Just did a calc on what Bezos would have owed if he had lived in CA and the 2nd bill passed
Smart man. I would move for much less. ;)
Just think, they lose "potential" revenue like that, and the new folks coming in pay zero income tax and consume "free" services.
New York is in the same boat. Sinking boat.................
Free Willie my azz!!!
[HEADING=2][SIZE=7]Orcas Sink Fourth Boat Off Iberia, Unnerving Sailors[/SIZE][/HEADING]
Orcas caused enough damage to sink a yacht in the Strait of Gibraltar last week. A small pod has been slamming boats in recent years, worrying skippers chartering routes closer to shore.
The yacht Grazie Mamma II carried its crew along the coastlines and archipelagos of the Mediterranean. Its last adventure was off the coast of Morocco last week, when it encountered a pod of orcas.
The marine animals slammed the yacht’s rudder for 45 minutes, causing major damage and a leak, [according to Morskie Mile]('https://morskiemile.pl/atak-orek-podczas-rejsu-oswiadczenie/'), the boat’s Polish operators. The crew escaped, and rescuers and the Moroccan Navy tried to tow the yacht to safety, but it sank near the port of Tanger Med, the operator said on its website.
The account of the sinking is adding to the worries of many sailors along the western coast of the Iberian Peninsula, where marine biologists are studying a puzzling phenomenon: [Orcas are jostling and ramming boats]('https://www.nytimes.com/2023/05/24/world/europe/orcas-sink-boats-spain.html') in interactions that have disrupted dozens of voyages and [caused at least four boats]('https://www.theca.org.uk/orcas') in the past two years to sink.
The largest of the dolphin family, orcas are playful apex predators that hunt sharks, whales and other prey but are generally [amiable to humans in the wild]('https://www.nytimes.com/2022/08/15/science/sharks-killer-whales-swimming.html'). The orcas hunting in the Strait of Gibraltar are considered to be [endangered]('https://www.iucnredlist.org/species/132948040/132949669'), and researchers have noticed an upsurge of unusual behavior since 2020: A small group of the marine animals have been battering boats in the busy routes around Portugal, Spain and Morocco.
While most interactions occur in the waters of southwestern Europe and North Africa, [an orca also reportedly rammed]('https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/jun/21/orca-rams-yacht-off-shetland-first-such-incident-northern-waters') a yacht some 2,000 miles north off the coast of Scotland, according to The Guardian.
“Orcas are complex, intelligent, highly social,” Erich Hoyt, a research fellow at Whale and Dolphin Conservation and author of “Orca: The Whale Called Killer,” said. “We’re still at the early stages of trying to understand this behavior.”
Researchers have pushed back at the idea that orcas are attacking vessels. Instead, they theorize that the rudders of boats have become a plaything for curious young orcas and that the behavior has become a learned fad spreading through the population. Another hypothesis, according to biologists [who published a study]('https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/mms.12947') on the population last June, is that the ramming is an “adverse behavior” because of a bad experience between an orca and a boat — though researchers tend to favor the first.
It is unclear what will stop the ramming, whether it’s playful or otherwise, a point that has left anxious skippers traveling these parts sharing advice in [Facebook groups dedicated to tracking such interactions]('https://www.facebook.com/groups/435540734439160').
“It’s been an interesting summer hiding in shallow waters,” said Greg Blackburn, a skipper based in Gibraltar. Orcas slammed into a boat he was commandeering in May and chewed at the rudder, he said, though the vessel was able to return to shore.
The encounter left an impression: On a recent trip to Barcelona, Mr. Blackburn had to pass through a patch where orcas had been sighted the week before. “I genuinely felt sick for about three hours,” he said, “just watching the horizon constantly for a fin to pop up.”
Conservationists, maritime rescue groups and yacht clubs are [partnering to navigate the challenge]('https://www.theca.org.uk/orcas#safety-protocol') of preserving an endangered population and helping sailors avoid calamity. The Cruising Association, a club supporting sailors, has recommended safety protocols for orca encounters, such as disconnecting the boat and staying quiet. Skippers have offered one another anecdotal advice to deter attacks, including throwing sand into the water and banging loudly on the boat.
