It's a scam

First, watch the video.

Then work on becoming unscammed. I'm leaving the corporate slave life soon. 

Still alive

My last post may have been a bit too negative. But I meant it.

Anyways, just wanted to say I am still here, but very busy. Monkeypox has not visited me yet.

A perfect storm

I try to avoid doomsday thinking. I mean just look at all the dire predictions from every crackpot since well, ever. They're wrong 99.9% of the time. 

But then you see dark clouds on the horizon. You think, well, probably just another little storm and we'll be back to sunny skies tomorrow. 

But then your neighbors start falling ill. Just a bug going around, we'll be fine in a week or two. 

Then your company announces a round or two of lay-offs. I'll just work extra hard and become irreplaceable. If not, there's always funemployment.

Then your washer and dryer decide to break, and it will cost an arm and a leg to fix, or an arm and a leg plus a disturbing but tempting amount to replace them. I can afford this minor emergency as a one off. We'll be frugal for a while, no biggie.

And then everything you're being frugal with, becomes more and more expensive. I'll just stop buying beef, and buy chicken or pork. Actually, I'll just buy chicken and only for special occasions. 

And then you have another emergency. The stress from all of the above likely contributed to it, and now you have a lot more stress. By the way, we're going to war with Russia, a bunch of small kids were shot and killed in a Texas school, your investments are plummeting, your savings are dried up, and if you are still employed, you freaking hate every minute of it. Plus your family is starting to blame you for being so bad at providing for them, at least that's how you feel. Nobody's happy. You and your family's outlook is... uncertain. 

Oh and by the way, that storm will be here any minute.

I'm tired, I'm scared, I'm stressed and I don't know how much longer I can keep this up. 

Recommended shows

I have a lot more personal stress than usual lately, combined with the daily terrible global news (suddenly I care much more about how crappy the world is), makes for a depressing outlook and a general feeling of misery. 

So I'm going to talk about things I like today.

Recently I've seen some very good shows, so here are a few I recommend:

Upload: This is a light-hearted, techy, sort-of sci-fi dramedy (mostly comedy) and it's just been fun. It takes place in the near future (maybe 20-50 years), and I will say some of the predicted tech/gadgets are so dystopian, pessimistic and reflective of some of the worst innovations of today that they feel like certainties. 

Worth a watch if only for those, but the show has a ton of fun with the concept of uploading your consciousness into a digital "heaven" upon death that even when the story is lacking, everything else makes up for it. But don't worry, the story is mostly fine and so is the acting. Available on the evil Amazon Prime.  

The Expanse: Probably the best sci-fi show in the last 10 years. Possibly the best sci-fi show ever. 

Season one took me a while to get used to. I remember watching it years ago, and gave up after 3 or 4 episodes. But I re-watched them and started to like it. Once you get it, and get comfortable with it, everything clicks and the show is freaking amazing. I think maybe season 5 is the best, but 6 is pretty damn good too. But if you haven't watched it, and if you like serious sci-fi, and if you can take in 4-5 episodes of season 1, you will be immensely rewarded. Honestly, season 1 isn't even that bad, I don't know what my problem was. I think it was just getting used to the belter accents. 

Anyway, I don't want to spoil anything nor spend all day writing about it, so I will say this: the effects are as good or better than big-budget films, with realistic space physics, while using mostly realistic scale (space is huge), which is refreshing not to have your intelligence insulted for the sake of storytelling. The drama, politics, conflicts, and the people are compelling. A few questions remain unanswered at the end of the show, but most were answered and I cannot remember seeing such a great show with a worthy ending. Extremely recommended. Also available on Prime.

Reacher: I watched this recently and just felt compelled to binge watch it. It's like a book you can't put down. Almost non-stop action, not big-dumb-Michael-Bay action, but the kind that you can follow, makes sense, leads from one point to another, and provides the occasional twist. 

The show is a little surprising. Jack Reacher, the hero, turns out to be more than the one dimensional stereotypical action figure. I'll just say things aren't so black and white and it's very well done. Great acting, great action, great characters, good story, and it all works incredibly well together. Highly recommended. Also on Prime.

