Make hay while the crime shines?

 

I had to laugh at the marketing chutzpah shown by a German company.

A German company inadvertently embroiled in the Louvre Museum heist after one of its lifts was used in the theft is making the most of its free publicity - by launching a new advertising campaign.

Werne-based firm Böcker this week published a social media post, external featuring the now-famous image of its furniture ladder extending up to a balcony outside the Gallery of Apollo.

"When you need to move fast," reads a banner under the image. "The Böcker Agilo transports your treasures weighing up to 400kg at 42m/min - quiet as a whisper."

Video has emerged of the alleged thieves escaping on the mechanical ladder after stealing €88m worth (£76m; $102m) of France's crown jewels on Sunday.

The company's managing director, Alexander Böcker, told news agency AFP on Wednesday that, when it became clear no one was injured in the heist, it had used "a touch of humour" to draw attention to the family-run business.

There's more at the link.

It's almost always fun when companies apply humor to otherwise "difficult" situations as a marketing boost (provided no actual human tragedy resulted).  One of my favorites was back in South Africa, decades ago, when a motorist drove off a steep, unforgiving mountain road behind the wheel of a Mercedes-Benz E200 sedan.  To everyone's astonishment, he survived with only minor injuries (bumps and bruises), although his car was a write-off.  Mercedes-Benz South Africa made a big thing of it, with advertisements proclaiming that his survival was due to his driving a Mercedes, and suggesting he wouldn't have gotten off so lightly if he'd been driving anything else.  BMW South Africa promptly replied with its own advertisements, suggesting that if he'd been driving a BMW, its superior roadholding would have prevented him from going off the road in the first place!  Much amusement ensued.

Peter

Talk about entitlement!

 

Courtesy of Midwest Chick, here's a social media post highlighting just how entitled to free handouts many people think they are in this benighted country.

There's a brief video clip at the link, showing his feelings - no, his absolute conviction - of entitlement.  I urge you to click over there and watch it for yourself.

EBT funds - i.e. the so-called "food stamp" program - are due to run out in November, thanks to the current government shutdown preventing Congress from reauthorizing that expenditure.  There are millions of Americans who are angry, upset, even panic-stricken at the thought of losing them.

My first reaction is that the bloated mess that such food assistance has become is long overdue to be cut back to essentials only - no sodas, no pizza, no lobster tails, no chips-and-dip, just basic supplies of regular, nutritious food that will provide an adequate daily diet for a typical family.  If that gores the ox of the suppliers of soda and sweets, so be it.  Why should my taxpayer dollars support such waste?

My second reaction is that food stamps were intended (back when they were first thought of) to be a temporary means of assistance to families who found themselves suddenly without sufficient income to make it on their own.  They were never intended to become a multi-year freebie handout to people who would never work hard enough to restore their family finances sufficiently to get off food stamps!  Sadly, that's what they've become in all too many cases.  I called an acquaintance yesterday who works in the social services department of a major municipality, and asked her what proportion of EBT recipients there had been getting those benefits for longer than a year.  She reckoned that more than half of the cases in her city had been getting those benefits for longer than five years.  So much for temporary assistance!

I'm not heartless or uncharitable, but it seems to me that requiring 20-odd hours of work per week to qualify for EBT/food stamps is hardly unreasonable.  Any reasonably able-bodied adult should be able to contribute that to his/her support.  To the man refusing to do so - sucks to be your kids, I guess, because they're going to go hungry thanks to your fecklessness and laziness (not to mention your amazing sense of entitlement and superiority).  Buddy, this taxpayer does not work for you, and isn't willing to tolerate your attitude any longer.

I'm sure my readers can cite examples of their own where they've seen this sort of entitled attitude in action.  Let us know about them in Comments.

Peter

Do they call the Coast Gourd if they get in trouble?

 

Looks like the annual Pumpkin Regatta in Oregon last weekend lived up to its reputation.

I wonder what they do with all the pumpkin "flesh" they cut out of the gourds in order to make room for a paddler?  Do they cook and eat it, or throw it away, or what?  I suspect there'd be enough seeds removed to be able to plant half the state with pumpkins!

Peter

Life delivers another warning about financial preparedness

 

We've discussed many aspects of "prepping" over the years in these pages.  Some topics come up repeatedly.  One of them is financial preparedness:  establishing an emergency fund, getting out of debt, paying cash rather than going into more debt, and so on.  Part of that advice has always been to have a certain amount of money available in cash, without needing to go to a bank to get it.  If communications systems go down, you won't be able to verify balances, pay by credit card, etc.  Better have some cash on hand to take care of essentials for a few days.

