Another night approaches. Use it well! If you need a place to write, you can write about whatever you like in the comments.
October 11, 2024
The sky at 3:22 a.m.
We were out at 3:22 a.m. in the hope of seeing the northern lights, but it was not to be. I know people saw the lights much earlier in the evening — around 8, which seems much easier to do. The 3 a.m. slot is the least used hour of the day — is it not? It is when it is most likely that night owls and early birds will both be in bed. But it's a lovely time. Giving up on the lights, we drove around town, just for fun, before heading home.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
97 comments:
It looks like Althouse needs to go much further away from the skyglow of Madison to have a shot at the aurora borealis.
I don’t know how much more of this horrible economic news I can take it’s like we’re already living in “1929”
Dow jumps 400 points to a record on Friday, S&P 500 closes above 5,800 for the first time: Live updates ~ MSNBC
The stock market was booming in 1929, until it wasn't,
We just saw red areas in the sky. It was around 10 pm.
Many years ago when I lived in SW Wisconsin I saw an amazing aurora. The dog woke me up with his barking. I got out of bed to see what the commotion was all about. I went outside and saw sheets of iridescent green cascading almost down to the ground. It was also moving along at the same time. No special phones or cameras back then. Since no special equipment was distracting my attention, I just stood there in awe and seared it into my memory.
Keep printing money, keep dumping the money into the stock market! What could go wrong?
Did Kamala Attend Ninth Grade? Can she diagram a sentence?
Stock market isn't the economy, it is a reflection of the collective risk assessment for the profit and loss of the companies listed on whichever index you are looking at and it makes up a part of the broader economy. It may or may not reflect the overall economic trend, and is just one of many indicators that need to be considered when making a claim on the state of the economy.
Jim Cramer on CNBC today predicted a Harris win. Chuck Todd on MSNBC predicted an R Senate win in PA. That combination seems almost impossible. Mayve white center right women who normally vote R but are anti DJT? I don't bet, but if I had to bet, I would bet against Harris winning PA and D Casey losing PA.
Any PA folks out there with comments? Thanks.
BG is soooo proud of himself! Kamala makes sense to him.
Cramer has a history with predictions.
Given Cramer’s record, I feel even better about Trump’s chances, lol.
When you price the stock market in terms of earnings, well, the earnings aren't supporting the high stock market, it's the ocean of dollars lacking productive investment opportunities. If they had a good place to be invested, they wouldn't be chasing the lousy earnings on the stock market. Instead the bet is that the money will keep flowing, it will have nowhere to go but the stock market, and prices will continue to rise.
https://www.currentmarketvaluation.com/models/price-earnings.php
It's magic! But not "magical thinking"! Oh, no!
And both picks go against type, because I think Jim will vote for DJT and I am pretty certain Todd is a D.
…and rallys like today can reflect anticipation of future Feds cuts due to economic weakness.
I’m getting retro Bogger Althouse version. Did I miss an event?
…must have been a glitch in the matrix…
…must have been a glitch in the matrix…
I love this post and all like it. Always seeking to be present and not future-trip, but I will miss this place mightily when it is no longer.
Jim Cramer, eh?! Say no more, I'm putting everything I own on DJT in the betting markets.
I routinely analyze the securities I'm invested in. I don't sell much at all, and I tend to hold forever, because I'm a dividend investor - so I hold high-quality stocks, mostly. Right now almost every single stock I've got is hugely over-valued, when I look at their graphs - which take into account actual and projected earnings, sales, so forth. Although my cost basis is great, I couldn't see investing to increase my positions, at these valuations now.
And just try to buy a bond right now, a squeaky-clean, tax-free municipal bond going out, say, 10 - 15 years. The premium you're paying up front almost makes it a wash.
I'm purely self-taught with occasional tutoring, but I've been investing successfully since the 1970s and now I live off that income. The market right now is crazy-edgy.
Am I the only one who's just not into the northern lights? I mean, I've got friends posting pics all over the place and "You gotta go outside and see them now!"
Um, no. Give me a supermoon? Yeah. I'll check it out. But these things? Meh.
