noticed less volume of spam in my gmail account. Used to be 30+ per day. Now I only see 5-10 per day in my spam folder. Very rare to get spam in the actual gmail ‘inbox’.
Less stuff in the gmail spam folder for over a month. Took a sudden drop, and stayed low since then.
Article about T-Mobiles 5G internet modem here https://www.cnet.com/news/i-signed-up-for-t-mobiles-50-unlimited-home-internet-service-heres-what-happened/ .
Might be an option if you local provider is slow (or non-existent) but you have 5G available. YMMV.
I really want to know how you are able to make that comparison.
I can relate to being kicked by a mule (unconscious for some length of time), being run over by a tractor (extremely sore and little movement for several days) , falling from barn roof (thank goodness it was muddy, still hurt), being stabbed by deer antlers (several stitches in the armpit), falling off a log (almost drowned in the river), but nothing relating to battery acid.
at is beautiful, didn’t you know?
Visiting the US is always a bit shocking. There are so many morbidly obese people, and they obviously don’t care. More, they expect accommodation. Sorry, but no. If you eat yourself to 400lbs, the last thing you need is handicapped parking next to the restaurant door. Maybe having to stagger those extra few feet would send a message…
I have a couple of cousins in this category. One used to be a diver and swimming instructor. Now, well, it would take a lot of lead to sink her. Why did she do this to herself?
I know, it’s not PC, but she did, in fact, do it to herself. I went out to eat with her, and she packs away the food. Of course, blaming outside forces makes it easier to keep eating.
Even our jet fighters are fat, “Yes, we’re talking about the F-35. The 25-ton stealth warplane has become the very problem it was supposed to solve. And now America needs a new fighter to solve that F-35 problem, officials said.”
https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidaxe/2021/02/23/the-us-air-force-just-admitted-the-f-35-stealth-fighter-has-failed/?sh=6cae1c961b16
25 tons for a jet fighter ? Are you kidding me ? The F-16 only weighs ten tons !
The shot felt like rubbing hand sanitizer into a paper cut. How’s that? 🙂
When I compared someone’s breath to a goat’s butt, I was asked for the provenance of my knowledge on that topic.
And? Inquiring minds want to know…
“Winter storm could cost Texas more money than any disaster in state history”
https://www.texastribune.org/2021/02/25/texas-winter-storm-cost-budget/
“The winter storm that left dozens of Texans dead, millions without power and nearly 15 million with water issues could be the costliest disaster in state history, potentially exceeding the $125 billion in damage from Hurricane Harvey.”
I’ve got somewhere between $5,000 and $10,000 in damage from the storm at my commercial property. The wife has at least $5,000 in damage at her rent house in Garland. Insurance will cover some of this, I have no idea how much yet. No damage at our home or the wife’s other rental properties in Carrollton and Abilene.
Hmmm. Just got my Frontier bill….$97.50, up from $80.50 the month before. That’s a 21% increase.
A lot to pay for nominal 12Mb DSL (actual about 8.5Mb).
Hurry up Starlink…
“Exclusive: Here’s Where Americans Are Using Starlink’s Satellite Internet Service”
https://www.pcmag.com/news/exclusive-heres-where-americans-are-using-starlinks-satellite-internet
“Starlink is currently in a semi-public beta, serving more than 10,000 users at speeds up to 170Mbps, with no data caps, according to beta testers.”
So about 10% of the lower 48 states are now covered ?
With an expected audience of 15 million users, that is a lot of scaling up. There will be problems along the way.
Wow, the article says an expanded user base of 65 million is expected. The feddies will be suing them for being a monopoly at that point.
says:
25 February 2021 at 15:14
I also have noticed less volume of spam in my gmail account. Used to be 30+ per day. Now I only see 5-10 per day in my spam folder. Very rare to get spam in the actual gmail ‘inbox’.
Less stuff in the gmail spam folder for over a month. Took a sudden drop, and stayed low since then.
