If Oscar was more ruthless, he would have slowed a bit on lap 24, ignored the box call and came in on lap 25 causing Lando to double stack. As it was he got the 3 sec to Lando’s 2 point something stop. Funny, Lando didn’t get asked to slow down a lap to make it even steven.
Max needed so much to go right for him beyond just winning races... and McLaren has given it to him. I had hoped he would come back to win, and he's closed a 104 point gap down to 12 in what, 8 races?
I have nothing against McLaren or their drivers, but I hope they botch it real bad this weekend and Max wins his fifth. He is so much more impressive than everyone else on the grid... except maybe LeClerc who manages to get points in whatever that thing is Ferrari keeps trotting out. Max in a McLaren wins 22 of 24 and has the WDC wrapped up before the summer break.
There must be some GM mentality in Ferrari's F1 team. An expectation that, since they are who they are, winning is a foregone conclusion and others need to adjust to them. It is working out for them as well as it has worked out for GM.
I'm rooting for Max, it would be one of the greatest comebacks in sports (would that make McLaren the racing equivalent to the Atlanta Falcons' Super Bowl team?) but if he does manage to pull it off, his detractors will say that F1 machinated things by DQing McLaren over a literal hair's breadth.
It never should’ve even been close. Piastri fucked himself which is a shame because he is so much more interesting than blando. Do they like blando because he is british? I dont quite understand f1 politics and favorites
That's kind of funny since all of the teams, except for Haas, Sauber, and Ferrari, are physically based in the UK. That's where the cars are built, developed, and maintained. Haas designs and builds its cars in North Carolina, but they have an aero facility in England. Sauber is based in Switzerland but use an Audi tech center in the UK, which will be where the team will be based when it switches to Audi branding. Cadillac's F1 team will also be based there. Ferrari is the only team that doesn't have operations in the UK, but I bet they source components from there.
Going back to Ford's GT40 program, there are only a limited number of places in the world that have the critical mass of businesses needed to house a top level racing team, near Indianapolis, near Charlotte and not that far from Silverstone.
I still feel bad about falling asleep and wrecking that fabulous 750C.C. Solo sT .
I sold the wrecked bike to a Russian friend who had it running in 15 minutes but discovered that when I told him "every inch of this bike is bent" he didn't believe me, turns out I'd managed to pretzel the massive and robust frame more than it could be straightened .
The good news (?) is that I still have two other Ural Solos, both early 1990's 650C.C. models , they're sidelined but not disassembled .
In February of this year of our lord 2025 I bought the single worst BMW AirHead (1971 R75/5) I've ever lain eyes on, it sorta-kinda ran but more importantly when I let go the handlebars during the test ride it went straight and true, this is near impossible to find on any 54 year old Motocycle .
I set straight to work on it but in the second week of August my cervical stenosis reared it's painful head again and I wasn't able to do anything (including sleep) until October) (?) when I was able to pick up my tools again and now have it reliably running and no longer set up as a "Cafe Racer" . (as if) .
I have lots of what I did articles with pictures written if anyone is interested, tell Jack and I'll get off my duff and edit a few, maybe he can start an ongoing thread .
As it turns, I love twins and would happily remove the side car and test ride that 445 C.C. parallel twin, side cars are fun but in truth they're a lot of work to ride and I'm still lucky to be ambulatory so no "chairs" for me .
Those who buy electric vehicles at any price deserve the drubbing they'll get included for free .
" like me, were basically basket-weaving majors in college" ~ I thought you were an English Major Jack ? .
If you seriously took Basket Weaving no wonder you're unhappy, the _real_ money is in the UNDERWATER Basket Weaving......
WOW ~ Alden makes some seriously good looking black wing tips but at $900 + $ and no steel toes I'll have to pass .
I was overly philosophical and decidedly radical at 22. I'm just a raccoon with some thoughts on life at 62. The 40 years in between rounded off a lot of sharp edges.
BTW : don't anyone be overly impressed by anything I do or have, Jack lives in a mansion in a nice area, I'm living in literally a rat infested termite farm in a not great neighborhood .
I killed off the last two rats and a week later I can smell another one .
"I have lots of what I did articles with pictures written if anyone is interested, tell Jack and I'll get off my duff and edit a few, maybe he can start an ongoing thread."
Nate, please get these up on the site when you can. Jack can provide access to get them posted or you can email him.
Thanx, I may even have more pictures of the mangled Ural and one or two of me in a wheelchair being happy I survived .
Jack says I should just write him a thing so I guess he'll have to add to it as it's been a real journey even at less than one year .
Best part is : it now runs and rides, is legal with tags and insurance etc. .
I think the original style of license tag may soon appear on it, that's not legal so I'm hoping Santa or someone does this while I'm snoring away in my recliner =8-) .
Remember all my stories, in the end are missives of a Blue Collar looser you shouldn't emulate, rather use them as cautionary warnings .
THANK YOU for the feedback, I'm never quite sure after listening to 70 years of "you're stupid/crazy"/etcetera .
The way you would quit is dependent on the level of addiction.
When quitting any addictive thing, always easier to substitute, rather than purely cold Turkey the problem. Ie, replace alcohol with high quality ginger beer (watered down with sparkling water) or homemade sarsaparilla. If peer pressure issue get sparkling water when out. Never been a better time and in 2025 not drinking is a flex. If you want to not drink do NOT marry a woman who loves to drink.
If struggling, consider, a guy once wrote: “you’ll be ready to quit when you hate it. When you see the bottle and see every thing it has taken from you over the years…(etc)”
In certain circumstances, perhaps out of frustration, people advocate AA.
About which: I don’t know even a single person who has seen someone who needed to quit badly, but struggled, fail if they stuck it out wjth sponsor & made it through 12 steps.
But in general the advice is,
Replace (with harmless substitute)
Get hypnotized (or self-hypnotize) or NLP’d or NLP yourself
Also, your post reminded me of this insane Washington Post story / newsweek article both uncovering and doing damage control for an AA chapter that turned into a teenage girl rape group.
Putting your teenaged daughters around adult men 🤦Putting your teenaged daughter WITH A DRINKIN PROBLEM around adult men WHO ALSO HAVE DRINKING PROBLEMS 🤦🤦🤦🤦🤦🤦
The age of consent should be 22 or marriage. Whichever comes first.
WHERE ARE THEIR DADS!
Do not let your pattern recognition skills observe that all the names in the alcoholics anonymous articles are Irish. I can say this because I'm Irish
I'm sure AA has helped many people. I've also heard it's a serious time commitment and that doesn't work for me right now. Not keen on spilling my guts to a bunch of strangers either - present company excepted of course.
I'm a heavy daily drinker but not a "day" drinker, if that makes sense. I had a traveling job for 11 years and my consumption was always at the end of the day, at the hotel. I no longer travel but the force of habit is hard to overcome, even when I can tell it's slowly destroying my health.
Wondering if anyone has had any experience with naltrexone or any other addiction drugs.
OK, but anecdotally I have heard that people in AA spend just as much time (or more) in meetings than they did at the bar. I drink at home, because I can't afford to drink at the bar and because I'm still at least a bit productive and present for my wife and kids.
I have/had a number of coworkers who were chronic and AA didn't work for those individuals.
Seeing a lot of excuses in his responses. Maybe he needs AA if he's at the point of asking for help from strangers on the internet.
I'm not an expert so maybe my opinion is dangerous but I would take up some sort of long-term physical activity. Training for a marathon, powerlifting meet, triathlon, long hike (think several weeks on the Appalachian trail). Can not just aimlessly work out, need a goal, one known to friends and family and coworkers so it would be personally embarrassing if you fail. Train either when you would normally drink or extremely early in the morning such that late day drinking the day before would be highly punishing. A year of that and you might think drinking is so counter to your goals that it's inconceivable.
IANAD, and I don't know anything about Naltrexone or similar addiction-treatment drugs. It's definitely worth a look with a qualified, non-idiotic psychiatrist; be extremely careful when qualifying such a doctor if you choose this. See if the doc is "un-dumb" enough to have read the recent studies nuking SSRIs from orbit; default treatment plans for some docs seeing an alc-suffering patient would be just to start with an SSRI which would be incomprehensibly idiotic.
In addition to the addiction-targeting drugs, there are also several classes of cognitive enhancers that as a sideline may have some effect here.
Off label use of a parkinsons drug (eg Selegiline) might have positive effects, though the side effects (gambling) aren't nice. Not kidding but the weight loss drugs ought to ameliorate cravings, and in general the atypical antidepressants could conceivably work as at least a few of them have an interaction with alcohol. Thinking Bupropion but talk to a psychotherapist, if the shrink says "how about an SSRI?" draw your weapon and slowly walk out of the room backwards.
But, while drugs that cognitively enhance are very nice, even nicer is needing no drugs at all. As @Andrew White mentioned that you get via routine exercise + walking + really, really good sleep, check the Huberman Lab podcasts and Bryan Johnson writings on sleep to get pointed in the right direction. Sleeping right will gain you willpower feeding a virtuous cycle enabling quitting.
I'm really sorry to hear this. Solo drinking is especially hard to break from, since it's harder to reduce external triggers (avoiding a bar, particular friends, etc.).
Have you thought about GLP1's? I'm making big assumptions here, but if you've had a travel-heavy job with heavy solo drinking, I'm thinking your overall health and weight might need addressing.
Anyway, my point is a GLP1 would address weight/body issues and there's SOME evidence that it helps mute some receptors related to addictions and habits. There may also be the side benefit of watching your body get healthier and that change also being a positive reinforcement away from alcohol.
FWIW, this all gets a lot harder if your spouse is still drinking in your presence, but I'll leave it here for now.
My weight has never been an issue, I'm 6'1" and about 190 or so. My job was a fairly physical one with lots of climbing and lifting that kept me in decent shape. But I haven't been to a doctor for a physical in over 4 years. I know my BP is high, who knows what else is wrong.
Go to an AA meeting. When they ask if any newcomers are present, raise your hand. Your thoughts and feelings about these suggestions are irrelevant; if you could have thought or felt your way out of this situation you are in, you would have done it already.
I typed out, and deleted, a few responses prior to this one.
On the one hand, I have huge respect for Craig Ferguson for his sobriety monologue, and he credits AA for saving his life. I re-watch that clip regularly.
On the other hand, I instinctively reject any dogmatic or evangelistic approach to treating mental health/addiction issues, and AA seems to me to be extremely dogmatic/one size fits all. Dr. Stanton Peele is probably the most well known antagonist in this space but I'm sure there are others.
When I want to feel bad about myself I gaze at Hogarth's Gin Lane.
I would love to go back to being a normal person that can casually meet up with friends for a couple of drinks and not have it turn into a backslide, but I suspect that's not going to happen. I will say that being off the road (65% calendar year business travel, sometimes 4-5 weeks at a time) and away from my chronic coworkers has helped somewhat.
As a wellness research nerd, I used basic fitness theory to take an entire calendar year off the sauce in 2023-2024.
0. There is no way out except through discipline. You can't trip and fall and quit a neurotoxin that has destroyed billions of other people down through the entirety of human history. It is a perfect biochemical trap. Some clever otters can open this trap with their little hands and escape. Some must gnaw off a leg to escape. Try your hands firs, unless you look around and think "oh, shit. How did I let it get this bad?"
1. Most cravings last about 30 seconds. Begin resisting your cravings, which are a chemical addiction. The more you do that, the better you become at it.
2. Failing once isn't a final failure. Skip a gym day? That doesn't mean you cancel the membership and go back to the couch or Reddit. Examine your failure to show up and try to outflank yourself next time.
3. You don't have to white knuckle it. It doesn't always take a program and "never again" thinking. Sometimes you can cut back successfully. Sometimes you need meetings and a new friend group. Figure out who you are on this spectrum and then use that to create success through the right support system. Shaming yourself is not productive and is just more bullshit. But you also don't have to tell a bunch of strangers your story like you're Bad Santa. Figure out what you need and then do it. If you were wrong about what you need, then fall back and reassess. Addiction is wily and will lie to you because you listen.
4. Observe yourself in third person as you try to quit. Use a cold judgement free lens to objectively examine habits, motivations, and whatnot. This helps you to figure out any self sabotage. This can be a deep dive into childhood trauma and stuff, so that's why it's #4.
5. Dispense feel good chemicals through your nervous system by engaging in exercise. It can't be understated how good exercise is for a recovering alcoholic or just someone who wants to stop for whatever reason. Alcohol is a neurotoxin that interferes with your sleep cycles. Not sleeping leads to brain dysfunction and lack of HGH sqiuirt in REM, so you age faster and get injured more quickly, feel like shit, etc. Exercise will help restore your sleep patterns, you'll get your HGH squirt in REM, and you'll feel instantly better. This is why a lot of people get off the sauce, start exercising, and say stuff like "best thing I ever did!" or turn into anti-alcohol evangelicals. You must take the opportunity to feel better chemically, not just so you won't be an injured brain sadpants, but so you can get back to not feeling like shit all the time. The sooner you do, the sooner you will see the stark difference between drinking and pursuing healthy habits.
Find something you like, or that you might enjoy, or that you used to enjoy, and then go let yourself spaz out over it for a few weeks. It's much more of a lifeboat than it is an activity when you're quitting booze. If you need a recommendation, do Norwegian 4x4 protocols to build your VO2 max. That's 4 minutes of hardcore training like a rower or running, rest a minute, then 4 more. Do that four cycles.
As you shed the bloat from alcohol, you'll look better in your clothes and nekkid. Pair that with feeling better, thinking more clearly, and getting stronger, and you have a good bulwark against backsliding. Once your liver starts functioning better, you can get serious weight loss and fitness metrics accomplished, and then you can really embrace something more hardcore than 4x4 or 5Ks. Cameron Hanes runs to the top of a mountain every day near his Colorado home and bowhunts elk in the back country. You can do big stuff like that instead of continuing to poison yourself. Heroic shit.
this is fantastic advice. just getting going with exercise - both in the micro sense of, say, one treadmill session and the more general sense of establishing it as a routine - takes willpower at first but it gets easier and easier the more you do it. then you start to see the benefits accrue over time (and, in particular, start feeling better all the time as opposed to only when drinking followed by feeling crap the rest of the time) and it gets even easier.
Jack's edible advice is great as well if a bit more unorthodox.
Thanks for this. The exercise bit especially resonates, I used to run Rippetoe's Starting Strength and I've been wanting to get back into it. I'll think on what you've said here.
Bear in mind, you prob already know this but no heavy deding or squatting after a bender. Inflammation + dehydration = guaranteed pulled muscle. If in cold climate and older than 32, try to heat up beforehand to avoid muscle pulls.
Once you are no longer tempted to drink, quit taking edibles.
This has worked for three people I know.
I'm de facto sober; I went from drinking 100 nights a year to between 2 and 5. The biggest thing that helped me: getting fired from a job where I was drinking with female executives every night.
Heh. I don't have a rock bottom story or anything close to it. I've been very lucky. Probably a big part of why I continue to rationalize not quitting.
I ended up in detox exactly one drama-free time, and only because my wife freaked out and took me to the ER when I told her I thought I was having a heart attack. Every single person with whom I shared that story said the same thing... "You hid it so well... I had no idea you had a problem!"
I know nothing about this topic, so let me tell you a story. I never saw my grandmother drink (and she lived with us for years), except for one small glass of scotch with my dad at Christmas. Apparently in her younger days she was a serious alcoholic. My grandfather would come home from work where she’d been drinking with her friends all afternoon and would drive them all home. According to my mom, one day she passed out, awoke on the floor in a pool of her own vomit, and said, “never again”. She quit cold turkey, except for that one drink at Christmas; apparently, this is hard for alcoholics to do. The point, I think, is that the impetus has to come from within and perhaps one has to sink a long way to summon the will. I sincerely hope nothing like this happens to you. My granny was a tough lady; I wish you the very best.
About a decade ago, at 55, my father dropped alcohol when his doctor said, "if you don't do something about your blood sugar NOW, I'm going to diagnose you with type 2 diabetes." I was shocked because, at the time, he was going thru at least two 30 racks of Milwaukee's weekly and that's a massive habit to just drop like a sack of rocks. It was replaced by increased weed consumption (though that wasn't entirely new either), but diabetes remains absent from his medical records to this day.
