The video: She says she drove all across the US, but never went east of the Rockies…..????
Sabine has finally realized solar is not economically/energy viable. She does say that she knows she’s rather slow in coming to this conclusion. Really? Ya think so? All one has to do is take the average solar insolation with the average solar cell efficiency to arrive at that conclusion. She also just now understands the sun is not out at night and in the winter the insolation is weak. Maybe that’s the difference between an experimentalist (me) and theoretician (her). I’ve definitely noticed us wrench monkeys in physics tend to have a more practical outlook on physics questions.
Hard to listen too, speaks so fast. I guess that is the thing with all young people.
1. In Europe, yes little tipping. But prices of eating out is more expensive, generally.
2. Sometimes, she is really stupid about things.
3. I have traveled a lot in Europe. Basically, driving is the same. Sure, some differences.
4. Four way stops are the same here as Europe.
5. Yes, finally understands just how big the US.
6. I don’t tip at takeout, generally. Only if getting a full meal, not just coffee.
7. Guns Guns Guns. Walmart did sell guns, until state laws have made changes.
8. CO is open carry, I don’t see people walking around tooled up.
SHIREHOME:
Excellent summary.
I had hoped to hear more interesting commentary than driving, food, and tipping. Glad she appreciates how big and beautiful the US is. I’ve gotten to dislike pickup trucks too.
Spoiler alert: 1000% Yes!
zu Beck’s a bit of an odd duck and independent as a hog on ice. Currently she’s vlogging living on a hill in Poland with a dog (and oh by the way being the frontwoman for Nat Geo’s “Superskilled” TV series).
Great video. It spurred a myriad of thoughts:
marriage@evazubeck. Just kidding she said. Oddly, a couple months after my wife died, I got a strange message on my answering machine. (Yes, I still had one. Past tense.) Some strange lady with a German accent was searching and dialing, trying to get in touch with someone in my wife’s family, and knew her personally from the distant past.
Turns out, her story was very much like Eva Zubeck, though originally from Germany. At a young age in the late ’60’s or early ’70’s she spent several months in the US, and lived with my wife’s family for a time and was looking to reconnect. Several years after that first visit, she did an extended US trip again and met her future husband and moved to the US. Now living in southern CA.
_____
Vast distances: I did a work related trip a long time ago to a military base in Panama City, FL. While having a long casual chat with one of guys there, he talked about how both he and his sister were transplants to FL, from somewhere like the mid Atlantic seaboard or possibly New England. Not long after he moved to Panama City, and she to Miami, they were talking on the phone at midday.
At the end she said, “Why don’t you drive on down and we’ll have dinner together tonight?” He said, “Do you have any idea how far that is?”
______
One of Eva’s favorite spots is in the middle of some Nevada desert? Interesting. I do get a kick out of the vast open spaces myself. And Yellowstone is too touristy?
______
Eva mentions not being surprised that many Americans don’t have passports. She doesn’t exactly mention it, but there is so much to explore here. Even just within CA, there is a lot.
______
Guns and Walmart. Back in 2015, after an extended trip to Idaho, I thought I’d see how difficult it was to buy and shoot a gun in CA. Buying the firearm was a modest hassle, but I walked into a Walmart Superstore and there were all the supplies in a fishing and firearms section. No ID checks at the checkout. Cool. I’ve got a nice outdoor firing range nearby too.
A friend of mine bought an apartment not too long ago and just last week we walked into that very same Walmart so she could pick up some food etc. It dawned on me that I hadn’t been there since I got 9mm ammo in 2015. All that firearm stuff is gone now. The ammo regs. are now absurd, onerous, and includes an expensive paperwork surcharge.
“independent as a hog on ice”
Awesome!
I thought it interesting that she seemed to like the empty space. And yes, you need a car (or pickup) in the empty spaces.
Tommy Jay:
One of Eva’s favorite spots is in the middle of some Nevada desert? Interesting. I do get a kick out of the vast open spaces myself. And Yellowstone is too touristy?
That place in Nevada appears to be a hot spring.
And of course your 4×4 allows you to become stuck much further out in the empty places.
I think it’s likely a lot of people will come to regret, at some time during their life, that they posted something on social media. Eva might just fall into that category in ten years’ time, as she’s marrying her third Montana husband. Oh well, she’ll grow up eventually.
She was flat out wrong about some things. Food is not cheaper in Europe, in my experience, especially at the high end. And tipping? Her observation that Europeans don’t tip because they pay their waiters more is typical of someone who grew up in a class-conscious society (England). Europe’s poor are almost certainly poorer than is in the case in the USA, but then their rich are also poorer.
No tax on food in European stores? Not true. It might be more obvious on the price panel, but it’s there.
Oh well. She’s young. She’ll see.
Admirable.
Neighborhood 4 way stop, 3 mildly dented cars and police. Apparently, all hesitated, the went at once?
@physicsguy:She also just now understands the sun is not out at night and in the winter the insolation is weak. Maybe that’s the difference between an experimentalist (me) and theoretician (her). I’ve definitely noticed us wrench monkeys in physics tend to have a more practical outlook on physics questions.
Not based on my experience…. they’re pretty much all leftists and on board with the Current Thing regardless; the process of getting a physics PhD filters for such people.
(One leader of an experimental research team used to digress on “those thieves on Wall Street” in meetings.)
Hard to listen too, speaks so fast. I guess that is the thing with all young people.
I didn’t have a problem with that, but I know what you mean about young people, I can hardly follow some of them. Maybe it is my ears, I will need hearing aids at some point, I just keep putting it off. OTOH, it may be fashion. Pianists 100 years ago tended to play faster, and some had a reputation for speed even then, Hoffman for instance. Speaking of Hoffman, the first thing I noticed was the speed, the second was that I heard all the notes, and the third was his snappy trills. Took getting used to.
Physicsguy, yes, Sabine is very bad on “climate change.” She posts graphs of world temperatures with no discussion of the context and problems with the data. It is interesting that she comes around, sort of, on solar energy at this late date. Few countries in the world are worse suited for solar energy than Germany. She still post numbers about the cost from solar energy proponents.
Speaking of Germany and climate crazines, see this article in Zerohedge
Germany moved to reduce the capacity it will auction in its offshore wind tender in 2026, following the flop in the latest auction without a single bid made.
The German Parliament approved legislation narrowing the capacity in the 2026 tender to just 2.5 gigawatts (GW) to 5 GW, compared with an earlier plan of auctioning off 6 GW of offshore wind capacity and with as much as 10 GW offered in the auction in August.
August.
The August offshore wind auction without government subsidies failed to attract a single bid, alarming the local offshore wind sector, which is calling for a fundamental redesign of Germany’s renewable energy auctions.
The Federal Network Agency’s auction for 10.1 GW offshore wind farms in the German part of the North Sea ended with no investor submitting a bid for any of the two proposed sites, the Federal Association for Offshore Wind Energy, BWO, said.