I came across a new channel on SiriusXM- The Bridge Deep Cuts. It's one of their streaming-only extra channels. I listen to The Bridge fairly regularly, the only downside (IMO) is that the songs are pretty much all "greatest hits" type songs. The ones they play on the Deep Cuts channel are like the ones on an album that weren't on the radio much (or at all).
Maybe not for everybody, but I've always preferred to listening to an album all the way through- even the songs that never made the charts- as opposed to what you get from the radio.
I read a book once, The Intelligent Investor, and it all makes perfect sense, if you were dealing with a market that reflected the underlying realities of the businesses you are investing in. We are not. And so the "Intelligent Investor" has nowhere to turn, today.
Aurora Borealis
At cold heights, white-hot fluorescent spikes
Tickle the ultra-horizon, each star
Occluded by the soupy light from which bar-
Graph towers rise and fall and rise like snakes
Dancing alien rhythms between the sun
And the upper atmosphere’s heated zone.
This year, like last year, they pencil-mark darkness
In the lock-step days of middle-autumn
To aid our hunkering down against loneliness.
Nothing stands between us and aurora
Except open sky. Trees utterly bare
Are barely speaking a word in wind’s flared tongue.
A month past, the trees cock-crowed proud with plume
Issuing fire to hills, settling finally
To twig-lines in winter’s nest of early dark.
Now shrunk into themselves, a crushed branch-work
Of nerves before this frigid majesty,
The trees recede (like parentheses of time).
We stand with our children on the hill’s spire
Behind the house, watching the northern night
Worming with electricity. We taught
The children how to see the Northern Lights --
Why it came down to gather our town’s lights
Everywhere turned off once or twice a year:
So the North Pole could give God’s pot a stir
To put all things right, putting back the stars
In their rightful places like expectations,
The kind you meet as you lay in your beds,
Connecting ceiling dots into constellations;
And angels tally pinpoints behind your lids.
Counting and counting dots… the children dream
They made a mess in their play the way they
Worry the math out of an autumn day;
The way water eats a leaf in a stream
Loosing gathered light from its veins, or divine
Fingers dipped in time’s ripple-widened skein.
This planetary light, this cosmic cry
Of stellar fire fans night’s deep, dark and still;
These indices, each an icy digit,
Reset the proper distances and fidget
With polarities, stretching themselves to tell
What God’s own Braille lesson chalks up the sky
To tell us: Earth-children, parent the light well.
There's supposed to be a naked-eye comet coming up.
JPMorgan Calls It: The U.S. Economy Has Made a Soft Landing ~ WSJ
My portfolio is up almost 5% this week -- I'm ruined.
This is a calamity. You know what we need? Someone who understands how to run a business (into the ground).. 🤔
What did the stockmarket do the year before 1929 ?
I also get Sirius XM and Mason’s comment explains why I like the Beatles channel so much. I have heard so much beyond their top 40 hits, both from their group and the four v playing individually.
I went out around 1 AM last night but couldn't see anything to the north- probably way too much ambient light around my neighborhood or I am too far south.
Well, if you think of the federal government as a business, the Congress is doing a fine job of it.
What is the purpose of this crowing, this braggadocio? Are you trying to announce this as a crowning victory for the Biden administration? You go, girl. We're all in awe.
This is the same vantage point I used recently when I got excellent pictures of the northern lights. Click on the tag for northern lights and you’ll find those old pictures.
What did I say about the October surprise back in September! Miss Lindsey now touting g time to hit Iran and the neo cons are creaming.Bibi sees a chance to boost his bff's election by dropping g a few big bangers.It is so freakin see thru.Remember that great song John McCain touted on the stump " BOMB BOMB BOMB IRAN a crap tune by beach boys. You righties wo t be happy to you blow off the BIG ONE WAR MONGERS!
by beach boys!
https://www.vanityfair.com/news/story/obama-laughs-at-trump-adult-diaper-joke-as-trump-proves-hes-a-78-year-old-baby
“Barack Obama held a rally for Kamala Harris on Thursday in Pennsylvania, where he made the case for the VP and argued that his successor, Donald Trump, is a selfish billionaire who’s never done anything for anyone else, including changing his own children’s diapers. That naturally led to an audience joke about Trump wearing adult diapers, which turned out to be extremely apt, given that at his own rally in Michigan, the ex-president unwittingly proved he is, in fact, a very large baby.”
