Modern Vespa

Xfinity.

No further explanation necessary.

That video I just posted, will get you in the ballpark of where this post is going to end.
See the free advertising you just did for them?
I like to misspell corporate names I hate

Sorry it took so long.

Peppa Pimp,

Oink! That's a mighty porky finger, Peppa. Snort!

You are a man of many hats.

Imagine a credit card company who's been convicted and had to pay fines, pay restitution and didn't notify all of their customers and continues to do what the courts ordered them no to…
I don't know if this makes me happy or pissed.

Man I have to tell you, you really push my buttons...

Years ago when I was a very young man and very much a troubled youth but I had a job and I worked really hard it was one of the few areas of life where I was responsible at that age and my co-worker and the guy I rode with his wife worked at Bank of America and had an account there so he would stop on the way home on Friday to deposit his check.

I was struggling to get by with no extra money ( I was young and had to fund party expenses besides a place to sleep and something to eat...) and since we were at B of A I decided to cash my check too but there was a fee so I opened an account. After about a year and a half or so I got a different job and went to close the account there and there was some bullshit fee to close it so I just withdrew all but a small amount knowing full well that there would be a service charge every quarter and that would eventually use up all the money in the account but it was less than the fee to close the account and they would have the expense of sending me the statement every three months.

I think it was more than ten years later that I got a letter and a check from Bank of America. They had been convicted of illegal business practices and had to pay restitution. I cashed the check of course but kept the letter and check stub to be submitted as evidence in my future court case.

Plan B for retirement is to rob banks but only Bank of America. I may do it anyway when I find out I have terminal cancer and don't have long left because I can't wait to present the evidence in court that they stole from me first, at a time in my life where I desperately needed every last dime and despite the fact that they had to pay restitution they still made out and made a profit from the investments of the ill gotten gains. They had worked out ahead of time that it would be profitable to engage in these illegal business practices there is no doubt in my mind.

I have been fascinated with bank robbers from a young age. While it may be illegal I have no moral questions about stealing from the banks as long as I don't hurt anybody, the gun won't be loaded.

There is no justice system in the United States, there is a legal system and if you have money you will not be punished. It might cost you but you won't go to prison.

I have often thought that O.J. not being convicted was proof that we are making strides in civil rights... certainly in previous times in our recent history a black man merely being accused of harming a white woman would be his death. Even when he killed Nicole I thought sure he was a goner because he was black but he had enough fame and money that he walked.

All kidding aside I use a credit card to pay for almost everything nowadays and I never in my entire life have paid any interest to any credit card company. If you pay the balance in full every month zero interest. If you need money for something do not use the credit card unless you have run the numbers and the credit card and kiting balance transfers is the cheapest loan.

Skids, whoa boy whoa! 😂
It's all about leverage, and knowing where exactly you are in that equation. May I introduce a legal term called Conversion?

It's all good, just a mini rant. That being said everyone has a point where just like Honey Badger they don't GAF.

I am not there yet but lets face it the older you get the less of a deterrent life in prison is.

I on the other hand see a Potential For Profit,
PFP, instead of fighting the system like they want you to, fight it ina civil manner.
Meaning Free Speech in America boils down to actually one real tangible thing, civil actions in court. Tort law
The prolls are taught to fear the system through miscalculations and incarceration. I say stand up and prepare yourself to represent yourself in court, instead of TV and cheap highs to supplant desperation.
BTDT
The poorer a citizen is the more powerful he is, as long as understands the basic framework of the law. Government isn't immune from lawsuits if you're legally bankrupt. It's a fact that more positive changes has occurred in court by regular people deciding to say no. But, big business won't print it. It undercuts their margins.
Lawyers don't like to represent issues that are counterproductive to their way of life, they have a vested interest. I entered a suit into court demoralizing a state with my own blood spilled on the pages. So far I've taken two different states to task. 47 to go. 😂

What happened to the other one? Giving Alaska a pass?

I have a birthday coming up soon. Earlier this year we lost my wife's father at 83. It was nice to visit with family even though it was a sad occasion. I went to the funeral but could not bring myself to attend the wake. The last few years of my father in laws life were difficult thanks to my wife's older brother and it was difficult for me to get past the recent difficulties and "celebrate" his earlier life but I did get a chance to visit with my wife's aunt and cousin.

To hear about what they went through with their husband/father dying of kidney failure and being kept alive with the dialysis and how it was really hard on his wife. How he was not nice to her towards the end and I want to make sure I am not a burden to my family. I won't have it. I will take matters into my own hands I refuse to be a burden to people I love. And I think to be successful in this you have to make sure you are not late. It would be a shame to be too early but you cannot be late.