The Witcher: This show is almost great. But there are some questionable set designs and actors that prevent me from completely gushing over it. But I will gush a little because many things about it are well-done. 

Henry Cavill is perfect as Geralt and crushes the performance as well as Geralt slays monsters. Most of the CGI stuff is really good, I really can't complain. A lot of it feels like a lived-in fantasy world with real characters, but then other moments feel like they cheaped out and the sets are sterile, some of the dialogue is lazy (old-world style fantasy characters using colloquialisms straight out of 2022 America is sloppy), and the acting feels forced at times (typically from the secondary characters). Overall though, it's nice to have a mostly competent fantasy show. Available on Netflix.

Without comment

via @DespicableMemes on Minds.com

We are in a housing bubble

But it's not as bubbly as the last one, which is to say there are significant supply and demand issues that make this bubble appear as good 'ol market forces doing what they do. 

Disclaimer: I'm a complete amateur when it comes to the housing market, but I know what I've seen and experienced the past several years, compared that to other reports and observations, and well, I'm confident I'm not horribly wrong.

Unless my financial situation dramatically improves soon, or housing prices approach affordable levels soon, I have given up on buying a house. With respect to wealth creation, I'll focus on investing, saving, and entrepreneurship. Maybe I should buy a house I can barely afford, sell it a couple years later and profit. But that's a bigger gamble than what I do with my other investments, plus hassle & ownership headaches, plus nothing ever goes according to plan. So right now, screw buying and living in a house, I'm not playing that game.

But there is a huge demand for housing:


I think it's a combination of many things: cheap money the last several years, the high and climbing prices stirs up the hornet's nest of speculators and flippers further driving prices, high wood prices and supply chain issues, an explosion of remote workers, inflation, etc.

When supply can't meet demand, prices go up (as they should, and that is not a bubble) and the market balances things out. But it's not balancing out.

The below is for an average-sized single family home (3 bed, 2 bath) in a suburban area in northern Utah (where we had water shortages last summer because there are too many people!):

It's listed for nearly $500k.

This is what you need to make to reasonably afford the average single-family house here (click image to enlarge):

 $110,000 with 10% down, and that is with little existing debt. Welcome to the real estate game; you cannot play! Something that cannot go on forever, will not.

Life of the Introvert (part 2)

Back when I wrote part 1, if we all would have bought and held a few hundred Bitcoin, we'd be millionaires right now (I wanted to but did not, to my eternal shame). 

Non sequitur aside, I bumped into this article to which I felt I could relate very much. I am not as extreme as the nocturnals, but I am comfortable with being alone, even if it were for months. All other things being equal, if I had access to the internet, I could live alone without issue indefinitely. But I have a family and prefer being around them, yet I still crave some alone time now and then.

When it comes to acquaintances or strangers--the larger the crowd the more stressed and exhausted I get. The population explosion and resultant crowds here in northern Utah is painful. Like physically and mentally stressful, exhausting, and vaguely depressing. I really need to get out.

Anyway, here are some excerpts I found among the most noteworthy: 

...while most people are fast asleep, there’s a whole world of people who are wide awake. They go to work, drive around, run errands at 24-hour stores. In this parallel universe, there are rarely crowds, nor traffic, nor lines; no awkward shuffling around other shoppers in the grocery aisle, no run-ins with neighbors or cacophony of email notifications. As the sun rises, these nocturnal people settle down to sleep.

They don’t all want to live this way. Some of them have to; they have sleep disorders, or night-shift jobs. But some of them want this very much—enough to seek out those night shifts, to train themselves to wake in the dark. They do this because of the isolation, not in spite of it. I talked to people who painted me a magical picture of their nighttime world: of exquisite, profound solitude; of relief; of escape.

