We are a commune of inquiring, skeptical, politically centrist, capitalist, anglophile, traditionalist New England Yankee humans, humanoids, and animals with many interests beyond and above politics. Each of us has had a high-school education (or GED), but all had ADD so didn't pay attention very well, especially the dogs. Each one of us does "try my best to be just like I am," and none of us enjoys working for others, including for Maggie, from whom we receive neither a nickel nor a dime. Freedom from nags, cranks, government, do-gooders, control-freaks and idiots is all that we ask for.
Usually, when we speak of financial news, we're referring to central bank machinations and Wall Street piracy and great big old honking government budget contortions and hedge fund rapacity and interest rate shenanigans and so forth. That's great, because talking about the monetary policy of your next door neighbors on the evening news could get boring. "Well, Stefanie, we see a period of instability in cross-border money transfers for the foreseeable future. Ms. Howard maxed out the Discover card on those super-cute Louboutins I was telling you about during the break, and Mr. Howard, oh dear, has been to the strip club again, so I don't see them going to Sandals this winter. Now the weather..."
Actually, that might be more interesting than watching the evening news to determine whether you're flush or flushed in the spondulicks department. The same news is reported as all bad or all good depending on who's in the White House. "We're seeing negative unemployment rates this month, as more Americans are retiring after successful IPOs on their javascript empires before they're old enough to get their first job, and the Fed is continuing to hold interest rates at zero because nobody needs any money. However, our Aye-Team investigative reporters have discovered that one of those buckets at the gas pump at the Sheetz in Fishkill, you know, the ones with the filthy water and the squeegee? Well, it was almost empty, and the clerk behind the counter was unsure when he'd be able to refill it. As of this moment, it's unclear how long the monster in the White House can survive after news like this gets out."
Well, I don't have time to scrape all your data from your Facebook pages to see how your personal finances are going, so going personal in the financial news isn't practical for me. And I would never peek in your windows to see how you're doing, but hey Ted, you should really tell your wife to stop undressing in front of the home security camera with the default password still on it. No reason. But let's at least take a Saturday look around the internet to see how we're doing in general, shall we?
Most economists and analysts tend to support the narrative that real income growth hasn’t increased enough for median Americans. Since the top 1% and 10% have seen their income and wealth increase, if real median incomes are flat lining, it’s a problem. As we mentioned in a previous article, if you look at real median income per person instead of per household, it looks better because households have shrunk.
My household has shrunk, too. My wife keeps wallpapering and the walls are getting closer.
The company produces frozen ready meals and since it was set up in 2014 has had just one profit-making year in 2016-17 when it made €400,000. Projected losses for year end 2019 are €2.6m and the parent company is no longer prepared to support it, the company's petition to the court states.
Oh dear. No ready meals in Ireland. This sounds vaguely familiar. The company was obviously poorly run, though. Look, they made a profit one year. Any Musk could tell you that's not how to run a company.
Unless you’re “independently wealthy,” you probably don’t have enough money to open a small press bookstore or artist-run space, which means you’ll probably have to be a non-profit, which is almost guaranteed to be a terrible idea for a number of reasons. Sure, people will get excited at first and want to give you their tax-deductible dollars. Or maybe you’ll win some big prize to help you get started. We did. We won a $10,000 community art grant.
I don't see the problem. They wanted a non-profit, and that's what they got.
Despite decades of research on materialism, there are few viable strategies for reducing materialism in younger consumers. In this paper, we present two studies conducted among over 900 adolescents that reveal a promising strategy for decreasing materialism: fostering gratitude. In Study 1, results from a nationally representative survey showed that children and adolescents with a grateful disposition were less materialistic.
Gratitude? For adolescents, Halloween now lasts for three months, while Thanksgiving consists of texting all day while your stepfather watches football and your mother orders takeout Chinese. Do the math.
A government computer system that interacts with HealthCare.gov was
hacked earlier this month, compromising the sensitive personal data of
some 75,000 people, officials said Friday. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services made the
announcement late in the afternoon ahead of a weekend, a time slot
agencies often use to release unfavorable developments.
Hmm. This article is unconcerned about HealthCare.gov data collection and an ensuing security breach, but doesn't like the timing of the announcement. Oh, and one of the squeegee buckets at the Sheetz is nearly empty.
Ride-hail giant Lyft just dropped $100,000 to fight Proposition C, the ballot measure that would tax rich corporations to house 4,000 homeless San Franciscans. Yes, you heard that right: Lyft, not Uber, is pushing back against “Our City, Our Home” in a big way, On Guard has confirmed. It’s perhaps strange for a company whose CEO bragged to TIME Magazine in 2017 that his company is “woke,” and especially odd since the often-vilified Uber, which has weathered myriad recent scandals, confirmed to On Guard they’re not planning on donating for or against Proposition C.
I hope the tax money goes to fund $10,000 community art grants to help the homeless open non-profit, small press/artist-run spaces of their own.
Four of every 10 people who will move to Nevada this year will be from California, and most of those arriving in Reno and its suburbs are from the San Francisco Bay Area. Along with that human stampede have come rising home prices and rents - as well as rising anxiety for those living on the margins."We're not worried with keeping up with the Joneses," said Dave Frazier, who lives in one of the old motor lodges. "We just want to keep a roof over our head."