I am getting 10 to 20 spam in my gmail spam folder in my corporate email per day. I get 100 to 300 emails per day in my corporate email with almost zero spam in my inbox.
“MUST SEE VIDEO: Senator Rand Paul DESTROYS Crazy Dr. Rachel Levine Over Hormone Therapy to 3-Year-Olds (Video)”
https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2021/02/must-see-video-senator-rand-paul-destroys-crazy-dr-rachel-levine-hormone-therapy-3-year-olds-video/
“Dr. Levine is Joe Biden’s pick as Assistant Health Secretary. She could become the first openly transgender federal official to be confirmed by the U.S. Senate.”
“Levine made an order forcing nursing homes to accept infected COVID patients, killing thousands of people in Pennsylvania, while she secretly took her mom out and put in Suite in Hershey Motel.”
“Rachel Levine supported the Black Lives Matter protests and riots while shutting down small businesses across Pennsylvania for months. Her policies were then ruled by a judge to be unconstitutional.”
“On Thursday Rachel Levine refused to answer Dr. Rand Paul’s questions about hormone therapy to 3-year-olds.”
Hormone therapy for three years olds ! ! ! Are you freaking kidding me ? ? ?
This so-called doctor Levine is a mentally disturbed person.
What the heck is going on in our country ?
Nobody ever listened to me when I recommended it, but Trump could have made good on his promise that Mexico would pay for the wall, by TAXING those remittances. And since Mexico’s entire economy DEPENDS on those remittances, the mere THREAT to impose a 25% tax on remittances would have gotten Mexico’s attention.
“TURN THOSE MACHINES BACK ON! OKAY!” by Charles Payne
https://www.wstreet.com/member/commentary.asp?con_id=49398
“Don’t look now, but the Duke Brothers are going to be pissed. Someone let the riffraff back into the market, and now the short squeeze saga continues. The establishment has spent the last three weeks running victory laps and chuckling over those silly Reddit people.”
“How dare they think they could play our game; a Duke has been in the market since the turn of the century (pick one). Financial media skeptics continued their condescending coverage, but GameStop (GME) never made it to the starting blocks.”
“Instead, GME smoldered and hinted from time to time that it wanted to nudge and test the shorts. Well, it did not only nudge hedge funds – but it also nuked them again. Shares of GME began to edge higher and then took off like a rocket ship. Even when the establishment pulled a few of their stunts, such as halting the stock from trading until one minute was left in the session.”
Here we go again.
“Something so stupid it makes your eye twitch”
https://gunfreezone.net/something-so-stupid-it-makes-your-eye-twitch/
“Wenatchee High School in Washington is welcoming kids back and activities are back to…normal?”
“Musical Body Condoms.”
I thought this was a joke when I first saw it. Looks abusive to me.
Thumbs up.
Or urinating (male of course) after cutting fresh jalapeños and failing to wash hands beforehand.
In that case I probably would not have asked. Having lived on a farm there were many unpleasant experiences with animal odors, and sometimes taste.
This so-called doctor Levine is a mentally disturbed person.
I haven’t seen any information about where Levine got her surgery.
Thailand is usually a dead giveaway for a psych situation which the US gender programs didn’t want to touch.
My wife’s transgender patient in Florida didn’t pass the standards in the US but got surgery in Canada.
Of course, her ex-special forces patient at the VA had treatment at a US clinic. My wife says you wouldn’t know the person used to be male. Lots of work done.
Nobody ever listened to me when I recommended it, but Trump could have made good on his promise that Mexico would pay for the wall, by TAXING those remittances. And since Mexico’s entire economy DEPENDS on those remittances, the mere THREAT to impose a 25% tax on remittances would have gotten Mexico’s attention.
Walmart never would have allowed the taxation of the remittances.
HEB has a piece of that action as well.
