lol! gonna be quite a week!fade everything@profitzet
·My prediction for next week:
-Monday: Relief bounce.
-Tuesday: Democrats win. Market dumps.
-Wednesday: Trump bombs the shit out of Iran, blames Democrats. Circuit breakers triggered.
-Thursday: WW3.
-Friday:
@kevinxu
says to prepare for the biggest bull run ever.
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chris Don’t forget Trump’s threat to take over DC if the wrong candidate wins!
I think the US could be in for a bumpy ride over the next two weeks but I don’t believe we’ll see WWIII. I think what we are likely to experience is a Global Spring, similar to the references that have already been made here regarding the Revolutions of 1848.
I have little hope such change, positive or negative will, impact my country. The comments from Pelosi the other showed me as clearly as anything that no matter who us elected there is one plan and change for the better is not consistent with that plan. Regardless of who wins.
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‘@Rainmaker1973
Massimo
@Rainmaker1973
The most thrilling hiking route in China’
Are those cafes along that trail? And is that a hotel near the end? Wanting to climb Mt. Everest? Join the queue. But this trail looks wild and the views are outstanding.
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JohnnyGL Yeah, that one got my attention, too. It’s hard to tell exactly how long it is.
Maybe I need to drag the family to Chongqing?
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vao I wonder whether the lenses of the camera introduced a strong distortion, making the slopes of the mountain appear steeper than they are.
The houses at the 0:15, 0:27, 0:52 marks look a bit elongated to me. Idem for the scene from about 0:30 to 0:36, and the bridge arch on the lower left at 0:56.
Photos and videos on other sites seem to indicate that the trail is indeed impressive, but the ridge, while very steep, may not look like a knife’s edge.
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Don I don’t buy it — lens distortion and/or image manipulation. Looks like the photos in real estate listings which turn 350 sq. ft. condos into billionaire’s palaces.
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Christain B Yes, there is horizontal compression to make it look steeper. That is the Three Gorges Dragon Ridge and while it is a trail on a very steep ridge, the video Massimo posted makes it over exaggerated.
Here is a more normally rendered video of the trail:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fF55boBB3pcI am kind of let down by most of Massimo’s posts actually.
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Offtrail Thanks for that video. It looks like the trail may be fenced on both sides, making it considerably less interesting.
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ChrisPacific I like that one much better, thanks. It looks quite beautiful in that one without the exaggeration (in today’s media environment, obviously doctored videos, like that one, give off the same kind of stench I get from AI fabrications, even if they aren’t AI themselves).
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ISL I have hiked (not handrails) “knife edged” ridges in Google Earth and in person, they do not look knife-edged. There clearly is the type of distortion you see in Google Earth with the 3X altitude distortion (which is useful for data visualizations). Still looks fun, though I prefer mountain hikes with no stairs and no people and no handrails.
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pete The video is vertically stretched (like the movies sometimes were on the old TVs, in order to get rid of the black bars).
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Clankenfoot Machine transcription/translation of the voice over:
The most thrilling hiking trail in China is located in Wushan County, Chongqing. Winding up from Wuxia Port, it leads directly to the summit of Denglong Peak, one of the Twelve Peaks of the Three Gorges. The 12-kilometer trail has been carved along the mountain ridge, with an cumulative elevation gain of 1,040 meters. Following the natural contours of the terrain, it resembles a dragon’s spine coiling across the mountains—hence its name, the “Three Gorges Dragon’s Spine.” The trail connects scenic spots such as Wenfeng, Guan Town, and the Water Tower. The hiking difficulty is moderate, and completing the full loop takes approximately five hours.
A 4-kilometer half-route is available for those seeking a lighter option. Notably, the trail is unlit at night and open to the public free of charge. Walking along the Three Gorges Dragon’s Spine, you can gaze across the vast Yangtze River to the left and admire the majestic peaks ahead, taking in the breathtaking scenery of Wuxia. When autumn winds blow, the mountainsides blaze with red foliage, harmonizing with the stark white rock faces and the emerald-green river—every step offering stunning views, immersing you in nature’s embrace.
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Regarding: Fears for UK economy as births collapse to lowest level since 1977, we have “Former Conservative MP Miriam Cates, who has long campaigned to draw attention to Britain’s ‘baby bust'” expounding on why this is a major issue:
“The consequences of decades of below-replacement birth rates are already being felt, with a record tax burden on working-age people, shortages of workers in key industries and an unfunded pensions bill.
[…]
Politicians need to wake up to this issue; falling birth rates are the biggest long-term threat to Britain’s prosperity.”
Raise your hand if bringing more taxpayers, more (low-wage gig) workers, and more contributors to social security into the world is what you consider to be the main goals for having children and what motivates you to procreate.
Raise your other hand if you believe that falling birth rates are the main threat to UK’s prosperity — above and beyond climate change, resource depletion, or war.
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Ignacio Raise your hand if bringing more taxpayers, more (low-wage gig) workers, and more contributors to social security into the world is what you consider to be the main goals for having children and what motivates you to procreate.
Wow! This is the most impressive critic to neoliberalism I have read and just in a single summary phrase. Bravo vao.
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GrimUpNorth Really hope the youngsters are thinking this rather than : My wages are low and rent too high, due to all those illegal immigrant boat people getting special treatment.
