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Woodworker Absolutley agree! I have been seeing these here in the Bay Area for around $20.00. I find that to be a lot but it is 30% cheaper than the $30.00 price mentioned
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American 2023 our experience too! Covid-like mystery extended cough illness, all negative. Have heard several similar stories.
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| 3,200 |
The parallels between Russia and Nazi Germany and World War II are becoming more and more apparent as the war progresses. Both states aspired to be world powers but lack ed the demographic and industrial base for such status. Both armies were over extended, and under supported logistically. They have both seen their tactical and operational capabilities and material strength continuously erode during the course of heavy, attritional fighting. Neither have shown an ability to regenerate to their original strength, much less increase it. Neither has attained their original objectives, but both are in a state of constantly shifting goals, and objectives. Objectives that appear to be more and more a case of prestige/obsession (think Bakhmut=Stalingrad) rather that rational, attainable goals. Russia, like Nazi Germany in World War II, finds itself confronting not only the immediate enemy (Ukraine in this case) but the industrial and military resources of the NATO which are far greater than its own. And last, but not least, both are totalitarian dictatorships pursuing a pursuing a criminal war against the people that can only stiffen the Ukrainian will to resist. The only difference is that even if it loses, Russia will not undergo an Anglo-Saxon occupation similar to Germany's, that would offer the possibility of converting it into something approaching a liberal, democracy. Russia will remain an embittered, expansionist dictatorship and a threat to peace.
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| 6,464 |
Hugh Briss I see the advertisements on FB frequently stating I or others can purchase “excess” inventory such as a popular portable generator that retails in excess of $1100.00 for $75.00 with free shipping.And there will be many testimonies about how great the product is on the posting.Buyer beware that if it sounds too good to be true.
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| 4,192 |
I have heard from a professor of a top flight professional school who on the admissions panel accepted individuals who had preference admissions due to skin color, despite many much more qualified Asian Americans and non Black, Latino, Native Americans with higher scores, GPAs and professionalism during interviews. Not only did the majority of these preference admissions required more time and energy because they could not preform at the same level, one even claimed discrimination. That professor ended up spending much more time and energy (again preferential treatment) to get that student up to speed for the sake not not being sued - he even told her how can I be racist when I choose you to attend this program? All I can say is these type of admissions really do a disservice - entitlements for the worse reason, and enabling students to pull the race card when the truth is they are not ready to compete at that level. Furthermore, when these students start to begin their careers in the open marketplace, there is a stain - a fair question emerges - are they truly competent or are they just a preferential admit? That is the last thing I want when I seek services, I want competence not preference.
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| 7,407 |
Andrew I wonder what their reaction would have been had you asked to cover your loss of $17,000. Probably a lot different than a few hundred quid.
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| 3,508 |
Santos ran for office because he didn't have a job and needed to pay his rent. Beginning and End of story, except he will be ripping off the taxpayers for 2 years at $175k per annum and will hide from his constituency for the duration. The GOP, what a stellar group of folks, aren't they?
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| 1,461 |
I served on a judicially-appointed government study commission in my rural Minnesota county. It included about 15 people of which roughly one-half were farmers. It was quite an eye-opening experience. The farmers spent the majority of their time criticizing Aid to Dependent Children and other programs designed to support single mothers and low-income people in general. Out of curiosity, I did a simple Google search on Dept of Agriculture subsidies in my county. I was appalled to see one of the most vocal husband/wife farm couples had received over $1 million in subsidies over the prior ten years--yet they had the temerity to criticize other social programs. I came from a family of farmers but I can't accept the hypocrisy of rural America. These are not dumb, picked-on people--they choose to be ignorant about the realities of government spending and hide behind the fact that they "feed America." Sorry, but no one is more bigoted than a farmer, the majority of whom inherited their farms. And when they finally sell-out, they typically knock down $1-2 million on the sale. Rather shameless in my view...
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Google lays off 12k employees today. Earlier this week, Microsoft announced laying off 10k. A few weeks ago, Meta let 11k employees go.Perhaps Elon Musk was right then in shrinking Twitter’s workforce. Here the move was portrayed as shocking and almost an insanity, but now we see that the circumstances are such that it was likely a necessity (even if we dislike it).
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| 9,550 |
There's another side to this story. I live in a professional-class college town of clueless social justice warriors and identity obsessives. They endlessly posture and perform for each other while ignoring the plights of working-class people regardless of color, gender, sexual orientation, or ethnicity. They argue endlessly about pronouns and spent thousands of dollars during the Trump administration to go on tours of the southern border so they could “witness” the deprivation and desperation of the refugees and immigrants caught up in Ice’s net. Their answer to climate change is to put solar panels on their huge houses so they can cut their utility bills and sell the extra to the power company while they buy Teslas and other high-end electric cars. Meanwhile, they spent the pandemic traveling (by car) to the short-term investor-owned northern rentals that have priced the service workers needed for the state's tourism industry out of housing. When I an older working-class liberal point out the hypocrisy of their policies and positions they act like turtles and pull their heads into their shells or attack you for not being “anti-racist” enough. They worship money and education (especially if it doesn’t address real-world issues) and disparage the very people they claim to represent. With “friends” like this the working class doesn’t need the republicans to undermine their lives and interests, the professional-class democrats will do so just fine.
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| 7,975 |
Gaetz is a complete twit, but there is nothing fantastical about having a policy discussion about eliminating or vastly pairing down the income tax in favor of a national consumption tax with appropriate exemptions for basic food-stuffs, medicine and essential services. Tax simplication, ending loopholes and special interest deductions and credits make good sense, especially if a national consumption tax is also accompanied by a reasonable flat income tax for earnings in excess of something $500,000 and large capital dispositions of estates, securities and real property.
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Mr Scott Exactly. The wealth gap is increasing not closing.
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| 4,579 |
Yawn. Their continued victimhood is dripping with insincerity, projection and airing it all out in the open is never the way to go about it with your own family, regardless of who they are. Bad form. He’s been so badly taken in by the mrs. I’ve yet to see any real humility, or responsibility taken because we all know it takes a village.
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| 883 |
Inquisigal I was privileged to be at my dear friend's bedside, in the ICU, when she died. What an amazing lesson in letting go! What joy cracked our hearts open! (there were 10 of us there, her children and their spouses, her siblings and three of us friends....) We sang and danced and ate the cookies and drank the tea that the staff provided, and said our goodbyes. We were in awe of the love in the room, and in love with her and each other all at once. There is nothing like a good death.
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| 8,493 |
Inflation is not when goods are too expensive. It's when our money is worth too little. A 1.7 trillion dollar spending bill, when not backed by any real wealth, adds 1.7 trillion our our national debt. It did. It was 9 trillion when Obama took office. It is now 33 trillion.It is more than our annual gross national product. The only other time in our history when this was true was during WW II, when we borrowed desperately from everyone to catch up to our enemies, who had prepared for war while we did nothing.So now milk which was $1.50 a gallon, gas, which was $2 a gallon and eggs, which were $2 a dozen, are now $4, $3.50 and $8 respectively.And our president brags about how well he's done. He's right, if he was the president of an enemy, like China.But not America.
