Meghan, my dearest friend in the whole, wide world reached out to me and thousands of other high-powered Mainstream Media personalities and asked us to shillpraisepromote gush-over her relaunched brand "What Evah".
I am not allowed to print Meghan's last name but it rhymes with "Success", and that is what my gurl Meghan is all about: Success!!!
Oddly enough, there is a county by that name in northern Indiana and it is filled with Amish families.
I am a bit miffed that Meghan demanded that I sign a non-disclosure agreement prohibiting me from identifying where these products are made but that is a small matter.
I am sure you will agree that these are the finest, freshest products if you should ever chose to destroy their collector's value by opening one and trying the contents.
Help a sistah out and make Meghan's product launch one that she will never forget.
You have probably seen these birds hovering over a hapless field-mouse as the raptor pinpoints its precise location before plunging in to harvest his lunch.
Range map. Green is present year-round. Amber is spring-summer-fall range.
Kestrels, also known as Sparrow Hawks, are North America's smallest falcon. Some experts estimate that populations of the American Kestrel has plummeted by over 90% over the last fifty years.
The very high populations of fifty to one-hundred-fifty years ago were almost certainly a historical anomaly.
Among the probable "players" for the decline are loss of nesting habitat, disease and parasites, and loss of prime, foraging habitat.
Kestrels, along with several species of small owls, are cavity nesters. When there are not enough suitable sites available, continuous use results in a build-up of lice, ticks, nesting material, poor drainage and diseases. There are tons of plans for "Kestrel nesting boxes" on the internet.
The loss of prime foraging habitat is a tougher nut to crack. Farmers almost always had pasture and that pasture always had a stair-step progression of grass in terms of height. It was heaven for mice and easy for avian foragers to hunt.
Those small farms also made grain, used to feed livestock, available to English Sparrows. To a kestrel, a colony of English Sparrows is the equivalent of a drive-through window at a KFC.
Finally, those old farms seethed with insect life. The weight of the beetles, grubs and hossgrappers on an acre of pasture could easily outweigh the cow that was grazing it.
All of those components; rodents, birds and bugs are key elements of the American Kestrel's diet and suburban America with its manicured lawns, prodigious use of pesticides and poverty of grain-eating livestock contribute to that. Even commonplace technologies like power garage-doors contribute to the decline by trapping kestrels. The high-strung birds are likely to injure themselves in their frenzy to escape by smashing through windows.
None of the conditions listed above were common in most of pre-Columbian America.
Hat-tip to Lucas Machias for the idea for this post.
The three open spaces are approximately 48" by 29-1/4"
No, I did not choose the color of the walls. Tomorrow will see me filling in the rectangular open spaces and "mudding" the long seams.
Peach tree
I was at Menards today and this tree called my name. It is a "Contender" peach and was almost 6' tall and the price seemed reasonable. Contender is on the list for what I was going to plant in Southern Belle's orchard. Not having to graft it might save a year or two in terms of the tree starting to produce fruit.
The Atlantic Magazine is owned by Laurene Powell Jobs. She also owns 4% of Disney's stock and has an estimated net-worth of about $10B.
Since March 1, Walt Disney stock lost about $20B in market cap. That impacts a lot of 401-k and IRAs and insurance company portfolios and public sector pension balances.
Since March 1, she lost $800M, on paper, on her Disney stock. Since 2021 Walt Disney stock lost 45% of its value. Extended over Laurene Powell Jobs' 4% ownership, that amounts to a $5.7B haircut. Total market cap for Disney company fell by about $142B. All of the same comments about 401-k apply.
So, The Atlantic Magazine doesn't have to be profitable. It is an avocation or a hobby for Mz Jobs. Sort of like breeding Carrier Pigeons or French Bulldogs. It doesn't have to be practical.
The reason a movie that was expected to make money but loses a projected $110M can have a $20B impact on the market cap is twofold.
The first is that there is a multiplier involved. If you were buying an apartment building, for instance, you might pay 15X the projected earnings (revenue-costs). For a company with proven growth prospects, you might have to pay 40X earnings.
