Good evening. I spent all day doing copyediting and got 3 articles done. Now I don't have to do any tomorrow. I've got lots of other stuff to catch up on, though.
I still want to post about Mr. Stirewalt's Sunday show (since it's only Tuesday). So here are a few highlights. Maybe tomorrow I'll remember to briefly post on here again to just refer people back to this post.
Mick Mulvaney, the first interview, managed to make Trump sound almost normal with the things he chose to say. But if one still remembers Trump's a sociopath, one may say "good spinning, but no thanks."
The panel included Continetti and McArdle and a third person. The topic of the "special" show was "presidential leadership and great books about it." All the panelists had some connection to that. Nixon is back! Carter, Hoover also being rehabilitated. Lincoln came up too, though he doesn't need any rehabilitation.
Amity Shlaes was on in an interview, and she discussed FDR, LBJ, and Coolidge ("do less"). In connection with Coolidge's point, effective enforcement of existing laws may accomplish more than creating a bunch of new ones that will be even more complicated and less efficient to enforce.
Christopher Cox (heard on a recent Remnant discussing his Woodrow Wilson book) was interviewed. No ominous music, this isn't a podcast. By the way the book has some really special color photos that can be viewed online. Cox gave some general advice on what everyone should do now: "Take off our jerseys." By that he means be open to things like splitting tickets.
Mr. Stirewalt's amusing remark of the week: "On what other Sunday show will you see an argument about Smoot-Hawley break out right there on the set? This may not be what America wants, but we're doing it anyway!"
The captions were not so bad this time. On the 24th, the caption (obviously AI) came up with "beloved tender" for "bill of attainder" and "yes I'm in sorry" for the name of a congresswoman-elect, don't remember her actual name. Maybe they switched captioning companies.
My MIL Janet is coming home from the hospital today. I may go Thursday to visit, or I may go Sunday. Katie works this weekend, so if we split it up, we can make 2 family visits this week.
Janet apologized to Katie for saying something playful about Pam. She sometimes feels guilty remembering Pam in front of Katie, although Katie is fine with it; she knew coming in that was to be expected.
A comfy but bit windy 62. 53F overnight. As part of my mostly retirement plan yesterday, and one thing earlier were accomplished.
Left United Healthcare Supplement and apx $350+/month for free UHC AZ-007 Advantage and free Rx. No copays on either. The due diligence is stupid, ridiculous and confusing. I consider myself about 0.00173% above average in sorting things out. I am probably overestimating myself.
When you go online to the myriad plan offerings, UHC, BCBS, Aetna, Humana, the providers enrolled in their negotiated lower pay (than Original Medicare) is incomplete and wrong at signup time. That's crazy. The kind of risks placed on citizens by Congress to satiate Insurance companies is pathetic.
Anyway, one calls the Insurance company. And laboriously asks about is my very important hospital, Banner University Medical Center on 1635 Campbell "in network". Yes. But confusingly another plan doesn't have them explicitly stated. Agent says this plan has Banner University Medical "Group". Which Agent says covers the hospital. I say well, it's actually a different address. Secondly where can I find evidence that my Hospital is in the Group? Trust me. I choose the explicit plan. Surprisingly a new Hospital, Northwest Medical opened a year back. Online, not in AZ-007. With the UHC signup patient, "in-network".
I have 2 good buddies that we get together with and share life. One liberal, one a Trump supporter. The latter need a long 2 hour chat with me on some career advice. Within that? I explained this "system" of congressional nonsense. And convinced him to change his opposition to M4A. That's gotten improperly branded. He prefers more single payer. I argued for this over at the mother ship multiple times. Alas, I hadn't dug deep enough until this personal change.
We probably don’t agree much on politics, but in this case, the “public-private partnership” approach is mainly a way of getting the worst of both worlds. The end result is confusion overlaying corporate cronyism. Go full V.I.Lenin or full Milton Friedman, but knock it off with the fence straddling.
Simple. Original Medicare os accepted by every hospital and every doctor. 99.999%
So why have Health Insurance?
A. Original Medicare has NO out of pocket maximum.
B. So why did Congress (D+R) create Insurance but not provide a maximum cap for Original Medicare?
C. OM has no drug plan coverage. But Supplement and Advantage do. Why didn't Congress allow OM to cover drugs?
How do these Insurance companies then, actually make money to provide the free Rx and out of pocket maximum. These two benefits if allowed for Original Medicare would be fair.
But, Congress wanted to create an unnecessary business for lobbyists and umm kickbacks ie pac spending.
Medicare sets the fee for your doctor and hospital. If you use OM they get paid 100% of the set rate.
But Insurance creates "networks" where they negotiate fees that are 50% and lower than OM pays. Why do doctors and hospitals sign up with Network A and not B?
They get sold on the customer volume power that the Insurance companies offer. They drive business to them. And screw the providers!
The money algorithm is simple and stupid. Your doctor charges $150 a visit and your hospital stay example costs $50,000.
