jas007

Non-productive agendas are all well and good, provided the core functions of government aren't ignored. Here. in the case of the fires, there was a systemic failure. A failure at every level, no doubt caused, at least in part, by people in authority focusing on their pet agendas rather than their jobs. For example, the mayor of LA knew fires were possible. She had weather forecasts, she keow it was the season for Santa Ana winds, and yet where was she? In Africa, not at all worried about LA and its people.

The article I was referring to has nothing to do with MTG. I'm not sure what her theories are on the whole thing. Sometimes she seems to be nuts, but I like her just because she's good at stirring up trouble. Sometimes, that's a good thing. Calling into question mainstream beliefs to allow for more discussion.

Basically, it's an article about two fire experts and what they think could have prevented the fires. They emphasized the need for proper forest management techniques, better building materials, and the fact that while very high winds no doubt contributed to the severity of the fires and that containment of the fires might have been an exercise in futility once they became widespread, proper management of the brush and so on might have stopped some of the fires from starting in the first place. That's just basic stuff. Basic precautions. Do what can be done and do it diligently. Fires will happen periodically, as they always do, but basic precautions must be maintained.

I think I've seen pictures. Maybe they're still floating around.

I don't doubt that it's called a "conspiracy theory." However, that doesn't mean it's not true. Do you need examples?

This is an interesting article: https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2025-01-11/fire-experts-asses-los-angeles-blazes-amid-changing-times

If I'm not mistaken, the Central Festival lower level has two food courts? One is right net to the Tops grocery store, and the other is in another area, but still on that same level.

Of course, you keep ignoring the fact that the reservoir for the Palisades area was empty and had been empty for months. https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2025-01-10/as-flames-raged-in-palisades-a-key-reservoir-nearby-was-offline

Every time I venture into central Pattaya area, I come back without being run over by a motorcycle, I feel like I cheated death for another day. Twice I've come within inches of being run over, and I've witnessed any number of accidents. All you really have to do is find a busy intersection, find a place to have a beer that has a good view, and wait. Sit there long enough and you'll see an accident or, at a minimum, a bunch of close calls. The corner of Soi Diana Inn and Soi Bukhao is a good spot.

Back to stocks. The other day, the U.S. Department of Labor issued a jobs report that showed explosive job growth in December. In response, the yield on the 10 year bond is approaching 5% and the market tanked, or I should say dropped a lot. Some stocks are now in correction territory, especially some high flying tech and speculative tech stocks. My theory going forward: I don't believe the jobs report for one second. Lately, many of the jobs reports have been revised downward at a later date. Perhaps the Biden administration is deliberately trying to leave Trump with a mess? That's exactly what the Democrats are now trying to do. A phony jobs report would be just the ticket to shake up the markets. I'm sure a lot of the official reports have been phony or fudged. For example, no one believes that inflation in 2024 was only 2.5% or whatever. And yet that's what was reported. Anyway, the markets have been disrupted because large banks and other institutions have little choice but to react to the official news and the movement of the bond market. They have rules they follow and don't deviate. If the 10 year yield is 5%, they go with that number and adjust their portfolios accordingly. If the stock market corrects, they make the appropriate adjustments there. They have no choice. They're managing large pools of other people's money and they don't want to be seen as gamblers. And yet Trump takes office in a matter of days. Perhaps they'll start reporting real numbers. And I'm sure the powers that be will do everything humanly possible to push down interest rates. It's that or a system collapse. It may be a system collapse either way, but I'll go with the lower interest rates. Why not? It's the only hope. So, I'm ignoring the market moves right now and I'm buying more of what's already working well for me. Palantir and Tesla. I've also been buying a little NVDA. And maybe some more oil stocks just for stability. XOM and OXY. Anything I buy going forward I'm not buying to trade, I'm buying for what they will be in a few years.

I've found a few good Apple Original series on Apple TV+, for anyone who subscribes. -Slow Horses, now in it's sixth season, I think. -Silo. also well past the first season. There are a bunch more, but so far, those are the recent ones.

