Today in Late October 2019

Inspired by the day’s world headlines:

spinning toward election
lawmakers reject proposal
fighters have left
forces captured
crisis turns violent
protesters pack square
so much damage
crisis despite slowdown
election blow
successor killed
dangerous situation
markets jumpy
police fire teargas
hopes resignation
won’t undermine stability

what do parties want to do?

police hunt for brothers
party appeals result
struggling to reform
rubble remains

hash cake accidentally served!
landslide kills dozens
wife held in london
child rapist released
racist abuse
amid protests
defy curfew
unfolding…

 

Special thanks to BBC and Reuters.

Keeping Up With Our Former Selves

People today aren’t so much keeping up with the Joneses as keeping up with our former selves. Things we used to be able to afford are suddenly too expensive. It’s not because we make less money nominally but that everything costs so much more. And so when commentators talk about people not getting a raise in 20 years, that’s what they’re talking about. The earning power of our money is less.

This doesn’t even get into the situation of people’s whose nominal income has been flat — or worse, has slid — but who are still forced to pay higher prices that assume a much higher income level. Read More

Corruption Battles

Watching multiple corrupt parties battling over corruption is a mindfuck that causes people to take this or that tidbit of the opposing stories and weave them into elaborate and unprovable theories designed to exonerate one or the other side, forgetting entirely that BOTH SIDES ARE CORRUPT, rendering the whole thing moot.