The most important lesson for Democrats from Mamdani’s victory is this: abandon the decades-old practice of triangulating to win the center. Instead, grow the base with a positive, joyful vision for what government can do when it gives up on being shackled to a Republican base.
Congratulations to Zohran Mamdani on his win in NYC. The lesson here, which the Democratic party will surely refuse to learn, is that we the people do not want stupid centrist compromises. We want you to paint us a picture of the country we could have if we simply ignore the awful little racists and the fabulously wealthy who pretend to lean left in public.
Years ago, I started getting emails addressed to Loretta Renaut. Mostly political junk, but from both extremes – the far left and far right. Occasionally I got stuff that looked legitimate, and once something that had a link that I clicked and it took me to some personal information about a Loretta Renaut who lived in Florida. I assumed that she had a similar email to mine and sometimes typed a “j” instead of the “l” and I just had Gmail send anything containing “Loretta” to spam.
I mostly forgot about it except when I was briefly reminded when poking around my spam folder or the rare email that actually made it through.
Then this morning I got the below… to my WORK email.
Hello Loretta
Sharing a quick example : for a 120‑unit garden‑style complex, our study identified significant reclassification into 5/7/15‑year property and captured bonus depreciation (40% in 2025, scheduled). Net result: substantial first‑year deductions and stronger after‑tax cash flow.
Property details matter—construction style, renovations, and placed-in service timing change the outcome.
Get a no-cost estimate specific to your property—just share the address and in-service date to begin.
Would you be available for a quick 10-minute walkthrough?
Thanks and talk soon,
Michael Higgins
CSS Specialist
Gryphon Lending
Powered by Compound Capital Connections, LLC
P.S. To opt out, just reply “No thanks.”
It’s clearly spam, the name on the email is not the person who signed it. It’s plausibly mistargeted – if you find me with a keyword search, this isn’t a crazy route to try. But my work email doesn’t have my last name in it. HOW DID LORETTA FIND ME?
This one weird COVID tic that still remains is that I feel that my hands are horribly dirty after going to the grocery store. I don’t wash them like I did in March 2020 but I didn’t usually wash them at all after shopping in February 2020. Not a bad thing, I suppose
People ask me a lot if I get discounts on work from contractors I use all the time, and I generally tell them I don’t get discounts, I get better service. Today it was more like a discount. Leaking water heater so I called Aspen Hill Plumbing (I use them and Stevens Plumbing most often and honestly the main reason I chose Aspen Hill over Stevens is because Aspen Hill is good over email and Stevens I have to call). It was clear what was wrong – the drain valve was leaking.
So he told me, “You need a cap on the valve. I can write up a $210 service call…” And he paused.
“Or I can go to the hardware store and probably get one for five bucks.” I finished for him, and he nodded. So I did, and he’s going to write up an estimate for fixing the heater vent so it’s up to code, which 1) will be way more than $5 or even $210 and 2) I can’t do myself.
A water heater with a brand new shiny brass cap over the formerly leaking drain valve
There’s just one problem with this master plan: OpenAI doesn’t have the money to pay for it. For example, OpenAI is committing to pay Oracle $60 billion in capex investment annually for five years. For reference, Meta, one of the most valuable and profitable companies in the world, which brought in $164.5 billion in revenue in 2024 and ended the year with a free cash flow of $52.10 billion, plans to spend $72 billion in 2025 building data centers. OpenAI, on the other hand, is on pace to bring in $12.7 billion this year, expects to lose $9 billion, predicts its losses will swell to $47 billion by 2028, and doesn’t expect to break even until 2029. How can OpenAI plan to spend five times what it brought in?
So if you’re trying to follow along, you have three companies. Nvidia makes computer chips. Oracle fleeces the federal government by making it impossible to move to cheaper, modern infrastructure provides cloud architecture. And OpenAI makes software that lies confidently makes software that lies confidently.
OpenAI has grand plans but no money. Oracle is desperately trying to modernize itself before people figure out it’s a dinosaur. Nvidia actually produces useful things. So OpenAI is going to pay Oracle to host their data centers so they can convert more scarce natural resources into false information. Oracle is buying tons of Nvidia chips. And Nvidia is pledging money to OpenAI to try and make all this happen.
Imagine you create three companies, A, B, and C. A pledges $100 billion to B. B pledges $100 billion to C. And C pledges $100 billion to A. No one has any actual money, but you now have three hundred billion dollar companies, and the stock market will manifest the value.
