What viewers in the rest of the world don't understand is the bottom 99% in Calif* is the top 1% in the midwest. US is really 2 different countries. 1 country is the wealthy coastlines. The other country is the agrarian middle. Democrats are manely on the coastlines, worth over $1 million, what the midwest would consider the top 1%. Most of the laws imposed on the midwest tend to be based on a world where people don't have to worry about money. They can afford to worry about this, that, & the other thing instead of whether their car starts. If Calif* doesn't have to worry about money, the midwest has an obligation to not worry about money. There's a kind of myth that in the 1980's, the Soviet Union & US were equally wealthy. The soviet military has always been portrayed as equal to US in the 80's. Their submarines were always shown to be as pristine as US's. This has led to the popular view that everyone was wealthy. In reality,
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Interesting scene from "smarter every day" showing a picture of Marco Ramius with his crew lined up, being displayed on an actual US submarine. It transformed the movie into a real moment in time that everyone took seriously. There was no scene in the movie showing Ramius's crew lined up on the deck. The only real submarine in the movie was the USS Houston. It was retired in 2016.
Interesting to ponder what would have happened if there was a pandemic in 1990, when the only 2 way communication for most people was the phone. The mane feature was the economy being less centralized, so there would have been a lot more adaptation than there is now. The internet would have expanded a lot sooner than it did. More people would have changed careers. There would have been a rapid uptake of home computers & networking gear. The cost would have been covered by not having to commute. BBS's by 1985 were a viable way to remotely do most of what an office does now, but a family would have needed additional phone lines. Most people could afford a 2400 baud modem. If it happened from 1940-1985, we would have been expending a lot of effort to work outside. Before 1940, we were manely farmers, sparsely separated families working on their own land, so anything less than a plague didn't impact the economy as severely. All this media coverage of schools has been a fo
Like most of the super rich, Elon is a democrat. He previously supported carbon taxes & subsidies for green tech, when that was a thing. Then, he jumped on board universal basic income when what's her name Cortez promoted it. His latest campaign is for direct payments instead of economic stimulus packages. Both parties have been promoting another round of economic stimulus packages, but sometimes it's about the home team more than the pitch. Of course, the super rich don't pay income tax. They pay capital gains tax. They're exempt from social security, medicare, & SDI taxes because they're only paid in stock. Their businesses pay no income tax because they only report profits overseas & they only report losses for domestic markets. The mane benefit from universal basic income is in allowing business owners to pay their employees less & offset the reduction with government income. Universal basic income is another way regular taxpayers will be for
Had the 1st observing campaign in the mormon territory in 15 years, to observe neowise's closest approach. The lion kingdom debated it for several days. The lion kingdom never expected to go back because of increasing light pollution, but fortunately had the EOS RP. Lions wondered where the last 15 years went, but running in the last 10 years had replaced all car trips to the mormon territory. The 1st trip was at night, near XMas in 2003. The neighborhood had peculiar xmas lights on a gate in the middle of the darkness & the lions thought it was a strange hobby. There were several trips with the Sony to find a good observing location & do some observations in odd locations before settling on the mountain. From 2004-2005, lions went there often. Each year, an area of flattened grass & a path would be formed out of impenetrable grass in the summer. By December, it was quite accessible. By winter, after long observing campaigns, the lion would return early in the mor
Maybe instead of military service & studying for dumb interview questions, college students should be required to write a piece of open source software that gives back to the community. 25 years ago, before software was as equated with corporate world domination as it is today, 20-24 year old males used to sit in their dorm rooms engaged in a coding war to avoid spending $20 for a dumb image viewer, database, web server, or something. A lot of the modern concentration of wealth into just 3 companies is over software that college students would have cloned & everyone would have owned, 20 years ago. The software generation X saw as something they could invent in their spare time is seen by generation Z as something that requires giant corporations or government programs. Instead of complaining about censorship on social networks, generation X wrote their own tools to circumvent the censorship. The lion kingdom figured out long ago that you can't spend your entire life wri
A scarier moment was after 20 years of climbing up to find it empty, spotting a bench at the top of the hill. It wasn't bolted down or oriented in any particular way but just dropped off. When lions 1st climbed the hill, there was no trail. They had to beat a path through the grass. 20 years later, the population is much younger & more athletic. The hill has a more permanent trail. The media recommended 60 minutes before sunrise. As usual, the media was worthless & it rose 2 hours before sunrise.
Then, the focus ring on the 100mm F2.8 macro began slipping after 15 years. The ultrasonic motor also began slipping. The problem is the manual focus ring & the ultrasonic motor transfer motion to the true focus ring through 3 roller bearings. The roller bearings gear down the motion, allowing more precise focusing than if the ultrasonic motor & manual focus ring were directly connected to the true focus ring. The roller bearings have to grip the manual focus ring & ultras onic motor to turn the true focus ring. The true focus ring has to have enough friction to make the manual focus ring sticky but not too much friction to keep from getting turned by the manual focus ring. Either the manual focus ring & ultrasonic motor lost their friction over 15 years or the true focus ring gained friction. After cleaning the ultrasonic motor & manual focus ring & relubricating the true focus ring, the manual focus ring still slipped. The ultrasonic motor was sli
Federal, state, & amended tax returns complete. The lion kingdom managed to hit a surplus by overpaying social security for the last 2 years but still suffered significantly from the day job running out of money & freezing its 401k last year. The lion kingdom accidentally calculated the married tax rate & felt incredibly euphoric before discovering the error & calculating the single tax rate. It's remarkable how high taxes become in old age, if you're not married. The money not put into tax sheltered investments just keeps being taken away in taxes for your entire life. There's no way to put money earned 20 years ago into a tax sheltered investment. At the rate money is losing value, generation X is going to need $5 - $10 million in order to retire. If it isn't in a tax sheltered account, the tax on even 1% interest every single year until you die is over $16,000. When the government announces new programs like universal basic income, racism repara