Cool and clear after the crashing rain and hail that started off yesterday. It even got into the high 70s and was sunny and blue sky by noon… and I feel like I could use some more of that.
Did my errands. Got lucky at a Goodwill on the east side of town, and got 3 shirts and a pair of pants, all like new, and priced like rags. One of the peculiarities of shopping thrifts is that they don’t usually differentiate between brands when pricing. So UnderArmor, Nike, Mammut, North Face, etc are all priced the same as Old Navy, or Abercrombie and Fitch, or the chain store ‘house brands’. So why buy the cheap clothes when you can buy the expensive well made clothes for the same money?
Had a chat with one of my auctioneers about the secondary economy and buying at outlets, resellers, and auctions. He sells $1200 sheet sets (yes bedsheets) at auction for 30-100$. Who has money to spend at Macy’s on a $1200 set of sheets? And how many of those people will there be when things go pear shaped? (just an example) He sees the number of people logging into his auctions dramatically increasing every week lately (which I hate because his prices won’t be so low anymore). It tells me that people are finding the lower cost ways to get what they want and need. Eventually, there won’t be a surplus of expensive stuff to sell cheaply, but those days are in the future yet.
If you haven’t checked out alternative ways to buy what you need, like ‘casual sales’ at yard or garage sales, ‘person to person sales’ either mediated by an app, or in a more traditional venue like a swap meet, or things like estate sales and thrift shops, or the online versions of any of the above, you need to. It takes a bit more time, and what you need or want may not be immediately available (but it may not be in traditional retail either), but prices are better. Remember the quality triangle, good, fast, or cheap, – pick any two… It applies to retail too.
However you do it, stack it up. The worse it gets, the harder it will be to catch up. And it sure looks like it’s getting worse.
n
44F at 6am with 77%RH
Chilly and damp.
joy
n
Over at SiG's place, he points out that 60-70% of the world's space lift capacity is ONE company that is 20 years old. A company that is doing a launch a WEEK, so far pretty much for the whole year. https://thesilicongraybeard.blogspot.com/
That is truly amazing.
n
"Resource Nationalism"
https://www.zerohedge.com/commodities/next-inflation-shock-comes-resource-nationalism
–funny that when Trump said he'd put American interests first, he was roundly decried. Of course it was mostly by those who benefited from putting someone else's interests first. Now everyone is doing it, or going to do it, because starving people at home trumps almost any other consideration.
n
Dade wants to be a tech hub but clubs offering fetishized entertainment and stirring FOMO are still major economic drivers of the economy as long as everyone has a few hundred extra dollars to spend every month.
Drag out the "evil" white guys to reassure the wives of the Locust Class that *something* is being done, but God forbid the party actually stop while the rest of the country is still playing mask and vaccination Kabuki.
Meanwhile, up in Tampa …
https://news.yahoo.com/controversial-tampa-bay-police-chief-102007570.html
And the city wonders why it is one bad quarter of Bloomin’ Onion sales from not having any Fortune 500 headquarters within its boundaries or even regionally.
Even Fort Myers has Hertz … for what that’s worth.
(Say, whatever happened with the big Hertz deal for cars from Tesla? Remember that?)
And in Orlando, assembling the Tron coaster amidst all of the “Don’t Say Gay” ruckus, notice who is turning the wrenches and who is tagged as "operations" personnel with the most face time on camera.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WMS6qfviysU
Nice ink! And properly (well kinda) masked too!
Still, any progress on that roller coaster is welcome news.
It looks like we are getting stuck with Brown Jackson on the SCOTUS. "I can't define what a woman is…", etc. How any Senator can vote yes is beyond me. Even Bishop Mittens loves her record on pedo light sentencing. That speaks volumes about him.
I pray for thee, ole chip off the asteroid, to hit DC, soon and hard.
That nomination was always going to be a wash in terms of direction of The Court. Better to have a Justice with mediocre writing skills than another Breyer or Blackmun in the Roe seat.
If Roe is overturned in the near future, crafting the dissent used to argue a future reversal will now fall on Hermione Granger Kagan. Kagan will be busy in general unless Roberts votes with the liberals.
Mittens is setting himself up to be a “compromise” VP possibility if Biden doesn’t resign or assume room temperature until after the midterms. He got a pass on this one from The Elders for the reasons listed above.
Where has Kankles been to contract the Koof? Or pSaki? I've been out and about maskless in Texas and a little in Nevda for a year and am fine. I don't think I have some super immune system. Maybe that *booster* isn't as great as Kankles, Obola, and pSaki think it is.
Can having your hair sniffed give you koof?
It was the association with me and my super anti-bodies along with the food at Bill Miller BBQ.
Yes, I have been multiple places, for months, without a mask. I have yet to catch the kung-flu since the uproar. I think I had kung-flu, or a very bad case of the flu, before the masking begin. Since then I only wear a mask when forced, not because I desire to wear a mask.
Which end? One end might give you a lot more than the koof.
Psaki again? She tested positive last year too.