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| 5,879 |
I'm one of the the ones that's benefited tremendously from Trump's and especially Biden's stimulus. I locked in a 15 year at 1.875% in 2021 effectively trimming my monthly payment by $800 from much higher rate 30 year. I had two new cars in 2019 so I didn't have to buy a new one at inflated prices. I use a credit card which gives me 7.5% onq groceries plus coupons and fuel points help keep my food and gas costs low. Now I'm just throwing as much money as I can into the market and t-bills.
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| 6,899 |
230,000 homeless in America. I have to wonder how accurate that number is, it feels like it should be higher. Using that as a baseline though, I don't understand why we cannot make the investment as a nation solve this problem. Doing the math, assuming we spent $30,000/per year to house 230,000 homeless per year it would cost $6.9b/year. In contrast we subsidize the oil industry near 3x that with $20b/year, corporations in an industry that reported record breaking profits in 2022 while increase prices to the public at the pump.I am sorry it makes zero sense to me that people and politicians say there is no money for the homeless, but we are happy to give billions in our tax dollars to corporations who frankly do not need the help and CEOs live at a level of luxury and the average person cannot even fathom. I also have to wonder, all this reach and emergency services and incarceration of the homeless, how expensive is that?? I'd love to see the numbers, expect its far more expensive to persist this band aid approach rather than investing in the services to fix the problem at the source.
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| 7,959 |
John Chastain for a "mediocre at best" president Biden has an impressive list of accomplishments for a first two years. I wasn't an early supporter in 2020 but have been impressed with his accomplishments. Has he made mistakes? Of course. Is he a great communicator? Not really. But he has enormous and valuable experience for this job and he has brought in good people and listens to them. I would support him if he runs again but also open to new blood.
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| 5,746 |
America is not “in” Ukraine. We are supplying Ukraine with badly needed weapons and Ukraine is using them to save its invaluable democracy and to weaken a criminal, fascist and extremely dangerous Russian leader who is a threat to the region and to the world. This investment is a small drop in our huge military budget. This is NOT where we need to be looking for savings. Consider how much money we literally flushed down the toilet in Iraq and Afghanistan, not to mention the lives of our own soldiers. The right wing fascists in this country who have taken Putin’s side in this conflict are the very same people who took the side of Putin’s puppet when he claimed his election had been “stolen” from him. The far right in this country whines continually about its “freedom”. Ironic when it is clearly in the process of destroying our democratic norms and our Constitution. If the word freedom means anything, it means that our system of free elections and our Constitution must be held sacred, and must be protected from the manipulation and lies of political criminals whose personal greed has evolved into treason.
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| 8,034 |
schools in South Carolina opened Fall 2020. Schools in Charlotte, NC (borders SC) opened in April 2021 (4 days a week...) . I wish I had lived in South Carolina.
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Ms. Greenhouse might also have mentioned that in Pennsylvania in addition to Mastriano's defeat that abortion largely sank his partner in crime, Dr. Oz, who ran for the senate seat and tried to separate himself as a moderate.He pretty much drove a stake through the heart of his campaign when during the single campaign debate, where the Republicans were hoping the effects of eventual winner Jon Fetterman's stroke would destroy him, Oz said that abortion decisions should be left to "the woman, her doctor, and local politicians."
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| 1,199 |
Laura No I am not minimising MC's experience. I am objecting to her extension of her particular unfortunate experience to being a general severe risk . If my neighbour is involved in an accident I extend my sympathy but it does not affect my assessment of my own risk. I still go out as before.
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| 7,681 |
If we had not had AIDS activists disrupting scientific meetings all through the 1980's and 1990's we would not have the effective treatments we have today, nor would there be a worldwide scientific effort looking (with plausibility) to a cure, nor would HIV be preventable by biological means (PrEP). The AIDS activists who were usually, although not always, nonscientists had the advantage that the scientific establishment led by Tony Fauci, was open minded enough, and cared enough, to listen. Never discount activism. At the same time, we all have our roles to play and we all decide where we will stand. When employees at my nonprofit decided at later points to do things like nonviolently chain themselves to statuary in the US Capitol building, they took a vacation day; they told their supervisor what they would be doing; they did not represent themselves as working for our health center. They paid their own way to the event. Being on the moral high ground does not entirely absolve anybody of recognizing that change is hard, and really you do have to think about longer term consequences of your actions. In my small FQHC the obvious potential consequence would be defunding and then the people depending on us for their care would have nowhere to go. That seems like a high price to pay for one action. For a government funded lab that would get a reputation of being too out there, I wouldn't know exactly what would happen, but I think you do have to think about that.
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| 4,486 |
From Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget:"To achieve these savings without more revenue, we estimate all spending in 2032 would need to be cut by 26 percent; this figure rises to 33 percent if defense and veterans spending is exempted from the cuts. For a sense of magnitude, applying this cut across the board would mean reducing annual Social Security benefits for a typical new retiree by $10,000 to $13,000 in 2032. It would also mean laying off 1.1 to 1.4 million federal employees (more than two-thirds of the civilian workforce if the military were exempted) and removing 20 to 25 million people from Medicaid eligibility."So, basically, the cuts the House wants to make achieve a savings, let alone a balanced budget as exemplified above, aren't going to happen.
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| 4,063 |
Jared Kushner got $2.5Billion from the Saudis for what? What deals did Jared make while his Father in Law was President and he was his Senior Advisor? Don't remember the results of that Investigation.
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| 9,581 |
Guns are fine as tools, but once they become intertwined in one's identity they become dangerous. A weapon cannot repair damaged self-esteem and a sense of inferiority. Open carry becomes a mechanism for controling one's immediate surroundings through initmadation and an implied threat. Confident people don't need this equilizer and don't need to impose themselves on others.
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| 4,605 |
Lord Krishna Great advice, and it does work for some. My 35 year old son ‘retired’ last year. I admire his dedication, but for those of us who grew up in rural America in the 60’s and 70’s, not an easy task. No way to invest, no internet to teach us how to dream, no 401k, no pension for most. Parents who lived paycheck to paycheck and would NEVER talk money, savings etc with their kids. The internet opened the world to everyone. We used our tax return to buy a Gateway computer in 1998 and our son was hooked. He set his path when he was 16, and never wavered. He is now very happily married to his girlfriend of over 10 years and starting a family, paid cash for a new home, diversified investments everywhere, has catastrophic health insurance but self pays for the basic stuff. He never asked us for a dime on this journey. Dang, sure wish I could have the life path he has, but I can at least enjoy watching him live his life.
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LW1: I think Philip missed the mark this week. Is 10 weeks very early for these conversations? Of course. Unfortunately, as you know, you do not have the luxury of dating guys for months and months before bringing up this topic. And as many other commenters have said, egg freezing, adoption, and fostering are not the no-brainer solutions they are made out to be in this column, and if this "incredible guy" is the kind who is nearing 40 and still has the mindset of "I want kids eventually one day", then you need to know that as soon as possible. I am a very direct person, so if I were you I would say:"I've noticed that when I bring up relationship milestones like moving in together and having kids, you become a little more reserved. This makes perfect sense, because we have known each other for 10 weeks. However, having biological children is really important to me, and unfortunately the remaining time I have to make that happen is limited. I am not, repeat NOT asking you to commit to being my life partner or the father of my children in this very moment. But if you are not going to be ready to get serious about having children in the next few years, please tell me now. I have loved getting to know you but I don't want to waste either of our time if our plans for the future do not align." If he's scared off by your honesty, maybe it wasn't meant to be after all.