I used to work swing shifts in my youth. And there was something very, very nice about getting off work and nobody is out. It's dark, quiet, little-to-no traffic, you can go grocery shopping in peace where the likelihood of idiots who think it's a good idea to stop in the middle of the aisle oblivious to the concept of other people, or elderly women paying with 1 part check, 1 part expired gift card, 1 part exact change is near zero. I miss grocery shopping at 2am in a nice clean & quiet store.

Much of the article is about how these people find relief from being nocturnal and avoiding people, how it may or may not be a disorder according to psychologists. 

But perhaps most interestingly was this part:

Pathologizing introversion sounds absurd—until you start considering the extreme end of the spectrum. Colin DeYoung, a psychologist at the University of Minnesota, didn’t comment on the DSM debate—but he did explain that the clinical version of introversion is known as “detachment,” characterized partly by low sensitivity to reward. That means disconnection from social relationships, but also from “energetic or upbeat positive emotions like joy or excitement,” he told me. Clark said something similar. “There is a connection between social interaction and pleasure,” she said. “So people who live their life alone without others, they may not be unhappy. But they also may not experience the full spectrum of pleasure.” And they might not even realize it.

Emphasis mine. "Low sensitivity to reward." I get this, I have it, and I have mixed feelings about it. I do not get a rush, high, thrill, nor elation when something significant and "good" happens to me. Other than stuff like sex, food, drugs (legally prescribed!)--yeah, those affect me like everyone else. But if I won the lottery, a competition, got married, had a kid--I don't feel much of a change in my mood. I am happy, but it feels very similar to other normal days where I'm not unhappy. You might think I'm a monstrous unfeeling psychopath, but I just feel things more slowly. The moment doesn't hit me like a truck, it slowly seeps its way in and I adjust. The big elation for me comes later--after I am very familiar and comfortable with someone or something: then those little and big moments of good things trigger my dopamine receptors constantly. I have to be intimately tied to whatever good thing happens to get immediate elation.*

It's strange, I never thought that characteristic was related to my introversion.

Like a lot of things, introversion is a multidimensional spectrum. I like being alone, but I also like having very few close friends and family around. Knowing just how much other people bother me, I can only imagine how hard it is for those on the more extreme end. Forcing people to conform and intermingle with large groups, like we do however, is insensitive at best, and literally torture at worst.

*I should mention that bad things affect me pretty much immediately. I may have low sensitivity to reward, but I am very much sensitive to loss and failure.

Miscellaneous updates

I will no longer refer to partisans and activists of the left in North America as liberals (I stopped using that ill-fitting label years ago) and progressives ("progress" lol). They are neither. They are more of the same predictable, anti-individual freedom, authoritarian left that started when Lenin took power. As the labels "socialist" and "Marxist" change definitions depending on who you ask and don't really capture all the non-economic leftist characteristics currently in abundance, I will unfortunately resort to using the broad, but fitting term, leftist.

Last summer I remember Australia going full tyranny with the Covid mandates. Canada is now  making Australia look like the little leagues. Before the trucker protest, I could not imagine a well-established liberal Western democracy enact emergency powers, threaten, arrest, and seize bank accounts of people for having "unacceptable views." And those views are totally understandable and quite reasonable for people who actually have to live with the rules the elites created, and have been for 2 years. Now that it is illegal, I feel the urge to donate.

They are building the border wall. They, as in the Dominican Republic. I only mention this because I am interested to see the both the reaction and the results. Do physical barriers impede physical movement? The experts the TV told me to trust disagree with each other! But we'll find out soon enough! 

Inflation is hitting me pretty hard, and I just got a big raise. I was trying to save up for a car, but those prices went way up and I think I'll try to wait it out. I have been wanting to buy a house for over a decade, but since I don't want to buy a piece of trash fixer-upper in a bad neighborhood, everything in the area was prohibitively expensive. Now that I have nearly tripled my income, new houses (including many 35 year-old houses) are still prohibitively expensive. I live in Utah, not California. And now the weekly grocery bill is getting out of hand. I very rarely eat out, I save as much as I can, and I thought I was being more or less frugal. But I'm going to have to find new ways of frugality while maintaining my sanity. I have the strong but vague sense the country is going to shit, while acknowledging the fact that every aging man has said that at one point; I know I may be wrong--but I really want to and want to know how to hedge against the shit-country scenario (cryptocurrency is still experiencing growing pains, faces significant government pushback, and is not yet up to the task, sadly). 

