Screwball

cheaper maybe, but quality, maybe not. Stems and seeds and things you don't need. Giggle. I haven't kept track, kind of wish I would have but never thought about it, after a few years of M squared pot Mecca, I can't say I have ever found even one lonely little seed. If I had, I would try to get the little guy back on life support. Never know what might happen. From the wayback machine; we caught the back seat of a car on fire one night because a seed popped (using a corncob pipe) and landed in the seat and we didn't know it. It was hot.

A view from afar. I live an hour and 15 minutes from the pot Mecca in Monroe. I've been to probably 10 dispensaries around there. Always love going through the parking lots looking at how many Ohio plates we could see. Almost all of them. Even from my county, but didn't see anyone I knew. I'm retired so I bootleg stuff back here for something to do. 🙂 I'm really impressed with the service and the knowledge of the "budtenders." I have a favorite place and the service is always good. Never had a bad experience. If only some of our other retail places could replicate that. Maybe $ has something to do with it. Don't know. I watched the West coast pot stuff and was in Oregon back in 2018 and it was like a candy store compared to around here when it was still illegal. The Netflix documentary did a great job with Murder Mountain. Things change. I've read there are Michigan pot companies folding up because it's too saturated and unprofitable. Same as it happened out West. If, and this is Ohio we are talking about, they ever get their **** together, will help run the border towns like Monroe out of business. We are rec now, but the prices are way too high. For example, an oz of 28% THC weed around here is around $240 where in M squared (Monroe, Michigan) it's $100. Tax not included.

Yes, good point, I forgot about that. Given the last PPI it might not be good.

I'm a day behind. The holiday on Monday must have shifted the ADP report to today. Jobless claims are also today (Thursday) like they always are. Jobless clams from the BLS

The ADP report was today. There is the weekly Dept. of Labor jobless claims report tomorrow at 8:30 am. Then Friday at 8:30 am will be the monthly non-farm payroll report by the BLS. Powell already admitted the labor market was weak and a rate cut is not off the table when they met a few weeks ago in Jackson Hole. The next Fed meeting is Sept. 17. If these job reports are weak, which I expect them to be, Powell and the FOMC will lower rates due to the job market. This is the opening and excuse to do so. It will be great and the market will soar once again. Seems like insanity to me lowering rates when the markets are close to all time highs, but they have done it before; I guess the good news is it will be cheaper to pay the interest on the 37 trillion dollar debt.

The word culture took me back many years, a blast from the past you might say. Years ago I was involved in a "skunk works" project for a multi-national corporation who supplied the automotive business. The part of the process we (my department) did was shown to be the smallest hole in the hourglass of time to market. They put about 8 of us in a room for 2 years to reinvent the mousetrap. It was, at the time, a "six sigma" project theme. This was an industry in and of itself in many companies at that time. The entire goal was to save time from conception to the shipping dock. There was a lead for this project, a young clean cut handsome guy who was going places. But the project was under my immediate boss. He was a **** of dicks. Anyway, we spent months interviewing people all over the company trying find out what they need, want, and would love to have. It was really a lot of fun. It was also, at the end of the day, show us where the problems are, and how to fix them. Our department was unique do the the amount of data we needed to manufacture into the product - correctly - liability laws and ambulance chasers are a bitch. We even had classes on what not to **** up. After about a year, and our little skunk works room had thousands of sticky notes and poster boards on the wall and we finally find out what our problem really is. <drum roll> CULTURE I wonder if the people who choreographed these classes discussed what happens when they find out the real problem is the system they helped create and the inept ****s who make us go through all this **** ARE the problem. It's the system, and that just the way it is. You will become a corporate robot ass kissing robot yes man or not have a job. But in this case a funny. I don't remember what we went with instead of culture, but we had to play the game too. The people who knew how to make the trains run on time created a system in about 7 months that kicked some serious ass. Took a process that once took 6 weeks to less than two. Could take an order from sales and cut chips the same day. It won the company tech award that year. We got a raise, and stock (promptly sold). It saved them millions. It also won a JD Powers second place award in a national contest. Our CEO and his henchmen went to Vegas to accept the award. We could have went but declined. Why would I want to be around those dickheads? My boss, **** of all dicks, of course went. The CEO and co went first class, boss had to fly coach, by himself. Hahahahahahahahahaha