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JohnA It is quite simple. Young people cannot afford to have children. The cost of housing, transport, food, energy, falling wages are bad enough, but for the first 5 years of a child’s life until they reach school age, parents either have to sacrifice one salary or pay extortionate childminding costs. On top of which, many prospective parents have crippling student loan repayments. The Thatcher and Blair years pretty much destroyed prosperity for the many for the benefit of the few. Another illustration of neoliberal enshittification of society. And to rub salt in the wounds, politicians expect these young people to accept conscription to fight and die or be maimed in non winnable wars of no benefit to them.
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cristobal It´s called ¨Family Values¨
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Michaelmas vao: Raise your hand if bringing more taxpayers, more (low-wage gig) workers, and more contributors to social security into the world is what you consider to be the main goals for having children
With robotics, AI, and automation we actually don’t need so many workers aka taxpayers. But:-
[1] That would require serious investment;
[2] The people on top now wouldn’t be the people on top any more as that wouldn’t be the same system of capitalism as we have now.
[3] And yet it’s stunningly obvious that the inevitable result of the neoliberal housing ponzi of the last forty years, when housing costs have been driven so high that people are living with their parents into their late 30s, unable to move out, is late and low family formation.
Current elites are not just scum, but fools.
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ArvidMartensen I think that we keep making the same mistake re the insane state of the world at the moment.
We keep looking for logic. But logic from our own perspective.
Because we worry about global warming and the skyrocketing cost of living and whether there will be a nuclear war and how to even afford a house and a family.
And some of us wonder why the “elites” don’t understand? How could they have so much money and be so dumb as to wreck the world and kill themselves eventually.What if the super-rich have two main goals, staying alive (them and theirs) and owning/controlling as much as they can?
What if the chaos we are seeing is the outcome of their planning around their own goals? In the context of the world as we know it possibly ending climate-wise, with too many humans to realistically support.What if, while the crazy Zionist oligarchs are doing everything to bring on the end times, the non-Zionist western oligarchs are just being pragmatic and making contingency plans for when it arrives?
What if we are just minor collateral damage in their plans? If I need to walk from A to B outdoors, I will likely squash some ants and bugs on the way, but I won’t notice.
Wars? Gotta own the resources to have the most powerful military. So control over all fossil fuels and mineral resources is a must.
AI? If humanity is going to be wiped out and no more workers, then they will need AI to do all the drudge work. Keep the AI in the airconditioned buildings doing the work of millions. Keep the humans outside in the heat.
Robots? If human soldiers become incapacitated by heat and disease, then the each tech warlord will need armies of robots to keep safe from the other tech warlords and to fight each other for resources.Build those bunkers and datacentres and robots baby! Whoever has the best wins!
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AI could turn China’s social credit system into surveillance tool: government-funded study SCMP
“The researcher pointed out that while a high or low score might not appear to directly affect an individual’s rights and obligations on the surface, in reality, it influences the treatment they receive in areas such as healthcare, financial lending and government services.”
This reality is already common practice in the USA…for a long time.
Driver facing cameras, flock, geolocation, integrated continuous financial, visual and geolocation attributes etc. taking more and more data processing power sucking up more resources for what, why and for who’s benefit
A technocracy of kakistocracy
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Jalopnik link re: Chinese high speed rail goes to another article about Alaska
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“Support for rejoining EU grows after Burnham opens door to UK’s return”
This was a fair poll done by Ipsos saying 56% want to go back into the EU. ‘When the findings were filtered by those likely to vote in a future referendum, the result was 63-34’. Of course the people asked in this poll were all in the City of London…
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Ignacio If you ask me i don’t want the UK back in the EU. The UK invented TINA. Pity nobody is asking me!
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cristobal I agree with you. Good ridence to bad rubish!
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vao At the time the discussion on the coming Brexit plebiscite was heating up, I read somewhere (I do not remember where) that Great Britain was the “stormtrooper of neoliberalism” in Europe. In that sense, the departure of the UK is a good (albeit marginal) thing for the EU.
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DJG, Reality Czar Ignacio: Agreed.
Why let in a country persecuting free speech with endless nonsense about antisemitism and Pro-Pal terraristses?
Why let in the world capital of false flag operations?
Condition: Withdrawal from Cyprus and reunification of that EU member.
Condition: Withdrawal from Gibraltar.
Because we know that six months after Brentrance Mistake Two, they will be maundering about plump Brussels bureaucrats diddling with Sacred Traditions like bangers and mash.
Rule, Britannia, elsewhere.
But I’m just a wog.
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anne warren agree Ignacio, but I’m Irish. Not worth considering as far as the English are concerned!
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eg We were merely the first among numberless millions so considered worthless among the overseas possessions of the English, Anne.
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“Hell will freeze over before Havana gives in to Trump. But regular Cubans don’t have that long.” So says CNN.
I don’t know where to begin critiquing this article. I’ve been to Cuba twice and was impressed with the Cuban people. They are smart and well educated. They are hard working and resilient. And yes they can wait out Trump and the United States. Cubans spent more than 400 years as a colony of first Spain and then the USA. There is no way they are going back.
Were I the head of CNN I would send a reporter to Pino del Rio where the entire mass transit system for the city is powered by horses, and has been for many years. I rode one of the horse drawn wagons that hold about 24 people and the other riders told me how proud they were of their transportation system. The wagons, which have rubber tires and roofs of plastic sheeting, are all manufactured in the city.
