Monday, June 18, 2018

June 18th Links

  • I work at Blick Art Materials and they aren't going to carry prismacolor colored pencils anymore because of how the quality has declined dramatically in the last few years. They moved their factory to Mexico and it's been downhill since. Faber Castel is definitely a better quality but is different. Their colors are based off of actual paint colors and aren't waxy, if you really layer it and use a little turpenoid on a Q tip it blends really well, just use a heavier weight paper like vellum Bristol so the turpenoid doesn't bleed through. I highly recommend them. [Reddit]
  • He doesn't go out of his way to find good beer when he's in a given city. "You know, I haven't made the effort to walk down the street 10 blocks to the microbrewery where they're making some fucking Mumford and Sons IPA," he said. Bourdain says a bar is a place to "get a little bit buzzed, and pleasantly derange the senses, and have a good time, and interact with other people, or make bad decisions, or feel bad about your life." When he recently went to a brewpub in San Francisco, he was annoyed with "people sitting there with five small glasses in front of them, filled with different beers, taking notes." It struck him as not a real bar. "This is fucking Invasion of the Body Snatchers," he said. "This is wrong. This is not what a bar is about." [links]
  • So the jury only needed to be convinced that these engines performed flawlessly for 30 years and through a couple of overhauls. Then they performed flawlessly just about all the way from the departure airport to the destination. Then they happened to quit just as the pilot was descending into bad weather and slowing down above his destination airport. [Phil G]
  • Nabtesco stemmed from an August 17, 2009, incident involving damage to a Cessna Citation 560 aircraft when its nose landing gear collapsed during landing. Plaintiff insurance company sued to recover for the damage to the accident aircraft, contending that the collapse was caused by a defect in the nose landing gear actuator. Nabtesco manufactured the subject actuator in April 1990, and it was installed as a new, original part on a different plane in October 1990. That plane, with the actuator, was delivered to its first purchaser on October 30, 1990, more than 18 years before the accident. At some point after its delivery, the actuator was removed and overhauled by a third party. In April 2007, the actuator was installed on the Citation 560 that later suffered the accident. The 560 had been delivered to its first purchaser on December 30, 1991. The district court granted summary judgment for Nabtesco, holding that the delivery of the aircraft in which the subject actuator was first installed triggered the start of GARA's 18-year repose period, and that the plaintiff United States Aviation Underwriters claims were therefore barred. [link]
  • On Nov. 2, Boucher hit some kind of limit with his patience. He poured gasoline on the pile of debris and set it on fire. The resulting fireball gave him second-degree burns on his arms, neck, and face. The next day, Paul, possibly underestimating the depths of his neighbor’s rage, used his lawnmower to blow leaves from his property onto Boucher's. Then he piled on the insults: "During this process, Rand Paul stepped away from his lawnmower, gathered several branches from an adjacent pile of trash, and placed them in the exact location where the last pile had been burned just one day prior." Boucher full-body tackled Paul. [Slate]
  • Kissinger avuncularly tried to set Holmes up on dates with promising young fellows he knew, unaware that she was living with her "executive vice chairman" Sunny Balwani, a middle-aged businessman who had gotten lucky and rich in the 1990s Internet Bubble. Under Holmes and Balwani, employees who pointed out problems were marginalized or fired, "while sycophants were promoted." America's H-1B visa system didn't do anything for workplace honesty. [Sailer]
  • Do people believe in "stocks for the long run" in these countries? Most places in the world, if you tried to pitch buying and holding and dollar-cost averaging you would get laughed out of the room. What would have happened if you dollar-cost averaged Iceland? [Bloomberg]
  • Jones, meanwhile, said the Dusit Thani Maldives has all but ceased working with fashion influencers after she discovered that many simply wanted a pretty backdrop for their swimsuit shots. "10 different bikini pictures a day on the beach is great for the bikini company," she said. "But you can't even tell where it's taken. It could be anywhere in the Maldives." [Atlantic]
  • A man hired as a corporate industrial hygienist, tasked with sampling acid mist in the battery charging area in a Ford battery plant recounted this: 'To set up the air monitors, I had to wear a respirator. Staff asked me to take it off since it might make workers who saw me with it on worry about the ill effect of the air on them. But they needn't have worried. Some of the guys started to taunt me, the corporate sissy who couldn't tough it out like they [did]. But when they laughed at me, I could see their teeth were visibly eroded by exposure to sulfuric acid mist." [link]
  • Jaguar has taken its time to introduce an all-electric vehicle, following Chevrolet, BMW and others into the space. And now that the I-Pace is out there, with a global press drive occurring this week, what we have is an obvious Tesla challenger. With a tested 480 kilometres of battery range [European testing, which may be optimistic by up to 100 km], the I-Pace respectfully demands consideration as much more than a vehicle to sate the environmentally conscious. [link]
  • This is why immigration reform is proving to be a non-starter. The Left side of the political class sees nothing but opportunities to rig the next election with foreign ringers, so anything that interferes with that is blocked. The Right side is wholly owned by the cheap labor lobbies, who like the idea of disposable labor. It's not that the people in charge think their grandchildren will be exempt from the ravages of mass migration. It's that they are unable to think past the moment. For our rulers, tomorrow never comes. [Z Man]
  • Is the reality gap in America today bigger than the gap was in 1980's Russia? We're required to pretend there are 57 genders, which seems a click more nutty than pretending the Lada was a nice car. There has never been a time or place where humans came in more than two sexes. Cars have been of varying quality since the dawn of the automobile. The Lada was crap, but it beat walking. [Z Man]
  • Anyone still scoffing at "conspiracy theories" must be living in an impenetrable dream world. Just for one random example, you can take your pick: either we were the victims of a massive Russian conspiracy that hacked our election and inflicted Trump upon us, or alternatively, that story is that a lot of squid ink coughed up by the deep state to cover up multiple massive DOJ conspiracies to spy on and subvert Trump's campaign and administration. I don't see any third option here. [Sailer]
  • The Matlins painstakingly selected wood, stone and other adornments. They chose Dinesen oak for floors and paneling, Statuary marble from Italy's Carrara region for the bathrooms, and honed black granite and tiles from Franz Mayer of Germany for the kitchen, among the many finishes. Industrial elements were also incorporated, in a nod to the building's manufacturing past, with the use of metals like steel in the doors and skylights and La Forge de Style bronze in the railing along the cantilevered black marble staircase from Chesneys. [NY Times]
  • But not everyone was a winner, and so far Matlin's performance in banking reform more closely resembles that of billionaire David Bonderman, who got his private equity firm, TPG, and other investors to put $7 billion behind ailing S&L Washington Mutual just before the government seized it, wiping out TPG's $1.35 billion contribution. It was the worst private equity deal ever. "This is looking kind of like the Bonderman deal, but at least this bank survives," says Eliot Stark, a managing director at Headwaters MB, who follows Michigan banks like Flagstar. "The deal was done before people understood the depths of the mortgage market." [Forbes]
  • A tin of osetra caviar arrives in a crystal bowl of crushed ice. It's served as a bona fide "bump" - the server spoons the eggs onto your fist along with a dollop of smoked creme fraiche, then drapes it all in a fat slab of barbecued wagyu beef fat. (Yes, all on your fist.) It's a salty, smoky, slippery slurp, enlivened by a perfect pop. The effect is similar to the drug it alludes to: I immediately wanted more — although not at $68 a hit. [Eater]
  • Kubrick often expects ballet music to keep you interested, and various movements in space are stretched out to interminable length, yet almost always with striking aesthetic success. You could generously describe the ending as "underexplained." Hardly anything happens in the movie, and yet at the same time it encapsulates the entire history of humanity with extra material on both sides, beginning and end, and a nod in the Hegelian direction. [MR]
  • Getting promoted at corporations is more about looking good, being liked by those who can promote you, and creating the perception that you’re senior manager material than doing any real work or creating real value. The complete opposite of how libertarian economists think the world works. [LoTB]