If they get evicted, they can always take an Uber to San Francisco and vote for a homeless tax on Lyft.
Goldman Sachs chief executive David Solomon took to the decks at a top New York nightclub just three days after the suicide of his former assistant, who was accused of stealing more than $1m of fine wine from the CEO.
I once played an Aerosmith record on my mom's stereo the day after my goldfish died. I still feel pretty bad about it.
RevPAR is the product of the hotel’s average daily room rate multiplied by its occupancy rate. It’s the most important ratio in the hotel industry. The hotel workers hours worked total also appears to have hit a plateau. STR, which measures the hotel industry, pre-announced growth of 0% to -2% in September. If this cycle is consistent with the last one, the economy would already be in a recession. However, it could just be a weak month which doesn’t mean anything for the broader economy.
I had no idea things had gotten this bad. The United States is apparently running out of Patels. Gentlemen, our country can't afford a Patel gap.
Los Angeles County's typhus outbreak, which began in the summer, has expanded to as many as 92 cases, including 20 in Pasadena and a possible 18 in Long Beach, where five were still under investigation by the Long Beach Department of Health and Human Services. The average number of typhus cases the county sees in a year is 60, which itself has doubled in recent years, according to the Los Angeles County Health Department. City officials recently declared downtown's skid row — roughly 54 square blocks where more than 4,000 homeless congregate — a "typhus zone."
"So if the stock continues to go down, based on these kids that play with computers and somebody else's money, we are going to buy back stock. We are going to screw these guys so badly that I don't believe that they will be able to only resign. They will have to commit suicide. So we are going to screw these guys so badly that it will be fun to watch. That will be my first priority other than the two top priorities of finishing HBI and paying down debt."
The CEO of Cleveland-Cliffs forgot to mention the lamentations of the Goldman women, but other than that, a fine, Muskish tirade. I bet that shortselling Goldman employee won't be deejaying anytime soon after that verbal beating. In other news, Cleveland-Cliffs Initiates Dividend, Expect More Upside
I hope you have a great Saturday everyone, with very few lamentations around your hopefully typhus-free home!
Dr. Newman with his crooked pince-nez Had studied in Vienna and Chicago. Chess was his only relaxation. And Dr. Newman remained unperturbed By every nastier manifestation Of pluto-democratic civilization: All that was cranky, corny, ill-behaved, Unnecessary, askew or orgiastic Would creep unbidden to his side door (hidden Behind a poster in the Tube station Nearly half-way up the moving stairs), Push its way in, the squat there undisturbed Among the box files and tubular steel chairs. H was once seen at the Philharmonic Hall Seeing the reactions of two patients, With pronounced paranaoic tendencies, To old Dutch music. He appeared to recall A tin of lozenges in his breast pocket, Put his hand confidently in - And drew out a black imp, or sooterkin, Six inches long, with one ear upside-down, Licking at an ice-cream corner - Then put it back again with a slight frown.
That's the title of this post, but I do not mean to restrict this little discussion to the workplace. The issue is that, wherever men and women congregate regularly, "chemical" attractions occur commonly.
These of course range from very mild to intense. It is difficult for people to focus on what they intend to do when there is a powerful attraction to a nice person of the opposite sex who is in regular proximity and contact. I have had people say to me "Is there anything you can do to help me get rid of this crush on so and so? It's messing up my workout/job/tennis game, etc."
A colleague and I were talking about this recently, and he (jokingly) suggested that people in that situation should just jump into bed together and eliminate the romantic/sexual tension and eliminate the mystery. "Get it over with. It's just biology." And of course their are rules about these things in the workplace.
In my view, such things are not necessarily a sign that a person is in a lousy relationship. Could be, but humans are designed to experience these things.
If a close friend confesses to you that some guy or gal at work or somewhere else is driving them nuts with desire, what would you say to them? Would you say"Grow up!"?
About a year ago our niece had a child. Shortly afterward, my in-laws felt it was time to go meet their great-grandchild. It became a family event. 5 of us flew from various locations to Arizona. We rented a van and took the 8 week old on her first grand family adventure, spending a weekend traveling through Sedona, up to Williams, and riding the Grand Canyon Railroad up to see the big hole in the ground.
A friend of mine recently posted a picture on Facebook of an old church in Europe, commenting "I wish we had old things like this here in the U.S." My tongue-in-cheek reply was "We do! The Grand Canyon is much, much older." In many ways, the Grand Canyon is much more beautiful than a church or any architecture man could devise.
I had never been to the Grand Canyon before. I can't say anything which hasn't already been said about its grandeur. I'll toss in a few pictures of Sedona and the Grand Canyon, but the reality is pictures simply can't capture the immensity and beauty.
We were on the South Rim, about mid-point of the canyon. It's 18 miles across at this location, and the North Rim is higher than the South Rim, so you look 'up' at the far side. Nowadays, there is no private property in the area, except for whatever was grandfathered in when the park was created. At this location, the El Tovar Hotel is right on the rim. We didn't stay, but it is a beautiful hotel if you enjoy the look of rustic West (I do).