Today I saw a picture online of a totally burned out house in California, and in front of one was a blue shoe in the driveway that survived the blaze, apparently unscathed. And that got me thinking. That and the fact that I've seen other posts about strange flashes of light over the fires. Directed energy weapons to deliberately start the fires? Think back to the fire in Maui. In the fall of 2023, I believe. Anyway, remember all the houses with blue roofs that survived the fire? In perfect shape while the houses all around in every direction were destroyed. Even Biden knew about the blue roof thing when asked. I got the feeling he spoke when he should have kept his mouth shut. Is it more than a coincidence? They never did truly get to the bottom of what happed in Maui back then, and there were more than a few clues pointing to something other than natural causes. Directed energy weapons being tested out on prime real estate after a weather modification experiment? The government is capable of both, no doubt. Lots of pole would like to ge tiheir hands on prime Maui real estate, cheap. Fast forward to the current California fires. The same kind of freak winds. Prime real estate. And I'm sure lots of people will be standing in line to buy it cheap, once the dust settles. Many were uninsured. Billions in uninsured losses so far, and the fires are ongoing.

Look up AIPAC. It's an Israeli lobbying group and they're very effective.

I'm not "blaming" anyone. But if you don't understand US politics, it's not my fault. It's broken. It's been broken for a long time, and it doesn't take a rocket scientist to make the observation. Nothing much gets done in DC, given all the political animosity, and I'm afraid Trump probably won't fare much better. His promises are well intentioned, but extreme to some. And the Republicans have only a slim margin of control. Throw in a few trouble makers in the Senate or in the House and the result is gridlock. Anyway, we'll see. There are some things Trump CAN do. And those things will happen, starting on day one.

If he doesn't "follow through with the vast majority of his promises," it won't be for a lack of trying. It'll be because the political system is broken. At this very moment, the Biden administration appears to be doing everything in its power to sabotage Trump, his plans, and his incoming administration. For example, much of the money provided for the "Inflation Reduction Act" has not been spent. So what is Biden doing? Signing long term contracts to spend as much of the money as he can in as many ways possible. Those are hard to wiggle out of. The money has been appropriated, and once the contracts have ben signed, that's that. In other words, more inflation. Much more. I think the American people can count on that, at least at first. At some point, all the AI agents and the effects of AI may be deflationary. Of course, there are things the Biden administration can't control. The effect of the Bond Market Vigilantes, for example. They can control the long end of the yield curve, and there's not much Biden or the Fed can do about it. The bond market is too big. So, Trump may well be thwarted in his plans to spend spend spend. At some point, higher interest rates will crash the system. Zero interest rats may still be possible, though. It's that or the end of the financial system as we know it. We'll see. Typically, they find a way to kick the can down the road. All things considered, Trump may have a hard time of it. I do worry, though, about his treats to Hamas over the hostages. He's not kidding.

I don't remember if I've ever had any airport food in Thailand. However, from my experience in airports generally, paying what might seem like a higher price goes with the territory.

I thought about that, but I figure that most of the market is dominated by large institutions who probably have their own trading rules and asset allocation guidelines. And then there are stocks that they don't own at all, for whatever reason, or stocks "off the radar" of most investors. So for now, maybe it's worth a try. In a sense, small individual investors have a lot of advantages.

Has anyone tried this service? Looks interesting for anyone too lazy to cook healthy meals. https://easyhealth.asia/

"State to probe why Pacific Palisades reservoir was offline, empty when firestorm exploded" https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2025-01-10/as-flames-raged-in-palisades-a-key-reservoir-nearby-was-offline

There's a ring of truth to all of that, but on the whole, they'e gross generalizations. While it's true that many houses built in the USA are flimsy and not built so well, everyone knows that. Why people buy them and why banks loan money on them is beyond me. In any event, that's not the whole story. Smart investors also know that build quality can vary tremendously, and location, location, location is often the most important factor to consider. A well built home in a prime location is as good as gold. I have friends who used to be builders. One would build houses one at a time, the other guy and his partner were into building entire subdivisions. The one house at a time guy built very high quality houses, the other guys put up hundreds of houses using the cheapest materials they could find. People would buy them anyway. In an area I used live, there was a house down the block that was constructed over a period of about two years. People there every day, working on that house. I'm not sure what it ultimately cost, but it must have been millions. Location, location, location. Of course, it's easy enough to find absolute junk houses in what are prime locations. People buy them for a small fortune, tear them down, and built something nice.