Am I being part of the problem? Not sure, but my small real-estate investments are one of the few paying good dividends. If you can't beat them, join them? A guy has to look out for his own; I can't fix the world by myself. Less so if I am poor. What am I gonna do?

It's been shown to be the case before and it will again: with high confidence, I predict leaks in the coming years showing big tech has cooperated with government to silence, censor, deplatform, and/or freeze financial tools/assets of those with "unacceptable views." That this kind of cooperation was without the backing of law.

Been busy

Life has been busy. I've been wanting to blog about many things, but just haven't found the time. I hope to change that this year. I plan on taking and making more me time, which means more family time, and a little more blogging time, hopefully.

Until then and as always, let's hope we don't stumble into another war.

RIP Bob Dole

I will miss Bob Dole. I really liked him and even liked his commercials. Not sure how great a president he would have made, but probably a lot better than Clinton and even George W. Bush in many ways.

He was a Trump supporter. That has nothing to do with the greatness we lost with his passing, but it's worth noting even well-respected people saw things in Trump, and not-so-great people are using that as an excuse to defile his legacy.

Happy Thanksgiving

I know I'm a bit early, but I won't have much free time over the next week or so. Still busy. If only I could blog for a living (I'd be interested in earnestly trying that and just seeing how it went, but the risk of little-to-no income is too much for me right now).

We can't all get what we want, but we can be thankful for those we love and the things we have.

Happy Thanksgiving.

Enjoy some royalty free Thanksgiving images:

Status update

Light-to-nonexistent blogging until further notice (life sucks).

Here's a couple things for now:

This is brilliant: Software engineer got tired of getting rejected by automated screeners and tested a theory.

Real resume: 0% success

Obviously fake resume stuffed with buzzwords: 90% success rate

Calls from from Notion, AirBnB, Reddit, Dropbox, Robinhood, etc pic.twitter.com/m80GUnPsr2

— Coding Career Community (@Coding_Career) October 30, 2021

Here’s Why Rapid COVID Tests Are So Expensive and Hard to Find. It's empty shelves for reasons unrelated to the supply chain issues. 

Halloween blend: almost spooky edition

Happy Thursday Halloween!

It feels like a scarier, more foreboding Halloween than last year. Enjoy!

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One of the best Dilbert's in a while:

click for whole cartoon

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Harvard Now Offering Advanced Degrees In Unconstitutional Law:

Some experts were quick to point out that Harvard has technically taught Unconstitutional Law for decades, but this latest move makes it official.

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White House Orders Daring Mission Into Afghanistan To Mark Stranded Americans' Passports As 'Non-Binary'

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Picard Suspended From Twitter For Saying He Sees Only Four Lights

 

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You may have read about some "Youngkin supporters" with tiki torches (presumably an effort to resemble the tiki torch-carrying extremists at the Charlottesville Unite the Right rally in 2017). 

Anyways, they were plants (shocking!): Lincoln Project takes credit for tiki torch stunt McAuliffe campaign passed off as genuine Youngkin supporters:

“Today’s demonstration was our way of reminding Virginians what happened in Charlottesville four years ago, the Republican Party’s embrace of those values, and Glenn Youngkin’s failure to condemn it," the Lincoln Project, a political action committee made up of ex-Republicans, said in a statement. 

Before the source of the stunt was known, former Democratic Gov. Terry McAuliffe’s campaign portrayed the group as genuine supporters of his Republican opponent. 

The five people pictured outside Youngkin’s campaign bus holding tiki torches in the rain wore khaki pants, white button-up shirts, sunglasses, and baseball caps.

--

The Bee is quick to follow up: Youngkin Keeps Lincoln Project Away By Holding Rally Within 500 Feet Of A School

Ouch.

