No, I have never found
The place where I could say
This is my proper ground,
Here I shall stay;
Nor met that special one
Who has an instant claim
On everything I own
Down to my name;To find such seems to prove
You want no choice in where
To build, or whom to love;
You ask them to bear
You off irrevocably,
So that it’s not your fault
Should the town turn dreary,
The girl a dolt.Yet, having missed them, you’re
Bound, none the less, to act
As if what you settled for
Mashed you, in fact;
And wiser to keep away
From thinking you still might trace
Uncalled-for to this day
Your person, your place.
Unemployment Numbers Don’t Make Sense
From a Daily Wire newsletter:
Tech giant Meta is laying off 13 percent of its workforce across all of its companies: Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp, etc.
That amounts to around 11,000 jobs — the biggest tech layoff of the year. That’s an especially high number when you remember that since its founding 18 years ago, Facebook has never had to cut back its workforce.
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg appeared to address the layoffs in a leaked video Wednesday afternoon, saying, “I want to say up front that I take full responsibility for this decision…It was one of the hardest calls I’ve had to make in the 18 years of running the company.”
And… the company has signaled investors to expect further bad news in the fourth quarter. This comes after Meta announced a second straight quarter of declining revenue in October.
Everywhere you look, big tech is struggling. Last week, Amazon announced that it has put a freeze on hiring for at least a few months because it said the economy was “in an uncertain place.”
The rideshare company Lyft is laying off 13 percent of its workforce. They say they’re preparing for a likely recession next year.
The payment processing platform, Stripe, is cutting 14 percent of its staff. The company’s CEO said in a memo to employees, “We were much too optimistic about the internet economy’s near-term growth in 2022 and 2023 and underestimated both the likelihood and impact of a broader slowdown.”
And…That’s to say nothing of Elon Musk firing about 50 percent of Twitter employees. . . .
According to one report, over 21,000 employees have lost jobs across 46 different companies in less than two weeks.
I work in technology so that’s the industry I know best but this has got to be happening elsewhere, right? Of course, the news above has a ripple effect for tech recruiters, who are also losing their jobs.
I’ve read that Walmart is doing layoffs and FedEx is closing stores. Disney had a rough earnings report a few days ago, the stock dropped to a two-year low and, according to Variety, the company will begin enacting layoffs, implementing a targeted hiring freeze and limiting company travel.
And yet in spite of all this, the one bright spot in the Biden economy remains low unemployment numbers.
I cannot figure it out. We lost 20 million jobs in the COVID pandemic. We’ve regained about 10 million. What happened to the other 10 million people. Did COVID kill them all?
The only other explanation I can think of is that people are dropping out of the workforce. I read an article a few months ago saying that a million people had dropped out of the workforce in the space of a month. It didn’t say why, probably a variety of reasons in play.
But the unemployment numbers don’t make sense. Someone should be asking more questions about this but I don’t see anyone doing it.
Updated 18 Dec 2022
It looks like I was right. The troubling thing is that everyone, including so-called “reporters,” could see the same things I was seeing and yet no one asked “Why am I being told things that do not match up with reality?”
Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia estimates that the employment data was vastly overstated in 2022.
10k jobs added instead of 1.1 million reported from March to June of 2022.??
The elections are over, so this can now be corrected. pic.twitter.com/kyGLp7vXhE
— Wall Street Silver (@WallStreetSilv) December 16, 2022
Messaging vs. Reality
I live in California. Gavin Newsom’s main flaw is that he’s very stupid.
Democrats are not getting destroyed on messaging. I don’t even know what the Republican message is. I know the Democratic message is “MAGA Republicans, extreme MAGA Republicans, fascists.”
Now that is a losing message, I grant you, because Democrats who aren’t insane, for whom politics does not play a destructive force in their life, have friends, neighbors, co-workers, family members, etc., who are Republicans and understand that while Republicans have different political views, they aren’t trying to put Democrats in gulags.