It's got nothing to do with tax law or politics. It all has to do with incompetent assholes who run and hire for our companies. The same clueless greedy assholes that took over academia and our government. They make the rules, they dictate policy, they make the decisions - good or bad. They are walking talking bull**** machines that couldn't pour piss out of a boot if the directions were on the bottom. Yet, they rule us. And drive those of us who try to make the trains run on time crazy. Yearly review; you really need better people skills. You could have had another one half percent raise. Really? For a ****ing half percent I will continue to be a prick, thank you. End of review. Good, your wasting my time, I have to go save your worthless ass. I sure as hell didn't design a car with a fuel pump in the gas tank or a starter under the intake manifold.

If you ever worked for a large multi-national and been a part of their research development engineering process cost & quality departments you would wonder how in the flying **** they make anything that works. Massive amounts of inept people Cost & quality department only cares about cost at the expense of quality If it can't pass the test, change the test We want to do X but X won't fit and will cause problems. It will fit - my raise and promotion depends on it. A year and millions of dollars later; hey, we have a problem, this doesn't fit. **** up move up Let's hire the guy with the highest GPA. No, you can tell from the interview the guy is an idiot. Cool, let's hire two of them. Corporate America is so many times a giant cluster **** ran by clueless arrogant corporate worms who care little about anything but themselves and their ego. The only thing good about the experience was making money and ****ing with all the idiots who deserved it. So many dickheads and so little time - they were highly entertaining though - especially when they had to squirm.

Skubal is one of the reasons I started watching the Tigers/baseball again. I love pitching, especially like this. Special. If I were a left handed batter I would tell coach to play the bat boy, he will have a better chance than me. I batted left handed and I can't imagine facing him. Unreal stuff.

The CHIPS act alone sent around 8 billion to INTC, not counting the many more billions of .gov contracts via office, military, and defense contracts (the 17 spook agencies). All under some type of MIL spec to satisfy and protect our needs. We already control them in many ways. .gov owning - assuming this 10% is publicly traded common stock - is probably not a good idea. The pigmen are quite creative though, we must give them that. One of those political cartoon artist should do one with Trump as a young shoe shine boy telling his client it was the best time ever to buy stocks. That's an old market thing for those who don't follow. It's almost like the very same pigmen need someone to sell to. Giggle.

And their off....

You ain't old enough. 🙂

Just for fun, thinking about the game today vs. the way it was, say 1984. How would our boys of those days do against the 2024 WS champs. Let's ask our AI buddies, just for fun. The stat guys will love this. I used GROK just cause I had Twitter open. Question; Who would win the world series if the 1984 Tigers played the 2024 mlb champions? It will give us extensive data we already know, so I'll only post the conclusion. Interesting to be honest.

Nicely said. I'm old, so a traditionalist. We always respected the game. When you walked between the white lines you entered hallow grounds. Same place as our hero's played. And it was played a certain way. Period. More gimmicks - like gambling - yea, that's the ticket. <SPIT>

I'm old, and used to be a baseball fanatic. I played for around 15 years until my body wouldn't allow me to play anymore. Then I got into coaching. From little league to high school. Because I loved the game. Finally got out in 1995 after I started playing around 1965. So maybe 30 years of my life was baseball. During this time the game changed. Strikes, lock-outs, the roid era, the rule changes, the ups and downs. One thing that was always a constant was gambling. Anyone that played understood. It wasn't questioned - it was evil and not in any way should be part of the game. I slowly got away from the game due to all the crap, and eventually turned it off altogether. I didn't miss it one bit. Once in a while I would watch a game and not get through it. Made me mad. Great athletes for sure. Great baseball players, I'm not so sure. Different game, played different, rules different. So much has changed, and so much I didn't like. Then last year I was rejuvenated. My beloved Tigers had a chance to make the playoffs - a shocking development to me at the time - so I started watching again. Finished the last part of last season, and then a month or so ago I got on the bandwagon again. But it's tough. It's no longer the game I knew and loved. Too much has changed. And now this gambling ****. Want to watch? Buy though a gambling site. Get peppered (pepper used to be a baseball drill) with gambling adds all game long. No thanks. Hear about guys getting suspended for gambling violations. Really? What's next? What have they done to what was once the greatest game on planet earth? And most of all WHY? A truly sad affair. <SPIT>