Before leaving shore, seagoers can also consult [digital platforms]('https://www.theca.org.uk/orcas/reports') that now track reported orca sightings and interactions in the region. This can help them avoid the animals, or charter a route closer to shore, said Bruno Díaz López, a biologist and the director of the Bottlenose Dolphin Research Institute based in Galicia, Spain.
“We suggested the boats stay in shallow waters,” he said, adding that they had noticed more boats changing their journeys. “Maybe the trip takes longer, yes. But it is worth it.”
Mr. Blackburn, the skipper, said he had heard of people resorting to throwing firecrackers into the sea to try to scare the animals away, adding that the boats served as people’s homes on the ocean. “At the end of the day, if you’re protecting your home what are you going to do?”
But the ocean is the orcas’ home, and conservationists say scaring the animals is not a solution.
“It is not about winning a battle, because this is not a war,” Mr. López said. “We need to be respectful.”
Guess that Bernie never got the memo instructing him that NIH has nothing to do with drug sales, CDC and FDA, yes, but not NIH...
[HEADING=2][SIZE=7]Senate Confirms Biden’s Pick for N.I.H. Director Over Sanders’s Objections[/SIZE][/HEADING]
Dr. Monica M. Bertagnolli won bipartisan approval despite opposition from Senator Bernie Sanders, the chairman of the Senate health committee.
The Senate on Tuesday confirmed Dr. Monica M. Bertagnolli, a cancer surgeon who currently leads the National Cancer Institute, as the next director of the National Institutes of Health, overriding the objections of Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont, the chairman of the Senate health committee.
The vote was 62 to 36, with Mr. Sanders voting no. In a [statement last month]('https://www.sanders.senate.gov/press-releases/news-sanders-statement-on-markup-of-nih-director-nominee/'), he said that while Dr. Bertagnolli was an “intelligent and caring person,” he would vote against her because she “has not convinced me that she is prepared to take on the greed and power of the drug companies and health care industry.”
Dr. Bertagnolli will become only the second woman to lead the N.I.H. on a permanent basis, after [Dr. Bernadine P. Healy]('https://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/09/us/09healy.html'), who served under President George H.W. Bush.
C’mon I waited a few days. Guess no one wants to address the manifesto of the trans-killers manifesto, or why they kept it from the public. (Mental illness)
[URL unfurl="true"]https://www.newsweek.com/nashville-shooter-manifesto-released-steven-crowder-what-we-know-1841207[/URL]
Gotta love this. 13 schools with not one proficient student.
Gotta love this. 13 schools with not one proficient student.
Gaining voters!
Yep! No doubt about it. It's got that "WTF vibe". So it goes here................................
[URL unfurl="true"]https://www.yahoo.com/news/astronauts-allowed-eat-other-starving-150120817.html[/URL]
:oops:
I was going to put this in the "What's on Tap" thread, but figured this was a better fit.
[URL unfurl="true"]https://nypost.com/2023/11/09/lifestyle/twitch-star-making-beer-with-her-own-vaginal-yeast-theyll-drink-it/[/URL]
I was going to put this in the "What's on Tap" thread, but figured this was a better fit.
[URL unfurl="true"]https://nypost.com/2023/11/09/lifestyle/twitch-star-making-beer-with-her-own-vaginal-yeast-theyll-drink-it/[/URL]
NOPE Thread would have worked too...
[HEADING=2][SIZE=7]Lucky Find at Auction Identifies Man on Cover of ‘Led Zeppelin IV’[/SIZE][/HEADING]
It’s not a painting. It’s a picture of a Victorian artisan taken in the English countryside in 1892.
[IMG alt="A sepia-toned photograph from the 1890s showing a man stooped over under a heavy load of thatch. "]
Lot Long, who worked as a thatcher in the 1890s. His image became the face of the album known as “Led Zeppelin IV.” Credit...Wiltshire Museum
On Nov. 8, 1971, Led Zeppelin released its iconic fourth studio album, which was untitled but is widely known as “Led Zeppelin IV.” It features the band’s major hit “Stairway to Heaven,” and the wordless cover shows the framed image of a bearded, older man with a large bundle of sticks on his back against the backdrop of a decaying wall.
Now, 52 years later to the day, a minor mystery about that cover has been solved.
Sometimes thought to be a painting, the image, it turns out, was a Victorian-era photograph of a man who made thatched roofs for cottages in Wiltshire, a rural county in southwestern England. His name was Lot Long and he was 69 at the time, according to Brian Edwards, a researcher who found the photo.