Democrats are getting destroyed by reality.
Republicans are running on GDP, inflation, lying about inflation, recession, lying about recession, gas prices, food prices, stock market, crime, border security, fentanyl deaths, energy independence, foreign policy, supply chain, social corruption, silencing, lies, pronouns and fucking with children.
Actually, now that I think about it, maybe the Republicans could borrow a message from Alexander Solzhenitsyn:
We know they are lying, they know they are lying, they know we know they are lying, we know they know we know they are lying, but they are still lying.
In Which We Learn That You’re Much More Likely to be Killed by a Bed Than by a Political Extremist
‘We are a tinderbox’: Political violence is ramping up, experts warn — Los Angeles Times
Politically motivated violence has ebbed and flowed throughout U.S. history. Currently, America is going through an upsurge in right-wing violence, according to researchers who track attacks and other incidents. They say today’s climate is comparable to that in the mid-1990s, when a similar wave of right-wing violence culminated in the 1995 bombing of the federal office building in Oklahoma City, which killed 168 people.
I’ll call bullshit on that. In fact, to avoid having to repeat myself, I’ll call bullshit on most of the article. It’s extremely slanted.
There were 9,625 threats against members of Congress and their families last year, according to the Capitol Police — more than twice as many as in 2017.
How many of the threats were carried out? I’ll estimate zero. “Death threats” are the biggest scam . . . everyone gets death threats but no one ever dies.
Over the last decade, politically motivated extremists, a majority of them right-wing, have killed over 400 people in the U.S., according to the Anti-Defamation League, which has tracked domestic political violence for 15 years. In 2021, political violence resulted in 29 deaths, according to the ADL’s most recent report.
The ADL data is flawed and consistently mis-cited, as we’ve pointed out before. A neo-Nazi strangles his wife, the ADL counts it as an extremist killing. A white supremacist gang member kills a rival white supremacist gang member, the ADL counts it as an extremist killing.
And so on.
The ADL includes those it describes as “anti-government” or “incel/manosphere” as right-wing extremists. Why being anti-government or incel requires being a right-wing extremist, I do not know.
One thing that gets in the way of understanding the world is a lack of context and perspective. During the same 10-year period cited by the ADL, there were at least 165,000 murders in the U.S. The FBI has not issued the official number of murders in the U.S. in 2021, but it is expected to exceed the number of murders in 2020: 21,570. The ADL says 29 of the 2021 murders were committed by extremists.
So the ADL data could be characterized as follows: The number of murders committed by extremists is very small.
In 2020, according to the CDC, 1,080 people were killed falling out of bed. Are you terrified of beds? You’re much more likely to be killed by a bed than by an extremist. Is the Los Angeles Times running alarmist stories about beds?
Though some Democrats have been criticized for provocative language . . . the party as a whole, especially President Biden, has been more forceful than Republicans in renouncing extremist rhetoric and actions.
“It’s one thing to condemn the violence,” Biden told reporters Saturday after he cast his ballot early in Delaware. “But you can’t condemn the violence unless you condemn those people who are arguing that the election is not real.”
Biden dedicated an entire speech in Philadelphia to warning of peril to democracy.
That’s the speech where he said Republicans are democracy-hating fascists, right? That should calm everyone down. Thanks, Joe.
Nowhere in the article that I can see is it mentioned that Democrats spent Trump’s entire term arguing that his election was not real due to Russian collusion, with a couple of impeachments thrown in for political theater.
Don’t sleep on the edge of the bed.
Put Away Childish Things
When I was a child, I spoke as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things. — 1 Corinthians 13:11
I’ve noticed in recent years what I’d call adult men playing card games and board games that seem to be intended for children.
When I was growing up, men played adult games like poker or chess, maybe backgammon or checkers, Hearts or Spades.
I’m not saying one way or the other is better for society, but . . . well actually, I guess I am.