During covid when the Atlantic was free I read an interesting article about how a college professor plans to end his life at 75. There is decline in quality of life as you age but not only that the burden old age puts on family and society in general. Of course it may not be for everyone but it got me thinking once again about my own mortality.

Years ago I read a book by Laura Day titled practical intuition. Laura was a very gifted intuitive is the term she prefers over psychic. She wrote a book from her perspective on how to cultivate intuition.

One of the first exercises in the book was the hypothetical question if you could have the answers to three questions from an all knowing all seeing being what would the questions be?

Of course there are jokes about this, you have to be careful what you wish for when the genie appears because english is not his first language...the point being if you just want to know the winning lottery numbers you have to get very specific with the question. Which lottery and on what lottery drawing...

The only questions that I could come up with were two. 1. When will I die? and 2. Why do painters wear white?

If like the college philosophy professor that wrote the Atlantic article you decide to end it at a certain point you know the answer to question number 1 especially if like me now you are getting close.

I wanted to know the answer to the question of when will I die so I can plan. So I can make sure I am not a burden to my loved ones and so that when my time is close so I can do something to make the world a better place and not just by removing myself before I am a burden to my family and society in general.

Eat the rich! I would love to be part of a movement that gets people to reevaluate their life choices. In a previous post I described how Jeff Bezos had done nothing illegal but gamed the system to his advantage. I also posited that had he not been able to do what he did that the general public would be better off, the tax coffers at least would have been fuller had he not made such a success out of Amazon.

I am sure there are a lot of people who look up to Jeff Bezos and others like him who have come up with brilliant ways to amass huge amounts of "resources".

I can say with absolute certainty that if I were able to do what he did and had that much money there would be no such thing as homeless veterans, hungry children, etc, etc. I imagine he sleeps just fine at night, he played within the rules carefully coloring inside the lines so as not to run afoul of any justice system...I mean legal system. Right?

I think it would be awesome to have a movement where people realize they cannot escape death and that for many if they try to prolong their life past a certain point it hurts the ones they have loved the most. And maybe at that point there is one last chance before you leave to try to make the world a better place by administering justice to some asshole that desperately deserves it. Just a thought as my time approaches.

I wouldn't mess with the state I actually live in.

Okay, I read it all,
I appreciate your passion and ability to crank the words out.
I hope you stick around long enough, so I can meet you.

I couldn't read all this now, but suffice to say, medical institutions are en masse filling bankruptcy. It's a sad state of affairs to be sure. The people are in a unique position due to the fact that we're a little crippled at the moment and leadership is begging for an answer. Sorry for your loss.
I'll read the rest later.

I jumped on a proverbial landmine to save someone and while it was ticking I learned some things about it, don't leave a legacy for your kids and grandkids to follow or fix.
Is all I got for now, My story is a bit more complicated, suffice to say. It is a fact that Eagles will kill their own nest mates, I guess I wasn't that type of Eagle. Maybe a Buffalo bird, where they are raised in another's nest.

Oh, yeah. I am from N.C. and lived in Charlotte many years. Bofa settled predatory overdrafts and a whole lot of other shit. Here's the thing: If you allow a company to do things that bring it profit, they will do it. Think of a company as a sociopath. Ted Bundy is driving the car at this point.

Allot of discussion here. I don't look for or identify companies or people who want to make profit as bad actors. It is true that end of life medical expenses are breaking life savings and a burden on surviving families

There was doctor in a small town in New Jersey that took this to heart. He enlisted all his patients (he was the only doctor in town) to sign a end of life agreements to not extend life at all costs. This simple move dropped health insurance costs by 50%.

Perhaps, get such an agreement signed with your family as long as you are cognitively capable.

Hey, I am getting old 76 years old. My health has deteriorated in just the last year. You folks are the future, I am the past. I enjoy recalling my past successes and failures and the fine friends I have made. So, I am having a fine cigar and brandy. I do not want to be a burden financially on my blushing bride who could keep me alive for $9000 a month in a full care facility. My good friends on ModernVespa, go gently into the night.

Bob Copeland
Hey not dead yet and still riding - but, I will not blow a bunch staying alive.

Bob I don't look for or identify companies trying to make a profit as bad actors either but when the literally steal from their customers as in what B of A did to me, and then get convicted of it and have to pay restitution that pretty much defines a bad actor for me.

Maybe you support Purdue Pharma and their business practices which were encouraged by Mckinsey & Company at the same time as McKinsey was working with the government to determine how to classify the "new drug" when your average first year chemistry student will tell that it is an opiate and highly addictive. There were all kinds of mental gymnastics going on to call an opiate a different name and say it is not addictive. They had to know what they were unleashing on the American public and they thought they would be able to hold onto some of the profits (which they have) even after they paid restitution.

If that's not a bad actor I don't know who is? What B of A did was the same thing on a smaller scale does that make it OK?

