Ghost of LL

Real talk here--that Michigan-Ohio rivalry is so toxic that Vance is probably worth a point to the Democratic nominee in Michigan.

And I mean, as an added benefit you'd get me as a neighbor if you moved to New York. Right? Yeah--you're exactly right about the specialists. I've been surprised how hard it is to get a doctor on some things here in Austin. For a lot of things, there are just one or two doctors. And with the present political environment, that's not improving (particularly for people like Mrs.LL, who are going to need medical care for things of a feminine nature).

So Mrs.LL and I have the same preferences, and we've settled on Manhattan, as I'll outline below: Big city but too big, if that makes sense. No small towns or mid-sized towns unless they’re within 30 minutes of an actual city. Well, look--it's probably "too big," since you seem to think "too big" is a thing. I don't share that opinion. Even in New York or Tokyo or London, you live in your neighborhood, which is big, but not too big. Nobody lives in New York; they live on the Upper East Side or Brooklyn or West Village. Nobody lives in London; they live in Chelsea or Tottenham or Arsenal . . . yeah, ok--I'm just naming Premier League teams. But you take the point. Good airport: I mean, obviously. From New York, you can get pretty much anywhere in the world that you might want to go nonstop. And because it's served by every major international carrier and is a hub for AA, DL, and UA, there is a lot of price competition. You're not a slave to UA like you are out of Denver or to AA like you would be out of Phoenix. Illustrating the point, I can fly from New York to London next Friday for less than $400 (or for $2,300 in Business) on any number of airlines. Try that trick out of Northwest Arkansas. Things to do on a random weekday. A raison d'etre for a city, if you will. I mean, obviously. A relatively outdoorsy place. By that I mean, we like outdoorsy stuff but no camping. I don't think people appreciate how much outdoorsy stuff there is in New York. Central Park is amazing--you can truly feel out in the wilderness there (and, in a lot of ways, you are). The beach is right there. You can go boating. There are ski resorts that are a two-hour drive away. I mean, ok--they're not Vail. But they're the same distance as Denver to Vail. A workable tax rate. We’re not going to slavishly chase a low rate but it does matter. New York's tax structure kind of works well for retirees. I mean, I'm not going to tell you it's great. But I am going to say that as a retiree coming from Texas, you're probably going to find it lower than what you've been used to. Politics, both state and city. Prefer left leaning. (This exempts the South and Texas.) So New York is liberal, but it likes electing cops and would-be authoritarians (see, e.g., Eric Adams; Rudy Giuliani). Maybe that goes back to the culture deriving from the original Dutch settlement and the fact that the Dutch West India Company didn't brook any inkling of democracy or sectarianism that would interfere with its mercantilist purpose. Whatever--it seems like that's what you're describing. Relatively good weather. (This exempts the South and Texas.) I mean, I don't know what you call "good." New York has four seasons. Two of them are great. Winter is cold, but not unbearably so. It's not Minneapolis. Summer is hot. But it's not Houston. And anyway--that's why you go to the Hamptons. House budget -- $1.5M to $2.5M. For what you need as a retiree, I should think that would be plenty for a small apartment in Manhattan. But let me humbly add a couple of other considerations: Access to healthcare. Dude--you're going to be old. You got to get that shit checked out. And if you have a heart attack, you need to be able to get to a hospital where they can save your life (you hear me, Mike Leach?). And in New York, you've got some of the best hospitals in the world. Mobility. In that same vein, think about a city if you're confined to a wheelchair. Or even if you're just old and can't walk super easy. New York may not seem ideal at first glance, but it actually kind of is. Between taxis and delivery, you can get everything you need with minimal/no walking. And since the state is so rigorous on enforcing ADA compliance, businesses are really accessible. It helps too that New York is generally pretty flat (compare with Denver or NW Arkansas). Good surface transit: You point out a good airport, but sometimes you don't want to get on a plane. For some things, you want to get on a train or hop in your car and be there in a couple hours. And New York offers all of that. Boston, Philadelphia, Washington--they're all three hours or less away. The beach is an hour away; skiing is two. Sports. I happen to like sports. Given that we're on a college football message board, I suspect you do, too. So you want a city that has all four major sports. I mean, fuck--you're going to be retired. You can get season tickets to your MLB team and actually go to 81 home games. What else you gonna do? And in New York, you have the added benefit of all the international shit that comes to America's first city--the World Cup, the ICC Cricket World Cup, the US Open. Diversity. I love the fact that there is a Georgian (Caucasian, not American) restaurant next to a Korean restaurant down in West Village. Over in Queens, you can get any type of cuisine you can imagine. And let's be real honest--the best Chinese food in the world isn't in fucking Beijing; it's in New York. Je ne sais quoi. And then there's a final factor. You just want someplace with a sense of "place" to live out your time in this dimension. Some place that's not generic "America." There are plenty of places that fit that bill. New Orleans. San Francisco. Miami. For my money, no place supplies that factor better than New York.

