CayceG

As I suspected, we'd hit the groups in Syria/Iraq that perpetrated the attacks. Yesterday we released a statement saying that we would do just that, which if you read between the lines gave Iran time to evac their important dudes to avoid being hit. 

The US and Iran both know how the game is played. Iran gets to save its more important pieces while we get to hit their pawns. Then we get it out of our systems and we go back to business as usual. 

I don't like how this is framed as "the US screwed up" when it is more accurately described as the enemy cleverly following our own drone in to the target as a way of avoiding our defenses. 

Shit like this really makes a man want to build a doohickey. 

let's fucking go

This should be the final nail in the coffin for "we talked to prospective Trump voters" reporting. This guy is motivated by irrational anger and responds to those stimuli, as are all Trump voters. 

It is fascinating to me that someone has the political journey of supporting Obama, Trump, Burgum (!), Hayley, and then Trump. 

‘Our System Needs to Be Broken, and He Is the Man to Do It’ - POLITICO

WWW.POLITICO.COM

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Ted Johnson sincerely thought he wanted a uniter not a divider. It didn’t last long.

Meatball Ron is cooked. 

Announcement:

This read makes me realize just how incredibly fortunate I am. I'm probably the one percent of one percent of people my age who didn't get a bunch of startup capital or fall back on a parents' rental property to live in after college but also made it out of the 2000s with not a lot of debt. 

My family grew up lower middle class/upper lower class. No government assistance that I know of (or that they spoke of). They didn't go to college. They owned a business and a house. The business failed. The house had a HELOC on it that got paid off within the last 5 years. They have no retirement to speak of. 

The lesson I learned from them wasn't anything they vocally taught--it was just that I wanted better for myself than what they had. I latched on to the requirements of the field I entered (civil engineering) which needed a bachelor's degree. And so that's what I got. That (with an interview set up by my college professor) got me a job. 

My brother wasn't so lucky. He had to have a job in college, whereas I didn't. His tuition was more. His degree was less specific. Our parents could afford to help him less than me. 

Quote

The 2008-2009 recession made entry-level jobs scarce. It also pushed older workers to put off retirement, gumming up the corporate path for younger workers. For years after the recession was technically over, unemployment remained higher than its pre-recession 2007 level, and wages stagnated.

...

The result was a Millennial wealth gap that was larger, relative to other generations. By 2016, families headed by 1980s-born Millennials were about 34% below

“wealth expectations” — the level economists would have predicted them to reach based on where earlier generations were at the same age

This is what I graduated college into. As an entry-level engineer I had all the makings of a white collar worker that would do just fine... and I have! But I started off low compared to the boomer or Gen-X equivalent and now compared to what a Zoomer starts at. In the last 13 years, I've made up a good amount, so I can't complain. Seeing what my younger coworkers are going through makes my heart go out to them. It's so tough out there and even though I entered the workforce "behind" in terms of salary, it's so much worse now for zoomers. 

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Had they chucked out the traditional wisdom, they say they’d be in a much better spot financially.

It’s an “if only” thought that seems to haunt Garrett, who majored in economics and prides himself on being financially disciplined. If only they’d bought their house in 2019 instead of 2022 – even with no down payment – their monthly mortgage payment would have been lower.

When I got my job I began renting an apartment. I still have the fridge magnet they gave me where they wrote the monthly rent. It was $671 a month. The same unit now at the same complex starts at $1300. 

Another bit of good fortune... I bought my house in 2015 for just under $200,000. I didn't have 20% down payment so I sucked it up and paid PMI for a while. The mortgage payment was a little higher than what my rent at the time was, so I figured it would be worth it. During the pandemic house prices were through the roof and interest rates were rock bottom. I refinanced from 3.75% to 2.75% and the equity I had in my house zeroed out the rest of my PMI. My mortgage is less than rent for the apartment I first had. That wasn't really any skill on my part outside of having enough money to refinance and enough sense and boldness to pull the trigger on a refi when I did. 

But I'm stuck here! If I had a growing family or needed to move, I'd be fucked. 

I don't have debt outside my mortgage. My 10 year old car is paid off. I've paid off my student loans (which weren't all that bad because my dad works for the state and I got a discount on tuition). The flip side is that I'm not looking to have kids. My dating drought aside, there's no way I'd want to have kids because of the insane costs associated. Things would be much more difficult and close to the edge. 

The solution to all this is easy to spot but impossible to implement. More housing in the "missing middle" between (huge) single family homes and giant 5-over-1 apartment blocks. Free childcare. Free college. Universal healthcare. 

Ultimately, the American Dream was just that: an imagined fiction. The only thing we had to look at to see that dream was the experience of a good slice of the baby boomers generation. And then they grew up to run the world. And so the fiction became the ideal that hardly anyone could obtain. 

I count myself uncommonly lucky in that I'm doing alright. 

24 minutes ago, Link200 said:

Out of curiosity, at what point will people on this forum believe Israel has gone too far? Where exactly is that line?

Yeah. I'm not really all that outspoken about it but that point for me was like October 8th lol.

