Tuesday, February 28, 2023

Johnny Cash - God' Gonna Cut You Down

European Gas and Wheat Prices are Back to Pre-Ukraine War Levels

Tuesday Flotsam and Jetsam

Have a new miscellaneous thoughts and observations post up on Substack.

Switched up the button I use at the end of the post from one about "Subscribe Now" to another one asking you to share the post because my number of subscribers has stalled. So if you haven't subscribed please do - I'd appreciate it.

Heh Heh

Quotes for Today

Some quotes I hope may resonate with you.

"The art of knowing is knowing what to ignore." - Rumi

"Sometimes success is less about making good habits easy and more about making bad habits hard." - James Clear

"Comedians didn't suddenly become 'right wing,' the left just went insane and the material is too good to pass up on." - Bridget Phetasy

"This country has grown great and strong and prosperous by placing major reliance on a free economy... Private property, free competition, hard work - these have been our greatest tools." - Barry Goldwater

Excellent Life Advice

Via

Monday, February 27, 2023

Linky Links

Stuff I found interesting or amusing and thought I'd share.

- China's economy, real estate bubble and all, looking a lot like Japan's from a couple decades ago. I've long said China's economy is much weaker than believed. 

- Dolphins CB sends warning to other players - "DO NOT take the pills they give you. DO NOT take the injections they give you.

- Is reverse aging already possible?

- Very cool - small water powered generator. Imagine this would be very handy for people living off the grid in the woods.

Gross Domestic Spending on R&D

Where's China on the list? Or do they just steal other country's tech? (Graph via)

What Destroyed the Nord Stream Pipelines

Interesting post that blows holes in the Seymour Hersh story about how the US blew up the Nord Stream pipelines. Pretty convincing take-down of Hersh's story. 

Here's the original Hersh story on how America took out the Nord Stream pipeline. Have to admit that after reading the story I was convinced that the US was to blame.

Now I again think perhaps the explosions were due to poor Russian maintenance. However, at this point we may never know the truth.

Quotes for Today

Some quotes I hope may resonate with you.

"Knowledge has consequences, not always intended, not always comfortable, not always welcome." - Richard Rhodes

"It is a profound and necessary truth that deep things in science are not found because they are useful; they are found because it was possible to find them." - Robert Oppenheimer 

"The more serious you take yourself, the unhappier you're going to be." - Naval Ravikant

"Love your country, but never trust its government." - Robert Heinlein

Truth

Sunday, February 26, 2023

Smiling is Infectious

Via

Linky Links

Stuff I found interesting and amusing and thought I'd share.

- Fentanyl found in THC gummies sold at Pennsylvania store

- Heh Heh

- Yesterday would have been George Harrison's 80th birthday. It's things like this that made him my favorite Beatle.

- 9 rules for all Roadrunner and Wile E. Coyote interactions.

Where are You on the Graph?

Via

Quotes for Today

Some quotes I hope may resonate with you.

"It is still an unending source of surprise for me to see how a few scribbles on a blackboard or on a sheet of paper could change the course of human affairs." - Stanislaw Ulam

 "Every great and deep difficulty bears within itself its own solution." - Niels Bohn

"Is it wrong to gamble, or only to lose?" - Sky Masterson (Guys and Dolls)

"The virus here is government - or at least the incompetents who advise our rulers and cannot admit the legitimacy of distension."  - David Mamet

Truth

HT Some It's Just as Well

Saturday, February 25, 2023

Slap Shot - The Greatest Sports Movie of All-Time

 

Released 46-years ago today.

Linky Links

 Stuff I found interesting or amusing and thought I'd share.

- Warner Brothers tells teams its leaving the regional sports network business. Fans in Denver, Houston, and Pittsburgh must feel like they're in limbo.

- The Russian economic sanctions have been an epic failure.

- Good for Penguin!

- Heh Heh

Farnam Street Knowledge


 

Letters from a Self-Made Merchant to His Son.

"There is plenty of room at the top here, but there is no elevator in the building." That was perhaps my favorite bit.

Find Something Beautiful Today

Alan Shepard playing golf on the moon (photo via). Headline stolen borrowed from Execupundit.

Quotes for Today

Some quotes I hope may resonate wit you.

