OK, I Didn't TOTALLY Blow the Month Off ...

I'm kind of surprised to have racked up 24 posts in a 28-day month.

My neighbor's death, in addition to making for a busy week or so, was also just a big ol' downer.

And I was distracted with some boring cryptocurrency stuff that I actually blogged about too much, probably. I prefer to be, you know, interesting.

I'm not very far off my "average of one post per day" goal, and expect I'll get caught up, maybe even ahead, in March.

One note that I keep meaning to bring up but don't think I have: Someone sent me some Dogecoin a little while back. IIRC, two transactions, in December. I didn't notice them at the time, and don't know who they came from, but whoever you are, thanks! I'm HODLing it.

A second note that I have brought up: If you don't have an FIO name, you probably should. It's not especially anonymous since it's tied to specific wallet addresses, but it does seem like a convenience instrument that could speed up adoption of cryptocurrency.

So, Not a Bad Deal at All

I didn't bother to research that ukulele body before turning it into, well, an incredibly easy 15-minute project.

Body, at a thrift store, at 50% off: About $17.50.

Grover friction tuners: About $15.50.

Ernie Ball strings: About $6.00.

Total cost: About $39.

All I knew about it was that it's a Gretsch "Roots Collection" uke. and that it doesn't seem to appear on Gretsch's site.

It seemed to me that a Gretsch in playable condition was surely worth more than $40.

Once I had it together, I decided I was right. Very nice sound. Even my youngest, who tends to dislike ukulele noise, said he thought it sounded nice.

Like I said, maybe 15 minutes to install the tuners and string it. Of course, the strings are still stretching, but it's not like I have to sit there and watch them. I just pick it up every couple of hours, give the strings a little stretch, tune it, and put it back down.

Which gives me time to actually mess around with Google and figure out what I've got.

Which, it seems, is a Gretsch G9101 NYC Camp Ukulele in Blue Sunburst. $129 at Reverb (not an affiliate link) ... but out of stock. No price at Amazon (not an affiliate link) ... because it's out of stock. 

Per the Amazon description, "A faithful recreation of the circa 1925-1935 Gretsch 'Camp' uke, it's built to be tossed in your knapsack and played around the campfire down at the beach, out in the woods or anyplace else where the day takes you." Maple body, nato neck.

So, pretty good deal.

Tamara owns a couple of pretty nice ukuleles, which she hasn't yet learned to play. I used to have one of the $10 plastic jobs that I couldn't stand to try to play, and do have a Glarry banjo ukulele that I haven't got around to looking for a lower bridge for (the action is way too high toward the top end of the neck). 

But this is the one that makes me think I'll go ahead and put in the time to do more than learn a couple of chords and get bored. If so, I'll record something with it so you can hear how much better it sounds than my voice.

I Needed Another Instrument Project Like I Needed Another Hole in the Head, But ...

This one kept enticing me until it got to be too good to pass up:

It's a Gretsch "Roots Collection" ukulele body. All it needs is tuners and strings.

It sat at a local thrift store, priced at $35, for months. Then one day they had a sale -- 50% off entire purchase if the total came to more than $50 -- and with some stuff Tamara was buying, this pushed the entire purchase to just over $50. So the end cost was $17.50.

Because it's a Gretsch, not some cheap plastic piece of crap, I decided to go with Grover tuners instead of $5 jobs. And because it's a "Roots Collection" thing, it seemed more authentic (and less trouble) to go with friction tuners than geared / machine head tuners. The tuners and a set of Ernie Ball strings set me back about $20 (just ordered them).

For less than $50 and not a whole lot of time/effort, I expect a pretty decent uke.

Good Cause

Nova Ukraine has a "Victims of Russian War -- Humanitarian Aid" fund.

They accept cryptocurrency.

Because, as mentioned in a previous post, "my sympathy is reserved for the non-combatants caught up in the gangs' turf disputes, not for the gangs themselves," I sent them US $10.

It's not a lot, but if your sympathies are similarly placed, I hope you'll match my donation.

Three tweets from the last 24 hours or so ...

More than 150 years ago, Abraham Lincoln noted the difference between American despotism and Russian despotism: The latter was "pure, without the base alloy of hypocrisy." Apart from comb-over style, that seems to be the major difference between Putin and his US counterparts.

