Vanguard trades occur at end of day.

I use “Getting by. We’re all just getting by.” I usually get a reply like, “Ain’t that the truth.” More real, and it invites an attitude of being in it together.

You could try oven cleaner…

• Set up my will.
• Dispose of the accumulated cruft.
• Get the house ready to sell.
• Document all my accounts.
• Move money as appropriate.
• Provide for preservation/distribution of my genealogy research.
• Work to prepare my friends and family for life without me.

The infinite improbability generator.

I think it has already started. It just hasn’t consolidated yet.

Well I still need to find a job. ASAP.

My wife got some postal mail about unclaimed funds that looked bogus. After several repeats, we found out that it was due to her uncle passing away intestate.

My wife’s already deceased father and him had mingled their finances. But another cousin had found out first and had already moved on cutting us out.

Fixing it has taken over a decade, but the estate finally closed last month. Our share total was around $350k. The thieving cousin probably got away with double that. But hey, a free windfall for retirement.

Unfortunately, I’m out of work so we’re living off of that money now.

H5N1 with 50% mortality. Collapse of the economy. Food shortages. Fuel shortages. Power outages.

This is the key plot of Fahrenheit 451.

Nice info. Helpful. Directly useful and applicable to me. But not really dull. Just not of interest to non-technical folks. Thanks for the post, but in the future you should try to be duller to fit in.

I have some old family photos (1940s) that I’d love to have identified. All of the folks are dead, and I can generally ID the date by the ages of the kids. In NYC, but where? If you start a community, I’ll be there.

From Reddit. But I started on Usenet.

I’m 61. Who’s older?

John: “I think we should install storm drains so Main street doesn’t flood when it rains.”

Jim: “But that will block access to my store for weeks!”

Bob: “And I think it’s a waste of time and money!”

Politics is the process of finding a solution that most of the affected people can agree on. As I see it. The rest is just scale.

The whole point of politics is compromise. Finding solutions that the most people can accept.

A job. I got laid off. Things are getting tight.

Make inter-nest alliances. Build the foundation of species-as-single-organism. Set ants on the road to total global domination.

Shattered by Lisa Morgan.

His name is Arnold Ferolito. He was a friend of my father. How did they meet? I don’t know. But the story starts like this…

Arnie was down on his luck. He had a business model based on some kind of green/environmental concept. But it was the 1960s - and that wouldn’t be a viable thing for 50 years. So my father’s advice was “Stick to your strengths. You’re a brilliant electronic engineer with experience in video. That will be a growth field. Find something there.” Well, the timing was impeccable. Within a few weeks, there was an accident at a studio in Manhattan. Two cabinet-sized muti-million-dollar videotape machines were blown out a window in Manhattan to the street several stories below. Arnie bought them as scrap, rebuilt and resold them. That became the seed money for AF Associates.

During my tweens, we would visit them for a day once a year or so. Swim in his pool. I’d chat with his daughter (close to my age), who was oddly willing to talk with me - introverted and awkward as I was. Turns out, the whole family was badly twisted. The older (middle) son was bright, but impossible to talk to (aka autistic). The younger one was “disturbed”. My sister (about 3 at the time) nearly died in that pool once. I was the only one who saw her fall in and I fished her right out.

I worked for AFA in the summer of 79 before my senior year in HS. AF did my father a favor and hired me for the few weeks. I assembled the on-location truck that went to the keystone of the remote TV studio at the Lake Placid Olympics. AFAssociates was reputable and successful. At least for a few years.

'Round about the 90s, my father volunteered me to help AF with some “tech stuff”. It turned into endless demands on my time. AF had seen my father demo a video camera connected to a TARGA board in a 486 PC. AF decided he wanted multiple cameras connected to a PC in each of his 3 houses (NJ, LI, FL) so he could keep an eye on them. Enter the GEOVISION board. These were first-gen tech at the time. The setup was difficult and finicky. There was no support. And it ran on Windows 95. Then there was the dynamic IP issue for the home DSL services. Plus VNC for remote access through the open router ports. It became a full-time support gig - with SUPER URGENT calls all the damn time when a PC crashed or an IP address changed. Did he pay? He did not.

All this time he’s working on his new business. An offshoot of AFA, it involves satellite signals and offshore content, and complex licensing. None of which I care to listen to. Oh, and he’s suing his son-in-law. And his daughter won’t talk to him. And his brilliant son working at Intel won’t either. And his wife divorced him 10 years ago. But that’s OK, his new wife Olga is young and beautiful and Russian. And he gets more and more insistent with his political opinions. Which are generally disgusting racist, elitist, anti-immigrant, winner-take-all, AnCap, well, you know the type. Except this was still the 1990s when Newt Gingrich was the worst US politics had to offer. He was out there.

Well, It got annoying. No pay, calls all the time, constant blame for issues, noxious opinions. My father had passed away, so I had nothing tying him to me. So I ghosted him.

He called me endlessly and left long voicemails. Some were guilt trips calling out to my dead father. Some were poor-me pity pleas citing his failing health. The calls lasted several YEARS, but finally tapered off. I never looked back.

Except I did. I looked him up. Holy shit, he’s in WIKIPEDIA! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RM_Broadcasting He’s LITERALLY a foreign agent! As declared by the State Department! He is a small part of a root cause of the downfall of this country. And I am sure that he is proud of the way things are headed.

If he (or anyone he knows) reads this, I am doxxed. But I really doubt this has any traction to spread. Please do not repost this.