Speaking of Tinderbox

There's an active community around Tinderbox, which is a rewarding social interaction outside the normal sphere of "social media" apps.

I enjoy dropping by the forum to see what other people are doing with the app, even though my applications are fairly modest and unsophisticated. The marmot is far more "sophisticated" now than it was when I started it back in 2013, and that's largely a function of becoming more involved in the community, and leveraging its knowledge and experience.

I'm happy to say that I've learned enough to be helpful. I'm usually the guy asking for help.

Here's a thread that made me feel pretty good this morning, and it's an example of the kinds of things you can do with Tinderbox, and the kinds of help you can get at the forum.

Tinderbox is on sale as part of the Winterfest promotion. It's not a "subscription" app in the sense that if you stop paying, it stops working. You pay each year for that year's updates. If you skip a year or two, you can pay the update price and get the current version and another year of updates.

But Mark Bernstein is actively developing Tinderbox, so new features and modified ones are rolled out pretty regularly, along with bug fixes. So, in my experience, it's been worth keeping up with the updates. I've been using Tinderbox for over 20 years, so I'm pretty invested in the app.

But you're not just getting the app and the updates, you're also getting this whole community that has grown around it. Since Tinderbox has been around for a long time, many of these community members have been around just as long. There's a deep resource of experience that is pretty generous and patient to accompany you as you begin to discover Tinderbox.

One of those members, Mark Anderson, even maintains an encyclopedic reference for Tinderbox at aTbRef. I have a link to the site in my Favorites bar in Safari.

This isn't a paid promotion or anything like that. I'm just writing this because I felt a nice feeling of reward this morning when Dominique wrote that his script now works. You have to take your rewards and satisfaction where you can find them these days. And I've enjoyed using Tinderbox ever since I first launched it. To be sure, I've had my frustrations as well. And it isn't always "easy," but it is rewarding.

It keeps me in the blogosphere and out of the "platforms," and all the bullshit that accompanies platform politics.

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Originally posted at Nice Marmot 10:11 Friday, 20 December 2024

Tinderbox

Photo of a rural home in a winter landscape

("Tinderbox" in this post refers to the app, not some reference to fire risk.)

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Originally posted at Nice Marmot 08:37 Friday, 20 December 2024

Illustrations

The preceding posts were illustrations of my impressions of doing your own thing with static HTML, and living in a "platform" ("walled garden") like Wordpress, or any other "social media platform."

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Originally posted at Nice Marmot 08:37 Friday, 20 December 2024

Wordpress

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Originally posted at Nice Marmot 08:36 Friday, 20 December 2024

No Drama

One of the very best reasons for maintaining a blog in Tinderbox, and paying for hosting (almost wrote "self-hosting," but that wouldn't be accurate), is that I am completely and utterly immune from the inevitable drama that accompanies "platforms."

A significant amount of the text that passes through my subscriptions in NetNewsWire deals with "federation," Threads, Bluesky, X, Wordpress, Mastodon, and probably any other platform you could name.

I mean, it's like being vaccinated. I'm exposed to all this sturm und drang around this bullshit; but I don't really care. I don't get infected. Apart from the wasted time and bandwidth.

These platforms are like HOAs.

They suck.

("But they preserve our property values!")

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Originally posted at Nice Marmot 08:23 Friday, 20 December 2024

Like a Hawk

Photo of a (red shouldered?) hawk perched on a street lamp against clouds in a blue sky.

Headed out this morning for my walk without a camera because it was solidly overcast. But there was a pretty stiff breeze, and about a third of the way around the skies cleared.

Got to the back gate and spotted this guy. He (she?) sat there patiently while I walked beneath it twice, pausing to take shots with my iPhone each time.

Oh well, it was a good walk. Faster without the camera, and because it was a bit chilly. Still ended up breaking a sweat though.

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Originally posted at Nice Marmot 08:16 Friday, 20 December 2024

Late

The Invading Sea is kind of an aggregator site that posts Florida climate-related articles from other sources. It's non-partisan, so you'll read a lot of Republican and conservative views here as well. (They tend to be the ones whistling past the graveyard and insisting everything is fine.)

Anyway, this is a recent, brief, op-ed from Tampa Bay Times. It's almost charming in its matter-of-fact tone. Don't want to start a panic, do we? Might adversely affect property values!

"Hardening we can afford." Yes, "affordability" will be an issue. A constraint. The fact that Florida has completely ignored the challenge until only recently has allowed the problem to grow in magnitude such that any meaningful interventions are largely unaffordable. There's too much built environment in too many vulnerable places.