I want to pull some of the A+ content I’ve posted to Facebook over the years and put it somewhere that isn’t owned by a super-wealthy sociopath. You all who aren’t friends with me on Facebook (don’t friend me on Facebook) have no idea what kind of a treat you’re in for.
Here’s a gem from October of 2011
This morning I pulled up at a light on PA Ave in the cycletracks behind a woman on her bike. Her backpack had come open at some point, so of course I told her. As she turned to look, a bra fell out. She was already embarrassed by the whole thing, not knowing if she had lost anything, and I had to point out to her that she had, in fact, lost something. My question to you all is – was it more polite to let her pick it up, or should I have done it? I decided it was less embarrassing for her (and therefore more gentlemanly for me) to have the strange man she’s never met NOT touching her underclothes, even if she wasn’t wearing them. Do you agree?
The rest of the comment from my dad that Facebook has “helpfully” hidden:
There is simply no comfortable outcome in that situation, and you can only pick the least bad, and I think you did. The legend surrounding the establishment of the Order of the Garter is instructive (from Wikipedia: The most popular legend involves the “Countess of Salisbury” (probably either Edward’s future daughter-in-law Joan of Kent or her former mother-in-law, Catherine Montagu, Countess of Salisbury). While she was dancing with or near King Edward at Eltham Palace, her garter is said to have slipped from her leg. When the surrounding courtiers sniggered, the king picked it up and tied it to his own leg, exclaiming, “Honi soit qui mal y pense,” (“Shamed be the person who thinks evil of it.”). I suspect it takes a king to pull that off, though.
I do not think he was implying that I should have picked up the bra and put it on. That would have made for quite a story, but likely not one that would reflect well on me.
“To help meet the growing demand for film, Kodak is excited to announce the launch of two color-negative films, KODACOLOR 100 and KODACOLOR 200, in 135 format rolls,” Kodak said in an Instagram post. “For the first time in over a decade, Kodak will sell these films directly to distributors, in an effort to increase supply and help create greater stability in a market where prices have fluctuated.”
Now, I wonder, did I accidentally sell my film cameras with my dad’s estate, or are they in a box somewhere in my house? I honestly don’t know. For a long time after I stopped using them (or shooting film at all), I kept my grandfather’s Konica, the camera I learned on, and my Nikon N70, the first SLR I purchased myself (woo Ritz Camera employee discount in 1998). But I do not know where they are NOW.
I have thought about buying a Nikon F5 – that was my dream camera back then, Nikon’s flagship, and WAY out of my price range as a poor college student. But now you can get a nice on for less than $500 on eBay. The question is whether I would actually use it, or just use my Canon mirrorless. Which I ALSO do not use nearly as much as I should.
Back to the article – in general I find discussions of which film to use kind of tedious. I shot a lot of Fuji back when I was shooting film, but that was largely because they had a deal with Ritz so it was cheaper than Kodak. I then told myself that Kodak color was too warm, which I probably made up so that I was making an artistic choice rather than a financial one. It would be fun to shoot a roll or two of Fuji Velvia, which is now about $1/frame, not including developing. I’d have to be really careful with it.
All that to say I don’t really care what film Kodak is packaging now – just the fact that they are expanding film production or even just upping marketing of film is good for people who shoot film or are considering it.
Lastly, the link is from 404 Media, of which I am a paid subscriber. They do good journalism (largely more important stuff than this piece).
I have been wanting to do the WABA Fifty States ride forever. It’s a really cool concept – the route takes you on all fifty of the state-named streets in DC. But it’s always a Saturday in September, and since I have two children with birthdays in September, I’ve never been free when the ride happened. But that changed this year – Gremlin 2 was in Raleigh, NC, for two soccer games, and Gremlin 1 is kinda too old to care if her dad is home. Gremlin 2 as well, for that matter.
So I did the ride. I started with a group of friends and friends of friends. Well, actually I started by dropping Gremlin 2 off in Alexandria at 630AM to catch the team bus to North Carolina. But I started the ride with friends. However, it shortly became clear that the pace they were going was not going to get me home in time to take Gremlin 1 to her soccer game, so I had to forge ahead on my own.
