I never saw a cat do that but growing up I saw a lot of cats get “stuck” in trees. They come down when they get hungry enough.
What I found most astounding about this photo and video capture of an Israeli missile strike in Beirut is the precision of the explosion. The targeted building almost instantly crumbles with little to no apparent damage to anything else. Israel spends more money and more lives of its own soldiers to minimize civilian casualties. If genocide was truly their objective it would have already occurred.
Our previous cat (RIP) was a 20-pound neutered orange tabby. He had arrived as a stray kitten but decided we should adopt him. He looked like a ginormous blob, but was actually in pretty good shape. He used to sit on the cool dirt in the vegetable garden, usually in the shade of the tomatoes. One year we had put up a tripod of sturdy sticks all tied together near the top about 8 feet up to hold up the plants.
I was watching one day as he was lying on his stomach nicely meat-loafed in the shade when a sparrow landed at the top of the tripod. He slooooowly looked up, and then without any windup or other give-away, bounded the 8-feet-plus straight up into the air, nailed the sparrow, and came down. Cats can do amazing things when motivated.
sdferr ref Ladders – reminds me of how Firemen and Policemen get selected:
All applicants are placed into a rectangular deep pit. Ladders are placed at two ends of the pit.
Applicants are told to get out of the pit.
Applicants who use the ladders to climb out of the pit are made Fireman. Applicants who remain in the pit are made Policemen
*****
Paul S. ref missile strike – WOW!!!
What was the cost/effects of the Great Recession of 2008 and what could trigger an even bigger crash in the future? Is this it?
“…consider the rise of finance as the dominant force in our socio-economic / political status quo. Statistics give us a rough picture of the dominance:
In 2023, the finance, insurance, real estate, rental, and leasing industry contributed 20.7% to the United States’ gross domestic product (GDP). This is higher than the long-term average of 7.29%. In 1947, the finance industry made up only 10% of non-farm business profits. By 2010, the finance industry made up 50% of non-farm business profits.
The chart below of non-bank financial institutions’ assets as a percentage of GDP (Gross Domestic Product) tells the story: prior to the era of financialization, non-bank financial institutions’ assets trundled along for decades at around 40% of GDP. Recall that “non-bank financial institutions” is shorthand for the mechanisms of financialization, which is the globalized commoditization of everything into a tradable financial instrument.
Labor, capital, risk, currencies, commodities, income streams, real-world assets–everything is converted into a financial doppelganger that can be arbitraged and traded for profit. The actual use-value is no longer the “value” being “created;” the “value” is “created” by generating an entirely abstract financial shadow cast by the collateral of the real world.
This transmogrification of the global economy into a fully financialized shadow-world took off in the early 1980s when financiers were first given access to unlimited credit and the other tools of financialization. Non-bank financial institutions’ assets soon soared from 40% of GDP to 140% of GDP, and in the final blow-off phase of hyper-financialization that we’re experiencing now, these assets are 200% of GDP– five times the pre-financialization era levels that were deemed “widespread prosperity” (the Trente Glorieuses, the 30 glorious years of shared prosperity from 1945 to 1975).
The wealth generated by financialization and hyper-financialization isn’t shared; it’s concentrated in the hands of those with access to credit and and the other tools of financialization, currently epitomized by private equity.”
——–
“The larger point is that an economy that’s dependent on the distortions of financialization for its “growth” and profits is not a stable system; the gross imbalances generated by the distortions undermine its stability, and the system collapses under its own weight once the imbalances destabilize society and the real-world economy.”
*Ladders? We don’t need no stinking ladders!*
I never saw a cat do that but growing up I saw a lot of cats get “stuck” in trees. They come down when they get hungry enough.
What I found most astounding about this photo and video capture of an Israeli missile strike in Beirut is the precision of the explosion. The targeted building almost instantly crumbles with little to no apparent damage to anything else. Israel spends more money and more lives of its own soldiers to minimize civilian casualties. If genocide was truly their objective it would have already occurred.
https://www.timesofisrael.com/liveblog_entry/photographer-captures-exact-moments-of-idf-airstrike-in-beirut/
Our previous cat (RIP) was a 20-pound neutered orange tabby. He had arrived as a stray kitten but decided we should adopt him. He looked like a ginormous blob, but was actually in pretty good shape. He used to sit on the cool dirt in the vegetable garden, usually in the shade of the tomatoes. One year we had put up a tripod of sturdy sticks all tied together near the top about 8 feet up to hold up the plants.
I was watching one day as he was lying on his stomach nicely meat-loafed in the shade when a sparrow landed at the top of the tripod. He slooooowly looked up, and then without any windup or other give-away, bounded the 8-feet-plus straight up into the air, nailed the sparrow, and came down. Cats can do amazing things when motivated.
sdferr ref Ladders – reminds me of how Firemen and Policemen get selected:
*****
Paul S. ref missile strike – WOW!!!
What was the cost/effects of the Great Recession of 2008 and what could trigger an even bigger crash in the future? Is this it?
https://www.zerohedge.com/personal-finance/can-we-rein-excesses-financialization-without-crashing-economy