I have not had as disastrous a time as poor MIdge, but I did think I had a broken transmission in my car, and turns out it was a flub of mine, accidentally turning on the OD icon.
Then, because the universe was unhappy, I avoided a costly and traumatic experience...someone hacked my debit card...the bank caught it in time and removed it, ( $1500) but, I had to give them my life story ( really, it was ridiculous how many questions they asked, I had to "prove" I had the card in my possession, so apparently they somehow got it online, though I don't know how, I am very cautious about clicking or opening things)...so, they have to send me a new card, which takes a week, so I have to pay them to overnight it, but I talked to the guy yesterday and haven't heard back since, and I am not looking forward to all the places I am going to have to go to to change the card ...luckily the stuff that was due to post yesterday and today made it ok ( he said he would temporarily leave it available...)
Well, I guess not any better, but, , at least it distracts me from the political stuff in the meantime..
Hi Angie. Hope you get the bank card stuff straightened out soon. I recently heard of a near catastrophe, but it still meant the lady had to change *all* her account numbers for everything, will have to have checks reissued, need new health insurance numbers and cards—the works. And that’s before automated payments bounce and incur fees. She fell for a scam that involved a pickup service (local gangster) meant to pick up her cash at her door! It was a phone scam from overseas, of course, probably in one of the countries that Trump thinks of as friends…
Aw, that is awful....I am very cautious, I don't even answer phone calls from people whose numbers I don't know who it is. The rep from the bank implied it had something to do with Amazon and like places..I did get a weird pop-up supposedly from Microsoft Security, loud noise, and a bunch of garbage about the danger I was in and to not shut my computer down....
I am just worried that I won't get the new card before some of my auto deductions are due...none of which allow ACHs...I do have 24-hour grace...so, theoretically, if something happens prior to this, they will honor the charbe for 24 hrs
A. I have long worried about China since MIT early 1970s.
B. I think they play an superior asymmetrical game
C. I was concerned about educating people who go back and supported a Communist autocracy.
D. The article talks about their angst over the common theme, China copies and doesn't innovate.
I still believe that China copies. And China creates great derivatives. Like Japan from 1950 to theb1970s.
Then Sony burst on the scene.
Where is the China Sony? Innovation? I don't see it. Now I'm biased because from my half century of technology participation and observation, I see almost nothing new new. Apple is "new" to most. Not me. We saw PCs and computing when Jobs was in grade school.
AI. Also not new. At MIT, the building we went into Friday night and came out of Sunday was called Project MAC. Man and Computer. But actually called Machine Aided Cognition
1973. Internet. Multi-player global gaming. Email. Interactive dialog with artificial shrinks ! And other "personalities".
Deep Seek is just brute force.nVidia. I'm old. So I guess I have an unappreciative high bar.
I recall that the Europeans said all those same things about Americans when America was industrializing, because it was true. Mr. Lowell is just one of the more famous examples. Right? Wrong? Criminal? Smart?
Please don't forget that our business geniuses going into China signed over the IP to get into the game, imagining they were the smart guys and China would be happy just making the stuff. In a word, our business leaders were morons. I sat on a long flight back to the States next to a Ford guy that had been in country for 15-20 years developing Ford's mfg. At first, he was circumspect, but he liked to drink. The more he drank the more he started bemoaning how "We gave it all away! We took 20 years off their development curve!"....and that sort of commentary. American business leaders entering into China were dopes. They didn't know Chinese had been doing this stuff for about 1500 years.
One thing I've learned from my small business... As soon as the big guys start calling "foul", you know what the game is. Anyone gigantic and successful business that starts in with the morality and ethical accusations....it's bullshit. They got gigantic and successful for lots of reasons, with some of those reasons being ruthlessness and stealing ideas. Business ain't beanbag at the levels these folks are playing.
Per innovation, you clearly are not paying attention to the innovations exploding out of Chinese universities, research institutions, and businesses.
I know some of the history of ancient Chinese innovations. Porcelain. Gunpowder. Certain textiles.
I haven't seen much innovation anywhere frankly that meets my own (silly perhaps) standard.
Even the portable tape playing Sony Walkman just downsized magnetic tape from others, speakers from others, plastics from others, Semiconductor from others. The synthesis was creative but derived IMHO. Now the CD was more a leap using digitized sound by others, lasers and optical lenses by others. Albeit tiny!!.
What innovations would you share as "innovative"?
As to BigCorp giving away IP!! Totally. I was in an Executive Education 4 week training at BigCorp. One big case we had was for the senior Aerospace Division President. He wanted to outsource mil grade flight grade IC and Electronic subsystem to Taiwan. Mid 1980s. We told him politely that our strong recommendation was .no. Didn't go well.
I missed your penultimate sentence in a Substack glitch. Read Caixin. Read SCMP (South China Morning Post). Read the dozens of Substack blogs about China. American media simply does not pay attention to what's happening.