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| 5,936 |
I recently shared Christmas dinner with a dear friend who is a mega Christian. She and her husband are kind, open-minded, non judgmental humans who have spent 35 years sharing the word of Jesus Christ all over the world. She apologized for Christians who blindly followed, and voted for the con man, trump. They do not follow the teachings of Christ is how she put it. She makes me proud to know that at least a couple of Christians out there recognize a false prophet when they see and hear one.
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| 8,879 |
Until and unless Chinese Americans from mainland write stories about unfortunate loss of loved ones back home when the country reopened, it will be difficult to assess the reality and whether Western predictions are coming true. China has taken a calculated risk of opening up when the virus mutated into a weak one and probably the vicious Delta has been long gone.
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| 9,489 |
OK, so here's the plan.I will offer my services, as a white man, to live in a house owned by black people. I increase the sale value, you give me, what, 10 percent of the agent's cut and you walk away with more money, such a deal!(And the word is spelled F A C E T I O U S)
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Switzerland has a high number of privately-owned firearms per capita (albeit not as high as the US). The difference is that open carry is subject to a cantonal licence that must be renewed yearly, and conceal carry, while also cantonal, is a lot rarer, and subject to stringent tests. The number of total gun deaths (all types) has halved since the mid-90s. The number of gun murders has also gone down, to around 10 a year. Most murders are committed with knives, but murder remains low in Switzerland.
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"Global demand for aviation is expected to double over the next 20 years."None of these potential solutions sound promising enough to combat that. I hope we can put in the needed investments to get off fossil fuel. How about taxing emissions so that flying becomes as expensive as it should be? Maybe use video conferencing more, and vacation at a state park rather than Fiji?
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| 6,056 |
As skyscrapers are built, they are open to the elements. On the morning after a snowfall, the 63rd floor, as an example, will be covered in a layer of snow and deep drifts from the wind. My favorite thing to see is the many, many paths made from the footprints of the current animal inhabitants of the unfinished building: rats, pigeons, maybe other birds? One time it was clear from the varying size of the tracks that a big mama rat had taken her young ones on a stroll.
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Susan A slow-moving coup?The 1% and the highly-placed people in government are best friends. How else do you think the highly-placed people in government can become multi-millionaires while in office or shortly after leaving office?And the response, "He wrote X number of books" doesn't cut it for me. If writing 5 or 6 books can fund multi-million dollar homes and beach houses, then Tom Clancy, John Grisham, James Patterson and a number of others must be gazillionaires!
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Mark What evidence can you cite that the last Democratic-majority Congress was not interested in the welfare of the entire country?Biden and the Congress got insulin to be capped at $35 bucks a month!Rotting bridges are going to be replaced in Republican-majority states.Aid went for veterans exposed to toxic burn pits.and that's just a few items
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| 1,877 |
In China, almost 70% of all investments Chinese make is in real estate. Why? There are few other options to invest. Foreign purchases are forbidden (except for well-connected CCP members); the stock market is highly regulated by the government, as we've seen the past few years, with companies like Alibaba, Tencent and many others suffering >50%losses because the CCP decided to steal some of their profits, er, I mean, make them comply with securities law (which the CCP just made up).As this article shows, real estate was supposed to be the ticket up for middle class Chinese.Real estate makes up nearly 30% of China's GDP. If it suffers, China suffers.China's public debt is now over 300% of their GDP - and with their just released numbers showing the population is not only declining but getting much older, how are they supposed to pay for this aging society?Remember Evergrande, the huge Chinese real estate developer? They defaulted on their debt and still have to find ways to pay off $300 billion. They are the most heavily indebted company in the world. Other developers like Sinic, Country Gardens and more are even worse off.The great Chinese real estate bubble has burst, and it's just getting started.
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La Belle Catalane As you may have noticed, the only nations among the former Soviet Republics and the Warsaw Pact which have been invaded by Russia are ones that are not in NATO. Seems like the mistake was in not expanding NATO fast enough. I believe that what had an adverse effect on the development of Russian Democracy was the West allowing the economic collapse of the Russia and other post-Soviet states. We should have poured untold billions into economic development, and even direct payments to individual citizens if necessary.
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Minneapolis Mom I agree. Also, the public is very uneducated about taxes we pay on income and keeping the GDP at 2% for the Last 20+ years. I read an article about how we will pay less in taxes this year, because the rate of inflation has doubled, although I do not believe that is the an adequate % representation. The Index mentioned here sys that if you take out fuel costs and food costs that the index went up only 4.6%. How do you NOT count those costs as a huge factor in inflation. Food is a basic necessity and if you want a working population, they will incur transportation costs of some type. This is a political/semantics game that is being played on working people, making under $400K and down. It’s very convoluted and makes no sense. Funny, if there are no shortages, prices do not drop significantly on food, ever. Once the higher price is set, it’s there. We all need to step back and think about what we need as opposed to what we want. We bought a brand new Subaru Outback 6 years ago, paid $29K. That vehicle has gone up by $7500+ since our purchase. Luckily, we are retired and only have less than 40K miles on it. As far as I am concerned, we will keep it until the wheels fall off. Sometimes, you just have to shut your purse on the greedy.
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JA The value that decentralized currencies provide is that they allow institutional investors to invest in criminal enterprises. Strip away the speculative value, and crypto is simply a vehicle for money laundering to facilitate wide scale crime like drug trafficing, and cybercrime. Crypto investment then is a way to profit from that.
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Eric B Wordle 564 2/6*⬜⬜⬜⬜🟨🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩Skill 98 Luck 90The Bot continues to disdain my random “weird word” openers, but they continue to up the fun for me in a “how will I get out of this one” sort of way. Today, assessed where the lone viable letter was most likely to appear in a word, then tinkered with the likeliest shapes of words from there. My remaining-word-whittler-downer was the word. Woot!
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Andrew ..Exactly! Bret is under the illusion that Biden can just wave a magic wand to change the tax code...even he should know that's entirely up to Congress. IMO though, the more aggravating (and ludicrous) point Bret made regarding taxes was his recommendation to implement a low flat tax, a tired old mantra Republicans have had for decades. Assuming that universal tax rate was 10%, one doesn't need a PhD in mathematics to realize that having to pay $3,000 in tax would hurt someone earning $30,000/yr. far more than someone making one million dollars having to pay $100,000. In other words Bret, flat does NOT equal fair.
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| 8,603 |
I agree that the discussion of the Fed’s tools for controlling the money supply (and through that, interest rates) is incomplete. Open market operations, executed by the NY Fed, are also a critical tool. Basically, the Fed buys or sells securities on the open market, thereby increasing (when it buys) or decreasing (when it sells) the money supply. This impacts interest rates, which impact the level of economic activity overall.
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NjRN Because Mount Sinai has more than 500 open positions it cannot fill. It cannot pay people more as it has to pay both enterprising nurses and bad nurses the same. Union mandates pay and thus hurts hardworking nurses.