A burlap bag hangs behind each horse and when the horse poops the poop is collected in the bag. When the horse bus arrives at the next station a worker dumps the poop into a wheel barrow and runs it to the nearest municipal vegetable garden and puts it onto a compost pile. Very little is wasted in Cuba. I don’t feel sorry for the Cubans. Despite the hard times forced upon them, I bet they are still happy people. They are showing us a way to live beyond oil.
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flora To be a bit cheeky: I bet the US casino owner never forgave Fidel for kicking their casinos out of Cuba. I bet the old casino corporations still want those Cuba Casino properties back. I’m betting on this. / ;)
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The Rev Kev Frankly if Cuba was occupied, those old mob bosses would probably run the island better than the Trump circus.
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flora You have doubts about a Rubio rule as Cuba’s el presidente? His Viceroyship of Venezuela is running so well. / ;)
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Ignacio At this turn of events “doms” like Rubio have not the slightest idea of what management is, and cannot run anything, or put there in charge anyone with some ability to keep things going. That’s why the current push for dominance in their “hemisphere” will probably show to be quite transient.
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Safety First It isn’t cheek at all. When Obama tried to relax the Cuban blockade a little bit, Coke immediately jumped in, demanding compensation for a bottling plant the Casto government had nationalized around 1962. With interest accruing since that time. Came to a couple of billion dollars, as I recall.
There are a lot of a) American corporations and b) descendants of the initial wave of post-revolutionary emigration (e.g. wealthy landowners, Fidel himself being the son of one such) who are going to want takesies-backsies, as in, return of property confiscated and nationalized over six decades ago, or at least “appropriate” monetary compensation for said (with accrued interest), the moment Cuba were to surrender to the US. I have no ins with the Cuban-American community whatever, but I wouldn’t be surprised if they hadn’t already come up with a specific Spanish term denoting this “compensation devoutly to be wished”.
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flora hmmmm. Sounds a US takeover of Cuba will cost the US taxpayer a bundle in reparation payments to big US/global corporations. Another way for big biz to loot the treasury. What deal!
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The Rev Kev Years ago when Castro fell sick for a short while, those Cuban-Americans started to announce their plans such as demolishing central Havana to build a whole set of new buildings as demands for compensation from stuff that happened before they were even born.
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Mikel This part of the article:
“… Ironically, as Cubans face the worst crisis of their lives, a small group here have made overnight fortunes importing gasoline, food and other hard-to-find items, profiting off the growing desperation. For those with the right connections, finding loopholes around the US embargo on Cuba and the tightly controlled Cuban economy has been a booming business.
It’s no longer uncommon to see women with children in their arms begging at stoplights as new Audis and Teslas drive by; an impossible-to-imagine sight just a few years ago.
I was recently in a gourmet store in Havana that opened up for Cuba’s elites where pricey Wagyu steaks, Russian caviar and Spanish olive oil were for sale, when a disheveled Cuban man walked in through the electric sliding door.
Glancing at a piece of frozen meat for sale at about 10 times the average monthly salary, the man turned to a hovering sales attendant…”
It’s how these rifts are dealt with down the line that matter more so than responses to the US govt.
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flora I remember when Marco’s nickname was Narco Marco.
From the American Prospect, last December 2025.The Narco-Terrorist Elite
Why is Marco Rubio so hell-bent on making Iran-Contra again?https://prospect.org/2025/12/23/narco-terrorist-elite-rubio-south-america-iran-contra/
—
an aside: Why did T pardon former Honduran president Juan Orlando Hernández, who was serving a 45-year sentence for conspiring to import over 400 tons of cocaine into the U.S. and weapons offenses, by claiming the conviction was a “Biden setup” and that Hernández had been unfairly treated?
Blow up fishing boats and pardon kingpins? Doesn’t make sense.
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ambrit It makes sense when you view the Narcos as proxies for the CIA. See the “career” of Boby Seal for an example.
“Sacrifice” a few of the “little people” so as to obscure the protection of the big fish. Standard big bureaucracy playbook strategy. The lower level operatives always take the fall. See the fates of those involved in the Abu Ghraib torture scandal. A few lower level grunts were punished while the upper echelon officers who oversaw the program skated.
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“AI could turn China’s social credit system into surveillance tool: government-funded study”
Isn’t any social credit system inherently a surveillance tool?
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The Rev Kev I’m coming around to the belief that anything digital is a surveillance tool.
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Screwball I agree.
Let’s add another little thing called Id.Me which is now required for the SSA, Veterans affairs, Treasury Direct and a couple of others I can’t remember right now. I was forced to use this login to use TD which already had a dual login to authenticate. It is a non-governmental entity but now required. Great!
Also, if you are a member of the FAA, you now have to have an app that authenticates your login to the FAA. Not required before, but now you must download this app.
Orwell is laughing at us.
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Rain City This id.me really angers me. Being forced to enrich a private entity when iD .gov was already available just reeks of corruption. Scot Bessent’s buddies profits? You are also forced to do their work, doing a “selfie” or a video interview. If not persuaded to join this privacy invasion, you’re tricked; just take a “photo” of yourself- which turns out to be a biometric scan. Now it looks like I’d.gov has been similarly crapified: I was forced to submit id again and a picture, managed by some other private entity in order to get into my already existing IRS account. Seems like the grift is in!