Insurance company pays doc and hospital their plan network negotiated rate. Doc only gets $75 and hospital gets $25k. But, because Insurance is managing your Medicare part A and B, Medicare pays Insurance the full amounts, $150 and $50k.
Insurance company takes the cash difference. And that funds the Rx and iut of profit maximum.
As I've long said, Insurance has a very negative pressure by reducing health outcomes vs single payer democracy. The lie is socializing medicine like M4A lets government choose and deny coverage. The truth: Original Medicare to my knowledge never denies your doctor or hospital. But Insurance hires disbarred and lousy doctors to deny your medical necessary coverage. Stupid.
The 2nd firing I did yesterday was my 34 year cellphone relationship with AT&T. Started with Cingular in Michigan. Kept number moving to California. This was not common in the 90s.
2 line plan $135/month. No AARP benefits. Lowest cost plan they said was like $100month.
So... shopping. And voila! Consumer Cellular plan for 55+ 2 lines is $35/month. Then a 5% discount on that. Then I leave the store. Fabulous customer experience in managing the atrocious AT&T process and folks required to change to the Consumer Cellular network.
I leave. Stop at a South Tucson Circle K for $.30/gal lower diesel than in the north and east Tucson area. Call the store back to ask a question. Call center answers. They text the store, but the nice agent answers my question. Then she says because I reached the call center, I was a lucky caller and would get $10/month 5 month credit. Someone in that business values customers!!
To pile on to the "customer service" head-scratchers, I thought I'd share my experience yesterday with my "local" newspaper. Here in Canada, most of the city newspapers have been swallowed up by a corporation that is majority-controlled by a US hedge fund. Thanks to the largesse of our Federal Liberal Government, this corporation is given a generous handout annually to "support Canadian journalism". In return for this largesse, this corporation has done everything they can to increase profits by sucking costs out of the business. The amount of reporting has declined and most of it is centralized (national). More importantly (for this story), they appear to have gutted their customer service department along with their online IT staff.
Having set the stage, my journey begins with my gradual annoyance at a pop-up ad that keeps appearing whenever I go to my local paper's website. Said ad informs me that I can subscribe to the paper for 12 months for $12 (about US$1.50 these days 😏). Assuming that my subscription has expired, I click on the ad, which takes me to a page that tells me that the offer isn't available to me because I'm already subscribed (you'd think that this would be something that a computer system could figure out before the ad was sent to me). Since I didn't remember having paid these guys for the past year or so, I became curious and clicked on a link on that page to "manage subscription".
That takes me to another login page that wants my name, address, and phone number. I dutifully enter those in.
The system tells me that my information doesn't match their records. I try again. Same result.
There is a link on that page to "contact us". I click on that and am taken to a web form that asks for the same information but also includes a field where I can enter a message. My message to them is simple: "Why am I getting this error message when I try to manage my subscription?" I click "send"
I immediately receive an email telling me that my message has been received. A few minutes later, I get another message telling me that "due to heavy call volumes" it might take up to five days to get a response 😮.
A few hours later, I get an email with the subject heading "Sorry to see you go!" and a message telling me that my request to cancel my subscription has been processed (!!!)
I reply back to that note, essentially saying "Wait! No!!". This brings back an automated response telling me that the system is unable to locate an account with the information provided and asking me to phone customer service. The phone number I'm given is for the subscription department at another city newspaper.
The story then ends somewhat happily, since when I next log on I am again presented with the 12 months for $12 offer. When I click on it this time, however, I am able to resubscribe for that price.
I am still getting that pop-up ad when I connect, but it goes away when I ask it to. I assume that I am subscribed for the next year. I also assume that I will be haunted by that pop-up add each time I go to the website for the next 365 days. Meanwhile, for at least the next 10 months (and hopefully ONLY for the next 10 months) my federal taxes will be going to these idiots to "support Canadian journalism".
God bless graduate students, the unsung heroes of academic research. They do all the grunt work, take all the risks (like getting stuck to velcro starfish), while their professors take all the credit.
In fairness to the professors with all the academic pincers, depending on the academic domain they often include them as a co-author when they present or publish.
Some illness hit most of us at the cabin last week. It started on Thanksgiving day with my pregnant daughter thinking she had a bad case of morning sickness. Not so as one by one the rest of us started feeling punk. It started Sunday with me and today I’m beginning to feel normal again. Fatigue, no appetite, and mildly annoying sore throat.
I remember when my girls were teens they didn’t say “nature” but rather “neature” cause it’s so neat. We did some “tide pooling” while in the San Juan Islands and there’s an entire ecosystem in those little pools.
Good morning. 20 degrees here. It may get above freezing this afternoon, briefly.