"'Show up and do stuff. and then do more of what works' is underrated advice." - Sam Altman

"Knowing what's right doesn't mean much unless you do what's right." - Teddy Roosevelt

 "The world will not be destroyed by those who do evil, but by those who watch them without doing anything." - Albert Einstein 

"Knowledge is itself the basis for civilization." - Niels Bohr

Holy Crap - Is this True?

Pun intended. HT Feral Irishman

Friday, February 24, 2023

Apple’s “No-Prick” Blood-Glucose Monitoring

Apple makes major progress on its no-prick blood glucose monitoring for it's watch.  This could be huge. With 1 in 10 Americans diabetic when this comes out the iWatch will become a ubiquitous accessory even for those who normally don't wear watches.

Linky Links

Stuff I found interesting or amusing and thought I'd share.

- Consumer Price Inflation by type of goods or service (2000-2022).  Notice the more government involvement - the higher the price to the consumer.

- Webb telescope discovery so shocking astronomers thought it was a mistake - "let go of your expectations and be ready to be surprised." Much of what we think we know will later prove to be wrong.

- China goes all-in on Russian war effort. We send Ukraine tanks and China figures OK then we'll sell Russia weapons too. Where does the escalation end?

- Morgan Housel with a few short stories on "How It All Works"

Friday Flotsam and Jetsam

Have a new miscellaneous thoughts and observations post up on Substack.

Amity, of course, means friendship. Be my friend and Subscribe (it's FREE), hit the Like button, or share the link with others. Otherwise you may end up getting eaten by a Great White shark.

Heh Heh

Via

Quotes for Today

Some quotes I hope may resonate with you.

"The happiness of most people is not ruined by great catastrophes or fatal errors, but by the repetition of slowly destructive little things." - Ernest Dimnet

"It is not philosophy we are after, but the behavior of real things." - Richard Feynman

"There's only one standard of justice in the field of economics: the verdict of a free market." - Ayn Rand

"The meaning of life is just to be alive. It is so plain and so obvious and so simple. And yet, everybody rushes around in a great panic as if it were necessary to achieve something beyond themselves." - Alan Watts

Heh Heh - Awesome

HT Some It's Jus as Well

Thursday, February 23, 2023

Johnny Cash - The Ballad of Ira Hayes

 

Think it's fitting that on the anniversary of the raising of the American flag on Iwo Jima that we remember one of the flag raisers.

More Linky Links

More stuff I found interesting or amusing and thought I'd share.

- Are there benefits to statins?

- Why Penn Entertainment bought Barstool Sports for $551 million. Good for Dave Portnoy - he built the company from nothing. 

- Love Brad Marchand's candor. And the way he didn't back down. Edmonton and Alberta aren't exactly dream winter travel destinations.

- China's manual for defeating America - weaponize everything including lawyers and balloons. Don't trust China - China is asshole!

Linky Links

Stuff I found interesting or amusing and thought I'd share.

- Unemployment rate projections by country in 2023. Looks encouraging.

- Joe Rogan explains the origin of the Proud Boys

- The War in Ukraine in 8 photos

- US can't keep up with China's warship building. This is a problem (although are you surprised at an Admiral arguing for a larger Navy?). 

H.G. Wells - The World Set Free

"...the liberation of atomic energy on a large scale for industrial purposes, the development of atomic bombs, and a world war which was apparently fought by an alliance of England, France, and perhaps including America, against Germany and Austria, the powers located in the central part of Europe. He [Wells] places this war in the year 1956, and in this war the major cities of the world are all destroyed by atomic bombs." - Leo Szilard's recollection of the 1914 book decades after the end of World War II.

H.G. Wells was pretty prescient in many of his predictions but given that this was written even before World War I and well before atomic power and bombs were a gleam in the top physicists of the day (Szilard didn't conceive of nuclear chain reactions until 1933) - the predictions in The World Set Free may even top Well's prediction that a mission to the moon would be launched from the Southern Florida coast.

Quotes for Today

Some quotes I hope may resonate with you.

"A fact doesn't have to be understood to be true." - Robert Heinlein

"Treat a work of art like a prince; let it speak to you first." - Arthur Schopenhauer

"You don't need enough courage for the entire journey. You only need courage for a few seconds to overcome self-doubt before you take the next step." - Shane Parrish

"Silence is the language of God, all else is poor translation." - Rumi

Iwo Jima

Today is the anniversary of the iconic photo by Joe Rosenthal of the raising of the American flag on Mount Suribashi on Iwo Jima. The fighting on the island actually started four days earlier on February 19th. The story of this battle is something every high school student should have to learn before they are allowed to graduate.

