Worth Knowing

From Friend & Longtime Reader JCinPA:

I’ve been handicapping the probability of widespread violence around the election—I mean as in nationwide—for a couple of years and now I believe any sentient person knows it is now virtually 100%. The only question remaining is which side wins the election, that will determine which side kicks off the festivities, but we will have festivities.

For any of your readers who are not firearms enthusiasts (there must be 1 or 2?), you may want to put this out as a public service announcement. Good condition S&W police surplus revolvers. Add $50-75 for s&h and processing, but in the unlikely event someone has no weapon and is now regretting that fact, these are the ticket for the non-shooter.

Along with four to five 5-gal water bottles and some 4patriot food packs, it’s time to get prepared.

All good advice and two good links.  Thankee, my friend.

I actually added some supplies to the SHTF cupboard a day or two ago, for no apparent reason.  Hadn’t done it for a while, but something must have been tickling my antenna.  And I don’t think I’m the only one…

Correction

Via Kenny:

Hate to break it to you, Scooter, but every state is hurting from Bidenflation, and we know damn well that DEI Harris is going to do sweet fuck all about the energy crisis and inflation except add more of the same Bidenbullshit like Net Zero, “sustainable” energy generation and EVs.  Trump, on the other hand, may actually do something useful… like he did the last time he was President.

And anyone who doesn’t know this doesn’t deserve to live, let alone vote.

From the same birdcage liner:

Actually, entrepreneurs of any ethnicity will “have an affinity towards Trump’s economic agenda”  because if they believe in Harris’s DEI-sodden, Socialistic and climate change economic agenda, they deserve to get whatever comes to them.

#GeneralMotors #Academia #etc,

Much Ado

So people are getting bent out of shape yet again by a sequel to an already-shitty movie about cartoon characters?

Oy.  Talk about a typhoon in a teacup.

And “folie à deux”?  (shared lunacy or psychosis, e.g. the Climate Apocalypticals)  Adding a pretentious title to what appears to be an abysmally bad movie is not gonna help the box-office receipts grow any larger, folks.

Fucking morons.  I hope Hollywood crashes and burns, along with most of its denizens.

FAFO

I’m not a huge fan of the term “fuck around and find out” (or its past tense equivalent), meaning you wanna play games, you might not end up with the consequences you wanted.  I don’t know what the Brit expression of the above might be, but here’s a real-life example:

A marked police car was chasing after a [car driven by] men who were driving at high speeds through London before crashing outside Central Middlesex Hospital this morning.

Now that’s a lucky place to crash if ever there was one.  However:

A 17-year-old boy has been killed and a second is fighting for his life after the car struck a kerb and flipped over. 

The 17-year-old was pronounced dead shortly after the collision on Park Royal at around 5:25am. Two other men in the car at the time were rushed to hospital for treatment with their injuries first believed to be life threatening. One remains in a critical condition with the other now said to be stable but still receiving medical help.

A fourth passenger was not seriously hurt in the crash.

So the Gods of the Copybook Headings came through, in this case, because TANSTAAFL/Ride  (said Gods generally being the nemeses of the ungodly, as the ones dealing out the consequences.)

Of course, this being Britishland, there has to be An Inquiry, but I can’t see what for.  Little shits were driving a car (probably stolen, 2:1) and that recklessly through an urban area.  Had they collided with a pedestrian or another car, some innocent lives might have been lost.  As it was, nobody dead except those that should be.

Just this once, I’d like to be heading up the inquiry.  It would take about half an hour, and only that long because I’d order takeout pizza for everyone as we discussed the (very few) details before sending everyone on their way with no consequences for any of the cops, who were only doing their job, after all.

Of course, the parents of the deceased scrote(s, I’m hoping) will be all Weepy And Waily because their little Precious was a good boy who sang in the choir and they can’t imagine how he got involved in such Bad Company, and all the usual twaddle.  They should be billed for the replacement value of the wrecked car as a consequence for not supervising their still-minor child.  That they won’t be will just encourage similar negligence among other parents, unfortunately.

In case anyone has missed it, I’m not feeling in a very charitable mood today.

Price Increase On Your Dreams

Well, isn’t this special:

The cost of buying a Mega Millions jackpot dream will soon more than double, but lottery officials said they’re confident players won’t mind paying more after changes that will lead to larger prizes and more frequent winners.  Lottery officials announced Monday that it will cost $5 to play Mega Millions, beginning in April, up from the current $2 per ticket.

Mega Millions will introduce changes at a time when fewer people are buying tickets and jackpots need to reach ever-higher figures before sporadic players notice and opt to buy a ticket or two. Whereas a $500 million jackpot once prompted lines out convenience store doors, top prizes of $1 billion now often draw more of a ho-hum response.

