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.
Moving heavy weights is extremely difficult and frequently impossible - or feels impossible. When you move up a notch, it requires as much will power as muscle power. You have to make a loud noise to do it and my place allows those necessary ejaculations. Farts also can occur with intense exertion. I believe in will power, and believe it can be trained in a willing trainee. Physical training is 50% mental training, learning to do what you can't do. It takes a trusted trainer or gym partner to help you past your limit. Just words like "You can do it" or "Gimme one more" or "C'mon, you got it" have a powerful effect - which is the power of a positive relationship. Psychotherapy.
Does a little magic help, if only for placebo effect?
- For example, I take a multivit once in a while, when I remember. Maybe only little brats with terrible eating habits need them. I take them for the magic.
- Mrs. BD and I make whey protein shakes with berries for after heavy lifting mornings, or use overpriced commercial protein shakes. It's quicker and easier than cooking food. Otherwise, I'll have a hard-boiled egg or two if I can get them down. We keep a bunch of them in the fridge. Supposed to get a protein blast after ripping up muscles with weights. Probably magic, but who knows? If underweight is a problem, add some carbs to breakfast. I should, but I don't want them.
- Creatine? Why not? It can't hurt, and probably can add some power to bursts of heavy lifting - full power- lifting and pushing. Application of more power means more muscle damage which leads to more strength. Alternative is to eat lots of steak. For other sorts of exercise it does nothing.
- Caffeine? It is one of the basic necessary food groups along with nicotine and beer, so I try to meet my minimum daily requirements as determined by Expert Government Scientists.
In 2020 I had some big gaps in my exercise routine. Mainly medical, including a nasty case of tendonitis probably due to squats with too-high reps.
Them's the breaks, I guess.
What you mostly lose from those times away is endurance. At least for me, physical endurance declines before muscle strength does.
I can pretty much manage the same weights, but fewer reps. And my cardio and calisthenics things are kind of sad compared to a year ago.
Use it or lose it is correct. I am back daily for my gym workouts, and it feels harder than before. I think working back gradually might be best, taking a couple of months to get there.
Yes, the downtrodden pigs, the exploited horses, and the victimized sheep finally did expel Farmer Jones from America’s Animal Farm.
But in his place, as Orwell predicted, revolutionary pigs began walking on two feet and absorbed all the levers of American cultural influence and power: the media, the bureaucracies, Wall Street, Silicon Valley, publishing, the academy, K-12 education, professional sports, and entertainment. And to them all, the revolutionaries added their past coarseness and 1960s-era by-any-means-necessary absolutism.
We are now finally witnessing the logical fruition of their radical utopia: Censorship, electronic surveillance, internal spying, monopolies, cartels, conspiracy theories, weaponization of the intelligence agencies, pouring billions of dollars into campaigns, changing voting laws by fiat, a woke revolutionary military, book banning, bleeding the First Amendment, canceling careers, blacklisting, separate-but-equal racial segregation and separatism.
Conspiracies? Now they brag of them in Time. Read their hubristic confessionals in “The Secret History of the Shadow Campaign That Saved the 2020 Election.” Once upon a Time, radicals used to talk of a “secret history” in terms of the Pentagon Papers, or a “shadow campaign” in detailing Hollywood blacklisting. They are exactly what they once despised, with one key qualifier: Sixties crudity and venom are central to their metamorphosis.
Our left-wing American revolutionary cycle from the barricades to the boardroom was pretty quick—in the manner that the ideology of the Battleship Potemkin soon led to Stalin’s show trials, or Mao’s “long march” logically resulted in the Cultural Revolution. The credo, again, is that the noble ends of forced “equity” require any means necessary to achieve them...
Voted greatest mystery novel of all time by the Crime Writers’ Association in 1990, Josephine Tey recreates one of history’s most famous—and vicious—crimes in her classic bestselling novel, a must read for connoisseurs of fiction. Inspector Alan Grant of Scotland Yard, recuperating from a broken leg, becomes fascinated with a contemporary portrait of Richard III that bears no resemblance to the Wicked Uncle of history. Could such a sensitive, noble face actually belong to one of the world’s most heinous villains—a venomous hunchback who may have killed his brother’s children to make his crown secure? Or could Richard have been the victim, turned into a monster by the usurpers of England’s throne? Grant determines to find out once and for all, with the help of the British Museum and an American scholar, what kind of man Richard Plantagenet really was and who killed the Little Princes in the Tower. The Daughter of Time is an ingeniously plotted, beautifully written, and suspenseful tale, a supreme achievement from one of mystery writing’s most gifted masters.