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badphoton There is a long history behind the current situation. Going back more than 20 years. I was involved at the beginning being one of the people called in for my expertise. Over the years there were constant battles between implementing a working government created one with substantial safeguards for privacy, etc that would act as a single way to access Federal (and potentially state) government services for citizens, with the same privacy protections as other non-online methods (imperfect as the PII laws are) when interacting with the government, and one of MANY proposed private sector ‘solutions’ with various Congressional backers. While the government one was implemented eventually in parallel (you can use login.gov instead of id.me for some services like Social Security), id.me is what gets pushed on people. It has few privacy protections beyond what any commercial service offers.
Its the constant problem faced by most Federal civil service workers. Despite the expertise existing within the government to fulfill needs at reasonable cost they are not allowed to use it and must contract for far more expensive commercial methods. Just one of the reasons for the ‘brain drain’ from the Federal service these last decades.
If you are a US citizen you can use login.gov instead. It works for some things. I’m not sure how long that will continue though.
Don’t get me started on digital signaturing or accounting systems or….
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Antagonist I have already struggled with the Id.me login and website. I don’t have a camera, and I have rare neuro-ophthalmological problems. I am dreading how much time this will take me. May I bypass this? Can I just sell all my treasury bonds without even bothering with id.me? Do tell if you have a workaround. Id.me customer support seems to be a worthless chat bot that repeats what is already in the FAQs.
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lyman alpha blob I didn’t sign up for the new ID and was wondering the same thing. They got rid of the zero interest cash accounts not long ago and now all funds are sent back to a commercial bank account on bonds’ maturities. You might be able to wait until all bonds mature and have the funds back in your account. Not sure if you can access tax docs without logging in or not.
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pete Not anything digital, but anything centralized. The original idea behind Internet was decentralization. Similar with personal computers vs mainframes.
A digital device is not a surveillance tool if it does not call home.
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Theo Haris Isn’t the Chinese “social credit system” a non-entity that is really the outcome of Western propaganda? Isn’t it rather focused on companies and not the social control system people here usually think it is?
At least that’s my impression from this video , (from an otherwise not really friendly to China channel) and from speaking with Chinese people (who tell me they’ve never heard of this).
For what it’s worth, this is also what the English version of Wikipedia says:
There have been widespread misconceptions in media reports about a unified social credit “score” based on individuals’ behavior, leading to punishments if the score is too low or rewards if the score is high
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Polar Socialist Yes, the purpose is to diminish the “information asymmetry” in the Chinese markets, whether it’s Chinese individuals or foreign banks needing to know if a Chinese company can be trusted. It’s a huge economy, and having a single number telling if a company respects it’s contracts and pays it’s bills means years can be saved in the due diligence processes.
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Re Elonville
the all-hours noise from gas turbines installed without permits to power the datacenters, has dismayed some locals.
“It sounds like an airplane engine but it’s continuous, it’s incredibly loud,” said Elizabeth Rose, a piano teacher, of the xAI site which sits about two miles from her home. “I’ve been woken up at 2am by it, I’ve been woken up at 3am by it. I sometimes have to just get away from it because it makes me so angry.”
The AI-ville that is nearing completion in my SC town will have its own gas turbines so good to know what to expect. There are neighborhoods in the vicinity as well as a state park.
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It strikes me that Iran has cyberwarfare capabilities that are quite strong, and access to AI Hacking tools.
This might pose a problem, here and there.
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Jeremy Grimm I have long been wondering why Iran has not launched cyberwarfare attacks on the u.s. There are so many ways Iran could bring the u.s. to its knees.
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Safety First Because they’d spent this entire war only gradually inching up the escalation ladder, lest they provoke the US into something stupid like nukes. As well, they probably don’t want any rally-around-the-flag phenomenon buttressing Trump’s political position, which any substantial attack on the US homeland likely result in, at least in the short term.
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vao Probably because it is a “one-shot” action.
Once you have used one way (usually an arrangement of various inter-connected break-in techniques) to carry out a cyberattack, you can no longer rely upon it, as the corresponding vulnerabilities will be addressed by the affected organizations.
If you want to keep hammering the adversary with cyberattacks, then you must have a whole series of different, unrelated subversion techniques such that defending against one does not protect against another. It is certainly hard to develop a large number of such techniques; it is unlike missiles, where you can produce a thousand based on the same model, and missile nr 1000 will be as effective as missile nr 1.
Hence, if Iran has prepared a cyberattack, it is waiting for just the right moment to deal the blow — perhaps as a “coup de grâce” to finish off the USA after devastating it with more traditional military means.
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“Why India has soured on Trump ahead of US midterms’
So Modi bet the bank – and his country – on Donald Trump and Netanyahu. Now Trump is set to be a lame duck and Bib’s position is at best wobbly and India has experienced nothing but chaos from Trump 2.0 the past two years. Idjut.
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World Wide dockworkers strike. Short strike but shows the ability to shut things down.
From Jimmy Dore.
Dockworkers Worldwide Strike to Stop Israel’s War on Gaza
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flora News report from the WSWS.
Dockers’ international day of action: Workers strike at 113 ports against war and genocide
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2026/10/30/ejvi-o30.html
AP and Reuters picked up the story. Very little mention of the strike in the US MSM.
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As a guardedly cynical usonian, I have been through this scenario time and again. Another putative critical election to save the nation. The voters respond and send a message disapproving the direction of the country and replace the leaders, who will then continue the same policies unabated.
Rinse and repeat.