The auction flop signals that offshore wind power developers are wary of taking on riskier, zero-subsidy projects amid rising costs and supply chain issues.
The cart is before the horse on “green energy”. The whole point is to shovel taxpayer money at the connected, the climate rhetoric is the excuse.
If we really needed to eliminate carbon emissions, like within five-ten years, we’d build nuclear plants a la France, which is about 70% nuclear, and put in hydroelectric dams in all the suitable places that don’t have them yet, no need to bother with wind or solar.
It’s just a grift, they’re not actually serious about solving it.
Chuck – about the fast speakers, there is a young co-host on one of the Fox shows that speaks really fast as well as going off on tangents and then forgets what she was going to say. And she sometimes interrupts the other hosts. But, most of them are older and are polite – they don’t reclaim their time.
So, it was really nice one day when she was taking a short breath, a male host just took over and continued the original conversation.
I turn off the shows when Tarlov is on spouting her nonsense. I am at the point of turning her off as well.
Neo says she often kicks the playback speed up. But it can be slowed down, too. Click the little gear symbol and one of the adjustments is playback speed.
I see Schumer has proposed continuing the Obamacare premium subsidies for three years– which would take the issue to the 2028 presidential election. The CR expires in January, so another battle will heat up. If Congress refuses to fund the subsidies (which covers nearly all of the 23 million people getting insurance on the Obamacare exchange) expect this to be a major campaign issue in 2026. The subsidy, which has been in place since 2021, costs around $60 billion/year.
I think the Democrat strategy has always been to keep wages low for blue collar and use government subsidies to raise incomes to a “living wage” with high corporate taxes/regulation to pay the bills– where Trump’s plan is to increase wages and deregulate with low corporate taxes and grow the economy.
With the fantasy economic notion of Modern Monetary Theory making inroads into education, it seems like a simple solution– subsidize everyone for everything.
Until Conservatives can breakthrough the fog of government largess and put the risks of government spending into real world context nothing is going to change. The Republicans are in charge, yet nary a peep from them about the nearly $2 trillion deficit in 2025 and 2026. They’re hiding it in the CR.
One problem with the hydroelectric plants is that once the water behind the dam builds up, then the recreation industry takes over the area. Any major drops in the lake water level is protested, even if it resolves a problem downstream.
In Oklahoma, there is a system of dams/lakes for flood control. And the system usually works. It interesting to monitor the water levels along the way when there are major storms and water releases from the dams as the levels rise. I wonder if the tragedy at the summers camps in Texas could have been avoided with better monitoring and warning.
Interesting discussion of the affordability “crisis” on All-in podcast. Fast forward to 51:24.
There was some discussion on Neo’s thread about the Tennessee election and the very social democrat candidate. Expect more of these types of candidates in the midterm elections.
Too many people expect the federal government to provide a solution to every problem.
Interesting calculator that estimates living expenses/wages in every area of the country, by county.
Ben Shapiro recently suggested that young people faced with high prices in major cities should relocate to areas where the cost of living is lower. He received pushback/ridicule from commenters at the suggestion.
But that’s been the answer throughout our history to unemployment/high costs. One of the problems to that is once you have purchased a home, the costs of relocating are high.
But to someone just starting a career, this is the ideal time to find an area where the living costs are more in line with wages.
F,
I thought about her tax point. I believe most of Europe uses a VAT (tax). Which, in my limited understanding, is kind of a hidden tax. It is much better when taxes are visible. I believe it was at a Chevron station recently where I saw a sign recently that says, “You just bought a 1/4 tank of taxes and fees.”
A related side point is something I remember from one of GW Bush’s terms. Germany lowered their max. income tax rate to 40%. They were then crowing that their taxes were lower than in the US. At the time our max. tax rate was 38%. How do you figure that? Well, we have more of a layered tax scheme with city, local, county and federal taxes. The total was then less in Germany, they claimed.
Unfortunately, my community is not terribly far from Berkeley. So many liberals take some sort of “government” curriculum at Berkeley and then ensconce themselves in a city’s or county’s government job in the greater area. Is it any wonder that the retirement packages have exploded many of these community budgets?
The left always says we should pay our “fair share” in taxes. How much is that exactly? They’ll take as much as they can get away with.
@Brian E:this is the ideal time to find an area where the living costs are more in line with wages.
But there’s the rub, isn’t it? Larger cities have more opportunities. Cheaper is usually cheaper because less desirable, with economic opportunities being a factor in desirability. Laptop Class can live where it’s cheap and work where it’s expensive, for now. (I personally have not worked in an office in nearly 6 years, but haven’t capitalized on it by moving someplace cheaper; I already have a low house payment thanks to my timing and we’re pretty frugal by modern standards.)
TommyJay Unfortunately, my community is not terribly far from Berkeley. So many liberals take some sort of “government” curriculum at Berkeley and then ensconce themselves in a city’s or county’s government job in the greater area. Is it any wonder that the retirement packages have exploded many of these community budgets?
Yes, that does happen. A college friend took a government job in a “progressive” city while his wife taught at the local U. There was a big brouhaha when he was awarded $500k for his retirement package. Not the dividends or interest from $500k, but the full amount. (I haven’t seen them in years…)
TPUSA says they will spend big dollars to primary the rinos in the Indiana Senate who vote against redistricting. Looks like the showdown vote will happen next week.
TPUSA mounts pressure campaign on Indiana Republicans opposed to redistricting
Turning point USA on Friday mounted a pressure campaign against Indiana Republicans who resisted President Donald Trump’s mid-decade redistricting push in the state legislature.
The conservative organization launched the effort with the help of pro-Trump super PACs. The groups will spend eight figures to “primary people that are standing in the way of the president’s agenda,” TPUSA spokesman Andrew Kolvet told Politico at a rally hosted by his organization at the Indiana Statehouse in Indianapolis.
I’m a fan of Eva Zu Beck; her series of videos of crossing the US from Mexico to Alaska was interesting (and her reaction to a local rodeo in Wyoming (or Montana, I forget which) was priceless).
Another interesting travel vlogger is Itchyboots. who did something similar on a motorcycle.
Why the problem with slow drivers in MT? It’s a big state, esp east to west. Many of the roads, at least through the mountains, are a bit windy, and two lanes. Used to not have speed limits on many of them, until forced to by the feds and the libs from the NE, who live like Europeans with everyone living so close together. So, you are driving to the closest WalMart, 100 miles away, and it should take a bit over an hour, and you get stuck behind Europeans, or invaders from the Acela Corridor, driven well under the mandated 70 mph or so. Pretty soon, the line is a half dozen cars long, and the tourists don’t have the civility to pull over and let everyone pass.