My reply was about a credit card company caught doing illegal things and continuing to do so after they had been caught and told to stop.

Bob you are also a veteran. Did you not learn in the service that leadership meant to take care of your people? How is stealing from them regardless of how much or little doing anything for society at all and when there is no punishment...when the fine is less than the profits why should you stop?

So turns out pumping groundwater into the ocean for decades has raised sea levels and changed its axis. Check out a globe and gawk how significant that is to climate.

Bob, I am 68, but I don't look upon my self as the past and neither should you. Everyone alive has a past, however short or long. You are the present and sometimes that's all you can ask for - this moment - this time. So, enjoy the brandy and cigar. This from another Dylan Thomas fan.

Honestly I haven't decided if I'm going to report them to the Judge, District Attorney and DOJ, or try a little extortion. 😂
There is also third option of filing a Qui Tam lawsuit.
They have not only fraudulently frauded their customers, they have committed fraud of the court, which has no statute of limitations.
But, SOL is entirely arbitrary if you manage the deepend of the pool.
Hope you're doing well today.


I'm other news,
Sara Duarte of the Philippines is off the hook!

Pumping groundwater into the world's oceans is no more likely to raise sea levels than pumping saltwater into deep wells is likely to lower them. There is both the matter of scale and the fact that groundwater and surface water are not isolated from one another.

Citation: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/rampant-groundwater-pumping-has-changed-the-tilt-of-earths-axis/

Oh you silly, silly man. Quoting science again.

Chris from CLE

Interesting article, and I'm going to add that to my list of "information to consider".

However, I would temper that with this. I have been in metrology and data collection for over thirty years. This is what concerns me about this sort of article immediately being classified as hard science rather than just interesting data. So, we are estimating global groundwater over a 17 year period to be more than 2 trillion tons ... sure, that's an estimate. An educated guess based on data that is likely not as accurate as we would like to think. And yet, we seem to be able to say definitively, out to two places, how many centimeters per year that has been able to shift our poles.

Asking Google what the earth's mass is, we get this : Because now the Pyramid of Khafre is a unit of measure. I'm sure that vein in Jess' forehead is pulsing over that one.

The modern calculation of Earth's mass is this : There is also the well known and often repeated fact that correlation does not equal causation. So, while moving groundwater is interesting and is one of those human effect ideas we probably should pay attention to, to make the definitive statement that "this caused that" when we don't even fully understand the dynamics of the earth's rotation is pretty silly. Hell, we don't even really know what is in the Earth's gooey center. We're just guessing based on observations. The deepest we've ever even drilled into the crust is right around 40,000 feet (or, for Jess, 89.799 Pyramids of Khafre).

For reference, and comparison, the 4.36cm stated in the article is roughly the length of an SD card. Or the height of my Apple Watch screen. Or the length of a large paperclip. Or two average almonds. Considering the Earth's diameter (and remembering it is not technically a sphere, but rather an oblate spheroid) is "roughly" 7926.2 miles, giving us a circumference of 24,900.8707 miles (carrying pi out five places for accuracy) or 4,007,406,685.5821cm.

4.36cm folks.

I get that we are pretty smart and like to collect data. And we have some pretty cool tools to do so. I measure stuff on a daily basis to fractions of thousandths of inches. But remember in any data collection there is a margin of error. So anything that begins with a seventeen year estimate of a value that ends with "more than" and "trillion tons" and gives you a linear global scale measurement in cm out to two places, don't quickly accept it as actual measurement. We aren't that good at measuring things. Yet.

Often when posting an opinion on this site, "like the first to state that the earth is not flat", I then am asked why I still believe what I believe when every body else knows better.


Oh well, so many, that deemed to be experts in their field, have been proven to be wrong, has taught me to always question the so called words of the majority.

made me think of this.

That's a nice jacket.

A wheel spins on an axial, we have learned that a little weight added to the situation of tire and rim not being perfect kinda balances the mess out at speed.
I think even a plumber understands this, even if he thinks the earth is flat. Thankfully my tap doesn't force me to drink ocean water.
All that being a word salad, I think a spinning object in a perfect vacuum with variable weight distribution should be addressed.

So the Russians like snow they can have it, but we're not paying that fine.

Well, I'm still not buying it. This is actually what is known in science as a hypothesis, and one that has really not been proven in any convincing manner that demonstrates cause and effect. Compare the "weight" of this groundwater to the weight of the ice which has melted in the North and South polar regions in the same period. Or the weight of the seawater which upwells along the Western Coast of North and South America annually powered by wind-driven circulation of the Pacific Ocean. And consider the fact that the axis of rotation of the Earth has been shifting since the planet came into being. I will be interested to see what thoughtful responses from geophysicists are prompted by this article.