You do not need to enter the ocean to find rough water. I have been boating in some nasty seas in my life, and I do not like it unless I am on a large ship - like an ocean liner. It's good practice, though. I am now a fair-weather boater. I used to take my boat out after storms for practice. There's no other way to get the feel of it.
These cheerful twins are offshore (which to me means ocean - not coastal) in Florida, not in rough water, but it is a good instructional video.
Mrs. BD and I came home from our enjoyable if grueling seamanship courses last night. We got certificates, plus FL boating safety licenses. Why did we do that? Why not? Navigation and boat handling are basic life skills and we both have plenty of room for improvement.
Photo is from now. Florida wasn't hot though.
Either way, I like both places. The Maggie's Weather Rule is that any day you are lucky enough to wake up, or wake up healthy, is a beautiful day. I love snow dumps.
These guys make backing into a slip look easy. It is NOT - especially in a narrow lagoon with a current, a 20 knot breeze, and manatees as special navigation hazards.
Freedom isn’t free. And what’s being asked of most of us is, in the grand scheme of things, relatively minor. You might lose a grad student, some colleagues might be mean to you, maybe it will be harder to get certain grants, maybe you will even lose your job—but probably nothing will happen to you that would particularly impress Solzhenitsyn. One exercise that might help is to play out in your mind all of the negative scenarios you can imagine and show yourself that you can survive them. Even in the worst-case scenario, you will probably still be better off than 99 percent of the world’s population.
Not all of us are willing or able to take on this fight. And even those of us who are ready to act need to choose our battles wisely, and not go charging into every fray like a mad berserker. In my own case, I spent years remaining silent and hoping the problem would just go away on its own. Eventually, I realized that the problem was getting worse rather than better, so I spoke up in the most considered way I could. And even then, I was still targeted for a cancellation attack.
40:21 Have you not known? Have you not heard? Has it not been told you from the beginning? Have you not understood from the foundations of the earth?
40:22 It is he who sits above the circle of the earth, and its inhabitants are like grasshoppers; who stretches out the heavens like a curtain, and spreads them like a tent to live in;
40:23 who brings princes to naught, and makes the rulers of the earth as nothing.
40:24 Scarcely are they planted, scarcely sown, scarcely has their stem taken root in the earth, when he blows upon them, and they wither, and the tempest carries them off like stubble.
40:25 To whom then will you compare me, or who is my equal? says the Holy One.
40:26 Lift up your eyes on high and see: Who created these? He who brings out their host and numbers them, calling them all by name; because he is great in strength, mighty in power, not one is missing.
40:27 Why do you say, O Jacob, and speak, O Israel, "My way is hidden from the LORD, and my right is disregarded by my God"?
40:28 Have you not known? Have you not heard? The LORD is the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth. He does not faint or grow weary; his understanding is unsearchable
40:29 He gives power to the faint, and strengthens the powerless.
40:30 Even youths will faint and be weary, and the young will fall exhausted;
40:31 but those who wait for the LORD shall renew their strength, they shall mount up with wings like eagles, they shall run and not be weary, they shall walk and not faint.
The distribution of significant community outbreaks along restricted latitude, temperature, and humidity are consistent with the behavior of a seasonal respiratory virus. Additionally, we have proposed a simplified model that shows a zone at increased risk for COVID-19 spread. Using weather modeling, it may be possible to predict the regions most likely to be at higher risk of significant community spread of COVID-19 in the upcoming weeks, allowing for concentration of public health efforts on surveillance and containment.
Our study found that the proportion of inpatients with COVID-19 who wear eyeglasses for extended daily periods was lower than that of the general population, suggesting that daily wear of eyeglasses is associated with less susceptibility to COVID-19 infection.
Can't wait for Fauci to tell us to wear two pairs of eyeglasses.
Even once inflation is factored in to produce the safe real interest rate, a steady decline after the Volcker era is clearly visible. This indicates that something fundamental is changing in the economy’s view of saving and investment. Bloomberg pundit Joe Weisenthal has glibly suggested, echoing views common on Wall Street, that sovereign bonds—indeed, a wide range of financial assets—are actually stores of value and that negative rates are fees for safehousing money.
Paul Volcker was either a god or a devil, depending on who you ask. But he was certainly nowhere in-between.
According to reports, Plummer died peacefully at his home in Connecticut with his wife Elaine Taylor at his side. Lou Pitt, his long-time friend and manager of 46 years, remembered him as "an extraordinary man who deeply loved and respected his profession".