There are lots of videos that appear to be Trump either passing gas or actually soiling himself on stage in Detroit.
And risk running into a Deplorable?
Not accounting for inflation, of course.
Can she french a fry? She obviously cannot prove that she ever did.
It has hit the fan:
NYT: The Secret Service is Understaffed and Unable to Protect Its Clients Because a Lot of Secret Service Veterans Are Quitting
Charlie Kirk @charliekirk11
The New York Times has a devastating article on the condition of the Secret Service under the Biden/Harris administration.
Agents are leaving in droves, especially the most talented and capable ones. Hiring standards have "slumped" -- though the Times won't say it, we know from other reports that DEI played a big role. The second-in-command of the men guarding the White House moonlighted as a real estate agent, and gave promotions to agents who became his clients.
"Nepotism, favoritism, corruption -- that is part of our culture here."
The Secret Service is supposed to be the best of the best. Under the left, they've become a joke -- just like the rest of the country.
Your blog presents itself on a whole new format, with arrows. What happened?
Talk about something completely different. Thanks professor.
The party that brought us Dylan Mulvaney to bathe in Bud Light, and wants to end masculinity as we know it can't figure out why men aren't going to vote for the McDonalds cashier.
I changed a setting to have mobile view if you’re using a phone
Apocalypse delayed -- Trump keeps promising a doom that never comes
Trump predicted that if Biden won, the economy would crash, crime would soar and Christmas would be canceled. None of that happened, but he's reusing those claims anyway. 🤣
They're lowering expectations in advance of the Secret Service murdering Donald Trump.
It's horrible, btw. Just my 2c.
Buying anytime for the long term wins 100% of the time. Remember, the stock market comes back 100% of the time.
scroll to the bottom and click "web version" to get it back, if you want.
YouTube: Carl Benjamin minority report: The unintended consequences of "progress"
Hint: Let's take a closer look at Musk's gadgets.
If Harris has raised $1B for her campaign, why am I getting the panicky “donate please” texts from her and Walz and assorted others? She must be wasting a lot of money - not a good look, from my perspective.
The web version via the phone does have a couple of issues when you are trying to comment, that the mobile version solves. The mobile version does have a drawback, however, that one can't respond below the comment you want to respond to like the web version allows. So, both have issues, and the common denominator is... the phone.
That's.........sad.
I think you must be thinking of Joe's visit with the Pope a while ago. But, since there are so many videos of this happening, why don't you link a few? Since there are so many.
New YouTube from John Michael Godier : Is Our Universe Eating Other Universes?
If true what could this mean?: "It could mean that something tunes all universes the same" 🤯
At a mountain hostel in the Alberta Rockies I saw the following amongst brief list of rules -- All Americans must be in bed and quiet before 01:30. No German may arise or make noise before 04:30.
“There are lots of videos that appear to be Trump either passing gas or actually soiling himself on stage in Detroit.”
1. I don’t believe you.
2. I’ve never understood shaming people for this kind of thing. Poor Jerry Nadler had an incident like that. That’s not the reason I would like him out of office. He’s a lousy congressman - that’s why I’d like to see him defeated - not because of his bowel movements. What is in people’s heads that they enjoy embarrassing people for physical infirmities.
3. If you have bowel issues or any other kind of physical limitation, it’s time to dump the Democratic Party and come join us in the Republican Party. Democrats are jerks.
I saw this: Israel has de-garnered Hezbollah's cash and gold. $1.5 billion in cash. 2000 pounds of gold. All destroyed in the huge strike on Hezabollah's HQ few weeks ago. The cash burned up and the gold melted away.
"Open Source Intel
@Osint613
⚡️⚡️⚡️Some really good news as we head into Yom Kippur:
Most of Hezbollah’s cash and gold reserves were destroyed in Israel’s recent strike that eliminated the Hezbollah leaders at their headquarters. An estimated $1.5 billion in cash was incinerated, and 2,000 pounds of gold were melted into the earth during the attack.'"
