Category: Meta

No Blogging Tonight

No Comments

As a result of our water eater giving up the ghost a few days back, we spent this evening separating the wheat from the chaff in the basement.

The wheat will be picked up by movers and move to storage tomorrow, and the traffic will be trashed out by the clean up crew the day after.

When you do things like this you think about deep philosophical questions like,  “Who in their right mind puts carpeting down in a basement?”, which is what the previous owners did.

I finished the evening sore and stinky, and so had a long hot shower.

Since Sharon joined me, the evening was not a complete loss.

Adding to My List

No Comments

I’ve got another entity to add to my list of They Who Must Not Be Named, but not because these individuals are unworthy, it appears that they are worthy and without blame, unless, of course they sh%$ on the carpet.

I will not meddle in the affairs of pure bred show dogs, like the Pekingese named “Waasabi” that just won “Best in Show” at the Westminster dog show.

Competitions between pure bred (inbred) animals, it’s just not my thing.

Animal pix are always welcome, whether they are cute cats, darling dogs, smiling snakes, profane parrots, obstreperous octopi, likeable lizards, precious ponies, tenacious turtles, precious pigs,
Shakespearean sharks,and happy hamsters.

Google Adsense Does it Again

No Comments

More crap advertising.

I don’t understand how Google™ Adsense™, given the enormous amount of data that they have on me, would think that I care one whit about dating Christian singles.

I’m married, and I’m Jewish.

If I were to troll some group looking for illicit hookups, I’d go with J-Date, but I don’t f%$# around.

I’m just an ordinary guy with ordinary tastes, “4 sets of identical twins, 2 gallons of Cool Whip, 5 quarts of chocolate syrup, 2-1/4 pounds of strawberries, satin sheets, a magnum of champagne, a trapeze, and a python.”

No link for my reader(s), because if you want to troll a Christian web site, I don’t want it to be tracked back to me.

Please note: once again, that I do not vet, nor do I endorse any ad that appears on my site, and I reserve the right to mock both the ads that appear on my site, as well as the advertisers.

Also, please note, this should be in no way construed as an inducement or a request for my reader(s) to click on any ad that they would not otherwise be inclined to investigate further. This would be a violation of the terms of service for Google™ Adsense™.

Adventures in Google™ Adsense™

No Comments

I don’t pay a whole bunch of the attention that Google™ Adsense™ serves on my blog, but occasionally,I see somethng truly odd:

I don’t understand how Google™ Adsense™, given the enormous amount of data that they have on me, would think that I care one whit about intestinal parasites in horses.

Please note: once again, that I do not vet, nor do I endorse any ad that appears on my site, and I reserve the right to mock both the ads that appear on my site, as well as the advertisers.

Also, please note, this should be in no way construed as an inducement or a request for my reader(s) to click on any ad that they would not otherwise be inclined to investigate further. This would be a violation of the terms of service for Google™ Adsense™.

The New York Times Catches Up With Me

No Comments

Worse than Spanish Influenza

I’ve been talking about how excess deaths is the best measure of Covid-19 mortality, (see here and here) and now the New York Times has discovered the statistical measure.

It only took them a year, though the graph surprised me.

It turns out that Covid is worse than the Spanish Influenza epidemic: 

A surge in deaths from the Covid-19 pandemic created the largest gap between the actual and expected death rate in 2020 — what epidemiologists call “excess deaths,” or deaths above normal.

Aside from fatalities directly attributed to Covid-19, some excess deaths last year were most likely undercounts of the virus or misdiagnoses, or indirectly related to the pandemic otherwise. Preliminary federal data show that overdose deaths have also surged during the pandemic.

………

In 2020, however, the United States saw the largest single-year surge in the death rate since federal statistics became available. The rate increased 16 percent from 2019, even more than the 12 percent jump during the 1918 flu pandemic.

These numbers are really f%$#ing scary.

Missed Jobless Thursday, My Bad

No Comments

Initial claims increased to 744,000, up by 16,000, and the second straight increase.

I am thinking that initial claims will remain in the mid 700K range for a while yet: 

Workers are slowly pulling away from unemployment assistance as a U.S. economic revival picks up speed, with initial filings for benefits holding near pandemic lows and the number of people receiving help dropping.

Initial jobless claims, a proxy for layoffs, increased by a seasonally adjusted 16,000 last week to 744,000, the Labor Department said Thursday. The four-week average, which smooths out volatility in the figures, rose slightly to 723,750 from 721,250. Claims are still well above the weekly average of around 220,000 in the year before Covid-19’s arrival.

The continued high rate of filings comes amid other signs of recent labor-market improvement. U.S. employers added 916,000 jobs in March, and the unemployment rate slipped to 6.0%, from 6.2% in the prior month.

………

Moreover, the number of people receiving unemployment assistance is slowly declining. Continuing claims, which provide an approximation of the number of people receiving benefits, at the end of March reached their lowest level of the pandemic, declining slightly to 3.73 million. A broader reading that includes state and pandemic-related federal programs also eased slightly to 18.16 million.

As always, I am more of a pessimist, particularly with Coronavirus cases spiking and talk about the re-imposition of some restrictions becoming more common.

Adding to the List

2 Comments

The list of, “They Who Must Not Be Named,” of course.

In this case, I am referring to actor Armie Hammer, who, somewhat like Peter Thiel, is alleged to aspire to be a vampire, though for more carnal reasons than does Thiel, who is questing for immortality.

As an aside, I do have a bit of a personal connection to the actor, in that my Grandmother came in second to his great grandfather, Armand Hammer, in a high school debate competition to him back in the day.

So, absent something like his running for US Congress, I will not mention him again.

Then again I never had cause to mention him before.

Google™ Adsense™ Strikes Again

No Comments

As near as I can figure out, a bot, and a possibly actual human Google employee, came across this post, which is about a judge dismissing the entire DA’s office from a case where they were prosecuting a mass murderer because of prosecutor misconduct.

In any case, I got a notice from Google™ Adsense™(click image for screenshot) warning me not to post pr0n .

The title of the judicial post was, “This is H a r d C o r e”, and Google India flagged it as sexually explicit.

Of course, there is no way to contact anyone about this, so I re-titled the post, and clicked “resolved”.

Once again, the colossus of the internet proves themselves to be staffed by f%$#ing idiots, both organic and aogorythmic.

My standard disclaimer on any post about the aforementioned service applies:

Also, please note, this should be in no way construed as an inducement or a request for my reader(s) to click on any ad that they would not otherwise be inclined to investigate further. This would be a violation of the terms of service for Google™ Adsense™.

Anyone out there know of another (better) internet advertising firm out there?

I would expect better service from a company that is paying me something less than $0.00035/word.

Google™ Adsense™ sucks wet farts from dead pigeons.