— KN@PPSTER (@thomaslknapp) February 24, 2022

When multiple authoritarian regimes fight each other, it's seldom the case that any of them are uniquely bad or good. Unfortunately, we're unlikely to see Putin, Zelenskyy, and Biden sharing a cell and arguing over whose turn it is to wash everyone's orange coveralls this week.

— KN@PPSTER (@thomaslknapp) February 24, 2022

"National sovereignty" is a prettified way of saying "respecting multiple authoritarian gangs' turf line agreements." My sympathy is reserved for the non-combatants caught up in the gangs' turf disputes, not for the gangs themselves, or for the gangs' grandiose "sovereignty" BS.

— KN@PPSTER (@thomaslknapp) February 24, 2022

Yes, I'm opposed to Vladimir Putin's "special military operation" -- which increasingly looks like all-out invasion -- in Ukraine. But not because of nonsense like "national sovereignty." That notion, drummed up in the 1648 Peace of Westphalia, was just an agreement between ruling gangs to systematize/regularize their turf lines instead of having fiefdoms switch loyalties every time a liege lord died or married off his daughter or got pissed.

Maybe Not a Bug, But Definitely Not a Feature

The usual warning: Stand back, I'm about to gripe.

When I'm sitting at home and thinking about food from out, I almost never want to order for delivery, or even order online for pickup. I'm just thinking, OK? If I buy from your restaurant, one of three  things will happen:

1. I and/or my wife plan to dine in, and will order when we get there; or
2. I and/or my wife plan to take out, and will order when we get there; or
3. I'm wanting takeout and it will be ordered online or via app, but usually my end of the deal is to tell my wife what I want and she places the order because she and/or the kids probably want something too, and because she is probably picking it up on her way home from work.

I can understand why you want to know my location, in case your menu differs from store to store.

But why, after choosing a location/store, can't I just see the menu instead of having to pretend I'm placing an order right now?

Most restaurants with an online ordering mechanism seem to want to force the "place an order" thing. In some cases, the menu is tied up in third-party delivery ordering to boot.

It doesn't seem like 133t hacker league stuff to design a web site that just lets me browse the fucking menu. And that maybe loads reliably instead of churning for 15 minutes trying to run all your fancy-schmancy scripts and stuff half the time.

Since I see you're charging eleven bucks for a sandwich that already seemed kind of steep when I paid $7.xx for it a year ago, but was craving and considering paying $7.xx for again, I have to assume you could afford a well-designed, working web site. If you wanted to. Apparently you don't.

Guess I'll just make my own damn sandwich instead.

Because I'm Not a Finance Whiz ...

... I do not understand, and therefore cannot explain, why cryptocurrency prices aren't soaring to previously unseen highs right now.

Between

1. Justin Trudeau's demonstration proof that establishment financial instruments are unsafe for anyone who disagrees with -- or might be mistakenly believed to disagree with -- even a "liberal democratic" regime; and
2. establishment investment instruments taking giant shits over several regimes threatening to start an evil and pointless war;

why anyone wouldn't be converting any and all disposable "cash" to crypto (or metals, at least -- and gold and silver are looking flatter than I'd have expected, too) simply surpasses my understanding.

I've Been Experimenting with CBD ...

... since I don't want to pay money and go into a database to get a "medical marijuana" card, and it seems like it might be helpful without THC being attached to it.

I participated in a CBD trial for chronic pain -- one capsule with, IIRC, 40mg of CBD in it each morning, a second capsule optional. I only took two capsules one time. I subjectively noticed (and reported in my logs) a slight reduction in my chronic back pain. What I noticed more -- and which the trial also asked about -- was that my sleep seemed to improve. I got to sleep more easily, slept longer without interrupting wake-ups, and felt more rested. That was especially true the one time I took a second capsule a couple of hours before going to bed instead of just the one in the morning.

Now that the trial's over, I've bought a pack of CBD cigarettes. I tried those once before and thought they were helpful, but now I'm making sure to smoke one about 15 minutes before bedtime. And instead of a lot of tossing, turning, etc., I'm off to sleep pretty quickly. I normally put on some random music ("Alexa, play songs by the Grateful Dead") when going to bed, and often hear a lot of songs before drifting off. Since I started the CBD, I've switched to asking for particular albums, and I have yet to make it through an entire album before falling asleep.

So, it seems to work pretty well for me. But I'm told that for the sleep application, CBN works even better. So I may give that a try.