All of the Dems have been working the fundraising trail since Christmas. Plus all of the names you mentioned will have domestic servants of some form, most paid hourly, with an incentive to conceal infection.
Is the convention business returning to San Antonio? If that big McDonalds near the Riverwalk is still boarded up, the pandemic fear still prevails.
We've been doing some polling of clients and where they want us to hold our twice a year training summit. Almost unanimously Vegas. We did a couple in SA and were underwhelmed at hotel conference support as opposed to Vegas.
Over The Hedge: Stan Death
https://www.gocomics.com/overthehedge/2022/03/23
So being a Reaper is punishment, who knew ?
Is the convention business returning to San Antonio? If that big McDonalds near the Riverwalk is still boarded up, the pandemic fear still prevails.
I went to a convention in San Antonio last September 2021 at the Mariott Riverwalk with about 2,000 engineers.
Long rant about customer service, phone bots, and chatbots deleted.
KitchenAid could certainly improve their approachableness.
The good news is for $32, they'll send me a box and packing materials, cover shipping the boat anchor stand mixer to the factory, and return it to me. Repair should be less than $200, so in total it beats replacing it even with a smaller model.
"Gone (Gone, 1)" by Michael Grant
https://www.amazon.com/Gone-Michael-Grant/dp/0061448788?tag=ttgnet-20/
Book number one of a young adult dark fantasy series. I read the well printed and well bound trade paperback published by Katherine Tegen Books (Harper Collins) in 2008, revised in 2014. I have yet to decide if I will read more books in the series as dark fantasy is not my bag. Warning: there is much death and disappearance in the novel. I have a feeling that the series gets darker as the next book is titled "Hunger".
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gone_(novel_series)
"Lord Of The Flies" meets "The Dome" meets "X-Men". Everyone fifteen and over suddenly disappears one day in a small California seaside community. The several hundred kids left behind, zero to fourteen, have to fend for themselves. After a month, most of the non-frozen and non-canned food is gone. And then there is the special abilities being exhibited by some of the kids: telekinesis, healing, etc. Plus the flying rattlesnakes and talking coyotes.
My rating: 4 out of 5 stars
Amazon rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars (2,316 reviews)
xkcd: Galaxies
https://xkcd.com/2596/
That is a lot of galaxies.
Explained at:
https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/2596:_Galaxies
Miami Beach riots – those darned Amish again. Bet: none of them are really college students, or anyway, not at any college that has admissions standards beyond having a pulse.
Seriously WTF are you supposed to do with a large fraction of the population that is fundamentally uncivilized, and not interested in changing? You can't build enough prisons, and anyway, that's not a solution. But no other (realistic – SteveF – realistic) solutions offer themselves.
– – – – –
Personal prediction: the next phase of the Ukraine war is going to be…interesting. It seems as though many Russian soldiers have reached their limits. Case in point: the commanding colonel of a tank brigade who was just run over by his own soldiers. Oops.
Lots of Russian soldiers would jump at the opportunity for 3 hots and a cot in a POW camp. Ukraine just needs to open the door, rather than making the units feel cornered. If Ukraine is really clever, they will ask some other nation to manage the POW camps. Put them in Poland, for example.
Put them in Poland, for example.
— probably why Putin is threatening to nuke Polish cities if they get involved.
Over at SiG's place, he points out that 60-70% of the world's space lift capacity is ONE company that is 20 years old. A company that is doing a launch a WEEK, so far pretty much for the whole year. https://thesilicongraybeard.blogspot.com/
That is truly amazing.
n
https://thesilicongraybeard.blogspot.com/2022/03/oneweb-has-ride-into-space.html
Amazing and scary. Truly amazing at the success and realization of the dreams of several generations of space enthusiasts, scary because of the one guy who is driving the company and several other companies.
One of my foreign sales agents emailed me this morning. Apparently his country is making war upon their neighboring country and he has decided to leave his country. Permanently. He is going to contact me when he has relocated himself and his family. He is worried that he will not be able to leave later.
Everything I've seen and heard goes against buying the lower-end new ones if you use them for more than mixing a cake or whipping cream.
Plus if it has the nice strong motor of the old ones, it can't be replaced except with a vintage one. "They say" that some of the new models have good motors, but I haven't seen any actual users compare them favorably to the >30 year old American made ones, especially for longevity.
(Say, whatever happened with the big Hertz deal for cars from Tesla? Remember that?)
"Hertz Reaffirms Massive Tesla Order, Receives First Model 3 Deliveries"
https://cleantechnica.com/2022/02/08/hertz-reaffirms-massive-tesla-order-taking-deliveries/
"Recently, a Tesla owner discovered two car carrier trailers outside the Hertz rental car center in Santa Clara, CA. One of the trailers had Tesla Model 3 cars still on it, while the other one was unloaded completely."
"Rental car giant Hertz ordered 100,000 Tesla Model 3 cars to add to its rental fleet last year. Since then, analysts and Tesla enthusiasts have been trying to learn more about when the cars would actually start getting delivered."
