One year ago today: May 2, 2015, I’s listenin’ to NPR.
Five years ago today: May 2, 2011, Cactus Pete, now Gozilla!
Nine years ago today: May 2, 2007, insert metaphor here.
Random years ago today: May 2, 2014, on asteroid mining.
MORNING
I spent the morning in meetings up in West Palm, but it was necessary. It seems that more and more states are enacting legislation to get their grubby hands on estate property with poorly written wills. The most common ploy appears to be the state contesting newer wills which do not, as an initial clause, revoke all previous wills. It makes all wills into a contract, which in turn becomes intentionally too complex for the average person to comprehend. Can we think of any group of people who would want such a situation?
Here is a the new Fishman, finally in my possession and being tested. It is everything they say, so I’ll go over the parts they don’t say. No matter what they say about inputs, there are only three real channels, and only two of them can be adjusted for tone. The good part is that although the unit is billed as optimized for acoustic guitar, the bass sound is so smooth even I am happy with it. Just turn the second or non-vocal channel down to full bass and it sounds like latter-day BB King.
The verdict? I am completely satisfied with the unit so far. It’s more than 40 pounds in the configuration shown here, and is actually three small amps. I’m pointing at the amp for the six larger speakers top and bottom of the column. The middle speaker, smaller, is independently powered by a tweeter amp. You will ignore the censoring rectangles and concentrate on the equipment, dammit.
I have not had adequate time to rehearse with the unit, or to experiment with the auxiliary wireless mic system. Nor time to price out wireless jacks, not so much for mobility, but because ordinary cables eventually always let you down or get underfoot.
The Fishman has limitations for bass, but that was already expected. It would require a bass speaker for all but the smallest rooms. But I have never been a loud player, I never thought volume was a substitute for skill. I’ve tested only the sound quality, not the blending of factors that are needed to get a pleasing stage sound. I suspect I’ll need a month, since until then everything on a new setup always sounds funny to me. I notice right away there are some features I cannot test until I get into a sizeable area. Stick around, and you’ll get a real review on this PA system soon.
An “influential” sculpture.
NOON
Looking into wireless jack technology, here’s a fundamentally new item from Scotland. New to me, that is, it’s been around over a year. But don’t think you can just go on-line and get a price on it. It’s called “Jack” and unlike conventional wireless guitar interfaces, it does not use radio or bluetooth. It’s more like a wireless router, pronounced in Scotland “rooter”. So, you came here to find out. The price for a pair, since you’ll need two units, is around $260. They are so recent, I have not seen any used units on eBay or other similar lists.
Next topic is foreclosures. These are the next level of real estate scam after trailers without the land and auctions. It’s tough to say which is the worst, but allow me to clarify what is wrong with foreclosures. It is the way they are advertised. What’s the most important detail for most people looking to buy a house? The price. Therefore anybody who advertises a misleading price is a con man. Don’t argue with me. Foreclosures carry misleading price tags. I didn’t say illegal, I said misleading.
The bottom line is if a place is advertised for $50,000 and you take the day off to go inspect it, there is probably some concept in your brain that the place is worth about that much. You are wasting time if that is just a sucker price to get you out there at your own expense. We’ve now seen this several times. I map out a path that maximizes the number of houses we can view each trip largely determined by what is advertised within my price range. If anyone missed that, we are talking about advertising, not houses.
Obviously, if that advertising is misleading, you are the one who is stuck--and that ain't right. Unless you intentionally like wasting money, it ain't right. So now, foreclosures join auctions for fictitious pricing, and people who advertise trailers without the land, well, they aren’t even human. When you buy a trailer in Florida without the land, you are buying little but the right to pay rent. I’m saying that the advertising is deceptive in the sense that if they told the truth up front, if would save you a lot of wasted time. To date, I’ve looked at close to 510 of these useless ads, and even if each wasted only 20 minutes, it’s clear there is something seriously wrong to get me to waste time.
To you real estate scumbags, the fact that there is no law against what you do does not make what you do right. There is no single real estate advertiser I can say is not guilty of this brand of misrepresentation, but I will commend Realtor.com for not listing mobile homes. Auctions, foreclosures, and landless trailers belong in a separate category.
In summation, I consider the way real estate advertising is done to be crooked and underhanded. I would point out to new readers that I am the party responsible for the onset (but not the continuation) of several investigations in the past when my writings brought wrongdoing to the attention of the media. These include the “closing costs” investigation of 2003 and the student loan scam of 2005. I did not cause the probes, I only called attention to them. I also leveled the exact criticisms of the local taxi industry that are just now, years later, being headlined in every Uber meeting. I have been ceaseless about the entire swindle of the rotten-to-the-core American hotel-motel syndicate.
The agent called concerning the doggie-poo place. The bank would not accept my cash offer as “proof of funds”. Their organization has difficulty with non-mortgage transactions. There are already bids on the property higher than the advertised “foreclosure” price. This does not happen very often in legitimate market practice primarily because the homeowner is inclined to ask for a price that reflects closely what the property is worth. That factor is key to an honest asking price.
