HISTORICAL: To go back to a simpler time when “baseball” was fun and relaxing

Friday, August 21, 2026

*** begin quote ***

On Aug 19, 2026, at 5:24 AM, reinkefj via gmail wrote to LUDDITE:

Brewers match modern-era record with 22-0 beatdown of Mariners https://nypost.com/2026/08/18/sports/brewers-match-modern-era-record-with-22-0-beatdown-of-mariners/

No mercy rule??? Pity the poor losing team’s fans!

*** end quote ***

On Wed, Aug 19, 2026 at 8:00 AM LUDDITE wrote:

*** begin quote ***

Laugh mercy rules are for kids, like participation trophies! They just have to suck it up!

Sent from my iPad

*** end quote ***

I guess that when they went from the “boys of summer” to MP4Bs [MP4B = “Millionaires Playing For Billionaires”], they lost the “mercy rule” from their playbook.

In the old old days, I remember when if a team “embarrassed” an opponent, the next time they met (ever) the lead off batter would get a deliberate “wild pitch”.

If the manager was Casey Stengel or Billy Martin, and they were really <synonym for having produced lots of urine output>, the lead off batter would get a “head shot”. Or even maybe other batters sprinkled through out the line up so no one knew when or what was coming.

“Come backs” from BIG leads (I think it was like 6 runs) were rare because both teams fiollowed the “unwritten rules” of baseball etiquette. Everything is different now that Big Bucks are in play.

Argh! To go back to a simpler time when “baseball” was fun and relaxing and not a “money grab”?

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HEALTH: Shingles is one of the most under-discussed adult health threats

Thursday, August 20, 2026

https://mailchi.mp/nutritionfacts/upcoming-how-not-to-die-book-club-2194463?e=f60fe40cd7

# – # – # – # – #

Look what showed up in my email. This is the doctor that pushes a plant based diet. (I try but I fail all the time.) I’ve had his books around. (Lent out, forgot to who, never returned, Argh!) I think he is really excellent since he cites his references for the advice he gives (i.e., his gold standard is double-blind placebo-controlled trials; all the way down the scale to case reports). If I was KING, I’d make him Health Secrtary. (But then, I’d have put Judge Judy and Judge Napolitano on SCOTUS too.). I plan to listen to what he has to say. He’s the reason I got the Shingles Vax way back when based on his recommendation. (It’s also the reason I ignore the Flu vaxes!)

YMMV

FAIWWYPFI (Free Advice Is Worth What You Pay For It! ?zero?)

*** begin quote ***

Dear Friend,

 

Shingles is one of the most under-discussed adult health threats—despite a lifetime risk approaching one in three. It can cause blindness, trigger strokes, and result in a debilitating nerve pain (postherpetic neuralgia) that can linger for years. What does the evidence say about this painful condition? In this 1.5-hour live webinar starting at 2:00pm ET on Thursday, August 27, 2026, I’ll cover preventing shingles, treating an active outbreak, and using diet and natural topical treatments to relieve postherpetic neuralgia and long-term nerve pain in general. Highlights include a discussion of how Big Pharma misleads the public about vaccine efficacy and step-by-step instructions to make my B-CALM Oil recipe for neuropathic pain.

Everyone registered for the webinar will receive a recording.

*** end quote ***

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RANT: Guess they haven’t head of Amaon Prime or Walmart+ or “free delivery”

Wednesday, August 19, 2026

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On Wed, Aug 19, 2026, 4:12 AM reinkefj via gmail wrote:

Kirkland Signature Organic Summit Roast Coffee, Medium Roast, Keurig K-Cup Pods, 120 ct | Costco https://www.costcobusinessdelivery.com/p/-/kirkland-signature-organic-summit-roast-coffee-medium-roast-keurig-k-cup-pods-120-ct/2001139222

*** end quote ***

Went to order and then <BAMM!> slapped in the face.

NOT ordered. They want a 25$ delivery charge. Guess they haven’t head of Amaon Prime or Walmart+ or “free delivery”. What a way to lose and a stream of future orders. Don’t want my business; fine. Argh!

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DISCOURAGING: All too true about NYC

Tuesday, August 18, 2026

<<FROM TWITTER / now X (but it’ll always be twitter to me)>>
<< EDITOR ADDED DATE 2026-08-18>>

*** begin quote ***

Josh Barzon
@JoshuaBarzon
Aug 17

You could move to New York City.

Rent an 852-square-foot apartment for $5,503 a month.

Blow $500 on three “first dates” a week and somehow remain single for six years.

Finally meet someone you like, then discover they’re “not really looking for anything serious right now.”

Get a master’s degree so you can qualify for an internship.

Apply to 147 jobs, get 93 automated rejections, and finally find an “entry-level” position requiring five years of experience.