Arrested and Conceivably Killed
To be fair, the plan to kill children is still under review. 🙂
Michael Beschloss on MSNBC warns America is just "six days away" from the end of democracy, historians, and the rule of law. And the start of a brutal GOP dictatorship in which our children could be "arrested and conceivably killed." https://t.co/4kFJuORA8r via @mediaite pic.twitter.com/SPByfPIV1k
— Caleb Howe (@CalebHowe) November 3, 2022
20 Things You Don’t Have to Apologize For
You Never Have to Apologize For…
1. Removing someone from your life that repeatedly crosses your boundaries. ~Bonnie Romano
2. Being who we are, and feeling our feelings. ~Courtney Redd-Boynton
3. Trusting your instincts, even if you can’t explain it. ~Kate Willette
4. We should never apologize if we’re not truly sorry. I don’t believe in apologizing because someone ‘demands’ an apology. ~Olga Baez Rivera
5. Quality “me” time (taking care of ourselves). ~Nath Ray
6. Your opinion—there is no right or wrong opinion, and there’d be a lot less arguments if more people could just respect and appreciate different insights. ~Jennifer Werner Mader
7. Standing up for what you believe in. ~Michelle Galyon-Stallings
8. Living life the way we choose to, regardless of fitting in with other people’s norms. ~Tanya Johns Emery
9. Making decisions about your own future that don’t do any harm to anyone. No one should be made to feel guilty for trying to better themselves. ~Rebecca Killeen
10. You shouldn’t have to apologize for how you feel. You may need to apologize for how you act on your feelings, but never for being hurt, angry, sad, etc., and expressing how you feel. There’s a difference. ~NathanArisa Ferree
11. Being sensitive. I feel my feelings and I believe it’s hurtful when individuals are quick to tell someone to “get over it.” If we aren’t harming anyone, we all deserve to process our feelings in our own time frame and manner. ~Lori Mitchell
12. For being protective of our children and trusting our instincts as parents—especially when they’re not yet capable of advocating for themselves. ~Amitola Rajah
13. Having to grieve. Some people think there is a time limit or a timeframe. It could take a lifetime to accept someone we love passing away. ~Lisa Marie
14. Speaking the truth. It ain’t always pleasant, but better to know what’s really in someone’s heart than be fake! ~Kiran Sohi
15. Speaking up when someone has hurt us in some way. ~Karin Alberga
16. Fighting for the rights of animals. ~Linda Leppington
17. Taking a break and doing absolutely nothing for ten minutes. ~Christina Teresa
18. Being a free thinker and questioning everything even when it’s not the popular thing to do. ~Kathy Gildersleeve Wesley
19. Choosing what you think is best for your life. ~Kay West
20. Apologizing too much. ~Lori Deschene
If I Had a Hammer . . .
My first thought on the Paul Pelosi hammer attack story was that it had to be fake.
First, is it possible that the Speaker of the House doesn’t have the minimal level of security needed to prevent her husband from being assaulted in their own home?
Second, I’m pretty certain that an 82-year-old man would not survive a battle against me and a hammer. I haven’t had any practice at it but that’s the point. How many hammer blows to the skull can an 82-year-old survive? I’d put the over-under at one.
Paul Pelosi was heard to say after the attack, “My goddamn congressperson better do something about the level of crime in this city . . . oh, wait . . .”
Third, “Democrats” and “violent crime” are becoming synonymous as midterm elections approach, so maybe there would be a way to find a high-profile story linking Republicans and violent crime.
Media and Democrats are pushing what would seem to be a plausible theory, i.e., that the assailant was an Ultra-MAGA Republican, hammer-wielding maniac, and not just another drug-addled San Francisco psycho:
New: In the months before police accused him of attacking House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s husband, David DePape had been drifting further into the world of far-right conspiracies, antisemitism and hate, according to a Times review of his online accounts.https://t.co/XUuGfgOkux
— Los Angeles Times (@latimes) October 28, 2022
Michael Shellenberger actually looked into the man and found that he is in fact a psychotic addict whose home — or more accurately, homeless encampment — features a Black Lives Matter sign and an LGBT flag with a marijuana symbol, accessories not usually found at the homes of unhinged right-wingers.