The 757 was a great airplane. 

RETVRN

I'm waiting for lots of confirmation on those things. 

1 hour ago, CitizenVectron said:

 

Big part here is that FAA is considering stripping Boeing of their right to conduct their own inspections. But...if you don't trust a company to do that, I don't think you can trust them to do anything.

These are common arrangements the FAA makes (that maybe they shouldn't). The production companies have agreements to institute an "independent" inspection regime to meet FAA standards. It's not fully independent, but so long as they follow protocol.... Which, of course they aren't.

In this case, this should be rescinded and the FAA should devote inspectors to the Renton facility. Boeing can't have the independence it's used to. 

Statement from President Joe Biden on Coalition Strikes in Houthi-Controlled Areas in Yemen | The White House

WWW.WHITEHOUSE.GOV

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Today, at my direction, U.S. military forces—together with the United Kingdom and with support from Australia, Bahrain, Canada, and the Netherlands—successfully conducted strikes against a number of targets in Yemen used by Houthi rebels to endanger freedom of navigation in one of the world’s most vital waterways. These strikes are in direct response to unprecedented Houthi…

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More than 2,000 ships have been forced to divert thousands of miles to avoid the Red Sea—which can cause weeks of delays in product shipping times. And on January 9, Houthis launched their largest attack to date—directly targeting American ships.

We really said late deliveries are one of the reasons we're doing this. 

I much would have preferred if we exercised a lot more of our clout in forcing Israel to stop what it's doing. Then maybe the Houthis would have stopped raiding commerce. 

I'm not sure if it would have been effective, but there's no reason to not think so and it wouldn't have hurt to try. 

Those are good pieces of news. 

And I'll issue a correction, because when I wrote that reply, I had in mind PANCREATIC cancer instead of Prostate cancer. I was all mixed up!

3 minutes ago, Greatoneshere said:

I haven't been following the crypto/bitcoin situation for awhile now. Can someone explain to me again why this is bad, etc. in plain terms? My brother and a good friend of his were both pretty happy with this, they are invested in bitcoin though.

The government agency in charge of regulating the marketplace took a look at a "currency," saw that it was developed in part to increase the wealth of those holding it at the expense of energy production and climate damage, understands that the only practical use of that currency is for illicit trades, and then decided to give the green light for people to trade it as an investment. 

SFLU spoke to the practical issues. I'm covering the moral issues with responsible management of investments allowed. 

Because there's no low capital won't stoop to. 

What an idiotic decision. Capitalism is so awful.

So it's literally "Lone Wolf & Cub" but in Star Wars words. 

It isn't solely about access. It's about connecting a Mikvah (ritual bath) in another location directly to this Shul. 

It just so happens to be done by a weird Messianic sect who denies that the real owner of the building actually owns it. 

Resignation or not, sounds like Biden needs to line up a successor. Prostate cancer is no joke. 

48 minutes ago, Subzwari1987 said:

They were fortunate it happened at 16,000 feet, otherwise at cruising altitude it would have probably disintegrated. 

That is not true. 

11 minutes ago, TUFKAK said:

Brb

 

checking what aircraft my flight to slc will be.

If it's Alaskan, they've grounded these planes already. 

Anyone want to guess how many sex reassignment surgeries were performed on people under 18 in 2021? 

Fewer than 300. 

This is simply not a problem needing legislation.

24 minutes ago, CitizenVectron said:

Okay. I went on a rant about this last night. 

1. What blew out last night WAS a door. This is a big problem and points to probably something wrong during construction. Alaska has grounded their 737 Max 9s, rightfully so. 

2. What Alice is tweeting about in the first article is something different. The issue here is a problem with the engine cowling deicing on the Max 7 and Max 10. The problem is that when the deicing is turned on during dry and non-icing conditions  there can be higher than normal temperatures in the cowling. The worry is that these temps could cause material failure and potentially lead to pieces detaching. This has not been observed to have happened. 

3. Boeing is working on a permanent fix to this but it will take time. In the interim is also proposing to the FAA a temporary change in operations to allow them to keep operating planes and provide a layer of safety to avoid high temps when the deicing system is operated in the wrong conditions. 

4. In the 2nd article Alice tweeted, that's yet a third separate issue. Congress granted that exemption in the 2nd article because the law was applying an already-passed ate to multiple plane models AND the Max 7 and Max 10. The Max 7 and 10 were cut out, but still required the Max 7 and 10 to have some systems retrofitted within 3 years. After that, if they aren't retrofitted, those planes can't operate. 

https://archive.is/KsxaN#selection-2125.0-2164.0

Boeing isn't blameless and needs to get its shit together. But Congress/the FAA aren't giving them a blank check to do what they want. 

That said, it's extremely fortunate no one was hurt in this Alaska blowout.

3 minutes ago, GeneticBlueprint said:

Yeah. Not very commonplace where most Mormons live though. 

Right

I'm thinking like... Ethiopia... Where it's been about the same since like 100 AD. (I could also be very uninformed about this)