This is exactly right. The money-laundering benefit of bitcoin is in the anonymity. But it is traceable because it is not fungible. In the same way that dollar bills are not fungible, neither is bitcoin. Dollar bills have serial numbers, so you can trace the bills that the feds handed over to DB Cooper and see that none of them have ever been spent. In much the same way, bitcoin has an identifying code that can travels with the bitcoin (or portion of bitcoin) through every transaction. The important difference is that in the ordinary course of business, nobody records the serial numbers of dollar bills. So dollar bills are "considered fungible." But with bitcoin, its identifying code is recorded with every transaction. So it's not even "considered fungible." Compare that with the dollars that are in my bank account. Those dollars are "actual fungible." I can wire them to a different account in which they are comingled with other funds, and it's impossible to differentiate those dollars from the dollars that were previously in that account with which they were comingled.

But here's the thing: anyone who doesn't want a black woman in the Oval Office is going to vote against a Biden-Harris ticket anyway. Because absolutely nobody in their right mind would believe that Joe Biden is going to live to January 20, 2029. So you've already got the negative. Why not go ahead and get the positive that comes with having her on the top of the ticket? And this is the punchline. Get Biden out of the way, and the entire narrative shifts back onto the only old non compos mentis guy left in the race.

Yeah--that's part of the money laundering. I mean, money laundering isn't just for blow and insider trading, now is it?

They're not really all over the country. Texas dominates bitcoin mining in the United States (and consequently, the world). And that is in large part because, as @Captainant rightly points out, they can make more money in Texas by turning off their machines than they can anywhere actually mining bitcoin. We're going to look back on bitcoin in the medium-term future with nothing but disgust and wonderment. Between the physical harm it's doing to rural residents who live near these miners, the environmental harm it is doing with its electric and water consumption, and the financial harm it has done to millions of people who aren't financially literate, bitcoin has caused/is causing untold amounts of human suffering. All for what? A product whose sole utility is money laundering and rube-fleecing? It really is a fair encapsulation of 34 years of Republican governance in Texas.

The problem here isn't deregulation. This is entirely a failure by Centerpoint, which is a transmission-and-delivery utility. Electric generators are deregulated, as are retail utilities. But the issue here isn't with the electric generators. Unlike during the 2021 winter storm, there's plenty of electricity being generated. And the problem isn't with the retailers--all they do is read your meter and bill you anyway. The problem this go-around is entirely with Centerpoint. And TDUs like Centerpoint are still regulated. They still operate under a certificate of convenience and necessity, which delineates a territory in which they have a monopoly. The PUC has to approve Centerpoint's rates; Centerpoint can't get a rate increase without getting the approval of the PUC. Of course, that approval is typically forthcoming because . . . well, you know--this is Texas. Regulators aren't really there to regulate industry so much as facilitate the regulated industry's fleecing of the citizenry. So yeah--this isn't about deregulation. This is about the failure of Greg Abbott's appointed regulators.

Honestly--the CIA is doing yeoman's work here in preventing World War III. Between foiling this and the Russian plot earlier this month to attack American facilities in Europe, they're preventing attacks that would very likely compel the United States and its allies to go to war against Russia. It's kind of a replay of the underappreciated documentary The Final Countdown. Except this time, we're actively preventing the attack on Pearl Harbor rather than allowing it to happen out of some misplaced concern about the "timeline."

It should have been done the day after we lost to Panama.

It's coming home! I mean, not really--Three Lions are going to get their asses kicked by Espana. But still.

Yeah--I don't know about that offside call.

This game is madness.

I don't know how that's not a penalty.