I know it's not drinking, but I used to smoke/vape from 2015-2020. The vaping especially was a boredom crutch because I could sit inside and just puff on it constantly without stinking the house up with real tobacco. One day, it fell over and broke the last spare glass tank I had and a replacement wasn't readily available locally. I tried some of the small disposables that burned "salts" instead of "juice" but they just made me feel ill. It was at that point I said "fuck it!" and just threw it all away... right before election week 2020 LOL
Unfortunately, I've found my damn phone has replaced the vape as my indoors boredom crutch as I switch between the same 4 apps while youtube plays on the TV.
In both cases, my father and I already knew in our subconsciousness those habits were costly and unhealthy, and that we'd like to stop but we just needed a reason.
I'm not sure how I can really advise you on how to quit something like this; but I do think that since you're asking us about it, there will soon come a day where you'll have a similar "fuck this" moment and toss the bottle in the trash (or recycling bin) one last time. Quitting is in your fore-conscience already, so I have faith in you and wish you the best!
My grandfather did the cold turkey routine when my grandmother was diagnosed with lung cancer back in the 80s. They were both multiple pack a day smokers. He quit cigarettes, on the spot, or so my mother tells me. It was too late for my grandmother, but he stayed clean, lived to be 90+ years, despite multiple heart surgeries, and was in good enough shape physically and mentally to walk to the grocery store by himself a few times a week.
Thanks for the comment and the well wishes. I feel like my "fuck this" moment is not too far away.
It's wild, although as a certified dinosaur I don't exactly have massive sympathy for people who have to pay $400 to get... 32GB of RAM! I once paid $1500 in today's dollars to put 16k more in an Atari!
Heh, somewhere around here I have a box of old RAM sticks going back 30 years. Probably thousands of $ of then year cost. Along with the larger box of old hard drives. Last year I paid $200 for 32Gb for my Dell workstation (Dell wanted $1600 for the same RAM sticks - I laughed at them).
I am quite proud to say that I do NOT have the PMP cert. I don’t know what those PMI folks teach, but it is certainly NOT effective project management, based on what I’ve seen from people with that behind their email signature. Hey people, spending months creating a ginormous MSProject file is NOT project management. Sigh.
This has been my conclusion as well (PMI is a great business probably, real Ellsworth Toohey-style philanthropic gift to the world.)
Unfortunately at a sub-$230K level there are a good many decent jobs that want you to have one. At more senior levels (depending on industry) it never hurts. My guess is it would only hurt in true competitive job markets (eg, would guess bad indicator if trying to get a job at OpenAI or Anthropic)
Today’s PC hardware—not just GPUs—has enabled developers to get lazy and throw shit together, as you allege. I think it was Jack who (I believe accurately) stated that CPUs haven’t really advanced since the Pentium III or 4; simply that we’ve packed more of them onto a single die. When Grandma’s $300 HP Pavilion has two or four CPUs onboard, never mind those of us who have really serious hardware, nearly nobody cares about a few extra lines of code.
I still remember (and shudder) over the bad old days of having to run wonky memory manager software and use virtual RAM drives. Way too many hours spent messing around with Windows registry settings. Ugh. Don't miss any of that.
I don't recall the exact numbers, but yeah, there was a limitation of 32 bit Windows for addressable RAM space. Hence there were all sorts of wonky work arounds using virtual RAM drives and other madness. Thankfully those days are long gone. I haven't had to mess around in the Windows registry in over a decade.
There were registry tweaks to disable Cortana and other more recent 'features' as well as to allow 11 on pre TPM machines. Now I just use DoNotSpy11 and Rufus, respectively. I really should be on Linux for anything but the gaming rig.
I built my PC 6 years ago and upgraded to a base 3080 about 3 years ago and it's still plenty beef enough for anything I play on nearly max if not actually max settings. (modded to high-fuck assetto corsa, the new assetto rally game, dirt rally 2, cyberpunk, starfield, RDR2, and KCD2.)
forza horizon 1 is the best horizon and fh4 is the best forza
gotta get both running on pc solely to get all the dlc as its far past being obtainable legally or even redeemed if you had it in the past (like i did)
Just bought a 9070XT to replace an aging 1080Ti. MB is X370 from 2018, 5700X and ram are from 2022, Hopefully it'll hold together until I win the lottery.
My 5700x from late 19 is still kicking ass with a PHAT ol bequiet air cooler on it! I swapped the 5700xt GPU for a 3080 in 2022 and I have no complaints about performance.
Kinda feel bad for Oscar. All the long faces in the McLaren garage when he got pole for the sprint and no one from the team around in the interview area when Carlos was stage diving the Williams team guys.
You think if Oscar is in third and gets told to let Lando pass that he'll actually do it after how things have gone? Gut says yes, but then again I just want to watch the team burn and have him say no-way.
If oscar is behind lando he should crash down hard. Mclaren would be wise to let him pass. Piastri cant lose the wdc from it and lando is a pussy. But, that wont happen. Well. Probably not
As a jingoistic Yankee, I'm hoping Yuki ends up in IndyCar in 2026. IndyCar is not complete without a fast Japanese driver and Sato is aging out. There's still an open seat at Dale Coyne, but I'm hoping Honda can convince Ganassi to run a fourth car for Yuki, or more likely, Meyer Shank could run a third car.
It was a joke because toto would definitely let lewis fuck his wife before bringing him back. I cant stand toto but that mostly cause his germanness reminds me a bit too much of my germanness.
Trading getting hosed in the best car for "Copy Oscar, we are checking", I'll pass. For Oscar if Mercedes isn't interested you're better off rolling the dice on which midpack team has a good car than waste away at the T-Shirt company where he'd still be driver 1a to Leclerc.
Qatar was another race where McLaren seems to be doing their best to help Max win a fifth title. I can’t understand why they didn’t split the strategy and bring at least one of the cars in for fresh tires during the safety car period. Idiots.
If lando was winning, theyd have played the strategy right. Oscar seems to get screwed on strategy every time. There was a race earlier in the season where they split the strategy to give lando the best chance to win and he did. When oscar had that same chance. They didnt. I applaud them for letting them race but they clearly have a favorite. That said, piastri screwed himself a couple times and those meaningless points to
Keep
Max behind and cost him a five second penalty might be the difference AND he lucked out with a lando dnf. Still. The only one i want to lose is blando but not nearly as much as i wanted lewish. I mostly want a fun mast race
Oh geeze, can't believe you're dropping the ball, you know I can go right down the street to the other Jack Baruth substack and I'll never see this type of shenanigan...
Racing was conspicuously absent from the post. I would've liked your take on McLaren being fair by fucking both drivers, and Max somehow being in the mix for the championship while his teammates have 30 points. It may come down to Kimi Antonelli's mistake handing Lando 2 points.
Also re shoes, New Balance has had a made in USA line for years, and in my experience they last 3 times as long as the imported ones while only costing 1.5x the price.
This post was initially like 6,000 words, I cut four topics out and didn't mean to cut out the racing topic. I have it pinned now.
The Papaya Rules fairness is ridiculous. If they'd double-stacked, Lando would STILL be in fourth place and Oscar would be ahead of Max. Now they're put themselves in a situation where the hard man on the team NEEDS to pass the soft one, which could easily lead to a double DNF in Abu Dhabi.
Yeah, but we have seen that one before so it would likely be met with a stiff penalty. And would he really be lapped in the same car as the one at or near the front? Even Jack's favourite little Yuki can't be THAT slow, can he?
America could be a world unto ourselves, if somehow a forcefield were to descend upon our national border and lock the rest of Earth out. We have the land, the resources, the population, the technology and in the attic somewhere, the will.
Yet we send our manufacturing jobs overseas, we allow all the wrong people to come in & set a spell, we alienate our next generation with talk of "what the market will bear" regarding house prices & wages, we have more raw dollars than ever before but can't put up a bridge, freeway or factory in less than a decade and nobody under 30 wants to get married except the fruits.
Well we sort of did with the Atlantic and Pacific until late 20 Century and until we got a political class that activity recruited and even flew these people into the country and a business class that actively sent good jobs overseas.
That dude who outourced uour cousins job, your brothers job, and all your neighbors job lets uou buy cheap shitty trinkets for the same orice they were before all those jobs were outsourced. Be grateful!
I'm for it. I remember the story of the Nintendo CEO who opted for a pay cut when things weren't going well rather than firing his employees. I also recall another one who assigned landscaping duty to other employees rather than laying them off during a down time. Or..... when they'll keep an older worker on payroll but not give them work just so they can stay afloat until retirement benefits kick in. Lot's to learn there.
No no no, sir... it's the lack of "the fuck" that is the problem.
I tried explaining to anyone who would listen over Thanksgiving that we're not doing enough to motivate young people to do ANYTHING... and that includes finding love or buying a car. Majority of parents simply aren't doing a thing. And so, who is to build the next widget that will change the world? Who will be the next best race car driver to impress the girl when they aren't even interested in doing any chasing? There's a lot of words being written about home buying but why leave the nest when there's no incentive to have privacy or live by one's own rules? It's a much more sad issue and one that the boomer/older X needs to look in the mirror at. Stop blaming and accept that maybe, just maybe, you didn't help produce the best offspring America has ever offered by removing any real danger or incentive to move on in life. (And yes... I'm one of those delayed mover onners.)
Oddly enough, the intro with Jerry Reed's sultry sounds being piped in a bit after the truck starts and sits there idling is quite possibly my favorite part of the movie.
See also: Yeah, I watched that again recently but tried to view it from as modern of a perspective as possible and realized that in today's world, Bandit's torso would be riddled with a few thousand cop-supplied bulletholes the first time he tried to go around a roadblock.
The End.
In other words, the movie didn't age too well, but I think that's the inside joke with the chase towards the end, even the fictional character of Bandit himself suddenly realizes that it's no longer the good old days where you could pull this kind of stuff and get away with it, you can't outrun radio and helicopters, it's almost as if he had no clue how heavyhanded it had become with the police response...and this is even in the late 1970's when it was still somewhat tame.
Now?
Bandit would be in a Lexus LS430, in Cypress Pearl or Mystic Gold Metallic, something that would blend in practically anywhere.
One of my original characters is a smuggler on the side. He's meticulous, careful and above all, wants to have his cake & eat it too. So he takes great pains to minimize his risk.
He always wears some kind of disguise and pretends to be an associate of "the boss," when his whole operation is really just him, which seriously reduces the possibility of being killed or ratted out by a disgruntled partner. He has a bunch of nondescript smuggling cars which blend into traffic, easily forgotten. He dresses and acts in ways that don't draw attention. He never fails to deliver a load. And he has enough fake documents, plates, etc. to at least minimize his chances of getting in trouble if he does get pulled over.
In the story, he'd been at it for ten years and only gave it up because he got married. Nobody ever found out who he was and nobody ever caught him doing it.
Without corporal violence I managed to raise up a boy who's hard working and industrious, doesn't have any tattoos, bastards etc. and I've never had to bail him out of jail and yes, in his brief street racing days he figured out how to out run L.A.P.D.'s radio -and- Air Support, there's a reason I and most others don't like riding shot gun with him .
Did I mention he's drug free, raising up a nice family and buying _two_ houses ? .
All this before age 50 =8-) .
Pardon me if I bust a few buttons over my progeny doing so much better than I ever dreamed of .
A select few of our foster boys are doing well too, they come back to say "thank you'' every now and then .
The ones who _knew_ their "homies" were smarter, well they're mostly dead, shot by those very same homies .
Same thing. My son is 35. He got married at 20, has a great job, 4 kids, a big house with a pool, and a gorgeous, leggy wife who loves him more than life. His oldest starts HS next year.
He's not waiting around to grow up -- I'm about ready to hand the "head of this family" mantle over. He's more temperate, more thoughtful, less prone to say the wrong thing in the wrong place.
Go ahead and bust those buttons, dad. I know EXACTLY how you feel.
Notice I didn't say he's *perfect*, he's still impetuous and doesn't like to do a fully complete job when he's spinning wrenches, I've had to re do much of the repairs he did on the Tracker I bought from him . (so glad his wife hated it) .
Children : you wind 'em up and let 'em go, if you've done passably well and you
re lucky they'll do fine .
Unlike my mates who's primary interest was in being their 'friend' and now brag to me their progeny makes more license plates per shift than anyone else on his shift......
-Nate
(or, "he hasn't been caught yet !" is another fave)
This, at least, I got right. I was a grandpa by the time I was 48. If I can stay vertical and ambulatory, I should be able to see my grandkids have kids.
At 62, I can't imagine facing college right tuition now. In every way, I'm on a slow glide, rather than the "on top of it" alertness needed to navigate that time in a kid's development.
I wish you nothing but longevity and strength, Scott.
I exist to solicit reader content here, and as such would advise that I am sure many of us would love to see what parenting Tales From the Deep and/or parenting advice you have for those of us far earlier into the journey than yourself.
Please don't look to me for any deep answers -- I have 3 adult children, two of whom are productive members of society who love and accept love freely, and one is not. I love all of them the same and have never shown favoritism -- but in any family one person is always going to take 80% of the work. I was that person in my dad's family, "A" was that person in mine. We had (a LOT) more success with "M" and "K" than with "A", because "A" was hardwired to be mistrustful and challenging and has always struggled. She is amazingly hard-working and the most stubborn person I've ever met... traits which could have helped her in her personal and professional life, if only she had been able to harness them and we had been able to better mold them.
The question is always nature/nurture, and I fall pretty hard on "amalgamation theory" (which I just made up) -- God gives a kid the raw material and wires them with a disposition which cannot ever be changed, but it's the job of the parents to identify who this "other small person" really is and how they can use the raw material they have to become empathetic people and productive members of society.
I came from a generation who was taught that "everybody is the same under the skin", which was trying to speak to the intrinsic value of all human life. In every other way, it's complete hippy-dippy BS. I dealt with every one of my kids in exactly the same way -- trying very, very hard not to deviate from a clear, predictable, and consistent cause/effect "touch this and get burned" baseline. I never, ever lied to my kids -- not about Santa or about anything, and I made sure that they suffered the full weight of lying in any and every circumstance.
The problem was, "A" created her own narrative, which became her reality. She was naturally challenging (as were both her mom and me as kids) in our home, but rather than just change course, she quit on herself and became the DUFF, the misfit, the "other" in the family (in her own eyes, never in ours). Her response to every correction was, "you think I'm a failure". As "K" and "M" watched their sister sticking her hand in the fire to be burned again and again and again, they determined that they wanted nothing to do with her way of moving through life. She had become a perpetually self-reinforcing corrective tale for them. She invented her own reality from whole cloth.
I'm going to cut the gory details of what has happened in each of my 3 adult children's lives, and by extension in ours, and just say -- that while they were raised in great consistency, the results have been anything but. 2 of my 3 kids have built successful lives and know how to love and receive love, and are raising their kids to be productive members of society. "A's" struggles have only increased as she moves into her 40s and reaps hard all the mistrust and dissociation from reality she's practiced for the majority of life.
The only thing everybody has in common is a need to feel loved. You pray you can give your kid a baseline where they believe that they are. Everything else builds out from there.
Not trying to lecture but this reads like a reason not to inject one's children with non-placebo-control studied, non-quality-controlled, non-longitudinally-studied biochemicals.
Pure blood here. Had Covid - or so their test showed - early January 2021 at the age of 68. Felt very lethargic for a couple of days but then pretty okay within a week. I knew it was all BS after reading about the Diamond Princess outbreak and have believed nothing the government has said about Covid since. They've been basically proved wrong about everything.
My primary doctor has pretty much given up on trying to talk me into any Covid or seasonal flu shot. The latter after I hit him about the Cleveland Clinic NEGATIVE efficacy study recently published. The Coffee & Covid substack has done yeoman's work on keeping readers informed of the latest developments in these areas. Invaluable.
Berenson has some interesting character flaws. Too long and dull to type, but there's something off about the fella. Katherine Watt, and WMC research have a lot to offer on the "governments killing people intentionally with bioweapons" subject.
Even before COVID, there was a study done based on residence halls at the University of MIchigan showing Zero (0%) effectiveness for flu shots.
And that's not considering the fact that even if a flu shot has positive efficacy in ONE year, the compounded effects over MULTIPLE years can be negative. In a similar way risk of a cardiac event is higher during a strenuous workout, but over time, the risk of being long-term sedentary is greater.
When the symptoms were virtually the same as having the flu or a severe cold and then the treatments were basically the same I figured that it wasn’t that big of a deal if I got Covid. I know I’ve had it at least once, caught it from an aunt at a funeral last year and felt awful for a few days but just like when you get the flu eventually it got better.