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‘Frustration is at an all-time high’: Behind Biden’s falling poll numbers. The headline is right but the article is a Democrat sympathy crying circle along the lines of "Biden is not polling well because he's just too moderate! He needs to move further left!" Riiight. Now you know why Democrats are always shocked when Republicans win.

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Biden preparing to hand out treats this year:

The Wall Street Journal first reported on Thursday that the Biden administration is in talks to offer separated migrant parents and children around $450,000 per person. That would mean that if a parent and a child were separated at the border, together they would be eligible for a combined payment of $900,000.

The talks are part of negotiations between the Justice Department and lawyers representing the separated families in a number of tort cases that have claimed the families experienced harm when they were forcibly separated.

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In defense of dumb TVs (old but good):

Decreasing prices and decreasing margins on TVs combined with long replacement cycles have driven companies to take advantage of built-in smarts to enable a new revenue source: user data and advertising. As of Q2 2020, Vizio and HiSense are the only major brands making TVs that ship without advertising enabled in their UIs. Sony, Samsung, LG, and others have ads enabled by default, most of which can’t be disabled. All of the above brands have built capability to aggregate data on what content is being viewed, and again, not all of them have the option to disable that. TVs smart enough to help you are also smart enough to harm you.

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The forever Covid strategy has its advantages for the ruling class:

A senior NJ Transit worker, who was absolutely adamant that he/she must not be identified because they could get in serious trouble for talking to the media, later told me that employees who ordinarily work in that maintenance facility were instructed by their higher-ups to stay home that day. No chance that they’d be allowed to attend this event, it was decreed, even though the event was taking place in their literal workplace — a public facility to boot. The justification? Who knows. Probably some half-baked combination of COVID, terrorism, and whatever other hyped-up existential danger is said to be lurking in the background on any given week. They won’t explain their reasoning if you ask; just as with all manner of completely arbitrary policies deriving from COVID which still remain in effect, people in positions of authority typically can’t be bothered to even offer a rationale for this or that leftover measure — content instead to blithely acclimate to the “new normal” rather than buck the bureaucratic inertia.

Just this afternoon I spoke to my local city council member here in Jersey City, who’s up for re-election next week, and she claimed to me that the primary reason for requiring children as young as two to wear facemasks when playing outside at recess — something I continue to see around town disturbingly often — is “psychological.” Or in other words, children that age need to be taught that wearing a mask for hours on end, each and every school day, is the “right” thing to do. It was a candid admission in a sense, to acknowledge that children’s health is not really the thing guiding this policy calculation

We need to increase the cost of this strategy. Read the whole thing.

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One of the few newish and good things still on Netflix is the Witcher. Here's the trailer for the 2nd season:

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Last but not least,

The list of major Biden administration failures

• The Del Rio Haitian border crisis.
• Don't forget Afghanistan.
• Unity. Biden may be the Great Divider. Every president fails on this, but we should start holding them responsible.
• TBA 

Thursday blend: postponed edition

Exhausted, probably sick with something I'm guessing. Just don't have the energy or time. And it's Halloween in a few days. I never ever have enough time to properly prepare for and enjoy this "holdiay."

So I will be postponing this Thursday blend for a little while. It will be the Halloween blend (I hope).

Until then, here's stuff:

So revealing that Facebook employees never even *think* to have internal debates about the propriety of non-conservative media. Just doesn't occur to them that those outlets could also be responsible for propagating "misinformation" or causing "harm." Never crosses their minds pic.twitter.com/b5GIB3WuEg

— Michael Tracey (@mtracey) October 27, 2021

Thursday blend: no time edition

Happy Thursday! 

I haven't posted anything all week but I have been working on something I hope to post within a few days. Between work, my nascent side-hustle, family, life-stuff (all the little things we need to do that add up) and the dwindling but precious hours and minutes I increasingly need to sleep and rest, I have very little time for this blog, unfortunately.