What OJ Simpson, Casey Anthony, George Zimmerman, and Kyle Rittenhouse Have in Common

Three things:

1. They were all charged with killing people;
2. They were all acquitted; and
3. Some people still think of them as, and call them, "murderers" anyway.

So far as I know, though, Rittenhouse is the only one who thinks he can turn (3) into a vexatious ligitation gravy train.

Living on the Edge (Edge Wallet, That Is)

I've been using the Edge Wallet for nearly a year now. I moved to it from Coinomi because Coinomi didn't support a payment protocol I expected to use (but didn't) when I went up to New Hampshire for PorcFest.

TL;DR: Highly recommended. It's non-custodial (you control your keys and edge doesn't have them, which is why Edge was able to post a nice smarmy reply to the Trudeau junta's "we're freezing cryptocurrency wallets" diktats and make it stick). It's easy to use. It's well-secured with PIN and optional 2FA. And it works with a number of "instant" exchanges so that if you want to (for example) swap some BTC for some FIO or some BCH for some DOGE, you're likely to find a deal and certain to get the most competitive fee offer on that deal.

The longer version will just be a few items of the "features I'd like that aren't there" variety, which isn't really negative since no wallet can have every feature I'd like.

• It doesn't include a Steem wallet. Which is something I'd like to have.
• Its Ravencoin wallet doesn't seem to handle RVN assets. I sent myself a million NORTONXIIIs from the Ravencoin native wallet thinking it did, so now I'm down a million NORTONXIIIs.
• It doesn't support the Lightning Network. Which for all I know may just not be possible -- does that require a dedicated app?
• So far as I can tell, it doesn't (at least yet) support using FIO for things like voting or assigning proxies to vote your tokens.

Which brings me to FIO (the Foundation for Interwallet Operability token). That's what happened to get me thinking about Edge today and deciding it was time for an "after nearly a year" rating/review.

Edge just implemented FIO staking. You can stake any number of the FIO tokens in your wallet. Stakers receive rewards from a pool which consists of 25% of all FIO chain fees. The staked tokens remain in your wallet, but can't be spent/sent while staked (or for seven days after un-staking them). That sounds good to me, so I converted a little BTC to FIO and staked it.

I think FIO is a great idea. It solves a couple of problems:

1. Cryptocurrency addresses are long strings of integers and letters that can be confusing. FIO addresses, linked to compatible wallets (Edge being one of those wallets) are simple. Mine is knappster@edge. If you have that address and are wanting to send me any kind of cryptocurrency, you can just send it to that address instead of copying the big long string of integers and letters and hoping you didn't forget to select the last integer or letter, etc. Or having to ask me for a wallet address or trusting a QR code that you hope is actually from me. Or whatever. You can also request crypto from someone else's FIO address to yours. Which brings me to ...
2. FIO wallets make it easy to attach data to sends and requests. For example, I could send your FIO address a requestfor 0.01 BTC "for writing services," and both of us would have a record of who paid how much to whom and for what without going through a more centralized service like BitPay, CoinPayments, etc. for invoicing and payment.

There's one devil in those details, though: The FIO address is linked to a particular address for each cryptocurrency, which makes tracking by third parties easier than if each of us generated a new address for every transaction. I don't know if there's anything to be done about that, but it's something to keep in mind.

One final thing on FIO: The standard cost for an FIO address like my knappster@edge is, IIRC, US $1.99. But when you install the Edge wallet, you can get your FIO address "free."

"Oath Keepers" for Real -- and for Pay!

Quoth Emily Green at Vice:

For the hundreds of migrants crossing into the U.S. without permission each day, the border itself is just the beginning: Next are a hundred miles of checkpoints on roads and highways that stretch well into the interior of Texas, Arizona, and California. To reach their destination, migrants rely on smugglers hiding them along the way, inside of dump trucks, tractor trailers, even coffins, to evade detection.

But [Byron] Law and his friend weren’t just any smugglers. They were U.S. Marines, sworn to uphold the values and laws of the U.S.

Well, not just any laws. They were specifically sworn to, in sequential order, "support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic" and to "bear true faith and allegiance to the same," then to "obey the orders of the President of the United States and the orders of the officers appointed over me, according to regulations and the Uniform Code of Military Justice."

There's good reason for that order: It's always a possibility that presidential or military orders will violate the Constitution of the United States, in which case "true faith and allegiance to same" takes precedence.