Quick plug for the turn-by-turn routing on my Wahoo (link is to one version newer than mine but whatever) – the ride is not marked like many are, and the roads are not closed, so you need to know where you are going. My Wahoo sent me on ONE wrong turn, and I followed the rider ahead of me on one other, but that was it.
It’s interesting to do a ride in the city. The organized rides I’ve done previously are out in much more rural areas, and there are not many cars. There are markers spray painted at turns. This ride is NOT that. We had to navigate around drivers, pedestrians, and other cyclists, not to mention they adjusted the route to avoid the H Street Festival road closures. It’s a very different vibe, and it attracts a different type of cyclist.
I highly recommend you do the ride if you think you’re able. It’s challenging – almost 60 miles plus 3,000 feet of climbing (and a good chunk of it in the last third of the ride, stupid upper Northwest and its leafy avenues). But you don’t have to do it FAST (unless you have a soccer conflict). The ride marshalls are pretty good if you aren’t comfortable on your own, or find some friends and let them take care of you.
Also, it’s better to have more time so you can celebrate with the other finishers at Metrobar. I had to leave so I could shower and take a quick nap before soccer.
Hey! Just launched TurboJot — the AI-powered outreach tool that actually wrote and submitted this message. It auto-fills forms with human-like messaging and precision targeting, consistently driving more conversions than email or ads. Book a demo on our site: https://go.turbojot.com/discover
I’m leaving the link in because you should know what this company’s product is. It frankly isn’t bad at sounding like a person. Unfortunately, it sounds exactly like a person writing a spam comment or email. And the targeting – back at the height of this blog, I got a decent amount of traffic for the poorly written ramblings of a completely unfamous person. But this particular post (I don’t have hit counters from the beginning any more) has three hits this year. Probably all AI scrapers that managed to trick WordPress into thinking it was a “view”.
In about 2011, I got back into baseball cards. I collected for a while around 1989-1992, the peak of the Junk Wax Era, when the market was flooded with cards that everyone thought were going to be investments like the cards your grandmother threw away in the 1950’s. I never had any money then, but in 2011 I had a real job and some friends who were ALSO interested in getting back into it.
I started collecting Aroldis Chapman cards. He was a young Cuban pitcher with an AMAZING fastball. He played for the Cincinnati Reds, which meant as an Oriole fan, he could never really hurt me. I have quite an extensive collection of his cards from 2009-2014. Then, at close to the same time, there were accusations (pretty substantiated, I think) of domestic abuse AND he went to the Yankees. I lost interest in my collection.
If you aren’t familiar with baseball cards since 2010 or so, I need to explain a few things. In order to avoid the overproduction of the early 1990s, they do limited print runs of some cards. Often a player will have his regular card, then they will do, say, 500 of that same card with a different color border, and they’ll number then out of 500 so you know you have the limited edition. They also put the printing plates into circulation. These are three metal versions of the card that they claim to actually use in the process of printing the card. There is only one of each of the three.
At the height of my collecting, late 2014, I found this on eBay.
This is a framed mini card (my favorite type of card). The card itself is about the size of a tobacco card, and it’s encased in plastic, and then a cardboard border to make it the same dimensions as a standard baseball card. This is the printing plate for a 2011 mini. It says on the back that it’s card #5, but I have card #5, and it’s NOT that. I scoured every website that dealt with cards and I couldn’t find ANY evidence of this card existing. I did find that there was a card, #385, that was a Chapman found inside of a rip card. This is a regular-dimension card but thicker with a pull tab on the back. You can choose to pull the tab, lowering the value, but MAYBE there’s something inside worth even more.
However, even armed with this suspicion, nothing. I even offered a bounty for proof of existence and nothing.
Here we are, nearly 11 years later, and a few weeks ago a hit on my eBay search. I found it! I was indeed correct that it was from inside a rip card, and someone had it for sale! I went back and forth for a while because he was asking a lot for it. But in the end, I couldn’t resist. I made him an offer (still too much) and he took it.
Yesterday, it arrived.
I can’t believe it took over a decade.
And as you can see, the printing plate is a liar:
It’s not 5, it’s 385. Whatever. Stupid lying sticker.
As an added bonus, this has inspired me to try to sell off the collection, aside from a few favorites. They just take up space. I was hoping his new contract with the Red Sox would bump his popularity enough to get some interest in the cards, but so far that has not really been the case. Anyone want to buy some Chapmans? I’ve got some really nice stuff…