The Grand Canyon Railroad is a fun way to get to there, especially if you're a family with kids. You don't get much time at the canyon itself, about 3 1/2 hours. However, you don't have to drive, you get to take in the scenery, the kids interact with cowboys and there is a train robbery on the ride home. It leaves at 9:15 am from Williams, Arizona (the last town bypassed by Interstate 40, and a town chock full of Route 66 memorabilia) and arrives at the canyon around 11:30. A tour guide gives a running commentary as cowboys stroll up and down the train strumming guitars and singing tunes for tips. There are a variety of vistas which are passed. High plains, forest, ranch, and mountains are all part of the two and a half hour trip. We saw elk, antelope, and jackrabbit galore.
I really enjoyed this trip, and there's so much to see I am inspired to return. I doubt I'd do the railroad again, and I'd like to see the canyon from several different places. I'd also like to go down into it, which I didn't have time to do. Always leave something for the next time. That's pretty much my motto when I travel.
The left has a pantheon of go-to authorities for this and that that I find amusing. In any setting where real work is performed, these dangerous intellectuals would be getting everyone else coffee, and getting the coffee order wrong, too. They'd be unable to give you correct change for their encore. The media takes the easy out, every time, by selecting someone from this Mount Rushmore of lamebrain notoriety to opine on the issues of the day, be it Krugman, or Bill Nye, or the knucklehead with the vendetta against Pluto, I forget his name. You know all their names if you watch TV. They once asked Krugman, the king of this empire of ill-formed opinion, what he thought of the internet. That's an accurate quote from the guy.
It's a ridiculous opinion, which is his stock in trade, I gather. It gets floated endlessly across the internet, and I saw it all over the place this week while looking for Maggie's Farm links. This opinion held him up to ridicule so badly that he got internet fellow travelers like the Snopes dissemblers to explain that he was just joking, or stirring the pot, or performing a thought experiment that the uncool couldn't grok. In short, he admitted he was wrong, without admitting he was wrong, of course.
Look, I'm not arguing that Paul Krugman isn't a rantipole, addlepated, intellectually stunted jerkwad hack, or that his mother doesn't dress him funny. I'll leave that to others. What I'm saying is that it's funny that he disowned this comment, because it's the only time he was on the right track with his opinions. The quote gets posted on the internet as prima facie evidence that Krugman is a fool, as if no further exposition is necessary. That's because the average internaut has no idea how profoundly the fax machine, and technology like it, changed the economy.
Posting this little quote is a form of begging the question. No, we don't all know reflexively that fax machines never mattered much, and the internet is everything. I stood in front of a teletype machine taking orders in the past, and slit open envelopes with mail orders from Fortune 500 purchasing agents, so believe you me, I know that fax machines transformed business. Many businesses in many parts of the world still use fax machines today as a primary form of business communication.
Google stole the Yellow Pages, Facebook stole magazine ads, Craigslist took over newspaper classifieds, Amazon got the Sears catalog, and Shopify is just a bunch of Fingerhut catalogs. Most other internet businesses are just unintentional Ponzi schemes who haven't run out of seed money or IPO cash yet. The fax machine soldiers on in the corner. So I say Krugman was almost right, for once in his life, and then immediately disowned his own comment, keeping his batting average at a thousand.
I was crawling along the bottom of the lake on my arms and knees, looking for stones to skim, when my hand and knee felt something long and hard buried in the clay and sand. I pulled it out and saw that it was different from the sticks or rocks I usually find. One end had a point, and the other had a handle, so I pointed it up to the sky, put my other hand on my hip and called out, “Daddy, I’ve found a sword!”
A charming story, but no, it doesn't make you the Queen. The guy you handed the sword to, however...
Wear Space is, for lack of a better description, like equine blinkers for humans. The strip of flexible material wraps around the back of the head and covers the side of the eyes, blocking up to 60 percent of a wearer’s peripheral vision, Panasonic says. Think of it as a sign for potential bothersome coworkers that broadcasts, “I’m busy.”
Millennials will go to any lengths to avoid admitting that they're wrong about anything, including cubicles, which were a fine way to balance privacy and office camaraderie.
In Chengdu, there is reportedly an ambitious plan afoot for replacing the city’s streetlights: boosting the glow of the real moon with that of a more powerful fake one. The south-western Chinese city plans to launch an illumination satellite in 2020. According to an account in the People’s Daily, the artificial moon is “designed to complement the moon at night”, though it would be eight times as bright.
I'm not sure if I'll trust this to replace streetlights until Paul Krugman weighs in.
Small talk outside social situations between close friends is virtually non-existent. Interactions with baristas? Limited to the name of the coffee you want to order. Sitting, walking or standing in a way that requires acknowledging a stranger’s presence? Never. (A meme featuring people standing outside a bus shelter rather than under it is an often-posted joke in Finland to illustrate this point.) If you’re a foreigner, congratulations – you’re probably the loudest person on their often (voluntarily) silent public transport.
What is it with these phlegmatic Finns? What is it with these female writers and parentheses?
SolarWinds, notably, has strong operating profit and EBITDA results but loses money on a net basis due to some exotic-ish expenses (“Unrealized net transaction gains (losses) related to remeasurement of intercompany loans”), and the cost of its debt. SolarWinds is carrying billions in debt, which drags its healthy business into a bucket of red ink.