I don't keep a list of this stuff; I just see it when I'm reading. Your going to be surprised in the coming years on China's advances in pharmaceuticals, medical analytical equipment (big), their automotive work is already so far ahead of America's it's existentially over for America's overseas auto business, the C919 is coming on strong and it's only going to be a few more years before they're using their own jet engines instead of GE/Pratt/Rolls/etc. What'a going to REALLY get folks hair up is their military equipment. They're doing stuff that's already leapfrogged us. I'm sure you've read about their shipbuilding. They're building a few millions of tons of highly advanced ships a year and we don't even have a shipbuilding industry anymore.
And Trump's idiocy is going to accelerate and exacerbate the issue. I'm just reporting the news. I don't like it. I just see it.
Porcelain, gunpowder, “certain” textiles….sheesh…. You really do need to read up. China research institutions are coming up with innovations that will surpass whatever your standard is, silly or not. (I don’t know what that means.)
Citing reality gets me labeled pro-China, anti-America…whatever. I’m pro-smart. I am fascinated and supportive of whatever makes life better for everyone.
You haven’t been paying attention. Americans are arrogant, imagining we’re the smart people. Americans are going to be getting an education they wished they weren’t in the coming decade.
Also...I just spent a few days driving and crisscrossing the Pearl River Delta. It is the entirety of all supply chains for every imaginable product all in one location that goes for hundreds of kilometers with rail spurs to vast computer automated ship loading/unloading and related logistics that go on forever, with a river full of ships getting loaded with goods for shipment all over the world. Meanwhile, we have labor unions demanding no computer or automated equipment and a total moron destroying our alliances with his tariffs. Tell me, who's going to win?
Americans do NOT get it. Sorry to have to tell you.
Well I disagree in part Kurt. Americans did get it that way. That WAS America. 1860s thru the 1950s. But.
It was my wife and my grandparents that fought for NOT running around all day full speed at work. FOR humane, safe working conditions. Where workers battled company paid police at the Nickel factory riots in New Jersey. In coal mines in West Virginia.
No one wants to be forced into absurd labor conditions.
The difference. In America, we could for a long time, address such horrible grievances and inhumane working conditions.
In China, so far as Comminism and Autocracy rule, such conditions are accepted by the People, Forced on the People and unjustly Tolerated by the People.
Sorry for the rant, but on a morning like this, it's either rant or get hauled to the loony bin (with all that entails when you've got kids, like home inspections – that, right now, I'm not optimistic we'd pass...)
In the past month, we've had, back to back:
* kid with 10-day fever of mysterious origins, maybe mono (but definitely not officially mono, since that would be too easy)
* a barf bug I worked my hands raw to contain, only for it to spread through the whole household, anyhow, including my barfing on a buncha laundry I'd just cleaned
* a water main break which, fortunately, didn't flood us, but meant we couldn't do ordinary hygiene for a while (before we'd completely cleaned up from the second round of barfing – fun!)
* my uncle dying, and his widow needing financial help
* my catching strep
* a lab mixup telling me I *didn't* have strep and letting it go untreated
* excruciatingly painful arthritis kicked off by the untreated strep – fortunately, not rheumatic fever, probably "just" reactive arthritis (not that BigHospCorp is saying, probably for liability reasons) – but it left me bed bound for a few days, and my hip is still messed up
* a kid's urgent, but not emergent, after-hours nosebleed problem that had me scrambling to sign up for my "insurer's" telehealth (which isn't covered by said "insurer"), only to find the telehealth unusable, since *I* signed up, not my kid: Hey, at least they'll still charge me for it, since it's technically my fault!
* repeatedly having to cancel help from the one family member outside my household who can realistically help me, due to all of the above
* and, petty as it sounds, LAUNDRY FROM HELL – continually backlogged (never got caught up after water main break followed barf bug), plus a comparatively trivial (but still really annoying and slovenly-looking) infestation of "laundry leprosy" (high-contrast lint pilling) caused by my bright idea of doing the hygienically-recommended thing, which is to wash barfed-on laundry by barf-contamination level, not by separating darks from lights as I usually do
I thought 2023-2024 had been a rough patch for me. My asthma, already kicked up by childbearing, delayed in treatment by COVIDtide, kicked up even further during the 2023 wildfires, and never kicked back down. My mom stroked out and eventually died. My computer and the family car died immediately afterward. A kid's autism diagnosis (getting it properly diagnosed: good; the procedure involved – and the need for it in the first place: not so good). The nightmare that was – is – continues to be – my mom's estate. Needing a biologic for asthma. Waiting months just to get a pulmonologist's appointment to confirm my problem really was asthma, and not, like, lung cancer (I wasn't worried it was, but it would have been darkly funny had it been). Finally getting the biologic for a few months, improving on it, only to have the prescribing doctor mysteriously disappear. So. Many. Mildew. Problems. (Which means more asthma problems.)
Oh, and art supplies from hell. They're very nice art supplies! But our housekeeping, not great to begin with, has been overwhelmed since their arrival: we don't have a rational place for kids to use and store these supplies right now. At first, I put my foot down saying, no, no nice art supplies in a house this messy and cluttered. Where will we put them? They'll get ruined and ruin the house. We must declutter first. But my husband, sensing our kids' childhood slipping away (which, to be fair, it is!) ordered them, anyhow. Now, the supplies are getting ruined and ruining the house – I can't keep up with it all...