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Allow me to put things in to perspective for you. I was married and with the same woman for 15+ years. Met her when I was 23, and for the most part we had great sex for the majority of these years. Having sex with the goal of conceiving is one of, if not the most intimate and sacred acts a man and woman can experience together. We have 3 kids together. Before we met I would buy hustler magazines to jerk off too. After we met I had a few porn vids Id watch when we weren't together. But this was supplemental for when she wasnt there and I needed to pound one out. She didnt know about it, and it was never an issue except when I stared at women that looked like porn stars/strippers she got self conscious.

Now back to our sex life. Ex is very traditional/conservative. Never let me piitb, never let me give her facial, and blowjobs only came on my bday or new years eve when she was drunk. And we practiced the Jewish law of niddah, which is to not do anything sexual during menstruation, and wait 3 days after the last sign of blood, when she would take a ritual bath in a fresh water flowing pool to be clean and pure for me to have sex with her when she came home.

After kids got brought into the equation, intimate time together decreased and when I wanted to plow Id get the "I got 2 hrs sleep last night because [our 1st son] was crying to be breast fed and I had no more milk" excuse or similar ones.

Now it's 2009 and and instead of watching 4 girls on a 1 hour porn vid, Id mosie into my office tell her I was doing the taxes and jerk off to dozens of women in minutes on the interwebs. It all went downhill from there. My thurst for more pron increased, her inability to look like a pronstar and phuck like one brought me to the regrettable reality where some nights Id be doing taxes instead of pleasing my wife. Other contributing factors plaid a role in our demise as a couple no need to get into here; but the bottom line is porn was a major destructing factor.

Enter bachelor life once again after the separation/marriage, tinder, and a much more casual view on sex in general by society in 2018, were all the ingredients needed for me to pursue a lifestyle of debauchery. Im not proud of it. I have post hookup depression quite often. I feel bad for some women that think I might wake up one day and be exclusive to them even when I say I will not. I get disgusted by the primal fleshy desire that prioritizes kink conquests over tradition relationships. At my core I am traditional. But also a man who loves the soft touch of a female body cuddling with me under the blankets. Believe it or not I ask women to cuddle with me before sex lol.

Add in the fact I have cold approach anxiety and built a career on increasing efficiencies by automating business processes to optomize production and my tinder strategies might make a little more sense.

Tl:dr Im a bit more complex then your critique of my life.

Anonymous said...

What the hell was that about?

League of Women Voters said...

https://forum.bodybuilding.com/showthread.php?t=175811451&page=4