There are parentheses inside of other parentheses in this article. What is it with these male writers always trying to one-up the girls? Oh, and that balance sheet is a mess, so I bet Krugman would love it.
At least 600 "highly skilled" roles will be added in Manchester working on software, machine learning and AWS, its cloud computing business. The company will also create 250 and 180 jobs at its development centres in Edinburgh and Cambridge respectively. Doug Gurr, Amazon's UK country manager, described the new roles as "Silicon Valley jobs in Britain".
Paul Krugman's head will explode while trying to explain this news while still blaming both Donald Trump and Brexit for all the world's ills.
Jane VC, a new venture fund based out of Cleveland and London wants entrepreneurs to cold email them. Send them your pitch, no wealthy or successful intermediary necessary. The fund, which has so far raised $2 million to invest between $25,000 and $150,000 in early-stage female-founded companies across industries, is scrapping the opaque, inaccessible model of VC that’s been less than favorable toward women.
Maybe abject discrimination against males of the species can produce another Ginni Rometty!
The growth of internet access around the world has slowed dramatically, according to new data, suggesting the digital revolution will remain a distant dream for billions of the poorest and most isolated people on the planet. The striking trend, described in an unpublished report shared with the Guardian, shows the rate at which the world is getting online has fallen sharply since 2015, with women and the rural poor substantially excluded from education, business and other opportunities the internet can provide.
As usual, women, minorities, and Paul Krugman hardest hit.
Palantir, the hyper-secretive data-mining company founded by Trump homie Peter Thiel and C.E.O. Alex Karp, is almost as mysterious as the clients it works for. Started in 2003 and with seed money from the C.I.A., Palantir has developed a suite of surveillance technologies that have reportedly been used by the military to hunt down Osama bin Laden, to avoid roadside bombs, and by police departments to predict crimes before they happen.
Well, everyone at the FBI and the CIA is too busy ghostwriting articles at the New York Times to get any work done, so they had to sub it out.
“If aliens are so likely, why have we never seen any?” That is the Fermi Paradox—named after Enrico Fermi, a physicist who posed it in 1950. Fermi’s argument ran as follows. The laws of nature supported the emergence of intelligent life on Earth. Those laws are the same throughout the universe. The universe contains zillions of stars and planets. So, even if life is unlikely to arise on any particular astronomical body, the sheer abundance of creation suggests the night sky should be full of alien civilisations. Fermi wondered why aliens had never visited Earth.
Please notice that Fermi followers never circle back to question their begged question: If aliens are so likely... Says who?
A lesser-known aspect of Sears’ 125-year history, however, is how the company revolutionized rural black southerners’ shopping patterns in the late 19th century, subverting racial hierarchies by allowing them to make purchases by mail or over the phone and avoid the blatant racism that they faced at small country stores.
That's funny. The internet shopping experience that replaced mail order catalogs lets advertisers discriminate by age, sex, and race when they decide who will see their ads. In order to promote racial equality, I demand that we immediately replace internet shopping with mail order catalogs and fax machine ordering. Who's with me? Besides Krugman, I mean.
Now fax in your comments, and have a great Friday!
For some reason, New York is upset that it pays 30% more, per capita, in taxes than the average state. Well, I'm from New Jersey and we pay slightly more than New York. New York is upset that it gets back much less than it pays out. Again, I'm from New Jersey and we get even less back.
New York is a big state, and a relatively wealthy one. New Jersey is wealthier. I figure we have more to be upset about.
Theirs is not an effort to raise boys into men who can integrate into a kinder, gentler future economy of helping professions and easily expressed feelings. It is an effort to overcome maleness itself. And it is an admission of failure, because when boys fail to grow into civilized men, everyone suffers, just as they do when women are denied equal opportunity. The answer isn’t reeducation in radical feminist notions of men’s innately violent natures. It’s raising boys and girls to treat one another with respect and to uphold gender-free values such as the presumption of innocence and due process and equal opportunity. Civil society relies on due process not only because it’s an objective good (though it is). Everyone should embrace both due process and the presumption of innocence because everyone might need these themselves one day, regardless of his or her gender.
If a problem is very important, then setting back the cause is very bad. If a problem is so neglected that you’re among the first focused on it, then you’ll have a disproportionate influence on the field’s reputation, how likely others are to enter it, and many early decisions that could have path-dependent effects on the field’s long-term success.
A long read but somewhat interesting. It makes one major error early: "Few people persist [in]doing actions that are obviously harmful ..." This assumes facts not in evidence, your honor. And your grammar is subtly atrocious.
The beauty of Android is that it’s easily customizable. On Apple’s iOS, one can’t even change the default browser. On Android, it’s a matter of a few clicks. Most alternative browsers work just as well as Chrome and aren’t as demanding of a device’s resources. Some are designed to keep data collection about the user to a bare minimum.
Ah, the internet. You can be Amish, or you can be famous. Take your pick.
While I have no interest in leaving my iPhone, when it comes to the computers in the house I am very interested in moving away from Apple. I am currently upgrading the home computer setup and while the MacBook will last a number of years yet, when the upgrade is eventually due I won’t be going with Apple next time around.
It's a testament to the mindset that this announcement is proffered like it's earthshaking news.