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JL -- if you're an engineer in product development, you clearly understand that customers will always pay the lowest possible cost for a product. So if you've designed in some amount of sustainability or repairability, that comes with cost. Maybe it's a compromise on the mechanical design, to give access to a replaceable battery. Maybe there's some way of making the screen trivially easy to replace. But you know this adds cost, and this cost shows up in the final price.Everyone complains that the things they buy can't be repaired (or repaired for a low cost), but when there are two otherwise identical products on the shelf, one priced $100 higher because it's "repairable," then we know what the consumer will choose. Every time.
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The problem with many of these "historical comparisons", as Krugman well knows, is that the methods for determining metrics like unemployment and inflation have repeatedly been changed by the government to, well, make them look better than they really are.For example what we call "unemployment" nowadays is the number that the Bureau of Labor Statistics publishes as "U3". In the past the top-line unemployment number was what BLS currently calls "U6".Similarly, inflation has introduced kludges such as "hedonics" (if NY Strip goes from $8 to $10 and Flank goes from $6 to $8, and a consumer who can no longer afford NY Strip buys Flank instead, that's NOT considered to be inflationary) and "owner's equivalent rent" (the single largest component of the inflation stat, where homeowners who have no concept of the rental market are asked to put a theoretical price on what they'd rent their house out for).Somewhere between "feelings" and manipulated statistics, Ronald Reagan's "are you better off now..." remains the proper measure of the economy.
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It's a rude awakening when you go on Medicare and discover what drugs cost in America when you can't use coupons or ACA insurance. Drugs for which I'd formerly paid $5 a month shot up to $120 and then I was suddenly in the "catastrophic" Medicare "donut hole" paying hundreds of dollars a month for those drugs. I'm only 65, still working and in full control of my mental faculties--and even I had a hard time figuring out how they calculate their wacky sliding scale. (The people who run it barely understand it.)So I entered patient assistance programs, which pick up the cost of the drugs if you're under a certain income level. Abbvie was the worst! To get Restasis, another drug that has only recently gone generic, it was always almost an hour-long hold, with crazy hoops to jump through for both me and my doctor. All the other assistance programs make it very easy. Abbvie continually lost what I sent them, had new things they wanted from me and my doctor, and what they wanted or how they wanted it kind of depended on who answered the phone. It was almost like they didn't want me to have the drug at all. Without it I basically can't open my eyes. I almost gave up and paid. I could go to them for Synthroid but I'm just buying it in Canada, where it's about $12.50 a month. $40 here but then it puts you in the donut hole. For everyone who thinks universal Medicare would be great - it would be. Except for the drug costs, which are heinous.
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First off, I was moved unexpectedly to tears as I read today’s Happiness challenge to my husband over coffee this morning. I must be lonely - this has cracked open my heart, I thought. So I called my best friend Jeff who lives in New Jersey. We wished each other a Happy New Year, and he announced that he was retiring after this job. Jeff and I worked together as professional musical theater actors for years. It’s hard to maintain a lifelong friendship in a business where when the show ends, everyone goes on hopefully to the next show in the next town with different actors. But our friendship has prevailed over years and careers and miles and my various husbands. The call took place as he was driving to the window store to buy windows for the remodel he’s doing - he’s now an interior designer. So we had our time boundary in place. I noticed that it doesn’t matter to me so much what we say, although we covered future travel, our mutual commitment to and new found love of visual art, spouses’ health, but the sound and cadence of his familiar and precious baritone that makes me smile and fills me up.
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$400,000? That's more than TEN TIMES what I make in a year! So please pardon me if I don't feel sorry for people making that much money and paying taxes on it. Congress needs to fully fund the IRS, and the IRS needs to go after the tax cheats and prosecute them to the full extent of the law.The "smaller government" and "less government" that the Republicans constantly harp about means that wealthy people skate on the check, while poor people like me have to pay the bill. And that isn't right.Poor people need to realize that the Republican party will NOT protect them. The GOP will screw them over at every opportunity, because the GOP consider us to be "lower class." If you're not making at least $1,000,000 a year, the GOP don't even acknowledge your existence.Tax the rich. I don't care how loud they scream. Make. Them. PAY.
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While the media is covering this display of dysfunction continuously, why are the Democrats not using the opportunity, 24/7 to point out the actual impact if the twenty succeeds? The Republicans have handed them the next election if they stop gloating, abandon the popcorn and start pointing out what happens if the Republicans cut social security etc. Tell people what will happen if the government is shut down. Sitting on the sidelines while the opponent leaves themselves wide open is the epitome of short sightedness.
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Non-gamer here. That was a great start for the show to build upon, although I feel like I must be the only one who's still confused about cordyceps's direct transmission. Airborne spores? Open wound caused by the infected only (classic zombie stuff)? Nobody's masking - obviously that wouldn't go over well for dramatic purposes - so I assume the latter.Mostly I wondered about the kid with arm tremor at school, and next door neighbor grandma - airborne makes more sense there.
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RLW What you are missing is that tax revenues are roughly $1 TRILLION less than spending now.To do what you ask, we would either have to cut spending by $1 T (what would you suggest we cut, and be specific), OR we would have to RAISE REVENUES (meaning increase tax rates) to bring in an additional $1 T (what taxes would you raise, and be specific), OR some combination of tax increases and spending cuts totaling $1 T.In addition, we do not actually know with certainty how much tax money will be collected in any given year. (Do you know how much income tax you will pay for 2023?)If tax revenues go down for any reason, under your "plan" we still end up with a deficit.By the way, your finances and government finances are not the same. Can you print dollars (and not go to jail)? The government can. Can you raise money by taxing? (I didn't think so.)
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| 1,192 |
I’m a fan of low budget horror and I had high hopes for Skinamarink, but all I got from it was a headache from squinting at the screen trying to figure out what I was supposed to be seeing. The best part of this film was the font in the opening credits. Then the long, repetitive underlit shots of walls, carpets and children’s feet began and at first I was thinking, “okay the filmmaker is establishing a tone, I’m sure the whole film isn’t like this” But I was wrong. The whole film, all hour and forty five minutes of it, are the same slow, dark procession of barely anything happening. There were one or two jump scares but I spent so long anticipating them that when they finally arrived they didn’t make me flinch. There’s the kernel of something interesting there, but after seeing the same shot of a wall with things stuck to it for the seventeenth time, I realized that that kernel was never, ever going to germinate and I sat there, growing increasingly restless and irritated, until the end credits brought blessed relief.
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| 9,266 |
GnarlyGdude Endowments are not petty cash. They can only be used in the manner the donor requested. The Ivies like Harvard and Princeton use the interest on the endowment to pay for full grants for eligible students. Princeton just raised the income eligibility to $100k or less. The Ivy League does compete in D1 sports, with FB in the FCS division.
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| 5,745 |
The best investment is a productive asset, a factory or a bar or a laundromat. Gold is for cynics, cryptocurrency for marks, and the dollar consistently loses value over time. The stock market accommodates everyone, but sometimes tumbles perilously over a black hole. The US Treasury Department is now restocking its gold reserves. Even they do not trust the dollar. Life tumbles forward, inexorably, relentlessly and without compassion or mercy or detectable intelligence.Investment strategies should spring from the heart. If you put your money into what you believe in, it will usually be safe. I have a personal problem with bigness, the banks, investment houses, hedge-funds, Real Estate Investment Trusts, and insurance companies. Community has always been a good investment, but big business has frayed the connective tissues.The most secure investment is to people you love, a husband, wife, child, parent or even a loyal friend. Emotional attachments usually trump fiduciary obligations. Gold is a good investment if it forms a marriage band. Silver for heirlooms. Diamonds for promises.A simple savings account should always be secure. America is in for a few shock waves before our trust in our financial institutions returns.
