My theory is that everyone’s taste in wine has an individual price point. By which I mean that most bottles above that price point will be very enjoyable, much-more-expensive being sometimes worthwhile but with rapidly diminishing returns. And anything costing less will be noticeably lacking.

In my case that price point seems to be in the $18 range, although Chateau St. Michelle merlot at $14 does not disappoint.

Make sure you’re not buying cooking wines. These are intended to go in stews etc. They are only a little above vinegar.

The rule I’ve always heard (and believe in whole-heartedly) is, don’t cook with anything you wouldn’t drink.

It was reviewers holding forth on the difference between two recordings (I think both were digital) and it turned out to be the same recording.

In high school long ago, a friend wrote a program for his (then new) HP55 calculator that wrote poetry using a random number generator. We gave examples to the school’s English teachers to analyze. I remember one particular teacher who thought the author had homoerotic tendencies.

Advertising doesn’t work.

Half of it works. You just never know which half.

Coke and Pepsi together spend $8B annually (!) on advertising and I’ve never understood why. Does anyone actually drink one or the other based on their marketing? I suspect either one could not spend a penny and the change in their market share wouldn’t be noticed

From History.com’s history of the 14th amendment…

In its later sections, the 14th Amendment…and mandated that anyone who “engaged in insurrection” against the United States could not hold civil, military or elected office (without the approval of two-thirds of the House and Senate).

This is simply incorrect. In the relevent part it mandated that such individuals could not be a presidential elector, a very different thing from becoming president. It also prohibits insurrectionists from becoming an “officer under the United States” however it is not clearly established that the office of President of the United States is an “officer under” since such officers are generally nominated by…the President of the United States.

It is also not clear that Trump being guilty of insurrection is something that Congress can simply declare. There is a decent argument to be made that a court verdict would be necessary.

At the end of the day, if Trump (whom I despise, in case anyone cares) can garner enough support that such shenanigans are necessary to prevent his re-election, we as a country have far worse problems than anyone is willing to admit.

Feeling sorry for the boy? The proper thing to do would have been to mate with a knight and a bishop, for maximum humiliation…

Failing at anything now is racist.

Now we need to come up with a way to conjugate “fail” to indicate that it’s the fault of others rather than one’s self.

“I was failed” doesn’t really cut it.

Can we leave the court pederasty out of this

“For royalty, the bottom of the page does not mean the end of the line.” –Christie Davies

Well played, sir. Well played.

The other thing going on is HS chess club players aren’t nearly so far into the tail of chess obsession as masters and grandmasters.

There aren’t all that many master/GM level players in high school simply because HS chess players have other things impinging on their time – studies, sports, etc. Two players from my HS team reached master only after HS graduation and GM a while later. Both graduated with PHD in STEM subjects. We played a similar number of hours weekly.

I hear Putin is planning his withdrawal from Ukraine and the Spratly islands are being abandoned as I write this. Talk about carrying a big stick…

“Have fun at [insert event/venue] here”

I was going to attempt a joke, but there’s no way to improve on the original.

But gotta say, when you get up to WA, those Indian names feel not just ornamental.

IMHO the difference is that eastern tribe names have been around long enough to not stand out. To most people, if you say “Pontiac” they think of the car. The PNW tribe’s names haven’t really been put to commercial use and so one only hears the name in reference to the tribe.

Still cracks me up that the city of Tacoma was named after a local volcano that was called “Tahoma” by the native Puyallup tribe

One example is Autopilot, which starts with a similar premise as the Ben Stiller prestige TV show “Severance”, but is much pithier and funnier.

“Ben Stiller” and “prestige” are not words that I would typically use together in the same sentence. But to be fair that’s based on his acting work, which is…not my cup of tea.

Keep on the treadmill; be a good worker ant in the Ant Farm. Do that, and you can have nicer stuff than your daddy (and his daddy before).

The American Dream was never about “anyone” being able to get “rich”. Rather it was that anyone could improve themselves regardless of social class or family income. And that is still true today – anyone who spends less than they earn can accumulate money, learn economically valuable skills, start a business, etc.

Now, the problems Larry describes are certainly an issue, it is harder today than it was 50 years ago. But the basic premise stands.

From the great American philosopher George Carlin:

“They call it the American Dream because you have to be asleep to believe it.”

Let us consider George Carlin. Child of immigrants (well, one anyways), broken home, raised by a single mother. No college. Became rich.

“In one case reported by the Guardian,[6] a man took a jacket from a department store in New Orleans, and walked out without paying for it. He was convicted of shoplifting and sent to Angola prison in Louisiana. That was 16 years ago. Today he is still incarcerated in Angola, and will stay there for the rest of his natural life having been condemned to die in jail. All for the theft of a jacket, worth $159. ”

So I might agree that sentencing guidelines need reformed, especially with regards to low level drug offences. But this description is…disingenuous at best. Mr. Jackson’s life sentence was a result of having three prior felony convictions, one of them violent. Gahd only knows how many actual crimes he committed.

So no, he was not sent to prison for life for the theft of a jacket.

WAPB? Wet A$$ Pu$$y Brigade?

“And yet she struggles everyday…to regain her place as the woman who is nonpariel.”

Sheesh, what a bunch of complainers. It can’t be that hard to become a piece of candy…

In a multi-party electoral system (a “democracy”) anyone can ‘try his hand’ at running the country. If he fails, the economy may suffer, millions may lose their jobs or their homes (or their lives), but he loses nothing.

The founders intended that the House of Representatives set policy and that the Executive carry it out. I wish that philosophy had held, in which case our incompetent Presidents (every single one since 1992) would have inflicted minimal damage on the country.