I got up early this morning to do a load of darks so that my eldest would have any clean pants whatsoever to wear to school – only to find the basement flooding. Something about the washing machine overburdening one of our two Necessary Pumps (sump and sewer pit). I find it deeply shameful to invite anyone, even a plumber, into a house as messy as ours is right now. Plus, water damage means more housework to strain my strepped-up hip, under penalty of mold damage, which worsens asthma. AND DIRTY WATER FLOODED LAUNDRY I'D JUST GOTTEN CLEAN! SURE, SERVES ME RIGHT FOR LEAVING A CLEAN HAMPER IN THE BASEMENT, RATHER THAN STOWING CLEAN ITEMS RIGHT AWAY! BUT...MORE DIRTY LAUNDRY – THAT I JUST CLEANED! ARGH!!!!
You’re about the third person I’ve encountered today having a general meltdown over impacted life circumstances… You take Gold, by the way, in case that’s any consolation. Huzzah!
I am so sorry for your trials and tribulations. When my mom died in PA, though she had prudently simplified her 'estate' to the minimum, her death and probate process was the most horrifying, exasperating and stressful situation of my life.
Not to be glib (well maybe I am) I have a simple laundry solution for you. When I was touring the Andes in 1973 I was astounded to see women doing their laundry in the rivers using just big rocks and soap. Their clothing was vibrantly colorful, so maybe it worked. Not making light of your challenges, but it brought back memories. Also, I am not sure that their method was ecologically beneficial.
Praying that you are able to bear up under the stress and find solutions!
Ya gotta be first-world to have your basement pump conk out during a washing-machine cycle, or to even have biologics for asthma as an option.
Much less have your strep test screwed up by a lab using the latest state of the art technology! (An effin' Liat – so cool! Too bad the BigHospCorp bureaucracy around it doesn't work better...)
So many of these problems involve one sort of abundance not catching up to another, whether it's the pettier example of not arranging for abundant storage of abundant art supplies, or the more serious example of an abundance of excellent medical science that's nonetheless inaccessible to even upper-middle-class folks like me because... reasons... And if medical care is like this for me, whose only demographic disadvantage as a patient now (without getting too woke, yeah, it *is* a disadvantage) is being female, it stands to reason it's much worse for many others. I loathe actions like Luigi Mangione's, but I'm not entirely surprised by them.
According to Wikipedia, "A kettle is a group of birds wheeling and circling in the air. The kettle may be composed of several different species at the same time."
I have not. There is a nature preserve near here where you can see them, Ibis, Heron (of multiple varieties), purple martins, and a whole passel of other birds. Its pretty cool.
Led by what's her face, the WWF wrestling magnate. Life imitating absurdity. I abstain from any vote on this measure. I maintain the college dropout's prerogative of general disdain for much of the modern university environment.
Yeah. Wonder how much the fact that he was a serious doper for nearly a decade and a half has to do with that, although according to him it helped make him *smart*, so to speak...
"I'll tell you something about heroin for me. I did very very poorly in school, until I started doing narcotics. Then I went to the top of my class because my mind was so restless and turbulent and I could not sit still. […] I'd probably today be diagnosed as ADHD, I was bouncing off the walls. I couldn't sit still, I just wanted to get in the woods. […] I started doing heroin, I went to the top of my class. Suddenly I could sit still, I could read, and I could concentrate, I could listen to what people were saying, things made sense to me. […] It worked for me. And if it still worked, I'd still be doing it. […] It killed my brother, and it destroys your relationships. It hollows out your whole life. You have a one-dimensional life. I was a bundle of appetites and it was a full time job to feed them, with drugs and sex and alcohol and extreme behavior."
RFK Jr. - from a podcast called the "Shawn Ryan Show" in June, 2024
Sure. It would be an expensive way to get a vaccination, though.
I didn't read about RFK shutting down flu shots. Did this just happen? I've skimmed a couple articles where he's gone one way then backtracked, then quibbled and obfuscated....it's insane that this moron is in charge of anything, let alone the health of a nation.
"The state is that great fiction by which everyone tries to live at the expense of everyone else."
― Frederic Bastiat
And....
"A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largesse from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most benefits from the public treasury with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy, always followed by a dictatorship. The average age of the world's greatest civilizations has been 200 years. These nations have progressed through this sequence: From bondage to spiritual faith; From spiritual faith to great courage; From courage to liberty; From liberty to abundance; From abundance to selfishness; From selfishness to apathy; From apathy to dependence; From dependence back into bondage.”
Frankly, I blame a lot of the overspending—private and public—on the zero-interest fed policy after the 2008 housing crisis & bank bailout extraordinaire. Homes don’t sell or even get built because everyone got used to mortgage rates no more than 3 percent—and now they’re waiting for interest rates to return to that “normal” level. Meanwhile, interest on the public debt is going to eat us all alive…
RE: All these people pitching a fit about mortgage interest rates
Please. They don't have a clue about high interest rates or even high inflation. But as to interest rates...