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| 6,190 |
Bobo the Clown What was really sickening to hear was that Wall Street traders still got their average $700,000 bonuses while people lost their homes. I wonder how many foreclosed homes they could buy up with that and rent out until home prices came back up.I didn't lose my home in Edmonton but I lost 20% of its value when I sold it in 2009 to go back to Ontario and care for parents in their 90s. I had just bought that condo recently after being a single parent for a long time. It was not easy for me to buy it but I was frugal.Sickening how the wealthy are catered to in the US. Marjorie Tayor Greene screamed about students having $10K loan forgiven but didn't mind at all having her $180K PPP loan forgiven. Many times I've posted on here, and posted today, how much income and wealth have flowed up from bottom 80% of Americans to top 20% since Reagan's fake trickle down economy.Donald Trump lives like a king and pays $0 taxes or $700? Criminal. Facilitated by a bought and paid for Congress thanks to a corrupt SCOTUS and Citizens United.
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| 9,201 |
Agriculture is actually only a small part of California’s economy. Quick search found it contributed around $50B, making only about 3% of state GDP.
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| 7,703 |
A commenter to a Washington Post article made the interesting observation that while the 2nd Amendment use the words "to keep and bear arms" it says nothing about buying or selling them. Since the originalists are so hung up on the exact wording, they cannot object to banning of the right to a sell a gun; or to make one or import one for that matter. The same goes for ammunition; it can be banned or just taxed so heavily that no one could buy it. How many people would amass thousands of rounds if a single bullet cost $1000 to buy?
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| 9,539 |
Agreed. US Chip manufacturing had been bleeding off to foreign shores for decades. Watching the Intel chip plant in Rio Rancho slowing down and struggling to stay open and modernize has been excruciating to witness. Hopefully, Intel will continue to invest and upgrade the plant to compete with Taiwan. The challenge is to provide a curriculum at US Universities and Colleges to supply renewed scientific, engineering, and technical personnel to help make our nation less dependent on foreign supply chains. About three years ago, I attended a few university graduations and noticed a large number of business graduates and a very small number of STEM graduates. It was a disturbing sight. The alarm was sounded by the scientific/ technical industry almost 20 years ago about America's growing loss of dominance in STEM education and workforce. Our nation has to regain our technological prowess and capabilities to remain competitive and as independent as possible.
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| 278 |
I went to the store yesterday and looked at the price of eggs, even though I didn't need any just yet--$5.99 per dozen free-range organic eggs, not on sale, and this was at the expensive store. Meanwhile, the roads outside were jammed with brand-new giant V-8 pickup trucks, their drivers no doubt listening to AM radio telling them how bad they've got it.
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| 3,220 |
$1.6 million? All he'll need to do is "print" some more trading cards.
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| 8,313 |
American Exceptionalism is the cry of a narcissistic braggart. Instead of saying we’re exceptional, do and accomplish exceptional (or even just good) things and the headlines will write themselves.The Reagan Revolution was true, but not in the affirmative way it was portrayed as ending the New Deal. Yes, it did roll back and diminish some of the New Deal’s programs, causing lots of pain in the process (e.g., the end of the Welfare system, even where it kept families out of poverty). But more importantly it repurposed the tax structure to favor the wealthy in accumulating more and more wealth, and eventually resulting in the inequality that led to the angry populism of the Tea Party and then Donald Trump and the weakening of American democracy. For example, when the highest tax bracket was 70%, no corporation was going to give its top executives excessive compensation because by doing so, they would actually be giving the raise to the government. Before Reagan, the compensation ratio between the CEO and other top executives compared to the average worker was at most a few hundred to one. After the Reagan tax cuts went into effect (top tax rate 28%), the compensation ratio changed to hundreds of thousands to one, with ever more powerful CEOs forcing their hand picked board to giving them excessive remuneration. Now $1 million in salary translated to $280,000 to the government and $720,000 to the CEO, except their tax often dropped to 0 with write offs.
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| 9,441 |
Frankly, the reason ballot initiatives are needed on the 2024 ballot is not because passage of any of these initiatives will expand access to abortion in those states; it is because that issue will drive votes up and down the ballot and ensure that the GOP gets the whitewashing it deserves. Especially in the Red and Purple states.
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| 5,362 |
Zoey Grey Santos was a good enough "communicator" to get himself elected to the US Congress.The fact that Trump has a diploma on his wall does not impress me, notwithstanding that it's from Penn. He needed a significant amount of family "help" from what I've read to even get in there.And I'm supposed to be impressed by the fact that he was a reality tv star? Really? And he's "an adult human being" with a family? Wow, what an impressive point, I should just give up now.If you start out with 400 million dollars, it can't be all that hard to build a network of "powerful, influential friends".Your arguments are laughable. What Santos did is much more impressive on a relative basis. He started from zero and now occupies one of the most coveted positions that this country has to offer.
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| 1,197 |
No mention of ongoing failed antitrust enforcement? Or of private equity taking over our economy? They are often linked. From <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/17/business/dealbook/kroger-albertsons-merger-private-equity-tactic.html" target="_blank">https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/17/business/dealbook/kroger-albertsons-merger-private-equity-tactic.html</a> :“Albertsons wants to pay $4 billion to shareholders ahead of its proposed merger with Kroger, a move that would require the already debt-ridden company to borrow $1.5 billion.”And what do the distinguished economists think will happen to grocery prices after Kroger and Albertsons merge? Macro-economic data might be correlated between two periods of time but correlation is not causation. We haven’t seen concentration of wealth and ownership on this scale since the gilded age, and some of the robber barons back then were at least serious philanthropists.The threat of communism in the early 20th century was certainly part of what led to more reasonable policies. Not sure how we get out of this now.
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| 1,699 |
The airlines all seem to be the same. Several years ago, my (minor) daughter’s JetBlue flight was delayed several times in one day due to a mechanical problem, causing her to miss her connection and spend the night in a strange airport. The airline’s rules clearly said that delays of five hours or more for non-weather related reasons meant the passenger would receive a $100 voucher. Something small, right? Well, when I called JetBlue to see how she could collect the voucher, the guy argued with me that the delay was weather-related, and she was therefore not eligible. I pointed out to him that it was a clear sunny day, and that the passengers had been told the delay was due to a mechanical issue. He kept arguing with me, asking me for “proof” of the weather. I couldn’t believe it. I finally asked to escalate the issue with a manager, and the representative said he would get back to me. Lo and behold the voucher arrived in our email box shortly thereafter.  I was so angry that their strategy was to initially deny that anything was their fault, question people’s accounts (when of course the airline knew the truth), and just hope customers gave up. This was just a small matter but a disheartening example of a large corporation behaving like a con artist.