My doctor said he still has patients with Covid. I asked how do they know? Do they run out and buy a test kit every time they get the sniffles?
He said well it can still be serious and that he had a patient die last spring. I said really. He said he was 95 years old. I said well there you go. Another Covid death of someone who had already beaten the mortality tables.
FWIW, I had the normal fall sinus infection in September. Went into the PCP for an unrelated incident. She asked if she could administer a Covid/Flu test. Ended up positive for the former.
Had I not had a chance doctor appointment, I would’ve had no idea. It was a nothingburger. I’m assuming that’s how they’re getting COVID patients.
IIRC a criticism of the tests at one time were that either they were over sensitive or they were over processed (not the right terms for sure). Not sure if that’s still the case.
Could be both. NIH says between Jan 1, 2020 and Dec 31, 2022 the US administered 2.7 BILLION tests. They’ve also admitted that 40% of people who tested positive were asymptomatic.
Since we are among friends here I am going to take an opposing view of this tariffs are great narrative.
First - I hate that Trump is throwing around tariffs based on who he likes or doesn’t like. Let’s not forget he is getting his ass kicked by China- did they start buying soybeans yet? That is a $23B loss to farmers, who are waiting for their bailout. How about we tariff China, because they are evil commies, but we work out what is reasonable with our friends and allies and implement it over time? This tariff scheme was implemented so drastically that most companies are waiting to see when Trump changes his mind, or SCOTUS reminds him that the constitution trumps tantrums.
Businesses paying the tariffs- see above, but this is wait and see, and chances are businesses get a big break soon. We will see.
Tariffs are a tax, period. It is money removed from the economy, either from individuals or business. I, as a life-long member of the conservative right, refuse to decide now that raising taxes is a good thing. (Sidebar- Ohio people- we need to discuss the movement to make property taxes unconstitutional. I love this, and would happily pay way more in sales tax so that I can actually retire someday and not have my community raise my taxes every time they feel the kids need a new school building).
How is the economy now? Not real great. I’ll admit, I am doing really well, but someone lower middle class probably isn’t. These people are not benefitting from these tariffs. They are not getting hired to join a manufacturing company at a big increase over their $20-25/hr at their current job.
Trump is a mess, some ok ideas, all of which are being poorly implemented. Please folks, let’s give it a rest with arrogant big mouthed show-offs for a while when we are voting.
I agree with you on all counts here…but who else can we vote for? I did not vote for the orange buffoon in the primaries but was forced to hold my nose and hit that button on the voting machine in the election.
I don’t remember if the primary in Ohio had anyone else. But DeSantis was an option for the early primary states, although he tried being Trumpy and blew his chance. I’d be happy for you to vote for me but ai am neither rich enough or famous enough to have a chance in national politics.
The problem was he wasn't trump enough. Vivek was a trump proxy and beat him up in the debates. Too many were concerned with whether he had a lift in his shoe.
There is no Trump except for Trump, DeSantis should have known that. . If DeSantis articulated limited government conservatism he would have done a lot better. The 25% who worship Trump are so far up his ass they wouldn’t know a winning strategy in politics if it bit them on their ass. Trump worship equals mediocrity at best. But, as stated elsewhere, better Trump than any democrat.
Scott, DeSantis while having done great things in Florida during COVID and afterwards. DeSantis the man is not user friendly, I know it does not matter policy wise but the man has no, I mean no people skills. Plus he takes criticism like a 5 year old. He is so use to running rough shot over the legislature in Tallahassee that when a couple of Republicans rise up to question a policy he went ballistic, for no reason. DeSantis will never be President, he would never make it out of the primaries.
I was shocked at what a lousy campaign DeSantis ran in 2023-2024. For as effective a governor he’s been in Florida I expected a lot more from him when he ran for president. Maybe he’s more of a COO and will keep everything running efficiently and less of a CEO or maybe he listened to too many consultants and his pain in the ass wife.
To be fair, Obama and Biden likely had real issues with executive orders, government functions, war crimes and pardons. Difference now is that we have a (R) the media pays attention to these things. I’d like to see the media actually pay attention no matter what party is in the White House. As far as warmongering pedophile, that is most likely a bit too much. And, if someone had accused Obama of that, geez, lookout.
I mean yeah fuck those guys too! Trump uses VASTLY more EOs and declared “emergencies” than… well.. any president ever I believe? And neither one of them is president right now though, so the focus should be on the one who is…
And perhaps I should say “alleged” pedophile if that makes it more sanguine.
Should note, I am registered as a Dem to vote in primaries, but I hold zero illusions as to what most corporate Dems are and who they actually represent.
The problem with breaking precedent is it’s broken for the next guy too. The problem is no one believes trump is a pedophine. He could have a smoking gun at this point wed believe it’s ai. The press should stop lying if they want to ever be believed again
Never forget that Obama ordered the killing of an American Citizen in Yemen.
I’m not saying the guy wasn’t a terrorist and didn’t deserve to die, but to kill an American citizen overseas with zero due process is quite something.
It makes all the hand wringing about double tapping a Go-Fast Boat filled with bales of dope and manned by foreign national narco runners seem ridiculous.
I haven’t forgotten- it should be a great stain upon all political journalists to compare their intense scrutiny of Trump (which I am fine with) and willfully ignoring what went on during the Obama and Biden administrations. A democratic republic needs the leadership challenged at all times, not just when an (R) is in the White House.
Kamala would have 100% gone all in with Kallas against the Russians and started WW3. I'm unhappy Trump hasn't completely pulled support but here we are.
Regime changing Maduro (instead of Sheinbaum) is foolish but kayfabing his way out of a war with Iran was the smart move.
Regime changing either of those countries is so unimaginably fucking stupid that the mere thought of it should disbar anyone from public office permanently.
I could list a half a dozen things I'm not happy about with Trump and his half measures but if you think Barry's fourth term would have been better for 'conservatives', I don't know what to tell you. Desantis would have lost bigly and started a domino effect of probably losing Florida as well if he had run.
I've agreed with this sentiment for a long time, but lately I'm seeing it a bit differently. If he's just a mole, that's actually even worse. His words and image from 2015 campaign brought in a lot of people from the right, but when I look back at his larger body of work, including the times before he ran for president, I'm not so sure.
It's hard to know a person's intentions without hindsight.
He is doing great in his current role and needs to stay there. He doesn't have the charisma for the show. I still have my doubts about JD but the bench is very shallow.
Trump is a clown. I’ll take DeSantis, no personality and substance with an ideology I agree with, any day over an egomaniac who isn’t conservative and likes to make everything up as he goes.
Then you'll be in the cuck chair losing with the other principled conservatives. The GOP will probably get its chance for that when they try to run Jeb again. Don't bring a knife to a gunfight. That clown won the general three times and has wrangled a hostile house and senate majority twice.
You are obviously not a conservative, nothing wrong with that, but you clearly don’t know what you are talking about. I want nothing to do with Jeb Bush. I’ll not call you names, we are supposed to be above that here, but you seem to take the low road like Trump any chance given. Trump won two elections, he lost the senate with his stupidity giving Georgia to the Democrats, lost 40 house seats in the 2018 midterm. He is a political loser except for fixing the border. Sorry but I don’t worship him, he is driving us farther into debt, just like a democrat, no solutions for healthcare or entitlements. Is he better than a democrat- yes. Would an actual limited government conservative who can talk policy be better, every day and 50 times on Sunday.
Hate to troll so brutally like this but there is something wrong with someone who will accept advice to wear lifters. Like a guy with a set of bad hair plugs. Just shave it!
I'm probably more conservative than 99% of the people on this board, but I've never been able to pull the lever for DJT-- not in '16, '20, the '24 primaries, or '24 general election -- because character REALLY matters to me, and DJT's character has always been "problematic". I'm from Illinois, and so have the luxury of sitting presidential elections out on principle if I don't like the Republican candidate, because my vote wouldn't count anyway. Chicago is the tail that wags the entire dog here. It would have been much tougher to know what to do if I was in a swing state, but I'd have probably voted Trump with a lot of misgivings.
I COULD support DeSantis fully as a candidate, and will probably do so with money and time in '28. He IS doing great in his current role, and he handled C19 better than any other leader in the US (DJT included and especially). He can foster prosperity and navigate a crisis. He's almost perfect.
He's 10x the man JD is, has far more experience, and far more electoral success. It's a moot point, because JD is completely unelectable with the gen-pop anyhow. If we nominate him, we lose badly to Newsom (of all people!). The shallow bench you talk about is what you get when you turn a political party into a 12 year long cult of personality.
We better get it together -- because after the midterms, DJT is a lame duck. I'm not hopeful for the outcome of the midterms either, given the persistence of inflation, DJTs fixation on lowering interest rates (which will only drive MORE inflation), and the drumbeat of a press bound and determined to undermine any success he might have. He's been "good enough" for the country, but could have been so, so (so) much more.
FWIW, our foreign policy is a mess, DJT loves H1b visas, and his embrace of government/private sector "partnerships" (unholy unions) is neither conservative nor Republican. If the party can't articulate a clear political philosophy beyond, "we like Trump", we're about to get slaughtered for the next 4 cycles. I'm not sure I'll be around for 4 more cycles, so I'd like to get it together sooner, rather than later.
I'm not sure I can live under another "D"-team administration.
I will add that DeSantis ran a distant third in *his own state* and is listed as getting a tenth of the total vote that Halley (the warmongering neocon shill who got a third of DJT votes) did overall.
In 20-20 hindsight, the last nail in the coffin for conservatism was probably when Buchanan lost the primary to Bush, but that mistake was made and that country is long gone.
I don't know how '28 will shape up with the Republicans. With Trump running, it left no room for others because none of them could distinguish themselves from everyone else like Trump could, and Trump won by food fighting better than other R candidates and in the general. Now that 2028 won't have Trump in it, there is space for other candidates to make their mark. Trump has provided a precedent for how to win (a general election) in an astonishingly hostile media and political environment, and how to plow through it well (and also not well).
The template for the next R nominee is not simply "traditional conservative values" or "a return to decency" because the media and Dem party are hellbent on not having a civil discussion on anything, or a fair election. The R's don't need a Trump 2.0 wannabe. They will absolutely need someone who is 100% themselves and comfortable being who they are. Trump, for his imperfections, was and is 100% himself, and that genuineness is something people saw and gave value to. People know what the party line and corporate shills sound like, and they are over it. Start with being genuine--as much as one can be while operating in the shark-infested waters that is the political system--and work from there.
It's not that they're bad. His lifts were probably made by the #1 lift shop in New Yawk!
It's that he's pushing 5 or 6 inches of heel lift. NOBODY can cope with that much heel lift without looking like a woman and walking like one. His toes are riding the arch of those boots, making him duck-walk like a geisha.
To me, it's less the lifting itself and more the implicit lying. A man who will let another man put lifts in his shoes will let a lot of other stuff go down without even blinking.
We should name this the "sir they struck the second tower" phenomenon.
You get the news, BAD news, but its already happened, it's already too late, and you're ALREADY WEARING THE LIFTERS that 21st hijacker put in your cowboy boots.
I'm honestly not as concerned with the billions farmers or other businesses are losing vs what we are collecting in tariffs. Yes, tariffs have been fairly rough shot but I do think businesses are thinking more about where things are made and why they are made there. Could tariffs have been more surgical? Sure.
I worked in Medical Research for a number of years. Everything we did was regulated and subject to oversight by the FDA. You had to be careful of anything you ever wrote down, because all of it was subject to review - regardless of the topic.
When I saw the strict rules, regulations and Laws, for vaccines and their approval being thrown out the door, when I saw experimental technologies that most of the experts out there had been saying for decades were dangerous being suddenly green-lit with absolutely zero testing, I said 'nope - not doing it'.
Saying all of that publicly did come with a cost - but oh well. I'm nobody's bitch. And I'm not going to take something that has a chance of killing me, just because some asshole, who you can be sure isn't taking it, says I should.
Also, the CDC needs to GO. It hasn't done anything worthwhile in decades. It's nothing more than a joke, and Faucci has a LONG history in the medical world of being a complete and utter shit.
You are correct, He was with NIAID, I still make that mistake because he worked so closely with them on a number of things and it seems like he ran them or at least bullied them into a lot of things.
There was an event in my life that pretty much destroyed the plans I had made for it. I found myself with a good degree, some good experience, a total lack of fucks and a complete inability to give a damn or be afraid of anything. So I drifted from job to job, changing careers on occasion and also picking up and moving 2 or 3 thousand miles for the hell of it to see what it was like someplace else.
I spent a lot of money on partying and women (the rest I wasted). But basically I decided I was going to try and experience as much as I could before I died. Which at several points in my life didn't seem like it was all that far away.
Even after hooking up with the right person and getting married, I still by no means 'settled down'. Though I was a lot less random.
In my family I'm the 'crazy uncle' everyone talks about.
But you know what they say: Life's a journey - enjoy the ride.
I owned and operated a manufacturing company for many years. Whenever an inquiry for product crossed my desk from any sort of government entity I threw it directly into the shit can. Our company grew, prospered, our employees were well compensated and all without government patronage.
I own and operate a small service business (we're a union supermarket and warehouse cold-storage refrigeration service). I'll do work for schools, but we're definitely not chasing it.
Nothing for Wal Mart (under any circumstances) and nothing for the GSA.
I understand, but most business owners wouldn't. They think "bigger is better", and it is... when you sell out at the end of everything. Along the way, it can be awful.
I have one client who is 60-70% of the business depending on the year. I love them, they love us... but when they sneeze, we get pneumonia, when they are fat and happy, we're backstroking through money like Scrooge McDuck.
First let me call out all the auto site simps that rushed to Jaguars defense at their brilliant marketing and design philosophy. Idiots.
Next, I will never forget driving by the Skydome in Toronto early on a Saturday morning during the dark times and seeing parents rushing to get their children vaccinated. Superheroes and Paw Patrol were there too. Free balloons and coloring books.
As skeptic I could not travel outside the country (or return), I could not fly or take the train, go to the cinema or even eat at a restaurant. This soviet state of affairs lasted for years north of the 49th parallel.
Any car company that would tolerate an Exec. of Design that dressed and carried a Hair Do like that deserves their fate. At minimum never allow him to be photographed in frame with one of your cars. I'm betting DEI. Come try to take my money.
I didn't personally see *anyone* rush to Jaguar's defense, not about the rebrand and certainly not about the Type 00 Concept. If anything, it became a bit of a pissing match to poke the most fun at it and Jaguar became an easy punching bag, not unlike the Chrysler 200 circa 2014.
Jalopnik is full of clowns and AI-generated content, with all the talent having left long ago (a lot of them for The Autopian). I stopped using their site after they blew away the old comment system when they moved away from Kinja, and have even placed them in my browsers' URL blockers out of protest, because sometimes I reflexively type their URL in when I'm bored.
As for the Autopian, they had at least a couple of big articles on the rebrand:
- One from our own Adrian Clarke, which pointed out that Jaguar was in such a state that it needed to do *something* different in order to survive into the next decade, without praising the specific direction Jaguar took and being outright critical of the Type 00's brutalist haunches: https://www.theautopian.com/why-jaguar-had-to-blow-up-its-brand-in-order-to-save-it/
Jokes on anyone who punched down on the 2014 200. They're one of the best used car values out there in a sea of overpriced garbage. Seriously, they were never great cars, but they are reliable and affordable.
What else can you buy for the same price that doesn't have some glaring fatal flaw like a DPS6 equipped Focus?
I'm sorry... I know your pain. I work for a company that was subject to multiple vax mandates. Lots of pressure to cave from several angles... interestingly, once the pressure campaign switched from incentives (like 2 paid days off) to coercion ("we're not sure you can continue working here"), then I had really made up my mind... I'd never cave, no matter what.
Life was bizarre... I lived in Florida, which was free of any mandate or restriction by May of 2020... but my job took me to places like NYC, Seattle, and San Francisco (note: I was barred from entering Canada without my "papers"), where the miserable covid dystopia was still in full swing. I remember being in NYC and going back to the airport to get food because I couldn't go to restaurants, and the hotel wouldn't serve me in the restaurant... I couldn't access fitness centers in the state of California...