Yeah, that’s right:  in the face of declining sales, boost revenue by increasing the price.  Fucking morons.  Ask Detroit how that’s worked out for them.

And even more special:

“Spending 5 bucks to become a millionaire or billionaire, that’s pretty good,” said Joshua Johnston, director of the Washington Lottery and lead director of the group that oversees Mega Millions.  The price increase will be one of many changes to Mega Millions that officials said will result in improved jackpot odds, more frequent giant prizes and even larger payouts.

Sure;  odds go from 2 trillion-1 to 1 trillion-1.  We lottery players may be suckers, but not that much.

And:

“You pay 5 bucks for your Starbucks,” Johnston noted.

But at the end of that transaction you get a cup of coffee in your hand, as opposed to a largely-worthless piece of paper.

I have this to say to MegaMillions:

…and thanks for nothing, assholes.

And thankee, sorta, to Reader Mike L. for the link.

Upright & Locked Position

Via Insty (thankee, Squire), I saw this:

Avoiding couches and chairs might be a good way of keeping your back pain from getting worse, new research suggests.  Finnish researchers found that when people with back pain sat even a little less each day, their pain was less likely to progress over the next six months.

Well, yes, but it depends on your definition of “sitting”, and I’m not being Clintonian, here.

A couple of years before Connie discovered she had cancer, she had back problems — I mean serious back issues, along with crippling sciatica.  Basically, she had three back operations (I forget which, L1S2 or vice-versa), had one of those electrical shock thingies implanted in her butt (electrodes linked to her spinal and sciatic nerves) and of course, serious pain medication.

How had this happened?  Well, basically, as it was explained to us by her back doctor, Richard Guyer of the Texas Back Institute (the man who fixed Tiger Woods’s back), it was because her job was 95% sedentary.  But first, a little history lesson.

According to Guyer, the worst invention ever created by Man was the upright chair.  Basically, the human body was conditioned over millennia of development into two basic positions that could be held for hours on end:  standing erect and lying prone.  The first was for survival purposes (hunting, herding and farming) and rest (sleep).

What the chair did, over a relatively short period of time, was to force the body into a position it wasn’t designed for, which of course placed all sorts of strain onto it, and most especially into the back.  While early chairs (mostly stools and benches) did not encourage lengthy periods of being seated (upright backs and hard seats), the addition of cushions and the creation of non-physically active tasks (e.g. clerical) had the effect of making upright seating a little more comfortable but no less damaging to the spine.  In fact, the added length of time while seated speeded up the damage process.

This is why so many early clerical jobs took place in a standing position, by the way, hunched over tall lecterns instead of being seated at desks — it really helped, and many people in the modern era who have gone back to working in an upright position can testify to the improvement in their physical health thereby.

But what if you can’t stand up for long periods of time?  An aside:

In my case, a youth spent playing competitive sport had messed my knees up — to the point that when I went to an osteopath several years ago, he looked at my X-rays and asked whether I was in the flooring business, because they only time he’d ever seen knees in this condition was from patients who installed carpets for a living.  (I made a joke about it and said that I was on my third marriage, whereupon he laughed and said, “Oh well, that explains it.”)  But my knees were and are no joke — it’s the reason I qualify for “cripple” license plates, by the way, because I can walk a little distance with no rest and without pain, but thereafter I have to start popping pain pills like M&Ms.  My daily pain-free distance at the moment is about 100 yards, cumulatively — about the distance walking to and from the car across a large supermarket parking lot, and a long shopping trip in the supermarket itself.  After that, my knees seize up and I reach for the Tylenol.  But back to the main story…

Anyway, Dr. Guyer’s solution to both my and Connie’s problem was to eschew sitting upright altogether, or at least for any serious length of time.  But for her job (training system design and tech writing) and my writing, that was not possible.

The solution?  Anti-gravity or, as we used to call them, Laz-Y-Boy reclining chairs.

Connie’s back, as it turned out, was too far gone, although her recliner helped some.  In my case, with only a “serious” (as opposed to her “critical”) back issue, the effect was close to miraculous:  my decades-long back pain disappeared within a matter of days, and I could (and still can) remain seated all day without back pain.  (I do have to get up throughout the day for coffee, meals and the related nature calls, relax, so I’m not going to die of deep vein thrombosis.)

So yeah;  as the Finnish boffins claim, sitting down less will help alleviate back pain and -injury.  But if you have to remain seated, do so in a reclining position.  It really works.

Even if the lack of exercise causes you to get other problems, like a fat gut.

You all know how to fix that problem:  eat less, eat better and exercise.  Or pay through the nose for Ozempic, like I have.