Eventually land a six-figure job and still need a roommate to make rent.

Pay federal income tax, New York State income tax, AND New York City income tax because apparently living there is a three-level subscription.

Learn that a “quiet neighborhood” means the sirens only come by every 20 minutes.

Pay $27 every day for a sandwich (no sides) because the place has exposed brick and a handwritten menu.

Take the subway to work every morning and develop the useful skill of pretending not to notice absolutely anything happening around you.

Spend 45 minutes traveling three miles.

Carry your groceries home six blocks because parking near your apartment is more of a philosophical concept than an actual possibility.

Have “owning a washer and dryer” become one of your primary measures of generational wealth.

Walk past a mountain of trash bags on your way to a restaurant with a Michelin star.

Tell your friends back home you don’t need a car while spending $46 on an Uber because the subway is delayed again.

Go to Central Park when you want to remember what trees look like.

Spend your twenties telling everyone you could NEVER live anywhere else.

Then one day you visit your cousin in Iowa.

He has a house with four bedrooms, a garage, a yard, two cars, four kids, and somehow pays less than you do for the apartment where your refrigerator touches your couch.

But hey.

The NYC bagels are incredible.

*** end quote ***

Having grown up in Manhattan I can certainly agree with what he has written.

I’d say it’s “funny”. BUT, (and there is always a BIG butt), it’s not “funny” like “HA! HA!”.  More like “funny” peculiar.  Like schadenfreude!

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TECHNOLOGY: Need a connector from TEXTEXPANDER to GBOARD on an iphone

Monday, August 17, 2026

I’m using TextExpander on an iPhone and would like to use Google’s voice typing (Gboard) together with the TextExpander keyboard. As I understand it, iOS only allows one third-party keyboard to be active at a time, so I currently have to switch keyboards via the globe icon to dictate with Gboard and then switch back to TextExpander to get snippet expansion.

Is there a supported way to use Gboard voice typing directly within the TextExpander keyboard, or any recommended workflow to reduce the back-and-forth switching? I’ve attached a transcript of a related conversation for context.

*** begin quote ***

onversation transcript ? Claude chat
Date: 2026-08-17

User: is there a way to use the Google voice typing with the TextExpander keyboard?

Assistant: iOS only allows one active keyboard at a time, so TextExpander's keyboard and Gboard voice typing can't run simultaneously as a combined keyboard ? but you can switch between them:
- Install both TextExpander and Gboard as keyboards (Settings > General > Keyboard > Keyboards > Add New Keyboard).
- While typing, tap the globe icon (bottom-left of keyboard) to cycle to Gboard, use its mic for voice typing, then tap the globe again to switch back to TextExpander for snippet expansions.

Simpler alternative: Apple's built-in dictation (mic icon on the standard keyboard) works underneath TextExpander without switching keyboards ? dictated text still passes through TextExpander's expansion engine while in the TextExpander keyboard. This isn't Google's voice typing specifically, but avoids the keyboard-switch friction.

User: cxxgd

Assistant: Anytime ? let me know if you need anything else.

User: capture this conversation in a text file and put in the google drive claudia folder

*** end quote ***

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RANT: We need about 40 year, 4 decades, 2 generations to erase these SOCIALIST mistakes

Sunday, August 16, 2026

<<FROM FACEBOOK>>
<< EDITOR ADDED DATE 2026-08-16>>

*** begin quote ***

Stephen E. Phelps Jr.
Favorites · p͏S͏t͏e͏o͏o͏d͏n͏r͏s͏c͏f͏ ͏3͏u͏s͏t͏f͏3͏2͏g͏ ͏ ͏1͏t͏P͏4͏7͏u͏a͏m͏m͏u͏u͏t͏2͏A͏ ͏i͏2͏f͏g͏t͏:͏t͏3͏i͏1͏3͏f͏0͏M͏f͏7͏0͏8͏l͏g͏l͏u͏ ·

Fúçĸ these scumbag pseudo-Republicans who want to welch on paying back the money that’s been “appropriated” by Congress out of our hard-earned Social Security savings over the years by now pretending that SS and Medicare are “benefits”.

*** end quote ***

Stephen E. Phelps Jr. quoted Steve Warkentin

*** begin quote ***

p͏S͏t͏e͏o͏o͏d͏n͏r͏s͏c͏f͏ ͏3͏u͏s͏t͏f͏3͏4͏g͏ ͏ ͏1͏t͏A͏9͏9͏u͏a͏m͏m͏u͏u͏t͏2͏A͏ ͏i͏2͏f͏g͏t͏:͏t͏3͏i͏1͏3͏f͏0͏M͏f͏7͏0͏8͏l͏g͏l͏u͏ 
I’m happy to share this, but sad that is necessary, because I don’t care what side of the aisle you sit on, this is a fact.
 