The manufacturing analysts who spent 6,600 hours inside a warehouse north of Detroit picking apart a Model 3 have good news and bad news for Tesla Inc. The company now boasts the best technology of any electric car, with potential profit margins that would be the envy of most automakers. But Tesla is squandering that edge with wasted expenses linked to poor design and bloated manufacturing.
I filed this one under: If only Comrade Stalin knew!
General Motors' self-driving vehicle unit, GM Cruise, is running neck-and-neck with Waymo, a subsidiary of Google, to be first to deploy fully autonomous cars for public use, likely as ride sharing. GM said it will do it next year. San Francisco is the proving grounds to refine the technology. But that race is facing resistance as some people fear losing the freedom of personal car ownership and want to have control of their own mobility. They distrust autonomous technology and they worry about the loss of privacy.
Who are we to argue with a generation of balding toddlers who want to ride in the back seat while playing with their speak and spell long after mom's kicked the can?
The Trump administration announced on Wednesday that the United States will be withdrawing from the U.N. agency that oversees postal rates around the world out of frustration with the discounts given to China and some other countries that allow them to ship products to America at cheaper rates than those paid by U.S. companies to ship domestically.
It's almost like the President is pro-American or something. It confuses a lot of people. Not used to it.
BEC is a sophisticated scamming technique that often makes use of the popular type of social engineering attack called phishing. In phishing attacks, a scammer disguises as a trusted entity in order to trick the victim into clicking on a malicious link usually included in an email or SMS and allow the attacker unauthorized access to sensitive data like financial and payment information.
These are always described as "sophisticated" scams. They're not. Telling a dullard clerk to click on stuff that looks vaguely like a bill is hardly Ocean's Eleven.
When Harvard University admitted several applicants tied to influential donors in 2013, including one who had promised to pay for a building, the Kennedy School dean fired off an e-mail calling the head of admissions “my hero.” “Once again you have done wonders. I am simply thrilled by all the folks you were able to admit,” David T. Ellwood, who then headed up the university’s Kennedy School of Government, wrote to William Fitzsimmons, the dean of admissions.
Thornton Mellon says been there, done that, got the T-shirt.
Poland’s government has allied with Hungary, whose prime minister, Viktor Orban, has courted confrontation with Brussels as part of what he calls a “national liberation struggle” against globalisation and the liberal ideas of the EU. PiS leader Jaroslaw Kaczynski has said Poland is following Orban’s example. Both states have railed against internationalist left-wingers and courted nationalist leaders such as Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan and U.S. President Donald Trump.
Alternate title: Three millennial women wonder aloud why Poland doesn't just do whatever Germany wants it to. Yeah, it's a mystery, gals.
The U.S. beat off Singapore, Germany, Switzerland and Japan, the other top four markets, with a score of 85.6 out of 100, the report said, due to its “vibrant” entrepreneurial culture and “strong” labor market and financial system. The World Economic Forum, the same organization that runs the Davos meeting of global powerbrokers each January, bases its rankings of 140 economies on a dozen drivers of competitiveness, including a country’s institutions and the policies that help drive productivity.
Unfortunate choice of words there, Katanga. Anyway, can anyone recall some problem that appeared in 2008, that's not extant now? I'm drawing a blank, but something has changed. It's a mystery.
I am not the first to conflate drama and history. Yet Twelve O’Clock High fascinates me precisely because it looks back at a World War II past that was scarcely past when the film was made. The strategic world of the Eighth Air Force that the movie recreates—massive formations of heavy bombers fighting their way to targets—was obsolete by 1949, but the filmmakers arrived in time to achieve authenticity on a budget. The Air Force put a dozen battered but still-flying B-17s (with U.S. Air Force crews) at the disposal of 20th Century Fox. The service also supplied World War II surplus flight gear (including many sought-after A-2 leather flying jackets later reported “lost” by the actors), a technical advisor at no fee, and several hundred airmen as volunteer extras. The studio acquired a surplus B-17 for the crash scene, paying stunt pilot Paul Mantz $2,500—about $26,000 in today’s money—to execute a wheels-up emergency landing for the cameras.
They got all that stuff from the military because Hollywood wasn't unanimously anti-American yet.
Leaders within the Constantinople Patriarchate, historically the most influential center of the global Orthodox Church, recently took several administrative steps toward granting ecclesiastical independence — also known as autocephaly — to the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, which is currently under the authority of the Russian Orthodox Church. The move comes after years of increasing tension in Ukraine over the status of its church in the wake of Russia’s occupation of Crimea.
Why, this almost sounds like a church making a political, not an ecclesiastical decision. Does Putin want to behead a couple of wives or something?
Mrs. BD is planning a trip to Normandy with her Dad. She has already signed up a well-respected Brit guide who will drive them all around.
Flight to Paris, train to Normandy, guide pick-up at train and ride to their (first floor) rooms at a chateau. The old guy is not great with stairs anymore but what he lacks in agility he makes up with Rugged Determination. 7-day trip, with no doubt great food.
My father-in-law has been a history buff all his life. Always had regrets that he was far too young to get into the Army in WW2. His much elder brother was in the third wave at Omaha Beach, while another brother was stationed at the Bermuda air station for the entire war. Sheesh. Of course, I he had to take crap about that.