As for guns, what Eva doesn’t realize is that pretty much every one of those pickups has a truck gun, in states like MT, WY, ID, and rural NV. Pretty much anywhere rural in the intermountain west. A lot of the guys also have pocket guns. And invariably one, or usually more, long guns in their homes. It was really funny, when a doctor moved into the neighborhood, from Seattle, and his wife realized this. She complained about someone owning a gun, and discovered that they were the only house in the neighborhood without one. Of course everyone has a gun there – the county is 110 miles long, with a population of 15k. That means that on graveyard shift, the one deputy on duty might be an hour and a half away.
Story I heard from the county JP (who also teaches very good gun classes) is that there was a robbery at a convenience store in the county seat, in the middle of the county. They headed west towards ID. And about halfway there ran into a roadblock, manned by locals, far better armed, with long guns – most scoped hunting rifles, by guys who have hunted all their lives. It took the sheriff an hour to get there, to collect the miscreants, and haul them back to the jail (built in 1888). While it’s 50 miles to the border, phone calls are instantaneous, and not being locals, they had nowhere to turn off.
You don’t see the guns, esp if you speak with a British accent, because they are a fact of life. Like wearing underwear. Or carrying a knife.
110 mile long county? It is 143 miles by road from Queets, Wa to the county seat of Port Townsend. I hear at this very moment, a duck hunter about 500 yards away. I.e between me and the school that is a little over a mile away as the crow flies.
@Chases Eagles: 110 mile long county? It is 143 miles by road from Queets, Wa to the county seat of Port Townsend.
Using Jefferson County is cheating, of course, as there are no roads across the Olympics and you have to leave the county to follow the coast from Queets to Port Townsend. I’ll allow it’s pretty long, but a lot of the Washington counties are–you can at least build one road across most of them though.
Lovely story about a Eruopean in the USA and I know what she is talking about when it comes to great big pickup trucks trying to blow as person off the road. I have a regular size pickup and I drive pretty much at the speed limit since I am in my 80’s now. When I am going the speed limit here in my part of Texas and on two lane highways the speed limit is usually between 65 and 70. On the interstate I-10 close to my house the speed limit goes up to 80 and there are still big tire huge pickup trucks that at times are trying to scrape the paint off the back of my truck before they blow on past me. At the same time it annoys me when people don’t drive the speed limit because this is Texas and it’s often a lot of miles getting where you gotta go, so there’s that. I also remember getting the doors of my Volkswagen blown off by Porsches and Mercedes pushing past me when I was doing about 75 mph which was all my car would do and I was holding up traffic on the Autobahn trying to get around slower cars and trucks while the car behind me was flashing headlights which meant I was required to pull into the right lane. The good old days of many years ago.
Anyway, about guns, I don’t see much open carry at all, now that we have it in Texas, however when it comes to me and guns, I don’t leave home without it. Both pistol and truck gun. This morning I was shooting Steel Challenge at our local range with folks ranging in age from 5 years old (with close supervision) to people in their 80’s. We have on lovey young ten year old girl who outshot a lot of us Seniors. We are shooting .22 pistol and rifles at steel targets against time, when the buzzer goes off until the last shot at what we think is the 2nd oldest gun range in the USA in continuous use since 1864.
I spent 3 years in Germany in the US Army in the 1960’s and I remember more than once having a waiter give me some of my tip money back and telling me that it was too much. In Germany I was told they were used to receiving ‘Trink Geld’ which was about like buying a waiter a drink for nice service, a recognition for nice service and that’s about it.
Grant County is 108 miles from Mattawa to Grand Coulee and that’s pretty much a straight shot, south to north.
We were in Montana this fall and yes, there were Ram trucks, all Cummins, blowing by us at 80-90 mph. I think they volunteer patrols whose job is to startle the tourists doing a pedestrian 70 mph on Hwy 200, a 2 lane road. Dodge must be the state truck of Montana.
I-90 is 80 mph since the feds forced speed limits.
Of general interest, a new biography of Franklin Delano Roosevelt by my old friend David Beito at the University of Alabama is newly out.
And the reviewer at Reason magazine, James Bovard, calls it “An antidote to the cult of FDR.”
Basically, Prof. Beito “presents Franklin Roosevelt as one of the greatest scoundrels of American political history.”
Bovard continues, “If there were any doubts that President Franklin Delano Roosevelt was one of the greatest scoundrels of American political history, David Beito‘s new biography should settle the issue…. ‘FDR: A New Political Life’ [does it], and it should help FDR get the villainous reputation he deserves.”
ANOTHER review by a compelling political policy thinker, Steve Hayward, appears in the Amazon.com books page entry for the title.
Hayward calls US historian Beito “one of my favorite historians.”
Meanwhile, the same book page tells us that this new title on Roosevelt has vaulted to #1 on Amazon’s titles on “Political Thought.”
Food for thought, if not a holiday book to buy and share. Bovard outlines his case on FDR — the most feted US President by scholars and public intellectuals of our lifetimes. Wrongly.
@richf I enjoyed that rodeo video. Eva Zu Beck talked about the young kids taking part, which reminded me of Mary Cleave’s comment:
Her own female heroes were the “cowgirls” from Colorado State who lived in her dorm. “They were tough broads!” she says. “I had never been around women that were tough before, and it had a huge impact on me. Huge.”
My wife and I watched “Casablanca” the other night. She is reading, Under A Scarlet Sky” about a guy in occupied Italy. Got some of the points.
But, man, did those people speak fast.
As did, for some reason, the actors in the Brit “The Unpleasantness At The Bellona Club”. And many others.
Fahrenheit is useful in one sense; zero to one hundred is pretty much the limit for effective outdoor work. More or less requires investment in clothing, hydration, break time, so forth.
My wife and I like to drive when we travel. Might take some side trips to make a two -day trip take an extra half day. Depends. Lots of stuff to see. Mountains, or flying through the Midwest’s farm country. Well-kept farm houses, occasional wood lots. Prosperous small towns.
Got a ticket for ten over in Wyoming. Seems eighty-five is only on the interstates, the way the trooper explained it to me. But that was the posted limit on some back roads in Texas.
Been in Europe. Not particularly impressed; big old buildings. Now what? History, some of it laudable. But if I were in the UK, asking how to get to Runnymede so I could see where the Magna Carta was signed, would I be arrested?
I tuned out when she lauded the European system of deciding precedence at 4-way-stops: “the person on the right goes first, that’s it” —
That’s also the written law in most of American, I believe.
And it works (sort of) if there are only 2 people arriving at roughly the same time.
The problem is when there are 4 people converging on at the intersection.
Which ONE is “on the right?”
Hence, most Americans a long time ago worked out the “first come, first served” rule. In my experience, the order then rotates to the right of THAT vehicle, including new arrivals, but I’ve seen people jump their turn.
In an exclusive interview, Parlatore laid out the legal distinction at the heart of the controversy…
“You have a boat full of cocaine and terrorists heading to this country to poison and kill Americans. That’s a legitimate target.” Parlatore said. “You then do battle damage assessment. The boat and the cargo remain legitimate military targets that SOUTHCOM has been ordered to put on the bottom of the ocean.” Parlatore referred to the death of drug traffickers resulting from the second strike as “collateral damage.”