Monday's Internet outage provided graphic evidence confirming how essential such a cash-on-hand reserve really is.

It’s not just that people couldn’t place mobile orders for coffee at Starbucks or ask Alexa for the weather. Hospitals said crucial communications services weren’t working, and teachers couldn’t access their planned lessons for the day. Chime, a mobile banking service, was down, too, leaving people without access to their money. Ring and Blink cameras, along with most smart home devices, stopped working.

. . .

One expert already estimated the total impact of the disruption will be in the billions of dollars.

“It creates a very large single point of failure that then impacts operations at warehouses, deliveries, people being able to sell their goods and services on websites,” Jacob Bourne, an analyst at eMarketer, told CNN.

. . .

The Doughertys ... stopped for lunch at Cattleman’s Roadhouse, where the manager offered to pay for their meal because the restaurant was unable to process cards.

“He said, ‘This is no fault of yours, and you’re already eating. I don’t guess you all have cash?’” Debi Dougherty said. “And we both looked at each other, and I’m like, ‘Not enough to cover this meal.’”

. . .

Dia Giordano was spending her Monday trying to untangle the mess that the outage made for her three businesses: an Italian restaurant, eight mental health clinics and a couple of rental properties.

DoorDash was “blowing up” her phone starting at 2 a.m., warning that the online ordering system, which is run through Toast, was down.

“What that means is one-third of my business is gone for the day,” she told CNN. “At least with the publicity (of the outage), people might be understanding, but I’m still getting messages asking if we’re open, because the website is just gone. It’s just not there.”

Toast, when reached Monday, declined comment.

At Giordano’s mental health clinics, her practitioners and administrative staff members were unable to validate clients’ insurance information because the online clearinghouse for that information wasn’t working.

And on top of that, Venmo was down, meaning she couldn’t receive the rental payments she normally would.

There's more at the link.

I've spoken to several friends and acquaintances who found they were unable to buy their normal purchases because credit card services were down.  Others had a little cash available, but not enough for everything they needed, and so had to make rapid decisions over what to buy, and what to do without.  In one case where little children were involved, disposable diapers and baby food took priority, meaning the car didn't get filled with gas and the family had to make do with less for supper.

I always carry at least $100 in my wallet, and sometimes more, and I've asked my wife to do the same.  If we'd been out and about when the Internet outage hit on Monday, we'd have had enough to get home again, including gasoline, food, etc.  However, I think a lot of people would not have been so fortunate.  (Remember, too, to carry smaller bills.  Offering a $100 note to a small business might bring the answer that they don't have enough change to break it, so it's either give them the extra, or do without whatever you wanted to buy there.  My wallet usually contains a mix of $20 and $50 bills for that reason.)

It's also worth remembering that Monday's outage was resolved within a day.  If it had gone on for a week, there are businesses that would literally have gone bankrupt through being unable to process payments from customers or to suppliers.  If it had lasted a month, the permanent damage to the US economy would undoubtedly have run into at least hundreds of billions of dollars, if not the low trillions.  It might have put many people out on the street, for that matter.  For example, how many companies could keep their staff on the payroll when they have no money coming in to pay them?  How many rental agreements contain clauses allowing the landlord to evict tenants for non-payment of rent, particularly if they're already a few weeks, or a month or two, behind in their payments?  Landlords (particularly the corporate variety) aren't renowned for their loving-kindness and humanitarian instincts.

I've always tried to keep at least one months' routine expenditure in cash on hand (i.e. available immediately, not in the bank), so that I could pay our essential bills if the banking system went down.  After Monday, and looking at the potential for greater disruption from terrorism, economic sabotage, etc., I'm seriously thinking it might be a good idea to increase that to two months' worth.  I can't afford that at the moment, but it's a worthwhile target, I think.

(Also, from a personal perspective, I'm currently undergoing rehab after my surgery last month, and preparing for a bigger operation next year.  What if I couldn't pay for those sessions, or for the medications I need?  I definitely need a medical cash reserve, over and above a general-purpose one!)

Monday's Internet outage should be a useful reminder to all of us.  Emergencies arrive on their own schedule, not ours, and they usually don't provide much (if any) warning.  If we're not ready when they happen, we're not ready.  Period.  It helps to be as prepared as practically possible, to survive the interruption(s) to routine that they bring with them, and come out the other side as intact as possible.

Peter

A thoughtful gesture, but...

 

I had to laugh at this report.

Animal rescuers in California shared security camera stills capturing the moment a foster kitten spiced up her human family's dinner with a special ingredient: a dead mouse.

. . .