The old guy always wanted to tour Normandy, but his Mrs. would never OK it although they did travel everywhere on the planet - entire USA and Canada, Japan, Australia, China, Thailand, Scandinavia, Sicily, all of Italy, France, Germany, Austria, Hawaii, Mexico, Bolivia, India - you name it. Always up for adventure into their 80s.
Besides it having been a final item on his bucket list, Mrs. BD felt it would inspire him to get into better shape after his quadruple bypass, multiple heart attacks, botched back surgeries, protsate cancer, and other medical misadventures not to mention arthiritis, etc. The anticipation has gotten him out walking distances again, and thus far has managed to lose 30 lbs. by eating rationally on my advice. After his PT he gets to his gym every day.
An American story: Second-generation Irish. Shanty Irish. Reluctant HS graduate, worked since age 8 (at first, in bowling alleys as a pin boy), later as A/C repair and the like until got onto the NYPD. Yes, he can be a pretty tough SOB when needed. I have his retired billy club but never used it on my kids. When he got that pension, became an entrepreneur with his Mrs and they built a very successful business together (she had been working on it for years already). They sold it in their 70s with a nice profit.
I do love this youthful old fellow. Love his stories about taking his baby sister to the outhouse in snowstorms in Jersey City, and their summers working on a farm in Spring Lake (NJ). No father (died young), 5 kids, wonderful but poor childhood (His baby sis slept in a dresser drawer), and wonderful successful and adventurous life. And, being Irish, a brilliant and entertaining story-teller so he has always been socially popular. Very much so - he is a fun guy and a great companion. When he was younger, we would go for 10-mile runs and he would try to tell me jokes the whole way while I would try to point out the birds.
I am so pleased with Mrs. BD's plan with him. I am not going. I want them to have this trip together. I think it will be his last international trip. His passport is up to date. God bless him, he still loves chances to get into NYC to see his old haunts and to stop into Irish pubs for a beer or two even if he needs a cane. Some people are just blessed with joie de vivre. Can't keep a good man down.
Very few exercises are pure forms of those four categories, but there are differences in emphasis which is why we recommend balanced programs of resistance, calisthenics, and cardio training to maintain or improve fitness.
Strength is the ability to move things which resist moving. Power is the ability to move things (including yourself) with speed and force. For example, bench press and rows are mostly strength exercises. Powerlifts are power exercises: deadlifts, squats, military press, etc. in which bursts of speedy intensity are required.
Where would we categorize pull-ups? I'd say Strength.
We have discussed cardio training at length. The main muscle it trains is the heart muscle. While any difficult exercise stresses the heart, only pure cardio training (HIIT via HIIT calisthenics/ aerobics class or sprinting intervals) gives the heart a specifically strength-building stress.
So what about endurance? If you are somebody who "gets too tired" from non-resistance activities, you have an endurance issue. It is not rare for very strong people to have poor endurance or for high-endurance people to be relatively-weak. We want both strength and endurance. Anything that is high-rep builds endurance but not strength or power: long-slow "cardio", high-rep (10-20) resistance work, calisthenics.
One caveat: Do not ever do high-rep (over 10) deadlift sets. The human body is made for low-rep heavy floor lifting (8 or fewer). If you can do over 8 deads, you need to increase the weight and reduce the reps.
Today there was a brief article on Netflix which claims that it's a kind of Ponzi scheme. This is based on a concept which I found interesting, but misguided. Netflix gained 7mm subscribers, but spent $7bb on programming. The next question was "were these 7mm people spending $1,000 a quarter?"
That's the wrong question.
The nice thing about programming is it's evergreen. Once you have it - you have it forever. So it has value over time, value that is increasing, since revenue can be generated forever, in theory. $7bb in programming didn't generate 7mm subscribers, but the range and quality of programming on Netflix did. Assuming each subscriber wants to watch every program on Netflix, that could take some time, especially if Netflix continues to add programs, which they will. Since each subscriber pays $11 a month, the cost of new programming is amortized over about 7 1/2 years, assuming subscribers stay that long. It seems, right now, that the average subscription is about 13 years or more (my parents have had it in some form since it started in 1997).
The case, Manhattan Community Access Corp. v. Halleck, No. 17-702, centers on whether a private operator of a public access television network is considered a state actor, which can be sued for First Amendment violations. The case could have broader implications for social media and other media outlets. In particular, a broad ruling from the high court could open the country's largest technology companies up to First Amendment lawsuits.
I'd prefer they decided social media companies should censor their users. That way, they'd be responsible for everything on their service. Good luck with that. Speaking of which...
The advert mimicked a horror film and showed young people being menaced by a scary doll when they played a particular song. In its ruling, the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) said the setting and events were "particularly likely" to scare younger viewers. Spotify has been told to make sure its future adverts are fit for children to watch and are targeted appropriately.
In the SJW pantheon, Halloween is now a combination of Christmas, Easter, Ramadan, and Passover, so anything goes. It's their high holy days, and it lasts for months. I say bring back All Saints Day, and keep your candy.
Officials said an "unidentified explosive device" detonated at the technical college in Kerch, where Russia has built a bridge between the peninsula and Russia. Initial reports had suggested that the blast was some sort of gas explosion.But a Russian national guard official said the incident was a deliberate "terrorist act".