When I bought my home 40 years ago - after living in a mobile home for 11 years because I couldn't afford either the price of a house *or* a mortgage - I purchased it on a land contract at 11% (the highest rate allowed on that instrument by law at the time) and was damned glad to get a financial deal at that rate for a home purchase, because mortgages were 13% to 14% in any bank you cared to walk into.
And on top of that, if you didn't have a provable bare minimum of at least 25% of the purchase price down and a pay rate that made one 40-hour paycheck cover at least 95% of a monthly payment, no loan officer would even give you the time of day.
When mortgages finally dropped to just under 9% a couple of years into that contract, I quite happily applied for and got one. Which made the home seller quite unhappy when I paid off his contract 13 years early, but TFB, baby. I'd met every term of that contract on time and in full.
As an aside, what really bent him out of shape was when he discovered at the mortgage closing, where he'd get his pay off money, that because he'd insisted on a bank - actually, the same bank giving me the mortgage - handling all my payments to him through a land contract account that included an escrow for monthly property tax and insurance money, he had to pay *me* nearly a thousand dollars to settle the unused escrow balance before the bank would pay *him* his payoff money. Didn't go over so well when the loan officer dropped that on him, since he couldn't wrap his head around the idea that that was actually *my* money. But anyway...
A couple of years later still, when rates were down to under 7%, I refinanced again, believing I'd truly arrived in mortgage interest rate heaven. So, all this whining about mortgage rates at 6 & 7% gets no traction with me at all.
But, if they want to whine about something, let 'em whine about the *real* problem, which is the cost of the *house*, not the cost of the financing, since all that super-cheap money spurred a whole lot of home buying over the years, but not nearly enough home building to come anywhere near staying in the same zip code for demand for homes, single family or otherwise.
And they better lay in a large stock of fresh hankies to keep up with the tears these unnecessary tariffs on lumber and other building necessities are gonna' cause. 'Cause Baby, it's only gonna' get worse from here.
But if someone out there helped put this policy in place by helping put in place its architect and yet are pitching a fit, feeling they're unfairly being denied this little piece of the American Dream, Don and the boys have a word for them.
I'm not smart enough or informed enough to lay blame for macro conditions on anything more than a simple understanding that we have zero fiscal policy beyond satisfying constituencies uninformed and unrealistic demands. Tytler described it perfectly.
Morning. It’s frosty out, but there’s a red horizon. I think that portends communism, if I’m not mistaken. Or else the joys of red-state living for all. Huzzah!
I reckon the anhingas will continue sunning and airing themselves even under the red dictatorship to ensue. The more things change, um, the more they don’t—or the less they do? Or something.
PS: Since my SS check finally turned up, I did pay off a bunch of debt, even totally wiping out one card.
Hi everyone, how's things?
Cool bird Cynthia, way cool
I have not had as disastrous a time as poor MIdge, but I did think I had a broken transmission in my car, and turns out it was a flub of mine, accidentally turning on the OD icon.
Then, because the universe was unhappy, I avoided a costly and traumatic experience...someone hacked my debit card...the bank caught it in time and removed it, ( $1500) but, I had to give them my life story ( really, it was ridiculous how many questions they asked, I had to "prove" I had the card in my possession, so apparently they somehow got it online, though I don't know how, I am very cautious about clicking or opening things)...so, they have to send me a new card, which takes a week, so I have to pay them to overnight it, but I talked to the guy yesterday and haven't heard back since, and I am not looking forward to all the places I am going to have to go to to change the card ...luckily the stuff that was due to post yesterday and today made it ok ( he said he would temporarily leave it available...)
Well, I guess not any better, but, , at least it distracts me from the political stuff in the meantime..
I hope your card replacement gets handled without excessive difficulty.
Thanks Cynthia, since I still haven't heard from them ,I am calling the bank tomorrow
Hi Angie. Hope you get the bank card stuff straightened out soon. I recently heard of a near catastrophe, but it still meant the lady had to change *all* her account numbers for everything, will have to have checks reissued, need new health insurance numbers and cards—the works. And that’s before automated payments bounce and incur fees. She fell for a scam that involved a pickup service (local gangster) meant to pick up her cash at her door! It was a phone scam from overseas, of course, probably in one of the countries that Trump thinks of as friends…
PS: And Hi Marque and thank you
Aw, that is awful....I am very cautious, I don't even answer phone calls from people whose numbers I don't know who it is. The rep from the bank implied it had something to do with Amazon and like places..I did get a weird pop-up supposedly from Microsoft Security, loud noise, and a bunch of garbage about the danger I was in and to not shut my computer down....
I am just worried that I won't get the new card before some of my auto deductions are due...none of which allow ACHs...I do have 24-hour grace...so, theoretically, if something happens prior to this, they will honor the charbe for 24 hrs
It's a fake snake!
"Help, help! I fell in the water! Oh, never mind, turns out I can swim."
It's a beautiful bird when basking in the sun. Thanks
An interesting read from ChinaTalk. I think Kurt reads this. A story about the Nationalistic AI efforts by China.
https://open.substack.com/pub/chinatalk/p/deepseek-and-destiny-a-national-vibe
My takes.