…
[gives an example from battle with Japanese warships in WWII]
…
The example, Parlatore argued, shows that sinking a disabled enemy vessel, even one carrying wounded personnel, has been standard naval practice for generations and remains fully consistent with the law of armed conflict at sea.
However, no one questions that we were at war with Japan.
A lot of the pixels being expended over the narco-boat operation is whether or not the bombing of the boats is legal in the first place.
ADDENDUM: Since it seems that all the Left has available for stopping Trump is Lawfare, and given that cycling through rounds of appeals takes a long time, Trump’s objective may be to destroy as many boats as possible before the judicial circus runs its course (assuming he loses, which is by no means certain).
The tactic is very similar to what the Left does with their lies (see Neo’s post): the fait accompli is hard to counteract after the fact.
Same subject, which Matt Taibbi and Walter Kirn discussed on America This Week.
A couple of commenters point out something that should be investigated, possibly with an eye toward the possiblity that the Seditious Six either went hunting for an “illegal” Trump order with lawyers on stand-by (there are plenty of them), or already had this one in their pocket, and were setting the stage to bring it out.
Keith Jajko
Mainly ones who just happened to be very accessible, it seems. Almost as if they cleared their calendar this week. I thought the calendars for lawyers, especially super-duper big-wig attorneys, are packed. Couldn’t it have waited some days or even a week? How peculiar.
“Everyone is so nice.”
Europeans ought to try it.
SHIREHOME,
Well stated on 2 and 4.
If we’re not at war–lots of legal issues involved in getting there–are we at peace? Is there some other situation?
About the identity of the J6 bomber, this clip, the 1-2m section shows us two keys. First, the bomber has a limp. Second, he (or she?) stops, and pulls glasses from a bag and puts it on his face.
RESOLVE both, and then I will agree that the real bomber has probably been found.
One might point out that since inundating the US with drugs IS DPOTUS policy (or more specifically, one very essential component of it) the Democrats DO have a pit bull in this fight…
Why does Eva Zu Beck think the US is more expensive than Europe? She’s actually correct. Let me explain.
Since this video was made in 2023, the exchange value of the Dollar has fallen. But back a couple years ago, the dollar was strong, and dollar=Euro parity was definitely on the table
And with a strong Dollar, it made a trip to the US expensive. For example, in that summer I visited a hostel in Kitzbuhel, Austria. The young German woman in charge told me how expensive it was for her to have a ski holiday in Vail, Colorado.
I chimed in how Vail and Kitzbuhel’s home property costs were very similar (nothing with a view under $1 million), in costs — because of spending demand from Munich and Souther Bavaria (the richest area of Germany) — only a few hours drive away.
Therefore, Eva Zu Beck is right in this perception, back then. It’s changed since then, as it seemed the EU would go on a spending bing for military armaments. Now, I think both are similarly priced after currency exchange is figured in.
I note what seems to me like a distinct uptick in volcanic eruptions world wide.
Snow on Pine,
Here’s grok AIs opinion:
No, there has not been a real increase in global volcanic activity over the past century (1925–2025) or the past decade (2015–2025). What appears as an increase in reported eruptions is largely due to improved detection and reporting technologies, such as satellites, global communication networks, and expanded human populations near volcanic regions. Scientific consensus from organizations like the Smithsonian Institution’s Global Volcanism Program (GVP) and the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) confirms that actual eruption rates remain stable, with 40–50 volcanoes typically in continuing eruption status annually and about 20 actively erupting on any given day. Large eruptions (Volcanic Explosivity Index [VEI] ?4, which eject at least 0.1 km³ of material) have remained constant over the past two centuries, providing the most reliable indicator of true activity levels since their regional/global effects (e.g., ash plumes) are harder to miss.
Unicorn stomps?
He admits this is speculation— but that this is how a prosecutor could tie up the J6 Bomber plot (using Cole) and the Fedsurrection.
“Why I Think The J6 Fedsurrection Was Planned At This Secret Meeting In June 2020, Mike Benz
A military coup against Trump was considered when high officials met to “War Game” the 2020 election, should Trump cling to power.
“This is where I think the seeds of the plot were planted. Here’s what that means for the J6 pipe bomber investigation.”
Rep. Byron Donalds (R-FL) has no sympathy for the Seditious Six (published before the NarcoBoat controversy).
He makes a good point here about the goal of the S6ers; I haven’t looked to see if his view has changed (I doubt it has).
Speaking to reporters amid the seditious uproar that saw Trump vow prison for the “traitors”, Donalds refused to entertain their victim act.
“I’m not going to give them any standing about ‘how do they feel?’ That’s BS! They KNEW what they were doing […] They created a political STUNT to get a response and they didn’t like the response!” Donalds urged.
Cutting off a reporter mid-question on presidential restraint, he roared:
“Stop. No, no. And this is where I’m gonna push back. What they are doing is trying to throw literally [figuratively]* a grenade into the room, it goes off. And then they’re going to claim outrage? They have no moral standing to claim outrage!”
*I literally [in reality] hate the confusion of this word with “figuratively,” as so many writers do now, even otherwise very precise rhetoricians.
https://www.wordnik.com/words/literally
adverb-
In a literal manner; word for word.
In a literal or strict sense.
Really; actually.
According to the primary and natural import of words; not figuratively.
With close adherence to words; word by word.
speech act word for word; not figuratively; not as an idiom or metaphor
But, one entry says this, bowing to the now-common and INCORRECT usage [as Donalds did]:
Used as an intensive before a figurative expression.
[Why does anyone need to intensify a metaphor?]**
https://www.wordnik.com/words/figuratively
adverb-
In a figurative manner; by means of a figure or resemblance; metaphorically or tropically.
Used to indicate that what follows is to be taken as a figure of speech, not literally.
****************
Likewise, I detest the use of “virtually” to mean “almost; nearly; practically” rather than the more correct “in efficacy or effect only, and not actually,” despite the dictionary writers who have caved to the public’s incorrect but common usage.
Wiktionary even uses “virtually” as a synonym for “literally” — aaaggghhhh!!!!
None of the definitions of the root “virtual” carry any connotation of “almost” — there is no logical reason for “virtually” to mean anything other than to indicate “In essence, but not in fact.”
Or, for Wiktionary, as a synonym for “figuratively.”
https://www.wordnik.com/words/virtual
adjective –
Existing or resulting in essence or effect though not in actual fact, form, or name.
Existing in the mind, especially as a product of the imagination. Used in literary criticism of a text.
Computers: Created, simulated, or carried on by means of a computer or computer network.
People just think using “virtually” at the (figurative) drop of a hat makes them sound more intelligent, whereas any peon can say (correctly) “almost” or “practically.”
A little learning is a dangerous thing.
Literally.