Semper Fidelis.

Wednesday, February 22, 2023

Amazon's Revenue Streams

And keep in mind that $149.2 billion was just a single quarter's worth of revenue.

Wednesday Flotsam and Jetsam

Have a new miscellaneous thoughts and observations post up on Substack.

I say "mucho" to all my Hispanic friends. It means a lot to them. And it would mean a lot to me if you Subscribed, hit the Like button, or shared the link with others. Gracias. 

Linky Links

Stuff I found interesting or amusing and thought I'd share.

Sensitive US military emails spill online. Very bad look for Microsoft. We're in the very best of hands.

- Yikes - Antidepressants no better than placebo for about 85% of people

- The Washington Post hit piece on Elon Musk. They gave more oxygen to this non-story than to all the Twitter Files stories combined. 

- How to cure hiccups.

Quotes for Today

Some quotes I hope may resonate with you.

"When we are no longer able to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves." - Victor Frankl

"It is easy to grin when your ship comes in and you've got the stock market beat. But the man worthwhile is the man who can smile when his shorts are too tight in the seat." - Judge Smails

"Don't spend your time making other people happy. Other people being happy is their problem. It's not your problem. If you are happy, it makes other people happy." - Naval Ravikant

 "Associate with the noblest people you can find; read the best books; live with the mighty; but learn to be happy alone." - Saul Bellow

Do You Believe in Miracles?

 

43-years ago today.

Tuesday, February 21, 2023

Same

HT Some It's Just as Well

Linky Links

Stuff I found interesting or amusing and thought I'd share.

- Eric McErlain and the tradition of the gnomes.

How the War in Ukraine ends. Interesting read but Ukraine is not getting Crimea back. We have to be realistic about that.

- Is God really visiting a two-stoplight town in Kentucky? I'm honestly jealous of people who believe they've been touched by the Holy Spirit.

- The Battle of Verdun

Sad Because Its True

Via

The Making of the Atomic Bomb


"Man-made death became epidemic in the twentieth century because increasingly efficient killing technologies made the extreme exercise of national sovereignty pathological. And it was evidently the discovery of how to release nuclear energy and its application to nuclear weapons that reduced the virulence of the pathogen." - Richard Rhodes The Making of the Atomic Bomb  

Quotes for Today

 Some quotes I hope may resonate with you.

"Any endeavor has unintended consequences. Any ill-conceived endeavor has more." - Stephen Tobolowsky  

"Science is the belief in the ignorance of experts."- Richard Feynman

"Some people aren't used to an environment where excellence is expected." - Steve Jobs

"Show me in the Constitution where you get a right to separate citizens based on race." - Clarence Thomas

Truth

Monday, February 20, 2023

More Linky Links

More stuff I found interesting or amusing and thought I'd share.

- Pfizer whistleblower case given green light to move to next phase in Texas trial. This could be the biggest story of 2023 so worth playing attention to.

- How China became Saudi Arabia's largest trade partner. Not surprising given China's energy needs but just another reason why America needs to be energy independent.

- Matt Taibi - Twitter Files #16. The unserious media. 

- Scientists boost quantum signals while reducing noise. Big step in the right direction.

Linky Links

Stuff I found interesting or amusing and thought I'd share.

-  The unbelievable but true story of Mitchell Paige - American hero and the real life face of the GI Joe doll. Where do we find such men?

- Yikes - is this true?

- Matt Taibbi - The West's Betrayal of Freedom

- On a related note - was Biden partly behind Trudeau's crackdown on the Canadian truckers Freedom Convoy? Hard to know where the truth ends and the conspiracy theories start anymore.

Monday Flotsam and Jetsam

Have a new miscellaneous thoughts and observations post up on Substack.

Tesla's fastest car is the Model S Plaid which has a range of about 400 miles. Wonder if they took out the passenger seat and added a bunch more batteries to make the range 500+ miles if the Tesla could win the Daytona 500? As always if anything made you smile or think - please Subscribe, hit the Like button, or share with others. Thanks.

Quotes for Today

Some quotes I hope may resonate with you.