Some science is so obvious it doesn't warrant testing, or confirmation. Kinda mad at myself for not even thinking of it.
I should have said centuries tho…

I did some quick math but won't share the hard numbers because they're pretty speculative, but during the same time period, patterns of migratory birds have changed dramatically, shifting millions of tons of birds to different areas for different amounts of time.

And then consider herd animals that are moving. Millions of tons of those.

And consider the weight of cities that have been built over the last hundred years and the growing populations in these concentrated areas. How many billion tons of concrete do you think are in New York or Chicago or Los Angeles?

And I've always considered the movement of traffic on highways and how they affect air currents close to the ground. There are 288 million vehicles active in the Unites States alone.

And what about all of the oil we have depleted from the ground, refined into gasoline and distributed all over the globe? We move 96.4 million barrels of oil per day from the ground and transport it all over the place. That's about 14.5 million tons of fluid removed from the ground daily. I'd put that up against the groundwater theory any day of the week.

For the record, that's like 5.3 trillion tons per year of fluid we pump out of the ground and displace.

I'm not going to do the math, but look here :

Statista

to see how much of the Earth's ability to balance itself we have actively moved since 1998. Staggering.

Ironically simple machines from the 50's and 60's haven't been improved upon with technology in the greater sense.
Thankfully oil floats on water.
Halocline is a thing

It has been my limited experience that whenever they invoke the "it is science metaphor" they are trying to shut down discussion.

Bob Copeland

Believe me, I will discuss their science and measurement methodology all day long. I'll also question it for the very specific reasons I mentioned. There is credible science and then there are headlines, and the two don't always intersect.

Agreed. I was just pointing out that there is in fact an idea floating around about groundwater and the tilt of the earth's axis -- and that it wasn't something that Veloce Vulture pulled out of the rectal database.

This is a typical reaction from someone who does not like the reality of the accepted reality.

Whom is they? All published science has to be paid for, if the needle isn't pointed north to profits then another angle is taken until the ship can be righted.
Personally I've learned a lot from occult areas of study because they weren't profitable. Occult meaning non profitable science that just stopped because the market wasn't big enough.
Admittedly I had other reasons for finishing the research, but came to wonderful conclusions that others dreamt of. Soap box is vacant Too much energy is spent extrapolating from our marvelous ability to ability to make tv sets and rockets. IMHO a lot of assumptions are made to carry the narrative a bit too far to justify investing, so more science can be paid for. And too many people take news (media) too seriously as science.

Much financial communication is done publicly in the media for investors only, and regular people try to make sense of it.
Then conspiracies develop.

My license plate quest continues. After getting the title corrected as the state DMV insisted, I re-sent the application. Two weeks later, here comes another letter... they want proof that the sales tax was paid. Uhhhhhh... what? Since you have to pay any applicable sales tax to get a title, it would seem reasonable to assume I paid the sales tax when I titled it back in 2002, if any was due. Off I trot once again to the county office. They say that A.) the state DMV has access to all the records they do, and B.) their records show zero sales tax paid. Well... that would make sense, I suppose, since the severely rusted-out derelict carcass of the scooter was given to me by my cousins, after my aunt died, and it had been sitting outdoors since at least 1967. So now I get to call the DMV droid and find out just exactly what the hell they want.

I could just get a regular license plate on it. It's got one now, long expired. The county would very happily give me one. And I'd get to renew it, every year, for about what the lifetime historical plate would cost, once. All of this for a 69 year old scooter that struggles to hit 40 MPH and will probably see under 10 hours of riding time per year, if we're being honest.

On top of that, I got a nice (and I do mean really nice) Milton tire fill attachment for my air hose. Eager to try it out, I used it to fill the front tire on the Vespa... where I noticed a couple of either cracks or slices in the sidewall. OK, it's an old tire, but that means the rear is probably in just as bad shape, so I'll be replacing both. I suspect they have maybe a couple hundred miles on them.

Sigh.

I need a vacation. No sympathy needed, I have 2 1/2 weeks to retirement.

Anyway, my schedule has been light...one of the problems, because I can't just schedule a few hours and take the rest of the day off. When I left work Monday, I made sure to check when I started...actually 11:00. Cool, as I picked up our kid from college for the week yesterday. Thought I should call into work this morning to confirm, then found out they had texted me yesterday with a 9:00 appointment. Allegedly. My phone didn't register a call or text.

I'd been coasting, slept in a bit, and suddenly would have needed to scramble. I had no one else for two hours, so they managed to reschedule (yeah, someone should have known better) and life is good at the moment, but I don't need that kind of drama either.

Congrats on the pending retirement!

What is pissing me off is I am now reminded I have about 520 weeks to retirement. *sighs*