***************
**If you do have some desire to intensify your figurative metaphor, the solution is to use virtually!
“What they are doing is trying to throw virtually a grenade into the room” is almost correct, except for the error of placement: “What they are doing is trying to virtually throw a grenade into the room.”
Leave a Reply
HTML tags allowed in your
comment: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <s> <strike> <strong>
The video: She says she drove all across the US, but never went east of the Rockies…..????
Sabine has finally realized solar is not economically/energy viable. She does say that she knows she’s rather slow in coming to this conclusion. Really? Ya think so? All one has to do is take the average solar insolation with the average solar cell efficiency to arrive at that conclusion. She also just now understands the sun is not out at night and in the winter the insolation is weak. Maybe that’s the difference between an experimentalist (me) and theoretician (her). I’ve definitely noticed us wrench monkeys in physics tend to have a more practical outlook on physics questions.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=otSAEca41eE
Hard to listen too, speaks so fast. I guess that is the thing with all young people.
1. In Europe, yes little tipping. But prices of eating out is more expensive, generally.
2. Sometimes, she is really stupid about things.
3. I have traveled a lot in Europe. Basically, driving is the same. Sure, some differences.
4. Four way stops are the same here as Europe.
5. Yes, finally understands just how big the US.
6. I don’t tip at takeout, generally. Only if getting a full meal, not just coffee.
7. Guns Guns Guns. Walmart did sell guns, until state laws have made changes.
8. CO is open carry, I don’t see people walking around tooled up.
SHIREHOME:
Excellent summary.
I had hoped to hear more interesting commentary than driving, food, and tipping. Glad she appreciates how big and beautiful the US is. I’ve gotten to dislike pickup trucks too.
Spoiler alert: 1000% Yes!
zu Beck’s a bit of an odd duck and independent as a hog on ice. Currently she’s vlogging living on a hill in Poland with a dog (and oh by the way being the frontwoman for Nat Geo’s “Superskilled” TV series).
Great video. It spurred a myriad of thoughts:
marriage@evazubeck. Just kidding she said. Oddly, a couple months after my wife died, I got a strange message on my answering machine. (Yes, I still had one. Past tense.) Some strange lady with a German accent was searching and dialing, trying to get in touch with someone in my wife’s family, and knew her personally from the distant past.
Turns out, her story was very much like Eva Zubeck, though originally from Germany. At a young age in the late ’60’s or early ’70’s she spent several months in the US, and lived with my wife’s family for a time and was looking to reconnect. Several years after that first visit, she did an extended US trip again and met her future husband and moved to the US. Now living in southern CA.
_____
Vast distances: I did a work related trip a long time ago to a military base in Panama City, FL. While having a long casual chat with one of guys there, he talked about how both he and his sister were transplants to FL, from somewhere like the mid Atlantic seaboard or possibly New England. Not long after he moved to Panama City, and she to Miami, they were talking on the phone at midday.
At the end she said, “Why don’t you drive on down and we’ll have dinner together tonight?” He said, “Do you have any idea how far that is?”
______
One of Eva’s favorite spots is in the middle of some Nevada desert? Interesting. I do get a kick out of the vast open spaces myself. And Yellowstone is too touristy?
______
Eva mentions not being surprised that many Americans don’t have passports. She doesn’t exactly mention it, but there is so much to explore here. Even just within CA, there is a lot.
______
Guns and Walmart. Back in 2015, after an extended trip to Idaho, I thought I’d see how difficult it was to buy and shoot a gun in CA. Buying the firearm was a modest hassle, but I walked into a Walmart Superstore and there were all the supplies in a fishing and firearms section. No ID checks at the checkout. Cool. I’ve got a nice outdoor firing range nearby too.
A friend of mine bought an apartment not too long ago and just last week we walked into that very same Walmart so she could pick up some food etc. It dawned on me that I hadn’t been there since I got 9mm ammo in 2015. All that firearm stuff is gone now. The ammo regs. are now absurd, onerous, and includes an expensive paperwork surcharge.
“independent as a hog on ice”
Awesome!
I thought it interesting that she seemed to like the empty space. And yes, you need a car (or pickup) in the empty spaces.
Tommy Jay:
That place in Nevada appears to be a hot spring.
And of course your 4×4 allows you to become stuck much further out in the empty places.
I think it’s likely a lot of people will come to regret, at some time during their life, that they posted something on social media. Eva might just fall into that category in ten years’ time, as she’s marrying her third Montana husband. Oh well, she’ll grow up eventually.
She was flat out wrong about some things. Food is not cheaper in Europe, in my experience, especially at the high end. And tipping? Her observation that Europeans don’t tip because they pay their waiters more is typical of someone who grew up in a class-conscious society (England). Europe’s poor are almost certainly poorer than is in the case in the USA, but then their rich are also poorer.
No tax on food in European stores? Not true. It might be more obvious on the price panel, but it’s there.
Oh well. She’s young. She’ll see.
Admirable.
Neighborhood 4 way stop, 3 mildly dented cars and police. Apparently, all hesitated, the went at once?
@physicsguy:She also just now understands the sun is not out at night and in the winter the insolation is weak. Maybe that’s the difference between an experimentalist (me) and theoretician (her). I’ve definitely noticed us wrench monkeys in physics tend to have a more practical outlook on physics questions.
Not based on my experience…. they’re pretty much all leftists and on board with the Current Thing regardless; the process of getting a physics PhD filters for such people.
(One leader of an experimental research team used to digress on “those thieves on Wall Street” in meetings.)
I forget who said that people are always conservative about what they know best, but lots of the time people are ONLY conservative about what they know best. The physicist’s disease, when looking outside of physics, is thinking that other people haven’t tried really thinking about the problem yet.
Hard to listen too, speaks so fast. I guess that is the thing with all young people.
I didn’t have a problem with that, but I know what you mean about young people, I can hardly follow some of them. Maybe it is my ears, I will need hearing aids at some point, I just keep putting it off. OTOH, it may be fashion. Pianists 100 years ago tended to play faster, and some had a reputation for speed even then, Hoffman for instance. Speaking of Hoffman, the first thing I noticed was the speed, the second was that I heard all the notes, and the third was his snappy trills. Took getting used to.
Physicsguy, yes, Sabine is very bad on “climate change.” She posts graphs of world temperatures with no discussion of the context and problems with the data. It is interesting that she comes around, sort of, on solar energy at this late date. Few countries in the world are worse suited for solar energy than Germany. She still post numbers about the cost from solar energy proponents.
Speaking of Germany and climate crazines, see this article in Zerohedge
Germany moved to reduce the capacity it will auction in its offshore wind tender in 2026, following the flop in the latest auction without a single bid made.
The German Parliament approved legislation narrowing the capacity in the 2026 tender to just 2.5 gigawatts (GW) to 5 GW, compared with an earlier plan of auctioning off 6 GW of offshore wind capacity and with as much as 10 GW offered in the auction in August.
August.