"You will never be criticized by someone who is doing more than you. You'll always be criticized by someone who is doing less. Remember that." - Denzel Washington

 "It is often said that before you die your life passes before your eyes. It is in fact true. It's called living." - Terry Pratchett

"The only thing new in the world is the history you do not know." - Harry Truman

"Hell can't be made attractive, so the devil makes attractive the road that leads there." - Saint Basil the Great

Thomas Sowell

Via

Sunday, February 19, 2023

Cool Japanese Battery Commercial

Epstein Island Visitors by Party Affiliation

Notice a particular trend? (Via)

Truth

Via

Quotes for Today

Some quotes I hope may resonate with you.

"The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds new discoveries, is not 'Eureka!' but, 'That's funny.'" - Isaac Asimov

"Maybe it's the beer talking but I really like beer." - Chris Lynch

"Who's that trip, tropping over my bridge?" - Jennifer Rubin

"We seem to be getting closer and closer to a situation where nobody is responsible for what they did, but we are all responsible for what somebody else did." - Thomas Sowell

Truth

Saturday, February 18, 2023

More Linky Links

More stuff I found interesting or amusing and thought I'd share.

- The Quiet Man fight scene

- Morgan Housel - Good ideas can't be scheduled.

- JP Morgan seems to have known about and facilitated Jeffrey Epstein's Lolita Island.

- The ChatGPT is a biased woke lefty and now Microsoft's Bing AI Chatbot is a psychopathic teenager

School Choice

Never understood the argument that school choice would be the death of public schools. If that were true wouldn't that mean that if parents were given a choice - none would send their kids willingly to public schools? Isn't that indictment on the quality of the education? Wouldn't competition force the public schools to improve their game and insure a better quality of teachers?

I've already said I'm for school choice. You don't have to sell it to me. (Meme via)

Linky Links

Stuff I found interesting or amusing and thought I'd share.

- Hobby Club's Missing Balloon Feared Shot Down by USAF

- White House explains why it turned down disaster relief for Ohio. But then changes its mind about supplying funds once Trump announces he's going to visit the disaster area.

- CHD sues CDC to obtain documents on Covid vaccine deaths and injuries reported in VAERS. The CDC says the shots are safe but won't release the data that would back up that claim. Why would they possibly do that?

- Some of the people who visited Epstein Island. Most surprised by Tom Hanks. Least surprised by Charlie Sheen.

Quotes for Today

Some quotes I hope may resonate with you.

"Liberals measure compassion by how many people are given welfare. Conservatives measure compassion by how many people no longer need it." - Rush Limbaugh

"The real act of discovery consists not in finding new lands, but in seeing with new eyes." - Marcel Proust

"It is remarkable how much long-term advantage people like us have gotten by trying to be consistently not stupid, instead of trying to be very intelligent." - Charlie Munger

"If the highest aim of a captain were to preserve his ship, he would keep it in port forever." - Thomas Aquinas

Heh Heh

Via

Friday, February 17, 2023

More Linky Links

More stuff I found interesting or amusing and thought I'd share.

- Laughed too much at this. Perhaps it hit too close to home. (Via)

- Sports Illustrated announces layoffs and pivot to AI generated content. Really? ChatGPT give me 1,000 words on the Chiefs Super Bowl win in the style of Frank Deford. Hard pass.

- James Clear: Pat Riley on the remarkable power of getting 1% better.

- 10 of the most influential science photographs of all-time 

Linky Links

Stuff I found interesting or amusing and thought I'd share.

- Some good news - the Truflation Inflation Dashboard shows inflation trending downwards. It was at 5.21% as I wrote this.

- Morgan Freeman on Black History Month

- Sad news on Bruce Willis - he has frontotemporal dementia and his condition is worsening.

- More good news - the levels of coral on the Great Barrier Reef are at record levels. The impact of "bleaching events" were wildly overstated by the media.

Friday Flotsam and Jetsam

Have a new miscellaneous thoughts and observations post up on Substack.

I apologize in advance for my observation about Raquel Welch. Despite that observation - please Subscribe, hit the Like button, and share with others.

Heh Heh

HT The Feral Irishman

Quotes for Today

Some quotes I hope may resonate with you.