A. I have long worried about China since MIT early 1970s.
B. I think they play an superior asymmetrical game
C. I was concerned about educating people who go back and supported a Communist autocracy.
D. The article talks about their angst over the common theme, China copies and doesn't innovate.
I still believe that China copies. And China creates great derivatives. Like Japan from 1950 to theb1970s.
Then Sony burst on the scene.
Where is the China Sony? Innovation? I don't see it. Now I'm biased because from my half century of technology participation and observation, I see almost nothing new new. Apple is "new" to most. Not me. We saw PCs and computing when Jobs was in grade school.
AI. Also not new. At MIT, the building we went into Friday night and came out of Sunday was called Project MAC. Man and Computer. But actually called Machine Aided Cognition
1973. Internet. Multi-player global gaming. Email. Interactive dialog with artificial shrinks ! And other "personalities".
Deep Seek is just brute force.nVidia. I'm old. So I guess I have an unappreciative high bar.
38F!
Cool birds Cynthia
I recall that the Europeans said all those same things about Americans when America was industrializing, because it was true. Mr. Lowell is just one of the more famous examples. Right? Wrong? Criminal? Smart?
Please don't forget that our business geniuses going into China signed over the IP to get into the game, imagining they were the smart guys and China would be happy just making the stuff. In a word, our business leaders were morons. I sat on a long flight back to the States next to a Ford guy that had been in country for 15-20 years developing Ford's mfg. At first, he was circumspect, but he liked to drink. The more he drank the more he started bemoaning how "We gave it all away! We took 20 years off their development curve!"....and that sort of commentary. American business leaders entering into China were dopes. They didn't know Chinese had been doing this stuff for about 1500 years.
One thing I've learned from my small business... As soon as the big guys start calling "foul", you know what the game is. Anyone gigantic and successful business that starts in with the morality and ethical accusations....it's bullshit. They got gigantic and successful for lots of reasons, with some of those reasons being ruthlessness and stealing ideas. Business ain't beanbag at the levels these folks are playing.
Per innovation, you clearly are not paying attention to the innovations exploding out of Chinese universities, research institutions, and businesses.
I know some of the history of ancient Chinese innovations. Porcelain. Gunpowder. Certain textiles.
I haven't seen much innovation anywhere frankly that meets my own (silly perhaps) standard.
Even the portable tape playing Sony Walkman just downsized magnetic tape from others, speakers from others, plastics from others, Semiconductor from others. The synthesis was creative but derived IMHO. Now the CD was more a leap using digitized sound by others, lasers and optical lenses by others. Albeit tiny!!.
What innovations would you share as "innovative"?
As to BigCorp giving away IP!! Totally. I was in an Executive Education 4 week training at BigCorp. One big case we had was for the senior Aerospace Division President. He wanted to outsource mil grade flight grade IC and Electronic subsystem to Taiwan. Mid 1980s. We told him politely that our strong recommendation was .no. Didn't go well.
I missed your penultimate sentence in a Substack glitch. Read Caixin. Read SCMP (South China Morning Post). Read the dozens of Substack blogs about China. American media simply does not pay attention to what's happening.
I don't keep a list of this stuff; I just see it when I'm reading. Your going to be surprised in the coming years on China's advances in pharmaceuticals, medical analytical equipment (big), their automotive work is already so far ahead of America's it's existentially over for America's overseas auto business, the C919 is coming on strong and it's only going to be a few more years before they're using their own jet engines instead of GE/Pratt/Rolls/etc. What'a going to REALLY get folks hair up is their military equipment. They're doing stuff that's already leapfrogged us. I'm sure you've read about their shipbuilding. They're building a few millions of tons of highly advanced ships a year and we don't even have a shipbuilding industry anymore.
And Trump's idiocy is going to accelerate and exacerbate the issue. I'm just reporting the news. I don't like it. I just see it.
Agree with this. Americans. Make America Dim Again
Porcelain, gunpowder, “certain” textiles….sheesh…. You really do need to read up. China research institutions are coming up with innovations that will surpass whatever your standard is, silly or not. (I don’t know what that means.)
Citing reality gets me labeled pro-China, anti-America…whatever. I’m pro-smart. I am fascinated and supportive of whatever makes life better for everyone.
You haven’t been paying attention. Americans are arrogant, imagining we’re the smart people. Americans are going to be getting an education they wished they weren’t in the coming decade.
Well shucks
Also...I just spent a few days driving and crisscrossing the Pearl River Delta. It is the entirety of all supply chains for every imaginable product all in one location that goes for hundreds of kilometers with rail spurs to vast computer automated ship loading/unloading and related logistics that go on forever, with a river full of ships getting loaded with goods for shipment all over the world. Meanwhile, we have labor unions demanding no computer or automated equipment and a total moron destroying our alliances with his tariffs. Tell me, who's going to win?
Americans do NOT get it. Sorry to have to tell you.
Well I disagree in part Kurt. Americans did get it that way. That WAS America. 1860s thru the 1950s. But.