The Twitter claim claim and the attack video
https://twitter.com/i/status/1844719988965306535
Test
Eva, I sure hope Mr.Trump doesn’t get his feelings hurt because someone said he shat his pants on stage. He’s such a kind and sensitive type, he never would dream of poking fun at anyone, he never would point out anyone’s infirmity, oh no.
Mag-ites are never jerks ohhhh, no not ever!
No, Trump won’t get his feelings hurt. He’s the kind of a guy who when shot, stands up and yells, “Fight! Fight.!Fight!” And your point is?
My introduction to punk rock music was not the Sex Pistols, but Patti Smith from the late '70s. Althouse had a blog about her not too long ago. Here is one of her videos that has been banned from almost all streaming services, but I found it on an old server. There was a time in America when freedom of speech, however offensive to some, was allowed:
https://.youtube.com/watch?v=b1o68h4Usqs
This song has been heavily censored. Let me try this link instead.
https://www.bing.com/videos/riverview/relatedvideo?q=rock+and+roll+nigger&cvid=105655691f4d44a3915afd1875a3b7d3&gs_lcrp=EgZjaHJvbWUyBggAEEUYOdIBCDY4MTBqMGo0qAIBsAIB&PC=LCTS&ru=%2fsearch%3fq%3drock%2band%2broll%2bnigger%26cvid%3d105655691f4d44a3915afd1875a3b7d3%26gs_lcrp%3dEgZjaHJvbWUyBggAEEUYOdIBCDY4MTBqMGo0qAIBsAIB%26FORM%3dANAB01%26PC%3dLCTS&mmscn=vwrc&mid=271C207F597DA585EF92271C207F597DA585EF92&FORM=WRVORC
The Regressive Progressives are suing to keep illegals and the dead on the voter rolls in Virginia because they know they can't win without them.....
“With less than 30 days until the election, the Biden-Harris Department of Justice is filing an unprecedented lawsuit against me and the Commonwealth of Virginia, for appropriately enforcing a 2006 law signed by Democrat Tim Kaine that requires Virginia to remove noncitizens from the voter rolls – a process that starts with someone declaring themselves a non-citizen and then registering to vote. Virginians – and Americans – will see this for exactly what it is: a desperate attempt to attack the legitimacy of the elections in the Commonwealth, the very crucible of American Democracy."
https://legalinsurrection.com/2024/10/doj-sues-virginia-for-purging-voter-rolls-too-close-to-election/
Nurse Ratched, have we ever established that you are in fact a female? I'm asking because the more I read your comments, the more your language and level of hostility suggest either you're really a guy or on testosterone therapy. In either case, could you give us a hint on which hospitals you provide your visiting angel of care services so we deplorables can take our chances elsewhere?
Bad Genes, you are well named. Stay logic-challenged, my friend. God love ya
Standing? Also there is no argument to be made to allow individuals who are ineligible to vote to remain on voter rolls other than to cheat an election. Next time they claim assertions are ‘without evidence’ here is your evidence..
I like this one, from The Shooting of Dan McGrew:
Were you ever out in the Great Alone, when the moon was awful clear,
And the icy mountains hemmed you in with a silence you most could hear;
With only the howl of a timber wolf, and you camped there in the cold,
A helf-dead thing in a stark, dead world, clean mad for the muck called gold;
While high overhead, green, yellow, and red, the North Lights swept in bars?--
Then you've a hunch what the music meant...hunger and might and the stars.
More importantly, people said that if Trump were elected, he would bumble us into WW3, and yet it was a time of peace, and as soon as he was gone, the war drums started beating again, and we are looking at a potential nuclear war with Russia, and another between Iran and Israel, which will drag us in.
LOL. Yes, it's Trump who is the war monger. He's the one who told Russia that we were going to put nukes in Ukraine, five minutes from Moscow, and there was nothing Putin could do about it, while there were 150K Russian troops on the border.