And the US Constitution (Article I, Section 9; Article V; Amendment X) forbids the government of the United States to regulate immigration.

Border Patrol, ICE, et al. are domestic enemies of the US Constitution, and helping immigrants avoid them and their unlawful depredations is therefore a lawful act of defense of the Constitution against those enemies. I'm glad they managed to get paid to do it, and sorrowful that the criminal gangsters behind the fake "immigration laws" caught them at it.

Dumb Arguments Don't Help Good Causes

Because when those dumb arguments are noticed as being dumb arguments, your opponent can use that to discredit your cause among those who aren't interested in paying close attention to the whole issue.

So, here's Joe Concha at The Hill:

[P]erhaps no other job in the world affords more isolation, more self-quarantine, than that of trucker.

That is the dumbest argument imaginable (and this isn't the first time I've seen variants of it).

The average worker goes to an office, factory, etc. and spends the whole day working around the same people before coming home to the same family. Day after day, week after week.

A trucker works with loading and unloading crews at each end of journeys (often between varying end points from day to day) filled with stops that include encounters with total strangers at various spots across vast distances. Fuel stops. Food stops. Rest stops. Shower/bunk facilities at truck stops, or in some cases hotels or motels.

Truckers are ideal vectors for the spread of disease.

Does that fact justify vaccine mandates? No.

As a moral matter, my body, my choice.

As a practical matter:

1. It's pretty well-established that the COVID-19 vaccines aren't especially effective at preventing transmission of the virus. You can still catch it, and you can still spread it. The "vaccines" are really more along the lines of pre-emptive treatment. They make it less likely that the virus will cause you to become seriously ill.
2. All of those other people an un-vaccinated trucker comes into contact with are free to be vaccinated if they'd like to be vaccinated. It probably won't stop them from catching COVID-19 if they come into contact with someone who's carrying it, but they're less likely to end up hospitalized or dead. And the vaccine doesn't care whether the exposure comes from a vaccinated or un-vaccinated vector. In fact, if the figures I've seen are correct, the former is more likely, which makes sense -- the vaccinated vector is more likely to be out and about, while the un-vaccinated vector probably got sick enough to skip work.

This issue is important. So please, don't make the right side of it look bad by using dumb arguments.

Airdrop Fail ... Try, Try Again

Yesterday was the deadline for my "airdrop" giveaway of 113 grants of 1,859 NORTONXIII tokens each. Total disbursed: Zero.

So, I'm extending the deadline to the end of the month.

Why do I want to give away a bunch of Ravencoin-based tokens? Because there are things that can be done with them after they're given away, and I don't completely understand those things yet. For example, some kind of "voting" function.

I can't really figure those things out until there's at least one other wallet holding some of the tokens. And I don't feel like dedicating a second device to installing another wallet/account on, re-downloading the blockchain, etc. Also, it would be more fun to try the stuff out with another person instead of just pretending to be another person. Additional feedback, etc.

If you'd like to be that other person (or one of those other people!), getcher NORTONXIIIs here.

Lock Them Both Up!

From my Garrison Center column for July 6, 2016:

In his July 5 press briefing, FBI director James Comey spoke 2,341 words explaining his decision not to recommend criminal charges over Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server to transmit, receive and store classified information during her tenure as US Secretary of State. He could have named that tune in four words:

“Because she’s Hillary Clinton.”

Comey left no doubt whatsoever that Clinton and her staff broke the law: “[T]there is evidence that they were extremely careless in their handling of very sensitive, highly classified information. For example, seven e-mail chains concern matters that were classified at the Top Secret/Special Access Program level when they were sent and received. … any reasonable person in Secretary Clinton’s position, or in the position of those government employees with whom she was corresponding about these matters, should have known that an unclassified system was no place for that conversation.”

“But that doesn’t matter, because she’s Hillary Clinton.”

That was really the entire case for not charging Clinton with violations of 18 U.S. Code § 1924 and 18 US Code § 793.

Now that Donald Trump has his own ass in a similar crack (with a Presidential Records Act chaser), Republicans who loudly protested against "some animals are more equal than other" treatment for Clinton seem to be keeping their silence, while Democrats who fled to their fainting couches and broke out the smelling salts over the shabby treatment poor, pitiful, persecuted Clinton received back then seem to want to throw the book at Trump.

Personally, I'd gladly fork over to buy orange coveralls and leg irons for both of them to wear at their respective arraignments.