I assume you understand how photosynthesis works? CO2 is plant food, of a sort. Trees and other green plants take in CO2 and excrete Oxygen in sunlight. Please explain how the CO2 takeup by trees would necessarily have to match the rate we are generating CO2 from fossil fuels? Where is it written that there would have to be a match? In any event, planting more trees would help, right? And it might help if the Brazilian rain forest wasn't be destroyed at a huge rate. To be sure, we may be creating more CO2 than the plants can absorb. Nobody is arguing otherwise. But it's not just human activity. Volcanos have caused big problems in the past. Or, certain types of bacteria in the ocean. There's always an ebb and flow. Wasn't there a time in history where the earth's atmosphere contained too much oxygen? And that resulted in a cooling period, as methane, a green house gas, was displaced. This all took place hundreds of millions years ago at a time when there were no humans around to burn fossil fuels. . It's interesting. Look it up. Anyway, I contend that, whatever the small variation in global warming currently being experienced, the larger trend is the more significant of the two.

Climate change may be real, but there's some question as to whether the changes we're now seeing are just small blips in the grand scheme of things, or significant. Over millions and millions of yers, the earth's climate has fluctuated. This article is interesting and contains a long term chart of the earth's temperature going back millions of years. From the looks of it, we may be entering another ice age. Of course, we'll ll be long gone by the time anyone finds out. Maybe we could use more CO2, not less. https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidbressan/2024/09/22/new-study-shows-485-million-years-of-earths-temperature/

The fires usually start in the brush, not in the forest canopy. The brush should be periodically cleared, and the county knows it, the city knows it, and the state knows. And yet those governing bodies seemed to have other priorities. As for the fire hydrants? Don't you think some of those houses might have been saved if the fire hydrants worked? Finally, do you know about California Proposition 1, I think, that was passed by the voters in 2014 and which provided that the state spend billions of dollars on new reservoirs and water infrastructure? And yet here we are, 10 years later, and do you know how many new reservoirs have been built? ZERO. None. What happened to the money? As for climate change and insurance companies? In July, State Farm cancelled the homeowners insurance policies in many of the affected areas. Climate change? I hardly think so. That's just another Deep State boogeyman used as a tactic to induce fear and government control. Rather, the insurance companies knew full well that for every season the hillside maintenance was neglected, the risk of fire increased astronomically. California law apparently prohibits or makes it difficult to increase premiums on homeowners insurance, and so to protect themselves, the insurance companies just cancelled the policies. And finally, I'm sure the people living in those areas pay some of the highest property taxes. For all that money, don't you think it's reasonable for them to assume that in return they would receive competent protection against a known risk? These types of fires happen all the time. The best that can be done is to try to manage the risk. It's not rocket science. Everyone assumes that the government will provide all the basic services. That's their function. That's their job. That's what people pay for. When you call 911, you assume the cops will come in short order. When you call for an ambulance, you assume an ambulance will arrive, sirens blaring. If you call to report a fire, you assume the fire department can and will handle it. Or what about air traffic control or licensed pilots? Don't you assume that, when you fly somewhere, the pilot is competent? That the air traffic control people know what they're doing? The people running the show weren't doing their job.

You start out by saying that you doubt that the people who lost their homes "will regard themselves as part of an ecosystem," and then a few paragraphs later you admit "we are part of an ecosystem." That doesn't make much sense. Whether the people who lost homes consider themselves part of an ecosystem, that's where they live. In the ecosystem. Fires go with the territory, especially when that territory has been neglected and mismanaged. As for the firefighters and the fire? They say there was no water for the hydrants. Instead of filling reservoirs with water, they allowed it to drain away into the ocean to "save the environment" for some fish or whatever. And the city apparently made little effort lately to actively manage the brush. The mayor's focus was DEI, and, to add insult to injury, she had previously cut the budget for the fire department. So call it what you want, I call it incompetence and neglect.

II looked into it a little and it seems as though Tesla will be manufacturing these TVs in their own factories, as they currently have excess capacity. So it's not going to be some rebranded product obtained elsewhere. Anyway, if Must wants to do something, he'll find a way. In any event, why all the hostility towards Tesla and Musk? What makes you think X spreads "his propaganda"? What are you mad about? That he came along and provided a platform for free speech?