The second factor is that Disney makes a lot of money licensing the images of its various characters. It is still generating very large sums of money for Mickey Mouse's image, for instance. Those licenses are perpetual, money-printing machines that operate at almost zero expense to Disney. Unless something drastic happens, the latest incarnation of Snow White will not generate anything like the licensing revenues of Lion King or Frozen.
The second factor plays into the first. As long as Disney kept churning out movies that were successes in the theater, its earnings kept accelerating and it commanded a higher multiplier in the stock market. As soon as it falters, i.e. proves it is not infallible, then the multiplier wilts. Two major duds in-a-row totally guts the glittery image of an unstoppable growth company and the Price/Earnings ratio falls off of a cliff.
The drywall work proceeds apace. The pressed-paper tiles were removed and I added a 1-1/4" long crown staple to the 1"-by-3" furring strips every place it touched the bottom of a truss. Drywall is heavier than paper.
I need to purchase the correct junction box for the ceiling fan before I go much farther.
My shoulders and neck are sore. I anticipate headaches in my future. Still, life goes on.
Buzzers on GE dryers (offered for entertainment purposes only)
The dryer at Southern Belle's house is directly below Quicksilver's bedroom. The end-of-cycle buzzer is identical to the buzzer at a basketball game. Of course, the most convenient times for Southern Belle and Handsome Hombre to do laundry is when Quicksilver is down for her nap or in bed for the night.
Great dryer but horrendous end of cycle signal. Simple dryer that works
great. Dried towels in 30 mins!...Now to the end
of cycle signal, it is just horrible and unbearable! It alerts you two
times for about 13 seconds long. With all windows and doors closed, you
could still hear it outside. It doesn't have an option to turn it
off....
Buzzer for that model of GE dryer according to V&V Appliance Parts
The piezoelectric buzzer unit is a black "ice cube" with two, 1/4", male, spade connectors on top.
OH! GEE GOLLY! Look. A black ice cube!
Theoretically, after unplugging the unit one might remove the back panel to the back-splash that holds the controls and find the black ice cube with the two, 1/4", male, spade connectors on top.
And, hypothetically speaking, a fellow might remove one of the wires to the black ice cube and generously wrap the exposed metal end with electrical tape. If he were extra-special careful, he could also zip-tie the wire to another wire so the end was suspended in space distant from any of the metal panels. He could then plug the unit back in and verify that the buzzer was disabled.
Of course, leaving it in this condition probably violates the warranty, so if a person were so foolish as to do this, he should IMMEDIATELY return it to its as-delivered-from-the-factory perfection. And after returning it to factory condition, to re-install the back panel to prevent curious engineers from messing with its innards.
Recreational Plumbing
The other "little favor" Southern Belle requested was to replace the valve that feeds cold water to the washing machine. The old one had fractured where the threaded inlet screwed into the Tee, leaving a portion of the "nipple" stuck in the Tee.
I would say "No sweat" but removing the old Tee at the solder joints and replacing it was the order-of-the-day. It is what folks in the turd-herding business call "A sweated joint". It was not my prettiest work but it didn't leak and Southern Belle was cheerfully whittling down a pile of laundry when I left.
Paul Anka cover
One of my Dad's favorite songs.
They did a great job capturing the feel of the old-time recording studio's reverb.
BREAKING: "The Atlantic's" Jeffrey Goldberg now reveals Mike Waltz had him in his phone contacts b/c they've spoken previously. "He's telling everyone he's never met me or spoken to me. That's simply not true," Goldberg told NBC's Meet the Press. "I understand why he's doing it."
If Jeffrey Mark Goldberg, Editor-in-Chief of The Atlantic actually said that, then he just made "burning" confidential sources Editorial policy at The Atlantic.
The value of journalism involves collecting many seemingly-disconnected slivers of information and knitting them into a rational narrative. Think of the fable of the Three Blind Men and the Elephant.
Goldberg's throwing Mike Waltz under-the-bus for short-term, tactical, political gain will have a "What the hell am I risking?" effect on the armies of "sources" who feed information to The Atlantic's journalists. Not having access to confidential sources will hamstring The Atlantic's ability to perform that function and will murder the value of its output.