Don’t know why I’m bothering, but what the heck…what exactly is your definition of traitor?

Agree it’s a poor showing for the Pubs, but it’s hard to see how that translates to “what the people want.”

– Pubs might eke out a one seat lead in the senate, or it could stay even or Pubs could lose one. Best case scenario for the the Dems is they don’t lose ground.

– Dems are up by one in the house, although there’s still a ways to go. They could keep a slim lead or lose the house by a slim margin. Best case scenario for the the Dems is they don’t lose ground.

By your logic Biden can claim a mandate for something or other…

One genre deviates from your paradigm: Rap. It’s utter garbage and always has been,

I will go out on a limb here and suggest that only 99.9% of it is garbage.

My memory fades as I get older but I still clearly remember the release of the “Walk this Way” collaboration between Aerosmith and Run DMC. Groundbreaking and also musically interesting. Of course, the rapping was a purely rhythmic rendition of Aerosmith’s lyrics on top of real music.

I can also recommend the self-titled first album of an obscure 80’s band, Rise Robot Rise. Also good music with rap on top, and the lyrics were thoughtful.

Most rap will either chase me out of the room or lead to the sound system experiencing mechanical difficulties….

The switch to Ms. may have made things simpler, however its purpose, rather like the pronoun/trans thing today, was not about that. Both had/have the same goal, to force society at large to change long-standing traditions because of hatred of the status quo and feelings of inadequacy. And the trans lunacy is leading to some pretty ridiculous results:

From the Atlanta Journal-Constitution:

Transgender inmate on Missouri’s death row asks for mercy

By SUMMER BALLENTINE and JOHN D. HANNA, Associated Press
Updated Dec 14, 2022

… “It is extremely unusual for a woman to commit a capital offense, such as a brutal murder, and even more unusual for a women to, as was the case with McLaughlin, rape and murder a woman,” Pojmann said.

O/T…

https://www.wsj.com/articles/ancient-dna-paints-a-new-picture-of-the-viking-age-11672933852

Shows an influx of outside folks arriving in Scandinavia during the Viking age 750AD-1099AD. Mostly female slaves, with a few others who left a minimal genetic footprint. Imagine that.

To their credit, neither the study nor the article impunes the Vikings for not living up to today’s moral standards. I initially assumed it was because the slaves were White, but it could be because the study was carried out by actual scientists and reported on by an actual journalist who isn’t woke.

Let’s see what happens if/when some one from the NYT gets their hands on it…

Those docs might (temporarily) cause a little more sturm und drang than most, but would not be earth-shattering. Our current political tribalism prevents adult conversations and real progress.

The Irish people have been decimated over the centuries

“Decimate” does not mean what you think it means.

“Ireland population prior to 1800 was 8 million”

“Nowadays there are about 80 000 000 people in the world who claim to have Irish ancestry…”

A poor job done either way.

Tunisia doesn’t actually have a border with any Sub-Saharan African country. They’re arriving there through Libya and Algeria. That tells you something about how much more advanced the place is compared to the other North African states.

Tunisia to Italy is 90 miles. From Tripoli it’s 300 miles. Which would you prefer in a raft?

When you consider just how mean and nasty women can be, and then you consider that women have about an order of magnitude smaller serum levels of testosterone than men have, any minute differences in testosterone levels between individual men wouldn’t seem to explain much of anything.

This assumes that men’s and women’s bodies react similarly to different initial levels and changes in testosterone levels…

“Baseline testosterone shared a weak but significant association with aggression (r = 0.054, 95% CIs [0.028, 0.080]), an effect that was stronger and significant in men (r = 0.071, 95% CIs [0.041, 0.101]), but not women (r = 0.002, 95% CIs [-0.041, 0.044]). Changes in T were positively correlated with aggression (r = 0.108, 95% CIs [0.041, 0.174]), an effect that was also stronger and significant in men (r = 0.162, 95% CIs [0.076, 0.246]), but not women (r = 0.010, 95% CIs [-0.090, 0.109]).”

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31785281/

The charging issue has a simple solution.

Manufacturers all switch to a standard battery designed for quick swap, “fueling” stations simply change batteries and drivers can be in and out as quickly as gassing up. Testing and refurbishment is part of the process, takes away worries about range loss and having to replace the batteries after eight years (although earlier estimates of battery life seem to have been overly pessimistic).

No, charging works much better.

Charging works great, currently, because the people charging their cars at home or at the office are… wait for it…people whose purchasing decision was informed by their ability to drive within the limitations of charging at home or the office. Also informing said decision, the wherewithal to pay for a relatively expensive EV and an ICE car for when additional range is needed.

Not a large percentage of the public can live within those constraints, certainly not 67%.

Now let’s discuss the process for charging away from your house, something absolutely necessary once we move beyond niche buyers. Folks stopping for gas are often on their way somewhere, time is important. If you pull up to a gas station with no empty spots, you know that one will become available within a few minutes. No so with EV charging – Teslas take up to a half hour to fully recharge. And if all spots are taken, you’re looking at possibly an hour before you’re on the road again. Just not suitable for mass acceptance.

What’s that you say, we can just add a gazillion charging stations? Let’s say we can add enough to guarantee empty spots. You’re still looking at a half hour. Still not suitable for mass acceptance.

You need robots to do the swapping, having extra batteries is a large capital cost, you also need robots to move them around in storage and plug them into chargers.

Yes to all those things. I’m not suggesting that the current stock of gas stations also be outfitted for EV battery swaps. Facilities would have to be larger, purpose-built with suitable equipment. They could be owned by the manufacturers – Tesla built their charging network before ever selling a car. Tesla could easily set up battery swapping stations, as could Ford, Chevy, Toyota, Nissan, etc.