Speaker of the house, Mike Johnson, concerning Social Security payments.
 
My contributions were made for me since I was 16 years old, on every wage or salary I received. Those jobs may not have always been the work I wanted to be doing at the time, BUT I always had a job. The Social Security check is now (or soon will be) referred to as a “Federal Benefit Payment?” I’ll be part of the one percent to forward this.
 
I am forwarding it because it touches a nerve in me, and I hope it will in you. Please keep passing it on until everyone in our country has read it.
 
The government is now referring to our Social Security checks as a “Federal Benefit Payment.” This isn’t a benefit. It is our money paid out of our earned income! Not only did we all contribute to Social Security but our employers did too. It totaled 15% of our income before taxes.
 
Congress took our money and used it elsewhere. They forgot (oh yes, they knew) that it was OUR money they were taking. They didn’t have a referendum to ask us if we wanted to lend the money to them. And they didn’t pay interest on the debt they assumed. And recently they’ve told us that the money won’t support us for very much longer. And now, to add insult to injury, they’re calling it a “benefit”, as if we never worked to earn every penny of it.
 
Just because they borrowed the money doesn’t mean that our investments were a charity!
 
Let’s take a stand. We have earned our right to Social Security and Medicare. Demand that our legislators bring some sense into our government.
 
Find a way to keep Social Security and Medicare going, PLEASE for the sake of the 92% of our population who need it. Then call it what it is: Our Earned Retirement Income.

*** end quote ***

I ABSOLUTELY AGREE! “Social Security” has always been a Gooferment Ponzi scheme that transfers, wealth from poor minority men to rich white women. It was a step towards socialism, and then communism.

  • It destroyed the extended family by allowing grandparents to “retire” and move places like Florida andArizona away from their families who needed their physical presence ass support.
  • Also, they got everyone used to the idea of a government monthly check thus destroying the savings incentive.
  • The federal reserve system destroyed the value of money and people could no longer put a few coins away for their old age.
  • It created an entitled boomer-class of voters beholding to the Democratic in income-bent politicians.

Both the Democrat and Republican incumbent politicians should share the blame and our scorn at their malfeasance in office. The Democratic Socialist cabal DSA should be laughed out of every election by pointing to North Korea, Cuba, and the third world hell hole.

Stephen E. Phelps Jr. and I don’t agree on a lot of political issues, but on this point, we are in 100% agreement.

Now that the government has made the wage slave class a serfdom we requires two salaries to barely stay afloat, we need a multigenerational decades long GENTLE plan to remove Social Security. We, The Sheeple should not allow the politicians to “pull the rug out “from people who planned their retirement around having that Social Security income.

Like separating “EDUCATION” from the Gooferment (i.e., Gooferment SK-CRUEL-as, we need about 40 year, 4 decades, 2 generations to erase these SOCIALIST mistakes.

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GOVEROTRAGEOUS: USPS website doesn’t locate individual blue collection boxes

Saturday, August 15, 2026

“usps mailnox drops near me”

Claude response:

*** begin quote ***

Google Places doesn’t index individual blue collection boxes — just staffed locations. For those, USPS’s own locator is the reliable source: usps.com/manage/collection-boxes.htm — plug in your zip and it’ll show every street-corner blue box near you, with last pickup times.

*** end quote ***

usps.com/manage/collection-boxes.htm —

<<ditto>>

Essentially the same.

UPS, FEDEX, and DHL can tell you exactly where and when they pickup —  even for individual blue collection boxes.

As ususal, the Gooferment can’t match what the “invisible hand of the free market” delivers … … at comparable or even lower cost.

Argh!

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RANT: Gooferment “codes” change without notice or a chance to object

Friday, August 14, 2026

In trying to sell our “old” house, I have a few example of “spectacular stupidity”.

Evidently NOW to sell a house and get a Certificate of Occupancy, all the smoke detectors and carbon monoxide detectors —  regardless of lifespan left —  must be replaced with a non-removable battery. 

WTH

My detectors were replaced when we bought the house 5 years ago because they were flakey and so were the carbon monoxide detectors because they were old and generating false alarms.  No Gooferment involvement!

Argh!

There’s a few dollars (more than 1,000) down the rat hole. And, now there is a fee for the City Inspector come out and confirm.

My Realtors, Handyman, and Contractor were all surprised by this.

And it’s not like a rental.  It was and will be owner occupied so there is NO motivation to cheap out.

Yet Another cash grab and expense incurred.  Glad to be out of the Pepuls Republik of Nu Jerzee.  Hope the last person out shuts the lights off!