He was Commodus before Joaquin was born, and better at it too. He was the definitive Rudyard Kipling, THE skinflint millionaire, Kaiser Wilhelm, more Rommel than James Mason, and more Barrymore than Barrymore. And still they hang the Sound of Mucus around his neck. Rest easy Sir Charles Litton. We'll remember you.
The collection has been purpose-built to reach a wide base of both public and academic library patrons, and to contain books that people want to read and access online—titles that are widely held by libraries, cited in Wikipedia and frequently assigned on syllabi and course reading lists.
When I get a little money I buy books; and if any is left I buy food and clothes -Erasmus
West is the latest Republican to come out in support of declaring Texas an independent nation. Last month, thestate representative Kyle Biedermann confirmed that he will introduce the bill for a referendum as early as this week. “Texit,” named after the British referendum to leave the European Union, refers to the process of Texas exiting the United States to become an independent, self-governing nation.
Please keep in mind that secession is only cool when California threatens to do it.
Behind the scenes, a power struggle for control of r/wallstreebets erupted on Wednesday when the oldest moderators of the forum booted over a dozen newer mods from their duties. The banned moderators then accused the old guard of selling out, and conspiring to secure a lucrative movie deal about r/wallstreebet’s role in the meme stock craze. “They (the old mods) left for years and came back when they smelled money,” wrote “zjz," a banned moderator.
Like campus politics, the fights are so vicious because the stakes are so small.
“I think if you have solid projections and a solid budget and you plan accordingly, you can certainly do all these things, but we didn’t have any of those,” brand director Kaelin says. Scott, who as head of production oversaw at least $1 million in expenditures, says in three years he was never asked for or given a budget, and never had to file an expense report for his company credit card. “I could put $8,000 worth of vanilla on a credit card and nobody would say a thing,” he says.
Huh. It turns out you have to know something about ice cream, and something about business, in order to run an ice cream business. Who knew?
VONNEGUT I would do the same thing with commencement speeches, I want them to be shapely and to be fun possibly for an actor to say. Where’d you go to college?
CARO Princeton.
VONNEGUT I’ve heard of it.
Kurt Vonnegut was funny. Robert Caro wrote four books about Lyndon Johnson, which is another kind of joke entirely.
Semiconductors are extremely important components of new vehicles for areas ranging from infotainment systems to more traditional parts such as power steering. They’re also used in consumer electronics.Ford’s confirmed plans come a day after General Motors said it would take down production next week at four assembly plants in Fairfax, Kansas; Ingersoll, Ontario, and San Luis Potosi, Mexico.
Ahem. A pickup truck has one bench seat, a metal dashboard, three on the tree, and an AM radio. I have no idea what exactly an F 150 is anymore, but it ain't a pickup truck.
Have a nice weekend, y'all. Or if you're Bird Dog, a nice weekend yawl.
The Proposal to Prevent the Feminisation of Male Adolescents called on schools to fully reform their offerings on physical education and strengthen their recruitment of teachers. The text advised recruiting retired athletes and people from sporting backgrounds - and "vigorously developing" particular sports like football with a view to "cultivating students' masculinity".
The American version is reminding the male students that they'll never be half the man their mother was.
Nationwide, the U.S. is averaging about 139,000 new cases per day — a 16% improvement over last week, which was a 16% improvement over the week before.
Flu season in the US runs from October to February. It's February. You're welcome
Threadneedle Street’s monetary policy committee (MPC) voted unanimously to keep the official interest rate at historically low levels while it agreed to set the deadline for banks to prepare themselves after policymakers said they were ready to make negative lending rates part of their toolkit.
Well, after giving away money doesn't work, there's nothing left to do but pay you to take it.
23andMe, founded in 2006 and led by co-founder Anne Wojcicki, has raised a total of just under $900 million to date, including an $85 million Series F round announced last December. The company was one of the first to debut at-home genetic testing for individual consumers, providing kits that people can use to find out more about their own DNA, and what it says about their potential health issue, ancestry and more.
If you're unfamiliar with 23andMe, they're like Facebook, but instead of spying on your browsing habits, they rifle through your medical waste if you're dumb enough to send it to them.
The blue verified badge on your house lets people outside know that you're an authentic public figure. To receive the blue check crest, there must be someone authentic and notable actively living in the house.
The iPhone maker plans to set up production with Kia and build Apple cars at the automaker’s facility in Georgia, U.S., DongA Ilbo reported, without citing anyone. The companies may sign a deal on Feb. 17 and aim to introduce Apple cars in 2024, according to the newspaper, which said they have an initial target to produce 100,000 autos a year.
You can get it in any color you want, as long as it's... white?