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Leftists Upset As Business Refuses To Discriminate

Experts Warn That If Children Between The Ages Of 5-11 Aren’t Vaccinated Then Pfizer Executives Won’t Get Their Sales Bonuses

Americans Still Trapped In Afghanistan Told By Washington Post To Lower Expectations


Liberal Parent Trying To Figure Out How To Cheer For His Son Brandon

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Trump launches his own social media platform, calling it TRUTH Social


Illinois hospital systems losing hundreds of workers because of COVID-19 vaccine mandates


Senate Republicans Block Voting Rights Bill, Leaving Its Fate in Doubt. I have not read the bill yet, but here is the full text.

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Here's a twitter thread on a small piece of the supply chain issues (click the tweet to view the whole thread):

 

Here is what I learned. Please keep in mind this is one team’s perspective. But perspective is important. I didn’t get into any “who is at fault” discussions, I just listened to them and what they had to say and what they were seeing. So here we go… 1/ https://t.co/EMtw5LTqwF

— Nathan Strang (@NavyStrang) October 20, 2021

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Last but not least,

The list of major Biden administration failures

• The Del Rio Haitian border crisis.
• Don't forget Afghanistan.
• Unity. Biden may be the Great Divider. Every president fails on this, but we should start holding them responsible.
• TBA 

Thursday blend: to boldly go briefly edition

Happy Thursday! I hope you got your Christmas shopping done, because after today they probably won't arrive in time (joking aside, there is a lot of truth to it--get it done early this year!).

Breaking: Evil Mirror Universe William Shatner Returns From Space

Santa Announces That Due To Supply Chain Issues, You Can Now Choose Between A Roasted Chestnut Or A Ball-In-A-Cup

California Orders Police To Arrest Children Who Pick Out Toys Traditionally Associated With Their Biological Gender

Terrifying New Halloween Mask Depicts A Human Face Not Wearing A Mask

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U.S. supply chain too snarled for Biden Christmas fix, experts say

Always be skeptical of 1.) the news media, 2.) "experts", and 3.) any claim involving the federal government. That said, this is likely true despite itself:

Biden brought together powerbrokers from ports, unions and big business on Wednesday to address shipping, labor and warehousing pain in the U.S. supply chain, and announced new around-the-clock port operations in Los Angeles.

As his Republican opposition seizes on possible Christmas shortages to connect Biden's economic policies to inflation, and try to stall a multitrillion-dollar spending bill in Congress in coming weeks, the White House's message Wednesday was that a solution is in sight.

The government isn't fixing this. It's a global problem that largely is due to the pandemic, China being China, and a host of inter-related lesser but complex issues like a lack of empty containers, truckers, & longshoremen.

 
Relatedly: Majority of Americans in new poll says government doing too much

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Schools Group That Urged Attorney General’s Anti-Parent Initiative Has Ties to Democrats, Unions

To paraphrase Glenn, the NEA and school boards are not very popular right now, use that and unseat them.

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Katie Couric omitted Ruth Bader Ginsburg's contempt for the anthem kneelers to spare Ginsburg's reputation:

In new memoir, Going There, Couric writes that she edited out a part where Ginsburg said that those who kneel during the national anthem are showing 'contempt for a government that has made it possible for their parents and grandparents to live a decent life.'

The published story, which Couric wrote for Yahoo! News in 2016, did include quotes from Ginsburg saying refusing to stand for the anthem was 'dumb and disrespectful', but omitted more problematic remarks.

This incident is hardly consequential, but multiplied by dozens of journalists covering more important issues... Tell me why we should trust the media?

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Last but not least,

The list of major Biden administration failures

• The Del Rio Haitian border crisis.
• Don't forget Afghanistan.
• Unity? Every president fails on this, but we should start holding them responsible.
• TBA

Job-hunting

It sucks. 

And it doesn't help that these days you absolutely have to job-hop every 2 years just to keep your salary at market level, or your employer can and will underpay you. 

The boomers had it easy when companies actually rewarded loyalty. Today, even as employee loyalty is demanded, it is rewarded with significantly lower pay and a boot in your ass the first sign of trouble.