Mr. Edwards, a visiting research fellow at the University of the West of England, stumbled upon the picture in March while scouring the internet for new releases at auction houses that might be interesting for his research, which includes the area’s well-known landmark Stonehenge.
As he was looking through a Victorian photo album full of landscapes and houses, Mr. Edwards noticed a photo he had seemingly seen before.
“There was something familiar about it straight away,” he said in a phone interview. (Mr. Edwards was the proud owner of a “Led Zeppelin IV” LP from the year the album was released, he said, and he listens to it to this day, albeit on a CD.)
After a quick call to his wife for a “sanity check,” he concluded: This was indeed the image on the cover of one of the most epic musical releases of his teenage years. He then called the Wiltshire Museum, where he curated an exhibit in 2021.
The museum bought the photo album for 420 pounds (about $515), [according to the auctioneer’s website]('https://app.dukes-auctions.com/en/auction/aa070323-avenue-auctions/401-reminiscences-of-a-visit-to-shaftesbury-1892').
The photo album’s first page states, “Reminiscences of a visit to Shaftesbury,” and is made out as “a present to Auntie from Ernest.”
Based on that information, Mr. Edwards researched the origins of the photo album and was able to conclude that the photographer was a man by the name of Ernest Howard Farmer.
“It sounds like good detective work, but in truth there was a lot of luck involved,” Mr. Edwards said. “I caught a few good breaks.”
As for how that photo ended up on the album cover: Legend has it that Robert Plant, Led Zeppelin’s vocalist, and his bandmate Jimmy Page were in an antique shop in Pangbourne, a village about 50 miles west of London along the River Thames, where they spotted a colorized version of the photograph that will be on view in the Wiltshire Museum.
Because the photographer, Mr. Farmer, was also a teacher, Mr. Edwards said, one plausible theory is that he used the picture to teach colorizing to his students. One of those versions may have ended up in a frame in an antique shop. That colorized version of the picture seems to have been lost.
The photo album included about 100 photos showing architectural views and street scenes together with a few portraits of rural workers, according to the Wiltshire Museum, where the photos will be on display.
“We will show how Farmer captured the spirit of people, villages and landscapes of Wiltshire and Dorset, an adjoining county, that were so much of a contrast to his life in London,” the museum said in an announcement about the exhibit.
“Even if this Led Zeppelin photograph wasn’t in there, this would be a very interesting exhibition about the quality of Victorian photographs,” Mr. Edwards said.
For those with young children, or grandchildren, PLEASE stay vigilant. It comes from every angle imaginable.
[URL unfurl="true"]https://www.foxnews.com/media/colorado-mom-poses-9-year-old-text-school-sanctioned-crisis-line-sickened-responses[/URL]
Because a certain economic agenda is so so good :rolleyes:
[URL unfurl="true"]https://finance.yahoo.com/news/americans-continue-to-ransack-their-retirement-savings-survey-finds-123049227.html[/URL]
Sissy issued draft papers and collapses, SHOCKER.
[URL unfurl="true"]https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-67355430.amp[/URL]
Because a certain economic agenda is so so good :rolleyes:
[URL unfurl="true"]https://finance.yahoo.com/news/americans-continue-to-ransack-their-retirement-savings-survey-finds-123049227.html[/URL]
Yeah. All good. :rolleyes:
Yeah. All good. :rolleyes:
shopping in the wrong place - I still get for about $5 for the same amount..........
Yeah. All good. :rolleyes:
shopping in the wrong place - I still get for about $5 for the same amount..........
Wader's right. You really need to pick a better example for your case. How about $14 a lb and it's very good stuff, especially when I find some nice, wood oven baked bagels?!!
Wader's right. You really need to pick a better example for your case. How about $14 a lb and it's very good stuff, especially when I find some nice, wood oven baked bagels?!!
Honestly I could close my eyes and anything I grab is priced 10 - 40 % more over a relatively short time period.
Honestly I could close my eyes and anything I grab is priced 10 - 40 % more over a relatively short time period.
I don't know - Bacon is back to $5 or less per package (Hormel). I've seen it at like $3.98 when on sale. I'm noting some prices dropping. But then again I do all of my own shopping - so's I kinda notice the pricing.
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