Both the mothership and the Front Page are covering the pardon of Hunter Biden by his dad. The FP calls it “hypocrisy”. The mothership, trying to be objective, reports that some believe that the elder Biden wanted to shield his son from a vindictive Trump administration and a weaponized Justice Department. That might be plausible, except that the pardon was very broad — covering all crimes, charged or uncharged within a 10 year period ending on December 1. That, of course, wiped out the gun and tax evasion charges. A more limited pardon could have let those stand while covering uncharged crimes that Trump might have used to go after Hunter.
Freezing here in the KC area also. Got down to about 15 degrees last night and it's now 22. Our wild birds are consuming amazing amounts of bird seed.
I am of two minds about the pardon also, my usual moderate state of seeing both sides.
The parent in me understands not wanting to let one more child die if I can help it and the frothy vengeful attitude of the MAGA crowd is enough to give me pause. I'd fear letting my child be in prison under a Trump admin. Too many of the charges and penalties against Hunter seemed exaggerated for political effect prior to this and that would surely only get worse.
On the other hand, I'd fear that not allowing my addicted child to fully face consequences would be worse in the long run, both for them and the country. It sends the wrong message, particularly to the families who don't have political power or money to keep their children out of prison. It sends the wrong message to other addicts that crimes committed while addicted can be ignored or glossed over, that responsibility can be set aside. And it sends the message to Hunter that he's different, and doesn't have to deal with his demons like other people.
I've watched other parents try desperately to deal with their addicted adult children. The worst mistake I can see is not allowing the addict to cool their heels in jail. "Rescuing" an addict from consequences only encourages them to hang on to their drug of choice, and keep looking for rescuers. Being rescued only seems to increase the self-loathing of many addicts. The addict has to make the commitment to change on his own, which is why AA is so effective for alcoholics as it makes that a foundational principal shared by all others in the group. I've seen AA work for a lot of people, but I don't know is there is a similarly effective group for other addictions.
Thanks for that! It merely confirms for me my bias of antipathy for Biden. Given any opportunity to show he can rise above cynical actions and poor choices, he has failed again and again.
He is yet another argument that the unlimited powers of the executive branch need seriously to be reined in once again. If we could stop idolizing the inhabitants of the White House, maybe we’d start demanding it!
I find it hard to disagree with anything in Josh Barro's post. He pretty well nails it, including answering the arguments that Hunter Biden was unfairly prosecuted in the first place.
From Dan Pfeiffer (Dem. strategist), and seems like good points:
“The incoming Trump Administration is a fount of misinformation and conspiracy theories. How can Democrats push back if voters don’t trust us? We have work to do to regain that trust after the pardon.
Every Democrat must make their own decision about how to respond. From a political perspective, I understand why many will be publicly critical. Like with his assurances about his age, Biden put them in an impossible position. Announcing the pardon by a paper statement on a Sunday evening before heading off for Angola was very unfair to the members of his party.
My hope is that President Biden will break from his recent practice of not communicating his decisions and offer an explanation as a father and President for why he pardoned his son. He has a compelling case to make and frankly, he owes it to the American people and his fellow Democrats.”
First of all, Biden’s legacy: no one is going to know what it is for years. Furthermore, I don’t believe that Biden’s legacy is determined by the media, although the media seems to think so.
Second of all, the timing, and why he did it are only going to be understood by a minority people, who are into the inside baseball of it all and connect the dots. If you know who Kash Patel is, it’s very obvious that the Hunter Biden pardon was a direct consequence of the nomination of cash Patel to be FBI director. If you don’t know why that is, you can read up on Kash Patel.
Thirdly, the position the Democratic Party is in vis-à-vis criticizing Trump may or may not be as bad as Dan Pfeiffer thinks. We’re talking about the general public and their perception of the situation, not the perception of a very well informed Democratic strategist.
The public never considered Hunter Biden as important as the Republicans did for one thing. And they may be perfectly fine with Biden’s reasons for doing it as a dad. We don’t know until a poll is done.
*Hypocrisy*, not unlike like *irony* and a couple of other words like shame and honor, is now for any and all practical purposes long dead and moldering in its grave vis a vie American politics. And any one particular party or partisan accusing another of engaging in hypocrisy is dishonorably engaging in... what?
We need a new and better word to apply here.
Actually, no. No, we don't. There's a very old and very suitable one that absolutely suits to a T when someone chooses to stink up the public political atmosphere beyond its current befouled state with completely meaningless words such as hypocrisy.
And that word is: bulls**t.
And I say the following completely unironically and without shame: Good morning, Phil. Hope you have a good day and that you don't rerun afowl of any pedantic punsters.
And there's nothing wrong with that position, which I'll admit I should probably try a little harder to emulate. But after more than 5 decades of "shop talk" at work and "code switching" between other speaking milieus in mixed company, sometimes it's a bit too easy to get tripped up. Or just forget the appropriate *code*.