Over the course of your working life, that adds up to a not insignificant sum, without which probably would include many more unhealthy incidents of stress due to not having enough, a lower standard of living, and fewer opportunities for you and your family among others. Being a good provider now necessarily includes job-searching on a regular basis for most Americans and much of the modern world.

With that in mind, you think the job-hunting process would be easier. In some ways it is a little, but in others it is very much not. I could go on, but many of you already know each and every way the job-hunting process horribly sucks and eats away at your soul with every edit to your resume, every tailored cover letter, every bullshit "aptitude" test. And despite all of this, we all know there are many companies who are not actively hiring, they just collect resumes per their SOP. 

There is a massive, overdue opportunity to disrupt the job-board market. Indeed has pretty much a monopoly and they really, really suck at it.

/rant 

Here's a video.

Thursday blend: eh-dition

It's already Thursday. I'm just going to phone it in today. Not sorry.

Democrats Put Out 'Help Wanted' Ad For Submissive, Obedient Woman To Replace Sinema

Local Man Prays That Wife's Text Message Of 'OK' Really Means OK

'I'm A Little Worried About What My Son Is Learning In School,' Says Dangerous Domestic Terrorist

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A student group at @EmersonCollege was suspended and is under investigation for handing out these stickers critical of the Chinese government.

Emerson promises free speech, but those promises are now kinda "SUS" — “suspicious.”https://t.co/U2hOKhppMl #FreeSpeech pic.twitter.com/kk5CoZJmau

— FIRE (@TheFIREorg) October 5, 2021

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Officially designated "whistleblowers" demanding more censorship get the red carpet treatment, along with a professional PR tour, because their "whistleblowing" doesn't challenge any orthodoxies -- just provides additional fuel to what establishment factions wanted to do anyway https://t.co/r2SKb3IIKJ

— Michael Tracey (@mtracey) October 6, 2021

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There's a Pulitzer Prize waiting for some investigative journalist who finds out why this took so long in the United States.

I'll bet it wasn't because of incompetence. And I'll bet it wasn't lack of knowledge or know-how or production capacity or money.

Guess what's left. https://t.co/4WtCdAA2nu

— Scott Adams (@ScottAdamsSays) October 6, 2021

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The great office refusal:

Driven partly by fear of infection, and by the liberating rise of remote work, Americans have been increasingly freed from locational constraints. Work continues apace in suburbs and particularly in sprawling exurbs that surround core cities, while the largest downtowns (central business districts, or CBDs) increasingly resemble ghost towns.

This shift has made it more practical for individuals and particularly families to migrate to locations where they can find more affordable rents, and perhaps even buy a house. But such a pattern may be countered by investors on Wall Street, who seem determined to turn the disruption to their own advantage by gearing up efforts to buy out increasingly expensive single-family homes, transforming potential homeowners into permanent rental serfs and much of the country into a latifundium dominated by large landlords. ...

The shift of work from the office to the home, or at least to less congested spaces, threatens the strict geographic hierarchy of many elite corporations. Some corporate executives, like Morgan Stanley’s Jamie Dimon, are determined to force employees back into Manhattan offices, like it or not. It’s now a common mantra among like-minded executives, especially those connected to downtown office development, that workers are “pining” to return to the office. Some have even threatened employees who do not come back in person with lower wages and decreased opportunities for promotion, while offering to reward those willing to take the personal hit of coming back on-site every day.

Haha. I'm not going back to the office, not without a massive (25%+) raise and more and better perks. That's how much working at home is worth, and I might be low-balling it. They can fire me and dozens of like-minded employees if they don't like it. We are in the position of strength. I'd be happy to remind them of that.

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Last but not least,

The list of major Biden administration failures

• The Del Rio Haitian border crisis.
• Don't forget Afghanistan.
• TBA: I'm thinking about adding unity here. Yeah, every president fails on this, but maybe we should start holding them responsible. Especially when they explicitly promise it (even if they know they will fail miserably).

Thursday blend: labor shortage edition

Happy Thursday!