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| 3,540 |
Where was the outrage of these born again Republican deficit hawks when their President Trump was putting $7.8 trillion of debt on the nation's credit card?THAT is whose debt these loose canon Republicans are refusing to pay: Republican debt.Did Republicans refuse to raise the debt ceiling during the Trump administration? Or did these same Republicans vote to pass the Republican tax cuts for the rich deficit budgets?But because there is now a Democratic President in the White House, they think they can con the American public into believing the national debt is the Democrat's fault. Just look it up online, national debt by president and political party, and you will see who the Big Spenders of your tax money really are. The Democrats are the real fiscally conservative political party.
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| 3,539 |
From what I heard in the serving liquor business the popular spot with waiting lines and over priced drinks has a well known life cycle. If it hits it is printing money. Then the line starts to shrink and the poor start smuggling in cheap liquor and buying no overpriced drinks. It’s over. Shut down and open a new one with some wannabe footing most the bill. At the lowest end a dive bar. The pours are generous. The liquor clear. The regulars alcoholics. Not a cent spent on the place that doesn’t have to be. Cheapest rent possible. Can last twenty years. Scraping buy with the alkies. Then the beer bar. Get regulars can last a generation. Restaurants are no different. Selling a fevered dream of what royalty had for dinner is a high end niche market. Odds are it won’t last unless modern royalty like to go there regular with price no object and prices that bar the riff riff are welcomed. Foodies? You got a kitchen at home.
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| 239 |
Maybe I'm being paranoid, but things have played out much as China, Russia, and Iran could have wished. How much of the fringe funding was from foreign sources?
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| 9,691 |
“Our average check hovered around $60 a person.”The food you’re describing isn’t available for double that price anywhere I’ve been. You’re not charging enough.
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| 4,569 |
Ross, your prognosis for falling birth rates is wrong. The impact of falling birth rates will NOT be worse than the unaddressed consequences of climate change. In fact, a reduced global population is part of the long-term solution to many of our world’s more serious ailments (climate, pollution, species loss, war, immigration, economic disparities).Still, somehow, despite your grim forecast, your five prescriptions are actually spot-on for our current situation. Bravo! They are indeed necessary solutions to help with the reversal of our species’ 10,000-year upward growth curve. 1. Yes, by all means, let’s tax the (mostly older) wealthy, let’s means test SS and Medicare, let’s increase the estate tax. 2. Yes, making sure new tech is smartly employed (and moreover that social solutions are simplified) is a good idea whether global population is 10 billion or 5 billion. 3. Less trench warfare, sure, let’s give it a try. 4. No argument, those darn kids have some good ideas, but will a world of 1 billion good ideas really lead to a deal-breakingly worse outcome than a world of 2 billion (less well-curated, I believe) good ideas? 5. Bingo, to help with the economic/innovation pains of tapering off the steroids of population growth, let’s introduce judicious and titrated policies of immigration from those countries still reproducing at greater than replacement rate. People are great Ross. Smart, kind, funny. But they trash the place. How many is enough?
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| 2,437 |
The nihilistic “Freedom” Caucus or Group of 20 has indeed received confirmation of procedural reforms extracted from McCarthy which will, regardless of which Republican becomes speaker, give them the power to shut down any legislation or eviscerate it.This dangerous group WILL not raise the debt ceiling and if you think the stock market tanking from its high almost a year ago (and the likely recession that will follow) is bad you ain’t seen nothing yet.I’d like to hear Krugman to tell us what will be the results of such a default and what strategies we might employ if we are investors who have already lost as much as 40% of value. We need to prepare for the worst.
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| 7,432 |
I so agree with this. It is disgusting to see a company like United Health "Care" turn another 4 billion quarterly profit while hospitals cut staffing to save money.
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| 4,144 |
Genuine question - what use can the govt or country make of this if we (I’m British) decided the royal family was not an appropriate use? How would this solve hunger?The royal family receive an annual grant in the region of £300m. This comes from revenues generated by the crown estate, the rest of which goes to the country. Yes there’s for sure a legacy argument about the source of the wealth used to buy the constituent parts of that estate. But if we can put that to one side, this is still net positive for the country and £300m while not small, is not a game changing amount. There will always be some republicans but polls show time and time again there is widespread support for the monarchy as a stable and largely benign force that projects calm against the often embarrassingly turbulent government. I totally understand that to an American with a very different psyche this is hard to understand but I am surprised how many comments on here point to abolition of the monarchy as the apparent solution or cause of some pretty difficult economic problems!
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| 2,064 |
Have you ever noticed in life that everyone has a story. It almost always has the ingredients of pain and suffering- with whiffs of occasional insight and intuition. And we cling to these stories and are confounded or disappointed that others don't necessarily find then as true or profound or whatever. In truth these stories are but dreams and they have no claim to reality beyond what we believe they represent. In "Spare" we have one man's story. I've not read it- but I presume it has poignant details, shocking perspectives and some element of wisdom acquired. If the Royal House were wise- they would accept Spare as Harry's story- ignore their friends (or enemies) in the Tabloid Press and focus on their own stories- their own growth- their own duties. And maybe, in a moment of compassion they can accept that Harry's story is his- whether they agree with it or not.By doing so- they will counter the other back story- that the Royal House, the Firm is a brand- not a respected institution. Because you can't have it both ways. Finally, what Harry does do very well in Spare is show the effects of trauma on children and the need for openness, love and compassion to help children reintegrate their lives and emerge into successful adults. To few children receive this support and it doesn't seem to matter whether the family is Royal or Poor.
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| 4,273 |
The article says that deductions on mortgage interest rates and property taxes are not factored in. People need to be reminded that Trump eliminated those deductions for most people. The standard deduction for a married couple is $25,900. The Trump tax change allows up to a $10,000 deduction for property taxes. However, a couple would have to have almost $16,000 of additional deductions to go over the standard.For the most part, deductions for home ownership has been eliminated.
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| 6,073 |
CitizenReally great point! I wonder how many cheap DJI-like drone-clones could have been mass-produced for, say, 10 billion dollars? If the program started a few years ago...?Ukraine would currently have a fleet of hundreds of thousands!And ditto when it comes to artillery shells (the other huge lapse/strategic oversight, if you ask me); it's completely inexcusable now (given how much of our tax dollars go to the military), that there wasn't a reserve of 20 million 155mm shells steadily accumulated over the last 20 years... and now ready for action. Because even putting aside "just a billion" a year out of the massive budget would have created 1 million shells excess per year (they're about a $1,000 each)... which could have gone into a reserve/strategic stockpile; which then would have meant Ukraine would now have TEN TIMES their current artillery capacity... for mere pennies on the dollar of the high-budget, white-elephant, budget-busters the Pentagon Wars and lack of oversight otherwise conduces to. A billion a year set aside; to make a million extra 155mm shells per year... starting in, say, the year 2000; would mean there would now be 22 million extra shells to "play with" for Ukraine. It's crazy to think about: when you actually do the math on just how cheap that return on investment would have been! Missed opportunities...Here's hoping lessons learned....