Its about 20 degress here; may get to 30 today. I skied yesterday. The good news was that the snow (manmade on top of the natural stuff) was excellent. The bad news was that there was very little terrain open because the snowmaking teams were running their snow guns all over the mountain. Also, normal folk were sharing the mountain with the "yutes" from the mountain ski racing school. Because it was their first day out, they were quite feral and were skiing with great abandon. As a result, I abandoned my effort after only a few runs. Still, it was great to be out on the mountain. Will head out a bit earlier today and hope there is terrain where the racers don't want to go.
Something to do when there wasn't much else to do at that moment. But I'm thinking if I don't get out there to feed the nags fairly soon, they'll be knockin' on the back door...
I was out for a couple hours this morning. Not enough open terrain to spend much more time than that. Excellent conditions and I was able to avoid the feral yutes
Today’s special animal friend is the Helmeted Guineafowl, Numida meleagris, a large, ground-dwelling bird in the Galliformes order, which includes turkeys and chickens. It is native to most of sub-Saharan Africa. Like other guineafowl, this one has a large, round body with relatively small wings and a small, bald, weird head. The head of the helmeted guineafowl has red, blue, and/or black skin and a yellow or reddish bony knob on top.
They are up to 2 feet high and weigh up to 3 lbs. Except for the head, they are dark gray or black with white spots, reminding me of a cute dress that doesn’t fit me anymore. They can fly, but they usually don’t; when they do, they glide as much as possible rather than flapping. They can run quite fast, keeping that round body nicely balanced, and ornithologists say it is common for them to walk or run more than five miles in a day.
As you can see, they are gregarious, assembling in flocks of 25 or so that feed and roost together. The flocks are hierarchical, with a dominant male as boss and his sidekick helping him to defend the group. Breeding females prefer the higher-ranking males, and the flock devotes the most care to the chicks of the highest-ranked adults.
They are seasonally monogamous, breeding near the end of the local wet season, which varies across their range. The females make a scrape in the ground in an area with good cover, lining it with feathers and grass. They lay 6 to 12 eggs. Females do the incubation, but males help to brood the chicks after hatching.
Helmeted guineafowl are omnivorous. Outside the breeding season, their diet is mainly vegetable matter: tubers, seeds, miscellaneous agricultural stuff. During breeding season, they turn to a mostly bug diet. Like our friend the banded mongoose, they will eat ticks off the backs of warthogs.
The helmeted guineafowl is a species of Least Concern. They have been domesticated. You can buy them as food in stores in the U.S. Feral populations are found in the West Indies, the U.S., Europe, and Australia.
We have Envirothon today. Son F and two other gormless teenaged boys will be doing a presentation on the physical and chemical properties of soil. The weather folks say it will be 42F by afternoon.
Good evening. I spent all day doing copyediting and got 3 articles done. Now I don't have to do any tomorrow. I've got lots of other stuff to catch up on, though.
I still want to post about Mr. Stirewalt's Sunday show (since it's only Tuesday). So here are a few highlights. Maybe tomorrow I'll remember to briefly post on here again to just refer people back to this post.
Mick Mulvaney, the first interview, managed to make Trump sound almost normal with the things he chose to say. But if one still remembers Trump's a sociopath, one may say "good spinning, but no thanks."
The panel included Continetti and McArdle and a third person. The topic of the "special" show was "presidential leadership and great books about it." All the panelists had some connection to that. Nixon is back! Carter, Hoover also being rehabilitated. Lincoln came up too, though he doesn't need any rehabilitation.
Amity Shlaes was on in an interview, and she discussed FDR, LBJ, and Coolidge ("do less"). In connection with Coolidge's point, effective enforcement of existing laws may accomplish more than creating a bunch of new ones that will be even more complicated and less efficient to enforce.
Christopher Cox (heard on a recent Remnant discussing his Woodrow Wilson book) was interviewed. No ominous music, this isn't a podcast. By the way the book has some really special color photos that can be viewed online. Cox gave some general advice on what everyone should do now: "Take off our jerseys." By that he means be open to things like splitting tickets.
Mr. Stirewalt's amusing remark of the week: "On what other Sunday show will you see an argument about Smoot-Hawley break out right there on the set? This may not be what America wants, but we're doing it anyway!"
The captions were not so bad this time. On the 24th, the caption (obviously AI) came up with "beloved tender" for "bill of attainder" and "yes I'm in sorry" for the name of a congresswoman-elect, don't remember her actual name. Maybe they switched captioning companies.
My MIL Janet is coming home from the hospital today. I may go Thursday to visit, or I may go Sunday. Katie works this weekend, so if we split it up, we can make 2 family visits this week.
Janet apologized to Katie for saying something playful about Pam. She sometimes feels guilty remembering Pam in front of Katie, although Katie is fine with it; she knew coming in that was to be expected.
It was reported to me by an unbiased adult that F did pretty well at the presentation.
Congrats to F!
Good morning. We have had temperatures in the mid to low 20s the past several nights but the passion flower vines have yet to completely succumb.
