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Let me file that under fuck it.

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You are here: Home / Open Threads / Wednesday Morning Open Thread: The Pitfalls of Prosperity

Wednesday Morning Open Thread: The Pitfalls of Prosperity

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Jason Chaffetz is fortunate enough that his family can afford the *best* high-end, free-range, organic Thanksgiving turkey. He should’ve had the sense not to parade his affluence for media clicks, but then, if he had any sense he wouldn’t be a Republican.

… Or then again, many people are saying, it’s possible the person cooking his family’s Thanksgiving meal (pretty sure that ain’t Jason) bought an ordinary midrange turkey, and Jase had to send out his interns to scrounge for a top-end bird costly enough to justify his on-air tantrum?


======
Meanwhile, in Oklahoma, Republican rep & former MMA fighter MarkWayne Mullin is caught between his need to signal his MANHOOD to every passer-by, and his state’s atypically high gas prices…

Beware the wallet inspectors, Repubs!

Reader Interactions

175Comments

  4. 4.

    docNC

    Our turkey cost less than $5…14.3 lb at $0.29 per pound at Food Lion.  Or Harris Teeter if you want to cross the street.

  5. 5.

    OzarkHillbilly

    A 100% vegetarian fed turkey is missing an important part of it’s natural diet: Bugs.

    Also, I bought gas the other day, $2.99/gal.

  6. 6.

    OzarkHillbilly

    Today in space news:

    As if homesickness, wasting muscles, thinner bones, an elevated cancer risk, the inescapable company of overachievers and the prospect of death in the endless vacuum of space were not enough to contend with, male astronauts may return from deep space prone to erectile dysfunction, scientists say.

    In what is claimed to be the first study to assess the impact of galactic radiation and weightlessness on male sexual health, Nasa-funded researchers found that galactic cosmic rays, and to a lesser extent microgravity, can impair the function of erectile tissues, with effects lasting potentially for decades.

    Raising their concerns in a report on Wednesday, the US researchers said they had identified “a new health risk to consider with deep space exploration”. They called for the sexual health of astronauts to be closely monitored on their return from future deep space missions, noting that certain antioxidants may help to counteract the ill-effects by blocking harmful biological processes.

    I predict female astronauts will soon outnumber the male astronauts 3-1.

  7. 7.

    Baud

    There’s no bigger cult indicator than people who believe what the media tells them about prices over what they actually see themselves paying.

  9. 9.

    Baud

    @p.a.:

    We found that the Times and the Post shared significant overlap in their domestic politics coverage, offering little insight into policy. Both emphasized the horse race and campaign palace intrigue, stories that functioned more to entertain readers than to educate them on essential differences between political parties. The main point of contrast we found between the two papers was that, while the Post delved more into topics Democrats generally want to discuss—affirmative action, police reform, LGBTQ rights—the Times tended to focus on subjects important to Republicans—China, immigration, and crime.

    Fascinating.

    ETA:

    In the Times, Republican-favored topics accounted for thirty-seven articles, while Democratic topics accounted for just seven. In the Post, Republican topics were the focus of twenty articles and Democratic topics accounted for fifteen—a much more balanced showing. In the final days before the election, we noticed that the Times, in particular, hit a drumbeat of fear about the economy—the worries of voters, exploitation by companies, and anxieties related to the Federal Reserve—as well as crime. Data buried within articles occasionally refuted the fear-based premise of a piece. Still, by discussing how much people were concerned about inflation and crime—and reporting in those stories that Republicans benefited from a sense of alarm—the Times suggested that inflation and crime were historically bad (they were not) and that Republicans had solutions to offer (they did not).

  10. 10.

    John S.

    @Baud: This is very true. I knew this BS about turkey was circulating when a coworker asked me yesterday about prices here in WA. “I heard turkeys cost more than $100 there.”

    Uh, no. Back here on planet Earth (non-Fox News edition), our turkey cost a mere $.99/lb. For a grand total of $11.

  12. 12.

    Soprano2

    That turkey thing is super stupid because most people shop for themselves and they know what turkeys cost. The replies to that tweet are hilarious, people telling him how much turkeys at Aldi and Walmart cost.  Also the diesel price thing, again people know what it actually costs.

  13. 13.