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| 4,691 |
Why does big tech make it so hard to fix their devices?I think fundamentally the problem, and in widest sense, is that life forms from the simplest to the most powerful and sophisticated and complex in human society strive to be elusive, to develop all sorts of strategies of evasion and protection, that ideally any approach to them is to get lost in a maze, to never penetrate the core and essential heart or mind, to be perpetually at a distance one way or another.In short, defensiveness is the order of things when it comes to life forms, individually and collectively. Not openness, transparency, vulnerability. Big tech makes it difficult to fix their devices because if you can't fix them it probably also means you can't deconstruct them, can't see deeply inside them, indeed it's only a step from there that you can't easily break them. And political and economic structures follow the same pattern: How things are actually run is the province of the few, the safe and initiated people, because you don't want your state transparent, open, and vulnerable.It's interesting the mystery of life itself, the universe around us, makes it incredibly difficult for us to know it, requires the most profound efforts of human geniuses to just get a glimpse beyond the veil. It seems a fundamental rule that most anything sets up all sorts of barriers to our understanding it. Big tech just seems to be following a fundamental pattern, and will probably only become more difficult to penetrate.
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| 4,469 |
We live out a life, and sometimes we sense something in someone else that we recognize, something real, and we feel less lonely. I read Iggy Pop and I hear a person, just talking, marveling, standing there and taking it, shaking it out and seeing if anything of value catches the light. Some stuff he did was hard to read.I've never ground my chest into a broken beer bottle. Never done any drugs. I've lain face down in the snow, though. When you feel the electricity of desperate hope coursing through you, you might do something jarring, just to try to feel something answering back.I saw Iggy open for the Pretenders in Detroit in the early eighties, when I was an art student there. I wasn't in the crush at the front of the stage. I was out on the edge, but I was listening intently for something real, and that night I heard it, and carried it home. So thanks, Jim, for that.
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| 3,008 |
I see no evidence of inflation 'cooling;'. With every weekly shopping trip I see astronomical price increases. Some items have nearly doubled in price from just a few months ago. A frozen meal tray that used to sell for a dollar now costs 1.69. A package of frozen fish sticks that was 3.99 is now 5.49; just a few weeks ago, t was 4.99. Due to the price increase for eggs, any store-made baked goods product price has nearly doubled. The only items I've seen with fairly stable prices are milk.
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| 1,161 |
As an academic, the views of my work that I share at conferences is partially/mostly paid for by my institution (if I made the request to go on their time and expected reimbursement for expenses), and therefore I have an obligation to represent THEM as well as myself and fellow collaborators my work comes from. However, if is wish to go and offer a personal message, then I should expect to pay 100% of the costs, use vacation time AND make double sure that my intended message is in no way a reflection on my institution -- I would expect to be very clear with my institution what I intend to say, and get in writing what those limits are so that both parties know where they stand. If I go outside our agreement with the institution, then I would expect consequences (that should also be crystal clear in the agreement), and the same for the institution -- if I stayed within what was agreed, then I have some protection and recourse.Being employed certainly limits one's voice and if one so feel compelled to voice one's findings, then turning to freelance work as a scientist or journalist would be better option. There are limits to "free speech" and I expect that this scientist ventured far into the grey area without considering all angles and consequences. Unfortunately, the message she wanted to deliver is clouded in the process of delivering it -- and so it was a wasted message in so many ways.
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| 4,589 |
John Harrington The books sold for $500 new. If you can find them, they now sell for thousands.Good luck!
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| 7,627 |
"Thomas Nides, the American ambassador to Jerusalem, said the United States hopes Mr. Netanyahu can help to avoid actions that will make cooperating with the Biden administration more difficult."It's quite sad that all we can do as a nation that supports Israel with $4 billion a year in military and other aid, which defends Israel at the U.N. with vetoes of resolutions critical of Israel, is to "hope" Israel stops its brutality, repeat that we stand by Israel, and just offer the same hollow, scripted statements we've been offering for decades. With the current leadership in Israel, with religious bigots overseeing security, with outright discriminatory laws being put in place, we, the United States, are showing ourselves as a morally bankrupt nation to the rest of the world -- and to the many Israelis protesting their current government. When will President Biden stop hiding and state publicly that we will immediately stop our financial support of Israel until there is a radical change in government. That is the only thing that will stop this brutal occupation. It's high time we exercised our moral leadership.
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| 2,100 |
I hate to be the voice of skepticism, but I'm not sure a flurry of EPA rule making will make a difference. The current Supreme Court majority is opposed to the administrative state, and fired their opening salvo in West Virginia v. Environmental Protection Agency last June when they limited the EPA's ability to control green house gases. Their next shot will be when they rule on Sackett v. Environmental Protection Agency (oral arguments heard last fall) and restrict EPA clean water regulations. And this will go on until the EPA, and likely other agencies, will have very limited discretionary power to create and enforce rules. Simply stated, Trump is still with us.
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| 3,286 |
RickW So why are americans earning less than 25,000 dollars five times more likely to be audited than americans earning more than 25,000. (According to results based on internal IRS reports released each month to the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC) at Syracuse University under a court order entered after successful litigation under the Freedom of Information Act.) Many poor Americans do not report tips and gig income and it is easy to audit them. Why else would IRS implement a 600 dollar threshold for reporting?
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| 95 |
Dilution is the solution to pollution. The fact that gas stoves may emit some chemicals which can be harmful does not mean that the actual levels in actual homes are harmful. I would like to see reporting on actual epidemiological studies of indoor air quality due to gas stoves on disease. My strong suspicion (and the evidence of my senses) is that the ill effects of chemicals released by cooking far exceed those released by the gas stove itself.LP gas is especially important in rural areas. Decades of neglect of the power grid mean that we in the Northeast experience many-day-long blackouts more than once a year, and far more shorter ones. LP running a generator provides a backup for heat, light, and water which is simply not available any other way. A $5K generator with an LP tank provides essentially unlimited backup. A single day's battery backup requires a capital investment five to ten times as high with a life time less than half as long, and even my quite large solar array would have difficulty keeping such a system in charge during the dark and cloudy days of December. As a typical example, we were without power for five+ days this past Christmas with at least five half-day outages since.I have faith that someday battery technology will be an acceptable substitute for LP gas in rural areas, but it looks as if that day is still some years off.
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| 6,096 |
No, he can not. When Israel turns itself into a theocracy, without regard for human lives within its sphere of power, we must downgrade our relations, cut off the welfare payments of $3.8B per year, cut off military support, then wait for the Israelis to come to their senses, if ever. Imagine, Saudi Arabia is theocracy, Iran is a theocracy, the Christian nationalists in the US want a theocracy, and now Israel is inching towards a theocracy. We cannot and should not support any of these people.
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| 5,752 |
Steph Exactly! More like $4K!
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| 511 |
Recent experience buying a used car - 2017 Avalon - was nothing like the last time I bought a used car. The amount of information available to the purchaser has exploded and, my opinion, puts purchase of a used car on the same playing field as considering any other kind of expenditure or investment. Car was from CarMax, which gave me every bit of information it could about the car, with pictures and a four month full guarantee after the purchase. Further research on Carfax (and you need to make a judgment about the full accuracy of a Carfax report) gave me the full service history and minor accident of its 43,000 miles. Bought it and, knowing that I could return it for any reason, paid an excellent mechanic 120.00 to inspect it after purchase, who called it immaculate, probably the best quality car I will ever have owned. The CarMax price was probably +- 1000 higher than it might have been elsewhere, but the Carfax told me what I'd be getting for that premium. I love it like a kid with his first car.
