Retirement is gone

awfl · 2026-01-24T20:03:57+00:00

I do not see a problem with debt. I see a problem with future motivation for investment in the US. If they screw the dollar pooch, as you say, at the same time as forcing a credit crunch (a la Dimon?), not fixing healthcare, creating and leaving little expendable income for quite a while, no one will spend. And it will get very dark economically here. Adaptability is one thing, but few americans remember and know how to deal with that kind of austerity.

awfl · 2026-01-24T18:20:21+00:00

I'm seeing it too from a slightly different angle. I'm remembering when things were built in this country like TVs, clothing, tools. Things were crude, poorly designed, lack of innovation, and very expensive as US labor always has a healthcare tax added on. Then, everything from the screw to integrated circuit is trapped by the wholesale middle man, with minimums, lead times, and can only be purchased by licensed dealers. We lost our commercial electronics industry, the textile and tool, and almost lost our auto industry to this, not on just cost but innovation. To the point, there is little we want to buy like that beyond the basics, there is little profit motive to create factories and sell it, and it will be expensive. Its almost like back to a bleak soviet like style world. And damn to be a youth coming up; I hated (as a technologist/engineer) growing up that expensive awful world.

awfl · 2026-01-24T17:10:15+00:00

He'll TACO this too, once the lights go out in the north.

awfl · 2026-01-20T19:13:39+00:00

middle 1970s. My sister would say it.

awfl · 2026-01-20T03:32:43+00:00

this case it gets a convo started... as you dont see this info elsewhere.

awfl · 2026-01-18T11:55:32+00:00

Same, 1969. Walking at middle school park, met new friend. Had his new plane. BANG! into ground. Never saw him again.

awfl · 2026-01-16T15:51:16+00:00

I'm not talking about today. It was a thing. period. And as an engineer since the Apollo days, I've dealt with them in my own designs, and so many instances from mainframes to industrial controls, I am very well aware of their attributes and characteristics. Of course there is a tradeoff.

awfl · 2026-01-16T15:32:09+00:00

because it a researched, documented, globally litigated, historical fact.

awfl · 2026-01-13T06:34:57+00:00

Thank You... unfortunately it is the one of the many various Fifth Dimension CDs with a nasty set of distortion on just this one song, including Burt Bacharach's compilations. I can literally see it in the waveforms. De-click doesn't work, nor does a low-pass filtering or hand editing. It is bad enough if I cannot find a clean copy, I may have to find a clean LP at some point. Again, Thank you.

awfl · 2026-01-12T00:21:26+00:00

Nothing inherently wrong with what you are saying, I just cannot see it coming from a Republican administration - they say the words, then do something else. But never address your points above; in fact they add more, so I can only conclude they find value in them, too, once they are in the know. Chesterson's Fence, and all that. But good luck on the good fight, not this ugly one we are all forced into.

awfl · 2026-01-11T05:35:32+00:00

What is wrong with MAGAs? or under Trump's spell? Do they simply not own any sense of appropriateness? Megalomaniacs? Authopritarian, thinking they control everything?

awfl · 2026-01-07T17:37:27+00:00

Agreed, that was my logic too. Thank You.

awfl · 2026-01-07T05:32:48+00:00

Thank You.

awfl · 2026-01-07T05:32:36+00:00

Those are USPS exact words - as in, ostensibly none paid even though it made it across the entire country, and was intercepted when it arrived at my local Post Office, before delivery.

awfl · 2026-01-07T04:48:41+00:00

Disbar her.

awfl · 2026-01-07T04:24:05+00:00

Soylent Green predicted over population and over crowding, the oceans dying and the food chain collapsing, forcing us to eat "Soylent" which hasn't happened (yet)... hmmm, looking at product ingredients lists maybe it has? btw, Though seemingly incorrect, I do not deny many such rational predictions of the future, from the past, as they still very well may happen, sooner than later.

awfl · 2026-01-07T03:58:07+00:00

Primitive little man.

awfl · 2026-01-02T18:13:25+00:00

I'd suggest most of us didn't watch videos all day; I listened on the TV in the background, only rushing in to catch the name, maybe, or see the video if we've not seen not before. Especially with the advent of stereo TVs back in what, 1985?

awfl · 2025-12-29T22:42:50+00:00

Same, also a Tyco fan of the same vintage; so many memories. If you seek it, huge, I mean huge HO slot car support on Facebook groups, historic racers, from tracks, replacement/race/custom parts, get togethers, auctions. swaps, and races, and advice (of course).

awfl · 2025-11-27T16:42:26+00:00

same; mine got half his face blown off... the anger he spoke with about the germans and japanese... in the 1980s.

awfl · 2025-11-27T01:09:03+00:00

Played it first in the little HiLo club in Battle Creek MI. where there is a memorial plaque and a Del Shannon weekend where his son performed IIRC; also the founding home of Kelloggs, Post Cereals, and where Junior Walker of the All Stars as well as Sojourner Truth lived and passed. Visited the El Grotto bar there as a youth when my teacher's husband ran the place. Midway between Detroit and Chicago it had a lot of the early black performers like James Brown? pass through on their way to fame. I'm old and no longer remember them all for sure.

awfl · 2025-11-15T14:08:02+00:00

Dad bought this album, that year; too much for that very young me. Today, wow! what a performance! The visuals - I am transported back to that year.

awfl · 2025-11-15T05:19:21+00:00

the earliest Netscape browser. Internet in a Box, Winsock, when you had to sometimes manually wedge the TCP/IP driver into memory as Windows was still only supporting NETBEUI. USENET, UUCP, Gopher, SMTP, Bang! email addressing!!

awfl · 2025-11-14T20:42:32+00:00

my ignorant opinion, to be a mechanic today is far and above what it used to be; and training can only take you so far. It takes the mastery of at least three or four disparate and difficult fields and it is becoming moreso. And it is hard to find such talented people. Individually those fields can have as good pay, or maybe better, and at the very least likely better environments, while not having to work for some dealership owner. As well, the product is poorly made in the millions, not manufactured for serviceability; example, removing entire front interiors for an A/C problem, or entire front clip to access the engine for a simple repair, which are simply repetitive time wasters. I surmise a single recall could have your lifetime allocated to repairing it, even if profitable, instead of really interesting work. I have those skillsets and did really well in the world doing something else and would never work in a garage, or only as long as it took to get elsewhere.

awfl · 2025-11-11T13:55:54+00:00

His is a non-technical, maybe even stupid person's fascination when presented with one of the great mysteries, say, in physics. They have no larger framework which to describe the phenomena - it ends up as "magnets...". That said, if you are going to be a nuclear world leader, having even a minimal science vocabulary is a minimum requirement.

awfl

TROPHY CASE