"Hertz also confirmed that they were getting the Model 3 deliveries for their Uber fleet, which is another 50,000 cars that the company intends to add by 2023."
No discounts !
"Clarence and Ginni Thomas, American Patriots"
https://cnsnews.com/index.php/commentary/star-parker/clarence-and-ginni-thomas-american-patriots
"Now liberal journalists are having their most recent field day because it happens that Thomas' wife, Ginni, is a conservative like him, is an American patriot like him, and is personally invested, like her husband, in safeguarding our Constitution's integrity, written, as its drafters wrote in its preamble, "to secure the blessings of liberty.""
"Clarence Thomas does it as the court's longest-sitting justice and perhaps its most principled and consistent conservative. Ginni Thomas does it as a conservative activist, involved with a number of conservative organizations in Washington."
Looks like part of an obit package.
Oh, God, will that be a sh*t show if he passes before the midterms.
The Senate is down one Dem member, who is recovering from a stroke, so even to get a nominee out of committee, one Republican will have to flip.
A dozen, then?
Where has Kankles been to contract the Koof? Or pSaki? I've been out and about maskless in Texas and a little in Nevda for a year and am fine. I don't think I have some super immune system. Maybe that *booster* isn't as great as Kankles, Obola, and pSaki think it is.
"Booster restores vaccine protection lost against omicron, U.K. study finds"
https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/covid-booster-restores-vaccine-protection-lost-omicron-variant-uk-stud-rcna18281
"Two doses of either the Pfizer-BioNTech or the Moderna Covid-19 vaccines provide minimal protection against symptomatic illness caused by the omicron variant of the coronavirus, but a booster shot was able to restore protection, new research finds."
I question the efficacy of the vaccines for the omicron variant. And the forthcoming omega variant that I believe the Chinese have in their viral stable.
I have not had the booster yet. I had the Pfizer twins back in April of 2021 so I am way out of date now.
Maybe it isn't in the stable anymore.
https://www.cnn.com/2022/03/21/business/shanghai-disney-closes-covid/index.html
Emphasis mine.
Yep.
I'm still waiting for the knock on the door from the regulars here who promised to hold down the reluctant and skeptical for the forced door-to-door jabs which seemed inevitable a year ago … until they weren’t.
You'll takes yer medicine, Skippy … and likes it. Or else …
Still vaccine free. And up until December, I worked for a marginal DoD contractor company with a**hat General James Clapper on the advisory board. The Yoga Pants in HR were not as brave as the General, however, and the vaccination deadline seemed to come and go without a peep.
>> Bet: none of them are really college students, or anyway, not at any college that has admissions standards beyond having a pulse.
Those D1 football players need someplace to study crocheting until they get drafted into the NFL.
They could always play at the I-AA school level … like at UT Austin.
Looks like the new basketball coach is going to get fired too. One coach at a time, however, and the new football coach hasn't been officially shown the door yet.
Emphasis mine.
Yep.
Musk is the real-life Delos D. Harriman.
Musk is the real-life Delos D. Harriman.
Definitely. Musk has been pushing the human to greater heights just like Heinlein's fictional character.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delos_D._Harriman
The power wall isn't a shipstone, yet.
n
Peter over at BayouRenaissanceMan has been doing the posts I'd do if I had more time. I think he's under prepped, and too light with his recommendations, and he has come to the party late, but he's working the problem.
n
>> Amazing and scary. Truly amazing at the success and realization of the dreams of several generations of space enthusiasts, scary because of the one guy who is driving the company and several other companies.
Driving…with no range anxiety…
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/who-will-be-the-first-trillionaire-study-predicts-elon-musk-in-2024-144150081.html
>> LOL! How many times do you need to post this same goofy remark before acknowledging that it’s not going to happen?
Sorry, couldn't resist…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rEBKSLR2CHw
Peter over at BayouRenaissanceMan has been doing the posts I'd do if I had more time. I think he's under prepped, and too light with his recommendations, and he has come to the party late, but he's working the problem.
n
https://bayourenaissanceman.blogspot.com/2022/03/if-youre-still-not-listening-youre.html
"For years, people like me have been warning that hard times are coming. For the past year or more, some of us have been hammering on the point that hard times are already here, and they're going to get worse – a lot worse – before they get better. Michael Yon has gone so far as to coin an acronym, PANFAWAR (Pandemic, Famine, War) to describe what he sees coming down the pike at us."
"Some readers have listened, and some have built up their reserves to an almost incredible extent. Good for them. Many of us (including yours truly) aren't able to do that much, thanks to financial and other constraints; but we've done the best we can within our limited capabilities."
LOL! I don't really stay up at night worrying about it, but, this time last year, some of the regulars here were ready to go full "Rolf Gruber" with regard to vaccines if that's what it took to get back to "normal". Many here have guns in large quantity where Rolf only had that whistle, which is somewhat scary when they start with the "You'll takes your medicine and likes it, Skippy" talk. You should know — you're the one using a VPN routed overseas to post. LOL!