But hey! Property taxes! Right?

Right???

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Originally posted at Nice Marmot 10:21 Thursday, 19 December 2024

Wrong Moon

This morning's moon, 12-19-24. Telephoto closeup of the waning gibbous moon, 81% illuminated.

Disregard my last.

Had the wrong image selected.

This is "This morning's moon."

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Originally posted at Nice Marmot 07:25 Thursday, 19 December 2024

Leap of Faith

We met with a realtor on Tuesday, and things have gotten more, um, "real."

It's interesting, because this has kind of stimulated more emotions than anything else lately.

Frankly, I'm still kind of amazed that Mitzi came onboard so quickly. I genuinely believed that it'd be another bad hurricane season before I could convince her. I didn't think we'd be putting the place up for sale this spring.

But here we are.

So, a certain amount of anxiety. Will we get what we want/need for the house? Early indications are that it'll be close, but we'll have to wait a few months before we can make a better assessment. But we're pressing ahead regardless.

Regarding where we land, a little less anxiety. Winterfell is mostly a known quantity by now. We can be comfortable there in the short term, while we figure out if we want to remain at that location and build something, or buy something in a location that's less rural. We're leaning toward building on the property. Mitzi's never experienced rural life, and I think she's intrigued or excited by the idea.

I was looking at the Census data for St Johns County and Schuyler County. One telling data point should be sufficient: Population per square mile. St Johns County, Florida - 455. Schuyler County, NY - 54.5.

As for me, I'm excited; but I have a tendency to expect the worst and hope for the best. So my excitement is tempered by my, well, temperament.

It's balancing risks. I know that some aspects of life, particularly aging and health care, will be more challenging in New York. But I also know that we're at far less risk for a large-scale natural disaster, or the unfolding, man-made disaster that is Florida as a whole right now.

New York has its own problems, no state is perfect. But it hasn't made this ideological turn toward cruelty. Florida was bad enough when it catered to the privileged and simply ignored everyone else. Now it's focused on culture war issues, a violent metaphor for dividing and demonizing people. And it does so at the cost of addressing the genuine challenges confronting the state due to climate change.

There seems to be an emerging public relations effort by Florida Republicans to convince people that they've been preparing for this, and the state is ready for whatever the future holds with respect to the climate. I don't know who they think they're kidding. They've governed for more than a generation now, and all they've done is place more people and property at risk. What they're pointing to now as "resilience efforts," are far too little and way too late.

But they don't want to spook the seniors, so what else should we expect?

Anyway, our task for now is to figure out how to get rid of stuff so that this place is ready to be shown while we're in New York this summer. That's mostly a challenge for me, the guy who tends to accumulate stuff, valuable artifacts that may be regarded by some as "clutter."

I've been wrestling with the idea of getting rid of this iMac. It tends to dominate this space (my "office"), and I wonder about the extent to which its presence shapes my behavior. Big desk, big chair, big computer. Resembles "work life" somewhat. Habituated to sit in big chair, before big desk with big computer.

Maybe getting rid of it will be a "big change."

Seems we may be in the season of "big changes."

The beat goes on...

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Originally posted at Nice Marmot 06:32 Thursday, 19 December 2024

Moon and Mars

Telephoto closeup of the waning gibbous moon, 88.8% illuminated, with Mars visible in the lower left corner of the frame.

Missed the occultation, and it's not a drone, but it's still an interesting shot. The moon, with Mars visible in the lower left corner of the frame.

Handheld hi-res shot with the Olympus E-M1X and the mZuiko 100-400mm zoom with the MC14 1.4x teleconverter mounted. (1120mm effective focal length.)

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Originally posted at Nice Marmot 05:25 Wednesday, 18 December 2024

Painteresque

Photo of a small house at night illuminated from within, with a Painteresque app filter applied

I spent some time yesterday doing large prints on my Canon Pixma Pro 100 printer. Printing is another perishable skill. If you don't do it all the time, you forget how to do it at all.

ChatGPT came in handy with some troubleshooting tips. It turns out that I couldn't allow the printer to choose the paper feed automatically, I had to specify "rear tray," because it kept insisting that I needed to load paper, even though the paper was already in it!

Sizes and margins were also problematic, and it kept defaulting to Letter Size.

Once I got it all figured out, I made several prints. Now I need to order more paper.

And figure out what to do with the prints.

Seems like a problem.