It was my wife and my grandparents that fought for NOT running around all day full speed at work. FOR humane, safe working conditions. Where workers battled company paid police at the Nickel factory riots in New Jersey. In coal mines in West Virginia.
No one wants to be forced into absurd labor conditions.
The difference. In America, we could for a long time, address such horrible grievances and inhumane working conditions.
In China, so far as Comminism and Autocracy rule, such conditions are accepted by the People, Forced on the People and unjustly Tolerated by the People.
Sorry for the rant, but on a morning like this, it's either rant or get hauled to the loony bin (with all that entails when you've got kids, like home inspections – that, right now, I'm not optimistic we'd pass...)
In the past month, we've had, back to back:
* kid with 10-day fever of mysterious origins, maybe mono (but definitely not officially mono, since that would be too easy)
* a barf bug I worked my hands raw to contain, only for it to spread through the whole household, anyhow, including my barfing on a buncha laundry I'd just cleaned
* a water main break which, fortunately, didn't flood us, but meant we couldn't do ordinary hygiene for a while (before we'd completely cleaned up from the second round of barfing – fun!)
* my uncle dying, and his widow needing financial help
* my catching strep
* a lab mixup telling me I *didn't* have strep and letting it go untreated
* excruciatingly painful arthritis kicked off by the untreated strep – fortunately, not rheumatic fever, probably "just" reactive arthritis (not that BigHospCorp is saying, probably for liability reasons) – but it left me bed bound for a few days, and my hip is still messed up
* a kid's urgent, but not emergent, after-hours nosebleed problem that had me scrambling to sign up for my "insurer's" telehealth (which isn't covered by said "insurer"), only to find the telehealth unusable, since *I* signed up, not my kid: Hey, at least they'll still charge me for it, since it's technically my fault!
* repeatedly having to cancel help from the one family member outside my household who can realistically help me, due to all of the above
* and, petty as it sounds, LAUNDRY FROM HELL – continually backlogged (never got caught up after water main break followed barf bug), plus a comparatively trivial (but still really annoying and slovenly-looking) infestation of "laundry leprosy" (high-contrast lint pilling) caused by my bright idea of doing the hygienically-recommended thing, which is to wash barfed-on laundry by barf-contamination level, not by separating darks from lights as I usually do
I thought 2023-2024 had been a rough patch for me. My asthma, already kicked up by childbearing, delayed in treatment by COVIDtide, kicked up even further during the 2023 wildfires, and never kicked back down. My mom stroked out and eventually died. My computer and the family car died immediately afterward. A kid's autism diagnosis (getting it properly diagnosed: good; the procedure involved – and the need for it in the first place: not so good). The nightmare that was – is – continues to be – my mom's estate. Needing a biologic for asthma. Waiting months just to get a pulmonologist's appointment to confirm my problem really was asthma, and not, like, lung cancer (I wasn't worried it was, but it would have been darkly funny had it been). Finally getting the biologic for a few months, improving on it, only to have the prescribing doctor mysteriously disappear. So. Many. Mildew. Problems. (Which means more asthma problems.)
Oh, and art supplies from hell. They're very nice art supplies! But our housekeeping, not great to begin with, has been overwhelmed since their arrival: we don't have a rational place for kids to use and store these supplies right now. At first, I put my foot down saying, no, no nice art supplies in a house this messy and cluttered. Where will we put them? They'll get ruined and ruin the house. We must declutter first. But my husband, sensing our kids' childhood slipping away (which, to be fair, it is!) ordered them, anyhow. Now, the supplies are getting ruined and ruining the house – I can't keep up with it all...
I got up early this morning to do a load of darks so that my eldest would have any clean pants whatsoever to wear to school – only to find the basement flooding. Something about the washing machine overburdening one of our two Necessary Pumps (sump and sewer pit). I find it deeply shameful to invite anyone, even a plumber, into a house as messy as ours is right now. Plus, water damage means more housework to strain my strepped-up hip, under penalty of mold damage, which worsens asthma. AND DIRTY WATER FLOODED LAUNDRY I'D JUST GOTTEN CLEAN! SURE, SERVES ME RIGHT FOR LEAVING A CLEAN HAMPER IN THE BASEMENT, RATHER THAN STOWING CLEAN ITEMS RIGHT AWAY! BUT...MORE DIRTY LAUNDRY – THAT I JUST CLEANED! ARGH!!!!
I kind of lost it.
My heart goes out to you! If I lived near by I'd offer to do laundry for you.
There's bad luck. Then there's whatever this is. Hope things improve - and improve drastically - real soon, Midge.
OMG, Midge and I thought my life was a disaster...
Many, many hugs and wishes for it just to STOP.
You must be pretty resilient to still be lucid after all that.
🤗🤗
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Oh, dear. There really is nothing to say except I'm glad you have all survived up to this point.
It's definitely been an "If I'm so smart, why am I also apparently too dumb for the world?" sort of morning.
You’re about the third person I’ve encountered today having a general meltdown over impacted life circumstances… You take Gold, by the way, in case that’s any consolation. Huzzah!
Hehe! First in today's first-world-problems contest.
This has me laughing, which I sorely need :-)
To be fair, some of these problems sound pretty rustic.