"I don't want to be part of a world where being kind is a weakness." - Keanu Reeves

"Anything that triggers good memories can't be all bad." - Adam West

"'No' is often a decision, frequently temporary, to maintain the status quo." - Chris Voss

"Tell me what you know. Tell me what you don't know. Only then can you tell me what you think. Always keep these three things separate." - Colin Powell

Science vs Pseudoscience

We're living in a world of pseudoscience but "trust the pseudoscience" just doesn't sound as compelling. (Via)

Thursday, February 16, 2023

Linky Links

Stuff I found interesting or amusing and thought I'd share.

- Enjoy your workout

- Three objects shot down after Chinese spy balloon may have been benign according to White House. It's a clown show.

- The booming market for backdoor Ozempic. People are taking the diabetes medicine for its side effect of weight loss. Problem is - if you stop taking it the weight comes right back. Oh there's also a risk of thyroid cancer.

- Novak Djokovic seeking special permission to enter US to play in tennis tournaments. He wants to come, the tournament organizers want him there, but our stupid Covid travel policies are keeping him out. Guessing this is something a bag full of cash to Hunter Biden could solve. 

The Good New Is...

 

This song came out in 1987 - so it's been the end of the world as we know it for most of my life.

Good God!

Above East Palestine, Ohio. (Via)

Thursday Flotsam and Jetsam

Have a new miscellaneous thoughts and observations post up on Substack.

Klaatu barada nikto! As always if anything made you think or smile, please Subscribe, hit the Like button, and share with others.

Quotes for Today

 Some quotes I hope may resonate with you.

"The secret of change is to focus all your energy. Not on fighting the old, but on building the new." - Socrates

"There is only one god, and his His name is Death. And there is only one thing we say to Death: 'not today.'" - Syrio Forel

"Relax. You'll live longer "and" perform better." - Naval Ravikant

"Think of each single day as a single life." - Seneca

Raquel Welch


Raquel Welch has passed away aged 82. I had such a crush. Was surprised to learn she was 82 - she'll always be young in my memory.

Wednesday, February 15, 2023

David Deutsch: Chemical Scum that Dream of Distant Quasars

John Havlicek

John Havlicek is perhaps the NBA's most underrated superstar. While I would not go so far as to compare him to Michael Jordan - I did compare him to Kobe Bryant

Linky Links

Stuff I found interesting or amusing and thought I'd share.

- Ukraine - the View from Poland

- Heh Heh

- Matt Ridley on why Global Warming is actually good for us. (From the archives)

- Woke ChatGPT is concerning. But I think it's bias is actually its undoing. It will be replaced by something that doesn't have bias built into its algorithm. 

PJ O'Rourke Quotes for Today

PJ O'Rourke died a year ago today. Here are some of my favorite quotes from him.

"When buying and selling are controlled by legislation, the first things to be bought and sold are legislators." - P.J. O'Rourke

"Giving money and power to government is like giving whiskey and car keys to teenage boys." - P.J. O'Rourke 

"Authority has always attracted the lowest elements in the human race. All through history mankind has been bullied by scum." - P.J. O'Rourke

"There are just two rules of governance in a free society. Mind your own business. Keep your hands to yourself." - P.J. O'Rourke

Find Something Beautiful Today

The National Library of Austria (via). Headline stolen borrowed from Execupundit.

Tuesday, February 14, 2023

Happy Valentine's Day to You and Your Love-ah

Linky Links

Stuff I found interesting or amusing and thought I'd share.

- Amsterdam banning marijuana use on streets of red light district.  

- The cloud radius of the East Palestine, Ohio chemical burn. That's a huge area.

- Who was Lilith, Adam's first wife in the Garden of Eden?

- This is 100% true. And i needs to be acknowledged.

Eisenhower's Military-Industrial Complex Speech

 

Interesting. Ike was a very underrated President.

Quotes for Today

Some quotes I hope may resonate with you.

"Hope is not a strategy. Luck is not a factor. Fear is not an option." - James Cameron

"I am indeed rich, since my income is superior to my expenses, and my expense is equal to my wishes." - Edward Gibbon

"It is not things that disturb us, but our interpretation of their significance." - Epictetus 

"If you risk what you need in order to gain what you don't need, that is foolish. It's just plain foolish." - Warren Buffett

Happy Valentine's Day from Ayn Rand

Monday, February 13, 2023

Fake But Accurate?

Via

Monday Flotsam and Jetsam

Have a new miscellaneous thoughts and observations post up on Substack.

