This woman got a spam email saying she had won $3m--and it turned out to be true

 

Hunt for men who dragged copse into post office to try to claim pension

 

Dinner Time!

 This is a small family eating at the dinner table. I suppose it's also the breakfast and lunch table. When you were a kid, did your family eat at the table for any meals? For those who have kids now, same question.

And, what was your place at the table? Did everyone sit in the same place each time?

As a kid, mom and dad sat across from each other and us 5 kids had our same place every time.  It was a round table. 

Breakfast was not as orderly. There was no formal breakfast or lunch time. Each kid got their bowl of cereal before school. Dad usually had a Carnation breakfast shake before work. But we still sat at our same places. 

Only dad got the yummy chocolate shake, us kids never did. It was only for dad. No fair!! LOL  

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How Are Your New Year's Resolutions Coming Along?

 20220116 Shep as Author

We're two weeks in now.  Have you been good?

                                                           Here is my resolution report 

First, I resolved to have the books for both of our businesses in Bristol Condition and to have all of our tax filing documents and records to the CPAs on January 31st.  This includes documents and data for my trustor's CPA.  I've made good progress on this one and we'll probably have it done on schedule.

At the start of each recent year, I've made a decision about the writing style I'll use on disqus.  The first year I made myself slog once again through the truly gawd-awful garbage writing in Rules for Radicals.  I made notes that distilled those techniques which could ethically be used on disqus and then I went to town.  Imagine my surprise when the Left did not applaud my adoption of their methods!

The second year I took a more lazy writing path.  That year, when counter-trolling Leftists, I would read a troll's posts and then only use his own methods against him.  Kind of like tying half my brain behind my back, just to keep things interesting.

If a guy were to plot a Venn of my first and second year techniques he would see an amazing amount of overlap.  

These years of adopting Leftist techniques were sort of an intellectual vacation for me.  I need to be serious again in both my on and off disqus writing and thinking.  

This desire leads to my second resolution.  I want to make some movement away from tertiary source material for my news.  It is impossible to be an expert on everything, but there is a lot of secondary, and better still primary source material out there pertaining to things that interest me.  A combination of time restriction and, frankly, being tired of all the political background noise in the news, gave me an excuse to be less informed than I should be.  As much as I can, I'll read from as close to the origin of information as possible.  This might mean reading sections of spending bills. It might mean reading the Neo-Marxists "Agenda XX" type documents.  I haven't done much along these lines since 2013.  With respect to this resolution, I haven't done much more than to think about which narrow subjects for which I'll have time to look at primary and secondary sources.  I'll get on it right after the taxes are done.

My third resolution is to read 12 books for more than fun.  Reading would run my life like an addiction if I didn't limit it.  For several years, excepting some things the kids thought I should read, I've only consumed fun and flashy books--histories written for mass consumption, science fiction, popular biographies, that sort of thing--not the sorts of books where you need to re-read paragraphs or make notes to ensure you understand it sort of stuff.  My thinking is not as crisp as it should be.  Both of our kids are at an age where they take almost evil delight in nailing me on my inconsistencies. 

 I haven't given much thought to which precise titles, but ideally I'll read 4 by objective journalists on serious contemporary topics, four on critical thought, logic, or philosophy, and then four written for people in the publishing or finance business.  Aside from ordering two of the texts I'll be reading for business, no progress has been made here.  This is another item I'll have to start after the taxes are done.

My fourth resolution is to better represent individual liberty in the world.  This can mean peacefully countering ANTIFA/BLM when they seek to intimidate through threats and violence.  It can mean actively expressing Libertarian ideas in my writing.  It can mean kicking the metaphorical legs out from under crypto-Marxist and crypto-Maoists when they advocate permanently trading rights away to solve temporary or imaginary problems.

What were your goals?  Have you made progress?  Feel free to critique mine. Suggestions are welcome. 

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This Woman Sells Her Farts in a Jar

Share Some Beauty You've Discovered

20220103 Shep as author

Rueda, a good friend to this blog, often goes out of his way to share beautiful things he and his wife have seen in their travels.  More than that, Rueda always finds something nice to say while visiting with our commenters.

   Let's follow Rueda's good example

If you have something beautiful to share, please do!  More's the better if you've actually been to the place to have experienced the beauty for yourself, but even if the image is aspirational, or just on a list of places you'd like to go, please share!

Here are a couple of my favorites.

 Padre Hidalgo,

seen here driving out the Fascist and Communist enemies of Mexico,

by Jose Clemente Orozco,

at the old government palace in Guadalajara.

Mexican culture & art fascinates me.  After learning the language it was natural to read their histories in their language.  So of course I became familiar with figures like Padre Hidalgo and knew well of Orozco's disdain for "-isms".  In 1988 I had a three day layover in Guadalajara.  I hired a local driver/guide for those days.  He properly sized me up and insisted I needed to visit the old capital buildings.  There was no expectations that I would see this work, although I was familiar with the image.  Upon entering a stairwell, there he was above me.  Padre Hidalgo, banishing the enemies of Mexico.  This was the first time any piece of art had ever moved me.  The work itself is not beautiful, but the ideas are.  A kind-natured Criollo priest chasing evil from Mexico by sheer force of will.  This story has a sad end, but the audaciousness of that moment in history, when this man squared off against raw political power, comes to me whenever I am in that stairwell.  What a heady life this priest lived.

Every time I am in Guadalajara I go to the old capital to visit the Padre.

Art is not always "art".  Sometimes engineering is art.  As a child who benefited from education grants during the space race I developed an appreciation for aircraft.  The forms that were demanded by the physics needed for an aircraft to function using technology available from 1920 through about 1990 were almost invariably beautiful in their own right.  Even unskinned aircraft, just bulkheads, spars, stringers and ribs, show strength and movement.  Add to this an understanding of history and then it becomes easy to be overwhelmed by the beauty present the first time someone like me enters a gallery at the National Air & Space Museum.  My favorite uncle gave me aviation books and a subscription to Air and Space as I was growing up.  I didn't know the beauty of it all would be coming together until entering that first gallery, that first time, with my wife.  I was dumbstruck, overwhelmed with emotion, as my eyes fell directly on history I knew and loved.

That first gallery has changed a lot since that visit.  Some of these aircraft were in that first gallery, although this room is much newer.

Different things are beautiful to different people.   Share something beautiful here.  It doesn't have to be real.  Sometimes the aspirational representation of a concept is beautiful to think about, even if the image that prompts the thought is rendered with no great skill.  Let us know if your post has a beauty beyond the visually obvious.

THOT's Gangbanger's Ball Happy New Years 2022 red carpet gala extravaganza.

Muh new intro. Going way back.

.  

 

                            Suzanna Hoffs hips. If you don't get it. You're probably not a Gen X male?

   

                                          If you don't turn that up. You'll never live it down. 

                                             -THOT. and Hangry Kittie......LOL. xoxox.