I listened to the accompanying podcast, it was so engrossing and the narrative was so compelling I binged the entire 8 episodes. It starts out with a bank in Kansas whose CEO had burned $47 million USD on a crypto scam. A woman, who by all estimations, was a smart, competent, self-directed adult was scammed out of $150K, not just her own money, but borrowed from her family, and took out a loan for $35K at a ruinous interest rate of 26%. There's a whole lawless world and physical cities operating these scams. When I hear the victims' account of how they were scammed, I was just beyond belief because their actions were so far out from the norm. They themselves acknowledge this when they recount their actions in hindsight.
Just like people who ask, how can you forget your baby/pet in the backseat of a car. It sounds outlandish but it happens, to all kinds of smart people. How can you give ten thousand dollars to someone on the internet, who you've chatted with but never met? And yet it happens and continues to happen. My takeaway of the comment elements for victims: loneliness (and neediness) and a tiny big of greed. This is not a condemnation, we are all greedy in some dimension. The scammers were successful because they presented a picture of readily available affluence, everyone is swimming in it, it seems so easy, why not me. Another vector of why social media is poison. I found this series fascinating!
Lamy Safari friends, I bought one, and it went unused for years because it was no fun to write with. The nib was scratchy, not feedback, scratchy, and no small tweak ever made it smooth. I was on the verge of buying a sheet of micro-mesh to fix it when I came to my senses, what the hell was I doing, like trying to fix a smokey candlewick for light. I thought to myself, it can't all be like this, and bought a TWSBI Eco. This was going to be my last fountain pen if it didn't work out. And, dear readers, it is amazing! It writes like butter, words cannot describe, I whip it out every chance I get to write with it.
(The Lamy does OK with a very wet ink and cheap printer paper. I use it to doodle, so all is not lost.)
SEEKING WORK / US / HYBRID, REMOTE, AVAILABLE FOR TRAVEL
Have you inherited a giant Splunk cluster operating on hundreds of TBs of data, and you're not sure what's in it, or how to leverage what's in it for Business and Operational Intelligence?
Do you have more than one Splunk instance, in cloud, on-prem, a hodge-podge of Elastic, Prometheus, Grafana, and you need to combine their operations across network enclaves?
Do you have logs from devices running not-an-OS? Does rsyslog configuration fill you with dread? It does for me too, but I've written lots of them and integrated them with Splunk.
Do you have data for which you need to enforce compliance, but you're not sure how?
Do you need to build a Splunk cluster from scratch? In a week? Do you have a derelict cluster that needs optimizing, cleanup, a multi-version upgrade?
I'm a Splunk Certified Architect who have worked with Splunk since 2008. I manage multiple clusters of +10TB/day by volume. How can I help?
When the Tsukiji fish market was still open to unescorted tourists there were many of these pocket eateries, I ate in one that was the size of a large closet, guests sat elbow to elbow, you can't lean back without bumping into another person who has lined up behind you to claim your seat when you're done. Clam broth, raw fish, chased with a beer, all before 6AM.
> Suppose the same principle was applied to a home owner. At the end of each year your property is evaluated and you're taxed on the difference between last and this years price.
This is exactly how state property tax is assessed in the US. You're not taxed on just the difference but the entire assessed value of the house. There have been cases of seniors who have bought and lived in their homes for 30, 40 years having to sell because they could not afford the tax after the value of their home went into the stratosphere. Similarly for poorer neighborhoods experiencing gentrification when property value shot up beyond what the original buyer paid, and they are forced out. When objections are raised on how a wealth tax would be infeasible to administer, my rejoinder is local governments levy it all the time, on the middle class, they just call it a property tax.
I bake bread at home nearly weekly, it goes stale and crumbly in about 3 days at room temperature and moldy by 7. I bought some pita and didn't use it all up. It was still soft, pliant, mold-free after 2 weeks. I tossed the thing, never going to buy it again.
If you added preservatives to your bread it wouldn't stale quickly either. Add a small amount of white vinegar to your bread and it will stale much less quickly.
The question is what kind of preservatives. Formaldehyde is a preservative. Acetic acid is a component of long-ferment lean dough such as sourdough, and an insignificant component of short-ferment (~2 hours) enriched dough, such as sandwich bread. It will not help with enhancement and preservation of texture, in this case the gelatinization of starch in the finished product.
Unless you're suggesting that the pita bread you threw out was preserved with formaldehyde, there isn't much of a question here. Taking issue with bread keeping its freshness is in-and-of itself no bad. If you have issue with a specific preservative, perhaps discuss that specificity.
Let us go back to the beginning. Are you saying home-bake bread which molds in 7 days is comparable to store-bought bread which does not mold in 7 days. OK then, in which we have nothing to argue about. I have no scientific source to cite one is better or worse than the other. By all means, buy and consume bread that does not mold for a long time. That sounds good.
> If you hire a driver, or use a taxi, offer to pay the driver to take you to visit their mother. They will ordinarily jump at the chance.
This is deluded.
> They fulfill their filial duty and you will get easy entry into a local’s home, and a very high chance to taste some home cooking.
Oh I see, he's probably traveling in a very poor country.
> Crash a wedding.
What? No. That's rude.
> You are not a nuisance; you are the celebrity guest!
Oh I see, probably a white person from a rich country traveling in a poor country.
> They will usually feel honored.
I stopped reading and CTRF-F for primae noctis. Disappointed. He had me going.