    Phylllis

    While CBS evening news* has done a story or two on the price of T’day dinner, they have at least foregone the interviews with folks spending $200-$300+ with carts so stuffed they can barely push them, which always came across to me as a put-on. Like, damn dude, are you having the whole neighborhood over for dinner? Also, gas here in midlands SC is averaging $2.98 right now.

    *I know, can’t break my hubby of the habit.

  15. 15.

    Soprano2

    On another topic, does anyone have any idea why the stupidity at Open AI happened? The board’s explanation that they lost confidence that he was truthful with them sounds flaky to me in light of subsequent events. Upward of 95% of your workforce doesn’t threaten to quit if the person you fired is like that.

  16. 16.

    Soprano2

    @Phylllis: Gas dropped to $2.88/gal here yesterday. Just last week it was $2.57/gal, but then for some reason it jumped to $2.99/gal overnight last Thursday. Might have been a refinery thing.

  19. 19.

    Andrew Abshier

    What does a U.S. Senator need with a Ford F-250 Power Stroke Diesel?  Unless he has land and is using it for it’s intended purpose, it’s just toxic male posing.

  21. 21.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @MattF: The bottom line cost of space colonization rules it out for all intents and purposes. It’s great to ponder about the wonders of it in sci-fi novels and movies but the realities are pretty harsh.
    Maybe some day with groundbreaking advances in science and technology but until then it’s the stuff of dreams.​

  22. 22.

    japa21

    Apparently the cost of the average Thanksgiving dinner has dropped 5% from last year’s cost. Let’s Go Brandon.

  24. 24.

    BellyCat

    Don’t understand why diesel, which is less refined and relied upon by the construction, farming, and overland shipping industries, is so much more expensive than gasoline.

    My work truck, which tows a trailer, uses diesel and the last time I filled it up it was $1.00 more per gallon. The time before that, it was $1.50 more per gallon. To believe this does not hurt working people who rely on diesel vehicles is to ignore a real concern affecting many.

  26. 26.

    Starfish

    @Soprano2: There was a thing on Mastodon that explained it well.

    It seems worth reiterating that the chaos roiling the tech sector today appears to come down to a conflict between two factions: one that is happy to boil the oceans and smother the world in nonsense if by doing so they can make a buck, and another that believes they are building a literal robot god whose infinite power can only be constrained by the establishment of a completely unaccountable priesthood steeped in the ideology of their weird cult

    The board was full of TESCEREAL nuts.

    From Timnit Gebru’s Wikipedia:

    Gebru has used the acronym TESCREAL to criticize what she sees as a group of overlapping futurist philosophies: Transhumanism, Extropianism, Singularitarianism, Cosmism, Rationalism, Effective Altruism, and Longtermism. She considers this to be a right-leaning influence in Big Tech and compares proponents to “the eugenicists of the 20th century” in their production of harmful projects they portray as “benefiting humanity”.

    Now Sam Altman is back in charge of his company, and his board is going to consist of Larry Summers and a couple of others.

    But who knows, everything has been shifting on this for almost a week now, with Microsoft saying they would hire Altman, all of OpenAI threatening to quit, and all other AI-curious companies trying to throw jobs at the engineers.

  28. 28.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @BellyCat: ​
      Don’t understand why diesel, which is less refined and relied upon by the construction, farming, and overland shipping industries, is so much more expensive than gasoline.

    I suspect it has to do with low demand. It’s the only thing I can think of.

  29. 29.

    Starfish

    @BellyCat: I think taxes that cover road repair are rolled up into gas prices, and the big trucks that are much heavier than everything else may be paying more into that fund. But I am not sure how all states fund their road repairs. I know that we have a bunch of potholes as more consumers go electric and don’t pay the gas tax that goes into funding road repairs.

  32. 32.

    Soprano2

    @Starfish: So it sounds like he pushed back against a bunch of assholes who wanted to make money and fuck the consequences of it, and they fired him. I thought it might be something like that. A bunch of Sam Bankman-Fried types. ETA thanks for the info, I don’t hang out in those places but what the board said was the cause sounded like bullshit to me.

  34. 34.

    VOR

    @Soprano2: No idea what’s happening at OpenAI. The timeline is confusing and some of the decisions seem irrational. They had 3 CEOs in a 3 day span, for example.

    One factor is the influence of Microsoft, who owned 49% of the company after investing a reported $13B. Microsoft is basing a lot of new and future products on the OpenAI technology. Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella was blind-sided by Altman’s firing last Friday. He probably was not happy they chose to release the firing news before the stock market closed since Microsoft stock dropped about 5 points immediately. Despite their large stake, Microsoft apparently didn’t have a seat on the board so maybe that will change with the new board.

