Lion ponderings

        The fabled girl's gym had a fire 1 year ago, right when lions were in NY.  It was once intriguing because it was a 70 year old building with a really flimsy truss roof.  It was since renamed the small gym after the banning of genders. What little was shown looked a lot smaller & lower than lions remembered.  The basketball nets were exactly what lions last saw 30 years ago.   https://www.independentnews.com/news/education_news/pleasanton-school-board-gives-green-light-to-85m-makeover-for-amador-valley-high-school/article_7d3874be-e3fb-11ef-9146-0b9b0fb54cbe.html They got a $1.75 mil insurance settlement, but instead of repairing it & reopening it, they moved towards demolishing it after 100 years.  The gym was built in 1923.  The theater was built in 1932.  There's a mention of heating but no mention of air conditioning since AC didn't exist in schools until after 1950. This map came from a larger fire insurance...

   The hardest road path around the valley.  Still couldn't crack a 4 hour marathon, despite taking a food break.  Part of the problem is traffic.  The 1st 17 miles were much faster than 10 years ago, but the endurance is no more.     ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- A video series about U-107 got lions pondering a diorama of U-107 attacking Rapidan.  Something got a lot of money invested in creating a kit specific to U-107.  U-107 was the 6th most successful u-boat in tonnage sunk.  Any type IXB kit would do, if custom decals were made. There's no Rapidan model or even Patoka class kit.  It would not be possible to print either boat.  There are many tiny bits.  It might be possible to salvage bits from other kits.  5" guns, 20mm guns were pretty common. Maybe lions would invest in a resin printer if pondering got to the point of doi...

  It seems the 401k catch up contributions begin at the start of the year instead of the birth day so it's taking out $31k right away.  Penalty free 401k & IRA distribution still starts on the 59.5 date.  It's important to start moving money out as soon as possible to reduce the taxes when distributions become mandatory.  Then the money has to go to a roth IRA & dividend free mutual funds to avoid taxes on interest.  You have to transfer as much as the 12% tax bracket allows, less investment income.  Lions expect interest rates to be 0 & not have any taxable interest. The time between 59.5 & social security is a low point in taxes.  A lot of animals are retiring at 55 to lower their tax bracket for longer & move more money from their last 401k to a roth IRA.  Distributions by age 55 are only possible from the 401k of the employer at age 55 & by not being employed . The gap between retirement & social secur...

   The Thing III took a while to get started, but at frame 104525, heroine MacReady was born.  As a prequel, it's a fail, but as a heroine movie it works.  She wasn't in any other heroine warrior movies.  She was 27 as MacReady.  The star of the Thing series to lions was always the flame thrower from day 1.  The 1st time that lit up the Union City drive-in, lions were hooked on flame throwers.  It was very ineffective as a military weapon because of its short range, short firing time, weight, & size.  As a close in weapon against aliens, it had a lot going for it. The world needs more movies about heroines shooting flame throwers.     Sigourney's scene never did it for lions because she looked scared & was in a mothering role.  Heroine MacReady was fighting for the vengeance of her fallen men. Kind of fitting that the final alien mutation was the antagonist from the beginning.  There's an extra terror because the m...

 In & of itself got enough lion attention to get viewed in 1 sitting & some of the better zingers rewatched a 2nd time.  Helas, it's an autobiography which has been spun off camera into a love letter for the democratic party.  He really did work as a crooked dealer in his 20's.  His mom was a lesbian when that wasn't a thing.  He sees republicans as the crooked poker dealers & democrats as the duped players. The magic tricks, audience participation were amusing, but lions knew they were edited from multiple shows to look perfect.  How many of the letter readings really worked?  The show moved from LA to NY.  Lions pondered how he got the tomorrow guy to come the night after the show moved, how he started the 1st tomorrow guy & ended the last yesterday guy, how he got the letters for the 1st show. It's all a bit melodramatic to lions who have seen the same themes for 40 years, especially in the stonk market.  Lying is fundament...

  Since politicians have a reputation for being the world's most useless beings & all of Elon's government downsizing efforts have been blocked in courts, this might be the 1st time since the Thai cave rescue fiasco he's been completely useless.  At least the AI phase led to a minimally useful image generator.    Suspect absolutely no voluntary resignations are going to get a severance. That's joining the USAID fiasco in the court of doom. Lions would classify AI image generators as marginally better than looking up an image on tineye was, 20 years ago.  You have to win the prompt lottery to get much originality. The deciding factor with language models is when they start creating content we're actually interested in seeing. This is an interesting picture & it's probably from AI.  It's a very common pattern in the training data. What's fascinating might be being surrounded by ice mountains & clouds in arctic dusk.  In real photos of ice bou...

  AI responses are so bad. You can tell they're just concatenating most likely words into a random sauce.  Maybe it's what he really wrote.  So much income nowadays comes from the bank of S&P, what animals call their income doesn't automatically register as income.  Experience showed most participants in a scheme have to lose for the scheme to work for the lucky few.  Nowadays, the scheme could be considered the S&P 500. Everyone's either drawing down their cash positions or treading water in cash while offsetting it with their stonk growth.  They're not selling stonk yet.  This is creating a lot of 100% stonk portfolios.  The trick with the 100% stronk portfolio is there's nothing to backstop a dip.  It just keeps falling.  A lot more animals have to be manely in cash & losing to prop up the animals who are 100% in stonk & winning. Most animals with jobs don't make money either.  They borrow more than their lifet...

 Rewatching Rogue One, lions pondered how useless the father quest was.  It was kind of an isolated chapter.  The only reason for the quest & killing him off might have been to prevent further evolution of the death star, but he said someone else would have developed it without him, so it was just stupid.  Even if he or the hologram survived, the rebels wouldn't have believed him so it was a moot point.  He was an imperial ally in their minds.  The 1st 70 minutes were just a bunch of hit points to win engagement & more like an episode of a TV serial, just intended for length.  Then the last 60 minutes were the 2nd episode of the TV serial. Writing out the death of the heroine would have been easy.  She could have just gotten miraculously saved in the last seconds by falling debris landing in just the right place.  Helas, she was too old for any more sequels. The heroine was 32 but looked a lot older for some reason.  She was in a...