The August offshore wind auction without government subsidies failed to attract a single bid, alarming the local offshore wind sector, which is calling for a fundamental redesign of Germany’s renewable energy auctions.
The Federal Network Agency’s auction for 10.1 GW offshore wind farms in the German part of the North Sea ended with no investor submitting a bid for any of the two proposed sites, the Federal Association for Offshore Wind Energy, BWO, said.
The auction flop signals that offshore wind power developers are wary of taking on riskier, zero-subsidy projects amid rising costs and supply chain issues.
https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/germany-scales-back-offshore-wind-auctions-after-latest-flop
The cart is before the horse on “green energy”. The whole point is to shovel taxpayer money at the connected, the climate rhetoric is the excuse.
If we really needed to eliminate carbon emissions, like within five-ten years, we’d build nuclear plants a la France, which is about 70% nuclear, and put in hydroelectric dams in all the suitable places that don’t have them yet, no need to bother with wind or solar.
It’s just a grift, they’re not actually serious about solving it.
Chuck – about the fast speakers, there is a young co-host on one of the Fox shows that speaks really fast as well as going off on tangents and then forgets what she was going to say. And she sometimes interrupts the other hosts. But, most of them are older and are polite – they don’t reclaim their time.
So, it was really nice one day when she was taking a short breath, a male host just took over and continued the original conversation.
I turn off the shows when Tarlov is on spouting her nonsense. I am at the point of turning her off as well.
Neo says she often kicks the playback speed up. But it can be slowed down, too. Click the little gear symbol and one of the adjustments is playback speed.
I see Schumer has proposed continuing the Obamacare premium subsidies for three years– which would take the issue to the 2028 presidential election. The CR expires in January, so another battle will heat up. If Congress refuses to fund the subsidies (which covers nearly all of the 23 million people getting insurance on the Obamacare exchange) expect this to be a major campaign issue in 2026. The subsidy, which has been in place since 2021, costs around $60 billion/year.
I think the Democrat strategy has always been to keep wages low for blue collar and use government subsidies to raise incomes to a “living wage” with high corporate taxes/regulation to pay the bills– where Trump’s plan is to increase wages and deregulate with low corporate taxes and grow the economy.
With the fantasy economic notion of Modern Monetary Theory making inroads into education, it seems like a simple solution– subsidize everyone for everything.
Until Conservatives can breakthrough the fog of government largess and put the risks of government spending into real world context nothing is going to change. The Republicans are in charge, yet nary a peep from them about the nearly $2 trillion deficit in 2025 and 2026. They’re hiding it in the CR.
One problem with the hydroelectric plants is that once the water behind the dam builds up, then the recreation industry takes over the area. Any major drops in the lake water level is protested, even if it resolves a problem downstream.
In Oklahoma, there is a system of dams/lakes for flood control. And the system usually works. It interesting to monitor the water levels along the way when there are major storms and water releases from the dams as the levels rise. I wonder if the tragedy at the summers camps in Texas could have been avoided with better monitoring and warning.
Interesting discussion of the affordability “crisis” on All-in podcast. Fast forward to 51:24.
There was some discussion on Neo’s thread about the Tennessee election and the very social democrat candidate. Expect more of these types of candidates in the midterm elections.
Too many people expect the federal government to provide a solution to every problem.
OpenAI’s Code Red, Sacks vs New York Times, New Poverty Line?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uxi6LVKanuY
Interesting calculator that estimates living expenses/wages in every area of the country, by county.
Ben Shapiro recently suggested that young people faced with high prices in major cities should relocate to areas where the cost of living is lower. He received pushback/ridicule from commenters at the suggestion.
But that’s been the answer throughout our history to unemployment/high costs. One of the problems to that is once you have purchased a home, the costs of relocating are high.
But to someone just starting a career, this is the ideal time to find an area where the living costs are more in line with wages.
Living Wage calculator
https://livingwage.mit.edu/
F,
I thought about her tax point. I believe most of Europe uses a VAT (tax). Which, in my limited understanding, is kind of a hidden tax. It is much better when taxes are visible. I believe it was at a Chevron station recently where I saw a sign recently that says, “You just bought a 1/4 tank of taxes and fees.”
A related side point is something I remember from one of GW Bush’s terms. Germany lowered their max. income tax rate to 40%. They were then crowing that their taxes were lower than in the US. At the time our max. tax rate was 38%. How do you figure that? Well, we have more of a layered tax scheme with city, local, county and federal taxes. The total was then less in Germany, they claimed.
Unfortunately, my community is not terribly far from Berkeley. So many liberals take some sort of “government” curriculum at Berkeley and then ensconce themselves in a city’s or county’s government job in the greater area. Is it any wonder that the retirement packages have exploded many of these community budgets?
The left always says we should pay our “fair share” in taxes. How much is that exactly? They’ll take as much as they can get away with.
@Brian E:this is the ideal time to find an area where the living costs are more in line with wages.
But there’s the rub, isn’t it? Larger cities have more opportunities. Cheaper is usually cheaper because less desirable, with economic opportunities being a factor in desirability. Laptop Class can live where it’s cheap and work where it’s expensive, for now. (I personally have not worked in an office in nearly 6 years, but haven’t capitalized on it by moving someplace cheaper; I already have a low house payment thanks to my timing and we’re pretty frugal by modern standards.)
TommyJay
Unfortunately, my community is not terribly far from Berkeley. So many liberals take some sort of “government” curriculum at Berkeley and then ensconce themselves in a city’s or county’s government job in the greater area. Is it any wonder that the retirement packages have exploded many of these community budgets?
Yes, that does happen. A college friend took a government job in a “progressive” city while his wife taught at the local U. There was a big brouhaha when he was awarded $500k for his retirement package. Not the dividends or interest from $500k, but the full amount. (I haven’t seen them in years…)
TPUSA says they will spend big dollars to primary the rinos in the Indiana Senate who vote against redistricting. Looks like the showdown vote will happen next week.
TPUSA mounts pressure campaign on Indiana Republicans opposed to redistricting
Turning point USA on Friday mounted a pressure campaign against Indiana Republicans who resisted President Donald Trump’s mid-decade redistricting push in the state legislature.
The conservative organization launched the effort with the help of pro-Trump super PACs. The groups will spend eight figures to “primary people that are standing in the way of the president’s agenda,” TPUSA spokesman Andrew Kolvet told Politico at a rally hosted by his organization at the Indiana Statehouse in Indianapolis.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/politics/elections/tpusa-mounts-pressure-campaign-on-indiana-republicans-opposed-to-redistricting/ar-AA1RNKiO
I’m a fan of Eva Zu Beck; her series of videos of crossing the US from Mexico to Alaska was interesting (and her reaction to a local rodeo in Wyoming (or Montana, I forget which) was priceless).
Another interesting travel vlogger is Itchyboots. who did something similar on a motorcycle.