The impatiens, on the other hand, look a lot like overcooked spinach! 😵💫
How'd you know?!
The basil is skeletal, too.
A comfy but bit windy 62. 53F overnight. As part of my mostly retirement plan yesterday, and one thing earlier were accomplished.
Left United Healthcare Supplement and apx $350+/month for free UHC AZ-007 Advantage and free Rx. No copays on either. The due diligence is stupid, ridiculous and confusing. I consider myself about 0.00173% above average in sorting things out. I am probably overestimating myself.
When you go online to the myriad plan offerings, UHC, BCBS, Aetna, Humana, the providers enrolled in their negotiated lower pay (than Original Medicare) is incomplete and wrong at signup time. That's crazy. The kind of risks placed on citizens by Congress to satiate Insurance companies is pathetic.
Anyway, one calls the Insurance company. And laboriously asks about is my very important hospital, Banner University Medical Center on 1635 Campbell "in network". Yes. But confusingly another plan doesn't have them explicitly stated. Agent says this plan has Banner University Medical "Group". Which Agent says covers the hospital. I say well, it's actually a different address. Secondly where can I find evidence that my Hospital is in the Group? Trust me. I choose the explicit plan. Surprisingly a new Hospital, Northwest Medical opened a year back. Online, not in AZ-007. With the UHC signup patient, "in-network".
I have 2 good buddies that we get together with and share life. One liberal, one a Trump supporter. The latter need a long 2 hour chat with me on some career advice. Within that? I explained this "system" of congressional nonsense. And convinced him to change his opposition to M4A. That's gotten improperly branded. He prefers more single payer. I argued for this over at the mother ship multiple times. Alas, I hadn't dug deep enough until this personal change.
Doing a test run with WSJ, and they had an article a week ago about “Same Drug, 2,200 Different Prices”.
https://www.wsj.com/health/healthcare/medicare-pays-wildly-different-prices-for-the-same-drug-b20fa58c?st=MFbF6n&reflink=article_copyURL_share
We probably don’t agree much on politics, but in this case, the “public-private partnership” approach is mainly a way of getting the worst of both worlds. The end result is confusion overlaying corporate cronyism. Go full V.I.Lenin or full Milton Friedman, but knock it off with the fence straddling.
Simple. Original Medicare os accepted by every hospital and every doctor. 99.999%
So why have Health Insurance?
A. Original Medicare has NO out of pocket maximum.
B. So why did Congress (D+R) create Insurance but not provide a maximum cap for Original Medicare?
C. OM has no drug plan coverage. But Supplement and Advantage do. Why didn't Congress allow OM to cover drugs?
How do these Insurance companies then, actually make money to provide the free Rx and out of pocket maximum. These two benefits if allowed for Original Medicare would be fair.
But, Congress wanted to create an unnecessary business for lobbyists and umm kickbacks ie pac spending.
Medicare sets the fee for your doctor and hospital. If you use OM they get paid 100% of the set rate.
But Insurance creates "networks" where they negotiate fees that are 50% and lower than OM pays. Why do doctors and hospitals sign up with Network A and not B?
They get sold on the customer volume power that the Insurance companies offer. They drive business to them. And screw the providers!
The money algorithm is simple and stupid. Your doctor charges $150 a visit and your hospital stay example costs $50,000.
Insurance company pays doc and hospital their plan network negotiated rate. Doc only gets $75 and hospital gets $25k. But, because Insurance is managing your Medicare part A and B, Medicare pays Insurance the full amounts, $150 and $50k.
Insurance company takes the cash difference. And that funds the Rx and iut of profit maximum.
As I've long said, Insurance has a very negative pressure by reducing health outcomes vs single payer democracy. The lie is socializing medicine like M4A lets government choose and deny coverage. The truth: Original Medicare to my knowledge never denies your doctor or hospital. But Insurance hires disbarred and lousy doctors to deny your medical necessary coverage. Stupid.
As a Medicare Advantage patient, I find that illuminating. That would explain the perks and freebies (like OTC med allowances) that they offer you,
I just changed MA insurance and the new company sent of a very nice coffee mug, with a lid and a cork bottom! (And of course, the company logo).
Awesome! I'm looking at my $1500 dental and $250 vision bennies.
Meant to add the link probably doesn’t do much, unfortunately, since WSJ is skimpy about giving anything away, it appears.
The 2nd firing I did yesterday was my 34 year cellphone relationship with AT&T. Started with Cingular in Michigan. Kept number moving to California. This was not common in the 90s.
2 line plan $135/month. No AARP benefits. Lowest cost plan they said was like $100month.
So... shopping. And voila! Consumer Cellular plan for 55+ 2 lines is $35/month. Then a 5% discount on that. Then I leave the store. Fabulous customer experience in managing the atrocious AT&T process and folks required to change to the Consumer Cellular network.