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| 8,746 |
It’s been a K shaped recovery. Most of those open jobs don’t pay squat, which is why they are open.
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| 4,098 |
Part II IN (4-5)• “It was the young girl’s repeated use of the word ‘like” and her rising IN(10) at the end of each sentence which turned every statement into a question,” he said, “that drove me absolutely nuts!”• The emcee’s short IN(5) to the plenary speaker was intriguing, but once the lecturer began to speak his monotone quickly made us lose interest in what he had to say.IR• My husband and I made a prenuptial contract: he would IR(4) all our clothes if I mowed the lawn. He’s still at it, but I had xeriscape landscaping installed.• Isn’t it marvelous that an IR(8) placed in an oyster’s shell yields such a beautiful pearl?• I realized that the toddler had some sort of skin IR(10) when I saw her arm covered with red bumps that she repeatedly scratched. JA• The JA(7) in my Catholic elementary school cleaned all the classrooms, bathrooms, and hallways nightly, offering his services freely to the parish.JI• The quirky Jedi master Qui-Gon JI(4), played by actor Liam Neeson in several Star Wars movies and tv series, is one of my favorite characters.• JI(5) is the plural form of JI(4): these spirits are supernatural beings with assorted powers who are capable of assuming different forms according to Arab and Muslim mythology.JO• “Absolutely,” said the recruiter, “we’d love to have you JO(4) our organization. Just sign on the dotted line and I’ll tell you more about us.”• The Army and the Navy participated in a series of JO(5) military exercises.
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| 7,543 |
Excellent point! I’m all for reducing our carbon footprint in reasonable ways, but it seems like many of these suggestions seem to overlook the realities and risks of living in the Midwest and Northeast. I can remember a few times growing up with a natural gas stove when the power would go out during a snow storm (or even some harsh summer thunderstorms), and, no matter what, at least we could still cook dinner. Today, I have a gas-top range in addition to a gas hot water heater and furnace, as well as an open (wood) fireplace. Anecdotally, the house smells a heck of a lot worse after burning a wood fire than cooking on the stove, so I would imagine the particulates of the smoke from that - fairly infrequent but traditional winter pastime - is a lot more harmful than some oven range fumes. As much as I would like to, I can’t fathom converting my home to “all electric” until there is a reliable way to store 3 to 4 days worth of electric power in the home in case of an emergency power outage.
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| 6,251 |
Franklin_Tea basically a useless entity that exists only to make its founders and staff grotesquely wealthy. They will claim they are “making markets more efficient”, but really they’re statistically front-running the stocks and index funds that everyday Americans invest in. They’re wealth hoarders and they’re undertaxed
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| 7,766 |
As Klein states, the Republican Party is led by private corporations and business institutions like the Chamber of Commerce, Americans for Prosperity and others. For this business elite, an efficient supply chain is essential to production and wealth. Workers are "parts" in the supply chain that must be constantly available, and often imported. That is why the CEO faction of the Republican party is pro-immigration. Assessing human workers as "replaceable parts" in the supply chain, means that safety net programs like Medicaid, Social Security, and the Affordable Care Act are unnecessary business expenses that must be eliminated in order to maximize profits. Enter the "you will not replace us" nationalists. They and their sympathizers represent the enormous backlash against the open immigration policies, paired with entitlement cuts, so dear to CEOs. As usual, with the Republican Party, their base is right that they are being played and dehumanized, but their rage is totally misdirected.
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| 7,789 |
SeaAlTell My sister got the two of us doing this…more than 30? years ago….?? When the Gratitude Journal idea first came around. She called them "Thankees' ..and we shared our Thankees with one another nightly.Let me assure/urge any if you who have never tried this simple technique: it can be (at least somewhat) life changing! It lifts your spirits, lifts you out of your humdrum doldrums/even mild depression, makes you open your eyes to seeing-appreciating the world around you. Nothing could be simpler to try…with as impactful a payoff. Kudos to my sister….who I miss every single day.
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| 3,501 |
Every morning I open my laptop to read The New York Times. And every morning, I wonder if the headline will be a mass shooting. And too many mornings I read the awful details of yet another mass shooting. My first thought is always if any of these mass shootings could have been prevented? Were there warning signs? If so, were they ignored? How did this individual get these guns? And then I think about our current Congress. The Republican Party refuses to be proactive about reducing gun violence, so it's left to the Democrats. Last year, Biden signed into law the first major gun safety legislation passed in decades. The measure includes funding for school safety and state crisis intervention programs. So, is that it? The Democrats need to put forth more legislation. Legislation that might actually pass with bipartisan support. Perhaps expand background checks to not allow loopholes for gun shows? Gun control legislation may need to be incremental. If the Republicans block the legislation, or vote it down, hold them very publicly accountable. Speak their names. Make sure Americans know that it is the Democratic Party that is trying to curb gun violence. This falls on the shoulders of the Democrats. They need to step up again with new legislation. Sitting back and doing nothing is not an option. And new legislation needs to be put forth this week when these mass shootings are on the minds of Americans.
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yes
| 8,702 |
I owned a fairly upscale cafe in the 90's in Los Angeles. It's a hard life, much harder than most of the public can even comprehend. I lost a lot of hair and money, and we were packed every day. The busier we got, the more money it cost to keep running, and the thinner the profit margin. After only two years of being opened I decided to close up at a tremendous financial loss, but by that point I didn't care, I simply wanted to end the overwhelming responsibility and the increasing stress to keep it going. Even though I had to declare bankruptcy, I still feel I came out ahead. If owning and running a restaurant is not your life's passion, and you don't have any financial backers to lighten the load, then don't do it. Opening a restaurant is not a decision to be taken lightly. 90% of them don't stay open more than a year. If you feel compelled to do it no matter what, then do your due diligence and start small with the least amount of staff necessary. If I absolutely had to do it all over again, I would have focused on pizza takeout only. A better profit margin and lower overhead will lighten the load. Or, be happy to just make meals for your friends at home. That's what I do these days.
|
yes
| 7,799 |
LJIS Granted, I left Denver in 2011 but uh... I made a lot less than $100K and had a pretty nice place in a good location, no roommates. My rent was $775 a month.
|
no
| 2,534 |
Peter Wait, they’re giving him $145,000? To do what?
|
no
| 4,671 |
During the covid lockdowns, we were all aware the nurses, Mt. Sinai nurses importantly among them, were having a tough time of it. Everyone wanted to show appreciation. But how? We began by emulating the Italians, opening our windows at 7:00 PM, the changing of the work shift, leaning out and convincing ourselves that the stressed out nurses would hear us. We hooted, applauded, banged cookware, and played instruments. Some danced on the sidewalks. FDNY would roll their truck up to the corner near the emergency room each night at that special hour, stop traffic and whoop the sirens. No doubt commiserating with their colleagues, hard at work pulling human lives back from the brink in ways only a few could comprehend. These front-line caregivers are attempting again, against the odds, to prioritize patient care. This time communicating the importance of staffing ratios. What an amazing thing to witness. Sending a big noisy NYC thank you to the striking nurses and their NYSNA leadership.
|
no
| 3,964 |
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