Well…you know, there are times that I do believe in karma and that people get what they deserve when they are so damn terrible people…and yesterday was one of those days when Tesla’s stock dropped almost 140 billion dollars in reaction to ole elon borrowing against it to buy twitter…and the sick thing is that it means nothing to elon…he still has 300 billion dollars and there is just something wrong with that…and the shenanigans have already started at twitter with conservative assholes gaining thousands and thousands of followers while the progressive voices have been losing them hand over fist…even Mark Hamill has lost over 8,000 followers since the sale of twitter was announced…and ole elon’s freedom of speech bullshit has been revealed to be just that…all he wants is to be free of twitter’s moderators and be able to attack whoever he wants…starting with some twitter execs who were then piled on by all of the deplorables who elon is allowing back on twitter…okay, he doesn’t own it yet so I’m not sure how much he had to do with it but he was setting the example that attacks are just peachy with him if they are to support him…hmmm…who does that sound like? trump? Yep….and he is just trying to intimidate people who work for twitter to show them that when he is in charge, they will have hell to pay if they cross him…and that is exactly what elon does…when he disagrees with someone or they disagree with him, he wants twitter to be able to launch an even bigger attack that the people he is attacking can’t respond to…and that is not “free speech”, it is just another rich guy trying to shut everyone else out of any conversation…after all, the only people these rich assholes think should have the right to speak to them are other rich guys…geez…
All posts by James DeVol
Got the car work done…
Well….have been neglecting the car for almost all of the time that I’ve been out here and I know I’ve never changed the oil since I’ve lived here until today….went out to zone this morning as part of the grocery run and got an oil filter, oil plug, and a set of spark plugs so I could do all of the things I’ve put off while working my butt off on the house. I normally use fram oil filters but neither zone or advance had any and they said they have been fighting shortages of them for over a year now…so I got an stp one since they have been rated pretty good too and got to work…and it started off pretty crappy with dropping the oil filter after I took it off and spilling oil all over the bottom of the car…there is not much room where the filter is but dropping it showed me a new way to take it out that is much easier so that was cool…and I put a new oil plug in that has a nice gasket on it that should stop that leak that I have been fighting since I bought the car…and it only cost 3 bucks so that was really cool…hope to get a few changes out of it before I have to replace it or the gasket and it is really nice to not have to slather the plug in blue silicone to try to keep it from leaking….after I finished that job, I decided to check to see if I could get the plug wires off and replace the plugs and they came off easily…and the blue silicone I used to hold them together was still working so I saved 60 bucks in not replacing them…but I’m still only about halfway done with the car since I need to do the spring cleaning and every thing else that comes with it…but I’ll wait til tomorrow for that when it is warmer….
April 27th
Well…darn, sleep was pretty crappy last night and I guess I’ll just have to get used to the lack of consistency…I feel okay so maybe the effects are not as severe as I thought….had and okay day yesterday but didn’t get anything done at all but lunch with T…that was a bit of a pain to get to with all of the bridge work being done in GH but I think it’s the first time I’ve been in traffic since I moved out here and I can live with that…it looks like another day on the indoor bike with the high not getting over 45 but I may be able to get out thurs and into the weekend with the warm up that is coming…and all I can say it’s about damn time…I mean it got down to 29 last night and we are 4 days from it being May….I do have a lot of work to do on the car that I have been neglecting over the past year so I’ll stop at zone this morning and get an oil filter and a new oil drain plug that will finally seal since I can’t get the aluminum crush washers for the standard one anymore and it drips oil even with coating the plug with blue silicone…and I think I need a set of plugs, too and plug wires but the NGK ones I need are now over 50 bucks for about 3 feet of wires and that is a bit much…those are being held together with blue silicone, too…I probably should get a tube of that this morning just in case I need it….I need to get the hose out today and try to clean out my trash bin to get rid of the plaster that is still stuck to the inside of it and it looks pretty gross…and I won’t be doing more of that work until the fall and I just want to have a clean one…not much to do today…just the grocery run and a run to depot to get some cuke seeds and some flower seeds that I want to get planted along the back of the house…might even try some herbs this year but I’ll have to see what they have…fresh rosemary would be nice but I wonder if I should get a big pot for the herbs to grow in? that might be better than just sticking them in the ground…we’ll see…more later….
I made it….
Well…had a nice lunch with T today and am still full so no more food for today….but, that’s not what this is about…..when I had the freakout about the rental houses going up across the street and talked to my brother about the effect they would have on the worth of my house…he estimated that if we put it on the market today, I could get 140K for it all day long….if that’s true, that makes 90K that I have in equity and I have gotten to my goal of having six figures in assets if you include the cash I have in the bank…in fact, it is well over six figures and that is amazing to me with where I was 4 years ago…broke and borrowing money to live….and the idea that I have enough assets to deal with anything that might happen does take a lot of stress off me…but, I still need to have more in the bank…could I get to 200K? Not sure if I need to really….the kids don’t need an inheritance but it would be nice to be able to spend 10 grand on the next Miata and not blink….so, I think I’ll just take the night off after taking the day off…and get back at it tomorrow…
Rand Paul is a Russian stooge…
Well…just a short one on how stupid and how bad of a Russian Stooge he is…in a hearing in the senate today, Paul tried to justify Russia’s invasion of Georgia and the Ukraine by saying that they once were part of the soviet union so Russia has every right to invade and try to take them over…word by word talking points that Putin and his cronies have used to justify the invasion…so, under that logic, Russia has every right to attack and try to take back Alaska since it was once part of Russia…and England has every right to attack and try to take over the US or any one of their previous colonies like India or even China…or any country that once ruled another has the right to attack that country again…how about Germany and France? Or Italy and southern France? You see how ridiculous this moron is….and the big question is why the hell would a sitting senator try to justify the attack and genocide that Russia is doing in Ukraine? Rand Paul needs to go…he doesn’t have the brains or honor to be a senator…and he needs to go…geez…
The financials don’t work…
Well…I promise you this will be the last one about twitter and ole Elon today but it deals with just another one of the confusing details about why he is buying twitter in the first place….and this one will be short so no TLDR….when you look at the details of the deal, it looks like Elon will be borrowing around 25 billion dollars to make the deal and at 4-5% interest on the loan, that is about 1.5 billion dollars in interest alone…and the funny thing is that even in it’s best year, twitter has never made that much money…maybe a billion dollars or so and that means that Elon is going to have to squeeze a half a billion dollars of cost out of the organization to make it work…and isn’t that always the way? Venture capital or billionaires swoop in and the first thing they do is fire everyone who is making any money so they can pump the stock and then dump it…with twitter going private, that won’t be the case here with the stock but there still needs to be a half billion dollars in costs taken out since analysts agree that there is not enough potential revenue growth to support the half billion in extra profit. So why? Could it be as simple as a thin skinned billionaire getting pissed that people on twitter don’t kiss his ass as much as he thinks they should? That would be a laugh and right now it is as good an explanation as any other…geez…
Let’s remember this about Elon….
