we're both left handed. so's my mom and sister. she was supposed to be.
joking aside i'm not sure that handedness works that way. we were able to correctly figure that she would have blue eyes and red hair based on mendelian genetics.
@leslietownes Exactly. Fox News, and the FoxNews-wannabes don't help. They amplify the insanity of the minority in a way that distorts their perceptions of their importance.
my daugher was using a spray bottle full of water and a towel to 'clean' the windows. i just heard some annoyed meows from downstairs, followed by 'i sprayed the cat because she was meowing'. or was the cat meowing because she sprayed her?
I really liked it, while I lived there; it was a four block walk from my apartment, in the famous "Loop" in University City (St. Louis Co.), with Blueberry Hill pub.
When I realized that an oatmeal Stout I was drinking at Blueberry Hill, and liked very much, was from Schafly's (Family with heiress Phyllis Schafly !!!!!! >:< ), I lost my taste for it, I could not drink it any more!
@leslietownes If only I could.... like in the White House, take just one "President"s portrait down, take it to a bathroom (I'm a modest woman, plus can't aim very well my pee-flow), and, well, I would know!!
@leslietownes Oh, good point. I wouldn't want those eyes looking up; he likely bribed the painter to include a microscopic camera in or on the paiting!
@leslietownes That would be fun for her. I was 2 and a half (birthday in May) when I accompanied my 5.5 year old brother to next-door neighbors, and two more houses, trick-or-treat. My memory has been enhanced by pictures every one of our neighbors took, of the two of us, dressed as clowns. (Then the next year, I did the same, with my sister 2.5 years old, both of us dressed as clowns.) My Mom accomplished a lot with two clown outfits, but that second year, I used my brother's old outfit...
i'd consider trying around here. our neighborhood is very nice, no heavy traffic on the street, lots of speed bumps and stop signs. except... nobody here has children.
lots of folks in their 60s who bought new when the houses were built in the 1980s. they have college age kids, if that.
and nobody younger can afford to buy housing. so probably not a lot of trick or treating.
I'm in a similar neighborhood, myself. One couple are in their 70's. It really is nice, the quiet and all. But a few are grandparents, and host grandkids for, say, a weekend; I suspect you'll see the same!
my daughter is running around on the porch. we taught her that raking leaves was a game, and she cleaned the whole porch. then she took the bag that she'd put all the leaves into and tore it open.
@AlexanderGruber How's it going back in Ohio? Perhaps it was your calling to return there so you can transform wayward Ohio-ites/Ohioans (don't know what Ohio residents refer to themselves as) to common sense, politically!
@leslietownes Like I said, ? not sure sometimes with things like this. I've been a Wisconite for much of my life, and for a stretch, I guess I'd have to admit to being a Missourian, but St. Louis is as far from the rest of the state, going back to the civil war!!
Even in Wisconsin, the milwaukee metro area, and Madison (capitol and UW Madison, with student enrollment in line with with the six biggest cities other than Milwaukee or Green Bay. with a few college towns are progressive, vs.....
@leslietownes Yes! I was quite happy to see Scott Walker dive in the primaries, long before convention time. But Ohio's Governer would have been the best option for GOP, Kasich, I think.
From my standpoint. I would have been willing to support a moderate GOP candidate, to drown out the Cruz and Trump.
for about the last 20 years the GOP has been a contest, who can be the loudest dumbest person. people who aren't loud and dumb enough get primaried by people who are. that needs to stop.
when trump dies, which actuarially is going to happen sooner rather than later, all of those people are going to realize how little there is left. including his idiot children. it's a personality cult.
@leslietownes My Dad was a National Review, William F Buckley conservative; he died young, but he's no doubt rolling over in his coffin wrt what the GOP has become.
there's no longevity to any of it. it's all about who can please trump and his legion of idiot followers. if trump isn't running for an office, there's nothing to offer those people.
@leslietownes Yes indeed. And Trump claims more power than he actually has, but his success, even in military school as a teen, has been predicated on lies, threats, etc.
@leslietownes Perhaps they sense that. And likely, given no one has a backbone to take the lead, they'd rather WIN by backing Trump, than do what's best for the nation.
i would love to see facebook go down forever. as much as conservatives complain about it, it's the only reason trump was elected. they are the party of deluded angry old people.
I tried Facebook for a year, until 2019 when I could not tolerate the vitriol by users, and recognizing users polarized, each interacting with those who agree, and unfriending those that disagree, politically.
steve jobs was also toxic in his own way but at least he had a personality cult. zuckerberg doesn't.
he's just some idiot who was in the right place at the right time. he has no personality and in videos he comes off like a creep. he should stay well away from video cameras.
i don't understand having that much wealth and influence and wanting to be seen by people. just enjoy your money and stay out of the spotlight.
you look like a turtle that was pried out of his shell. you can't change that in the metaverse. just give up, you're still wealthier than everyone.