Stones and Rice are so disappointing.

I was on a cruise earlier this summer, so I figured I'd start the Aubrey-Maturin series. I mean, when better to read that than when you're bouncing up and down on the waves? I'm now on the fourth book, and it's really entertaining. It's kind of if a Tom Clancy book were set in the Napoleonic Wars, with a scooch of Jane Eyre mixed in.

I mean, for that money the stewardesses better be (1) in those Pan Am uniforms, (2) offering me blow jobs in the lav, and (3) answerable to the title "stewardess."

Oh, wow.

God, John Stones sucks.

Deutschland!

What a brilliant correction of my misstatement.

A maximum of five years in power. The PM can ask the King to dissolve Parliament and call a General Election at any time. But he must do so not more than five years from the beginning of this Parliament (which will open with the King's Speech on July 17). I have some takeaways, but first a few highlights: 1) Jacob Rees-Mogg had to stand there on stage next to an anthropomorphic corn on the cob to hear that he had lost his seat. That that wasn't all--his loss provided Labour with its 326th seat, officially making Labour the majority party in Parliament. The staging, the timing--it was all so perfect for a man who is as responsible as anyone for the collapse of the Conservative Party. Rees-Mogg actively developed and nurtured the racist populist fringe that became Reform UK, thinking that he could domesticate it and keep it as a pet. But as we have seen in the United States, the leopard always eats their faces. And so it was with Rees-Mogg. 2) A huge number of Tories looked shellshocked, as though they genuinely didn't expect this outcome. And that amazes me. The polls have been predicting this for months. And I don't even think you needed a poll to sense the mood of the electorate. 3) But through their shellshock, they were remarkably candid. Tories honestly called it a "disaster," a "catastrophe," and a "bloodbath." But absolutely none of them called it "rigged." There is a deep consensus in the UK as to the constitutional democratic structure that seems to be lacking in the United States. And it's quite alarming and distressing when you see it lain quite so bare. So a few additional take-aways: 1) I don't know what the Conservative Party is today. Twenty years ago, it was the party of both Archie Leach and his racist father in Kingston-on-Hull (people think Archie came from money, but really he only married into it). But yesterday, Archie's dad voted Reform UK. And Archie is now living in Rio with that American lass with the great tits. So who is voting Conservative these days? I think the answer is "not very many people." The Tories, I fear, are going to take the lessons that the Republican Party took from 2012 and decide that they need to consolidate around a base of racist, xenophobic, anti-capitalistic, and populist voters. If they do that, it will be an even smaller party. But people like Suella Braverman will be safe, and that's frequently the consideration that trumps all others. 2) The people of Clacton are functionally not going to have any representation in Parliament. Nigel Farange made that pretty clear in his victory speech. He has no ability to or interest in actually holding office. He's only interested in campaigning for the next election. And for a down-and-out town like Clacton, that's the last thing it needs. 3) The cause of Scottish independence looks to be pretty much cooked, at least for now. SNP with only 9 seats is a disaster for that party. I guess I'm a little surprised that Brexit didn't immediately bring about Scottish independence with an eye toward rejoining the EU. But the problem is that when you get into government, as the SNP is at Holyrood, you have to actually govern. And the SNP hasn't been very good at it. It's really the same disease that infected the Tories with the Brexit vote. Great--you won. Now actually govern. And they couldn't. 4) Which brings us to Labour. What the fuck is that party? It legit had no real policy positions in its manifesto to distinguish it from the Conservatives. And as has been rehashed, the Conservative policy decisions have led the UK to an absolutely abysmal economic (and, it must be said, cultural) state. So Labour has a sweeping mandate, but to do what? The new Chancellor is going to have a real challenge. The British economy is stagnating. But government expenditures desperately need to go up. The American solution is debt. And, in all honesty--the evidence reflects that it's not a bad solution. But damn, the UK's debt is already around 90% of GDP. But the United States is around 125%, so fuck it--why not?

It’s refreshing to see the losing party saying that they respect the people’s vote and saying they need to look at why the voters rejected them rather than claiming fraud and planning an insurrection.

The nice Lady with the Sword is out.

It’s going to be interesting in Northern Ireland. Sinn Fein may be the largest NI party in Westminster for the first time, as it looks like the DUP is taking a beating alongside the Tories.