Researchers from SINTEF, the Norwegian Polar Institute and the University Centre in Svalbard have collected samples from Arctic crustaceans close to the settlement of Ny-Ålesund on the west coast of Spitsbergen. During the spring and summer, they discovered a number of drugs in a variety of different concentrations. “These included ibuprofen from Ibux, diclofenac from Voltaren, antibiotics and an antidepressant,” says SINTEF researcher Ida Beathe Øverjordet.
You know, I'd kinda noticed that my Svalbard mollusks seemed a tad taciturn recently. They've completely lost the urge to fetch sticks and dig in the garden, too.
Staff at Balthazar poured the two wines into identical decanters, but the one containing Mouton Rothschild 1989 was accidentally sent to the young couple’s table, said the New York restaurant’s owner, Keith McNally. Four Wall Street businessmen at another table had ordered the Bordeaux First Growth – the most expensive wine on the restaurant’s list at $2,000 (£1,528) – but were served the $18 Pinot, the restaurant’s cheapest, said McNally on his Instagram account.
I remember this one time I was at a boring convention, but they had an open bar with a half-decent wine selection. I guess I sorta took advantage of the open bar thing. After my eighth trip across the auditorium to get another glass, a guy handed me a big trophy, a pretty girl kissed me, and the master of ceremonies announced over the public address system that I'd won the dance contest.
The hardware and software will be supplied by Netradyne, a California company behind a platform called Driveri that uses cameras and artificial intelligence to analyze a driver as they operate the vehicle. The camera then gives real-time feedback — including automated suggestions like “distracted driving” and “please slow down” — while collecting analysis that is used to later evaluate drivers during their shifts.
Amazon should just install the driver's mother-in-law in a jump seat and get it over with.
“What these companies were doing was essentially fudging the numbers, lying to investors, other companies and the SEC,” said Schwartz. “Eventually, you have to make up for the money that was lost, that really never existed, so shareholders lose money, people lose retirement plans, people lose jobs. It’s very, very damaging.”
I was walking down the sidewalk in New York once, when I noticed a stockbroker I'd met at a party recently coming towards me. "Hello," he lied.
“Firms don’t allow employees to go out and make predictions on stock,” he said of employees who aren’t analysts. Many financial firms also require employees to disclose if they have brokerage accounts with other firms to monitor their trading activities, he added. Mr. Gill, as a securities broker, is registered with FINRA. His broker registration does not indicate he has any outside business activities. FINRA rules prohibit brokers from filing incomplete or misleading information about themselves.
This dude is in for an SEC enema with a Maxine Waters rubdown finish. He'll be used as a political football. If he's useful in their endless efforts to raise taxes, they'll call him a little guy and let him keep the vig. If he hurt the wrong hedgies, they'll stake him out on an anthill. But his real problem comes later. Some enterprising lawyer with a client who dumped their college money into GameStop and lost it all will sue him, and win. It's pit bull season, and he's wearing milk bone underwear.
Well, that's the links for today. Don't forget to shift your buttocks slightly on the couch at least once a day.
Ned Beatty explains how the world really works to a doe-eyed crank in Network. A wonderful parable for our times, and still spot on 45 years after it was made. The Wall Street Bets kids will be cozened into Janet Yellen's boardroom shortly, and get Citadel's version of this speech.
It was kind of wonderful to watch Peter Finch ramble and rave for two reels, lulling you into the false idea that this was as far out as a man could get. Then Ned Beatty goes intergalactic compared to Finch's low Earth orbit. They gave all the Oscars to everyone else in the movie, so there were none left for him. Well, real boardrooms are supposed to be filled with faceless men.
Television's mesmeric effect was very real, but it's nothing compared to the internet. No one was walking around all day, every day, with a running television in their hand in 1976. TV was an alternate reality, a reality more beguiling than real life was, surely, but not a replacement.
There is no life outside the internet. It's Arthur Jensen's wildest dream, fully realized.
Much of this is down to the idiosyncratic nature of the Reddit investment phenomenon, which is the key difference between this deleveraging episode and others spurred by economic anxieties or macro shocks such as the pandemic. While the retail crowd can whip up a trading frenzy in a few stocks through its message board, the targets tend to be concentrated and relatively small.
I'll explain the GameStop/Reddit/Wall Street Bets frenzy in the simplest terms possible. They've all joined a joint-stock Amway.
The agreement came at a cost. In a six-page statement of facts, Smith acknowledged evading more than $43 million in taxes over a decade and repeatedly filing false tax forms. He agreed to pay a penalty, forsake tax-deduction claims for $182 million of charitable contributions and cooperate for five years with prosecutors on investigations, including their case against Brockman, whose web of opaque Caribbean entities was allegedly used to hide $2 billion in income earned from Vista.