Insofar as my somewhat lemon body, and my own character flaws, would follow me anywhere, including the hinterlands, you're no doubt right.
I have trouble Liking this list of travails, since there's truly nothing to like in it.
Except that you're part of our community and happy to listen. Hang in there
Beautifully said. Thanks.
😥👋🌠
OMG!!!
Ouch. It all kinda went sideways. Sorry to hear it.
I am so sorry for your trials and tribulations. When my mom died in PA, though she had prudently simplified her 'estate' to the minimum, her death and probate process was the most horrifying, exasperating and stressful situation of my life.
Not to be glib (well maybe I am) I have a simple laundry solution for you. When I was touring the Andes in 1973 I was astounded to see women doing their laundry in the rivers using just big rocks and soap. Their clothing was vibrantly colorful, so maybe it worked. Not making light of your challenges, but it brought back memories. Also, I am not sure that their method was ecologically beneficial.
Praying that you are able to bear up under the stress and find solutions!
Ha! Yeah, first-world problems, quite literally :-)
Ya gotta be first-world to have your basement pump conk out during a washing-machine cycle, or to even have biologics for asthma as an option.
Much less have your strep test screwed up by a lab using the latest state of the art technology! (An effin' Liat – so cool! Too bad the BigHospCorp bureaucracy around it doesn't work better...)
So many of these problems involve one sort of abundance not catching up to another, whether it's the pettier example of not arranging for abundant storage of abundant art supplies, or the more serious example of an abundance of excellent medical science that's nonetheless inaccessible to even upper-middle-class folks like me because... reasons... And if medical care is like this for me, whose only demographic disadvantage as a patient now (without getting too woke, yeah, it *is* a disadvantage) is being female, it stands to reason it's much worse for many others. I loathe actions like Luigi Mangione's, but I'm not entirely surprised by them.
Thank you for a demonstration of the kind of gratitude our society needs more of: Not taking what we do have for granted.
Hope the good karma (or whatever one prefers to call it) catches up with you soon.
Great piece on our stabby bird friends. We are patiently waiting for our purple martins to arrive.
Anhingas are one of my favorite birds. I am sadly too far inland and north to see them on a regular basis. Thank you for profiling them, CynthiaW!!
Sorry, I meant you're welcome.
You're welcome?
Is there any other animal group called "kettles", or is this unique to these birds?
According to Wikipedia, "A kettle is a group of birds wheeling and circling in the air. The kettle may be composed of several different species at the same time."
I was watching one out side my window just yesterday.
They are not found in my neighborhood.
Good morning.
They are fun to watch.
Yes, it is. They're common in lowland South Carolina, which is where we usually take our vacations.
Have you seen them darting?
I have not. There is a nature preserve near here where you can see them, Ibis, Heron (of multiple varieties), purple martins, and a whole passel of other birds. Its pretty cool.
Good morning. Happy Mardi Gras! 37 here, rumored to get to 60. We’ll see. Rain tonight.
The mothership is covering the Trump Education Department’s efforts to end DEI programs at federally funded colleges and universities.
Yeah, warm here too, at least some news in my life...lol
Led by what's her face, the WWF wrestling magnate. Life imitating absurdity. I abstain from any vote on this measure. I maintain the college dropout's prerogative of general disdain for much of the modern university environment.
Hey Kurt, can we come visit and get flu shots over there next fall? Apparently RFK has shut them down here.
What a dope he is.
Yeah. Wonder how much the fact that he was a serious doper for nearly a decade and a half has to do with that, although according to him it helped make him *smart*, so to speak...
"I'll tell you something about heroin for me. I did very very poorly in school, until I started doing narcotics. Then I went to the top of my class because my mind was so restless and turbulent and I could not sit still. […] I'd probably today be diagnosed as ADHD, I was bouncing off the walls. I couldn't sit still, I just wanted to get in the woods. […] I started doing heroin, I went to the top of my class. Suddenly I could sit still, I could read, and I could concentrate, I could listen to what people were saying, things made sense to me. […] It worked for me. And if it still worked, I'd still be doing it. […] It killed my brother, and it destroys your relationships. It hollows out your whole life. You have a one-dimensional life. I was a bundle of appetites and it was a full time job to feed them, with drugs and sex and alcohol and extreme behavior."
RFK Jr. - from a podcast called the "Shawn Ryan Show" in June, 2024
https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/rfk-jr-heroin-addict/
Sure. It would be an expensive way to get a vaccination, though.
I didn't read about RFK shutting down flu shots. Did this just happen? I've skimmed a couple articles where he's gone one way then backtracked, then quibbled and obfuscated....it's insane that this moron is in charge of anything, let alone the health of a nation.
He canceled the meeting where they were planning to begin work on the 2025 vaccine.
Sheesh… This just can’t be going anywhere good.
Unless it contributes significant impetus to the public backlash.
"at federally funded colleges and universities"
Which all but 22 of the country's thousands, according to the interwebs:
https://deanclancy.com/a-list-of-colleges-that-dont-take-federal-money/
L’il Jimmy Madison must be sooooo proud of what we’ve made of his life’s work…
A government that robs Peter to pay Paul can always depend on the support of Paul. - George Bernard Shaw
It would not surprise me if Madison considered this possibility. He was really smart.