Why the problem with slow drivers in MT? It’s a big state, esp east to west. Many of the roads, at least through the mountains, are a bit windy, and two lanes. Used to not have speed limits on many of them, until forced to by the feds and the libs from the NE, who live like Europeans with everyone living so close together. So, you are driving to the closest WalMart, 100 miles away, and it should take a bit over an hour, and you get stuck behind Europeans, or invaders from the Acela Corridor, driven well under the mandated 70 mph or so. Pretty soon, the line is a half dozen cars long, and the tourists don’t have the civility to pull over and let everyone pass.
As for guns, what Eva doesn’t realize is that pretty much every one of those pickups has a truck gun, in states like MT, WY, ID, and rural NV. Pretty much anywhere rural in the intermountain west. A lot of the guys also have pocket guns. And invariably one, or usually more, long guns in their homes. It was really funny, when a doctor moved into the neighborhood, from Seattle, and his wife realized this. She complained about someone owning a gun, and discovered that they were the only house in the neighborhood without one. Of course everyone has a gun there – the county is 110 miles long, with a population of 15k. That means that on graveyard shift, the one deputy on duty might be an hour and a half away.
Story I heard from the county JP (who also teaches very good gun classes) is that there was a robbery at a convenience store in the county seat, in the middle of the county. They headed west towards ID. And about halfway there ran into a roadblock, manned by locals, far better armed, with long guns – most scoped hunting rifles, by guys who have hunted all their lives. It took the sheriff an hour to get there, to collect the miscreants, and haul them back to the jail (built in 1888). While it’s 50 miles to the border, phone calls are instantaneous, and not being locals, they had nowhere to turn off.
You don’t see the guns, esp if you speak with a British accent, because they are a fact of life. Like wearing underwear. Or carrying a knife.
110 mile long county? It is 143 miles by road from Queets, Wa to the county seat of Port Townsend. I hear at this very moment, a duck hunter about 500 yards away. I.e between me and the school that is a little over a mile away as the crow flies.
@Chases Eagles: 110 mile long county? It is 143 miles by road from Queets, Wa to the county seat of Port Townsend.
Using Jefferson County is cheating, of course, as there are no roads across the Olympics and you have to leave the county to follow the coast from Queets to Port Townsend. I’ll allow it’s pretty long, but a lot of the Washington counties are–you can at least build one road across most of them though.
Lovely story about a Eruopean in the USA and I know what she is talking about when it comes to great big pickup trucks trying to blow as person off the road. I have a regular size pickup and I drive pretty much at the speed limit since I am in my 80’s now. When I am going the speed limit here in my part of Texas and on two lane highways the speed limit is usually between 65 and 70. On the interstate I-10 close to my house the speed limit goes up to 80 and there are still big tire huge pickup trucks that at times are trying to scrape the paint off the back of my truck before they blow on past me. At the same time it annoys me when people don’t drive the speed limit because this is Texas and it’s often a lot of miles getting where you gotta go, so there’s that. I also remember getting the doors of my Volkswagen blown off by Porsches and Mercedes pushing past me when I was doing about 75 mph which was all my car would do and I was holding up traffic on the Autobahn trying to get around slower cars and trucks while the car behind me was flashing headlights which meant I was required to pull into the right lane. The good old days of many years ago.
Anyway, about guns, I don’t see much open carry at all, now that we have it in Texas, however when it comes to me and guns, I don’t leave home without it. Both pistol and truck gun. This morning I was shooting Steel Challenge at our local range with folks ranging in age from 5 years old (with close supervision) to people in their 80’s. We have on lovey young ten year old girl who outshot a lot of us Seniors. We are shooting .22 pistol and rifles at steel targets against time, when the buzzer goes off until the last shot at what we think is the 2nd oldest gun range in the USA in continuous use since 1864.
I spent 3 years in Germany in the US Army in the 1960’s and I remember more than once having a waiter give me some of my tip money back and telling me that it was too much. In Germany I was told they were used to receiving ‘Trink Geld’ which was about like buying a waiter a drink for nice service, a recognition for nice service and that’s about it.
Grant County is 108 miles from Mattawa to Grand Coulee and that’s pretty much a straight shot, south to north.
We were in Montana this fall and yes, there were Ram trucks, all Cummins, blowing by us at 80-90 mph. I think they volunteer patrols whose job is to startle the tourists doing a pedestrian 70 mph on Hwy 200, a 2 lane road. Dodge must be the state truck of Montana.
I-90 is 80 mph since the feds forced speed limits.
Of general interest, a new biography of Franklin Delano Roosevelt by my old friend David Beito at the University of Alabama is newly out.
And the reviewer at Reason magazine, James Bovard, calls it “An antidote to the cult of FDR.”
Basically, Prof. Beito “presents Franklin Roosevelt as one of the greatest scoundrels of American political history.”
Bovard continues, “If there were any doubts that President Franklin Delano Roosevelt was one of the greatest scoundrels of American political history, David Beito‘s new biography should settle the issue…. ‘FDR: A New Political Life’ [does it], and it should help FDR get the villainous reputation he deserves.”
“Treachery was the consistent theme of Roosevelt’s political life.”
https://jimbovard.com/blog/2025/11/25/an-antidote-to-the-fdr-cult/
ANOTHER review by a compelling political policy thinker, Steve Hayward, appears in the Amazon.com books page entry for the title.
Hayward calls US historian Beito “one of my favorite historians.”
Meanwhile, the same book page tells us that this new title on Roosevelt has vaulted to #1 on Amazon’s titles on “Political Thought.”
Food for thought, if not a holiday book to buy and share. Bovard outlines his case on FDR — the most feted US President by scholars and public intellectuals of our lifetimes. Wrongly.
@richf I enjoyed that rodeo video. Eva Zu Beck talked about the young kids taking part, which reminded me of Mary Cleave’s comment:
Her own female heroes were the “cowgirls” from Colorado State who lived in her dorm. “They were tough broads!” she says. “I had never been around women that were tough before, and it had a huge impact on me. Huge.”
My wife and I watched “Casablanca” the other night. She is reading, Under A Scarlet Sky” about a guy in occupied Italy. Got some of the points.
But, man, did those people speak fast.
As did, for some reason, the actors in the Brit “The Unpleasantness At The Bellona Club”. And many others.
Fahrenheit is useful in one sense; zero to one hundred is pretty much the limit for effective outdoor work. More or less requires investment in clothing, hydration, break time, so forth.
My wife and I like to drive when we travel. Might take some side trips to make a two -day trip take an extra half day. Depends. Lots of stuff to see. Mountains, or flying through the Midwest’s farm country. Well-kept farm houses, occasional wood lots. Prosperous small towns.
Got a ticket for ten over in Wyoming. Seems eighty-five is only on the interstates, the way the trooper explained it to me. But that was the posted limit on some back roads in Texas.
Been in Europe. Not particularly impressed; big old buildings. Now what? History, some of it laudable. But if I were in the UK, asking how to get to Runnymede so I could see where the Magna Carta was signed, would I be arrested?