It was madness. Just complete, utter madness... I had often wondered how people tolerate societies like WW2 Japan, Nazi Germany, or today's North Korea. How can so many people support a totalitarian society, certainly people would reject it at some point? But they don't... most people are intellectually lazy, prioritize convenience and comfort, and animated by fear...
I think there was also the boomers comparing themselves with their greatest generation parents and making it their generations WW2 vs coming to terms with their generation being a bunch of failed revolutionaries.
Don’t get me started on the dancing nurses and pot banging. It never really caught on like in the UK but I could hear it on my way home from work as I passed through a wealthy neighbourhood. And hats off to my old boss who kept our office open throughout the madness.
I can't imagine how that marketing campaign was approved by the Tata leadership. Indians would really willfully throw their money and brand like that? Based on the many Indians I know, pissing away money is not one of their stereotypes.
When I was in high school in the 70's, everyone wanted to know 'Just how did the Nazi's rise to power? Why didn't anybody say anything?' (we were all children of ww2 vets, concentration camp survivors, and refugees).
Then Covid came along and we got our answer.
I will never forgive any of the people involved in pushing that shit as long as I live.
I might have a tinfoil hat but seems like a setup to me. A dry run to see how far the lab rats could be pushed. Put unproven drugs in your person, isolate from society, depend on govt. as to the "truth", stigmatize your fellow citizen for non-compliance. Test case for 1984? Seems to fit pretty good to me. Where is Fauci? Wuhan? Dead? Naturalized citizen of Switzerland/Rich. Put that SOB in the Dock and twist is balls for the truth.
It wasn't a set up. It was an actual attack. Look at how birthrates have fallen.
Look at how many people are now 'dying suddenly'.
Look at all the issues children are having.
There was a lot of shit put in the vaccine to fuck you up.
Also, Covid wasn't invented in China, WE DID IT. Or rather our government did. But they realized they were about to go to prison if they got caught, so they paid China to mess with it.
The only question is: Was the release an accident or on purpose?
Thanksgiving 2021 was held at an in-laws. I heard through channels beforehand that the in-law hosts were still nervous regarding who had or had not taken the shot, and were concerned over some elderly family members attending that were at risk, etc. Because I had not taken any of the vaccines, I was informed that I would need to be tested before or be tested at their house that day. Not taking any of this horseshit seriously in the least, because I had not been sick one day since the shit show all started, I ignored it all and showed up anyway with my family. My wife had taken the jab only because she was still teaching elementary kids, our 20ish mo. old son was as pureblood as me (no way he was ever getting some mystery meat pumped into his veins).
We arrive and walk in casually as if nothing happened, mostly because the hosts were in over their heads cooking and spinning about (and it showed after tasting the fare). Eventually my BIL, who was hosting, finds me and hands over a swab to shove up my nose to stick in his little white box 'analyzer' POS he probably bought from Amazon. I looked at him sideways and was like 'oh, you were serious...?' Dude stood there and supervised me while I wiped my mucus on the thing. The little box took something like 15-20 min. to do its thing (???) and, lo and behold, I tested....negative. The 'elderly' family members who were a big concern? They didn't bother to show up. From that day forward, these in-laws changed from people I could tolerate well enough into being another couple of insufferable CA dipshits.
The second time I caught Covid, I got it from someone who had just been vaccinated. Of course now it's public knowledge that being vaccinated caused you to shed the disease and infect others.
I got pneumonia from it (I have lung issues from another case of 'trusting the government' - never again). The hospital was 'you have covid and pneumonia. Go home'.
THAT is a death sentence - you're supposed to be admitted with that, because it will kill you. But I'm an old white guy and the 3ed world doctor (who I could barely understand) well she didn't give a shit. So I went home, got the ivomectin out that I use on our animals, and dosed myself. 8 hours later NO Covid. Gone.
Then I just had to deal with the pneumonia until Monday when I can see my doc. That I had the ability to do. If the ivomectin hadn't worked, I might not have survived.
Crapping on Ivermectin they way they did was gross malfeasance. A nickel a pill, given around the world to millions for years with a very mild side effect profile vs the $1K+/dose brand new crap they were peddling.
Howie Mandell just said that the media never said that if you got the shot that you wouldn't spread it. (Even though that was exactly what Maddow said)
I took a covid test for a friends wedding because his wifes friends were nervous i wasnt vaccinated. I actually did because he asked nicely and it was a swab. Bfd. If i was forced to, my grumbly personality wouldve said “fuck off”
Our California neighbors 13 year old boy is now a 13 year old girl and while i mostly dont care what adults do giving a teenager chemical castration strikes me as wrong.
My previous employer tried to play hardball and eventually said that they were firing everyone not vaccinated on June 1, 2022. I left May 1st and got a 30% raise out of it.
They walked it back May 15. Everyone who stayed got rewarded 24 months later by being told that their jobs were moving to ATL.
If not working on the line at “Factory Zero” was the biggest bullet that I ever dodged, refusing the shot was the second. That’s also ignoring the adverse health effects.
The amount of disdain that I have for everyone involved in pushing the shot cannot be overstated. While I benefited, countless people were not as fortunate.
I sit out plenty of elections. Im republican or nothing in this state. Plenty of republicans i dont like. And as much i dont like trump the person, i have voted for him twice. I sat out 2020. If this country doesnt heal, the next trump will be worse. At least he fights
Ditto JVS. When covid showed up I was reminded of a book I read some years ago called Hitler's Willing Executioners. The author's name escapes me but the parallels to the covid days are uncanny.
I hope COVID (and everything else) was a wakeup call that we need to stay alert and ALWAYS question the government.
I'm surrounded by quite a few people who ONLY fear and follow the government so I kind of have a decent feel for their perspective too. Unfortunately, they don't see a better path for their "survival". They gotta feel like they are on the winning team.
Watched the Qatar GP with my brother, and around lap 8-9 we were already saying that maybe a better use of our time would be to just watch the recap on the ESPNF1 youtube channel, as it was already looking like the race was going to be a boring-ass parade.
Then the safety car at lap 9-10, wherein the entire field dove into the pits for tires - except the two McLarens.
At that point, I said "hold on a sec", and after a couple laps worth of not very stringent mental arithmetic by two dudes sitting on a couch day-drinking at noon, we had realized with some simple math that given the 25 lap limit on tires, McLaren had just fucked themselves. We then committed to watch the entire race, and what a race it turned into! While I'm not going to say that we are smarter than the entire might of the McLaren strategy team.... it seems that we are smarter than the entire might of the McLaren strategy team.
Watching Oscar on the podium look like someone handed him a dead fish instead of a second place trophy was pretty hilarious. Especially juxtaposed by Sainz's utter joy in getting third. Oscar knew he got boned by the team and even a second place finish wasn't alleviating that feeling.
This is the ancient argument of conspiracy vs cock-up. Do you really think that they can conspire to create a, say, 3 second pit stop vs a 2 second one? Just think about it for, say, 3 seconds. It just doesn’t ring true. Cock-up vs conspiracy is a 95:5 ratio, imho, and speaking as a man who is no stranger to cocking things up!
Oscar gets the pit crew member that sometimes doesn’t perform well under pressure and that crew member gets second chances vs. if Blando got him, he’s gone after the first cock up.
I’ll never forgive or forget the many “leaders” that made our lives hell (vax holdouts) during the covid times in the military. Eventually caved, and still regret it.
My former division commander just got fired, which brought me great joy.
One huge upshot is it completely changed the schooling trajectory of our children, which will probably be my wife and I’s crowning achievement besides a great marriage.
Somehow the Swedes figured out how to make cheap decent knives. Maybe helps having Sandvik Steel right there. An advantage we're giving up by letting Crucible get shut down (though there's still Carpenter for the moment).
Morakniv rightfully gets a lot of attention, but EKA also makes good cheap folding knives in Sweden. At the moment you can pick up an EKA Swede 8 for $39: comparable in size/purpose to a Buck 112, Sandvik 12C27 (decent stainless) blade, wood handles. Screwed together, unlike a pinned Buck, makes for easier cleaning & maintenance.
I found it wild that Crucible couldn't leverage Magnacut and other PM steels.
I know American companies get a lot of flack for their high priced knife, but I can't complain when I just dropped 250 bucks on a smallish Japanese knife made out of fairly inexpensive Silver3.
I too am a switchblade guy, but I lose knives like a 9 year old. So, I use the Boker AK, mostly. I too appreciate the Kershaws and aspire to be the kind of guy who can own one and not lose it.
I lost my benchmade osbourne during the house move. Ive ha dit for ten years. Very upset about that one. I have lost so many kershaw leeks im single handedly keeping that division going
I had so much to put in the hopper I left McLaren's amazing boondoogle out; discuss it here.
If Oscar was more ruthless, he would have slowed a bit on lap 24, ignored the box call and came in on lap 25 causing Lando to double stack. As it was he got the 3 sec to Lando’s 2 point something stop. Funny, Lando didn’t get asked to slow down a lap to make it even steven.
Max needed so much to go right for him beyond just winning races... and McLaren has given it to him. I had hoped he would come back to win, and he's closed a 104 point gap down to 12 in what, 8 races?
I have nothing against McLaren or their drivers, but I hope they botch it real bad this weekend and Max wins his fifth. He is so much more impressive than everyone else on the grid... except maybe LeClerc who manages to get points in whatever that thing is Ferrari keeps trotting out. Max in a McLaren wins 22 of 24 and has the WDC wrapped up before the summer break.
There must be some GM mentality in Ferrari's F1 team. An expectation that, since they are who they are, winning is a foregone conclusion and others need to adjust to them. It is working out for them as well as it has worked out for GM.
Sainz has to be feeling pretty good right now
Sainz has to be feeling GREAT right now. Talk about getting fired working out well for a guy. There's a lot of upside potential at Williams, IMHO.
Leaving mercedes as position one to be position two at ferrari. Lol hamilton. What a clown https://media1.tenor.com/m/rC9RVD5LauYAAAAC/wedding-crashers-will-ferrell.gif
That's "Sir Lewis" to you, plebe.
Lol
Were american. You know what we do to british knights? We beat the piss out of them
Did you ever sell the Street Triple, Scott?
Buy a house and get a street triple! I need to fix the front brakes. Easier to sell a bike in the spring. Jack might have a new rich man job by then.
🎼…smoooth operator…🎼🎼🎼
oh god i am so hyped for the race and max winning 5 wdc
hoping for (another) catastrophic mclaren fuckup
That's a good problem to have (too much work), but it remains a problem. Perhaps the 4 topics you cut could be their own thing in a few days.
I'm rooting for Max, it would be one of the greatest comebacks in sports (would that make McLaren the racing equivalent to the Atlanta Falcons' Super Bowl team?) but if he does manage to pull it off, his detractors will say that F1 machinated things by DQing McLaren over a literal hair's breadth.
It never should’ve even been close. Piastri fucked himself which is a shame because he is so much more interesting than blando. Do they like blando because he is british? I dont quite understand f1 politics and favorites
I'm an Anglophile about many things but I can't stand their racing play-by-play. Do they really have to get that excited about everything?
Nawww, it’s just Crofty who makes an ass of himself. That guy has gotta go.
Bring back Coulthard to partner Brundle. That was the A-Team back in the day and they could still do it today.
The F1TV guy (not Clot-head) is a yelling moron as well. I prefer David Hobbs after he’s had his warm up G&T’s.
Neither of them has the cuddliness of DUH DUH DUDUH MAX VERSTAPPEN, but then, who on the grid does?
"if he does manage to pull it off, his detractors will say that F1 machinated things by DQing McLaren over a literal hair's breadth."
It won't stick, because everyone knows the modern FIA favors British drivers and teams to an extent that is almost absurd.
That's kind of funny since all of the teams, except for Haas, Sauber, and Ferrari, are physically based in the UK. That's where the cars are built, developed, and maintained. Haas designs and builds its cars in North Carolina, but they have an aero facility in England. Sauber is based in Switzerland but use an Audi tech center in the UK, which will be where the team will be based when it switches to Audi branding. Cadillac's F1 team will also be based there. Ferrari is the only team that doesn't have operations in the UK, but I bet they source components from there.
Going back to Ford's GT40 program, there are only a limited number of places in the world that have the critical mass of businesses needed to house a top level racing team, near Indianapolis, near Charlotte and not that far from Silverstone.
I still feel bad about falling asleep and wrecking that fabulous 750C.C. Solo sT .
I sold the wrecked bike to a Russian friend who had it running in 15 minutes but discovered that when I told him "every inch of this bike is bent" he didn't believe me, turns out I'd managed to pretzel the massive and robust frame more than it could be straightened .
The good news (?) is that I still have two other Ural Solos, both early 1990's 650C.C. models , they're sidelined but not disassembled .
In February of this year of our lord 2025 I bought the single worst BMW AirHead (1971 R75/5) I've ever lain eyes on, it sorta-kinda ran but more importantly when I let go the handlebars during the test ride it went straight and true, this is near impossible to find on any 54 year old Motocycle .
I set straight to work on it but in the second week of August my cervical stenosis reared it's painful head again and I wasn't able to do anything (including sleep) until October) (?) when I was able to pick up my tools again and now have it reliably running and no longer set up as a "Cafe Racer" . (as if) .
I have lots of what I did articles with pictures written if anyone is interested, tell Jack and I'll get off my duff and edit a few, maybe he can start an ongoing thread .
As it turns, I love twins and would happily remove the side car and test ride that 445 C.C. parallel twin, side cars are fun but in truth they're a lot of work to ride and I'm still lucky to be ambulatory so no "chairs" for me .
Those who buy electric vehicles at any price deserve the drubbing they'll get included for free .
" like me, were basically basket-weaving majors in college" ~ I thought you were an English Major Jack ? .
If you seriously took Basket Weaving no wonder you're unhappy, the _real_ money is in the UNDERWATER Basket Weaving......
WOW ~ Alden makes some seriously good looking black wing tips but at $900 + $ and no steel toes I'll have to pass .
-Nate
If I recall, he was a philosophy major. There's a major market for those folks right now.
I find being philosophical and contemplative about life has served me well, too bad I didn't figure it out until I was past 40Y.O. .
-Nate
I was overly philosophical and decidedly radical at 22. I'm just a raccoon with some thoughts on life at 62. The 40 years in between rounded off a lot of sharp edges.
I bought boats and houses with the difference between doing X and doing X UNDERWATER.
See ? .
BTW : don't anyone be overly impressed by anything I do or have, Jack lives in a mansion in a nice area, I'm living in literally a rat infested termite farm in a not great neighborhood .
I killed off the last two rats and a week later I can smell another one .
jeeso-peezo I hate rodents .
-Nate
Maybe Jack can overnight ship a couple of his cats to you.
"I have lots of what I did articles with pictures written if anyone is interested, tell Jack and I'll get off my duff and edit a few, maybe he can start an ongoing thread."
Nate, please get these up on the site when you can. Jack can provide access to get them posted or you can email him.
Okay ;
I'll begin , it will likely take some time but be photo heavy .
-Nate
If they’re photo heavy and you want to caption the images, ask Jack for an account so you can post directly to the stack
Trust me Nate, photos would be EXCELLENT to go along with your stories!
Thanx, I may even have more pictures of the mangled Ural and one or two of me in a wheelchair being happy I survived .
Jack says I should just write him a thing so I guess he'll have to add to it as it's been a real journey even at less than one year .
Best part is : it now runs and rides, is legal with tags and insurance etc. .
I think the original style of license tag may soon appear on it, that's not legal so I'm hoping Santa or someone does this while I'm snoring away in my recliner =8-) .
Remember all my stories, in the end are missives of a Blue Collar looser you shouldn't emulate, rather use them as cautionary warnings .
THANK YOU for the feedback, I'm never quite sure after listening to 70 years of "you're stupid/crazy"/etcetera .
-Nate
Since this is ORT, any of y'all know how to quit drinking? I could use some advice.
smoke meth instead
Thanks but the booze is more appealing.
well the trick is to do something thats more appealing than drinking
i presume methheads are to busy stealing catalytic converters and copper wire to get drunk
I will keep your comments in mind while waiting for others to reply. I assume my wife would prefer I not resort to meth.
fair
Weed
Tim ;
It's not easy but _is_ doable .
I have little to help you, I think most folks need help, I stopped this and smoking by my ownself, I'm a stubborn bastard when I put my mind to it .
I hope you give it a try and are successful .
-Nate
Also Jesus man do you ever sleep?!
well yeah eventually but its only 10pm
Please.