How to Tell if They Really Mean What They Say

I've recently noticed several commentators decrying the (so far as I can tell non-existent) teaching of Critical Race Theory in government K-12 schools on the very specific basis that it "politicizes" education.

While separating school and state wouldn't inherently "de-politicize" education -- it would simply allow students/parents/educators to choose what flavors and intensities of politics they allow into that education -- it seems to me that there's a reasonable litmus test to be applied here:

Do these opponents of Critical Race Theory in government schools also oppose flying/wall-mounting, and having students "pledge allegiance" to, the American flag in those same schools?

If so, they may honestly be against "politicization" of government education.

If not, they aren't opposed to "politicization;" they just want it to be their preferred form of "politicization."

AOC is Much Smarter Than Many Seem to Suspect

I've written before on how US Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) carefully and calculatingly remade herself from an affluent life-long politico into a "working class bartender" to get herself elected to Congress. Theatrics like wearing "tax the rich" dresses at at parties with $30k ticket prices may strike some people as dumb, and for that matter may not always work out the way she intends, but there's method to the madness.

Now it looks like she's using a "credibly demand the whole ball of wax" parliamentary play to maneuver House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) into reversing position and supporting a ban on congrescritter stock trading.

Stupid, Cowardly, and Uptight ...

... does seem to be a reasonably accurate description of  Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. And, for that matter, of most politicians.

But you're not allowed to say so in Germany.

I'm Just Not Seeing Any Lack of Clarity Here

This is the entire text of Article V of the US Constitution:

The Congress, whenever two thirds of both Houses shall deem it necessary, shall propose Amendments to this Constitution, or, on the Application of the Legislatures of two thirds of the several States, shall call a Convention for proposing Amendments, which, in either Case, shall be valid to all Intents and Purposes, as Part of this Constitution, when ratified by the Legislatures of three fourths of the several States, or by Conventions in three fourths thereof, as the one or the other Mode of Ratification may be proposed by the Congress; Provided that no Amendment which may be made prior to the Year One thousand eight hundred and eight shall in any Manner affect the first and fourth Clauses in the Ninth Section of the first Article; and that no State, without its Consent, shall be deprived of its equal Suffrage in the Senate.

The Equal Rights Amendment has been proposed by two thirds of both Houses of Congress.

The Equal Rights Amendment has been ratified by three fourths of the states.

QED, the Equal Rights Amendment is valid to all intents and purposes as part of the Constitution.

Three Republican members of the US Senate are "urging" the national archivist to continue pretending that it isn't, because they fantasize that Congress has the power to set a time period for ratification of amendments  and that states have the power to rescind their ratifications.

But as you can see above, neither Congress nor the states have any such power.

The latter is an especially good thing, else there would probably be more than a quarter of state legislatures who were willing to rescind, for example, their ratifications of the Second Amendment.

What, I wonder, would these three Republicans think of the national archivist -- an official mentioned neither in Article V nor anywhere else in the Constitution -- declining to "certify" a bill duly passed by both houses of Congress and signed by a president until some frivolous legal arguments against the plain, clear, and unambiguous language of the Constitution on passage of legislation were settled?

The ERA is part of the Constitution. The only way to remove it from the Constitution is for two thirds of both houses of Congress to propose, and three quarters of the state legislatures to ratify, yet another amendment repealing it.

Some Thoughts on Gerrymandering

The Supreme Court is allowing Alabama's regime to move forward with a congressional redistricting map while it hears and decides the suit against that map. Not permanently. But you'd think it was the end of the world, or at least the return of Jim Crow. Here's the supposed issue:

The order pauses an opinion by a panel of three judges that held that the Alabama map likely violates Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act because it only includes one district where Black voters have the opportunity to elect a candidate of their choice.

I find both the map and the complaint remarkably, well, racist.

Both seem to assume that the only thing that matters, or should matter, to black and non-black voters when choosing public officials is race. The supporters of the map seem to be going out of their way to ensure that only one district has a black majority, and the opponents of the map want it altered to ensure that at least two districts have black majorities. And of course the historical trend is that in southern states district electorates tend to vote for one or the other party based on racial demographics, so the map is designed to delivere only one, rather than at least two, Democratic US Representatives from Alabama. 

Should women get a given number of female majority districts? How about electricians? Philatelists?