Happy Super Bowl Monday - hope your hangover is manageable. None of my pool squares hit so if you could Subscribe, hit the Like button, or share with others that will help decrease my disappointment. Thanks in advance.

Interesting Quote

An interesting quote and I agree with the sentiment. But what really makes it interesting for me is that it was posted online by the GOP. Thomas Jefferson was a Southern, slave-holding Democrat. Did the GOP run out of quotes from Abraham Lincoln or Teddy Roosevelt or are they trying to send a message I'm missing, 

Quotes for Today

Some quotes I hope may resonate with you.

"Every time you choose to perform a bad habit, it's a vote for that identity." - James Clear

"He's very popular, Ed. The sportos, the motorheads, geeks, sluts, bloods, wastoids, dweebies, dickheads - they all adore him. They think he's a righteous dude." - Grace Wheelberg

"The ones who thrive long term are those who understand the real world is a neverending chain of absurdity, confusions, messy relationships, and imperfect people." - Morgan Housel 

"To be completely cured of newspapers, spend a year reading the previous week's newspapers." - Nassim Taleb

Chuck Yeager

Today would have been General Chuck Yeager's 100th birthday. A true American original and we may never see his like again.

Sunday, February 12, 2023

Linky Links

Stuff I found interesting or amusing and thought I'd share.

- Yes the US sanctions against Russia have failed (miserably).

- Funny because its true 

- Will an unintended consequence of the War in Ukraine be a nuclear Japan and South Korea? Good question.

- Heh heh - too funny

Heh Heh

Via

Idris Elba is the Man

Budweiser Upside Down Clown

 

In what has become a Super Bowl tradition for me - I'm posting my favorite Super Bowl commercial of all-time - the Budweiser Upside Down Clown. This commercial only ran once because it was so disturbing (butt so damn funny!).

Quotes for Today

Some quotes I hope may resonate with you.

"The best arguments in the world won't change a single person's mind. The only thing that can do that is a good story." - Richard Powers

"I have a very simple sense of humour, which even my appreciative critics find tiresome." - J.R.R. Tolkien

"Find 3 hobbies - one that keeps you fit, one that makes you money, and one that hones creativity." - Naval Ravikant

"The twentieth century was great and terrible, and the twenty-first century promises to be far greater and more terrible." - Peter Thiel

What Do You Do on Super Bowl Sunday?

Saturday, February 11, 2023

More Linky Links

More stuff I found interesting or amusing and thought I'd share.

- Rand Paul is a hero.

- Nuclear waste (and nuclear power) is nothing to fear. Nicely done.

Andrew Huberman's 10-step approach for designing a training program.

- Sorry Mike that number is already taken in Boston

Linky Links

Stuff I found interesting or amusing and thought I'd share.

- Holy crap - is this true?

- Is the Epstein client list about to be finally released and made public by the courts

- That's awesome!

- Funny because she does scare little kids (almost as much as that cat)

The Habit Line

"Repeating a habit leads to clear physical changes in the brain." - James Clear Atomic Habits

Oppenheimer

 

Looking forward to this movie. It's directed by Christopher Nolan (so you know it will be good) and it's coming out in late July. That should give me enough time to read The Making of the Atomic Bomb by Richard Rhodes - a dense history book (about 750 pages) that's been sitting on my stack for some time.

Quotes for Today

Some quotes I hope may resonate with you.

"Academic politics are so vicious because the stakes are so small." - Henry Kissinger

"Everything that irritates us about others can lead us to an understanding of ourselves." - Carl Jung

 "Every battle is won before it's ever fought." - Sun Tzu

"For myself, I am an optimist - it does not seem to be much use being anything else." - Winston Churchill

Cool

Via various

Friday, February 10, 2023

I'm an Awful Person for Laughing at This

HT Dad's Deadpool Blog

Linky Links

Stuff I found interesting or amusing and thought I'd share.

- Morgan Housel on Risk and Regret

IRS proposes new reporting program aimed at the tips earned by waiters and bartenders. This is crap. Unless it's a business expense I need to put in my expense report to be reimbursed I always try to give my tips separately in cash. This is why!

- Data from Medicare databases show each shot a person takes increases the risk of death. Our vaccine intervention has made things worse - not better.

- Hacking ChatGPT. I look at the hackers in this case as the "white hats."

AI Chatbot Tucker Carlson

 

I'd watch this show. But that's coming from a guy who's long thought that if CNN simply had Strong Bad read the news it would be the highest rated show on their network.