@leslietownes Exactly; Suckerberg is like a weather vane, points and pursues whatever points to the biggest profit AND to beat other sites, or compete with novel ideas introduced elsewhere. He used to look so young for his age, like Pharma Boy. But now he looks like like a waxed model, man.
Is the proprietor of Tik Tok a foreign entity? I know Donald Trump tried to intervene, so I'm not clear what's up with Tik Tok (realizing Trump is a psychopathic idiot).
trump's long-running hysteria about china is probably worth a book or two.
i have mixed feelings about china. we sometimes work with companies where it's clear that a chinese entity is basically the government. which feels unfair.
I don't mind global access to many global enterprises, and heck, look at the role Russia played in intervening on even American-born social media. Etc.
but so much of the stupidity of US foreign policy over the 30 years or so has been premised upon the completely unsupported assertion that the US is destined to be the best at everything. guess what, without unprecedented postwar levels of investment in stuff like education and science-based reality, it's not.
you can't campaign like the goal is to win whatever the day's debate is on fox news, and expect the US to be globally competitive. you have to choose.
the UK are finding this out with brexit. same stupid shooting oneself in the foot bullshit.
a lot of boomers were the beneficiaries of unprecedented global conditions, and did absolutely nothing to preserve anything of what they were given for the next generation.
china isn't destined to be america's little brother, it has its own thing going. incredibly stupid geriatric senators can't grasp this.
@leslietownes Exactly!! And the Trump worshipers telling their children to get a tech degree, to acquire employable skills (rather than learning how to think, and such). I get that not everyone is better off in college, but the anti-intellectual sentiment that came with Trump is frightening.
oh i love the conservative argument to get a tech degree. as if a single person on fox news, or a single person that they vote for in congress, has one.
they're all majoring in bullshit
all the 'culture war' stuff going on about what is taught on college campuses. even if it weren't imaginary, which it is, what are you majoring in where people talk politics?
you don't have to do that. you can major in something else. it's something called personal choice and taking responsibility for the consequences of your own actions. conservatives sometimes emphasize this.
my daughter is melting down because we won't let her use the spray bottle anymore. she was aggressively cleaning windows and it turned into aggressively spraying everything.
@leslietownes It's frightening. I remember reading a sci-fi (in terms of projecting social and political trends into the future), story in which a couples 12 year old son was set for "educational testing", and the parents worried about it, because the boy was brilliant. But... with trepidation, the couple brings their son to the testing center, where an administrator takes the boy into a room. The parents never see the boy again, seeing a body bag dragged by the administrator,
exit the testing room. There was more foreshadowing in the story; but I realized with horror that the "society/government" could not "risk" having intelligent "citizens".
I was twelve at the time, with a very high IQ, and it scared me, because of all the social pressures on pubescent girls to "let boys think they are smarter"; etc. And other experiences later on. I grew up in a family where at holidays and gatherings, the woman would gather in the kitchen, cooking, and gossiping, and weighing in on the recipes in Good Housekeeping, or sharing their latest diet... and the men watched sports in another room.
For a time I was content to watch sports, say football (my older brother let me play with his friends, but I remember the moment it struck me that for girls, football is fine for tomboys, but there were no organized teams.... My Dad was smart, but wished my brother had my "smarts", instead of me. So to the kitchen I went, where I dreaded my future (no woman in my family went beyond highschool, and my Mom's two sisters dropped out before finishing highschool.
@leslietownes Good advice... She's got a wonderful spirit!
Things have improved sooo much for girls now; but social media can be a sink-hole, particularly near puberty and such.
Dang, another R and we'd have MARTYR. Another W and we'd have WALLOW. Plus an S would give us SWALLOW, @leslie. @quid has challenged us!
SWELL (may have been listed already). Can't remember from reruns of "Leave it to Beaver," or of "The Brady Bunch", or something else, but I remember a kid or kids using "That's real swell (name of person)." As in "That's great". Of course, when one hits one's noggin against a wall, or the floor, the the little monkeys who jumped on the bed and fell, the contusion might swell.
@leslie Yikes! I referred to the conservative Wisconsin Evangelical Lutheran Synod yesterday.... They give parishioners bumper stickers: Welcome to the WELS
I've always wanted to own realty and run it as a non-profit; charging tenants only enough rent to cover upkeep/maintenance of habitats and overhead costs. Something just doesn't seem right about making money of the need for folks to find adequate shelter. My units would be up to date, well maintained, ...