Why assume that only black voters will vote for black candidates, or that black voters will only vote for black candidates, or the same thing of whites, that race is the supreme, essential characteristic that drives, or should drive, political decisions, or that if it is such a characteristic it should be humored and catered to rather than ignored?

As an anarchist, of course, I'm agin Congress anyway.

But if we're going to do this, I'd prefer to see it done one of two ways:

1. Districts drawn by an open source, population-density based algorithm that starts at a random corner of the state and works its way to the opposite corner drawing districts of equal population without regard to race, sex/gender, profession, party registration of voters, or stamp collection size. Credit where credit is due: I remember reading that Robert Bork (of failed SCOTUS nomination fame) recommended a system like that when, as a lower court judge, he somehow got asked to suggest a settlement proposition for a gerrymandering case.
2. No districts -- all US Representatives elected at large by the entire population of the state, using either ranked choice or approval voting.

My Final NFL Pick of the 2021-22 Season ...

... is the Bengals to beat the Rams in the Super Bowl.

There's no underlying data to support this pick. I haven't even looked at stats, and my understanding on casual notice is that those stats fairly heavily support a Rams victory prediction.

I'm not going big here. I've got the Bengals at 53% to win.

Why pick the Bengals at all? Three reasons that don't make any sense as a way of producing rational predictions:

1. I hate the fucking Rams. I hate them with a passion. They screwed over my former hometown, St. Louis, leaving in violation of their contractual obligations after the area's taxpayers built them a beautiful domed stadium, because the area's taxpayers declined to build them another beautiful domed stadium before the first one was paid off. Fuck them.
2. I've just got a gut feeling that the game is going to be an all-out quarterback duel and that Josh Burrow is going to out-class Matthew Stafford.
3. My neighbor -- the one who died last week -- was a Bengals fan. Our last conversation was me letting her know which network to turn her hospital TV to to watch the AFC championship. I was pulling for the Chiefs, of course, but I'm glad she got to see her team win a spot in the Super Bowl right before things went downhill in a big way. And if there's an afterlife and, and if that afterlife comes with an NFL Season Pass cable package, I'd like her to be able to watch them win the game.

For the season and post-season up to now, I've got a cumulative score of 83.3 points in FiveThirtyEight's NFL forecasting game, putting me in the 61st percentile among all players. The outcome of the Super Bowl will change that score by a gain of 5.8 points if the Bengals win and a loss of 6.2 points if the Rams win, and that probably won't change my percentile performance much.

There's a Reason for the Light Blogging ...

... and it's not a happy one.

On Friday (January 28th), our neighbor was told by her home health care provider, who didn't like her vital signs, that she needed to go to the emergency room. It went downhill from there, and she died on Thursday.

For the last few years, Tamara and I have been very involved in her life -- doing most of her grocery shopping, transporting her to medical appointments, etc. -- and Tamara was her medical proxy. So it's been a busy week-plus, including the last couple of days of helping her children and brother go through her belongings and start wrapping up her affairs.

Her name was Ruth, and she was a wonderful lady. My last conversation with her was by phone, letting her know what hospital TV channel to watch the AFC championship on. She was a Bengals fan. I'm a Chiefs fan. But I'm glad she got to see her Bengals win a Super Bowl slot for the first time since 1988 before things got really bad.

Anyway, things should be back to "normal" soon, except that I'll no longer be spending several afternoons a week sitting across her dining room table from her, having enjoyable chats. I'm going to miss that a lot.

In What Universe ...

 ... is Rachel Maddow "working class?"

Newsweek deputy opinion editor Batya Ungar-Sargon worries that Maddow's upcoming hiatus may be a sign that MSNBC is abandoning a "working class" audience in favor of chasing "highly educated, affluent white progressives" like ... well, like Rachel Maddow.

Maddow wasn't a truck driver,  plumber, or coal miner before magically landing at MSNBC, at least according to my cursory biographical research. She's  the daughter of a lawyer and an educrat, with an undergraduate degree in public policy from Stanford and a PhD in politics from Oxford, who went from college into media. Not that there's anything wrong with that, but it's far from stereotypically "working class."

The NORTONXIII Airdrop is Live ...

... because I wanted to beat Jackass Forever to the punch with my own stunt. Register here.

Thanks For Asking! -- 02/01/22

The monthly AMA thread -- you ask me anything (yes, anything) in the comments below this post, and I answer (in the comments, or linked therefrom).

Ask away.