Nobody ever listened to me when I recommended it, but Trump could have made good on his promise that Mexico would pay for the wall, by TAXING those remittances. And since Mexico’s entire economy DEPENDS on those remittances, the mere THREAT to impose a 25% tax on remittances would have gotten Mexico’s attention.
Walmart never would have allowed the taxation of the remittances.
HEB has a piece of that action as well.
So does Cemex and a few other multinational companies.
https://nextbillion.net/immigrants-build-houses-in-mexico-with-remittances-the-case-of-c/
Can’t speak for Walmart. But HEB has Western Union. It’s weird to see it cost $38 to send a hundred bucks to Austin from Burnet when you can just DRIVE there. But a few hundred to Mexico and points South cost $8.
After spending a decade outside the US (UK, Hong Kong, New Zealand) we were shocked by the size of the IHOP breakfast platters on our return. All restaurants were serving huge, to our view, portions. We still find it hard to swallow. American portions are huge.
Since early January, Oklahoma active covid cases have nosedived. We are almost back to April levels and falling like a stone. I can’t explain the change. We generally don’t mask up and indoor venues were only closed for a few weeks in the summer. The drop predates any serious vaccinations. But some cities are extending masking regulations into the summer even if no one pays attention.
Since early January, Oklahoma active covid cases have nosedived. We are almost back to April levels and falling like a stone. I can’t explain the change. We generally don’t mask up and indoor venues were only closed for a few weeks in the summer. The drop predates any serious vaccinations. But some cities are extending masking regulations into the summer even if no one pays attention.
People came out of their home in May and June. And got infected. And mostly got better. Covid has now mostly burned its way through the general populace. We may be close to herd immunity.
I heard on the radio earlier today that 13% of the USA populace now has had both doses of a covid drug. Not bad, not bad.
Moderna jab #2 update. Never got back to bed this morning. The wife wanted a special breakfast cooked then her physical therapist came then had to take her to two Dr appointments, then spent two hours filling ATMS. Anyway, feeling better but the arm with the injection site is still very sore and painful to use. My brother says this should be gone by tomorrow.
From Starlink FAQ:
https://www.starlink.com/faq
“I live in an area with heavy rain, snow, or wind—can I still use Starlink?”
“Your Starlink will detect and melt snow that falls directly on it, however accumulating snow around your Starlink may block the field of view. We recommend installing Starlink in a location that avoids snow build-up and other obstructions from blocking the field of view. Heavy rain or wind can also affect your satellite internet connection, potentially leading to slower speeds or a rare outage.”
Too bad SpaceX does not design windmills. Automatically detecting snow and melting it is cool and needed for Texas.
After spending a decade outside the US (UK, Hong Kong, New Zealand) we were shocked by the size of the IHOP breakfast platters on our return. All restaurants were serving huge, to our view, portions. We still find it hard to swallow. American portions are huge.
I have to special order a short stack when I go to IHOP. They no longer have it on the menu but will oblige an order.
Can’t speak for Walmart. But HEB has Western Union. It’s weird to see it cost $38 to send a hundred bucks to Austin from Burnet when you can just DRIVE there. But a few hundred to Mexico and points South cost $8.
Walmart transfers the money for free if the recipient in points south takes the transfer in the form of a gift card. I was told HEB played the same game.
$38? Geesh. I’m reminded of the line from “The Simpsons”: “Are you by any chance familiar with your state’s usury laws?”
@Chad
+1,000
I hate the substitute of picture taking for participation. My husband gets occasionally annoyed that I fail to capture important moments for posterity. I’m taking pics with my brain.
@Nick
I got that PayPal message. I believed it but as is my practice I went to a different system and logged on by typing everything in by hand. I changed my password, looked for transactions, verified no changes had been made to who was authorized for what, or any scheduled in future stuff existed. I’ll be checking it regularly in case they fooled me.
plugs launched an airstrike in Syria. Wait until the first US military death. The Dumbocrats will be turning on him in short order.