Friday Flotsam and Jetsam

Have a new miscellaneous thoughts and observations post up on Substack

If you're in any Super Bowl pools - I hope you get good numbers. All my pools for Sunday need lots of field goals. As always if anything made you think or smile - please Subscribe (you keep saying you're going to so why not now?), hit the Like button, and share with others. And good luck cashing on your pool numbers.

Quotes for Today

Some quotes I hope may resonate with you.

"The primary reason the brain remembers the past is to better predict what will work in the future." - James Clear 

"The most important trick to be happy is to realize that happiness is a choice that you make and a skill set that you develop. You choose to be happy, and then you work at it. It's just like building muscles." - Naval Ravikant

"Choice of attention - to pay attention to this and ignore that - is to the inner life what choice of action is to the outer. In both cases, a man is responsible for his choice and must accept the consequences, whatever they may be." - W.H. Auden

"Be the flame, not the moth." - Giacomo Casanova

Good Life Advice

Thursday, February 09, 2023

Eggs


The price of eggs has gone through the roof due to inflation and other causes. Everyone paying attention knows this. One of my "shower thoughts" recently wondered about something related but maybe different.

Used to be you'd buy a carton of eggs. Some kind of cardboard container everyone who shops was familiar with. And if you're like me when buying eggs you'd open up the carton container and check to see if there were any broken eggs. If there were - back on the shelf that carton went.

Today there seems to be fewer eggs at the super market and those that are there now usually come in this double sealed plastic container. You can visually inspect the eggs but opening up the container to check becomes much more of a production then it used to be. 

Did the increase in prices cause the change to a more protective but more expensive packaging? If there's less "breakage" then this would make sense. But where's the outrage from the folks who wanted to outlaw plastic straws on all this new plastic being introduced to the average home? And whatever happened to those cartons of eggs that had a broken egg that I - and others - would just place back on the shelf? Did they just sit there until someone who didn't check bought them? Did the supermarket take the unbroken eggs and repackage them in different cartons? Or was the whole thing chucked out in the trash? 

These are the types of things I think about in the shower.

Rational Anarchism

 "True. But I will accept any rules that you feel necessary to your freedom. I am free, no matter what rules surround me. If I find them tolerable, I tolerate them; if I find them too obnoxious, I break them. I am free because I know that I alone am morally responsible for everything I do." - Professor Bernardo de la Paz in Robert Heinlein's The Moon is a Harsh Mistress.

If that's the basic tenets of being a Rational Anarchist - count me in! 

Also not a bad guide to a moral life. Right up there with John Wayne's from The Shootist.

Linky Links

Stuff I found interesting or amusing and thought I'd share.

- Thailand becomes first country to make Pfizer contract null and void.  The decision reportedly comes shortly after the daughter of the Thai king got a booster and fell into a coma. If true - I like how they use the word "first" as if many more are to follow.

- What the hell? Is this video of Hitler real?

- Nice appreciation of Mel Brooks. Not sure I hope much hope out for History of the World Part II though.

- Yesterday would have been Jack Lemmon's birthday. We should all have as good a friend like Walter Matthau.

How America Took Out The Nord Stream Pipeline

"If Russia invades... there will be no longer a Nord Stream 2. We will bring an end to it." - Joe Biden February 7, 2022

Did potential war with Russia start in Panama City, Florida? Did the US Navy using NATO exercises in the Baltic last June as cover, use divers to plant C4 explosives on Nord Stream 1 and Nord Stream 2 that could be remotely triggered at a later time? Were those explosives purposely triggered on September 22, 2022?

That's exactly what happened according to this post by Seymour Hersh. Very compelling and detailed case laid out by an award winning journalist.

The Russians never had any motive to destroy their own pipelines and the argument that it was poor Russian maintenance - while compelling - does not ring as true as the case Hersh lays out.

Quotes for Today

Some quotes that I hope may resonate with you.

"The best revenge is not to be like your enemy." - Marcus Aurelius

"But life is very short and anxious for those who forget the past, neglect the present, and fear the future." - Seneca

"The most effective way to do it - is to do it." - Amelia Earhart

"People say 'you're a very tough person.' I'm not tough. Life is tough. I'm merely trying to acquaint you with those facts." - Thomas Sowell

Heh Heh