And residents could assist in yard care, gardening, and cleaning community rooms, and get reasonable credit towards their share of monthly espenses.
landlording is one of the laziest professions ever. most of the ones i had never did anything, including what they were supposed to do. several were do-nothing children of whoever had originally made the money that let them own investment property.
not that it really matters. if someone is screwing over their tenants i don't care if they worked or not for their money.
i don't understand why housing is so expensive. from neighbors' sales i can estimate that our house has appreciated around 20% since we bought it. i don't understand that at all.
i did have a politically radical landlord in college. he basically implemented 'pay what you can afford' in a 20-unit apartment building. sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn't.
@leslietownes Exactly, but the wealthy real estate possessors, and investors, like Trump himself, seem to referred in the media as "moguls", and too many people find that impressive. Despite declaring Bankruptcy many time. Like you, I find it as opportunistic for most landlords who then can live off of others' need to have a roof over their heads.
real estate of trump's sort is 99% who you know. it is all about greasing wheels at city hall and getting tax breaks. one of the most heavily lobbied pastimes in america.
and he couldn't even be successful at that, with all of his dad's money.
if one of has casinos had taken off, we might have been spared his presidency. i think about this from time to time.
i think he knows that almost everyone in his orbit hates him and thinks he is stupid, including people on his payroll. he also knows that they are right to think that he's stupid. he also has faded memories of nobody treating his father the way that they treat donald trump.
speaking of do-nothing landlords i should really clear my rain gutters, or pay someone to do that. but it doesn't rain often enough to make it feel like a pressing concern.
@leslietownes And hosting "The Apprentice" should have screamed loudly to the American people how much he loves the spotlight and "entertaining". I know of no past president that staged High Schoolish Pep Rallies s to pump up one's ego!!
@leslietownes I know! He seems lame, compared to Trump! I did also appreciate his own stance against Trump (after Trump lost and wanted to rewind history). It seems some presidents wisen up after presidency; again, save for the narcissistic megalomaniac, Trump!
W was the first time i was aware of the GOP just moving in lockstep behind somebody because it was the easiest way to grab as much power as possible. there was no consequential infighting in his administration. 9/11 certainly helped with this.
it's the kind of thing that journalists praise as political savvy, irrespective of the consequences. yeah, X happened, but boy can they get their judges on the court. that kind of thing.
having said all of this, the only judge i've ever met outside of a work setting is a trump judge :D and he is not that bad of a guy. i think he would treat people fairly. the people who got him nominated may not have known that.
there is a lot of extreme mediocrity particularly at the high end of trump's judicial nominations, but most of them are people that any republican would have chosen. i'm less worried about those folks than the Qanon people.
i 'celebrated' 10 years on math.se about a week ago. the website shouldn't remind us of such things.
@amWhy i do kind of want to run for an office of some sort but the local politics may be insurmountable out here in the country. 70% red out here, from the voting record
hm, if it's local enough you might be able to avoid people injecting national issues into it (not always a given). you could try running as an independent.
i think he's registered as a republican but governs as an independent. most of the politics in his town is stuff around development of a handful of streets, and whether you belong to a few developers or not. not a huge culture war thing.
@AlexanderGruber I am livid that Trump vs. non-Trump has become the litmus test!! He doesn't deserve that amount of influence! But, indeed, that's the reality.
when he was campaigning his first time around people kept asking him about gay marriage. he would deflect by saying, what do you think the mayor of a city of 40k people has to do with that?
@amWhy the thing i like about it is that i think many left leaning people would love to landlord at cost, but not many have the capital to do it, and the risk for volatility is hard to bear when youre just one person managing buildings unless you have a lot of profits to lean on as cushion. Thus high rent from indep landlords. But with a REIT structure, the capital could be there, and spread out in a way that fubctions a bit like insurance. Lowering volatility to an acceptable level
@amWhy just the propoganda in my opinion. Too much media inspired separations.
if you were designing an economy i don't think you'd place so many valuable assets in the hands of failed children of people who had access to capital in the 1960s.
which at least was mostly my experience as a renter.
that would be great. i had a lot of policy arguments with my tax professors in law school, most of them centering on how favorable it was, from a tax point of view, to die.
@leslietownes Hence you have the Lawyer from ??? who paid a man to shoot him in the head, so his son could inherit life insurance and what not. That is the making of the infamous "Must see T.V."
there's all sorts of good tax stuff aimed at people with money. if you inherit stock there's a step-up in basis, meaning you can get a good 50-70 years of untaxed gain if you have the right kind of relatives.
not to imply that 'inherting stock' is some kind of marker of generational wealth. just one of the many things that only applies if you were born from people who had stuff.
we were spitballing estate plans for a client on a zoom a while ago and i suggested something and our tax guy said 'nice idea i think that might be illegal now.' i didn't believe him.
turns out it's still legal, it's just sometimes the IRS looks at it and you have to have annoying phone calls with them.
it's treated as if you bought the stock at the value you inherited it as. so any further taxable gain is only measured from that and not from when grandma bought coca-cola in 1940.
