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Or at least not yet – just talked with my wife.

She is not happy with the crazy people in Ukraine and in the US.

Well – she knows how to strip a Kalashnikov (yes, really), but hopefully that won’t be necessary. And it’s not the US – she can’t go to the corner store and buy one.

She was shocked by a convenience store and gas station not far f…[Read more]

I had to look up who he was, but that’s absolutely ridiculous.

Only in America.

I couldn’t even vote for him in 2020 as the primaries were effectively over, and a vote for Biden was counted as a vote for Biden.

Wait – that’s not true. I did vote for Jill Stein and Mark Charles, but Bernie was the last candidate I thought had a chance of winning.

Or to be more polite, no one has ever considered his intelligence as positive characteristic.

Biden was ranked 76th in his law school class of 85 students. He also weathered a plagiarism scandal that he attributed to an unintentional mistake in a paper that he wrote during law school. Biden has said he misunderstood the need to cite sources…[Read more]

In practice, probably the old gang from the Obama days – Blinken, Nuland, and the military-industrial complex.

I’m still waiting for the reactions in Ukraine, Russia and Europe that the State Department has advised all Americans to leave Ukraine – but even in Moscow it’s only a bit after 7 AM.

There’s still plenty of Trump Derangement Syndrome today, as well as plenty of Saint Joey with the icon I will always associate with him.

Literally. 🙂

I have family and friends in both Ukraine and Russia.

But I suspect this will cause panic and may embolden the crazies in Ukraine.

Margaritas and hashtags coming your way #Ukraine pic.twitter.com/MajabY8lAY

— Austin Rayburn (@a_ray88) January 23, 2022

But now it’s, shall we say, a little more challenging. Just the cost for the fees is estimated at $1760, per individual (spouse and each child) with a wait time, according to Internet sources, of seven to 32 (!) months.

Compare that to Ukraine – it’s 15 days for me to get a temporary residence permit with a cost of 3400 UAH (about $120). Of…[Read more]

I’ve been vaxxed as far as I can get vaxxed – that’s the protection, such as it is, that I can accept. And I know that protection is limited.

Masks as mandated by law – well, only because I am a reasonably law-abiding citizen.

The challenge is that coronavirus has been ridiculously politicized globally to the point it’s very hard to get anyone to trust anybody on coronavirus.

From https://www.cbs8.com/article/news/health/coronavirus/prices-surge-for-kn95-and-n95-masks-how-to-and-reuse-them-to-save-money/509-e76fd98a-7ab4-4947-bc89-57ca2d8a6179 :

Prices surge for KN95 and N95 masks; how to safely wash and reuse them to save money
Prices go as high as $58 for a pack of 30 KN95 masks, nearly $80 for another pack and up…[Read more]

But it’s a sign of how close other countries believe Ukraine is to a major escalation in its civil war, and a recognition of the likely response from Russia to protect Ukrainians who speak Russian as their primary language.

Look at the map of Ukraine – Kyiv is very close to Russia, and even closer to Belarus –  about 60 miles.  I think e…[Read more]

It wasn’t – so I had to look up a definition – is it moral to do bioenhancement, or are they trying to improve morals?

The article is behind an expensive paywall, as is true for too many academic publications, so here’s a quote from another article.

Apparently it IS the latter:

Three different ideas about moral improvement compete for attention…[Read more]