CME Group and FanDuel Join Forces to Let Investors Bet on Financial Market Outcomes What could possibly go wrong. I'll save you the click.

I wouldn't trust any of them either.

The bold is the key. Coming from someone who started making engineering drawings with paper, pencil, a mechanical arm, and a cheap calculator, to the highest 3D CAD systems in the world. Thanks to computers, the transition from paper to CAD changed the world. The days of football field size drafting rooms with hundreds of tables (and people) were replaced with AutoCad (went DOS 1992) at first, then the 3D stuff. Once it went digital, many jobs and support systems were lost. This will continue with AI. We have the great things we have today due to the progression in this technology - we could draw some complex parts years ago with a pencil and mechanical arm (had to scale as well) - but nobody could make it. Today, with our CAD/CAM machines we can do incredible things. All about cost. I bolded we. We isn't AI. That is the scary part. What should scare the living **** out of all of us is what these inept corporate worms are cooking up to convince their corporate worm bosses this AI horse**** is going to make record profits for years to come and they will suck it up like a Hoover vacuum cleaner. Hey - look at the stock price and all the bonuses and these dickhead getting rich. What's not to like? Then the whole ****house blows up because it was a scam from the start. Dot-com mania on roids (when it comes to the market). All driven by technical BS by arrogant greedy clueless assholes and an ignorant populous. AI can't replace people, and never will. Crazy Teddy Kaczynski is laughing in his grave.

I think it was a Sunday game with the Phillies when they were interviewing the first basemen. While the game is going on, and if I remember right, a left handed batter at the plate. Don't remember where he was playing, but adding a fudge factor, let's say 110 feet from the plate. Ball gets ripped toward said player with an exit speed of 110 and he has about 3/4 of a second to react. WTF? Not to mention how utterly stupid this is since there is a baseball game going on. And this dude's basically on the phone. It could get someone killed and that is a hill I will die on.

We used to stand by where the players came in (of course it was the old Tiger Stadium) and the Mick came in on a motorcycle. I think it was a Kawasaki. He was wearing a green outfit that matched the bike. We heard the club wasn't happy about him riding the bike. I couldn't get through 13 innings today. They piss me off and I'm usually done by 7 or 8. If they interview a guy who is playing a base while the game is in progress I run it off immediately. One of the dumbest things I have ever seen. <spit> And I've seen a lot of dumb **** over the last 70 years.

Without a doubt. Here is a stat sheet for that year, game by game. Too bad it doesn't include pitch counts for each game (which I consider more important than innings). I was at one of them but don't remember when. Mickey Lolich 1971 Pitching Logs - Baseball Almanac

I'm not worried about that, and I'm on it. Money is fungible and we have a printing press. There is no trust fund, and we are what (have to look) 37 with the big T trillion in debt. It all went to the people in the big club.

And thinking further - think of the private equity derivatives the wizards of Wall Street can come up with. Wankin' ****in bankers.

Pox doesn't come close to describing how stupid this is. The first obvious problem is private equity has no transparency - they are private - DUH! From Vanguard; Private Equity [bold mine] Footnote 2; Ain't that great? Giggle. They keep finding ways to fleece us. To your second paragraph, I couldn't agree more, but it is in conflict with the first one. They still wouldn't know how to manage it. To be honest, the ones I dealt with while employed didn't give me a bunch of choices as far as timing and choice anyway. In other words - run and hide. The whole ****ing thing is a giant scam.