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flora Speaking of the election. In KS the GOP incumbent Sen. Marshall sounded scared, imo, in a recent interview he gave a local TV station. Some of his answers sounded pleading. His numbers aren’t improving and I don’t think a rally with T today will help him. Especially since two former KS governors, both moderate Republicans, both two term governors, (KS governors are term limited to two terms), both popular even among Dems during their terms, came out essentially refusing to endorse Marshall. One rhetorically asked what Marshall stood for, what is his platform, what has he done for Kansas? Very, very rare for former govs to publicly not endorse their party’s candidate.
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Screwball Imagine what all the money spent on trying to elect these pukes could do elsewhere?
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Unrelated to anything in the Links, I’ve been watching a development around Iain McGilchrist, the author of The Master and his Emissary. I’ve enjoyed a number of McGilchrist’s interviews and colloquies, and viewed him as a valuable contributor to current discussions around the Metacrisis.
A few months ago, I noticed that McGilchrist was now associated with Ralston College as Chancellor, replacing Jordan Peterson in that role. Ralston is an unaccredited college located in Savannah, GA, officially “founded” by Stephen Blackwood, a right-wing critic of the supposed Marxist takeover of mainstream academia. The biggest funders of Ralston include Paul Marshall, British right-wing hedgie and owner of a right-wing media empire, Home Depot founder Bernie Marcus, right-wing Zionist, and the Scaife Foundation.
Maybe McGilchrist is a good guy who’s now associating with some bad actors, but his right brain should be screaming that he’s surrounded at Ralston by a bunch of jackals.
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KLG Indeed, HMP! Knowing Savannah well since childhood and being relatively close to the city now, I have followed Ralston College a bit. When I saw that Iain McGilchrist is now associated with that thing it made me ill. I think the expression is “threw up a little in my mouth.” Perhaps living in the wilds of Scotland has affected his judgment? Chancellor is probably only an honorific title, but sheesh!
This video of David Butterfield’s library (in or near Cambridge instead of Savannah based on the internal architecture of the house – the ceiling beams) led me back to Ralston, where Butterfield is Provost and Professor of Latin. Butterfield left Cambridge for Ralston because the former was no longer a home for proper scholarship. Well, this is not the Cambridge of Sir Isaac Newton, Bertrand Russell or Joseph Needham, but the stupid, it burns.
Jackals? More like hyenas?
One other thing, why would anyone really want to consider a college where the mailing address is a post office box?
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dave -- just dave The Jungian term for what might perhaps explain this is “spiritual inflation”. I have read – in books from someone whom I now regard as an unreliable narrator – that there’s a proverb: “It is easier to fall from a high place than a low one”. I myself have secularized an admonition from the prophet Micah: “Act justly, love tenderly, and don’t get too puffed up.”
No doubt there will be people attracted to the Masters of Arts in Humanities program that Ralston is offering, and who can pay for it – maybe there will even be partial scholarships for the deserving non-wealthy. Maybe this will be the best use of their time and money right now. As the saying goes, compared to what?
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Carolinian Home Depot was founded and is headquartered in Atlanta. Gotta keep the home state institutions in line. I recall driving past their headquarters once and monkey wrenchers had hung a “save the tropical hardwoods” sign from the tower.
Meanwhile, one state up, I have fingers crossed that Darline will go down in flames Tuesday.
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Hermann Tertsch X -post about the “coup”.
Even if here Tertsch here is signalling an outrageous, let’s call it, “political move” by supposed “liberal” Tusk please bear in mind that this Tertsch is nothing but a pro-fascist Spanish far right asset defending similar pro-fascist PiS of Poland. Tusk is an idiot, Nawrocki is an idiot, Tersch himself is the same. A battle or a war between idiots though none of them give a damn about regular Polish populaces.
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More hopium from “no opinion” who does actually have an opinion. Sadly, AI is for the things it’s doing now rather than the future… surveillance and dystopia, but oh yeah. Cancer!!! Science!!!
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I mentioned the other day that the narrative about AI had changed, when that happens to a bubble it’s only a matter of time before it deflates.
The Market has “Happy Feet”, an indication that this one is near its end.
Trump will not accept the results of the mid terms if they go the way it looks like, he can’t change the result but he can cause a lot of chaos before things settle out.
And of course there’s “Miriam’s War” with Iran which is about to go hot in a very stupid way.
Trump is desperate and the people he has surrounded himself are both stupid and desperate.
Even reasonably bright people who are desperate do stupid things and these are not reasonably bright people.
Have I mentioned that the people behind the Anthropic IPO are also desperate?
And very greedy.
The next few weeks are going to be right lively and the odds of a market crash are increasing daily.
I expect to see more than a little spectacular stupidity over the next few weeks because someone is always that stupid.
Stay safe and enjoy the show.
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wol The Mother of all Popcorns! (h/t James Brown)
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ilsm I subscribe to Gary Marcus. His latest post is about meeting with a group on AI at the Vatican.
Interesting including a read on the Pope’s encyclical.
One line from Gary. AI can do big correlations but cannot see or find causation.
The problem with AI for the majors like Meta, etc is competition. The problem for the frontiers is both competition and limited benefit from supercomputers doing word and image matching in the world.
In short, the bubble is in a tech which has no or limited monopoly to blow up margins.
Imagine if the Russians were not using their AI inventions in war….
China has AI tools to sell
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@baddest_cash
Ijoba 𓃵 💵💰
@baddest_cash
TOP 10 WORLD’S MOST EXPENSIVE SHOES IN THE WORLD TODAY
A THREAD 🧵
Antidote to that:
Paul Simon – Diamonds On The Soles Of Her Shoes
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Ocasio-Cortez Has Evolved. She Wants the Left to Evolve, Too. (NY Times; archive)
The Times seems to have fallen in love with AOC. Definitely tainted.
