BSR

Interesting ... an Australian news outlet did a comparison of an electric vs. ICE BMW 7-series, the cost of driving Melbourne to Sydney, and it cost more in the electric, not to mention the trip took longer because of time to recharge. They concluded that electric is cheaper if you're charging up at home and just driving locally, but more expensive for road trips that require recharging at public charging spots.

Marcos Giron in his Wimbledon whites ...

Every once in a great while, I buy a box of Cap'n Crunch Peanut Butter which I have for dessert, a guilty pleasure that takes me back to childhood. But I have no desire to have it, nor any other cereal, as my dinner. I haven't bought Peanut Butter Crunch in a long time because the price jumped so much -- eek!

We had a very typical winter here in Las Vegas, neither warmer nor colder than average. That probably means we'll also have a typical summer, i.e., 110° every single day from Memorial Day to Labor Day ... ugh! I love the weather in Las Vegas for 9 months of the year, almost perfect. But the summers are H-E-double hockey sticks.

Or you could put the $75,000 toward getting an MBA and see how that advances your career.

Marcos Giron has been playing great recently and reached a career-high ranking of #44. As a player climbs the rankings, tennis broadcasters start showing more of his matches. Watching Giron's matches are worth your while just for the shirt changes ...

Thanks, @maninsoma, the guy's got some mad skillz ... and a nice chest.

As good as Fellow Travelers is in so many ways, I'm struggling to get through the series because of all the ugliness. I love Jonathan Bailey, both for his performance and his nerdy sex appeal, I love the whole cast really, love the script, direction, and production quality, but as someone posted previously, forget how awful McCarthy et al were to gays (as if that weren't bad enough) -- how could we be so awful to each other?? I'm almost done with Ep 5, 3 more to go, but it's been the most difficult series I've ever watched.

The guys who started predicting a recession back in 2003 weren't "consistently wrong" throughout the aughts. It just took a while for the gigatons of sh*t to hit the fan.

'imminently"? I'd like to see the quotes of Dimon's predictions of an imminent recession. Warning signs abound that our economy is headed for a bad recession: unprecedented government debt at a record-high percentage of GDP, a huge number of commercial real estate foreclosures, an alarming rate of personal bankruptcies, car repossessions, and mortgage delinquencies. The bankruptcies, repos, and late mortgage payments in isolation wouldn't worry me that much. But those factors in our current economic environment of record-high debt-to-GDP and the commercial lending collapse make me fear a perfect storm is brewing. Those in the aughts who warned a bad recession loomed were the first to admit they had no idea when it would hit. That's why I question the "imminently" aspect of Dimon's prediction(s).

Recessions are a long time in the making. Some investors started sounding alarms about the economy way back in 2003, 5 long years before the Sep 2008 bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers. Dimon argues that recession is likely because "the consumer is in good shape. But the extra money that they got during COVID, trillions of dollars, that's kind of running out… It runs out this year. The government has a huge deficit which will affect the markets." Some disagree with Dimon because they don't see the government debt as that dire and are confident that the Fed can manage a soft landing.

Did we see the same movie??

Re: the ads, what happened to all the humor, creativity, and innovation we used to see in Super Bowl ads? I can't believe companies forked over $7 million(!) a pop to show that boring, forgettable dreck. Until the Chiefs' final drive, in which Mahomes showed how a master gets it done, I thought the quality of play was fairly mediocre, like both teams were simultaneously choking. But that nail-biter overtime redeemed the previous 4 quarters. There was a beautiful sense of inevitability in that final drive: the Chiefs feeling a sense of destiny whereas the 49ers a sense of doom. I understand the need for the padding, helmets, and all, but the NFL really needs to figure put how to showcase this kind of *ahem* talent ...

Since I don't follow the NFL any more, I chose to root for San Francisco just 'cuz I think Brock Purdy is cute. If I were a bona fide 49ers fan, I'd be devastated. How the f*ck do you miss an extra point?! That never happens! Or so I thought. Google says it happens more often than most people think, teams miss 5.35% of extra point opportunities. Nonetheless, I doubt die-hard Niners fans are in a particularly forgiving mood. But who knows? KC played it safe, going for the much easier field goal to get into overtime. If SF made that extra point & KC had to go for a touchdown, they might have done it. I would never underestimate Patrick Mahomes. PS: the ads this year sucked.

If you're looking for a shining example of a mediocre man competing in women's sports, here's one for you: the 1619th-ranked male college (D3) sprinter transitioned and now ranks 3rd in the women's 200 meters.