Anyway, I also wanted to screw around with Painteresque, an app that applies filters to images like the one above this post. I love the app, though I suppose it can be overdone.

I started to use my phone, but although the icon was there, it indicated it needed to be downloaded. When I tried to do that, it reported that it was no longer in the App Store and therefore couldn't be downloaded.

Well, long story short, I went to use one of my iPads and the only one the app was still on was the 12.9" iPad Pro (the original). I bought that with 128GB of storage, so it's never had to offload apps in order to update the OS. My 10" iPad Pro only has 64GB of storage, likewise my iPad mini. (There's another iPad around here with 256GB of storage that might have it, I just can't seem to put my hands on it.)

I suppose if I'd have been backing up all my iPads, I could have restored it from backup? I don't know, but it seems kind of weird that an app you've purchased can just disappear. Maybe it's a compatibility issue? The 12.9" Pro has stopped getting the latest releases a couple of years ago. This one is on 16.7.10.

At least I still have it on the 12.9", so I can make some images that might be appropriate for holiday cards. (Not the one above.)

The beat goes on...

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Originally posted at Nice Marmot 07:16 Monday, 16 December 2024

Shortcuts Improvements

During yesterday's Tinderbox meetup, in the course of discussing something related to Apple Notes, I mentioned that I'd created an automation for note-taking with Shortcuts and Apple Notes, and that at the time, on an iPhone 13, it wasn't fast enough to be practical.

I didn't recall, at that moment, exactly what I'd intended for the automation to do, only that I had to wait for it, and it wasn't responsive enough to be practical.

After the meetup, I checked and the automation was still on my phone, now an iPhone 16, with a faster processor and more RAM. And I was able to recall what I'd created it for in the first place.

It was a dictated note, so it relied on speech recognition, and it recorded my location and the weather conditions at that location at the time of the note. It was intended to be kind of a travel diary, where I might record my impressions of a place we were visiting with some additional meta-data added automatically.

I ran it, and much to my surprise, it ran very quickly. Much of that is certainly due to the more robust hardware on the iPhone 16. The automation also has to go out to Apple's weather service and query that as well, and perhaps there've been some improvements in that since the time I created it.

It performed well enough that it's made me consider creating some additional specialized notes. At least, it's convinced me that it may be practical. I don't have an immediate use-case in mind.

It's been a while since I've experienced "surprise and delight" from an Apple product, and I can't say this approached euphoria, but I was pleased and somewhat surprised.

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Originally posted at Nice Marmot 06:46 Sunday, 15 December 2024

Connections

We've made some friends here that we'll miss after we've moved. But maybe not as many as we thought.

The couple who lived next door when we moved into this house became pretty good friends. They later sold their place and bought a larger one in another Del Webb development a couple of miles from here. We've been back and forth to each other's places several times, and out to dinner here and there many times since.

In the course of our conversations, we'd mentioned how much we enjoyed the Finger Lakes, and of course, most recently, that we'd bought a place up there. Last summer, they went to the Finger Lakes, she for the first time, he had only been there once before back in 1980. They loved the place too.

On Friday, Mitzi invited them over for dinner on Saturday, partly to see them for the holidays, but also to break the news that we'd be moving sometime in the next year.

They brought some news of their own, much to our surprise and delight.

After their two-week stay up there last September, and visiting with us, they talked about it and thought about it, and a couple of weeks ago he went up and bought a wooded lot of their own in the next county over.

They had some different priorities than Mitzi and I did. Their property is undeveloped, apart from an accidental leach field (Someone built part of the neighboring lot's septic field on the wrong lot. The original owner of the lot wouldn't let them remove it. It may or may not be useful when they go to install a septic tank.)

They'll have a view of a lake, while we have a view of a rural landscape.

Their lot will be mostly wooded, while ours is cleared.

They're planning to build a log cabin home on their lot. At present, they don't intend to relocate permanently, just use it as a summer home.

We were thrilled, and it felt as though it affirmed our decision.

Our neighbors likely won't be able to take up residence until 2026, they have a lot of work to do next year, getting the infrastructure in place. I told him to make sure he has an arborist look over the trees they intend to clear and to hold onto any valuable hardwood. How, exactly, to go about that is something that'll require some research. The county has restrictions on the amount of trees they're allowed to cut down, but it's compatible with their wishes for the property. They want woods for their grandkids to play in. They've got a bit more property than we do.

Anyway, it was an especially delightful evening last night, and we're looking forward to relocating even more than before.