Student Loan Prediction
I don’t think that’s a good prediction but it’s probably a good idea to make the prediction for the benefit of gullible idiots, aka voters.
How much is loan forgiveness going to cost? $400 billion, something like that? Unless I’m very much mistaken, the president can’t just decide to spend $400 billion without the consent of Congress, which he doesn’t have. That’s not the way the system works.
Time will tell . . .
Let’s See the Minnesota Twins
I saw these on sale at the Minneapolis airport. It’s maybe not obvious from the photo but they’re women’s cut V-neck T-shirts. Feel free to supply your own punch line because I’m not saying anything.
Tom Brady, Gisele Bündchen File for Divorce
I may be ignorant about crucially important details obviously but it seems like the main problem from Ms. Bündchen’s point of view was that her husband had a job.
First, I’m super against divorces for people with minor children. Second, there are just few if any people who are as physically attractive as Tom Brady, have the charisma of Tom Brady, have as much money as Tom Brady, and are as good at their job as Tom Brady. So if she’s thinking she’s going to upgrade her spouse, she’s almost certainly deluded or getting bad advice.
On the other side, I can’t help thinking that Tom Brady would be able to choose from any number of fabulously attractive women to enliven his social life.
The Right Side of History?
No, are you a mental patient? I'd like to retire but can't because my 401(k) cratered and inflation is thru the roof. But keep drinking the Kool-Aid, MFer. https://t.co/K0mPszyWL0
— Paul Epps (@paulepps) October 23, 2022
U.S. Economy “Strong as Hell”?
BREAKING
Spokesperson for Hell disputes Biden’s claim that the U.S. economy is “strong as hell”
Quote: “Data shows Hell’s economy is currently much stronger than America’s” pic.twitter.com/czwnQAMGCn
— News That Matters (@ThatmattersNews) October 17, 2022
Abolish the Police
Last night a POC tried to mug me. I said he was more than welcome to my purse or if interested in we could fool around behind the dumpsters over there.
He ran away. It hurt my feelings but it’s proof social workers can handle these crimes. #abolishThePolice
— Dr. Carol X Lunz PhD She/Him,GED Alumni,commentary (@marinasmigielsk) October 21, 2022
How to Keep Poor People Poor
If you want to see the poor remain poor, generation after generation, just keep the standards low in their schools and make excuses for their academic shortcomings and personal misbehavior. But please don’t congratulate yourself on your compassion.
Chess Game of the Day: Italian Game
One of my online chess games. White takes a pawn advantage, Black evens, then achieves a winning position, bungles it but wins on time (1+2 bullet game). Some annotations below . . .
8. …Be7 (8. …cxd5?? 9. Qxa8)
10. Ba4 White is up a pawn but Black is fine.
13. …Qxe3+ In hindsight, I like 13. …Nxb3 better. The actual move I think gives White a small edge,
29. Rf2? (29. f4 is a better way to block the Black bishop.)
39. c5? (39. Rc5 puts more pressure on the Black pawns.)
40. Kf2? (40. Kg2 looks better.)
40. …Rb2+? (Not as good as 40. …g4.)
43. …fxg4 Black has a winning position.
45. …h3?? Black wins with either 45. …Kh7 or 45. …Rc1+.
White had 23 seconds left here but just ran out the clock. It seems counterintuitive but White can draw even two pawns down here with any rook move that doesn’t actually lose the rook.
For example, 46.Rb8 Rxc7 47.Rb4 Rc1+ 48.Kh2 Rc2+ 49.Kh1 and Black has no way to force a win.