@jenny, I’m beginning to wonder if paypal’s system sent the messages to everyone by mistake. Even in a side by side comparison, it looks legit. The fact that my wife got the same one at the same time, and our normal good hygiene made me think otherwise.
Could be there was some sort of massive exploit. We’ll probably know in a few days.
n
Re the “PayPal” message:
If I was so inclined, I’d dig into the email’s headers to see the details of the sender. You can usually spot a bogus sender that way. Which is what I suspect.
Easy enough to clone a valid email’s HTML and send out it out from your server. I could do it manually in under 30 minutes, easy. And there are automated spam tools that can do it much faster. But much harder to spoof the sender header info.
I use the tools in https://mxtoolbox.com/EmailHeaders.aspx to analyze the mail header – and they have other tools there that are useful for email forensics. Or just to verify that your mail server is configured properly, or not on blacklists, or …
Useful site.
@Ken Mitchell
I said pretty much the same thing: Require 35% withholding unless they could show source of income and taxes paid. 35% = 20% withholding + 15% FICA
Walmart would not have allowed it? Like hell. File RICO and confiscate a couple of stores.
Be interesting to call the CEO’s in front of congress: “Please submit OUS remittance totals by store location 7 days prior to testimony, so we can prepare large charts and graphs for the evening news.”
the legit change mail
n
@nick
Assuming those are the complete mail headers, both IP addresses decode to ‘permitted senders’ from PayPal.
But hard to tell without seeing the entire email (in ‘raw’ mode).
Always a good practice to log in manually to anywhere, rather than a link in an email. Links can be really obscured, as you know.
Blacklists are a two-edged sword. I am glad they exist and we do need them, but just ask anyone that ever got issued an IP range, had trouble sending email, then found out one of the IP address was blacklisted because of previous owners. Getting off of some of those blacklist is a real chore. Especially when you are on multiple blacklist
A Texas family shares their story during the ‘Freeze’. From Emergency Essentials, so it promotes their products, but the preps (and lack of preps) along with Lessons Learned are interesting.
https://beprepared.com/blogs/articles/texas-snowstorm-story
Maybe it’s time to get a Sterno stove in my preps. I do have a propane grill and spare tank for cooking outside. But a can of Sterno and a clay flowerpot has been mentioned by others who have said is good to put over a Sterno can for heat. And a ‘Water Bob’.
Hmmm…
https://amzn.to/3aVe4ql
https://amzn.to/3pXDlnQ
https://amzn.to/3bVbRKX
“Trump — Once and Future King?” by Patrick J. Buchanan
https://buchanan.org/blog/trump-once-and-future-king-142826
““I don’t know if he’ll run in 2024 or not. But if he does, I’m pretty sure he will win the nomination.””
“So says Mitt Romney, the sole Republican senator to have voted twice to convict President Donald J. Trump of impeachable acts.”
Romney is beginning to remind me of Regina the blond girl in the “Mean Girls” movie.
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0377092/
A Texas family shares their story during the ‘Freeze’. From Emergency Essentials, so it promotes their products, but the preps (and lack of preps) along with Lessons Learned are interesting.
https://beprepared.com/blogs/articles/texas-snowstorm-story
Maybe it’s time to get a Sterno stove in my preps. I do have a propane grill and spare tank for cooking outside. But a can of Sterno and a clay flowerpot has been mentioned by others who have said is good to put over a Sterno can for heat. And a ‘Water Bob’.
No mention of how to flush the toilets. Weird.
And another total electric house in Texas. About half of the houses in Texas are total electric, no natural gas. Those houses suck, do not buy one.
The cost of the FOOD in a restaurant meal is the smallest part of the restaurant’s costs. Labor, taxes, utilities, building rent, all cost as much as the food does. To make the meal on your plate LOOK like it’s worth the price you paid, a lot of restaurants will make the meals quite large. The difference in their cost between a “normal” meal and a “huge” one is minimal. If you were to walk in and sit down, look at the menu and walk out without ordering anything. the restaurant’s cost would probably be half the cost of a low-priced meal.
