One year ago today: November 12, 2023, emergency.
Five years ago today: November 12, 2019, snow & bamboo.
Nine years ago today: November 12, 2015, west of Sebring.
Random years ago today: November 12, xxxx, WIP
Why am I still in Tennessee? Paperwork. In America, if you stand still, you instantly begin losing ground. Nothing is free in the end. For a bit more detail, read today’s addendum. The Apple is proving impossible to configure properly, with updates conflicting with updates. I stopped at the local shop and got the same old story, they want $100 to take a look. That always leads to a $400 instalation of the latest Apple OS, which is how Apple behaves these days. So, most of this morning I had a newsfeed.
But what an inspiring session that news was. Trump is appointing non-establishment people into key positions. And the career bureaucrats are sniveling and howling. They presumed nobody could ever breach their ranks without becoming as indoctrinated to the woke behavior they've long taken as normal. Trump is appointing people who care less about their internal structure, but business people who know you don't need a million people to run a few government agencies. This could be a festival for the taxpayer. Canning 80% as Musk says is the goal, would save trillions in wages and pensions. Can the economy absorb so many useless, lazy people? Let's sure hope we find out. They had it coming, and in the sense of how they treated the taxpayers, nobody would care if they fell by hard times. Many would not care if they starved.
Return tomorrow for results of my look into the 2018 incident when an Iranian clone of a US UAV flew right into the central military district of Israel. The Iron Dome and Patriot defense systems either ignored it or refused to fire on it, indicating the Iranians have not just copied the design, but have reverse-engineered the software. The Obama administration has never admitted their role in how the Iranians have become such experts in asymmetrical warfare, a fancy way of saying they don't play by US rules.
A good example is their latest warship. It's not an aircraft carrier, but a drone carrier. I would not give it any hope for survival, since it lacks any protective screen of support vessels. It is more likely designed to launch an overwhelming flurry of drones before it is taken out. If that sank one US carrier, it would pay for itself twenty times over.
Later, there are entirely believable rumors of Trump appointments showing no repeat of 2016 is possible, when the corrupt department heads kept their jobs. One rumor says the FBI headquarters and its 7,000+ jobs will be shut down. Trump is not President yet but as the saying goes, America feels more has be done in a week than in the entire Biden administration. And Kamela has essentially gone into hiding, but not out of fear, rather of embarrassment. Before long, these appointments will be too powerful to change no matter what they do to Trump. And that's as if America doesn't know they are planning something.
Have you heard the latest name for cybertrucks? "Deploreans." And how about the Obama birth certificate released by the Democrats as a PDF where they forgot to remove the layering. I don't much use PDF editors, but I believe they are called boundary boxes. If you don't click some command that removes the layering, the document can be taken apart. By the way, so much for our public watchdogs, the boundary handles were discovered by a Russian. Did you know that between 1958 and 1964 in the State of Hawaii, all you needed to do for birth certificate for a child up to 60 months old was apply for it at the post office with just a signature. As I said back in 2008, there is no way in hell America ever elected that boy or anybody like him.
Invasive phragmites.
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ADDENDUM
For an interesting report on writing, here is a link to my addendum of November 29, 2010. If you don’t write, compared to you I am 25% more resistant to disease, smarter by 6 IQ points, and will live 12 years longer. So improve your odds instantly and grab a pencil or something soon as you can. Let’s talk about money, in particular, why am I investing far past the age where any real payoff won’t likely benefit me directly. I will not live another 12 years. It has to do with legacy, in a way. I accept making mistakes as part of the investment process and part of the game is how to minimize them. The immediate looming danger is digital currency and the controls that will be implemented shortly should that become a reality. More than 3/4 of Americans oppose digital but I doubt more than 5% understand the depth of the threat.
And the bottom line on that is the amount of liquid cash one should keep. I divide this into two categories. The emergency fund and the opportunity fund. (It was the emergency fund that was wiped out in August, but now being replenished as best I can.) People without cash are like I lived the first years of my life, forced to repeatedly make poor long-tern decisions. I learned years later this is called a “scarcity mindset”. When you start from nothing (or as I did, from less than nothing), you find there is a third largely-unspoken category of cash. This was today’s topic. I don’t really have a name for it, but I can describe it.
You’ve heard me on the need to protect your investments. Where the pundits say keep three to six months expenses in reserve, in real life you’d best make it a year. It is this extra amount that makes up the third category and protects your investments. I know there is a name for it, but to that name I add the concept of protection. You’ll find no gain in an emergency fund if you have to dip into your long-term investments over some immediate setback.
And at the moment, I could probably make it until next May if the system collapses. But that’s still better than most. If a collapse continued longer than six months, I doubt I would ever get back on my feet. However, unlike those who seem to refuse to think ahead (it makes them realize how badly they’ve screwed up), nor would I land flat on my ass.
x margin-bottom: 0em; margin-right: 1em; margin-top: 1em; margin-left: 1em;