When You Want to Help People
“When you want to help people, you tell them the truth. When you want to help yourself, you tell them what they want to hear.”
Thomas Sowell.?Anna Devís & Daniel Rueda pic.twitter.com/do0UwAY2s5
— Cecilia Qui (@CeciliaQui1) October 14, 2022
Chess Game of the Day: 10-Move Vienna Game
One of my online chess games. More like an 8-move Vienna Game, since Black’s 8th move leads to a forced mate in 2. Some annotations below . . .
4. …exd4? (4. …Bxd4 would prevent White’s next move.)
5. …Bd6?? (5. …d6)
7. Qg4 (7. Qxd4 is also good.)
7. …g6? (7. …Kf8 would be better for reasons that will soon become clear.)
8. …Ne7??
Rachel Dolezal on OnlyFans
There’s nothing that Rachel Dolezal (who still self-identifies as black, btw) could post on OnlyFans that would induce me to pay money to see it, but if you disagree then it’s your lucky day, because her nude photos have been leaked on social media.
The success of OnlyFans has always puzzled me given the quantity of free pornography (so I’ve heard) available online, and obviously even OnlyFans content can turn up for free.
Inflation Numbers and Unemployment Numbers
Latest inflation report came out today (BLS is the Bureau of Labor Statistics):
Annual inflation via BLS just out:
42.9% airline fares
33.1% utility gas
30.5% eggs
18.2% gasoline
17.2% chicken
15.7% coffee
15.2% milk
14.7% bread
10.1% furniture
9.2% vegetables
8.2% all items
8.2% fruit
8.1% ham
7.6% women apparel
7.2% used cars
6.7% rent
3.7% men apparel— Ryan Struyk (@ryanstruyk) October 13, 2022
Core inflation excludes energy and food, so we get to say that inflation is at 8.2%, which is still the highest in 40 years, but most of the items on that list are energy and food, and many are a lot higher than 8.2%, so the 8.2% number doesn’t do justice to the enormity of current inflation.
Biden economic adviser Jared Bernstein said this:
What the president said was that a recession is far from inevitable and I think what he was referring to there is the strength of our job market. Look, you just don’t have a recession when you have a 3.5 percent unemployment rate adding hundreds of thousands of jobs per month. That’s just completely inconsistent with recession.
We’re actually already in a recession, defined by experts as two consecutive quarters of declining GDP, but Democrats have at least temporarily redefined the word “recession” to mean something else.
Don’t worry, the next time we have two consecutive quarters of declining GDP in a Republican administration, the definition will go back to the way it was before.
Adding jobs is an anomaly. We lost about 20 million jobs during the COVID pandemic and so far we’ve got about 10 million of them back. So we’re not really adding new jobs. We’re just regaining jobs that we used to have but lost.
The 3.5 percent unemployment number puzzles me. I can’t say it’s wrong but we’re far from regaining all of the pandemic job losses and the industry that I work in, which is technology, has had a lot of layoffs this year.
Tech companies with recent layoffs include Oracle, Intel, Spotify, DocuSign, Twilio, Patreon, Snap, Better.com, Meta, Apple, HBO Max, Microsoft, Groupon, Robinhood, Shopify, Vimeo, TikTok, Twitter, Netflix and Carvana.
In non-tech layoff news:
Walmart has begun to lay off corporate employees, the company confirmed Wednesday, about a week after it slashed its profit outlook and warned that consumers had pulled back on discretionary spending due to inflation. — cnbc.com
I could go on with this but I think we both get the point. Are they double-counting people with more than one job? Because there are currently a record number of Americans working more than one full-time job.
Have people just dropped out of the job market entirely? You don’t get counted as unemployed if you’re not actually trying to find a job. According to nymag.com, 1 million people dropped out of the workforce in just one month earlier this year. So that helps the unemployment numbers.
By the way, does anyone have $5,000 they can loan me for groceries this week?