Posts by SWTarget

Quote from Lord Soth

U-Haul’s annual report for 2021 showed people are heading to Texas and Florida more than any other state while leaving California and Illinois.

I keep telling people to stay away from Illinois. For your own good.

Really.

Quote from Gina

Why would people put millions of dollars into one bank? It's only insured to $250k. hug risk.

I guess there's really no easy way to manage and access large sums of cash. I'd always wondered how difficult it would be to have hundreds of millions of dollars - but I'll bet I could suffer through it.

For someone managing his or her personal wealth, perhaps you can afford to have dozens / however many accounts you need to keep all of your deposits insured.

Now imagine you are running a small business with a $12M annual payroll. You are NOT going to run your payroll out of dozens of accounts. You aren't going to risk that the checks you write to your vendors bounce because they drew on the wrong account. The very remote risk of your bank going under pales in comparison to the financial risk of a mistake let alone the huge administrative burden of keeping dozens of accounts to keep them FDIC insured.

Companies may choose to mitigate their risk of a banking booboo by keeping reserves in multiple, non-affiliated banks, but unless / until it happens to "the bank near you", the probability of this kind of thing happening just seems so incredibly remote that I would wager relatively few small business do that.

And I'm not in favor of sending anyone's son or daughter off to fight any wars at all. Doesn't change the inevitability of it.

Quote from Maverick

One question I have is where are the traffic control signs? Yield or stop signs. I see a couple poles, one the far left corner and another on the near right but neither one seems to have a sign on it.

At 0:30 the news lady said the police car raced through a stop sign. At 0:58 the stop sign on the far corner is seen above and slightly to the left of the silver car's back top corner. At 1:04 in the video you see the stop sign that is on the corner where the silver car came to rest.

This is Australia, the signs are on the corners opposite where you are looking.

Quote from Gina

He switched his lights on after the accident.

I'm not sure he turned them on at all, rather, they come on automatically if the vehicle senses it has been in an accident.

Alternately, if he was fiddling with the switch at that exact moment, might be why he blew the stop sign.

Quote from Toad

Don't you think that the more we get involved in Ukraine the more Xi sees a window of opportunity to do whatever he wants in the South China Sea and Taiwan? Do you think he'll pass on the opportunity?

If he has a brain, he'll let Russia exhaust our war material supplies and then act. We are at a HUGE disadvantage in the Pacific to begin with because of the long logistics trail. Exacerbate that with empty war material warehouses. Xi has to be smiling.

If Xi thinks this is giving him an opportunity, then he is a fool. Nothing the US is giving to Ukraine is in any way is depleting what would be brought to bear to defend Taiwan, or the Philippines, or Malaysia.

Quote from Gina

This is the Russian mindset

https://news.yahoo.com/russias…ea-pushing-091433077.html

Russia's Medvedev floats idea of pushing back Poland's borders

This in my opinion is why Toad's attitude of isolationism is always doomed to fail. If the US/NATO wasn't already keeping Russia busy in Ukraine, then it's Poland or Estonia or Moldova or Romania and we're right in the same position. By that measure, it could have been Ossetia or Crimea that there was a forceful response to, and then we wouldn't be talking about Donbas.

For that matter, in WWII why did it take the invasion of Poland when perhaps it could have been short circuited earlier with Czechoslovakia or Sudetenland? Heck, why not re-occupation of the Rhineland? Had the "West" shown the will, things would have been much different.

So my observation is, the conflict starts when the "West" finally decides it's time. Until they decide it's time, their inaction only emboldens the dictator to make more brazen moves, and the dictator gets more powerful in the meantime, not less.

Sorry to hear, RR. Mine passed on the 25th last month. Had plans to visit on the 22nd but a circumstance got in the way. She texted that evening to say she hoped my week would go smoother. She was already gone by the time I got the call. I can't be certain if having the opportunity to say goodbye would be have been better for me or not, but please forgive me if I envy you a little bit for your privilege.

Prayers for peace for you and all of yours.

Worst

Vulcan

Evar

Quote from Iron

A long time favorite of ours is A Christmas Carol with George C. Scott. . . I've seen other adaptations but it is the best by far in our opinion.

George C Scott, you say?

Was going to title this "socialist utopian medicine" but I'm bad at sarcasm / irony and it wouldn't come off as intended.

Anyhoo . . .

I have a pain in my arm. No biggie, but want it to get better. Had an appointment already with my regular doctor, so just decided to mention it. Five minutes of talking, slight prodding to determine range of motion, and poof, prescription for an anti-inflammatory, get some blood work since I am due, x-ray to rule out skeletal problem, and referral to physical therapy. Prescription ready in 2 hrs at the pharmacy. Do I need an appointment for the other items? Nope. Walked in to a lab and had blood drawn this morning without calling ahead, in/out 15 minutes (granted, last time they had only one person and it would have taken longer, but this time, at least 3 workers and boom, done). Drive down road to hospital, walk into imaging center also without an appointment, and in/out in in less than 30 minutes. Accessibility very high. Insurance will cover, minor co-pays will be approximately $25-$50.

Trade off for accessibility -- Cost. My company is very open about what they spend on benefits. They have kept the employee contribution relatively small, about 15%. But total cost for my family plan is somewhere around $28K per year. My company hasn't said whether the total plan cost will go up next year, but just said that the employee contribution would not change.

Youngest brother just a couple weeks ago was talking about his medical coverage. A little different story there. The cost of his medical plans all went up. Unlike my company, his employer has decided that the employee must cover the entire increase. The company will continue to contribute $700 / month (that's $8,400 annually for you math-challenged folks), the employee pays the rest through paycheck deduction. After the increase in his contributions, he calculates that he will need at least a $2 per hour raise just to keep his net take-home pay even next year. (Not being able to help myself, I told him that was his benefit for being a Union Thug.)