Sorry, but Trump's presidency was an era of peace. Bolton tried to drag Trump into war with Iran over the shutdown of an unmanned drone, and Trump said no.
Bart Hall (Kansas, USA) said...
“At a mountain hostel in the Alberta Rockies I saw the following amongst brief list of rules -- All Americans must be in bed and quiet before 01:30. No German may arise or make noise before 04:30.”
What if you’re German-American? Are you only permitted to sleep during the 3 hour window?
[Option $] makes '¢', at least on a Mac
Using Biden-provided bunker buster bombs.
As a PA resident I am being bombarded with Sen. Bob Casey ads slamming his opponent Dave McCormick for being pro-life. Millions of $$$ in ads. Casey’s father of the same name, was a democrat who was ardently pro-life. So was the current Casey until the pro-death Commie’s got to him.
Unless the R’s can stop the huge cheat in Philly, Casey and Harris will carry PA.
Makes you wonder what would happen if some other power decided to provide, I don't know, man portable air defense systems to Hezbollah, I mean, if we are talking about fighting a war with outside provided weapons.
"The web version via the phone does have a couple of issues when you are trying to comment, that the mobile version solves."
What are they? I made the change in response to a complaint from someone, but I don't like it. Everything looks worse.
As for replying under a comment: I don't like that and would turn it off if I could. Just quote, like I'm doing here, and publish and take your place in the chronological line. Don't jump the line.
I'm probably going to change it back soon. So if there is some significant problem that it is solving, you should let me know, because it's about to come un-solved.
It does solve an issue where you cannot view the text being typed unless the page is resized. Editing the text is also easier. With the web format I cannot scroll to the beginning of text without touching buttons that take you away from the lage, like submit or next…
Oh the irony, the Harris campaign runs a ad attempting to define a man. It depicts a collection of beta men telling us they cry, they love strong women, the usual drivel. It’s a good thing they didn’t ask Justice Ketanji-Brown to weigh in on gender definitions.
“As for replying under a comment: I don't like that and would turn it off if I could. Just quote, like I'm doing here, and publish and take your place in the chronological line. Don't jump the line.”
+1 for this quoting norm. Currently, with indented replies, the font becomes too small for me to read and the lines continue outside the display of my preferred portrait mode, so I have to switch to landscape mode and scroll more.
also, if I look at comments more than once it is more convenient to be able to scroll down and find the place I ended last time to catch up on new posts. With the reply feature the new posts are woven into the old ones.
All in anticipation of Trump being elected.
I wonder how much Chinese savings has been dumped in our stock market.
“and I am pretty certain Todd is a D”
Good one! 😆
Inga knows bowel movements, and she knows them intimately… 😬
Planetgeo,
I’m convinced you live a sheltered life if you’ve never met women who express themselves aggressively or strongly in certain circumstances. I’m retired, so you needn’t fear.
We’ve already seen Trump’s approach to foreign policy, and there’s nothing good to say about that.
He’s even more unhinged now. His cognitive decline is obvious when you listen to his rallies, and this time he’s determined not to have grown-ups around him who were able to rein him in last time. Instead he’ll be surrounded entirely by wealthy yes men with their own petty agendas.
Trump’s supporters say he didn’t start any wars. Setting aside that he did nothing to resolve ones that were already in motion like Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and Israel’s West Bank colonization, there’s also the fact that he was barely stopped from making calamitous policy blunders abroad. Trump daftly gave Saudi Arabia the go-ahead to invade Qatar, but Rex Tillerson was able to stop it. (The Saudis settled for a multi-year blockade that ended when Trump lost the election.)
Harris may be inexperienced but at least she’s not a proven basket case.
Any Chicago area folks on here? Do you think the mayor will run for relection? He seems terrible for the city, but who could beat him in a D primary? In a dream scenario, wish Obama (yep, only time I have written hopefully about the guy) would run, defeat the mayor bum and start improving things in Chicago. Things are so bad that Obama could only improve things. Cheers!
Which one was Howard?
You can enter the comments by clicking the blog post title itself and scrolling down- those comments all appear chronologically still, at least on my laptop.
