Category: Uncategorized

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The Rent is too Damn High

Via Mock Paper Scissors:

We got trouble:

“People working minimum wage jobs full-time cannot afford a two-bedroom apartment in any state in the country, the National Low Income Housing Coalition’s annual “Out of Reach” report finds. In 93% of U.S. counties, the same workers can’t afford a modest one-bedroom….

“Given each state and locality’s minimum wage, the report finds that the average minimum wage worker in the U.S. would need to work nearly 97 hours per week to afford the average two-bedroom home. That’s more than two full-time jobs.”

Housing should be a human right. The American Dream/Nightmare has always been a bit of a bait and switch. But how can working people escape the poverty trap if there are not places that they can afford to live?

I have read recently that the Venture Capitalists have taken to buying entire new subdivisions and renting out the homes at exorbitant rates because there is nothing that late-era capitalism and capitalists cannot make worse.

“They don’t have to conspire,” as Gay Talese once said of the rich, “because they all think alike.”

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Another View From The Top

No, I don’t believe it was aliens. I do, however, believe these and other megalithic structures were built by an advanced planet-wide civilization that preceded our own and was blasted into oblivion by a cometary impact around 12,000 years ago. See: Younger-Dryas Impact

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Fuck Them All

Any one of these guys could end hunger in the United States like that, and still have enough money leftover to buy a few dozen yachts. And yet they choose not to.

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Then and Now

6th & Market, San Francisco CA

1963

2021

Not the best “now” photo. It was grabbed from Google Street View and it was either this one with the UPS truck parked illegally, or another one with an even bigger delivery truck blocking almost the entire scene…

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The Pyramids From Above

Climbing to the top of any of the Giza pyramids was banned in 1951. Enforcement has been lax, but if caught, one can face up to three years in an Egyptian prison, although it appears more likely that If you’re a tourist who feigns ignorance of the law,  punishment is simply being banned from the country for life.

Thanks to modern drone photography, actually scaling the monument is no longer physically necessary, as shown in the photos above of the “Great” pyramid, or as it’s also known, the  Pyramid of Khufu/Cheops.

While certainly not impossible, climbing to the top of the “smaller” of the two largest Giza Pyramids, the  Pyramid of Khafre (or Chephren as it’s known in Greek). has always been a bit more problematic as the original smooth casing stones are more-or-less intact on the upper quarter of the edifice as shown below:

But again, thanks to modern drone technology, we get a birds-eye view of this Pyramid as well:

 

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I’m Not Holding Out Much Hope for the Former

I mean (and I’ve said this before) that COVID gave us the opportunity to start doing things differently; to make a new way of life. And it was working!

But noooo... As soon as they could (some say it’s still too early) the powers that be declared it was time we get back to the exact same horrid state everything was in prior to COVID—even with the knowledge that the average person actually preferred the slower pace of life; the freedom of not having to waste time sitting in traffic to get to a job that it was proven could be done from home instead of being trapped in a beige cube for 8 hours a day, and the multitude of other positive things that were happening. (Like cleaner air; less emissions. Less—if only a minuscule—reduction in global warming? Remember how that spontaneously happened a few weeks into lockdown?)

Remember when almost everyone was working from home and the streets were nearly deserted? Remember when wildlife started appearing in the cities again? Remember when we were actually paying attention to health and safety?

And there’s a not-so-subtle resentment that’s building because of it. People are saying hell no to going back to into the office and it’s going to be interesting to see if the wheels of industry adapt or continue thinking they can crush people under the weight of “it’s always been done that way.”

While not perfect, the entity I work for is at least allowing for most of the employees who have been working from home over the last eighteen months to continue to do so two days a week going forward. (I was hoping for a two-day/three-day alternating week schedule, but this is the best we’re going to get at the moment.)

 

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Aren’t They All?

Over summer school, Ben was dealing with a difficult student who was named Damien. Yes, Damien. And from what I heard, he lived up to his name 100%.

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Why The Hell Not?

Genuinely…just make up your own explanation for the universe. I make up gods on the daily to explain the little things, and when I’m hurt or need help, I toss a prayer out into the universe. I know they’re not real—I know that—but they’re a good scapegoat for my problems.”

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The Illustrated Man (NSFW)

He took his shirt off and wadded it in his hands. He was covered with Illustrations from the blue tattooed ring about his neck to his belt line.

“It keeps right on going,” he said, guessing my thought. “All of me is Illustrated. Look.” He opened his hand. On his palm was a rose, freshly cut, with drops of crystal water among the soft pink petals. I put my hand out to touch it, but it was only an Illustration.

As for the rest of him, I cannot say how I sat and stared, for he was a riot of rockets and fountains and people, in such intricate detail and color that you could hear the voices murmuring small and muted, from the crowds that inhabited his body. When his flesh twitched, the tiny mouths flickered, the tiny green-and-gold eyes winked, the tiny pink hands gestured. there were yellow meadows and blue rivers and mountains and stars and suns and planets spread in a Milky Way across his chest. The people themselves were in twenty or more odd groups upon his arms, shoulder, back, sides and wrists, as well as on the flat of his stomach. You found them in forests of hair, lurking among a constellation of freckles, or peering from armpit caverns, diamond eyes aglitter. Each seemed intent upon his own activity, each was a separate gallery portrait.

—Ray Bradbury, The Illustrated Man

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Tell Us Something We Didn’t Know

From Mock Paper Scissors:

In news of News We Already Knew, The Guardian tells us that, yeah, Comrade Putin did want Comrade Trump to win the 2016 Goat Rodeo because: D’uh.

Vladimir Putin personally authorised a secret spy agency operation to support a “mentally unstable” Donald Trump in the 2016 US presidential election during a closed session of Russia’s national security council, according to what are assessed to be leaked Kremlin documents….

They agreed a Trump White House would help secure Moscow’s strategic objectives, among them “social turmoil” in the US and a weakening of the American president’s negotiating position.

Russia’s three spy agencies were ordered to find practical ways to support Trump, in a decree appearing to bear Putin’s signature.

But why Lord Damp Nut?

There is a brief psychological assessment of Trump, who is described as an “impulsive, mentally unstable and unbalanced individual who suffers from an inferiority complex”.

There is also apparent confirmation that the Kremlin possesses kompromat, or potentially compromising material, on the future president, collected – the document says – from Trump’s earlier “non-official visits to Russian Federation territory”.

The paper refers to “certain events” that happened during Trump’s trips to Moscow. Security council members are invited to find details in appendix five, at paragraph five, the document states. It is unclear what the appendix contains.

And sadly that is where it ends, so no Russian Pee Hookers… yet.

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