James Bond To Stay Male, Will Be Played By Elliot Page

DISGUSTING: Disrespectful Football Player Kneels During Traditional 'F Joe Biden' Chant

Leftists Deeply Afraid Things Could Go Back To Normal

“Normal is like the worst thing ever,” said Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the world’s smartest socialist. “Normal is systemic racism and inequality and people telling me the math doesn’t add up on all my plans—even though I didn’t do any math.”

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An observation: I went to the doctor's office recently to have some blood drawn for labs. I checked in, walked in the little blood lab room, sat in the chair, turned my head the other way, felt some pain, and I'm assuming they drew some blood. But I have no idea if something was injected or drawn, or if the needle was even clean--it happened pretty quick. That's our new normal. We go where we're told, and technicians poke you and inject or draw fluids (if you're lucky an actual nurse might do it, doctors don't have time for that).

I think it's good to question "normal" sometimes. At least be more aware and ask questions. It's like I was on autopilot the other day. It's not just about medical stuff, it's everything. All the little fees and taxes we typically no longer question, or any minor annoyance that is suspiciously easier in which to accede rather than to challenge. I'll try to be more aware and at least slightly skeptical of "normal" things.

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There's apparently a labor shortage. I have kind of been vaguely aware of this the past several months, but it's getting more pronounced lately. And according to this article, it's still hard to find work despite the labor shortage:

Erica Groshen, senior economics advisor at the Cornell University School of Industrial and Labor Relations and the former commissioner of the Bureau of Labor Statistics, told Insider that employers may not be working rapidly to actually fill the record number of job openings.

"They may say, 'Well, we have an opening and we have it listed,' but they may not be rushing to fill it if they're not sure how the pandemic is playing out in their area," Groshen said. "So they may leave the posting up, but not be rushing."

The supply chain industry is having a particularly rough time with it. If you're in that industry, now is a good time to ask for a raise and/or change companies for the increased pay the industry rarely gives.

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There may be a government shutdown. Good. Save us some money, and propose something much more reasonable than a $3.5 trillion bill. 

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Twitter seems to think (or hope) that Dog the bounty hunter will find Brian Laundrie before the FBI finds him.

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Last but not least,

The list of major Biden administration failures

• The Del Rio Haitian border crisis.
• Don't forget Afghanistan.
• TBA

Thursday blend: the Biden list of failures

I'm going to keep a list of the growing Biden failures and re-post it every Thursday blend. The list is starting out small, but not insignificant. I can add more, but I'll try to keep it to major/huge and obvious failures. That said, happy Thursday!

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Gen-Zer Wishes Socialism Had Some Historical Examples Of Whether Or Not It Works

Border Patrol Agents Accused Of Patrolling Border

Idiot Immigrants Enter Country Legally

Trudeau Re-Elected Sultan Of Canada

Above image is satire, barely

Actual photo of Trudeau - click for story

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It appears misinformation and sloppy immigration policy was largely responsible for the immigration crisis. 

The left seems increasingly disinterested in carrying water for old man Biden: Joe Biden's Disastrous Approval Ratings Show No Sign of Rebounding (note that is from the lefty rag Newsweek).
 

President Biden's ambassador to Haiti resigns over 'inhumane' treatment of Haitian migrants.

Gee, I wonder why Biden is rarely accessible by the press? Could it be that he's a terrible president, or that he has extreme difficulty answering basic questions? My money is on both.

President Joe Biden pitched the merits of democracy during his inaugural United Nations address, but hours later, White House aides' treatment of reporters raised questions about whether he is leading by example. ...

"Biden hasn’t completely shut out the press, but he has been less available to them than any president in recent memory," Schnur added. "The White House has the prerogative of deciding on the format, but the president should be much more available to questions from journalists than has been the case until now."

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2 men arrested for trying to sneak KFC into Auckland

Above image satire, but only barely (again)

 

Reminds me of a South Park episode.

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Last but not least,

The list of major Biden administration failures

• The Del Rio Haitian border crisis.
• Don't forget Afghanistan.
• TBA