What's the alternative? Some would say socialize the industry. Gov-run healthcare would mean what? Well, no insurance so you would pay taxes. I have 14% stuck in my head as a rate that has been bandied about that would go just to healthcare. People with lower incomes would possibly / probably pay less for the coverage. People with higher incomes would pay more in taxes. People like me who presently have very generous employers would get the short end, while people like my brother may benefit and see it as a good thing.

Trade off for that? What happens to accessibility? I've heard horror stories about the long waiting times for basic diagnostic testing in some countries with socialized medicine. Are they true? I'm sure to a degree they are. I am also always mindful of my friends who live in Sweden, both working in the medical field (one in administration, the other an oncology nurse), and their complaints about how inefficient everything is and the 3 year struggle to get a second MRI machine for one of the hospitals. My guess is, I would still have received my blood test and my x-ray under socialized medicine, but it would have been on their timetable, not mine.

Point of my wall of text? I like my easily access healthcare, but it is sobering to understand how much of the cost I really am not bearing compared to others. I feel very blessed to have a relatively good position in it all. I can also see why so many others are cynical when I compare their situation to my own. No system is perfect, trade offs for everything, and everyone's experiences will be different.

I see someone who isn't feeling well and doesn't want to infect others.

You people are very judgemental.

I think back in April there was a Russian drone that ended up crashing in Serbia or Croatia. And there are vids all over the place of Russian AA rockets that don't do what they are supposed to. I'm sure this wasn't deliberate, just another example of their less than fully reliable tech.

He thought he hurt your feelings or made you mad and was embarrassed. Just send him an e-mail asking him why he left and I'm sure he'll come back.

Most random picture I think I took this year.

Yes, that's looking out my back door.

No, that sandal doesn't belong to anyone who lives here.

For some reason that reminds me of an old cartoon . . . something about modern inventions (for the late 40's), and when they were talking automobiles . . .

"This one comes with special-equipped bumpers" zoom out from driver, the bumpers are so wide they cover both sidewalks "Just let them TRY to get away!!"

Smashing noise

"This model also has a glass bottom, so when you DO strike a pedestrian, you can see if he was a friend of yours!"

EDIT -- OMYGOSH I FOUND IT!

Quote from Toad

He's going to get off with a DUI I think.

I read of a case long ago where the town bully had killed a guy's kid. The dad of the kid kept his mouth shut about it and waited a few months. He then went and parked a half a block up the street from the bully's favorite bar about an hour before closing time, sipping from a pint of whiskey. He got enough in him to feel the buzz. When the bully stepped out of the bar and into the one horse town main street, the dad chugged the rest of the bottle, splashing some on his shirt front. Then he nailed the accelerator and knocked the bully into the next astral plane.

The cops knew why the dad did it. Revenge. As he had never said a peep about it and his BAC showed him legally drunk, the guy ended up with a DUI. They couldn't show premeditation. It was an accident. Payback's a bitch.

Display More

Sounds like a 1981 "Quincy" episode.

"Quincy M.E." D.U.I. (TV Episode 1981) - IMDb

D.U.I.: Directed by Georg Fenady. With Jack Klugman, Garry Walberg, John S. Ragin, Val Bisoglio. Quincy gets involved in an anti drunk driving campaign after a…

www.imdb.com

Quote from El Sluggo Loco

Noise cancelling... That's interesting. As long as the ringing pitch doesn't change. You just dial it in and reverse the phase. That's a simple and ingenious solution.

Quote from Gina

The problem is that you're not really hearing a sound. It's the perception of a sound. You could remove every part of your ear and you'll still "hear" it.

You're both right to a degree. The Doctor said it depends on the cause of the tinnitus as to whether it will work. It isn't an external sound, but in some people the hairs in the inner ear partially lay down as if they are getting a stimulus, and so the person hears a sound that isn't there. These people can be helped with the feedback in a hearing aid if they can tune it just right that the hairs stand erect.

Other people have tinnitus because the inner ear or the nerves have been damaged so that there is a range of sound the ear isn't picking up in part or in whole, and the brain tends to fill in the lack of stimulus by creating one to "fill the void." These people aren't able to be helped, as the feedback can't be detected due to the existing damage.

At least that's what I remember of the conversation. I also remember the "thousands of dollars to find out" part most vividly.

Quote from Iron

They don't help with tinnitus like some do so I've read . . .

Several years ago I went to an audiology center to see if they could do something about my tinnitus. I was told they could try some kind of a feedback hearing aid that in theory could cancel the tinnitus. He said the problem was that they only get it to work well for about 40% of patients, and since my hearing in general wasn't bad enough, insurance was not going to cover the thousands of dollars it would take to find out if I was one of the lucky ones.

Yeah, I was trying to look it up and it is definitely a more murky area than I imagined. Guess I'm still naive enough to think that laws mean things. One site had 465 different legal definitions.

Did find this, though. Could already be in litigation I suppose.

FPC to California AG: Revoke Your “Good Moral Character” Legal Alert and Comply with Bruen Before We Sue

Last night, Firearms Policy Coalition (FPC) sent a letter to California Attorney General Rob Bonta informing him that if local concealed-carry issuing agencies…

www.firearmspolicy.org

"Conditioning a carry license on a discretionary evaluation of an applicant’s ‘good moral character’ is patently inconsistent with Bruen’s repeated statements that the carry right may not be denied by non-objective criteria applied by a local government official."

Easy definition would be, no felony convictions.