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POLICY: Here’s a good idea for a Gooferment diktat about corporations

Thursday, August 13, 2026

✔ 2026-08Aug-09 solar panel.

As much as I am against Gooferment diktats and “tax policy”, how about, until we get to a free open AnCap¹ society, the Gooferment require “corporations”² to purchase offsets from private homeowners’ rooftop solar panels.  

With the inet, there would be no need for the Gooferment to run anything but a domain to facilitate and document the transfers.  Not that homeowners would cheat and sell the same rooftop solar array credits to multiple corporations or the corporations would fudge “buying” the credits!  (Unlike how every Gooferment (welfare) program gets abused. Argh!)

Corporations are a construct of Gooferment diktats which most little L libertarians hate.  Since with public ownership, they do represent a collection of people. Where it gets further diluted is when “shares” are held by other corporations.  That actually dilutes the power of worth of individually owned shares. See how the Big Pension Funds supported the “DEI” initiatives of large corporations despite the general public’s opinion DEI. Argh!

Opinions?

# – # – # – # – #

¹ Anarcho-capitalism is a political ideology and economic theory that advocates for the abolition of state monopolies and the expansion of economic liberalism and market economy through the promotion of a voluntary society. Proponents argue that a society could function without a centralized state through voluntary exchange and private institutions that provide legal and security services relegating coercion to the collection of tort damages, and refining recoupment in the context of a free and open marketplace. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarcho-capitalism

² Libertarians generally oppose the idea of corporations being treated as individuals with the same rights, arguing that this can lead to excessive corporate influence in politics and undermine democratic processes. They believe that while corporations should have some rights, they should not have the same rights as individual citizens. https://www.libertarianism.org/videos/what-you-probably-havent-heard-about-citizens-united

³ Libertarians often argue against corporate influence in politics by advocating for limited government intervention and regulation, which they believe can reduce the opportunities for corporations to exert power through lobbying and political contributions. They emphasize the importance of free markets and individual liberties, suggesting that when government is less involved, corporate interests will have less sway over public policy. https://leadershipnowproject.org/corporate-political-influence-101/

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MEME: “There’s an App for That”

Wednesday, August 12, 2026

https://www.malone.news/p/sunday-strip-theres-an-app-for-that?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=583200&post_id=210458209&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=3snn7d&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email

*** begin quote ***

“There’s an App for That”

Remember when you could just do things?

Check into a hotel. Board an airplane. Park your car. Order lunch. Buy a ticket. Enter a museum. Pay a bill. Turn on the television. Apparently those days are over.

Now there’s an app for that.

Checking in for a flight on an obscure foreign airline you will almost certainly never fly again? Download the app.

Parking for 37 minutes in a small town in Virginia? Download the app.

Want to look at the menu? Scan the QR code. Actually, no, download the app.

Want to pay for the parking meter? App.

Charge the car? Different app.

Open the hotel room? App.

Use the hotel Wi-Fi? Create an account, verify your email, accept 46 pages of terms and conditions, then download the app.

And naturally, every app would like to get to know you better.

Please provide your full legal name, date of birth, home address, email address, mobile number, two forms of identification, emergency contact, name and phone number of your closest living relative, credit card, billing address, location permissions, Bluetooth access, camera access, microphone access, contacts, notifications, and apparently a small vial of blood.

Then create a password containing 14 characters, one capital letter, two numbers, a hieroglyph, a Sanskrit character, and the name of your third-grade teacher.

Excellent.

Now verify your identity with a six-digit code we have sent to the phone you are currently using to read the six-digit code.

Whoops! The password has expired, create a new password. Be sure it doesn’t contain anything related to the last password. Oh, now verify your identity again.

All because you wanted to park the car.

There may indeed be an app for everything.

Unfortunately, there does not yet appear to be an app for leaving me the hell alone.

*** end quote ***

Laugh!  

Yes, IKTF (I Know The Feeling).

Shouldn’t there be a genre of single function apps that can satisfy these “marketers” and yet not drive us all nut and fill up our “phones”.

It seems a misnomer to call what we carry around today as a “phone”?  I miss my Mickey Mouse handset that I had until my Mom came to visits eons ago and asked for it.  How could I say “NO”?  Good thing it had a switch for touch tone or not.  She never got touch tone because she didn’t want to pay for it.  I laugh even when I think about it because she kept it and her other extension phone switched to pulse even after the country switched to touch tone from pause for free.  When I’d use her phone I’d have to wait while the pulses were sent … … click … Click click … Click <eight more times> … Click <nine more times>… <<You get the idea?>> All to “dial” 1-90 something.  Felt like an eternity.

Laugh!

And I am called “cynical” and “curmudgeon”?  At least I am not a “LUDDITE”!

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