  35. 35.

    BellyCat

    @Baud: Good link. Thanks. The fact that diesel refining prices are (and have been) so much higher than gasoline is the mystery.

    My theory, welcome to being proven wrong, is that the Petro Industry has a captive market and is milking the shit out of it to the benefit of none but themselves.

  36. 36.

    schrodingers_cat

    @Baud: NYT used to be my homepage. I haven’t paid them a red cent since BUT HER EMAILZ campaign. I do subscribe to WashPost. I have access to free NYT and I seldom give their news stories any clicks (exception is when they cover India).

  38. 38.

    Soprano2

    @OzarkHillbilly: Google says taxes, regulations and the war in Ukraine, although the higher price of diesel far predates the war in Ukraine. Thing is, something changed because it used to be cheaper than gasoline.

  39. 39.

    CarolPW

    @BellyCat: ​
     Farm diesel is much cheaper than road diesel (it is not taxed since farm equipment almost never uses the roads gas taxes support).

  40. 40.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @Soprano2: ​ Speaking of SBF and his partners in crime:

    The attorney general Merrick Garland said at a press conference that the total of $4.3bn in fines Binance and Zhao had agreed to pay as part of guilty pleas was one the largest penalties the justice department had ever obtained from a criminal matter.

    According to Garland, Zhao had “willfully violated federal law that guards against money laundering and terrorist financing”. The Binance chief, he said, had entered a guilty plea in person on Tuesday in Seattle.

    “From the very beginning, Zhao and other Binance executives had engaged in a deliberate and calculated effort to profit from the US market without implementing the controls that are required by US law,” Garland said. The US attorney general identified millions in transactions from the US to Iranian users, users in Syria and Russian-occupied Ukraine, and terrorist groups including Isis.

    “Binance willfully enabled hundreds of millions of dollars in transactions between American users and users subject to US sanctions. Its platform accommodated criminals across the world who used Binance to move stolen funds and other criminal proceeds,” he added.

    Treasury secretary Janet Yellen said US financial regulators had been investigating Binance for more than three years and found that it had engaged in “consistent and egregious violations” of US law that “allowed illicit actors to transact freely” on the platform and “supporting activities from child sexual abuse, to illegal narcotics and terrorism across more than 100,000 transactions”.

    Yellen said Binance had posed risks “to the US financial system, US citizens and our country’s national security for too long”. And she had a message for the cryptocurrency industry: “Let me be clear, we’re also sending a message to the virtual currency industry more broadly – today and for the future, the virtual currency exchanges and financial technology firms wish to realize the tremendous benefits of being part of the US financial system they must play by the rules. If they do not, the US government will take action.”

    Is anybody surprised?

  42. 42.

    Starfish

    @Soprano2:

    That’s backwards. He is the asshole who wants to make a bunch of money, damn the consequences.

    And his board is afraid that the AI will become God, instead of worrying about real AI stuff like “AI is denying your medical bills at your healthcare company” or “AI is doing racist things again, and no one cares because they are not personally harmed by the racist things AI is doing.”

    Yes, @Baud is correct.

  43. 43.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Soprano2: Altman’s sister has accused him of sexually assaulting and molesting her when she was six years old and he was thirteen. It hasn’t gotten much coverage, but that’s the underlying issue. The rest is he wanted to move fast, break shit, and generate huge profit while the original and now largely replaced board wanted to move cautiously and be non-profit.

  46. 46.

    BellyCat

    @Soprano2:Thing is, something changed because it used to be cheaper than gasoline.

    This. See my theory at #35. ALL consumers ultimately eat this inflated cost whether they realize it or not. Not just the mall-pimping diesel Manly Mobiles.

  47. 47.

    Soprano2

    @Starfish: Ok, in reading what you posted I guess I misunderstood. It’s confusing for us normies out here. All I knew was the official reason sounded like bullshit to me, so I knew there had to be something else.

  49. 49.

    p.a.