"The state is that great fiction by which everyone tries to live at the expense of everyone else."
― Frederic Bastiat
And....
"A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largesse from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most benefits from the public treasury with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy, always followed by a dictatorship. The average age of the world's greatest civilizations has been 200 years. These nations have progressed through this sequence: From bondage to spiritual faith; From spiritual faith to great courage; From courage to liberty; From liberty to abundance; From abundance to selfishness; From selfishness to apathy; From apathy to dependence; From dependence back into bondage.”
― Alexander Fraser Tytler
Have a GREAT DAY!..... woof....
Frankly, I blame a lot of the overspending—private and public—on the zero-interest fed policy after the 2008 housing crisis & bank bailout extraordinaire. Homes don’t sell or even get built because everyone got used to mortgage rates no more than 3 percent—and now they’re waiting for interest rates to return to that “normal” level. Meanwhile, interest on the public debt is going to eat us all alive…
RE: All these people pitching a fit about mortgage interest rates
Please. They don't have a clue about high interest rates or even high inflation. But as to interest rates...
When I bought my home 40 years ago - after living in a mobile home for 11 years because I couldn't afford either the price of a house *or* a mortgage - I purchased it on a land contract at 11% (the highest rate allowed on that instrument by law at the time) and was damned glad to get a financial deal at that rate for a home purchase, because mortgages were 13% to 14% in any bank you cared to walk into.
And on top of that, if you didn't have a provable bare minimum of at least 25% of the purchase price down and a pay rate that made one 40-hour paycheck cover at least 95% of a monthly payment, no loan officer would even give you the time of day.
When mortgages finally dropped to just under 9% a couple of years into that contract, I quite happily applied for and got one. Which made the home seller quite unhappy when I paid off his contract 13 years early, but TFB, baby. I'd met every term of that contract on time and in full.
As an aside, what really bent him out of shape was when he discovered at the mortgage closing, where he'd get his pay off money, that because he'd insisted on a bank - actually, the same bank giving me the mortgage - handling all my payments to him through a land contract account that included an escrow for monthly property tax and insurance money, he had to pay *me* nearly a thousand dollars to settle the unused escrow balance before the bank would pay *him* his payoff money. Didn't go over so well when the loan officer dropped that on him, since he couldn't wrap his head around the idea that that was actually *my* money. But anyway...
A couple of years later still, when rates were down to under 7%, I refinanced again, believing I'd truly arrived in mortgage interest rate heaven. So, all this whining about mortgage rates at 6 & 7% gets no traction with me at all.
But, if they want to whine about something, let 'em whine about the *real* problem, which is the cost of the *house*, not the cost of the financing, since all that super-cheap money spurred a whole lot of home buying over the years, but not nearly enough home building to come anywhere near staying in the same zip code for demand for homes, single family or otherwise.
And they better lay in a large stock of fresh hankies to keep up with the tears these unnecessary tariffs on lumber and other building necessities are gonna' cause. 'Cause Baby, it's only gonna' get worse from here.
But if someone out there helped put this policy in place by helping put in place its architect and yet are pitching a fit, feeling they're unfairly being denied this little piece of the American Dream, Don and the boys have a word for them.
Well, three words, actually...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R2uRRDV63ns
I've never had a mortgage interest rate that low. I have 6% now and thought that was awesome...lol
It was the "normal" level that was abnormal. A zero interest rate environment made a lot of "haves" have-ier.
I'm not smart enough or informed enough to lay blame for macro conditions on anything more than a simple understanding that we have zero fiscal policy beyond satisfying constituencies uninformed and unrealistic demands. Tytler described it perfectly.
John Adams wrote: "Remember, democracies do not last long...." then listed waste, intemperance, etc...."then they eventually murder themselves."
Thomas Jefferson stated his belief the new form of government of the US would not last 200 years.
Yeah, I remember those too.
Morning. It’s frosty out, but there’s a red horizon. I think that portends communism, if I’m not mistaken. Or else the joys of red-state living for all. Huzzah!
I reckon the anhingas will continue sunning and airing themselves even under the red dictatorship to ensue. The more things change, um, the more they don’t—or the less they do? Or something.
Well said 🙄
No Red Dawn for you!
Remember Red Dawn from about the mid-80's? Patrick Swayze, Jennifer Grey, Charlie Sheen...in a movie so awful it was fun to watch.
Come to think: that movie alone may explain how we got Trump. 🤔🤔🤔
That didn’t end all that well for them did it?
It is true that it was said.
Anhingas, and animals in general, are apolitical.
Good morning. 35Fs and clear with a high of 65. Happy Trash Day!
Let's all get trashed!
Many people in New Orleans will get trashed today.
Only to a certain extent, because we have to get up tomorrow morning.
I just thought it sounded funny. I don't drink, not because of any moral or spiritual qualms...it just makes me feel really lousy.
Why should the Muskovites have all the fun to themselves?