His company manages $73 billion in assets for public pension funds. Public pension funds are about to get maybe a third of a trillion or so in bailouts, masquerading as aid to state and local governments. He won't be eating ramen anytime soon.
IBM’s blockchain unit missed its revenue targets by a wide margin for two years in a row, said a second source. Expectations for enterprise blockchain were too high, they said, adding that IBM “didn’t really manage to execute, despite doing a lot of announcements.”
I guess IBM is being haunted by the ghost of Romettys past. You will be visited by three spirits. Listen to them, and do what they say, or your (block)chains will be heavier than mine.
Together, these hieroglyphics give archaeologists hints about where the workers came from, what their lives were like, and who they worked for. Nowhere have archaeologists found signs of slavery or foreign workers. Meanwhile, there is ample evidence of labor tax collection throughout ancient Egypt. That’s led some researchers to suggest workers might have rotated through tours of construction, like a form of national service. However, it’s also unclear if that means the workers were coerced.
Got that? "Researchers" say it wasn't slavery. It was "national service." Give them another couple years to research the topic, and they'll be able to explain it was just like playing Minecraft, only with real blocks. Loads of fun for the whole conscripted family!
Women in China's "re-education" camps for Uighurs have been systematically raped, sexually abused, and tortured, according to detailed new accounts obtained by the BBC.
No sweat. Xi will just get some researchers to rename it "national service."
The Justice Department withdrew a lawsuit that alleged Yale University violated federal civil-rights law by discriminating against white and Asian-American undergraduate applicants, the latest indication that the Biden administration is shifting the federal government’s stance on civil-rights enforcement from that of the Trump administration.
Pretty soon, we'll perfect bizarro world college admissions where the only way a white male can attend is to make the football team.
The character trait that typically accompanies fame is extreme narcissism. Many friends quickly went messianically deranged when their social media accounts exploded with followers. I remember being in the ‘backstage’ area of a Bernie rally thinking that it felt less like a protest and more like the greenroom at a pop concert. People chatted to each other distractedly, glancing every few seconds at their phones or over each other’s shoulders for someone more famous to talk to before going on stage to passionately expostulate on the evils of inequality. For all its supposed utopianism, this is a cynically competitive and rigidly hierarchical scene.
I've been accused of being a narcissist. But enough about me. What do you think about me?
“They're going to get rid of the infrastructure that allows individualized tracking and profiling on the web,” says Bennett Cyphers, a technologist at the civil liberties group the Electronic Frontier Foundation. “They're going to replace it with something that still allows targeted advertising—just doing it a different way.”
Cookies for me, but not for thee, says Google, and every toddler's mother.
Last September, India was confirming nearly 100,000 new coronavirus cases a day. It was on track to overtake the United States to become the country with the highest reported COVID-19 caseload in the world. Hospitals were full. The Indian economy nosedived into an unprecedented recession. But four months later, India's coronavirus numbers have plummeted. Late last month, on Jan. 26, the country's Health Ministry confirmed a record low of about 9,100 new daily cases — in a country of nearly 1.4 billion people. It was India's lowest daily tally in eight months.
Flu season in India runs from October to February. It's February. You're welcome.
In new research published in Advanced Materials in December, the QUT team describes a design that uses a capacitor-style titanium carbide-based negative electrode and a battery-style graphene-hybrid positive electrode. The result, says the team, is a hybrid capacitor with a power density (and thus charging capability) "about 10 times that of lithium batteries", and an energy density "close to that of nickel metal hydride batteries."
People mistakenly believe that designing electric cars is an electric car problem. But electric cars are about as old as gasoline-powered designs. They didn't catch on because the batteries sucked, and gasoline rocked, and was damn near free. The batteries still suck, and only work on a boondoggle basis. Supercapacitors are the future of electric cars and solar storage.
Well, that's the links for this morning. I hope you found them enjoyable or informative or amusing. But remember: It's the individual that's finished. It's the single, solitary human being that's finished. It's every single one of you out there that's finished. Because this is no longer a nation of independent individuals. It's a nation of some two hundred odd million transistorized, deodorized, whiter-than-white, steel-belted bodies, totally unnecessary as human beings and as replaceable as piston rods.
I'm sorry. Did I say that out loud? I meant to say, "Have a nice day!"
The Bee Gees 
TRAWLER BLAST - 
A good thing about dumbbell resistance exercises is that you don't need a spotter. In addition, you can have them at home if you are still gym-phobic.