We all know from legendary (professional) ladies man Hunter B that crack is the true white mans medicine.
and he was the very best connoisseur of consumables
what he took on a daily basis would flatline me immediately
The way you would quit is dependent on the level of addiction.
When quitting any addictive thing, always easier to substitute, rather than purely cold Turkey the problem. Ie, replace alcohol with high quality ginger beer (watered down with sparkling water) or homemade sarsaparilla. If peer pressure issue get sparkling water when out. Never been a better time and in 2025 not drinking is a flex. If you want to not drink do NOT marry a woman who loves to drink.
If struggling, consider, a guy once wrote: “you’ll be ready to quit when you hate it. When you see the bottle and see every thing it has taken from you over the years…(etc)”
I've been hating it for years. I still drink.
In certain circumstances, perhaps out of frustration, people advocate AA.
About which: I don’t know even a single person who has seen someone who needed to quit badly, but struggled, fail if they stuck it out wjth sponsor & made it through 12 steps.
But in general the advice is,
Replace (with harmless substitute)
Get hypnotized (or self-hypnotize) or NLP’d or NLP yourself
(Other mild approach others may suggest)
AA
Aa is a risk because it will show up on anything medical.
How does that work? Who is even recording that you’re there ?
You have to out yourself if you ever fill out life insurance shit. I guess you can lie. I Dare say, you should lie!
Also, your post reminded me of this insane Washington Post story / newsweek article both uncovering and doing damage control for an AA chapter that turned into a teenage girl rape group.
https://archive.is/VSFyj#selection-495.294-543.309
https://www.newsweek.com/critics-say-washington-aa-chapter-cultlike-101337
Wild stuff, the group appears to still be operational (https://www.midtownaacult.com/ ) , unclear how a rogue father has not put a stop to this.
Putting your teenaged daughters around adult men 🤦Putting your teenaged daughter WITH A DRINKIN PROBLEM around adult men WHO ALSO HAVE DRINKING PROBLEMS 🤦🤦🤦🤦🤦🤦
The age of consent should be 22 or marriage. Whichever comes first.
WHERE ARE THEIR DADS!
Do not let your pattern recognition skills observe that all the names in the alcoholics anonymous articles are Irish. I can say this because I'm Irish
I'm sure AA has helped many people. I've also heard it's a serious time commitment and that doesn't work for me right now. Not keen on spilling my guts to a bunch of strangers either - present company excepted of course.
I'm a heavy daily drinker but not a "day" drinker, if that makes sense. I had a traveling job for 11 years and my consumption was always at the end of the day, at the hotel. I no longer travel but the force of habit is hard to overcome, even when I can tell it's slowly destroying my health.
Wondering if anyone has had any experience with naltrexone or any other addiction drugs.
Please let us (or me anyway) know how it goes .
You are _NOT_ALONE_HERE_ though it often may feel that way .
One of my shirt tail relatives in the D.C. area managed to quit by using A.A. .
-Nate
Thanks Nate.
“Too busy for AA” is a good one.
OK, but anecdotally I have heard that people in AA spend just as much time (or more) in meetings than they did at the bar. I drink at home, because I can't afford to drink at the bar and because I'm still at least a bit productive and present for my wife and kids.
I have/had a number of coworkers who were chronic and AA didn't work for those individuals.
Seeing a lot of excuses in his responses. Maybe he needs AA if he's at the point of asking for help from strangers on the internet.
I'm not an expert so maybe my opinion is dangerous but I would take up some sort of long-term physical activity. Training for a marathon, powerlifting meet, triathlon, long hike (think several weeks on the Appalachian trail). Can not just aimlessly work out, need a goal, one known to friends and family and coworkers so it would be personally embarrassing if you fail. Train either when you would normally drink or extremely early in the morning such that late day drinking the day before would be highly punishing. A year of that and you might think drinking is so counter to your goals that it's inconceivable.
IANAD, and I don't know anything about Naltrexone or similar addiction-treatment drugs. It's definitely worth a look with a qualified, non-idiotic psychiatrist; be extremely careful when qualifying such a doctor if you choose this. See if the doc is "un-dumb" enough to have read the recent studies nuking SSRIs from orbit; default treatment plans for some docs seeing an alc-suffering patient would be just to start with an SSRI which would be incomprehensibly idiotic.
In addition to the addiction-targeting drugs, there are also several classes of cognitive enhancers that as a sideline may have some effect here.
Off label use of a parkinsons drug (eg Selegiline) might have positive effects, though the side effects (gambling) aren't nice. Not kidding but the weight loss drugs ought to ameliorate cravings, and in general the atypical antidepressants could conceivably work as at least a few of them have an interaction with alcohol. Thinking Bupropion but talk to a psychotherapist, if the shrink says "how about an SSRI?" draw your weapon and slowly walk out of the room backwards.
But, while drugs that cognitively enhance are very nice, even nicer is needing no drugs at all. As @Andrew White mentioned that you get via routine exercise + walking + really, really good sleep, check the Huberman Lab podcasts and Bryan Johnson writings on sleep to get pointed in the right direction. Sleeping right will gain you willpower feeding a virtuous cycle enabling quitting.
I'm with you on this. I won't touch the SSRIs with a ten foot pole.
I'm really sorry to hear this. Solo drinking is especially hard to break from, since it's harder to reduce external triggers (avoiding a bar, particular friends, etc.).
Have you thought about GLP1's? I'm making big assumptions here, but if you've had a travel-heavy job with heavy solo drinking, I'm thinking your overall health and weight might need addressing.
Anyway, my point is a GLP1 would address weight/body issues and there's SOME evidence that it helps mute some receptors related to addictions and habits. There may also be the side benefit of watching your body get healthier and that change also being a positive reinforcement away from alcohol.
FWIW, this all gets a lot harder if your spouse is still drinking in your presence, but I'll leave it here for now.
My weight has never been an issue, I'm 6'1" and about 190 or so. My job was a fairly physical one with lots of climbing and lifting that kept me in decent shape. But I haven't been to a doctor for a physical in over 4 years. I know my BP is high, who knows what else is wrong.
My wife doesn't drink.
Go to an AA meeting. When they ask if any newcomers are present, raise your hand. Your thoughts and feelings about these suggestions are irrelevant; if you could have thought or felt your way out of this situation you are in, you would have done it already.
I typed out, and deleted, a few responses prior to this one.
On the one hand, I have huge respect for Craig Ferguson for his sobriety monologue, and he credits AA for saving his life. I re-watch that clip regularly.
On the other hand, I instinctively reject any dogmatic or evangelistic approach to treating mental health/addiction issues, and AA seems to me to be extremely dogmatic/one size fits all. Dr. Stanton Peele is probably the most well known antagonist in this space but I'm sure there are others.
When I want to feel bad about myself I gaze at Hogarth's Gin Lane.
Permanently or temporarily? There are plenty of fairly easy temporary solutions. I take a few months off a year. Permanently, i havent tried that.
I would love to go back to being a normal person that can casually meet up with friends for a couple of drinks and not have it turn into a backslide, but I suspect that's not going to happen. I will say that being off the road (65% calendar year business travel, sometimes 4-5 weeks at a time) and away from my chronic coworkers has helped somewhat.
Can you take a week off?
I would have to taper down first. I learned that lesson the hard way.
Just start there and go until you can not drink a day then 2 days, then 3 days. After a couple weeks it's not too hard.
As a wellness research nerd, I used basic fitness theory to take an entire calendar year off the sauce in 2023-2024.
0. There is no way out except through discipline. You can't trip and fall and quit a neurotoxin that has destroyed billions of other people down through the entirety of human history. It is a perfect biochemical trap. Some clever otters can open this trap with their little hands and escape. Some must gnaw off a leg to escape. Try your hands firs, unless you look around and think "oh, shit. How did I let it get this bad?"
1. Most cravings last about 30 seconds. Begin resisting your cravings, which are a chemical addiction. The more you do that, the better you become at it.
2. Failing once isn't a final failure. Skip a gym day? That doesn't mean you cancel the membership and go back to the couch or Reddit. Examine your failure to show up and try to outflank yourself next time.
3. You don't have to white knuckle it. It doesn't always take a program and "never again" thinking. Sometimes you can cut back successfully. Sometimes you need meetings and a new friend group. Figure out who you are on this spectrum and then use that to create success through the right support system. Shaming yourself is not productive and is just more bullshit. But you also don't have to tell a bunch of strangers your story like you're Bad Santa. Figure out what you need and then do it. If you were wrong about what you need, then fall back and reassess. Addiction is wily and will lie to you because you listen.
4. Observe yourself in third person as you try to quit. Use a cold judgement free lens to objectively examine habits, motivations, and whatnot. This helps you to figure out any self sabotage. This can be a deep dive into childhood trauma and stuff, so that's why it's #4.
5. Dispense feel good chemicals through your nervous system by engaging in exercise. It can't be understated how good exercise is for a recovering alcoholic or just someone who wants to stop for whatever reason. Alcohol is a neurotoxin that interferes with your sleep cycles. Not sleeping leads to brain dysfunction and lack of HGH sqiuirt in REM, so you age faster and get injured more quickly, feel like shit, etc. Exercise will help restore your sleep patterns, you'll get your HGH squirt in REM, and you'll feel instantly better. This is why a lot of people get off the sauce, start exercising, and say stuff like "best thing I ever did!" or turn into anti-alcohol evangelicals. You must take the opportunity to feel better chemically, not just so you won't be an injured brain sadpants, but so you can get back to not feeling like shit all the time. The sooner you do, the sooner you will see the stark difference between drinking and pursuing healthy habits.
Find something you like, or that you might enjoy, or that you used to enjoy, and then go let yourself spaz out over it for a few weeks. It's much more of a lifeboat than it is an activity when you're quitting booze. If you need a recommendation, do Norwegian 4x4 protocols to build your VO2 max. That's 4 minutes of hardcore training like a rower or running, rest a minute, then 4 more. Do that four cycles.
As you shed the bloat from alcohol, you'll look better in your clothes and nekkid. Pair that with feeling better, thinking more clearly, and getting stronger, and you have a good bulwark against backsliding. Once your liver starts functioning better, you can get serious weight loss and fitness metrics accomplished, and then you can really embrace something more hardcore than 4x4 or 5Ks. Cameron Hanes runs to the top of a mountain every day near his Colorado home and bowhunts elk in the back country. You can do big stuff like that instead of continuing to poison yourself. Heroic shit.
this is fantastic advice. just getting going with exercise - both in the micro sense of, say, one treadmill session and the more general sense of establishing it as a routine - takes willpower at first but it gets easier and easier the more you do it. then you start to see the benefits accrue over time (and, in particular, start feeling better all the time as opposed to only when drinking followed by feeling crap the rest of the time) and it gets even easier.
Jack's edible advice is great as well if a bit more unorthodox.
Thanks for this. The exercise bit especially resonates, I used to run Rippetoe's Starting Strength and I've been wanting to get back into it. I'll think on what you've said here.
Bear in mind, you prob already know this but no heavy deding or squatting after a bender. Inflammation + dehydration = guaranteed pulled muscle. If in cold climate and older than 32, try to heat up beforehand to avoid muscle pulls.
Take edibles every time you are tempted to drink.
Once you are no longer tempted to drink, quit taking edibles.
This has worked for three people I know.
I'm de facto sober; I went from drinking 100 nights a year to between 2 and 5. The biggest thing that helped me: getting fired from a job where I was drinking with female executives every night.
Heh. I don't have a rock bottom story or anything close to it. I've been very lucky. Probably a big part of why I continue to rationalize not quitting.
I ended up in detox exactly one drama-free time, and only because my wife freaked out and took me to the ER when I told her I thought I was having a heart attack. Every single person with whom I shared that story said the same thing... "You hid it so well... I had no idea you had a problem!"
I'll give the edibles a shot.
I know nothing about this topic, so let me tell you a story. I never saw my grandmother drink (and she lived with us for years), except for one small glass of scotch with my dad at Christmas. Apparently in her younger days she was a serious alcoholic. My grandfather would come home from work where she’d been drinking with her friends all afternoon and would drive them all home. According to my mom, one day she passed out, awoke on the floor in a pool of her own vomit, and said, “never again”. She quit cold turkey, except for that one drink at Christmas; apparently, this is hard for alcoholics to do. The point, I think, is that the impetus has to come from within and perhaps one has to sink a long way to summon the will. I sincerely hope nothing like this happens to you. My granny was a tough lady; I wish you the very best.
Thank you. Agree 100%. Means a lot to me.
About a decade ago, at 55, my father dropped alcohol when his doctor said, "if you don't do something about your blood sugar NOW, I'm going to diagnose you with type 2 diabetes." I was shocked because, at the time, he was going thru at least two 30 racks of Milwaukee's weekly and that's a massive habit to just drop like a sack of rocks. It was replaced by increased weed consumption (though that wasn't entirely new either), but diabetes remains absent from his medical records to this day.
I know it's not drinking, but I used to smoke/vape from 2015-2020. The vaping especially was a boredom crutch because I could sit inside and just puff on it constantly without stinking the house up with real tobacco. One day, it fell over and broke the last spare glass tank I had and a replacement wasn't readily available locally. I tried some of the small disposables that burned "salts" instead of "juice" but they just made me feel ill. It was at that point I said "fuck it!" and just threw it all away... right before election week 2020 LOL
Unfortunately, I've found my damn phone has replaced the vape as my indoors boredom crutch as I switch between the same 4 apps while youtube plays on the TV.
In both cases, my father and I already knew in our subconsciousness those habits were costly and unhealthy, and that we'd like to stop but we just needed a reason.
I'm not sure how I can really advise you on how to quit something like this; but I do think that since you're asking us about it, there will soon come a day where you'll have a similar "fuck this" moment and toss the bottle in the trash (or recycling bin) one last time. Quitting is in your fore-conscience already, so I have faith in you and wish you the best!
My grandfather did the cold turkey routine when my grandmother was diagnosed with lung cancer back in the 80s. They were both multiple pack a day smokers. He quit cigarettes, on the spot, or so my mother tells me. It was too late for my grandmother, but he stayed clean, lived to be 90+ years, despite multiple heart surgeries, and was in good enough shape physically and mentally to walk to the grocery store by himself a few times a week.
Thanks for the comment and the well wishes. I feel like my "fuck this" moment is not too far away.
OT: RAM prices tripling and Micron getting out of the market. Merry Christmas, PC builders!
It's wild, although as a certified dinosaur I don't exactly have massive sympathy for people who have to pay $400 to get... 32GB of RAM! I once paid $1500 in today's dollars to put 16k more in an Atari!
I don't remember what my parents paid for the 80 column/64k card that went in my IIe.
I think they were between $200 and $300 back then, so... basically a thousand bucks now.
Heh, somewhere around here I have a box of old RAM sticks going back 30 years. Probably thousands of $ of then year cost. Along with the larger box of old hard drives. Last year I paid $200 for 32Gb for my Dell workstation (Dell wanted $1600 for the same RAM sticks - I laughed at them).
wait a sec, this older dinosaur wants to know how you got “certified”?
I got my PMP cert from PMI in... 2003? I think that counts
I am quite proud to say that I do NOT have the PMP cert. I don’t know what those PMI folks teach, but it is certainly NOT effective project management, based on what I’ve seen from people with that behind their email signature. Hey people, spending months creating a ginormous MSProject file is NOT project management. Sigh.
This has been my conclusion as well (PMI is a great business probably, real Ellsworth Toohey-style philanthropic gift to the world.)
Unfortunately at a sub-$230K level there are a good many decent jobs that want you to have one. At more senior levels (depending on industry) it never hurts. My guess is it would only hurt in true competitive job markets (eg, would guess bad indicator if trying to get a job at OpenAI or Anthropic)
The Project Management Book of Knowledge should be burned to ashes and the ashes stirred. May its pretentious name never be heard again.
FUCK
i keep putting off building a pc (have a decent laptop) and everything keeps getting worse
the 5090 is a massive waste of money for the performance which isnt helped by aaa devs just throwing shit together in ue5
Today’s PC hardware—not just GPUs—has enabled developers to get lazy and throw shit together, as you allege. I think it was Jack who (I believe accurately) stated that CPUs haven’t really advanced since the Pentium III or 4; simply that we’ve packed more of them onto a single die. When Grandma’s $300 HP Pavilion has two or four CPUs onboard, never mind those of us who have really serious hardware, nearly nobody cares about a few extra lines of code.