There's trouble in the Crimea? I blame the Scythians, the Persians, the Greeks, the Pontics, the Romans, the Goths, the Huns, the Bulgars, the Khazars, the Byzantine Empire, the Arabs, the Kypchaks, the Russians, the City State of Venice, the Mongols, the Turks, the Cossacks, the Russians some more, the English, the French, and Kingdom of Sardinia of all people, Germany, the Soviets, the Ukrainians, and the Russians some more. And Donald Trump, because why not.
In addition to Facebook knowing about the problem far longer than previously acknowledged, Facebook's records also show that the impact of its miscalculation was much more severe than reported. The average viewership metrics were not inflated by only 60-80 percent; they were inflated by some 150-900 percent. Facebook did not wish to draw scrutiny to its viewership figures because it knows that the majority of video ads on its platform are viewed for very short periods of time—users scroll right past.
Half of the money I spend on advertising is wasted. The problem is I don't know which half. This is somebody's half, I imagine.
Three European countries – Malta, Monaco and Cyprus – are among those nations flagged as operating high-risk schemes that sell either residency or citizenship in a report released on Tuesday by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development. The Paris-based body has raised the alarm about the fast-expanding $3bn (£2.3bn) citizenship by investment industry, which has turned nationality into a marketable commodity.
Then again, if turning a particular nationality into a marketable commodity is outlawed, America will turn into a one-party state.
I know what you're thinking: there's no way broadcasters, journalists and producers will fail to realise they're interviewing the wrong guy. I get that. But I have reason to believe this will work. Whether it's the segment on Brazil's Globo TV, or the hour-long documentary on Japanese TV, every interviewer has asked me the same questions about the shed. It's not really me being interviewed; what I did has some recognition, but I don't. So, for six weeks, I'm stepping aside to see whether these superior versions of myself can excel in my place.
This fellow gamed TripAdvisor reviews to make a shed in his back yard the most highly rated restaurant in London. It worked, so he actually opened the shed up as a restaurant, and he charged big money to serve cheap microwaved food on paper plates to patrons, who dutifully raved about it on social media because they're dullards. Now the whole world wants to interview him about his exploits, so he sends an army of random people in his place. No media outlet notices. Fake news? Is there another kind?
Answer the call. Okay, duh. But, says Thompson, “a lot of people don’t even answer the phone anymore.” You can’t do that when you’re expecting a call from a potential employer. It doesn’t matter how nervous you are, or how little sense you see in having a phone call when email exists, you can’t ignore the ringing and hope that a follow-up note will solve your problem.
Get out of here with that email alternative. An email is like receiving a radioactive registered letter from the Gestapo to these kids. They won't answer that, either. The average college graduate has never spoken to a real adult about any topic, in any setting, and is terrified of answering their ringing phone. A generation of mannerless housebound agoraphobes who dress their pets in costumes for Halloween, which lasts for six months. Good jerb, social media.
Praful Tickoo, the head of people analytics at Genpact, has been working with MIT to study the communication patterns of the company’s top 650 leaders. His findings were astounding: a 74% statistical correlation between communication patterns and the highest levels of individual performance (using a 9-box performance process). What did they find? The highest performing leaders use simpler words to communicate, they respond faster, and they communicate more often. In other words, they are more engaged, more efficient, and more action-oriented.
And I'll bet they know how to answer the g*ddamned phone. Never mind all that. Let's get to the really interesting part of the story. Praful Tickoo is the greatest name I've encountered since reading about Hercules Mulligan in grade school.
Canada has become the second country after Uruguay to legalise possession and use of recreational cannabis. Medical marijuana has been legal in the country since 2001. But concerns remain, including about the readiness for police forces to tackle drug impaired driving. Information has been sent to 15m households about the new laws and there are public awareness campaigns.
Once again, Uruguay leads the way! Said no one, ever.
The base, which was built in the late 1960s, was once focused only on monitoring missile tests and other military-related activities in countries such as Russia, China, Pakistan, Japan, Korea, and India. But it is now doing “a great deal more,” said Tanter. It has shifted from “a national level of strategic intelligence, primarily to providing intelligence — actionable, time-sensitive intelligence — for American operations in [the] battlefield.”
Sort of in their job description, fellas, despite your breathless reporting style.
It sounded a little slippery last week, when Facebook announced Portal, a new voice-activated speaker and video chat gadget, and the company said that it would not use data collected through the device to target ads. It was, in fact, very slippery. Facebook just admitted that Portal is completely capable of collecting data about you and using that data to target ads. But don’t worry, Facebook probably won’t do this right away.
I'm constantly reminded of a demented form of the Lady Godiva story. Everyone simultaneously wishes to ride naked through town, sometimes forbidding everyone else to look, sometimes forbidding anyone from looking away, all the while reserving the right to be a peeping Tom, 24/7.
I stumbled on an article about how people tend to disagree regarding facts. It was clear from the start the author was seeking to explain the hyperpartisan nature of our political divide. I wasn't too impressed with the outcome. The closing paragraph stipulates our liberal democratic institutions are designed for disagreement, but these disagreements hinge on agreeing upon facts, a process which seems straightforward, but which he implies is broken and liberal democracy cannot fix. I'm not sure I agree that the process of agreement is straightforward, and I do believe liberal democracy can fix the issue.