    Europe  left-to-right petrol, diesel, lpg, per liter.   It’s formatting well before I hit *post*.  Fingers x’ed  ETA🤬  petrol, diesel, lpg, per liter top-to-bottom😂

     

    Estonia
    1.680
    1.586
    0.679

      Finland
    1.912
    1.996
    –

      France
    1.826
    1.808
    0.993

      Germany
    1.763
    1.750
    1.055

      Greece
    1.876
    1.727
    0.897

      Hungary
    1.551
    1.601
    0.839

      Iceland
    2.070
    2.109
    –

      Ireland
    1.827
    1.832
    –

      Italy
    1.822
    1.806
    0.728

      Latvia
    1.602
    1.606
    0.664

      Lithuania
    1.444
    1.444
    0.6

  51. 51.

    BellyCat

    @CarolPW: Not in Central PA, where farm diesel is “slightly” (maybe 5¢-10¢) cheaper. I watch the signs while driving out there VERY closely, trust me (and have been sorely tempted).

  53. 53.

    Starfish

    @Soprano2: OpenAI was a non-profit before it became interesting to everyone for having a better generative AI model than everyone else.

    Because of its origins, it had an independent board that unexpectedly fired Sam Altman. No one knew why Sam Altman was fired so they speculated that it was because he molested his sister and denied her, her inheritance. But all the board really said about why they fired Sam Altman was that he was not truthful with us.

    At that point, the CEO of Microsoft, a company which had invested a significant amount in OpenAI, said they were going to hire Sam Altman. Sometime around then, several people quit OpenAI and hundreds more signed a letter in support of Sam. That means, a lot of people were about to quit their jobs, and OpenAI would be gone.

    Other companies were trying to acquire OpenAI engineers. I think I saw something from the Salesforce CEO on LinkedIn offering them jobs.

  54. 54.

    OzarkHillbilly

    I am shocked, SHOCKED I tell you!

    Moms for Liberty outreach leader exposed as registered sex offender

    A Philadelphia-based outreach leader for Moms for Liberty – the conservative parental rights group that is pushing to exclude discussion of gender and diversity from school curricula – has been exposed as a registered sex offender.

    According to the Philadelphia Inquirer, Phillip Fisher Jr – a pastor and local Republican ward leader who volunteered at Moms for Liberty’s national summit in Philadelphia this year – pleaded guilty in 2012 to a charge of aggravated sexual abuse involving a 14-year-old boy when he was 25 and living in Chicago.

    Still not a drag queen.

  55. 55.

    Frank Wilhoit

    This past Saturday, viz. five days before the holiday itself, our local grocery ostentatiously — one had said, pleadingly — marked the turkeys down from $1.50/lb to $0.99/lb.

    Years ago, some friends of ours were adopted by a wild turkey who popped out of their woods one day and made himself at home.  They then got a domestic turkey to keep him company.  You have not lived until you have had your foot trodden upon by a thirty-pound turkey begging handouts at a cookout.  They don’t snap with their beaks, they just try to overwhelm you with their sheer physical presence.  I had to be careful not to let it tip me backwards in my chair.

  57. 57.

    sdhays

    @Starfish: No one knew why Sam Altman was fired so they speculated that it was because he molested his sister and denied her, her inheritance.

    Yikes.

  58. 58.

    Chief Oshkosh

    @Andrew Abshier:

    What does a U.S. Senator need with a Ford F-250 Power Stroke Diesel? Unless he has land and is using it for it’s intended purpose, it’s just toxic male posing.

    It’s likely both, in this case. Marky-whine is rich, OK land is cheap, so he probably owns lots of it. But he’s also a toxic male posing toxically.

  59. 59.

    Steeplejack

    Gas prices are down. My anecdatum: I paid $3.26 a gallon (for regular) last Saturday to gas up the doughty Kia here in pricey NoVA.

  61. 61.

    Chief Oshkosh

    @Baud: Being very old, I remember when diesel was always cheaper than gasoline, but I couldn’t remember when that changed. Turns out, that was back in 2004. The link you provided has lots of good stuff (thanks for helping me waste even more time this morning! :) ), including this nugget about 2004 and, even more interesting to me, WHY gasoline got cheaper than diesel:

    https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.php?id=9&t=9

  65. 65.

    Soprano2

    @Frank Wilhoit: My husband has a hilarious story about how he tried to catch a turkey that the local poobahs near his base in Vietnam had given them. I told him that to this day the NCO’s in the club he chased that turkey into tell the story about the drunken officer who cornered a turkey behind the bar and then proceeded to have the shit beaten out of him by it. He said the spurs on those things are deadly, and those turkeys are big.