I still remember (and shudder) over the bad old days of having to run wonky memory manager software and use virtual RAM drives. Way too many hours spent messing around with Windows registry settings. Ugh. Don't miss any of that.
Less than 30 years ago, consumer copies of windows could only fully utilize 128mb of Ram - isn't that right?
I don't recall the exact numbers, but yeah, there was a limitation of 32 bit Windows for addressable RAM space. Hence there were all sorts of wonky work arounds using virtual RAM drives and other madness. Thankfully those days are long gone. I haven't had to mess around in the Windows registry in over a decade.
There were registry tweaks to disable Cortana and other more recent 'features' as well as to allow 11 on pre TPM machines. Now I just use DoNotSpy11 and Rufus, respectively. I really should be on Linux for anything but the gaming rig.
and its not made games any better really
sure they look super realistic sometimes at the right angle but they dont behave any better than games that came out 15 years ago
forza motorsport 4 is a fast and near seamless experience especially when you compare it to forza motorsport 7
the added graphics just made everything slower
FM4 is my favorite game of all time.
I built my PC 6 years ago and upgraded to a base 3080 about 3 years ago and it's still plenty beef enough for anything I play on nearly max if not actually max settings. (modded to high-fuck assetto corsa, the new assetto rally game, dirt rally 2, cyberpunk, starfield, RDR2, and KCD2.)
oh hell yeah bro
forza horizon 1 is the best horizon and fh4 is the best forza
gotta get both running on pc solely to get all the dlc as its far past being obtainable legally or even redeemed if you had it in the past (like i did)
Yeah, I work in NAND industry and this AI boom is causing some serious supply problems. I am seeing Supermicro quote out 122TB SSD for $30k! LOL
Jesus, time to root through the basement for my old shoebox of rando RAM sticks.
Just bought a 9070XT to replace an aging 1080Ti. MB is X370 from 2018, 5700X and ram are from 2022, Hopefully it'll hold together until I win the lottery.
My 5700x from late 19 is still kicking ass with a PHAT ol bequiet air cooler on it! I swapped the 5700xt GPU for a 3080 in 2022 and I have no complaints about performance.
No racing recap? Can’t believe the WDC is coming down to the wire like this. Even better than Verstappen’s first championship year
Kinda feel bad for Oscar. All the long faces in the McLaren garage when he got pole for the sprint and no one from the team around in the interview area when Carlos was stage diving the Williams team guys.
It’s the McLando and not McLaren team.
Ferrari should fire Lewis and hire Oscar, immediately.
And when you see Oscar talking... whatever was in his head holding him back is GONE.
The Sky commentators still flying Luigi’s flag is even more of a joke that Luigi.
You think if Oscar is in third and gets told to let Lando pass that he'll actually do it after how things have gone? Gut says yes, but then again I just want to watch the team burn and have him say no-way.
If oscar is behind lando he should crash down hard. Mclaren would be wise to let him pass. Piastri cant lose the wdc from it and lando is a pussy. But, that wont happen. Well. Probably not
McLaren have said they're going to let them race. I guess we'll see what happens.
>inb4 lap 1 crash
Ferrari gets Oscar, Lewis "comes home" to the papaya for a retirement season, and Sky Sports goes full kielbasa queen for 2026. Win-win.
Conversely, Lance decides he wants to go run a Hypercar and they let Lewis and Nando cosplay senna/prost for a year racing for 13th.
I'd been hoping that Aston seat would go to Yuki!
Yuki is done. No seat for Yuki in '26. Sorry, man.
As a jingoistic Yankee, I'm hoping Yuki ends up in IndyCar in 2026. IndyCar is not complete without a fast Japanese driver and Sato is aging out. There's still an open seat at Dale Coyne, but I'm hoping Honda can convince Ganassi to run a fourth car for Yuki, or more likely, Meyer Shank could run a third car.
Toto might let lewis fuck his wife before he brings him back to mercedes
Toto is too good a TP to ever let Lewis back in his car.
It was a joke because toto would definitely let lewis fuck his wife before bringing him back. I cant stand toto but that mostly cause his germanness reminds me a bit too much of my germanness.
Is Lewis even interested in women any more? Gotta wonder sometimes.
Lol. No. He’s gay. Like, obviously gay. Theyre all beards
Lewis is queerer than Cory Booker's three-dollar-bill lookin' ass. He's also tiny, fallback career as a jockey is waiting
To a man, all of these dudes "put on the dress" (in the Chappelle's show sense) in a Hollywood basement at some point.
Why would you wish that on Oscar?
Trading getting hosed in the best car for "Copy Oscar, we are checking", I'll pass. For Oscar if Mercedes isn't interested you're better off rolling the dice on which midpack team has a good car than waste away at the T-Shirt company where he'd still be driver 1a to Leclerc.
Could lecrlerc
Win with a real team?
He's probably the best driver on the grid not named Max, so yes.
Qatar was another race where McLaren seems to be doing their best to help Max win a fifth title. I can’t understand why they didn’t split the strategy and bring at least one of the cars in for fresh tires during the safety car period. Idiots.
Papaya rules.
If they bring in Oscar, Lando loses points.
If they bring in Lando, it puts him ahead of Oscar at the end through no merit of his own.
If they double stack, Oscar goes out first and Lando goes out... anywhere between 5th and 8th.
So they made BOTH of them suffer.
It’s just so fucked up.
Oscar needs to watch San Marino ‘82 and pay attention to one D. Pironi.
If lando was winning, theyd have played the strategy right. Oscar seems to get screwed on strategy every time. There was a race earlier in the season where they split the strategy to give lando the best chance to win and he did. When oscar had that same chance. They didnt. I applaud them for letting them race but they clearly have a favorite. That said, piastri screwed himself a couple times and those meaningless points to
Keep
Max behind and cost him a five second penalty might be the difference AND he lucked out with a lando dnf. Still. The only one i want to lose is blando but not nearly as much as i wanted lewish. I mostly want a fun mast race
if they didn't have obnoxious tire rules we could actually waych racing!
im personally in favour of a spec tire
probably the hardest thing on a car to model or engineer correctly yet so very critical to performance
This post was initially like 6,000 words, I cut four topics out and didn't mean to cut out the racing topic. I have it pinned now.
Oh geeze, can't believe you're dropping the ball, you know I can go right down the street to the other Jack Baruth substack and I'll never see this type of shenanigan...
acf 2 electric boogaloo
Racing was conspicuously absent from the post. I would've liked your take on McLaren being fair by fucking both drivers, and Max somehow being in the mix for the championship while his teammates have 30 points. It may come down to Kimi Antonelli's mistake handing Lando 2 points.
Also re shoes, New Balance has had a made in USA line for years, and in my experience they last 3 times as long as the imported ones while only costing 1.5x the price.
This post was initially like 6,000 words, I cut four topics out and didn't mean to cut out the racing topic. I have it pinned now.
The Papaya Rules fairness is ridiculous. If they'd double-stacked, Lando would STILL be in fourth place and Oscar would be ahead of Max. Now they're put themselves in a situation where the hard man on the team NEEDS to pass the soft one, which could easily lead to a double DNF in Abu Dhabi.
so ... why doesn't RB tell their #2 driver to take out the McLarens??
Because he won't see where they went?
just has to wait for them to come around to lap him, then "oops"
Yeah, but we have seen that one before so it would likely be met with a stiff penalty. And would he really be lapped in the same car as the one at or near the front? Even Jack's favourite little Yuki can't be THAT slow, can he?
Yes. Yes he can.
need yuki to channel his ancestors and kamikaze them both somehow
There is also a code of honour to take into account. It can produce strange results, agreed, but would you want to live with being the man who…
what are they gonna do
fire him
actually i wonder if theyd consider giving him some kind of cash payout for doing that
He might not be completely willing given they just sorta fired him ...
All I want for Christmas is a McLaren double-DNF.
I think part of the problem for McLaren is there’s bad karma in saying “papaya” over and over. Constantly. Annoyingly.
Go Max!!!!
I have 3 pairs of 990s purchased over the last 6 years, the oldest looks nearly as good as the newest.
America could be a world unto ourselves, if somehow a forcefield were to descend upon our national border and lock the rest of Earth out. We have the land, the resources, the population, the technology and in the attic somewhere, the will.
Yet we send our manufacturing jobs overseas, we allow all the wrong people to come in & set a spell, we alienate our next generation with talk of "what the market will bear" regarding house prices & wages, we have more raw dollars than ever before but can't put up a bridge, freeway or factory in less than a decade and nobody under 30 wants to get married except the fruits.
The fuck, people?!
Well we sort of did with the Atlantic and Pacific until late 20 Century and until we got a political class that activity recruited and even flew these people into the country and a business class that actively sent good jobs overseas.
Perhaps instead of exporting all the jobs EXCEPT the ludicrously-well-compensated C-Suite Class, we should flip that ratio.
Get some of those Japanese CEOs who work for like three million a year and believe in job security for their employees.
why don't we just deport ALL of the C-suite class and don't bother to replace them?
Oh, we replace them, alright.
With actual orangutans.
Right turn, Clyde.
Scrap the Caddy, Clyde.
Because those are the people who create the prosperity from which you benefit.
Be grateful.
Right. Doug Oberhelman ("Dougie Fresh") would like a word.
That dude who outourced uour cousins job, your brothers job, and all your neighbors job lets uou buy cheap shitty trinkets for the same orice they were before all those jobs were outsourced. Be grateful!
And Eddie Lampert.
The people who create the prosperity from which we all benefit are the members of the us navy army and airforce.
If you can read, thank a teacher. If you can read in English, thank a soldier.
Somebody has to do the math.
I can if I take my shoes off.......
=8-) .
-Nate
I’m not ready for ribbons of shame.
We have them in american corporations. All white men get a full set for free
Weirdly, I've found an American company that still does this.
I'm for it. I remember the story of the Nintendo CEO who opted for a pay cut when things weren't going well rather than firing his employees. I also recall another one who assigned landscaping duty to other employees rather than laying them off during a down time. Or..... when they'll keep an older worker on payroll but not give them work just so they can stay afloat until retirement benefits kick in. Lot's to learn there.
No no no, sir... it's the lack of "the fuck" that is the problem.
I tried explaining to anyone who would listen over Thanksgiving that we're not doing enough to motivate young people to do ANYTHING... and that includes finding love or buying a car. Majority of parents simply aren't doing a thing. And so, who is to build the next widget that will change the world? Who will be the next best race car driver to impress the girl when they aren't even interested in doing any chasing? There's a lot of words being written about home buying but why leave the nest when there's no incentive to have privacy or live by one's own rules? It's a much more sad issue and one that the boomer/older X needs to look in the mirror at. Stop blaming and accept that maybe, just maybe, you didn't help produce the best offspring America has ever offered by removing any real danger or incentive to move on in life. (And yes... I'm one of those delayed mover onners.)
I agree.
And I say in all seriousness, we need more dads who tell their teenage sons:
"You walk in there tomorrow and hit that little fuck with something till he agrees to leave you alone."
"Here's $500. Go to San Diego and get me a case of beer. You have 72 hours. Don't let trouble follow you home. GO!!!"
"You can do it. Here's how."
That last one, especially, is the most powerful thing a father can ever do for his son.
Tell him to watch Smokey & The Bandit for some tips.
"That's called bootleggin' and that's against the law."
"Well, who gives a turkey?"
Oddly enough, the intro with Jerry Reed's sultry sounds being piped in a bit after the truck starts and sits there idling is quite possibly my favorite part of the movie.
See also: Yeah, I watched that again recently but tried to view it from as modern of a perspective as possible and realized that in today's world, Bandit's torso would be riddled with a few thousand cop-supplied bulletholes the first time he tried to go around a roadblock.
The End.
In other words, the movie didn't age too well, but I think that's the inside joke with the chase towards the end, even the fictional character of Bandit himself suddenly realizes that it's no longer the good old days where you could pull this kind of stuff and get away with it, you can't outrun radio and helicopters, it's almost as if he had no clue how heavyhanded it had become with the police response...and this is even in the late 1970's when it was still somewhat tame.
Now?
Bandit would be in a Lexus LS430, in Cypress Pearl or Mystic Gold Metallic, something that would blend in practically anywhere.
You make an interesting point.
One of my original characters is a smuggler on the side. He's meticulous, careful and above all, wants to have his cake & eat it too. So he takes great pains to minimize his risk.
He always wears some kind of disguise and pretends to be an associate of "the boss," when his whole operation is really just him, which seriously reduces the possibility of being killed or ratted out by a disgruntled partner. He has a bunch of nondescript smuggling cars which blend into traffic, easily forgotten. He dresses and acts in ways that don't draw attention. He never fails to deliver a load. And he has enough fake documents, plates, etc. to at least minimize his chances of getting in trouble if he does get pulled over.
In the story, he'd been at it for ten years and only gave it up because he got married. Nobody ever found out who he was and nobody ever caught him doing it.
THAT'S how you run contraband.
just don't tell him to go to the beach out here or he never will come home!
yeah
thats what happens when everything is taken from them. why bother when you know you cant ever hope to succeed at anything?
Or ;
Without corporal violence I managed to raise up a boy who's hard working and industrious, doesn't have any tattoos, bastards etc. and I've never had to bail him out of jail and yes, in his brief street racing days he figured out how to out run L.A.P.D.'s radio -and- Air Support, there's a reason I and most others don't like riding shot gun with him .
Did I mention he's drug free, raising up a nice family and buying _two_ houses ? .
All this before age 50 =8-) .
Pardon me if I bust a few buttons over my progeny doing so much better than I ever dreamed of .
A select few of our foster boys are doing well too, they come back to say "thank you'' every now and then .
The ones who _knew_ their "homies" were smarter, well they're mostly dead, shot by those very same homies .
-Nate
Same thing. My son is 35. He got married at 20, has a great job, 4 kids, a big house with a pool, and a gorgeous, leggy wife who loves him more than life. His oldest starts HS next year.
He's not waiting around to grow up -- I'm about ready to hand the "head of this family" mantle over. He's more temperate, more thoughtful, less prone to say the wrong thing in the wrong place.
Go ahead and bust those buttons, dad. I know EXACTLY how you feel.
Well ;
Notice I didn't say he's *perfect*, he's still impetuous and doesn't like to do a fully complete job when he's spinning wrenches, I've had to re do much of the repairs he did on the Tracker I bought from him . (so glad his wife hated it) .
Children : you wind 'em up and let 'em go, if you've done passably well and you
re lucky they'll do fine .
Unlike my mates who's primary interest was in being their 'friend' and now brag to me their progeny makes more license plates per shift than anyone else on his shift......
-Nate
(or, "he hasn't been caught yet !" is another fave)
If you consider your license plates "personalized" because your uncle made them, you might be a redneck.
My oldest will start high school
When im damn near fifty. My youngest will graduate when im damn near sixty 🤦♂️have kids young fellas!
Little late for that here, but I agree with the sentiment.
This, at least, I got right. I was a grandpa by the time I was 48. If I can stay vertical and ambulatory, I should be able to see my grandkids have kids.
At 62, I can't imagine facing college right tuition now. In every way, I'm on a slow glide, rather than the "on top of it" alertness needed to navigate that time in a kid's development.
I wish you nothing but longevity and strength, Scott.
I exist to solicit reader content here, and as such would advise that I am sure many of us would love to see what parenting Tales From the Deep and/or parenting advice you have for those of us far earlier into the journey than yourself.
Congrats on your man.
Please don't look to me for any deep answers -- I have 3 adult children, two of whom are productive members of society who love and accept love freely, and one is not. I love all of them the same and have never shown favoritism -- but in any family one person is always going to take 80% of the work. I was that person in my dad's family, "A" was that person in mine. We had (a LOT) more success with "M" and "K" than with "A", because "A" was hardwired to be mistrustful and challenging and has always struggled. She is amazingly hard-working and the most stubborn person I've ever met... traits which could have helped her in her personal and professional life, if only she had been able to harness them and we had been able to better mold them.
The question is always nature/nurture, and I fall pretty hard on "amalgamation theory" (which I just made up) -- God gives a kid the raw material and wires them with a disposition which cannot ever be changed, but it's the job of the parents to identify who this "other small person" really is and how they can use the raw material they have to become empathetic people and productive members of society.