"Wendy is a foster failure that was caught on the kitchen cam -- or kitten cam -- adding 'spice' to her mom's dinner," the post said. "We should all be as thoughtful as Miss Wendy!"

Wendy's foster owner said she was out feeding her dogs when the kitchen camera recorded the cat's attempt at cooking. She said the feline's suspicious behavior when she returned to the kitchen led her to check the camera footage and discover the surprise Wendy had left in the pot.

"As you can guess, it was takeout for dinner that night," Wendy's foster mom told KMPH-TV.

There's more at the link.

Our two cats don't try to feed us.  Instead, they're on a lifelong mission to persuade us that human food is really precisely what a cat needs.  Furthermore, there are some foods so cat-worthy that they deserve extra feline attention.  Just drop a small flat tin of tuna on the metal surface of our prep table, and seventeen-odd pounds of black Maine Coon will arrive at near-supersonic speeds, followed closely (and more arthritically) by an older, creakier lady.  Don't bother with seasonings, mayonnaise or anything else - just drain the tuna into cat-size bowls and put it down on the floor.  Kitty nirvana!

Peter

OK, another car question

 

Thank you to everyone who responded to my car question yesterday.  It looks like, thanks to tariffs and other issues, repairs may cost north of $3K, and given that the value of the car is probably not much greater than that, the calculus is leaning in the direction of replacement.

Online research shows that there's virtually nothing worth having under $10K in the used car market.  Either the mileage is as great or greater than our present vehicle, or there are persistent reliability issues, or availability is haphazard.  Moving up to $15K doesn't improve things very much, although there is a greater selection.  At $20K upward, there's plenty of availability, but low-mileage vehicles remain hard to find in good condition:  most are in the 80-140K mile range, with some notable exceptions.  That means, if we want a reliable replacement to use for the medium to long term, we have to look at new vehicles as well.

The cheapest new vehicle I can find is the Kia Soul (which I've driven before, and is OK as an urban runabout), or the Ford Maverick mini-pickup.  The Maverick's ride quality isn't great, but it's a truck, not a car, and can't be expected to be as soft-riding and comfortable as the Soul.  It does have the advantage of reasonably good utility, with a small loadbed and a back seat that can accommodate a fair amount of baggage or household debris.  Both the Soul and the Maverick (in base model configuration) are in the mid-$20K base price range, plus tax, title, license, etc.  If we move up to the $30-$35K range, there are a lot more options, but then, that's a lot more money.

There's also the big disadvantage that some manufacturers are now demanding monthly subscription payments to use even the most basic in-car services (Toyota, I'm looking at you!).  I'm simply not prepared to do this.  There are also dealers who advertise "no-haggle" prices (that always seem higher than those who will negotiate), and others who low-ball trade-in offers.  There are also too many dealers who add gimmicks pre-sale (e.g. windows engraved with an "anti-theft" serial number, nitrogen tire fills, etc.), and want to charge hundreds of dollars for them, and won't sell you a vehicle without them.  There are an awful lot of shysters out there, it seems to me . . .  Any advice on tell-tale signs that a particular dealer may be more trouble than he's worth?  Obvious red flags?

Therefore, I turn to knowledgeable readers again, to ask for your input.  The need is for local transport of one or two older people, with occasional longer-distance excursions (e.g. 300-400 mile round trip in a day).  Economy is important, as is reliability, and the vehicle should not cost an arm and a leg to insure.

1. If you were looking for a lower-cost vehicle for that mission, what would you recommend?  New or used?
2. Has anyone had experience with the Ford Maverick mini-pickup models?  I'd be very interested to hear what they're like to own, particularly reliability, ride quality, etc.  Their overall utility is appealing.
3. Is there any vehicle that you absolutely would not recommend, due to issues, problems, or whatever?

Thanks in advance for your input.  I'm grateful for your help.

Peter

Economic chickens coming home to roost

 

With all the bad economic news deluging us over recent weeks, some people appear to be panicking.  They're running around trying to find a safe haven where they can "ride out the storm" with their money and wealth intact, and get back to normal as soon as the trouble has passed.  Sadly, that's not possible any longer.  We've spoken about this for years in these pages, pointing out the consequences of bad decisions taken decades ago and how they've been piling on top of each other all along.  Today's situation is the culmination of a whole lot of them.

Furthermore, it's not a matter of partisan politics.  Both sides of our political aisle are equally guilty of over-spending, under-saving, and wasting trillions of dollars on policies that have burdened us today with a debt so vast that it can't be adequately envisioned.  Our minds can't grasp the reality of thirty-trillion-plus dollars.  It's too great to conceptualize.  All we can say is, we're broke, and yet our politicians are still bickering over shutting down the government, taxes versus tariffs, and all the rest.  Those matters are now small beer compared to the fire in our economic engine room.