Well…before anyone else feeds the world the bullshit that Elon Musk is a “self made” man, let’s remember this about him…he was born rich in South Africa where his father owned an emerald mine and made his money on the backs of black laborers in the apartheid era when they were treated as little better than slaves and who lived in shanty towns with no running water or any other services like electricity while Elon and his family lived in a palatial estate and that he inherited along with the mine…so it’s bullshit that he “built” everything that he has…like most other billionaires, he started out with a few hundred million from daddy or grandpa and then used the power of that money to get where he is…and when you see the union busting tactics at his tesla plants and the widespread racism that permeates them, and the fact that he was a regular visitor at the idiot boy’s WH tells you all you need to know about him….he is not someone to hold up as any sort of a role model, after all, he can come up with 44 billion to buy twitter but whines, whines, and whines about having to pay any taxes at all…just another billionaire moocher whose companies wouldn’t exist without the largess of the US people and government….geez….
April 26th
Well…that was a little better…pretty much slept through the night with just a bit of tossing and turning so I’ll take that…and my laptop updated windows overnight and it started just like normal this morning and that never happens…so, a good start to the day and I feel pretty good so I’ll take that, too….this is a little weird…microsoft has a little weather app that shows the current condition on the lower banner on my front page and it is telling me that it is humid right now…why anyone needs to know that, I don’t know…what would your reaction be? How do you dress for humid? Would you say “I’m not going out today, it’s too humid”? Sometimes too much information is of no use at all….all I have to do is open my freezer and I know it’s humid in here….weird. It was nice to get some outdoor work done yesterday and get that off my mind…still have the sidewalk edging to do but starting a 2 stroke when it’s cold is a pain so I think I’ll wait until it’s a little warmer…..I did start on the second bedroom yesterday by removing some quarter round molding that was between the floor and baseboards that looked like hell and I’ll probably do a little every day but I won’t make it a major project…yet…I am curious to see if the wallpaper remover will work if I score the walls and spray it on and I’ll probably do a test section just to see how much work removing the wallpaper and paint is going to be…but my hands and shoulders haven’t healed yet and I don’t want to do anything until they do….the skin on my hands is finally showing some progress and has stopped peeling and feeling like sandpaper and I am even getting some feeling back into them….not much to do today….have a lunch with T tentatively scheduled for noon but I will have to leave early since 31 south to GH is under construction and I don’t know how long it will take to get there from here…or even if I can….but, I have time so I can figure it out…and I need to ride indoors today with the high only about 43 and need to get on it here in 15 mins or so….more later….
No lunch but got some work done…
Well…T just couldn’t work out getting someone to sit with her mom so lunch has been put off til tomorrow or later in the week, and that gave me the chance to get on the work that needed to be done on the lawn today…got the first mowing of the year done and it only took about 7 pulls to get the mower to start and one little adjustment of the drive to get it to work right and that lasted through the mowing so I have my fingers crossed for the rest of the summer…and the weeds are really overgrowing the lawn so I ran out to menards to get some weed and feed that was on sale and put that on the lawn….and I filled up one of the big lawn bags that needs to go out later today for pick up tomorrow but I don’t think I have enough to put the trash bin out this week…I do need to put some more seed on the front of the lawn in the spots they killed with all of the crap they piled on my lawn when they were digging for the water and sewer…and the spot where they dug up the sod plowing the driveway next door…and I need to do that tomorrow with the rain that is coming wed…okay, nope, no rain til Sunday so that will give me the rest of the week to fix the bare spots and do a repair on the car’s top that needs it….but right now I’m done for the day…I did get an indoor ride in this morning so I can veg the rest of the day…not sure if I can do that or not but I am going to give it a try….
Quitting twitter after today….
Well…I really hate frickin billionaires….with the pandemic windfall the all of these parasites made over the past two years, they now have trillions of dollars to take over the country and it’s communications…and today, Elon Musk is going to buy twitter with some of that free money and I, for one, am not going to help him make even more money so I will be leaving twitter after today. Look, the country just does not need another trump humper in charge of another huge part of the news/communication infrastructure like they have taken over most radio and television stations in this country…and the only reason he’s doing it is to help the far right spread their hate and propaganda since twitter now has rules in place to stop the spread of disinformation and lies but when he is owner, those rules go away and it turns into just another parler or gab where lies will be the currency of the day and support for the killing of our democracy is one of it’s prime purposes. This is the reason we need a billionaires tax that keeps this much power from the hands of a few right wing assholes who don’t give a damn about anything but themselves…bye,bye twitter…