I came from a generation who was taught that "everybody is the same under the skin", which was trying to speak to the intrinsic value of all human life. In every other way, it's complete hippy-dippy BS. I dealt with every one of my kids in exactly the same way -- trying very, very hard not to deviate from a clear, predictable, and consistent cause/effect "touch this and get burned" baseline. I never, ever lied to my kids -- not about Santa or about anything, and I made sure that they suffered the full weight of lying in any and every circumstance.
The problem was, "A" created her own narrative, which became her reality. She was naturally challenging (as were both her mom and me as kids) in our home, but rather than just change course, she quit on herself and became the DUFF, the misfit, the "other" in the family (in her own eyes, never in ours). Her response to every correction was, "you think I'm a failure". As "K" and "M" watched their sister sticking her hand in the fire to be burned again and again and again, they determined that they wanted nothing to do with her way of moving through life. She had become a perpetually self-reinforcing corrective tale for them. She invented her own reality from whole cloth.
I'm going to cut the gory details of what has happened in each of my 3 adult children's lives, and by extension in ours, and just say -- that while they were raised in great consistency, the results have been anything but. 2 of my 3 kids have built successful lives and know how to love and receive love, and are raising their kids to be productive members of society. "A's" struggles have only increased as she moves into her 40s and reaps hard all the mistrust and dissociation from reality she's practiced for the majority of life.
The only thing everybody has in common is a need to feel loved. You pray you can give your kid a baseline where they believe that they are. Everything else builds out from there.
Not trying to lecture but this reads like a reason not to inject one's children with non-placebo-control studied, non-quality-controlled, non-longitudinally-studied biochemicals.
yeah
just stick with test and tren like any normal dad
Pure blood here. Had Covid - or so their test showed - early January 2021 at the age of 68. Felt very lethargic for a couple of days but then pretty okay within a week. I knew it was all BS after reading about the Diamond Princess outbreak and have believed nothing the government has said about Covid since. They've been basically proved wrong about everything.
My primary doctor has pretty much given up on trying to talk me into any Covid or seasonal flu shot. The latter after I hit him about the Cleveland Clinic NEGATIVE efficacy study recently published. The Coffee & Covid substack has done yeoman's work on keeping readers informed of the latest developments in these areas. Invaluable.
And Berenson’s substack.
Berenson has some interesting character flaws. Too long and dull to type, but there's something off about the fella. Katherine Watt, and WMC research have a lot to offer on the "governments killing people intentionally with bioweapons" subject.
After Berensons last article I think I have to retract my last statement. You are correct on your feeling that something is off about him.
Even before COVID, there was a study done based on residence halls at the University of MIchigan showing Zero (0%) effectiveness for flu shots.
And that's not considering the fact that even if a flu shot has positive efficacy in ONE year, the compounded effects over MULTIPLE years can be negative. In a similar way risk of a cardiac event is higher during a strenuous workout, but over time, the risk of being long-term sedentary is greater.
When the symptoms were virtually the same as having the flu or a severe cold and then the treatments were basically the same I figured that it wasn’t that big of a deal if I got Covid. I know I’ve had it at least once, caught it from an aunt at a funeral last year and felt awful for a few days but just like when you get the flu eventually it got better.
My doctor said he still has patients with Covid. I asked how do they know? Do they run out and buy a test kit every time they get the sniffles?
He said well it can still be serious and that he had a patient die last spring. I said really. He said he was 95 years old. I said well there you go. Another Covid death of someone who had already beaten the mortality tables.
Dying from covid at 95 sounds like a better way to go then withering away.
FWIW, I had the normal fall sinus infection in September. Went into the PCP for an unrelated incident. She asked if she could administer a Covid/Flu test. Ended up positive for the former.
Had I not had a chance doctor appointment, I would’ve had no idea. It was a nothingburger. I’m assuming that’s how they’re getting COVID patients.
IIRC a criticism of the tests at one time were that either they were over sensitive or they were over processed (not the right terms for sure). Not sure if that’s still the case.
Could be both. NIH says between Jan 1, 2020 and Dec 31, 2022 the US administered 2.7 BILLION tests. They’ve also admitted that 40% of people who tested positive were asymptomatic.
Since we are among friends here I am going to take an opposing view of this tariffs are great narrative.
First - I hate that Trump is throwing around tariffs based on who he likes or doesn’t like. Let’s not forget he is getting his ass kicked by China- did they start buying soybeans yet? That is a $23B loss to farmers, who are waiting for their bailout. How about we tariff China, because they are evil commies, but we work out what is reasonable with our friends and allies and implement it over time? This tariff scheme was implemented so drastically that most companies are waiting to see when Trump changes his mind, or SCOTUS reminds him that the constitution trumps tantrums.
Businesses paying the tariffs- see above, but this is wait and see, and chances are businesses get a big break soon. We will see.
Tariffs are a tax, period. It is money removed from the economy, either from individuals or business. I, as a life-long member of the conservative right, refuse to decide now that raising taxes is a good thing. (Sidebar- Ohio people- we need to discuss the movement to make property taxes unconstitutional. I love this, and would happily pay way more in sales tax so that I can actually retire someday and not have my community raise my taxes every time they feel the kids need a new school building).
How is the economy now? Not real great. I’ll admit, I am doing really well, but someone lower middle class probably isn’t. These people are not benefitting from these tariffs. They are not getting hired to join a manufacturing company at a big increase over their $20-25/hr at their current job.
Trump is a mess, some ok ideas, all of which are being poorly implemented. Please folks, let’s give it a rest with arrogant big mouthed show-offs for a while when we are voting.
I agree with you on all counts here…but who else can we vote for? I did not vote for the orange buffoon in the primaries but was forced to hold my nose and hit that button on the voting machine in the election.
I don’t remember if the primary in Ohio had anyone else. But DeSantis was an option for the early primary states, although he tried being Trumpy and blew his chance. I’d be happy for you to vote for me but ai am neither rich enough or famous enough to have a chance in national politics.
The problem was he wasn't trump enough. Vivek was a trump proxy and beat him up in the debates. Too many were concerned with whether he had a lift in his shoe.
There is no Trump except for Trump, DeSantis should have known that. . If DeSantis articulated limited government conservatism he would have done a lot better. The 25% who worship Trump are so far up his ass they wouldn’t know a winning strategy in politics if it bit them on their ass. Trump worship equals mediocrity at best. But, as stated elsewhere, better Trump than any democrat.
Scott, DeSantis while having done great things in Florida during COVID and afterwards. DeSantis the man is not user friendly, I know it does not matter policy wise but the man has no, I mean no people skills. Plus he takes criticism like a 5 year old. He is so use to running rough shot over the legislature in Tallahassee that when a couple of Republicans rise up to question a policy he went ballistic, for no reason. DeSantis will never be President, he would never make it out of the primaries.
And fortunately for us Vivek let the mask slip RE: H1Bs early this year. His political career on a national stage is over.
Either he owns being pro H1B, or he walks it back and is seen as an untrustworthy Indian (many such cases). He fucked himself.
I sure hope he is done and gone. The mere thought of him having any chance at any elected office is enough to make me vomit.
I was shocked at what a lousy campaign DeSantis ran in 2023-2024. For as effective a governor he’s been in Florida I expected a lot more from him when he ran for president. Maybe he’s more of a COO and will keep everything running efficiently and less of a CEO or maybe he listened to too many consultants and his pain in the ass wife.
That pain in the ass might be enough to warm his seat for a term and let him run again.
And that’s just the tariffs! To say nothing of his whimsical approach to executive orders, government functions, war crimes, and pardons!
A corrupt warmongering pedophile moron surrounded by nothing but power hungry yes man.
To be fair, Obama and Biden likely had real issues with executive orders, government functions, war crimes and pardons. Difference now is that we have a (R) the media pays attention to these things. I’d like to see the media actually pay attention no matter what party is in the White House. As far as warmongering pedophile, that is most likely a bit too much. And, if someone had accused Obama of that, geez, lookout.
I mean yeah fuck those guys too! Trump uses VASTLY more EOs and declared “emergencies” than… well.. any president ever I believe? And neither one of them is president right now though, so the focus should be on the one who is…
And perhaps I should say “alleged” pedophile if that makes it more sanguine.
Should note, I am registered as a Dem to vote in primaries, but I hold zero illusions as to what most corporate Dems are and who they actually represent.
The problem with breaking precedent is it’s broken for the next guy too. The problem is no one believes trump is a pedophine. He could have a smoking gun at this point wed believe it’s ai. The press should stop lying if they want to ever be believed again
Never forget that Obama ordered the killing of an American Citizen in Yemen.
I’m not saying the guy wasn’t a terrorist and didn’t deserve to die, but to kill an American citizen overseas with zero due process is quite something.
It makes all the hand wringing about double tapping a Go-Fast Boat filled with bales of dope and manned by foreign national narco runners seem ridiculous.
I haven’t forgotten- it should be a great stain upon all political journalists to compare their intense scrutiny of Trump (which I am fine with) and willfully ignoring what went on during the Obama and Biden administrations. A democratic republic needs the leadership challenged at all times, not just when an (R) is in the White House.
It was TWO American citizens killed by drone. The father, then the son a couple of days later. Double tap indeed.
Kamala would have 100% gone all in with Kallas against the Russians and started WW3. I'm unhappy Trump hasn't completely pulled support but here we are.
Regime changing Maduro (instead of Sheinbaum) is foolish but kayfabing his way out of a war with Iran was the smart move.
Regime changing either of those countries is so unimaginably fucking stupid that the mere thought of it should disbar anyone from public office permanently.
Agreed. It's not really about the drugs.
Blood For Oil: South American Edition!
We have all of the oil we can ever use. Our wars are for Israel.
where's this pedophile crap come from?
the epstein files
I could list a half a dozen things I'm not happy about with Trump and his half measures but if you think Barry's fourth term would have been better for 'conservatives', I don't know what to tell you. Desantis would have lost bigly and started a domino effect of probably losing Florida as well if he had run.
I never said anything about voting for a democrat. Trump at his worst, at least so far, is better than any democrat.
I've agreed with this sentiment for a long time, but lately I'm seeing it a bit differently. If he's just a mole, that's actually even worse. His words and image from 2015 campaign brought in a lot of people from the right, but when I look back at his larger body of work, including the times before he ran for president, I'm not so sure.
It's hard to know a person's intentions without hindsight.
I guess we'll have to agree to disagree, Henry. DeSantis was the real deal.
He is doing great in his current role and needs to stay there. He doesn't have the charisma for the show. I still have my doubts about JD but the bench is very shallow.
Trump is a clown. I’ll take DeSantis, no personality and substance with an ideology I agree with, any day over an egomaniac who isn’t conservative and likes to make everything up as he goes.
Then you'll be in the cuck chair losing with the other principled conservatives. The GOP will probably get its chance for that when they try to run Jeb again. Don't bring a knife to a gunfight. That clown won the general three times and has wrangled a hostile house and senate majority twice.
You are obviously not a conservative, nothing wrong with that, but you clearly don’t know what you are talking about. I want nothing to do with Jeb Bush. I’ll not call you names, we are supposed to be above that here, but you seem to take the low road like Trump any chance given. Trump won two elections, he lost the senate with his stupidity giving Georgia to the Democrats, lost 40 house seats in the 2018 midterm. He is a political loser except for fixing the border. Sorry but I don’t worship him, he is driving us farther into debt, just like a democrat, no solutions for healthcare or entitlements. Is he better than a democrat- yes. Would an actual limited government conservative who can talk policy be better, every day and 50 times on Sunday.
Will you take lifters with that?
https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/ron-desantis-high-heels-conspiracy-theory
Hate to troll so brutally like this but there is something wrong with someone who will accept advice to wear lifters. Like a guy with a set of bad hair plugs. Just shave it!
what about a good hair transplant
what then
I'm probably more conservative than 99% of the people on this board, but I've never been able to pull the lever for DJT-- not in '16, '20, the '24 primaries, or '24 general election -- because character REALLY matters to me, and DJT's character has always been "problematic". I'm from Illinois, and so have the luxury of sitting presidential elections out on principle if I don't like the Republican candidate, because my vote wouldn't count anyway. Chicago is the tail that wags the entire dog here. It would have been much tougher to know what to do if I was in a swing state, but I'd have probably voted Trump with a lot of misgivings.
I COULD support DeSantis fully as a candidate, and will probably do so with money and time in '28. He IS doing great in his current role, and he handled C19 better than any other leader in the US (DJT included and especially). He can foster prosperity and navigate a crisis. He's almost perfect.
He's 10x the man JD is, has far more experience, and far more electoral success. It's a moot point, because JD is completely unelectable with the gen-pop anyhow. If we nominate him, we lose badly to Newsom (of all people!). The shallow bench you talk about is what you get when you turn a political party into a 12 year long cult of personality.
We better get it together -- because after the midterms, DJT is a lame duck. I'm not hopeful for the outcome of the midterms either, given the persistence of inflation, DJTs fixation on lowering interest rates (which will only drive MORE inflation), and the drumbeat of a press bound and determined to undermine any success he might have. He's been "good enough" for the country, but could have been so, so (so) much more.
FWIW, our foreign policy is a mess, DJT loves H1b visas, and his embrace of government/private sector "partnerships" (unholy unions) is neither conservative nor Republican. If the party can't articulate a clear political philosophy beyond, "we like Trump", we're about to get slaughtered for the next 4 cycles. I'm not sure I'll be around for 4 more cycles, so I'd like to get it together sooner, rather than later.
I'm not sure I can live under another "D"-team administration.
I will add that DeSantis ran a distant third in *his own state* and is listed as getting a tenth of the total vote that Halley (the warmongering neocon shill who got a third of DJT votes) did overall.
In 20-20 hindsight, the last nail in the coffin for conservatism was probably when Buchanan lost the primary to Bush, but that mistake was made and that country is long gone.
Buchanan, who had it all figured out, really f*ed up.
Hard to be sure he ever really had a chance... but still.
Didn't he also choose a "Dems R the Real Raycis!" VP candidate in 2000, too?
The brutal abdundance of r-tarded R-team unforced errors is hard to even grasp sometimes
I don't know how '28 will shape up with the Republicans. With Trump running, it left no room for others because none of them could distinguish themselves from everyone else like Trump could, and Trump won by food fighting better than other R candidates and in the general. Now that 2028 won't have Trump in it, there is space for other candidates to make their mark. Trump has provided a precedent for how to win (a general election) in an astonishingly hostile media and political environment, and how to plow through it well (and also not well).
The template for the next R nominee is not simply "traditional conservative values" or "a return to decency" because the media and Dem party are hellbent on not having a civil discussion on anything, or a fair election. The R's don't need a Trump 2.0 wannabe. They will absolutely need someone who is 100% themselves and comfortable being who they are. Trump, for his imperfections, was and is 100% himself, and that genuineness is something people saw and gave value to. People know what the party line and corporate shills sound like, and they are over it. Start with being genuine--as much as one can be while operating in the shark-infested waters that is the political system--and work from there.
Well, his height certainly isn't the real deal. (look at him walk, on television, even once, to verify the fact he's wearing lifters)
When it comes to short men, I like mine Erik Prince style short-man-syndrome suffering maniacs . YMMV
https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2023/10/31/desantis-boots-shoemakers-00121044
https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/ron-desantis-high-heels-conspiracy-theory
im now convinced hes got lifts and not even good ones
i mean id wear cowboy or chelsea boots with a somewhat tall roper/cuban heel but thats for the aesthetics
It's not that they're bad. His lifts were probably made by the #1 lift shop in New Yawk!
It's that he's pushing 5 or 6 inches of heel lift. NOBODY can cope with that much heel lift without looking like a woman and walking like one. His toes are riding the arch of those boots, making him duck-walk like a geisha.
To me, it's less the lifting itself and more the implicit lying. A man who will let another man put lifts in his shoes will let a lot of other stuff go down without even blinking.
We should name this the "sir they struck the second tower" phenomenon.
You get the news, BAD news, but its already happened, it's already too late, and you're ALREADY WEARING THE LIFTERS that 21st hijacker put in your cowboy boots.
"pushing 5 or 6 inches of heel lift"
at that point you can start giving advice to strippers on how to walk with that much rise
"sir theres been a second heel lift"
I'm honestly not as concerned with the billions farmers or other businesses are losing vs what we are collecting in tariffs. Yes, tariffs have been fairly rough shot but I do think businesses are thinking more about where things are made and why they are made there. Could tariffs have been more surgical? Sure.
