I did human intelligence. It was literally my job to interact with the people. And we did. And not just to hear what they say to our face, but to get sources and find out what people say behind our backs too. I can, with high confidence, say that close to 90% of the population wanted the taliban gone. It was the other 10% that were the issue. And they were the very loud minority that news stations loved to interview just to claim “accurately showing both sides”.

Under taliban rule Afghanistan was economically devastated and the second poorest country in the world. They had one of the lowest literacy rates in the world. And they had no healthcare system to speak of other than what was gifted to them from Iran or Pakistan depending of what half of the country you were in. No to mention their lack of infrastructure with the not even completed one highway ring around the country.

That all changed under ISAF and the people noticed. And now their past is about to become their future.

Lol. I did two tours over there. The people loved us. They loved the government. They loved the schools for women. The problem is culturally, they didn’t see a need to fight for it because of apathy. They figured “ISAF was always going to be here, so why need to fight for ourselves? And is ISAF isn’t here anymore, then we can’t support our selves, so why try?” As far as the schools go, they are voluntary. There are no truancy laws. They don’t even take attendance at most of the schools. It was completely up to the family if they wanted to send their boys OR their girls. Under pre-ISAF taliban the literacy rate was about 15% and at the time of withdrawal it was almost 40%. The people wanted to go to school, the taliban just didn’t let most of them or the schools that they did keep open were so severely limited in what they could teach.

The biggest red flag of this post, to me, is the use of the word Afghani. Any time someone says it with an ‘i’ at the end, you know they don’t know what they are talking about. Afghani is a currency, Afghan is a person.

You either lost money, or you lost time. If you are implying that you lost nothing because you didn’t cash out and therefore can wait for a rebound, then you are going to lose the time you have to wait for the rebound. In economics that is also called an opportunity cost. You have now lost the opportunity to invest that money into something profitable because you have now tied it up in something that is unprofitable. You still lost. You are just too dumb to realize it with this mentality.

Worst case is when people with this mentality ride a stock to the bottom insisting it will just take more time to come back, and it doesn’t. Then forcing the person to lose both the money and the time.

I miss HEB. family owned and private. Thus why they get away with treating their employees so well, paying them well, and supporting their communities all while also being the largest private employer in the state of Texas. That company is a great example of how a company can both grow to a large size and not be evil. If they ever go public you know all of its charm will instantly get cut in the name of shareholder value.

Think of a more direct democracy. I will oversimplify enough to annoy those from Switzerland:

Differing levels of law require differing thresholds. Country votes on a law, the majority above the required threshold vote it in. It becomes a national law. That is easy. What about when it fails? Then look to the state level. Did it pass the threshold for your state? Yes? Then it is a state law. Failed state level? Let’s look at your county/city/local level. Passed threshold? Local law.

Again, over simplified, but general idea.

While I have progressive ideas and believe the Republicans rule with malace, I also strongly believe the democrats rule with incompetence.

I would love to run for president on the party of burn down the two party system and restart from there. Make politics boring again and not some partisan winner take all spectacle. We keep pushing to out ‘wing’ the ‘wing’ and it is driving us to some bad extremes.

So yes, I will vote straight ticket Democrat for 99% of the time, but I am also disgusted by the fact anyone is even allowed to do that and people have little party letters by their name. If you didn’t research your candidate to at least know their name, then you shouldn’t be voting for them.

It is mind-blowing to me that some things are not seen as human rights and are instead seen as political posturing. In Texas we had barbed wire intentionally strung up in the Rio Grande river with the intention to drownd people and it took multiple rounds of court cases to make them take it out. Somehow killing people is acceptable rather than booking, ticketing, and sending back. Politics have now taken a place above literal lives. At the same time, when I express this I have democrats immediately agreeing and adding “just let them in!” Or “just let them stay and we will figure it out” and that is where I stop them and ask, is that what I said? No. Simply that human life is worth more than politics. Again, stringing up barbed wire in a river to intentionally drown people it true malice. But saying let them all in and figure it out later is naive at best, and incompetence at its worst.

The Kirkland brand of hearing aids is the same as phonak. It is the same company. Sonova. The biggest two things are oing to be getting them fit by a good audiologist, and picking out a set that fits the needs of the person.

Totally agree. In the US- Real ear verification is actually required by law in several states. Unfortunately the laws about it are a little gray on details, but they at least require it.

Trial periods are also required by law in every state, but the time period varies. When I was in Texas it was 30 days, which is the minimum several states have. A few state offer longer periods.

Close, but definitely not 30% volume. When we fit hearing aids a good audiologist would have asked you if you already wear hearing aids and other questions to know if we need to enable a very specific feature. Each brand calls it something different, but it is generally called “first time user adaptation.” It let’s us set an initial decrease percentage (normally 60-70% of the prescription volume) and we can then set a ‘target time’ of normally about 2 or 3 weeks, maybe 4 or 5 if they are extra old. Then the hearing aids will slowely turn up on their own over the time set. In the end, the person is as 100% volume and they shouldn’t have noticed. You can still do your own personal temp volume changes in the app and it doesn’t interfere with the progressive steps.

A good audiologist will then typically have you come back in 2 weeks, then a month, then at 6 months, then annually or as needed. Each appointment they should be checking several things and asking about the sound and volume levels and such, but specifically we can see where you are adjusting the volume to on average. Most manufacturers let us then just take your average adjustments and apply them to the prescription. So if you are turning it down 3 db on average every day, or if you just cut a little bass or push a little more treble, we can see that and just apply it to be permanent. This is why we encourage people to use the app as much as possible.