If you haven't been paying attention to the economic news, I recommend you select a few articles from this list and read them carefully.  Some focus on specific areas, such as a business activity or precious metals;  others are more broadly focused.  All are informative.

• "I've Never Seen Anything Like This": One Bullion Dealer Sees A Rupture In Gold And Silver Markets
• Don't look now (money quote:  "The dollar has lost 3/4 of its value in the past decade, 90% of its value in the last 20 years, and 98.5% of its value since we went away from being a gold based currency in 1973. That isn’t the greed of the banks, that’s the greed of our government.")
• Wall Street has been worried about bad loans for weeks. Now those fears are spreading
• The Bizarre Bankruptcy At The Heart Of This Week's Regional Bank Meltdown
• Auto Loan Delinquencies Surge 50% As Cracks Deepen Across U.S. Credit Markets
• 'Nobody's spending $17 on an egg sandwich': Restaurant owners say inflation forcing tough menu choices
• L.A.’s Entertainment Economy Is Looking Like a Disaster Movie
• The Final Crisis: This is Our Future

I'm not posting those links because I want to be alarmist:  I'm doing so because some people still don't seem to grasp the depth of the water flooding in beneath us, and they aren't good enough swimmers to stay afloat when they lose their economic footing.  Some put their faith in precious metals;  others, in index funds;  still others, in stockpiling essentials to help keep the wolf from the door.  Unfortunately, none of those measures will help most of us in the longer term.  We're going to have to tighten our belts and work hard to stay afloat.  That includes abandoning everything that may weigh us down, including excessive possessions, wasteful habits, and a self-centered spirit that says "To hell with everyone else - I'm all right, I've got mine!"

We're all in for a very hard time, friends.  Let's do our best to help each other stay afloat.

Peter

Post-surgery update and car info request

 

As regular readers will know, one of my kidneys was removed in late September.  Close to a month later, things are on the mend, but painfully slowly (emphasis on the "painfully" sometimes!).

Some of the surgery scars are healing nicely, to the point that they're almost closed with minimal scab left.  Others - including the largest one - are unfortunately taking rather longer to close up.  I'm told that's inevitable, due to natural movement of my body as I walk around or turn over in my sleep, but it's nevertheless irritating me with the slowness of the process.  To add to the fun (?), those bigger scars are itching intensely as the skin grows over the areas where it had been cut open.  I'm constantly having to fight the urge to scratch them.  Keeping them covered helps, and keeps out the dirt, but then they don't dry out, either, which appears to prolong the healing process.  Catch-22, anyone?

The internal injuries caused by taking out the kidney appear to be well on the mend.  The initial pain and "hollowness" I felt have largely ended, and the hollow left in my abdomen by the sudden absence of a kidney is "balancing out" with the rest of my belly.  I'm on a lifting restriction of not more than ten pounds for another six weeks at least, and I have to be careful to observe that;  I've slipped up a couple of times, and the sliced muscles let me know very sharply that I shouldn't do that again.  Apparently I'll be allowed to lift up to 20-25 pounds by mid- to late November, which will help me get back to normal in helping around the house.  All being well, the recovery process should be complete early next year.

Thank you, yet again, to all of you who've helped with the costs of this operation, and with your good wishes and prayers.  It's become a cliche to say "I couldn't do this without you", but that's the plain and simple truth of the matter.  I don't have family in the USA, but I have a support network of readers and online friends and acquaintances, and you've all helped me to get over this particular hump.  I remain very grateful to you all.

Now, if I may, a quick question to the car aficionados among us.  Our 2014 Nissan Pathfinder SUV has just begun to show front suspension problems, which I'll have checked out today.  The irritating thing is that this will be the third time that we've had problems in that area (most recently just over a year ago), and fixing them is not cheap (including labor, over $2K in the past, and with tariffs and other increases, perhaps over $3K today).  The vehicle is about to turn over 180K miles, and is running well apart from the suspension issues.  My dilemma is this:  is it worth sinking another $3K+ into a known issue that may well recur in 1-2 years time, and keep the vehicle running, or is it better to trade it in whilst the rest of it is in very good condition, and find a newer and more reliable ride?  I can see pro's and con's either way.  Based on your knowledge and experience of the car market, what would you recommend?  Please let us know in Comments.  (And, just to reassure anyone who's worrying, no, we won't use any funds donated for surgical costs to pay for the vehicle!)

Thanks again, everyone.

Peter

Memes that made me laugh 282

 

Gathered from around the Internet over the past week.  Click any image for a larger view.