Anti-McCormick ads focus on his prior life as an evil hedge fund manager, and -gasp- spending his own money on his campaign. Anti- Casey ads focus on immigration, inflation, and the (D) party agenda in general. Some mentions of abortion, but neither campaign wants to alienate traditional Catholics or evangelicals. I dunno about Trump's chances here, though the feeling I get is that Kamala Harris isn't generating a whole lot of excitement.
Most people don't realize how weird things are, at night. I decided to take the dogs for a walk in the woods a few months ago, just for the heck of it, around midnight, and put on a headlamp to free my hands for the leashes. As we went down the trail, I saw there were millions of tiny pinpricks of light, along the ground. It quickly became apparent that these were reflections of my headlamps, shining back at me, and I was seeing them because the headlamp was so close to my eyes. Millions, down in the grasses and leaves ! It was magical. At first I thought it was dewdrops, but they were too small. I got down on my hands and knees and discovered that it was spiders - those quirky little jumping spiders that we have in Texas. They've got these iridescent, shiny metallic green or blue eyes, and they're ambush predators - they don't spin webs. They hide and jump out.
I had no idea that there were that many, though, geez those little light pinpricks where everywhere around me.
From Vox Popoli:
However, none of the men in the ad are actually regular voters—they are paid actors.... Moreover, their real-life circumstances differ significantly from the individuals they portray in the ad. Here are their stories:
Wayland McQueen is a far-left, pro-Antifa comedian and actor who has, until now, found limited success. He does improv gigs at the Upright Citizens Brigade in Los Angeles. In a Twitter post from 2022, he explains what white privilege is and tells you why you need to acknowledge your white privilege. As of 2024 he is single.
Lanre Idewu is an immigrant from Nigeria. He is also an actor who works at the D.C.-based OCTET Productions. He has many intimate pictures with the Obamas and the Bidens. Idewu, who is bisexual, has done gay-for-pay movies and nude solo shoots. In the Men for Kamala ad, he says he is “man enough to braid his daughter’s hair,” but the only problem is that he doesn’t have a daughter. Idewu isn’t braiding anyone’s hair.
Mike Leffingwell, a gay man, also works at the Upright Citizens Brigade, where McQueen works. He is an acting coach, cartoon writer for Netflix and DreamWorks, and an actor in TV commercials. On his public Instagram page, he showcases his participation in his latest project—the Men for Kamala ad.
Winston Carter, the heavyset fellow in the ad who claims to be a mechanic and rancher, lives in Los Angeles signed with Taft Broadcasting Company. He has found limited success in the acting world, mainly as an extra in films and as a character in the low-budget superhero film Spaghettiman.
Tony Ketcham, the tough, rugged, bearded grandpa in his garage in the Men for Kamala ad, is also an actor. He now mainly does low-budget independent films like Car Botz, where he played the role of PePaw. Tony is unmarried in real life. In 2001, he played the extra role of “alcoholic consumer” in the movie Ghost World.
How perfectly fitting is that?
Bond funds, rather than bonds, have inherent and inescapable duration risk.
There is no such thing as your investment reverting to par.
Much prefer direct bonds.
The gold was not destroyed, gold melts at 1970 deg F and it would be a good trick for a bomb to melt a ton of it since you cant use a bomb in an insulated furnace. But even if melted it will be dug up and recast into bars. Gold ore containing .5 grams per ton can be economically mined. A ton is worth usd76 million so it will buy lots of guns, but they will demand to be given food instead of paying for it,
Yancey Ward said...
"You can enter the comments by clicking the blog post title itself and scrolling down- those comments all appear chronologically still, at least on my laptop."
iPad is the same, you can have either format depending on how you enter the comments. Unfortunately, now that there is the nested format people have stopped quoting what they're replying to. You really need to go through the comments twice if you care to understand who's replying to whom.
Usd76 mm would buy about 500 lbs of wheat flour each for every man woman and child in Gaza. Just as a perspective.
Longshoreman suspend strike, reach tentative agreement (PBS)
A portent that a Trump win is expected, to head off Taft-Hartley? Or holding abeyance for a Harris win which they expect will empower them to press for the higher wage hike?
Post a Comment