So make that work for you. Eat half of your meal, get a “to go” box, and take it home. Eat all of whatever foods don’t travel well; soups and salads, for example. Transfer it to an airtight container (Ziploc bag or Tupperware) and put it in the fridge. It’ll probably be almost as good the next day.
@rickh, I mentioned trying my ” sterno inferno ” stove during the blackout. It worked pretty well and sterno is easy to use and store and about as safe as a fuel can be.
I’ve got a shoebox filled with sterno cans in my DEEP preps.
n
Winner winner chicken dinner!
(Almost) nothing our friends over in D.C. like more than more bureaucracy!
That story about the family in SA didn’t have much in it. You’d think that they might be better prepped for hurricane season, but SA isn’t affected much by hurricanes.
I’ve got a water BOB, didn’t use it this time as the tub was for flushing water only. I need to seal my tub drain very well though to hold the water in. Really clean it, then totally dry, and cover the drain with high quality duct tape. It’s very convenient to just dip out the water to refill the toilet tank, and with the low flow design, it works best if the tank is filled rather than just dumping the water in the bowl.
n
Another way to look at the same thing is to say even if food is cheap, you can’t drop the price too far. Beyond all your other expenses, if the wait-staff are working for tips, they want higher prices so the percentage they get as the expected tip is higher, and they will leave for elsewhere if the tip money drops. So if you can’t compete with Joe’s Diner down the street by lowering your price, you offer more food for the same price. It just escalates to the point where no one understands what a “regular” portion looks like anymore. For a simple measure, look at what passes for a “regular” cup of coffee now (about 12 oz. or more), and look at the size of a coffee cup in an old movie (around 6 oz. I think). Who the hell needs a 20 or 30 oz. cup of coffee or could drink it all before it goes cold?
My Cox bill also went up, increased content costs according to some notice accompanying the bill…so why did some non content related items go up as part of the total increase?
I cut my cable cord and switched to straight ATT fiber to the home. I did it the week it became available. Kids don’t miss it. I don’t miss it. Netflix and disney+ replaced it for the kids and wife, youtube for me. And discs. I’m well into my disc ripping project now. 155 so far. Took a break today too, and snuck in ripping a dozen CDs.
now to start another rip and head to bed.
n
Hmmm. Just got my Frontier bill….$97.50, up from $80.50 the month before. That’s a 21% increase.
My Cox bill also went up, increased content costs according to some notice accompanying the bill…so why did some non content related items go up as part of the total increase?
Starlink is going to be a total market upsetter when it becomes totally available.
Too bad Google Fiber seems to(?) have stalled out…they were supposed to be the ‘upsetter’.
Hmmm. Just got my Frontier bill….$97.50, up from $80.50 the month before. That’s a 21% increase.
My Cox bill also went up, increased content costs according to some notice accompanying the bill…so why did some non content related items go up as part of the total increase?
BTW, I am paying Comcast / Xfinity $70/month plus sales tax for internet only 300/??? mbps on my cable line. No TV stations at all.
Hey…look over there kids…COWS!
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/john-kennedy-biden-stimulus-chock-full-spending-porn-coronavirus-relief-bill
Article about T-Mobiles 5G internet modem here…
Might be an option if you local provider is slow (or non-existent) but you have 5G available. YMMV.
I checked just for grins. No service here, of course. I am now on their list, but don’t expect to hear from them.
Watching Starlink, but have not signed up yet. I wish there was a way to see the signups, but bet there are a lot. Still think it has the best potential. Like at Paul’s, nobody will trench fiber here. PTP and satellite make sense.
I only had internet service installed at the SA house. Spectrum/Charter is the provider and rates went up right after the snowpocalypse. Streaming, discs, and torrents.