Now, all of this is also dependent on the person wearing the hearing aids all day. We get a lot of old people that insist they only need to wear them in very specific situations and then wonder why they never get used to them. It is always fun the first time the person finds out we can see how long the hearing aids are on every day. So they are like “yeah I totally wear them for a few hours every day. 4 or 5 hours, easy” then we tell them they are actually averaging about an hour.

Am I the only one who read the paper? All the comments are like: it’s only mice.

They did it in 6 different breeds of knockout mice, rats, and beagles -as in the best dog model for cancer translation to humans. They are well passed the threshold needed to show strong potential in people.

Other comments: it’s new and experimental

They have been working with it for years now and have shown efficacy down to a single dose. That is what this paper is about. They had previous tests with the compound, then with decreasing doses, and now this paper will it down to a single dose.

Other comments: there is no way this is real

Of the 9 primary authors, 4 are on NIH grants. I’m taking a wild guess no one here has had to fill one of those out, but they take about a month of solid writing and submitting evidence as to why your thing should get funded due to the shortage of scientific funding, then it gets reviewed by several rounds of blinded experts in the field to evaluate if you have any merit to what you are talking about, then you have to submit regular updates to show that you aren’t just pissing away tax dollars. On top of that, this was done out of a lab at the university of Illinois urbana-champaign, meaning you also have university funds mixed in so you have them checking in on you. Then they also had a state cancer research grant, adding more oversight.

How real is it? If you read the paper you would have seen they were using human tumors grown in the mice. This is a very well established cancer testing method. The downfall in their model, as they pointed out, is using NSG and athymin mice. These are immunocompromised mice. They bring up how with the necrotic cell death in the tumor (from the drug working ironically so well and so fast) that they don’t know how human immune systems will respond to it and that is kind of their next direction of the research.

Read the full abstract, then at least read the discussion section near the end if you want to get a better understanding of what is going on. Then if you are still interested, go back up to the intro and read through from there till you can’t any more.

Fun experiment: take your turntable out, place in a large plate with pieces of the shittiest American cheese slices. We are talking kraft single serves. Splay them out, no deeper than one layer thick is needed, but make a full cover of the microwave bed (on top of the plate though. You will make a mess if not). Then you simply cook the shit out of it. You will see the cheese bubble and burn in the microwave wave peaks and you will see cold cheese in the wave troughs.

Yes, it was supposed to have a sequel. It was the start of a franchise that never became one. The OP of the OP is not wrong in saying it was a setup and wanted a sequel. The difference of this movie versus the slop of other sequels is this one was made to be one. It wasn’t based on some one-off movie that did well, so the studio demanded a followup to milk it for more money. From its inception this movie was supposed to have one.

Too soon for Obi Wan? 1977? Nah.

But I will tell you what was too soon. I was at a firefly/serenity trivia night back in about 2008 or 2009 and everyone had various firefly related cute names. Kaylee’s commandos, the 'Washbucklers, team ‘leaf on the wind’, and such. Then you had the one team that chose fire. Their team name was “Reaver cleaning company: putting spears in the wash since 2005”

That was too soon…

For as much as everyone is saying to buy now out of economic fear, I wouldn’t say they are wrong, but there are several steps that will have to happen first. Tarrifs must be congressional approved first. That means the bill must be presented, debated on, voted on, then signed. I would start to worry a little when we see the bill presented, but even then if he presents some insane ranting that everyone knows will kneecap the economy for the rich, then it won’t go through and I wouldn’t worry. But if he lets his economic hit men write it and it is airtight, targeted, and specifically- then I would be buying my computer parts before the effective date hits for the reasons people are saying.

When it is easy bull markets, I go heavy on growth stocks. When the market is bear, I go heavy on dividends. Right now though there is a high beta turmoil, so I have a mix of both. My IRA is also set up as more od a “leave this alone” investment. My etrade account has my “fuck around and find out” money. I mention this because it is hard to directly compare the two. So far my dividends have strongly out performed the growth stocks, but only in the last 3 months or so has the gap widened. I credit it to 2 specific ones that are getting me 30%-ish yields with stable prices. They are also new etf’s, so the hedge money is still strong before the stripping gets to its prices. I mentioned in a post lower that that my little under 30k is netting me 800/month. Honestly it is paying a higher yield than renting out my condo is getting me.

It is also called ‘dividend stripping’.

Also yes. The more professional name is ‘dividend capture strategy’. More work, worth the pay off, do all you can to avoid commissions and fees.

Little under 30k in higher risk dividend. Bring in about 800 a month.

I have a mix of large cap, small cap growth stocks, then dividend high risk and low risk. Stock like this (I do not own PETS, I was just using it as an example) would be a high risk due to its price instability. But you mitigate that with stop loss orders.

I have a vanguard/roth for my longs (large cap growths and stable dividends with DRIP) and then use etrade for the small cap or high risk ones. I like their tax documents and easy interface.

People make arguments against dividend stocks, I simply call it a different strategy. Some years it beats out my growths, some years it is about on par. Depends on where I have it at the time and slightly more market dependant.

I have recently gotten into ex-date chasing. While it has increased the returns, it is more work.

Sure. It is still a lower rate than going into dividend stocks.

PETS, sorry, don’t know why my phone cut off the ‘S’.

PETMED EXPRESS INC COM