I leave. Stop at a South Tucson Circle K for $.30/gal lower diesel than in the north and east Tucson area. Call the store back to ask a question. Call center answers. They text the store, but the nice agent answers my question. Then she says because I reached the call center, I was a lucky caller and would get $10/month 5 month credit. Someone in that business values customers!!
To pile on to the "customer service" head-scratchers, I thought I'd share my experience yesterday with my "local" newspaper. Here in Canada, most of the city newspapers have been swallowed up by a corporation that is majority-controlled by a US hedge fund. Thanks to the largesse of our Federal Liberal Government, this corporation is given a generous handout annually to "support Canadian journalism". In return for this largesse, this corporation has done everything they can to increase profits by sucking costs out of the business. The amount of reporting has declined and most of it is centralized (national). More importantly (for this story), they appear to have gutted their customer service department along with their online IT staff.
Having set the stage, my journey begins with my gradual annoyance at a pop-up ad that keeps appearing whenever I go to my local paper's website. Said ad informs me that I can subscribe to the paper for 12 months for $12 (about US$1.50 these days 😏). Assuming that my subscription has expired, I click on the ad, which takes me to a page that tells me that the offer isn't available to me because I'm already subscribed (you'd think that this would be something that a computer system could figure out before the ad was sent to me). Since I didn't remember having paid these guys for the past year or so, I became curious and clicked on a link on that page to "manage subscription".
That takes me to another login page that wants my name, address, and phone number. I dutifully enter those in.
The system tells me that my information doesn't match their records. I try again. Same result.
There is a link on that page to "contact us". I click on that and am taken to a web form that asks for the same information but also includes a field where I can enter a message. My message to them is simple: "Why am I getting this error message when I try to manage my subscription?" I click "send"
I immediately receive an email telling me that my message has been received. A few minutes later, I get another message telling me that "due to heavy call volumes" it might take up to five days to get a response 😮.
A few hours later, I get an email with the subject heading "Sorry to see you go!" and a message telling me that my request to cancel my subscription has been processed (!!!)
I reply back to that note, essentially saying "Wait! No!!". This brings back an automated response telling me that the system is unable to locate an account with the information provided and asking me to phone customer service. The phone number I'm given is for the subscription department at another city newspaper.
The story then ends somewhat happily, since when I next log on I am again presented with the 12 months for $12 offer. When I click on it this time, however, I am able to resubscribe for that price.
I am still getting that pop-up ad when I connect, but it goes away when I ask it to. I assume that I am subscribed for the next year. I also assume that I will be haunted by that pop-up add each time I go to the website for the next 365 days. Meanwhile, for at least the next 10 months (and hopefully ONLY for the next 10 months) my federal taxes will be going to these idiots to "support Canadian journalism".
God bless graduate students, the unsung heroes of academic research. They do all the grunt work, take all the risks (like getting stuck to velcro starfish), while their professors take all the credit.
In fairness to the professors with all the academic pincers, depending on the academic domain they often include them as a co-author when they present or publish.
Pretty much like grunts and bosses everywhere, no?
No doubt.
Some illness hit most of us at the cabin last week. It started on Thanksgiving day with my pregnant daughter thinking she had a bad case of morning sickness. Not so as one by one the rest of us started feeling punk. It started Sunday with me and today I’m beginning to feel normal again. Fatigue, no appetite, and mildly annoying sore throat.
Glad you’re recovering. Sounds like a potential covid variant, no? New and improved: now without debilitating headaches!
Seems like COVID is constantly "improving" to infect more people without actually killing them.
Oh no! Hope you're feeling better, BC!
I remember when my girls were teens they didn’t say “nature” but rather “neature” cause it’s so neat. We did some “tide pooling” while in the San Juan Islands and there’s an entire ecosystem in those little pools.
Good morning. 20 degrees here. It may get above freezing this afternoon, briefly.
Both the mothership and the Front Page are covering the pardon of Hunter Biden by his dad. The FP calls it “hypocrisy”. The mothership, trying to be objective, reports that some believe that the elder Biden wanted to shield his son from a vindictive Trump administration and a weaponized Justice Department. That might be plausible, except that the pardon was very broad — covering all crimes, charged or uncharged within a 10 year period ending on December 1. That, of course, wiped out the gun and tax evasion charges. A more limited pardon could have let those stand while covering uncharged crimes that Trump might have used to go after Hunter.
Yeah, I noticed that angle in the paper this morning and thought it had some plausibility.
The Chicago Tribune editorial page took a stance on what he should have done if he was worried about that.
Freezing here in the KC area also. Got down to about 15 degrees last night and it's now 22. Our wild birds are consuming amazing amounts of bird seed.
I am of two minds about the pardon also, my usual moderate state of seeing both sides.
The parent in me understands not wanting to let one more child die if I can help it and the frothy vengeful attitude of the MAGA crowd is enough to give me pause. I'd fear letting my child be in prison under a Trump admin. Too many of the charges and penalties against Hunter seemed exaggerated for political effect prior to this and that would surely only get worse.