I tuned out when she lauded the European system of deciding precedence at 4-way-stops: “the person on the right goes first, that’s it” —
That’s also the written law in most of American, I believe.
And it works (sort of) if there are only 2 people arriving at roughly the same time.
The problem is when there are 4 people converging on at the intersection.
Which ONE is “on the right?”
Hence, most Americans a long time ago worked out the “first come, first served” rule. In my experience, the order then rotates to the right of THAT vehicle, including new arrivals, but I’ve seen people jump their turn.
Probably European tourists. 😉
Or Californians.
Meanwhile,back at NarcoBoatGate:
https://townhall.com/tipsheet/mattvespa/2025/12/06/naval-lawyer-delivers-the-killshot-to-the-lefts-uproar-over-trumps-airstrikes-on-narco-terrorists-n2667485
However, no one questions that we were at war with Japan.
A lot of the pixels being expended over the narco-boat operation is whether or not the bombing of the boats is legal in the first place.
ADDENDUM: Since it seems that all the Left has available for stopping Trump is Lawfare, and given that cycling through rounds of appeals takes a long time, Trump’s objective may be to destroy as many boats as possible before the judicial circus runs its course (assuming he loses, which is by no means certain).
The tactic is very similar to what the Left does with their lies (see Neo’s post): the fait accompli is hard to counteract after the fact.
Same story with a few different details.
https://redstate.com/rc-maxwell/2025/12/05/exclusive-dow-legal-advisor-boat-with-cocaine-terrorists-heading-to-poison-americans-is-legit-target-n2196866
Same subject, which Matt Taibbi and Walter Kirn discussed on America This Week.
A couple of commenters point out something that should be investigated, possibly with an eye toward the possiblity that the Seditious Six either went hunting for an “illegal” Trump order with lawyers on stand-by (there are plenty of them), or already had this one in their pocket, and were setting the stage to bring it out.
https://www.racket.news/p/transcript-america-this-week-dec-924/comment/184859702
IMinLA
Not every legal expert says this was illegal.
Keith Jajko
Mainly ones who just happened to be very accessible, it seems. Almost as if they cleared their calendar this week. I thought the calendars for lawyers, especially super-duper big-wig attorneys, are packed. Couldn’t it have waited some days or even a week? How peculiar.
“Everyone is so nice.”
Europeans ought to try it.
SHIREHOME,
Well stated on 2 and 4.
If we’re not at war–lots of legal issues involved in getting there–are we at peace? Is there some other situation?
About the identity of the J6 bomber, this clip, the 1-2m section shows us two keys. First, the bomber has a limp. Second, he (or she?) stops, and pulls glasses from a bag and puts it on his face.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E20rhPXGUxY
RESOLVE both, and then I will agree that the real bomber has probably been found.
One might point out that since inundating the US with drugs IS DPOTUS policy (or more specifically, one very essential component of it) the Democrats DO have a pit bull in this fight…
Why does Eva Zu Beck think the US is more expensive than Europe? She’s actually correct. Let me explain.
Since this video was made in 2023, the exchange value of the Dollar has fallen. But back a couple years ago, the dollar was strong, and dollar=Euro parity was definitely on the table
And with a strong Dollar, it made a trip to the US expensive. For example, in that summer I visited a hostel in Kitzbuhel, Austria. The young German woman in charge told me how expensive it was for her to have a ski holiday in Vail, Colorado.
I chimed in how Vail and Kitzbuhel’s home property costs were very similar (nothing with a view under $1 million), in costs — because of spending demand from Munich and Souther Bavaria (the richest area of Germany) — only a few hours drive away.
Therefore, Eva Zu Beck is right in this perception, back then. It’s changed since then, as it seemed the EU would go on a spending bing for military armaments. Now, I think both are similarly priced after currency exchange is figured in.
I note what seems to me like a distinct uptick in volcanic eruptions world wide.
Snow on Pine,
Here’s grok AIs opinion:
Unicorn stomps?
He admits this is speculation— but that this is how a prosecutor could tie up the J6 Bomber plot (using Cole) and the Fedsurrection.
“Why I Think The J6 Fedsurrection Was Planned At This Secret Meeting In June 2020, Mike Benz
A military coup against Trump was considered when high officials met to “War Game” the 2020 election, should Trump cling to power.
Benz scours open source reveal Deep State thinking to support his case
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e5C5t5F1zMc
“This is where I think the seeds of the plot were planted. Here’s what that means for the J6 pipe bomber investigation.”
Rep. Byron Donalds (R-FL) has no sympathy for the Seditious Six (published before the NarcoBoat controversy).
He makes a good point here about the goal of the S6ers; I haven’t looked to see if his view has changed (I doubt it has).
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/they-threw-grenade-now-feign-outrage-no-sympathy-tiktok-traitors
*I literally [in reality] hate the confusion of this word with “figuratively,” as so many writers do now, even otherwise very precise rhetoricians.
https://www.wordnik.com/words/literally
adverb-
In a literal manner; word for word.
In a literal or strict sense.
Really; actually.
According to the primary and natural import of words; not figuratively.
With close adherence to words; word by word.
speech act word for word; not figuratively; not as an idiom or metaphor
But, one entry says this, bowing to the now-common and INCORRECT usage [as Donalds did]:
Used as an intensive before a figurative expression.
[Why does anyone need to intensify a metaphor?]**
https://www.wordnik.com/words/figuratively
adverb-
In a figurative manner; by means of a figure or resemblance; metaphorically or tropically.
Used to indicate that what follows is to be taken as a figure of speech, not literally.
****************
Likewise, I detest the use of “virtually” to mean “almost; nearly; practically” rather than the more correct “in efficacy or effect only, and not actually,” despite the dictionary writers who have caved to the public’s incorrect but common usage.
https://www.wordnik.com/words/virtually
Wiktionary even uses “virtually” as a synonym for “literally” — aaaggghhhh!!!!
None of the definitions of the root “virtual” carry any connotation of “almost” — there is no logical reason for “virtually” to mean anything other than to indicate “In essence, but not in fact.”
Or, for Wiktionary, as a synonym for “figuratively.”
https://www.wordnik.com/words/virtual
adjective –
Existing or resulting in essence or effect though not in actual fact, form, or name.
Existing in the mind, especially as a product of the imagination. Used in literary criticism of a text.
Computers: Created, simulated, or carried on by means of a computer or computer network.
People just think using “virtually” at the (figurative) drop of a hat makes them sound more intelligent, whereas any peon can say (correctly) “almost” or “practically.”
A little learning is a dangerous thing.
Literally.
***************
**If you do have some desire to intensify your figurative metaphor, the solution is to use virtually!
“What they are doing is trying to throw virtually a grenade into the room” is almost correct, except for the error of placement: “What they are doing is trying to virtually throw a grenade into the room.”