I, however, disagree with the closing paragraph. The problem, as stated, is incorrect. People tend to agree about facts, so the adjudication process remains adequate. The issue seems to be that few people want to agree, even when they know they are wrong and the facts have presented themselves. If you play poker, as I do frequently, you've probably seen exchanges like this. You have 2 Queens in the hole and one on the board. But there are 3 spades on the flop, and betting action convinces you that a flush is in play. You convince yourself the 3 Queens will hold, and shove all your chips in. When you lose, you blame the person with the flush for not folding to the clearly superior bet, rather than analyzing your decision to shove as a mistake in the face of the facts as they'd presented themselves.
It's nicer in the original French, and more subtle: Chacun voit midi à sa porte. It means that everyone sees everything from their own point of view. Adam Smith understood the concept. People have a foremost interest in their own affairs, and see everything in relation to their own worldview, wants, and desires. In commerce, it leads to the generation of wealth whenever a willing buyer and a willing seller get together. In politics, it leads to harridans testifying that someone looked at them funny thirty-five years ago.
I freely acknowledge that my doorstep has a very different noon than my neighbors. When I was younger, I found eccentricity in others piquant. Now I'm the eccentric, I guess. But I can't help noticing, as I search for news stories for you fine folks here at Maggie's Farm, that it's always the same noon in every news outlet on the planet. I also can't help noticing that their noon is my midnight.
Allen ranked among the world's wealthiest individuals. As of Monday afternoon, he ranked 44th on Forbes' 2018 list of billionaires with an estimated net worth of more than $20 billion.
After the game, the pawn and the king go in the same box.
Deep into late antiquity, the Homeric epics, like the King James Bible in Georgian and Victorian England, “offered a shared language which could be activated at all levels of literate culture in the expectation that an audience would understand”. Early Byzantine subsistence farmers, who neither knew nor cared about the glories of classical Athens, still saw Homer as “the Poet” par excellence. For well over a millennium, the Iliad and Odyssey formed the basis of literate education for Greek-speakers everywhere from the Rhône to the Tigris.
The reshuffle is an attempt to steady his administration after a series of resignations, and revive a reform drive that has shown signs of flagging. Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire, who has spearheaded Macron's eurozone reform push, and Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian retained their posts.
The idea would be to let customers of Walmart’s video service, Vudu, pay for additional services like HBO Now, Showtime or Starz. The discussions are still exploratory, and Walmart’s plans may change. The retail giant is trying to convert its hundreds of millions of customers into users of online services, responding to changes in how those customers watch TV.
Everyone watches TV in their pajamas, and shops at Walmart in their pajamas, so this would be a perfect fit.
Bezos was asked about his position on defense contracts after Google dropped its bid for the Pentagon cloud computing contract worth up to $10 billion because it would be inconsistent with its principles. "We are going to continue to support the DoD," he said, referring to the Defense Department. "If big tech companies are going to turn their back on the US Department of Defense this country is going to be in trouble."
You know, it tipped from opposition to insurrection on day one. Ask Steve Scalise. Bezos just like money. I guess Google figures China will pay more. Speaking of which...
The other thing I find disturbing, after all these years, is the willingness of my former colleagues to not only comply with the censorship but their enthusiasm in rationalizing it. It is not a coincidence that the rationale they give was the same one management had given them. As Blaise Pascal trenchantly observed in Pensées, *power creates opinion*. This is just as true within corporations as it is for national politics.
Ils ne sont pas des traîtres. iIs sont de l'autre côté.
The Facebook posts were not from everyday internet users. Instead, they were from Myanmar military personnel who turned the social network into a tool for ethnic cleansing, according to former military officials, researchers and civilian officials in the country.
I'm sure everyone working at Facebook will resign in protest over this dastardly use of their product, such as it is. This is my "sure" face.
In 2014, an international team of biologists estimated that, in the past 35 years, the abundance of invertebrates such as beetles and bees had decreased by 45 percent. In places where long-term insect data are available, mainly in Europe, insect numbers are plummeting. A study last year showed a 76 percent decrease in flying insects in the past few decades in German nature preserves.
Fewer bugs? Your definition of hyperalarming and mine varies considerably. Chacun voit midi à sa porte.
The surge in the price of bitcoin, and of other cryptocurrencies, which proliferated amid a craze for initial coin offerings (I.C.O.s), prompted a commensurate explosion in the number of stories and conversations about this new kind of money and, sometimes more to the point, about the blockchain technology behind it—this either revolutionary or needlessly laborious way of keeping track of transactions and data.
Last month, it was announced that a review by the Law Commission would look at whether offences driven by misogyny - dislike, contempt or ingrained prejudice against women - should be treated as hate crimes. And now it's emerged the same review will also consider the opposite - crimes motivated by misandry - hostility towards men. Ageism and hatred of certain alternative cultures, such as Goths or punks, could also be included in future.
Punks? L’habit ne fait pas le moine. I'm sure, as always, women and minorities will be hardest hit by this law. Although, isn't it cruel to be nice to goths and punks? It cheers them up. They hate that.
Well, that's Tuesday's slate. Be sure to describe the angle of the sun on your stoop in the comments.