On the other hand, I'd fear that not allowing my addicted child to fully face consequences would be worse in the long run, both for them and the country. It sends the wrong message, particularly to the families who don't have political power or money to keep their children out of prison. It sends the wrong message to other addicts that crimes committed while addicted can be ignored or glossed over, that responsibility can be set aside. And it sends the message to Hunter that he's different, and doesn't have to deal with his demons like other people.
I've watched other parents try desperately to deal with their addicted adult children. The worst mistake I can see is not allowing the addict to cool their heels in jail. "Rescuing" an addict from consequences only encourages them to hang on to their drug of choice, and keep looking for rescuers. Being rescued only seems to increase the self-loathing of many addicts. The addict has to make the commitment to change on his own, which is why AA is so effective for alcoholics as it makes that a foundational principal shared by all others in the group. I've seen AA work for a lot of people, but I don't know is there is a similarly effective group for other addictions.
Interesting take. This sure won’t help Biden’s legacy: https://open.substack.com/pub/joshbarro/p/joe-biden-knew-it-was-wrong-to-pardon?r=50b9j&utm_medium=ios
Thanks for that! It merely confirms for me my bias of antipathy for Biden. Given any opportunity to show he can rise above cynical actions and poor choices, he has failed again and again.
He is yet another argument that the unlimited powers of the executive branch need seriously to be reined in once again. If we could stop idolizing the inhabitants of the White House, maybe we’d start demanding it!
I find it hard to disagree with anything in Josh Barro's post. He pretty well nails it, including answering the arguments that Hunter Biden was unfairly prosecuted in the first place.
From Dan Pfeiffer (Dem. strategist), and seems like good points:
“The incoming Trump Administration is a fount of misinformation and conspiracy theories. How can Democrats push back if voters don’t trust us? We have work to do to regain that trust after the pardon.
Every Democrat must make their own decision about how to respond. From a political perspective, I understand why many will be publicly critical. Like with his assurances about his age, Biden put them in an impossible position. Announcing the pardon by a paper statement on a Sunday evening before heading off for Angola was very unfair to the members of his party.
My hope is that President Biden will break from his recent practice of not communicating his decisions and offer an explanation as a father and President for why he pardoned his son. He has a compelling case to make and frankly, he owes it to the American people and his fellow Democrats.”
There are a few layers to the situation, I think.
First of all, Biden’s legacy: no one is going to know what it is for years. Furthermore, I don’t believe that Biden’s legacy is determined by the media, although the media seems to think so.
Second of all, the timing, and why he did it are only going to be understood by a minority people, who are into the inside baseball of it all and connect the dots. If you know who Kash Patel is, it’s very obvious that the Hunter Biden pardon was a direct consequence of the nomination of cash Patel to be FBI director. If you don’t know why that is, you can read up on Kash Patel.
Thirdly, the position the Democratic Party is in vis-à-vis criticizing Trump may or may not be as bad as Dan Pfeiffer thinks. We’re talking about the general public and their perception of the situation, not the perception of a very well informed Democratic strategist.
The public never considered Hunter Biden as important as the Republicans did for one thing. And they may be perfectly fine with Biden’s reasons for doing it as a dad. We don’t know until a poll is done.
RE: hypocrisy
*Hypocrisy*, not unlike like *irony* and a couple of other words like shame and honor, is now for any and all practical purposes long dead and moldering in its grave vis a vie American politics. And any one particular party or partisan accusing another of engaging in hypocrisy is dishonorably engaging in... what?
We need a new and better word to apply here.
Actually, no. No, we don't. There's a very old and very suitable one that absolutely suits to a T when someone chooses to stink up the public political atmosphere beyond its current befouled state with completely meaningless words such as hypocrisy.
And that word is: bulls**t.
And I say the following completely unironically and without shame: Good morning, Phil. Hope you have a good day and that you don't rerun afowl of any pedantic punsters.
Me personally, I tend to avoid that word, or other crudity. For me, BS will do.
I apologize if I offended you. No offense intended and will bear that in mind in the future.
No worries, I was mostly explaining my personal position instead of taking offense.
And there's nothing wrong with that position, which I'll admit I should probably try a little harder to emulate. But after more than 5 decades of "shop talk" at work and "code switching" between other speaking milieus in mixed company, sometimes it's a bit too easy to get tripped up. Or just forget the appropriate *code*.
That is some weird sea creature for sure.
And there are so many weirder ones in the unimaginably weird ocean.
Its about 20 degress here; may get to 30 today. I skied yesterday. The good news was that the snow (manmade on top of the natural stuff) was excellent. The bad news was that there was very little terrain open because the snowmaking teams were running their snow guns all over the mountain. Also, normal folk were sharing the mountain with the "yutes" from the mountain ski racing school. Because it was their first day out, they were quite feral and were skiing with great abandon. As a result, I abandoned my effort after only a few runs. Still, it was great to be out on the mountain. Will head out a bit earlier today and hope there is terrain where the racers don't want to go.