So we present “The Left” as children.
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has done a lot of growing up in the eight years since a stunning upset catapulted her from anonymous 20-something insurgent to establishment-busting avatar of American progressivism. She is pursuing alliances across the political spectrum rather than flaming other Democrats, betting that bridge-building is a better way to expand her movement.
She would like to see the left grow up, too.
You see, you’re an ignorant child if you even profess to care about things like universal healthcare. As an adult, you know better.
I didn’t realize she had a “movement”.
In private discussions, she has urged fellow democratic socialists to foster a “culture of welcoming” rather than of “intimidation,” mindful that even she has sometimes failed their purity-minded litmus tests on issues like the war in Gaza.
Meanwhile, opposing genocide is just a “purity” test.
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Darthbobber Important here to differentiate between what she actually is quoted as saying in this piece and the ham-fisted editorializing by the Times.
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James Thomson During the next year we will see flight testing of all the presidential contenders.
This seems to be the first big spread on one of them, that I have seen.
A year from now will be the beginning of primary season for the 2028 election.
Yeah, JB, kind of puke inducing.Reply ↓
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Kurtismayfield Oh god.. this is going to be her transformation to “Hope and Change” while she triangulates herself into the position of both pleasing the left AND the DNC at the same time. Which is like pleasing the bull and the torerors at the same time.
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mrsyk No surprise that the Times is gushing over AOC, hometown girl and all, they will rise on her tide.
Depressing that AOC may become the least intolerably awful candidate to choose from.Reply ↓
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Hepativore We are seeing in real-time the transformation of AOC into Nancy Pelosi 2.0 in all of her neoliberal glory.
Pelosi herself started off on a similar trajectory, going from a young and idealistic Congresswoman decades ago into the current reigning queen of the corporate DNC nomenklatura.
I do not know why people are still so excited about AOC, because she has become yet another rank-and file careerist Democrat who hopes to skate by on empty performative gestures and social media publicity rather than do anything substantial in terms of taking on the DNC establishment.
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How a Secret Vote by U.N. Scientists Legitimized Carbon Capture and Skewed Decades of Climate Policy (Pro Publica)
The technology magic pony will save us all.
Meanwhile, in 2005, I first learned about Climate and knew any real action was incompatible with capitalism and that we’re all fucked. Being right so much in life tends to suck.
The researchers were in Oviedo only because Saudi Arabia and other oil-exporting countries had pressured the U.N. to write the report despite the paucity of evidence, according to U.N. officials and records. The oil, gas and coal industries had spent years casting doubt on climate change while quietly fretting that policies to address it would one day put them out of business. The industry, documents show, saw CCS as a way to forestall that outcome, allowing the world to keep burning fossil fuels while simply burying the pollution underground. A U.N. report would bring the technology into the mainstream.
and it was all made up lol
With so little evidence to work with, David Keith, a Canadian physicist, proposed a workaround: The authors could conduct an “expert elicitation,” taking an anonymous survey about what they expected the evidence to eventually show.
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https://x.com/ZardSi/status/2116630312402944337?a=OaTPm5GJo2j40maP8vk
It looks like on top of India abandoning investments in Chahabar, the Iranians remember that Modi went to visit Bibi to declare the marriage of India as the motherland and Israel as the fatherland. Then in the US there was that time Trump’s daughter at Mar A Lago hosted the new American Hindu Jewish Congress…
What will come of this? India being locked out of the Persian Gulf for energy and remittances from their workers which would probably be disastrous?
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https://lily357.substack.com/p/injustice-porn
Good read that includes an assessment of the situation in Serbia.
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Quintian and Lucius Really liked this piece, perhaps because it’s the kind of thing that accords with my cynical priors. Every time there’s a manifestation of any sort in one of these countries that high-westerners don’t think much about (anyone remember Nepal last year?) I really like to find primary source accounts from locals with this kind of perspective.
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Bugs Thanks, this is a really useful corrective to the blathering we’ve been hearing. My better half is all in on the students but I smelled a rat there for a while. It’s too obvious.
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I started reading China is Read, which reviews an article by a director of a CASS institute (so well connected) that responds to an IMF report on how China can become economically like the West.
China is Read does a good setup:
“First, are the problems identified by the IMF real? Second, is its explanation of the mechanisms behind these problems reasonable? Third, even if the first two assessments are correct, are the remedies it proposes suitable for China?”
And then, in the first paragraph on the first item, it states that China is “12% of global trade in recent years”
Huh! Sounds low, so 1 minute of googling reveals Global trade is 33 T, and China’s trade is 6.4 T (values from multiple sources), and I ask myself – if China is Read cannot get such a basic number right in the first paragraph of his discourse, do I really have time to spend on his article? Answer: No. So then I try to access the CASS director’s identified English-translated original article (I would rather have my own opinion), but the link only takes me to a Chinese article I cannot read, with no translation option. Huh, what game is this? I even tried Google Translate on the link; no success in getting a translation.
Does anyone have any reason not to ignore China is Read as a psyop in the future for the time-limited (me).
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WaPo:
Democrat Haley Stevens appears with Michigan GOP Senate candidate Mike Rogers
[I couldn’t make the link overlay work, dunno why]
With friends like these…
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Martin Oline She said she is standing behind her country in her endorsement of Mike Rogers. She did not identify which country that is.
