One year ago today: July 22, 2025, 50% - 60% chance.
Five years ago today: July 22, 2021, two days early.
Nine years ago today: July 22, 2017, weather-dependent travel.
Random years ago today: July 22, 2008, the old Club X.
A morning with the banker to iron out a plan to squeeze my pension account dry. This is too convoluted to explain, but here’s how it works. My pension account, set up 36 years ago, was absorbed by a big bank corporation with strange rules which I certainly never agree to. The upshot is I have not been able to check my balance for years. I’ve made withdrawals only to the last known good information, but we know those pensions have been adjusted upward for inflation. The usual rate is $40 to $50 per year, and there are two accounts. Do the arithmetic; this means there could be as much as $6,000 sitting there above what my records show.
Who remembers Mitch, the Louisiana guy who moved to the Canadian moose pasture of Edmonton, Alberta. The trikke rider guy. He sends this video of little Albertan weather y’day afternoon. Or is that Albertonian, or Albertese? How should I know? I’m not an Albertic. I am scraping together some cash out of old corners, and one is my own private pension. They adjust it annually for inflation, which is a joke, but I carry the balance on my books at the historical amount. Thus, those small increases, often as little as $45 per month, have been adding up since 2017.
I had to get into see my bank about all this, it is an advantage having a commercial account. You’ll find all the staff are far more seasoned than the street-level tellers hired off Zip. However, this wipes out the gas budget and I had to pour in another $40 to end the month. Is this a PPP? Yes, part of the reason is the van needs a tuneup, it is not getting the full combined fuel economy of 19mpg. More like 16mpg, and poor people don’t maintain things, an extra few gallons of gas beats the cash outlay needed for keeping things efficient.
Then, I settled in to watch selected clips of the Enigma move, the one that portrays Alan Turing as something other than a math nerd. That fails, but the scenes are hilarious, like the Brits faced an overwhelming onslaught from every direction. In fact, Germany had no real navy, no long range bomber force, and no craft to cross the English Channel. Other than that, we are to believe they were out to conquer the world.
I have yet to see a documentary that does not portray the Germans as inept. Time and again the history people expect us to believe not one German in the entire High Command down to the telegraph clerks never once suspected the English were reading their messages. Not one German radioman ever figured out that “Station X” was a code-breaking outfit.
I’d link if I could find it again, but I found a study that showed crime went down and people were politer if there was somebody nearby wearing a Batman costume. Airbnb is reportedly excluding blacks from their platform.
Diamond cut chart.
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Here’s a view of a Ukrainian drone factory. Your tax dollars at work. This conflict has changed the face of war. That movie “Eye in the Sky” was far-fetched at one time. Today it's so real it is unreal. I’ve little else today, so here is a highlight of what the banker and I chatted about during an otherwise number-intensive meeting. He is keen on my theory that I can tell when a person is lying about certain topics by what they don’t complain about. And here is today’s example. Imagine some dude, who otherwise appears normal, saying we don’t tax the rich enough. Is he lying. Yes, but the path is very indirect. Not only is he not rich, he has never even tried.
I know precisely what it takes to rise from abject poverty to at least a lower-middle-class zone, and plainly he does not. Okay so far? Okay, that means I made sacrifices and invested and lost a lot before I learned. Another thing he has not done. Being rich can be properly defined as making money from what you own rather than physical labor. Don’t broaden that for now, because that is what most people mean by “rich”.
So, I have a savings bond. I did what was necessary to get that bond, I got no help from anyone. Taxing me amounts to some dork who contributed nothing demanding a share of my interest—and he wonders why I don’t like him and built a fence around my property. I say the same applies to the man who owns the factory. People who have never even tried are demanding a cut. So where is the lie?
To me, it is implied. The dude is pretending he knows what he is talking about, but has never deprived himself of a thing that counts. Ut-tut, I said “that counts”, because if he did, he would be whistling a different tune. The lie is play-acting he as some clue what is involved. If he did, he’d be complaining about the rich being taxed too much. This, folks, is why the rich spend so much to protect themselves. They have to.
ADDENDUM
The plan is the same, flood the market with these cheap clones until the competition collapses. Then take over. Here is the Chinese Leapmotor, heavily government subsidized to a price tag of only $22,000 US. It has a range of around 375 miles when the battery is brand new and fully charged 36 hours in advance, but you can get an 80% charge in 20 minutes using their 800V zapper—but that punishment tapers off to 30% before too long.
The Chinese factories have formed alliances with Canada, Mexico, and Europe to sweep away the competition and Volkswagen could very well disappear. What they did was called sleeping with the enemy.