THANK YOU SCOTT .
The economy -is- tanking and inflation is so bad trump closed up all the government agencies that were reporting the facts .
Part of being Conservative is honesty and basic decency, things our President neither knows nor cares about .
-Nate
I'd like to hit the like button several times on this post!
I worked in Medical Research for a number of years. Everything we did was regulated and subject to oversight by the FDA. You had to be careful of anything you ever wrote down, because all of it was subject to review - regardless of the topic.
When I saw the strict rules, regulations and Laws, for vaccines and their approval being thrown out the door, when I saw experimental technologies that most of the experts out there had been saying for decades were dangerous being suddenly green-lit with absolutely zero testing, I said 'nope - not doing it'.
Saying all of that publicly did come with a cost - but oh well. I'm nobody's bitch. And I'm not going to take something that has a chance of killing me, just because some asshole, who you can be sure isn't taking it, says I should.
Also, the CDC needs to GO. It hasn't done anything worthwhile in decades. It's nothing more than a joke, and Faucci has a LONG history in the medical world of being a complete and utter shit.
thought Fauci was in a different agency than CDC
You are correct, He was with NIAID, I still make that mistake because he worked so closely with them on a number of things and it seems like he ran them or at least bullied them into a lot of things.
damn
you were everywhere doing everything at some point
There was an event in my life that pretty much destroyed the plans I had made for it. I found myself with a good degree, some good experience, a total lack of fucks and a complete inability to give a damn or be afraid of anything. So I drifted from job to job, changing careers on occasion and also picking up and moving 2 or 3 thousand miles for the hell of it to see what it was like someplace else.
I spent a lot of money on partying and women (the rest I wasted). But basically I decided I was going to try and experience as much as I could before I died. Which at several points in my life didn't seem like it was all that far away.
Even after hooking up with the right person and getting married, I still by no means 'settled down'. Though I was a lot less random.
In my family I'm the 'crazy uncle' everyone talks about.
But you know what they say: Life's a journey - enjoy the ride.
I owned and operated a manufacturing company for many years. Whenever an inquiry for product crossed my desk from any sort of government entity I threw it directly into the shit can. Our company grew, prospered, our employees were well compensated and all without government patronage.
That's what makes America great.
I own and operate a small service business (we're a union supermarket and warehouse cold-storage refrigeration service). I'll do work for schools, but we're definitely not chasing it.
Nothing for Wal Mart (under any circumstances) and nothing for the GSA.
What about Amazon? I've heard stories about how they royally screw over small suppliers / contractors.
They have no cold storage warehouses in this market, but that would also be a hard "no".
Walmart is positively mild compared to the new guys.
No doubt. I don't do business with thugs.
We had a serious inquiry from Sears I turned down, concerned they might become too big with us and start telling us how to run our business.
I understand, but most business owners wouldn't. They think "bigger is better", and it is... when you sell out at the end of everything. Along the way, it can be awful.
I have one client who is 60-70% of the business depending on the year. I love them, they love us... but when they sneeze, we get pneumonia, when they are fat and happy, we're backstroking through money like Scrooge McDuck.
Exactly!!!
"Then Richard Nixon was elected to end the war, and it ended."
But are pro-tariff politicians going to continually be elected?
Given that the corporate media is screaming the other viewpoint 24/7, maybe not.
First let me call out all the auto site simps that rushed to Jaguars defense at their brilliant marketing and design philosophy. Idiots.
Next, I will never forget driving by the Skydome in Toronto early on a Saturday morning during the dark times and seeing parents rushing to get their children vaccinated. Superheroes and Paw Patrol were there too. Free balloons and coloring books.
As skeptic I could not travel outside the country (or return), I could not fly or take the train, go to the cinema or even eat at a restaurant. This soviet state of affairs lasted for years north of the 49th parallel.
Any car company that would tolerate an Exec. of Design that dressed and carried a Hair Do like that deserves their fate. At minimum never allow him to be photographed in frame with one of your cars. I'm betting DEI. Come try to take my money.
The guy running Jaguar is named raw dong lover
You might have considered flying out and staying free.
Can those with a Canadian or British passport claim refugee status in the USA?
We love the undocumented!
We are fleeing a repressive leftist regime
if i get caught when i escape theyd probably castrate me upon return
I didn't personally see *anyone* rush to Jaguar's defense, not about the rebrand and certainly not about the Type 00 Concept. If anything, it became a bit of a pissing match to poke the most fun at it and Jaguar became an easy punching bag, not unlike the Chrysler 200 circa 2014.
Autopian and Jalopnik drank the pink and purple kool-aid
Jalopnik is full of clowns and AI-generated content, with all the talent having left long ago (a lot of them for The Autopian). I stopped using their site after they blew away the old comment system when they moved away from Kinja, and have even placed them in my browsers' URL blockers out of protest, because sometimes I reflexively type their URL in when I'm bored.
As for the Autopian, they had at least a couple of big articles on the rebrand:
- One from Jason Torchinksy that spoke pretty harshly on the whole thing and pointed out that the Jaguar rebrand was exactly as derivative as it claimed not to be: https://www.theautopian.com/jaguar-changed-their-logo-and-no-one-is-happy/
- One from our own Adrian Clarke, which pointed out that Jaguar was in such a state that it needed to do *something* different in order to survive into the next decade, without praising the specific direction Jaguar took and being outright critical of the Type 00's brutalist haunches: https://www.theautopian.com/why-jaguar-had-to-blow-up-its-brand-in-order-to-save-it/
Jalopnik is the car site for people who hate cars. I don’t understand the appeal.
Jokes on anyone who punched down on the 2014 200. They're one of the best used car values out there in a sea of overpriced garbage. Seriously, they were never great cars, but they are reliable and affordable.
What else can you buy for the same price that doesn't have some glaring fatal flaw like a DPS6 equipped Focus?
I'm sorry... I know your pain. I work for a company that was subject to multiple vax mandates. Lots of pressure to cave from several angles... interestingly, once the pressure campaign switched from incentives (like 2 paid days off) to coercion ("we're not sure you can continue working here"), then I had really made up my mind... I'd never cave, no matter what.
Life was bizarre... I lived in Florida, which was free of any mandate or restriction by May of 2020... but my job took me to places like NYC, Seattle, and San Francisco (note: I was barred from entering Canada without my "papers"), where the miserable covid dystopia was still in full swing. I remember being in NYC and going back to the airport to get food because I couldn't go to restaurants, and the hotel wouldn't serve me in the restaurant... I couldn't access fitness centers in the state of California...
It was madness. Just complete, utter madness... I had often wondered how people tolerate societies like WW2 Japan, Nazi Germany, or today's North Korea. How can so many people support a totalitarian society, certainly people would reject it at some point? But they don't... most people are intellectually lazy, prioritize convenience and comfort, and animated by fear...
I think there was also the boomers comparing themselves with their greatest generation parents and making it their generations WW2 vs coming to terms with their generation being a bunch of failed revolutionaries.
Don’t get me started on the dancing nurses and pot banging. It never really caught on like in the UK but I could hear it on my way home from work as I passed through a wealthy neighbourhood. And hats off to my old boss who kept our office open throughout the madness.
I can't imagine how that marketing campaign was approved by the Tata leadership. Indians would really willfully throw their money and brand like that? Based on the many Indians I know, pissing away money is not one of their stereotypes.
When I was in high school in the 70's, everyone wanted to know 'Just how did the Nazi's rise to power? Why didn't anybody say anything?' (we were all children of ww2 vets, concentration camp survivors, and refugees).
Then Covid came along and we got our answer.
I will never forgive any of the people involved in pushing that shit as long as I live.
I might have a tinfoil hat but seems like a setup to me. A dry run to see how far the lab rats could be pushed. Put unproven drugs in your person, isolate from society, depend on govt. as to the "truth", stigmatize your fellow citizen for non-compliance. Test case for 1984? Seems to fit pretty good to me. Where is Fauci? Wuhan? Dead? Naturalized citizen of Switzerland/Rich. Put that SOB in the Dock and twist is balls for the truth.
It wasn't a set up. It was an actual attack. Look at how birthrates have fallen.
Look at how many people are now 'dying suddenly'.
Look at all the issues children are having.
There was a lot of shit put in the vaccine to fuck you up.
Also, Covid wasn't invented in China, WE DID IT. Or rather our government did. But they realized they were about to go to prison if they got caught, so they paid China to mess with it.
The only question is: Was the release an accident or on purpose?
'both'
100% on purpose. The only question is whether the ChiComs released it to quell the protests in Hong Kong (remember those?), or to bring down Trump.
Why not both? Trump is a known germaphobe.
Thanksgiving 2021 was held at an in-laws. I heard through channels beforehand that the in-law hosts were still nervous regarding who had or had not taken the shot, and were concerned over some elderly family members attending that were at risk, etc. Because I had not taken any of the vaccines, I was informed that I would need to be tested before or be tested at their house that day. Not taking any of this horseshit seriously in the least, because I had not been sick one day since the shit show all started, I ignored it all and showed up anyway with my family. My wife had taken the jab only because she was still teaching elementary kids, our 20ish mo. old son was as pureblood as me (no way he was ever getting some mystery meat pumped into his veins).
We arrive and walk in casually as if nothing happened, mostly because the hosts were in over their heads cooking and spinning about (and it showed after tasting the fare). Eventually my BIL, who was hosting, finds me and hands over a swab to shove up my nose to stick in his little white box 'analyzer' POS he probably bought from Amazon. I looked at him sideways and was like 'oh, you were serious...?' Dude stood there and supervised me while I wiped my mucus on the thing. The little box took something like 15-20 min. to do its thing (???) and, lo and behold, I tested....negative. The 'elderly' family members who were a big concern? They didn't bother to show up. From that day forward, these in-laws changed from people I could tolerate well enough into being another couple of insufferable CA dipshits.
You should have swabbed your anus with it put *that* in his damned machine.
The second time I caught Covid, I got it from someone who had just been vaccinated. Of course now it's public knowledge that being vaccinated caused you to shed the disease and infect others.
I got pneumonia from it (I have lung issues from another case of 'trusting the government' - never again). The hospital was 'you have covid and pneumonia. Go home'.
THAT is a death sentence - you're supposed to be admitted with that, because it will kill you. But I'm an old white guy and the 3ed world doctor (who I could barely understand) well she didn't give a shit. So I went home, got the ivomectin out that I use on our animals, and dosed myself. 8 hours later NO Covid. Gone.
Then I just had to deal with the pneumonia until Monday when I can see my doc. That I had the ability to do. If the ivomectin hadn't worked, I might not have survived.
Crapping on Ivermectin they way they did was gross malfeasance. A nickel a pill, given around the world to millions for years with a very mild side effect profile vs the $1K+/dose brand new crap they were peddling.
Follow the money
They banned nac, a vitamin i had been taking for ten years, because someone suggested it might help covid
Howie Mandell just said that the media never said that if you got the shot that you wouldn't spread it. (Even though that was exactly what Maddow said)
Howie Mandell seems to have killed many brain cells by performing his surgical glove gag too many times.
I took a covid test for a friends wedding because his wifes friends were nervous i wasnt vaccinated. I actually did because he asked nicely and it was a swab. Bfd. If i was forced to, my grumbly personality wouldve said “fuck off”
Our California neighbors 13 year old boy is now a 13 year old girl and while i mostly dont care what adults do giving a teenager chemical castration strikes me as wrong.
it should because it is wrong
its incredibly evil actually
This is one i do not understand. Arguing about tax rates i get. Mutilating children? Youre the bad guys.
My previous employer tried to play hardball and eventually said that they were firing everyone not vaccinated on June 1, 2022. I left May 1st and got a 30% raise out of it.
They walked it back May 15. Everyone who stayed got rewarded 24 months later by being told that their jobs were moving to ATL.
If not working on the line at “Factory Zero” was the biggest bullet that I ever dodged, refusing the shot was the second. That’s also ignoring the adverse health effects.
The amount of disdain that I have for everyone involved in pushing the shot cannot be overstated. While I benefited, countless people were not as fortunate.
I decided to take the J&J jab twice. Since it was made through “old school” means, I thought it posed little if any risk.
They’d have to forcibly jab me with an mRNA anything!
I can't/won't ever vote for a Democrat, no matter what they say or how normal they appear.
Never forget.
I sit out plenty of elections. Im republican or nothing in this state. Plenty of republicans i dont like. And as much i dont like trump the person, i have voted for him twice. I sat out 2020. If this country doesnt heal, the next trump will be worse. At least he fights
Ditto JVS. When covid showed up I was reminded of a book I read some years ago called Hitler's Willing Executioners. The author's name escapes me but the parallels to the covid days are uncanny.
I hope COVID (and everything else) was a wakeup call that we need to stay alert and ALWAYS question the government.
I'm surrounded by quite a few people who ONLY fear and follow the government so I kind of have a decent feel for their perspective too. Unfortunately, they don't see a better path for their "survival". They gotta feel like they are on the winning team.
Sadly we've become a nation of cowards and morons.
No one has critical thinking skills anymore.
No one will take a stand.
Everyone just wants free stuff from the government and they vote for the person who they think will give them the most of it. Bread and Circuses.
Watched the Qatar GP with my brother, and around lap 8-9 we were already saying that maybe a better use of our time would be to just watch the recap on the ESPNF1 youtube channel, as it was already looking like the race was going to be a boring-ass parade.
Then the safety car at lap 9-10, wherein the entire field dove into the pits for tires - except the two McLarens.
At that point, I said "hold on a sec", and after a couple laps worth of not very stringent mental arithmetic by two dudes sitting on a couch day-drinking at noon, we had realized with some simple math that given the 25 lap limit on tires, McLaren had just fucked themselves. We then committed to watch the entire race, and what a race it turned into! While I'm not going to say that we are smarter than the entire might of the McLaren strategy team.... it seems that we are smarter than the entire might of the McLaren strategy team.
Watching Oscar on the podium look like someone handed him a dead fish instead of a second place trophy was pretty hilarious. Especially juxtaposed by Sainz's utter joy in getting third. Oscar knew he got boned by the team and even a second place finish wasn't alleviating that feeling.
With two cars why not employ two strategies? Eggs and baskets, innit?
Oscar wouldve got fourth if they did that. They weren’t giving him the good one
Funny how he seems to always get the slow stop - except for Monza.
This is the ancient argument of conspiracy vs cock-up. Do you really think that they can conspire to create a, say, 3 second pit stop vs a 2 second one? Just think about it for, say, 3 seconds. It just doesn’t ring true. Cock-up vs conspiracy is a 95:5 ratio, imho, and speaking as a man who is no stranger to cocking things up!
Oscar gets the pit crew member that sometimes doesn’t perform well under pressure and that crew member gets second chances vs. if Blando got him, he’s gone after the first cock up.
One would think that should be an option, but McLaren seems to be following their Papaya Rules to the letter.
I’ll never forgive or forget the many “leaders” that made our lives hell (vax holdouts) during the covid times in the military. Eventually caved, and still regret it.
My former division commander just got fired, which brought me great joy.
One huge upshot is it completely changed the schooling trajectory of our children, which will probably be my wife and I’s crowning achievement besides a great marriage.
Somehow the Swedes figured out how to make cheap decent knives. Maybe helps having Sandvik Steel right there. An advantage we're giving up by letting Crucible get shut down (though there's still Carpenter for the moment).
Morakniv rightfully gets a lot of attention, but EKA also makes good cheap folding knives in Sweden. At the moment you can pick up an EKA Swede 8 for $39: comparable in size/purpose to a Buck 112, Sandvik 12C27 (decent stainless) blade, wood handles. Screwed together, unlike a pinned Buck, makes for easier cleaning & maintenance.
I found it wild that Crucible couldn't leverage Magnacut and other PM steels.
I know American companies get a lot of flack for their high priced knife, but I can't complain when I just dropped 250 bucks on a smallish Japanese knife made out of fairly inexpensive Silver3.
I bought a made in America kershaw switch blade. It was stupid expensive but it is awesome
Kershaw makes great knives.
I too am a switchblade guy, but I lose knives like a 9 year old. So, I use the Boker AK, mostly. I too appreciate the Kershaws and aspire to be the kind of guy who can own one and not lose it.
I lost my benchmade osbourne during the house move. Ive ha dit for ten years. Very upset about that one. I have lost so many kershaw leeks im single handedly keeping that division going