The Blogger Himself

Four Russians found dead at Albanian resort

Sauna goes wrong, asphyxiation. Horrible.

And the immediate thing that popped into my mind was something entirely different. Yes, OK, Albania, Adriatic. Coastal Croatia is lovely just to the north, so is Corfu just south. Mountains and wine dark sea and all that, why not resorts?

And yet, I’m old enough to find this very jarring. All that commie and socialism stuff. Iron Curtain etc. And Albania was deranged even by the standards of that nonsense.

What, resorts in Albania? No, don’t be silly – ah, hmm, perhaps the world really has changed in this lifetime?

Teen Vogue introduces us to the concept of necropolitics, the horrifying idea that some lives are worth more than others. This is, they insist, because capitalism is such a vile distortion of the true human spirit. As we might expect from people trained to tell us what is this season’s must-have nail polish, they’ve managed to get the entire concept the wrong way around.

That some lives are worth different amounts from some others is simply the way that we humans act, it’s something built into the basics of the species. The only influence capitalism has, as opposed to any other form of economic structure, is that it raises the value applied to each life.

The only problem with this work is that it does mean that I’ve got to read the likes of Teen Vogue.

Sigh, the things I do, eh?

As a result of a bit of work I’m doing I need to be able to read popsugar.com.

No, don’t ask.

If I go to the site it will only present me with popsugar.co.uk.

So, how do I get to see .com? I’ve tried incognito window and that doesn’t work….

Nor do I want to live in the US, less so in PA, possibly even less so in Newton. And yet:

206 Worstall Alley, Newtown, PA 18940

Nice house with a cool address.

Perhaps I should just wait until I can buy “Worstall Court” or “Worstall Castle”?

So, a mobile phone, battery won’t hold a charge. So, this happens to Li batteries.

It’s a Vodafone own brand one.

Go to Voda to ask how much is a new battery and am told that just isn’t done. Now, I knew Apple glued batteries into some stuff. But didn’t realise it was industry wide.

Is there a battery replacement market? Or is it upgrade to a new phone with more memory etcetc because when the battery fails it’s about time to do that anyway?

So new build designs are fine because they're exactly what kids want??! Surely they draw houses like that because that's what they see around them? If they were asked to draw, for example, a picture of war, and they did, would that mean they WANT war?

— Jenny Worstall 💕🌻 (@JennyWorstall) September 7, 2021

Can’t quite work out how this happens.

So, using right shift key to try to get capitals, GHJK the L doesn’t work. Using left shift to get capitals the GHJKL does work. The l works, but not the capital L using right shift.

Have I done something absurd to keyboard settings? Or is it just one of those weirds?

Ah, solutoin! Truning it upsoide down and bangning it works!

Although it appears to cause spelling errors, that.

An American friend, probably will have a Fri lunch to Mon evening weekend to disport himself in Southern England in Sept. Been to England many a time, lived here as a kid, isn’t about to do StonhengeBathStratfordOxfordCambridge then Paris on Tuesday.

So, Southern England, where to go? Both Bath and Brighton (he was a mod back in the day) have been discussed. Where else? 4 days along the Ridgeway isn’t the style – urban is our lad. And not so much a goherethentherethen but a place to amble and taste the flavour of.

Could sorta suggest Salisbury, say, for the Cathedral, but after that, well? Which is the problem I’m having coming up with other ideas. There’re lots of places to go to do the one or two things. But where for 4 days?

Ideas?

DDOS – not directed at us specifically, a more general attack on the hosting company.

Much thanks to those who have supported server costs etc for Expunct and Continental Telegraph.

They’ve clearly not worked and so are going to cease being fully operated at the end of this month.

So, please don’t send any more money.

Of course, anyone who wants to buy me a beer or a steak dinner is more than welcome to do so. But that’s a different matter.

In order for either of those two sites to actually work it was necessary to get into Google News. Continental was at one time and it did work then. Ad revenue from it made it worth doing. Not a fortune by any means but the fun plus some money was worthwhile. Quite why it dropped out well, I don’t know. Some tell me that being right wing – by which they mean free market etc – gets you banned but I just don’t know. It’s entirely possible that it wasn’t enough of a news site.