It is evident these foreclosure prices are just click-bait. Soon, we will be able to bid anonymously and I have several schemes ready to countermand these fake artists at their own game. And top of my list is bottom feeding. You see, I know that all offers set that red “Pending” flag in motion. I will soon have a system that floods the market the instant a new property appears. I have not stated I will do this, only that it is in place.
It works in a now familiar way. I don’t intend to buy everything I bid on, only to discourage new bidders and make the existing ones pay a higher price ostensibly until they run out of money. The only way to make me stop is for the people who defined this unethical system is to let me have one of the places for advertised low price and make me run out of money. Temporarily, at least. Brilliant, and an example of how I meet deadlocked situations. Make it the the problem of the instigator, they hide behind the rulebook. But rulebooks always have loopholes.
I’m not saying I’ll do this, only that I have devised the strategy. And I have not forgotten Arcadia. Nor my idea of a website that exposes the liars, property by property. Don’t get me wrong, a lot of these “real estate agents” honestly feel they are doing a good job and obeying the rules. But that is not good enough when not one ad spells out specifically the things that are wrong with a given property. It is not “due diligence” nor decent practice to remain silent and hope some unsuspecting buyer overlooks major defects.
NIGHT
I’ve begun a new murder mystery, by Cook. He’s the writer who knows his medical details and how hospitals and the health insurance industry is run. So he’s good for a background peek at what really motivates the professional who says you need yet another MRI. Hospitals, or you might say “doctor factories” were known in my day for some fairly creative, even over-creative accounting practices in the bills presented to insurance companies.
I’ll get you the info on this writer, since I know I’ve read his work before and it sustains my interest even when he tangents off into the homey feminist good mother and nurse arena. If I recall, he’s bad for character bloat. By page 67, he’s already rattled off a good thirty names. But he is great at writing scenes and I obviously am partial to that as I write a lot that same way. Unlike New Age jumble that is all over the place, I hope most of you can most of the time visualize when I’m explaining something different or difficult. To me, that is a constant element of good writing and essential for sci-fi. Fiction does mean you can go scramble-brained on your public.
Time is running out for the Wiki picture of the day. I’ll try to find a replacement. I’m surprised Wiki hasn’t tended to that portion of their site. It is full of mistakes, inconsistencies, wrong pictures, duplicates, and reveals the photographer bit off too much. Enough pictures of Australia already. And you know how kind I am to people who start what they can’t finish. What? Listen, Bubba, even if I quit now, this blog is more than complete. Comparing this blog to a lazy Aussie photographer will get you nowhere.
ADDENDUM
Here’s more of my fictitious tale of the silver market, which is my prime example of “creative non-fiction”. Although I could be both as wrong and as right as the pundits and experts, the point to notice is that my explanations exactly match the facts and have been repeatedly accurate in predicting short-term results. Ready? Here we go.
They drag the price down every day, it is less effective upon repeat. Notice how they dropped the price right at 2:00PM, their closing time. There is a rapid revival. This was a successful exploit for the banksters, they got the price down by 50 cents today, but they are overplaying their hands. The SEC is no doubt working overtime to create excuses for not policing this on-line scam. The usual alibi is that they need more funding to be effective. What's that smell?
For now, the fake traders are acting with impunity, but it is not real silver, keep that in mind. Only bank paper is trading hands, and there is still 300 times as much paper silver as there is real silver. Don’t be caught holding paper.
Which brings me to an intriguing point. Sweden, the land of cowards who can’t even hang their own politicians for treason, went cashless in late last December. Sweden is known for major cover-ups of their social ills and I say it is no different with cash. Their media only presents glowing praise of how even children now “swish” for their bubblegum—and predictably hounds anyone who dislikes the digital cash as “old fashioned”.
The point is, people are not asked if they want to go cashless. Usually the government (Spain, Italy, Australia) begins by outlawing cash transactions above a certain amount, usually the equivalent of $5,000 USD. There is a colossal difference between choosing to go cashless and being forced to when the government, any government, has jurisdiction over who is allowed to use the system. Anyone who laughed just now is a prime candidate for being wiped out over the slightest infraction. Remember, the government goes after the little guys and easy targets first. The kingpins are never touched.
Ah, but I said something about intriguing. Pay no heed to the lying Swedish press. People at street level are using something in place of the disappearing currency. Anonymity is too precious to intelligent people for it to be otherwise. Not enough people understand Bitcoin for it to be the replacement. My guess is the majority of small businesses are not happy because they are tacitly dependent on nameless cash transactions to survive. So, what will replace cash?
My "interest" is really nothing but ordinary thinking ahead. Something, albeit we do not know what, will take the place of cash in any society that goes digital. And if I knew what it was going to be, I would buy 100,000 units of it right now while it's cheap. It’s associated with dirty money, but that is not my fault. I want to know how them Swedes are paying for their hookers and cocaine. I want to know what they are using at the racetrack and the late night poker game. Because that would be one hell of a commodity to be sitting on when the shit hits the fan.
For conspiracy theorists, here is your angle. To go “cashless” requires that the user have on his person a tracking device that monitors and logs his every movement. It is called a “smart phone”. You cannot use the cashless system without that smartphone. How smart are the people with smart phones? Don’t know? The answer it does not matter because dumb people will always be a majority. It is necessary for the survival of the human race that we always have a majority of dumb people.
Last Laugh
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