RE: "yutes"
The Brits don't have enough places to ski on their own side of the pond? Well, better yutes than yutzes, I guess?
Go to the 1:24 mark
https://youtu.be/K6qGwmXZtsE?feature=shared
I'm thinkin' maybe that stems from the fact that the Brits got to New York in large numbers about a quarter millennia before the Italians did...
https://slangsensei.com/what-does-yute-mean-in-british-slang/
Probably more there than yute ever want to know about that subject.
(Thanks for the clip. I love My Cousin Vinny! The movie, not my cousin Vinny. He's sort of a s.o.b.)
Wow, are you overthinking this or what?
Something to do when there wasn't much else to do at that moment. But I'm thinking if I don't get out there to feed the nags fairly soon, they'll be knockin' on the back door...
Thought you were going back out skiing?
I was out for a couple hours this morning. Not enough open terrain to spend much more time than that. Excellent conditions and I was able to avoid the feral yutes
No, “yutes”from my cousin vinnie.
I hope it's a less crowded day there today.
Me, too!!! Looks as if there are a few more trail open, so here's hoping!
Today’s special animal friend is the Helmeted Guineafowl, Numida meleagris, a large, ground-dwelling bird in the Galliformes order, which includes turkeys and chickens. It is native to most of sub-Saharan Africa. Like other guineafowl, this one has a large, round body with relatively small wings and a small, bald, weird head. The head of the helmeted guineafowl has red, blue, and/or black skin and a yellow or reddish bony knob on top.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DvXU9vjk9OI
They are up to 2 feet high and weigh up to 3 lbs. Except for the head, they are dark gray or black with white spots, reminding me of a cute dress that doesn’t fit me anymore. They can fly, but they usually don’t; when they do, they glide as much as possible rather than flapping. They can run quite fast, keeping that round body nicely balanced, and ornithologists say it is common for them to walk or run more than five miles in a day.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Lu2vB_Tfho
As you can see, they are gregarious, assembling in flocks of 25 or so that feed and roost together. The flocks are hierarchical, with a dominant male as boss and his sidekick helping him to defend the group. Breeding females prefer the higher-ranking males, and the flock devotes the most care to the chicks of the highest-ranked adults.
They are seasonally monogamous, breeding near the end of the local wet season, which varies across their range. The females make a scrape in the ground in an area with good cover, lining it with feathers and grass. They lay 6 to 12 eggs. Females do the incubation, but males help to brood the chicks after hatching.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MobasiNcJFk
The chicks are called “keets,” and only about half live to adulthood. They can live up to 12 years in the wild. The helmeted guineafowl sings a bit:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oASLiM5sSDY
Helmeted guineafowl are omnivorous. Outside the breeding season, their diet is mainly vegetable matter: tubers, seeds, miscellaneous agricultural stuff. During breeding season, they turn to a mostly bug diet. Like our friend the banded mongoose, they will eat ticks off the backs of warthogs.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZshnzrUFV78
The helmeted guineafowl is a species of Least Concern. They have been domesticated. You can buy them as food in stores in the U.S. Feral populations are found in the West Indies, the U.S., Europe, and Australia.
Fun stuff! And yes the ocean is weird! Ms. Pinki and I did a lot of snorkeling and scuba, both day and night dives across 3 oceans and a sea or 2.
Find a video of a large conch moving across the water. It's more than a shell ! Or soup!
Night dives show sleepy fish being munched by cool coloree eels. Coral comes out and blossoms for various mollusks to munch on.
I found a live conch in its shell on the beach once and put it back in the ocean.
I have an article about scary animals that live in seashells. I'll look in my files.
Another twofer! (Of course, the guineafowl is a rerun).
I thought TSAF was the velcro starfish, which btw, is really creepy.
The helmeted guineafowl is the re-run that I'm posting at The Dispatch. It's part of the African Safari series.
I agree: the starfish is creepy.
Just the same, for some reason I found the velcro starfish article one of the most enjoyable of all the TSAF series so far.
🤔
Thank you 😊.
Two-fer Tuesday...
You can have "weird and prickly" or "harmless and rather cute." I'm the servant of my readers.
I'm fine with creepy, weird, prickly, harmless, cute...whatever you got. Just cuz I say something is creepy doesn't mean I'm creeped out.
Good morning, everyone. It's 28 Fs here, according to those who know these things on my computer.
Morning. It’s about 10 degrees less here. Or fewer. I already need a nap.
Same, 18 degrees with a “feels like” temperature of 14.
We have Envirothon today. Son F and two other gormless teenaged boys will be doing a presentation on the physical and chemical properties of soil. The weather folks say it will be 42F by afternoon.
I'm envious of anyone who can honestly work "gormless" into a sentence....
If you had my children - and the rest of the nerd-heavy science team - you'd find it easy.