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Originally posted at Nice Marmot 06:21 Sunday, 15 December 2024

Truth to Power

Nice piece at American Experience about Dorothy Thompson.

“No people ever recognize their dictator in advance,” Thompson wrote in a 1937 “On the Record” column, making the clearest case possible for constant vigilance. “He never stands for election on the platform of dictatorship. He always represents himself as the instrument for expressing the Incorporated National Will. When Americans think of dictators they always think of some foreign model. If anyone turned up here in a fur hat, boots and a grim look he would be recognized and shunned…But when our dictator turns up you can depend on it that he will be one of the boys, and he will stand for everything traditionally American.”
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Originally posted at Nice Marmot 08:46 Saturday, 14 December 2024

Irony

Florida's legislative response to the Surfside condo collapse takes effect at the end of this month, and there's a lot of wailing and gnashing of teeth. If you're interested, it's the first segment of this podcast.

I listened to it yesterday, and it occurred to me that here was another example of irony as the fifth fundamental force of the universe.

Sen. Jennifer Bradley, Republican, essentially blames condo owners for their predicament, by failing to perform regular maintenance and providing the funding for major maintenance items, even though that was "already in the law." (That's a paraphrase, not a quote.)

That's true, there was just no real enforcement mechanism.

It occurred to me that the condo crisis is just a microcosmic version of the overall crisis in Florida, with the entrenched Republican legislature being the negligent condo owners.

There is a "special assessment" in every Floridian's future. You just don't want to be here when it's issued.

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Originally posted at Nice Marmot 08:33 Saturday, 14 December 2024

Unhappy Holiday Party

We attended our local Democratic Party holiday party yesterday evening. It was a pretty dismal affair. A couple at our table is also planning to leave Florida, but not as quickly as we are.

Since it's virtually impossible to elect Democrats to any office in St Johns County, the club is changing its focus to service and volunteer work. The idea is that it'll be more rewarding than beating our heads against a brick wall, and it may get the brand before some underserved populations in a context other than asking for their vote.

Maybe it'll matter someday.

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Originally posted at Nice Marmot 08:24 Saturday, 14 December 2024

McKinsey In the News Again

Human lives have value. Corporations are in the business of extracting value from a commodity and transferring it to their shareholders. (And CEOs, through obscene salaries and "compensation" schemes.)

Consulting firm McKinsey has agreed to pay $650m (£515m) to settle criminal charges related to its role in the US opioid crisis.

We are not "consumers," we are the consumed.

The beat goes on...

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Originally posted at Nice Marmot 08:19 Saturday, 14 December 2024

Reply to Dominique

I haven’t played with it for a while, but I just verified I could invoke a script with a keyboard shortcut while I was writing this reply. The note is created in Tinderbox (the marmot, my blog file, in this case) in the background.

========

From a reply I wrote at the Tinderbox Forum.

The part below the separator I wrote afterwards. I should think some more about using this more often.

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Originally posted at Nice Marmot 16:31 Friday, 13 December 2024

Acceleration

Things are picking up on the escape plan.

Originally thinking we'd FSBO this place ("for sale by owner"), Mitzi has reached out to a realtor she knows. She's coming by this Tuesday.

Conceptually, we will have the house ready for showing when we leave for New York for the summer. That's kind of ideal, since we'd be out of the house and wouldn't have to go through repeated efforts at "tidying up," in preparation for a showing. Having someone here representing us should make it far more pleasant than coordinating zoom calls and emails with potential buyers.

The visit by the realtor is to do a sanity check on what we think the house is worth, and begin planning for the listing.

I like the idea of having a realtor handle the sale, though we've done FSBO before. We only had to show my condo twice and the second couple bought it for the listing price. (Maybe I under-priced it?) I'm not sure this place will be as painless, though I could be surprised.

I was genuinely worried that the snow in New York would prompt Mitzi to seriously reconsider any thoughts of relocating. That doesn't appear to have been the case, and things are moving faster than I'd originally envisioned. For a number of reasons, she's kind of the senior partner in this affair.

Anyway, this is a very major decision, so I find it both gratifying and humbling that she's "all-in," on it. I figured it was going to take another year or so of bad news before I could convince her.

The sooner the better, I think.

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Originally posted at Nice Marmot 14:03 Friday, 13 December 2024

“Doom” scrolling

Here's a fascinating 13-minute look at an historic earthquake and tsunami event, as well as something I'd never heard of before, a "tsunami evacuation tower."

Another "low-probability/high-impact" event risk that people are beginning to take seriously.