I think the original recipe used rabbit (hunters shoot rabbit, not chicken). We Americans just switched in chicken because because chicken is cheap and available everywhere in the US whereas rabbit quite the opposite. In pretty much any chicken recipe, you can sub in rabbit and get a far richer, yummier dish. Sorry, Bugs.

I saw Charo here in Las Vegas ~12 years ago (comps). Her show was surprisingly entertaining because, while she's not a great singer, she pours so much into the performance that her show is a ton of fun, even if the vocals aren't great. She hired a crew of flamenco dancers, who were fantastic and fantastically sexy, plus she performed a few pieces of classical guitar (she studied with the legend of Spanish guitar, Andrés Segovia). I'm not going to fly cross-country to see her, but if you're in Queens or close by, I would actually recommend going. Glad to hear Charo is still alive & kicking.

Yikes, Purdy does kinda sorta look like Lee Harvey Oswald, albeit a younger and one billion times cuter version.

My only advice is to extend your trip a bit to a final destination on the Pacific coast. It doesn't matter where -- LA, Santa Barbara, San Diego, whatever tickles your fancy -- so that you get the full "from sea to shining sea" experience. When I drove from Boston to Las Vegas, I made it a point to have lunch at a clam shack on Boston Harbor a few days before heading out. When I got to LV, I remember thinking it would have been cool to continue on to LA because 1) I always wanted to see the iconic Santa Monica Pier and 2) it would have given me the feeling of truly driving cross-country. But since Las Vegas was my final destination, the 10 additional hours to LA (round-trip) would have been silly. For your sake (and for all of us), I hope that Dick's Cabaret in Phoenix reopens by the time you make your trip, even though chances are awfully slim.

I have that cilantro-tastes-like soap gene. It's no big whoop, just means that I can never go to any Mexican restaurant because every dish is drowning in the stuff. I can't imagine having a similar aversion to onions because everybody adds onions in everything. I have one weird aversion: I hate -- with vehement passion -- heated-up pie. Every restaurant is obsessed with heating up pie if it's served a la mode. I used to ask places to simply not heat it, but apparently the restaurant industry's 1st commandment is Thou Shalt Always Heat Up Pie because it always comes out piping hot no matter how clearly I ask them not to. Oooh, you have a microwave, congratuf*ckinglations! Here's a recipe that's gotta be your worst nightmare because it calls for 4 pounds(!) of onions. Since I loooooove onions, especially when slow-cooked and caramelized, I can't wait to try it.

I wanted to like this movie, but it was just awful. A script that sounded like it was written by high school students, clunky delivery of the jokes, bend-over-backward political correctness ... yeah, definitely Hallmark Channel Sh*t of the Week except with a gay couple. The movie could have redeemed itself with some really hot sex scenes, but the sex was barely PG-13. It's too bad because it's a great premise, could have made for a super-cute rom com.

People form their opinions on the health of the economy based on their personal financial situation. No government report will change that. No matter how much you scream "the economy is GREAT!!", if a person's rent & groceries have increased 25% but his salary only 8%, he's gonna have a dim view of the economy. Personal bankruptcies surged 18% in 2023, car insurance increased 19%, credit card debt hit an all-time high, and the percentage carrying a balance is up to 47% (39% in 2021). Go ahead & sis-boom-bah about the economy all you like, but don't expect the guy with a maxed out credit card & a $1200 car insurance payment due to agree with you.

There are lies, damn lies, and then there are statistics. Counted as 47,000 jobs "created" last quarter were simply striking autoworkers and actors returning to work. In other words, some very creative accounting is producing these sunshine & rainbows jobs reports. While reports keep saying the economy is great, most Americans keep thinking it's lousy. A recent Pew poll shows only 28% of Americans think the economy is good or excellent while 72% think it's fair or poor. Low (official) unemployment and lower inflation are the biggest factors cited by those who think the economy is good/excellent whereas high inflation and high cost of living most worry the other 72%. The percentage who think the economy will be worse a year from now is 33%, down from 46% last April. While those numbers arent awful, there is a clear disconnect between what government says about the health of the economy vs. what Americans are actually experiencing.

Some trivia about Jannik: yes, he grew up speaking German at home because his parents are Austrian. I assumed he learned Italian in school, but as you point out, he grew up in a German-speaking region of Italy (his hometown is only ~3 miles from the Austrian border). At 13yo when he went to live & train at Riccardo Piatti's tennis academy, he knew only the basics of Italian, couldn't speak it. He lived in the home of one of the coaches who spoke German, but when the coach was out, which was often, Jannik had no one to talk to because the wife & kids didn't speak a word. Until Jannik learned to speak Italian, he eased his loneliness by speaking German with the family dog. Lucky for him the dog was fluent.

My favorite comment: "I just unlocked my front door because of this." 🤣