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Christain B Reply ↓
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dave -- just dave I wondered if this was authentic. Search results: Yes, it is.
The clip comes from a December 2023 Hanukkah menorah-lighting ceremony in Detroit. In it, she states words to the effect of: “In the United States Congress, I will continue to fight for the people of Israel. I will continue to fight for Israel’s existence. Israel comes to me in my dreams. I see Israel’s future. And I know that Israel will continue to exist for the Jewish people.”
Detroit Free Press reporter Niraj Warikoo (@nwarikoo) recorded and posted the original footage from the livestream/event in December 2023.
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Alice X NYT:
Midterm Elections Live Updates: Democratic Senate Primary Loser Endorses Republican in Michigan
The rift between Dr. Abdul El-Sayed, the Democratic nominee for Senate, and Representative Haley Stevens widened to a gulf two days before the midterms. The president was set to campaign in Iowa and Kansas.
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Hepativore Once again, this is yet more proof that the DNC would rather lose than let leftist candidates win. After all, maybe the real goal of elections is the fundraising you do along the way…
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ambrit “With friends like these,” you don’t need Republicans.
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Alice X That’s for sure! :-/
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Alice X Jacqueline Sweet at Dropsite News
Mike Rogers Campaign Spokesperson Is a Registered Agent for Israel, Documents Show
Abigail Ronson and Jesse Stokes have been working for the government of Israel since May and last October, respectively, while also working on the campaign of Mike Rogers for Senate.
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Alice X Julia Conley Common Dreams
AIPAC-Backed Stevens Denounced as ‘Traitor’ After Endorsing Pro-Trump Rogers in Michigan Senate Race
“Politicians like Haley Stevens always had more in common with Republicans like Mike Rogers and Donald Trump than with the Democratic base,” said House candidate Darializa Avila Chevalier. “And now she admits it.”
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Acacia FWIW, Polymarket predictions 95% that the Dems will take the House, and 72% the Senate.
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Let’s hear it for my (second) home state coming out and voting hard:
North Carolina End of Early In-Person Voting
🔴 2024: R+41,457
🔵 2026: D+343,548
Republicans did not win a single day of early voting. Even when high-propensity voters were red, those gains were overwhelmed by exceptionally blue turnout among less frequent voters. Pretty amazing…
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ChrisFromGA Does not bode well for Mike Johnson. I checked out “The Hill” with my morning coffee, they have a tracker on the front of their web page that shows a graph of the Senate forecast. It’s up to 63% Dem and 37% GOP.
The House is now 83% for the Donk-os.The graph of the GOP looks like one of those stock charts where the CFO got caught cooking the books and had to revise two years worth of earnings. Cliff divin’!
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Interesting Kit Klarenberg today
https://www.kitklarenberg.com/p/german-imperialism-an-urgent-explainer
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Alice X Thanks for the link. I like Klarenberg.
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flora Good read. Thanks. Gives new insights into Angela Merkel’s comment that the Minsk accord for Ukr was never meant to be honored. It was a ruse to buy time.
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flora The UK wants to rejoin this German imperial project? And Canada wants to join it, too? wow. Might give new meaning to Remembrance Day.
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Alice X It’s a good piece. Any essay of 3,500 words is going to leave out much in such a complex topic.
One thing left out is that the Ukrainians of Lvov (IIRC) negotiated a separate treaty at Brest-Litovsk which the Russians acceded to. This was an element of of the practical divisions of Ukraine that we see so emphatically today.
Also missing is a mention of the East Ukrainian anarchists under Nestor Ivanovych Makhno.
But as I say, you would need many books on the subject to home in on a more complete understanding.
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Danny Haiphong and Prof. Marandi now.
Iran Orders NO LIMITS Strike, US & Israel Signal CATASTROPHIC WAR | Seyed M. Marandi
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OT, to a degree.
My daughter and her Fiancee were renting a small 3 Br 2 Ba house on a postage stamp lot half a mile from the Apple Campus and paying $4,500 per Month.
There were several sales this year on that block and the lowest was $2MM.
Taxes are 1.25% per Annum, insurance half that and current Mortgage rates are above 7%.
$25K Taxes, $12,5K insurance ( Both are lowball figures) and with $400K down at 7% the interest alone on that note would be $132K Per Annum.
And listings sell in a matter of days or weeks.
He’s a rocket scientist (NASA) and she has a steady job at a University, the marriage is planned for next June.
No kids planned, they can’t afford them and buying a home is a far away dream.
Both got full ride scholarships, My daughter completed a 4 year program at the USF Honors College in 3 years with Honors and he graduated from Cal Poly SLO with Honors, a Masters in Aerospace Engineering.
And they can’t afford Kids or a Home.
America, land of opportunity!
If you are already a Billionaire.
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dave -- just dave No kids planned.
Who knows if it’s good or bad? Recovering astrophysicist Tom Murphy says that modernity is metastatic, but it will outlive us. I understand “us” to mean me, Tom, and the people reading this post today. I have a two year old grandnephew. Even if modernity outlives him – and it might – environmental conditions will probably continue to change, not necessarily to his advantage.
To be clear, I also agree with Murphy, Nate Hagens, Jem Bendell, and others that “modernity” is not the only way for humans to live satisfyingly human lives. Whether humans will, after a period of adjustment, get their “included in nature, instead of outside of and superior to nature” groove back, is something TBD.