Because we love nothing more than to build homes and cities near the sea.

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Originally posted at Nice Marmot 10:10 Friday, 13 December 2024

“News”

It's a habituated behavior that I really ought to break. I scan Apple's News+ app while I'm eating breakfast. I enjoy my breakfast, because I made it. Two eggs, spinach, mushrooms and black beans, occasionally onions, if Mitzi chopped some, turmeric and black pepper, topped with Siracha. I can enjoy my breakfast and read the "news" at the same time.

Mostly, I skip the political news, and focus on science and technology. But some topics grab my attention, and the UHC thing still seems to have it.

This morning, NPR offered this: UHC murder suspect railed about U.S. health care. Here’s what he missed.

Another piece that pissed me off. Maybe it's the title, they're always click-bait and seldom have much to do with the story.

I realized that I learned more about the "news" industry than the supposed subject of this report. This isn't "reporting," this is "content." They need clicks, so they need content and content needs a hook, so the UHC-thing is the hook.

Shame on me. I should know better.

What irritated me most was how misleading this all was. The killer wasn't angry about US lifespan when compared to other wealthy nations!

What he was angry about was being abused by the system. Kind of like the way NPR is abusing my attention and intelligence with this bullshit and meaningless title.

I have great health insurance. I'm on Medicare and I have Tricare For Life (that's the name of the program). Medicare is the primary payer, Tricare picks up the difference. I seldom pay much of anything out of pocket, and when I do, I couldn't begin to tell you why. I don't understand the first thing about the EOBs. I did call to question one item my provider billed Medicare for, which was a service I didn't receive, and supposedly they amended it. ("Smoking cessation counseling." I'm a lifelong non-smoker and it is never to topic of "counseling" during an office visit.)

Everybody's health insurance should be like that. It's fucked up that it's not. That's not news either.

But I am familiar with the experience of interacting with a faceless corporation, trying to receive the service you're paying for.

In politics, and I suppose in other dimensions of social interactions, we're told that people seldom remember what you said, but they always remember how you made them feel.

(Disclaimer: Nobody can "make" you feel anything. Your feelings are your responsibility. But, yeah, it's basically true.)

And when you're interacting with faceless bureaucratic entities, you're almost always made to feel insignificant, powerless, like a chump for buying their "service," especially when you didn't have a choice. (Looking at you, Comcast/Xfinity. Which is why I'm now on IQ Fiber.)

It begins with the bullshit automated call centers. "Please listen carefully to the following items because our menu has changed." Then the inevitable, "Your call is very important to us," while you're sitting on hold, which is complete and utter bullshit. And I'm convinced that many of these call centers are designed to make callers give up and hang up.

Frankly, it's amazing to me, given the number of guns in this country, that there isn't more violence against corporate CEOs. Or call centers for that matter.

Now, there have been some improvements in call center performance. I like the "call back" feature, so you don't have to sit on hold. Of course, I have to remember to turn off Focus Mode, so my phone will actually ring.

I absolutely hate the "AI" features that seem to be rolling out now. I just repeat "Representative," over and over again.

That's all just to get to a person who may be able to understand what you're calling about, and who may or may not have any authority to resolve your issue, but who will most definitely try to upsell you, change your mind, offer you a reduced rate or anything other than what you're asking for.

I mean, it's been this way for nearly half a century. "I'm a human being God damn it! My life has value!"

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Originally posted at Nice Marmot 08:15 Friday, 13 December 2024

Belted Kingfisher

Telephoto image of a belted kingfisher perched on a dead limb against a busy background

Not an image I'd normally share, but it was interesting to me because it's the first time that I recall seeing a kingfisher back there in the swamp. They're smaller birds than the egrets and herons, so I'm less likely to notice them. This one's motion caught my attention. I had to pull out the binoculars to be sure. I figured by the time I got back with the camera it'd be gone, but it was still there!

Got a few frames before it decided to go after whatever it was hunting.

I've been shooting the birds out back with the E-M1X because it handles better with the 100-400mm zoom with the 1.4x teleconverter mounted than the OM-1, though if I was going out with the specific intent to shoot birds, I'd probably use the OM-1.

They both have bird identification as part of the autofocus algorithm, which is what makes these images possible at all. Even with in-body image stabilization, at 1120mm effective focal length, it's very hard to get one small auto-focus target on the bird, which is pretty much what you have to do at this distance. There are so many limbs and trees that can grab focus otherwise.