  66. 66.

    comrade scotts agenda of rage

    @sdhays:

    Larry Summers. JFC.

    Exactly.  He’s lucky I’m not king or that the chances of The Revolution happening are slim to none.

  67. 67.

    Chief Oshkosh

    @OzarkHillbilly:

    Is anybody surprised?

    No.

    SATSQ and all, but I don’t think even a $3.4Bn fine will mean much to these guys. It’s just numbers on spreadsheets for them until a top dog does real prison time. Maybe SBF’s real time is what got the Binance guys to agree to paying the big fine (and we’ll see if they actually do), but I sure hope DOJ continues to pursue these people to the full extent of the law. So, congrats DOJ on the big score, please proceed! :)

  68. 68.

    p.a.

    “They” are lowering gas price so the pre-election rise will be more of a shock and put another finger on the scale in favor of the orange shitstain.

     

    They: KSA, RF, BigOil.

  72. 72.

    NotMax

    FYI (emphasis added).

    The Information reported some of the gruesome incidents that have occurred at the Gigafactory in Austin, Texas, where one out of every 21 workers were reportedly hurt in 2022. The data is derived from the required injury reports Tesla submits to OSHA.
    [snip]
    Tesla’s Gigafactory in Austin first opened in April 2022 and was built about two years after its announcement in 2020.… Source

  73. 73.

    Old School

    I paid $.90 per gallon for gas this past weekend.  I felt like a kid again.

    (Gas was $2.899 per gallon and I had supermarket fuel points that got me a $2/gallon discount.)

  74. 74.

    Old School

    @Steeplejack:

    The Rolling Stones have been a Rolling Stones tribute band for at least 20 years.

    Still put on a good show though.

    I recall the “Steel Wheels tour?  More like Steel Wheelchairs!”  The Stones are old jokes are almost ready for AARP membership themselves.

  75. 75.

    Ken

    @steppy: “Damnedest thing, the guy came in and slipped me a twenty to raise the pump price by a dollar a gallon. Then he took pictures while he filled up. Moron.”

  77. 77.

    Rusty

    @Chief Oshkosh: Diesel is subject to global pricing, it is used heavily elsewhere in the world and for heavy equipment and so there is more competition to buy it.  Gasoline is more regional, used more in the US than other places, and so gets a lower price.  That’s from a number of articles over the last couple of years about the price differences.  Given the price differential it really doesn’t make a lot of sense to buy a diesel vehicle for the fuel efficiency, you would be better to buy a hybrid.  You only need a diesel for when you need serious torque for towing.  Buying a diesel truck when you are not using it for a lot of towing is just dumb.

  80. 80.

    Trivia Man

    @Soprano2: I track this as part of my job. Anybody who wants to idly speculate about what the diesel cost  portion of trucking contributes to the trip cost, here’s some math!

    Currently about 50 cents a mile, paid to the trucking company, and that is a wash in the spend. Every time fuel  fluctuates about a nickel add or subtract a penny a mile. Trucks are getting approximately 8 mpg these days.

    Extra fun – that’s for every leg. Manufacture>> package>> big warehouse >> smaller warehouse >> final store for purchase. Each >> is another trip, more miles at 50 cents a mile.

  81. 81.

    NotMax

    Cans of Pringles at the closest supermarket are (no lie) $6.79. Stunned to see that yesterday while passing by that aisle.

    Somewhere in the neighborhood of $2.59 in town. Go figure.

    Needless to say I do not frequent the closest market. Oh, their in-house bakery sucks too, Trip yesterday was solely to get a small box of sugar. Not enough left in the larder for Turkey Day prep. ($2.29 for those playing at home.)

  83. 83.

    Trivia Man

    @Baud: They are not inflation adjusted. The Ukraine war price spike broke the record weekly jump (Katrina!) and hit record highs (Katrina again) but was about $1 below the flatiron adjusted high.

  85. 85.

    Ken

    @OzarkHillbilly: A lot of his claimed wealth is in the form of tokens, and he couldn’t get anything like the nominal value of them if he sold. This is a common thing in crypto — in fact, one of the things Binance is strongly suspected of, is facilitating the wash trading of tokens to drive up the “market” value.

  86. 86.

    catclub

    @BellyCat: Don’t understand why diesel, which is less refined… [costs more].