There will be the occasional update just to keep the sites ticking over but nothing like the regular entries there have been.

On to the next adventure. I’ve several ideas for e-books. We’ll see if I can stop procrastinating long enough to actually scribble them out.

So, I buy a decibel meter. Sound meter, whatever. €20 or so, summat like that.

Great, I can measure noise levels!

Not so fast matey. It needs to be calibrated. 94 dB 1kHz or summat sound source.

Which, apparently, costs €160.

Is there a way around this?

Portugal is the only major holiday destination to make the “green” list for quarantine-free travel, with many of the other 11 countries still banning tourists or imposing tough restrictions.

Given that we live on the street of bars……and lockdown earnings have not been sufficient to build that next level of noise abatement.

I’ve worked in this pub:

The landlord of The Raven pub in Bath has kicked out Sir Keir Starmer during the Labour leader's walkabout in the city pic.twitter.com/7byQt2bFqW

— PA Media (@PA) April 19, 2021

Hell, I’ve painted that pub.

All most amusing…..

I’ve now actually seen the legal letter. I’m accused of shaking down a stock market quoted company. If they pay me then I will write nice things about them on a stock tipping site. If they don’t I will write nasty things and also nice things about one of their competitors.

A complete and total fabrication. Also a damaging allegation. Not that there’s anything I can do about it apparently. US libel law is different from that of our own Dear Queen.

Still, at least it clears up that nagging question about the probity of the people running the company.

So something I wrote gets used as a reference. Cool:

Folk-economic beliefs: An evolutionary cognitive model
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 12 October 2017

My little book on economic fallacies gets used as a reference to people believing that international trade is a zero sum game, that it is exports that matter etc. A reference to how this is a belief but a wrong one.

Yes, I know, it’s entirely trivial. There’s still a kick to it though. Not as much of a kick as the book actually selling more than a few library copies but a kick all the same.

I don’t know about this but I think I probably – as a published journalist – qualify as a public figure over there. In the one respect and the one respect only – that I would have to prove malice in a libel suit.

Which is a bit of a pity.

Because I’ve clearly just been libelled over there. Not publicly but enough.

Just one of those things I guess.

next-hop.forbes.com | Access denied (403)
Current session has been terminated.
For further information, do not hesitate to contact us.

Ref: 185.136.53.3 2021-04-08T17:03:13.569Z

Trying to access this:

https://www.forbes.com/sites/timworstall/2014/12/23/more-than-90-of-us-businesses-dont-pay-the-corporate-income-tax/

??

Over the weekend PayPal informed us that they would no longer be willing to process payments for us due to “inappropriate content”. What this actually means is “we dont believe in your political opinion” both yours, and my own.

With this is mind we will no longer be able to accept PayPal for donations or for the purchase of literature.

We’d fight it, but we’re small fry and its easier to move on, plenty of more payment processors in the world.

No, I don’t know why, not really, either.

That shooting in Boulder. I’ve been in that supermarket, that King Sooper. Which is enough for a column, right? How dreadful, could have been me, sympathy, empathy, bathos etc.

I’ve even written about having been in it. Somewhere, can’t find it right now. But I went from Moscow to Boulder and had jet lag, wandered around it at 4 in the morning. Even now – no, really – I can recall the wonder of the place. Acres of space devoted just to potato crisps. This was in, umm, 1991 I guess, when Soviet supermarkets were rather different.

So, there we have it, the perfect Guardian column. Free markets and capitalism might provide chips but they also lead to mass murder. No shoot ups in ration shops after all, are there? We have made the wrong choice as a society etc QED, bring back Beria.

Of course, I’d have to be careful. Wouldn’t want to go overboard and insist that Dachau reminds me of where I’d be under fascism…..

Why is it that Nigeria is so successful in creating inflation (see link) but the supposedly smarter economists at federal reserve, with all their Harvard Phds, cannot achieve in spite of printing a shitton of money? Are black economists are smarter?

That could be just good trolling of course but still…..