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albrt I think humans will get back to nature whether they like it or not, and probably within the actuarial lifetime of your grandnephew.
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i thought this was an interesting discussion about what its actually like in China….as opposed to what we in usa! hear all the time.
and Einar is so mild mannered and measured in his speaking that you hafta pay close attention to get the clever jabs he delivers against our own way of doing things:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qQNcPNb6tv0
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rowlf Good catch. Einar has been on my list of people to listen to since I ran across him a few months ago. A nice change from the popular rotation of guests.
A friend travels to China every month to supervise and approve work, and says the changes over that last two decades is amazing.
Chas Freeman likes to joke that mainland China is the best at capitalism.
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yet another postcard from the Wilderness Bar:
11-01-2026
so last wednesday afternoon, I talked with that chick at the gas station for a good 20 minutes…and she opened up even more…about her poverty, and how she just goes home and smokes a joint and goes to bed(both admissions, I grok, in order to gauge how I would react)…and about her lil white car, with a bald tire and overheating.
So I get home to wilderness bar, drink 2 beers, and realise that I have people,lol.
So I call the store after 6pm, when mason is busy rollin up sidewalks.
I say, I got people, I can get you a tire, if you give me the Rnumber.
So she’s out there pronto doing so.
So thursday am, I call my guy and order it.
She said she’d be at work at 2pm…so I went in for other things around then, figgerin id take her car to my guy and make it happen.(shore up yer treasures in heaven, etc…no strings)
But she called in sick.
Now, its been 4 days that she’s called in sick…and the dude who’s covering seems worried.
She doesn’t have a workin fone.
And I don’t know which of the apartments she lives in…pretty sure that she’s in the original po folks apartments, over by the school.
I glean that there’s no one to look after her.
Flu and covid are goin around out here.
So the Knight Errancy that is baked into me bones kicks in…as well as my inherent sense of compassion, humanism, and all(Tam said I was a better xtian than the xtians)…and I wanna bring her some of this awesome chicken noodle soup I made in september, and portioned and froze.
(all except noodles and salt and pepper are from the farm)…and just check on her.
My main concern is that I come off like a stalker.
Cousin, in houston(who admits he can catch em bu not keep em, while I have difficulty catching them, but when I do, I keep em) says oh hell no…she’s prolly on a meth bender,lol>
but I don’t get that vibe from her.
But dammit, knowing what I do know about her, it feels like the right thing to do.
Marcus Aurelius said, “ cease arguing about what it means to be a good man…and be one”.
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The Rev Kev No way that you can goose her employer to see what is up? They must have her address on file and maybe you can get them to send you to her place to knock on the door to make sure that all is well. The chicken noodle soup can come later if she answers.
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amfortas her employer is charlie, who is a giant dickhead, fucks over his employees like its his bidness model.
i loathe him, and he loathes me,lol
all i can do, really, is find her car(dent gives it away—again, i am superobservant), and knock on a door and ask, where does the woman who drives that(points) live?
but 4 days of callin in sick sounds serious…especially since she’s wanting to make as much money as possible, in order to climb out of her hole. she works double shifts, etc
(tryin to get her stuff out of storage in arlington(outside of DFW, some 300 miles away) for the whole time ive known her)Reply ↓
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mrsyk Better yet, ask the employer to send someone round to check on her, gets the job done without effing up your chances down the road.
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Alice X My main concern is that I come off like a stalker.
Care need be there, bro’mio.
A woman (a person) has feelings that are best served by those that don’t want anything in return for their direction.
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amfortas https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vI35mXr3IC4
i aint a christian, but that kind of stuff moves me.
that part of it.
Matt 25, and all.
walk a mile in somebody’s shoes.
“there, but for the grace of god, go i”
least of these.
because i been there, done that.
good, without god.
if, per the Gay Science…which seems rather relevant to me, these days…we must make our own morality, this one is better than most that are on offer.Reply ↓
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ambrit Yes. Do be careful. Don’t rush in. In our shambles of a country, the appearance of maleficence is sufficient to provoke censure. Hold on to the tyre until she pops up again and then offer to help. Never forget Neoliberalism Rule #3: No good deed goes unpunished.
Curious but true; I met my wife, (note the Old School possessive, oh well,) after I stopped looking. There seems to be a synchronicity to human affairs.
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Alice X I met the love of my life by pure chance and I wasn’t even looking. We had a great romance that ultimately cooled, but we are still great friends. What may be the best lesson that I could have learned is that we thrive best when we don’t demand.
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ambrit Amen to that.
As I age, I realize that life is endless and I am not.
Stay safe.Reply ↓
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skippy Its always difficult to help people when you don’t have a solid history about them mate. Sure you could be a good humanitarian and help her out, yet what motives might you have that skews things=primrose path. Then again she seems like she might have a life of issues and do you really want to take that on, be responsible, and then find yourself owning it all past the post.
As Jimmy Carr said in a show to a young man in the audience, asking how to break up with a crazy GF. Jimmy played the the dad, since it seem his dad did not have that chat, “don’t/never stick your di#k in stoopid” ….
PS I like what Carr said about Trump a year ago at a show in US no less=a TV host man one spray tan away from power and I dare to dream … I just need a Slovenian wife … rim shot … meeting is a tail as old as prostitution …
Good luck and no stress ….
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skippy At Amfortas above
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