This is cropped to 3:2, so that's pretty much all the bird I get in the viewfinder, and it's dancing around pretty good as I'm trying to shoot. The bird ID will put a box around the bird and the af algorithm will confine its efforts to the bounding box. If there's enough subject, it'll try and focus on the head, or even the eye. In this case, I think I was lucky to get the bird at all.

Shutter speed was 1/500s (f9, ISO 320), so I'm relying on IBIS to reduce or eliminate motion blur. I'm happy with the result. It was a target of opportunity of a rare subject. Would I print it? Probably not, except to send to Mom.

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Originally posted at Nice Marmot 15:22 Thursday, 12 December 2024

Duh

Well damn. Here I was trying not to think about this UHC murder-thing, and it's like trying not to think of a purple elephant!

For some reason, I decided to read this piece in The Atlantic. Now I wish I hadn't.

I don't know who Graeme Wood is, but it doesn't seem like I'd enjoy hanging out with him.

It just reads like a lot of condescending, tut-tut'ing.

It sometimes seems that activists have learned nothing and forgotten everything. Consider Womack’s sophisticated theory of social and economic change, born from careful study of electricians’ unions in Mexico—and compare it with the theory that to achieve health-care reform, one should put on a hoodie, shoot a guy in the back, and then get caught a few days later while eating an Egg McMuffin. From this action, and the glee that it has elicited, one learns not that the health-care system is broken but that many of us are.

Yeah, those damn "activists!" (Whoever they are. Evidently, not Graeme.)

"One learns," indeed.

"One learns."

As Mack Bolan pointed out, long ago, "The only problem with killing sons-a-bitches who deserve it is it's so hard to know when to stop."

Perhaps I should re-written that, "One learns that the only problem with..." Give it that Ivy League touch.

This pearl-clutching, blinding glimpse of the obvious by Wood is a waste of electrons.

Breaking news... Many of us are broken.

Wait, what?

Did you see who we just elected president?

A guy who bragged he could shoot somebody in, wait for it... New York City, and his poll numbers wouldn't change! And he wasn't wrong!

No shit, Sherlock. A society that fetishizes firearms, that will do nothing to stem the bloodshed of innocents, all for some fantasy about "freedom," was broken long ago.

A society that cares for "capital" more than people was broken long ago.

Jesus wept.

Spare us your "virtue signaling," Graeme.

We have worse problems than people thinking Mangione is some kind of hero. You should direct your attention toward those, and give us all the benefit of your keen analysis and penetrating insight. Cite some obscure cinematic references too while you're at it.

Class up the joint.

Give me a fucking break.

It's not just, "Don't read the comments," these days.

It's, "Don't read the commentary."

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Originally posted at Nice Marmot 18:23 Wednesday, 11 December 2024

Echoes ‘Round the ‘Sphere

Spotted this from Kottke in my feed. Bought the book. Is there anything McKinsey & Co. haven't made insufferably, inexcusably, worse? Timely, not only for the grotesque profits of heath "insurance" companies, but also because of the accelerating climate catastrophe.

And Florida implemented insurance "reforms" that amount to a "heads I win, tails you lose" gift to the insurance companies. Essentially, they've made it impossible for ordinary folks to sue their insurance company.

It's all just greed, greed, greed.

And Jack, for you, I'll keep posting the moonshots. In that vein, you may want to visit this post at Kottke's.

Denny Henke is also in accord with the Liberal Redneck's take on the Mangione matter.

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Originally posted at Nice Marmot 13:49 Wednesday, 11 December 2024

More Florida

Here's a good summary of the unfolding condo catastrophe.

In Pinellas County, a teacher died of Legionnaires' Disease because of mold in the AC system. You know Florida, the state that is defunding public education. What could go wrong?

People are dying to live here.

Here's a nice summary of the insurance crisis, with one enormous missing piece. Nowhere in this report do they mention that the reason why insurance companies are skating out of enormous losses was the majority of the damage was due to flooding! And how many of those folks had flood insurance? Haven't seen any reports about that, but I'm going to guess that most of them didn't.

So where's the reporting on what happens when you don't have flood insurance and can't afford to rebuild? I guess "investors" buy your home at distressed prices. What does that do to the net worth of those individuals? What does that do to the housing market?

I guess we're all going to find out.

Oh yeah, before I forget. Florida is also malignantly indifferent to the healthcare needs of children, too.

Horrible state, governed by horrible people.

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Originally posted at Nice Marmot 10:03 Wednesday, 11 December 2024