     

    I think a gallon of diesel has more energy in it than a gallon of gasoline, and also takes more gallons of crude oil to produce than a gallon of gasoline.

  88. 88.

    catclub

    @Soprano2: So it sounds like he pushed back against a bunch of assholes who wanted to make money and fuck the consequences of it,

     

    I think you have the facts exactly reversed.  The board is the board of a _non-profit_ which has a mandate to develop AI but also keep AI safe for humans… RATHER than a usual corporation which only maximizes profits.

  89. 89.

    Honus

    @MattF: and why is Mullin driving a 3/4 ton diesel pickup truck?  What exactly is a US Senator hauling in that thing?  I’d bet that a picture of the bed will show that it doesn’t have a scratch or dent on it.

  90. 90.

    matt

    It’s clear to me that Jason Chaffetz is holding Biden accountable for Jason Chaffetz’s expensive tastes. Leadership matters!

  92. 92.

    NotMax

    @Honus

    What exactly is a US Senator hauling in that thing?

    A passel of fire extinguishers. Need to constantly put out his pants.
    //

  93. 93.

    mrmoshpotato

    Chaffetz: We went to go buy a turkey today. It was $90! It’s all a choice by Joe Biden

    Keep fucking that chicken!

  96. 96.

    p.a.

    Check out wikipedia for the Mazda skyactiv-X engine, a gasoline engine that uses compression-ignition à la diesel (with some high-tech spark assist).  16:1 compression, company-claimed 15%-30% better fuel economy.  Technically viable soon.  Market viable, who knows!?

  97. 97.

    jonas

    @BellyCat: It used to be that diesel was less refined and cheaper, but I believe about 10-15 years ago, they started having to make this new, low sulfur (= lower S02 and particulate pollution) formulation that actually costs a bit more. OTOH, diesel engines remain more fuel efficient and cost a lot less to maintain per mile than gas vehicles, so you pay more up front, but also save quite a bit on the back end.

  99. 99.

    glc

    In France now, picked up my first Covid case – undoubtedly JN.1, so I will be sitting tight for a bit. Made a nice bright red positive in an Abbott test.

    I did a quick telehealth for a paxlovid prescription picked up at the local pharmacy. I’ve spent about 50Euros so far (includes 30 on a telehealth conference on a site called Feeli for a quick prescription, with less than 2 hour wait time). Probably reimbursable at home but being uninsured medically in France seems only marginally more expensive than having good insurance in the U.S., on the whole.   (Personally, I’ll probably get any costs encountered reimbursed eventually; this is purely a theoretical comparison.)

    No particularly obvious sources – after the fact I recall a very nice couple who came over and chatted for a few minutes about some sheet music I was looking at, as my most extended contact. It didn’t even occur to me to put my mask back on.  Anyway as they say, it’s around and about, and highly contagious, and coming shortly to a theater near you.

    Stay alert. (Do as I say, not as I do.)

  100. 100.

    OzarkHillbilly

    Still not a Democrat:

    Iowa woman guilty of stuffing ballot box in husband’s Congress nomination race

    The wife of a north-western Iowa county supervisor was convicted on Tuesday of a scheme to stuff the ballot box in her husband’s unsuccessful race for a Republican nomination to run for Congress in 2020.

    The Sioux City Journal reports that jurors deliberated six hours before finding Kim Taylor guilty of 26 counts of providing false information in registering and voting, three counts of fraudulent registration and 23 counts of fraudulent voting.

    Prosecutors said Taylor, a Vietnam native, approached numerous voters of Vietnamese heritage with limited English comprehension and filled out and signed election forms and ballots on behalf of them and their English-speaking children.

    They said the scheme was designed to help her husband, Jeremy Taylor, a former Iowa house member, who finished a distant third in the race for the Republican nomination to run for Iowa’s fourth district congressional seat. Despite that loss, he ultimately won election to the Woodbury county board of supervisors that fall.

    No one testified to seeing Kim Taylor personally sign any of the documents, but her presence in each voter’s home when the forms were filled out was the common thread through the case.

    Jeremy Taylor, who met his wife while teaching in Vietnam, has not been charged, but has been named as an unindicted co-conspirator. The case remains under investigation. The assistant US attorney Ron Timmons, one of three prosecutors who presented the federal government’s case, said he couldn’t comment on any potential future indictments.

    And yes, some DEMs have engaged in such fraud, but it is rather striking how often GOPs are getting caught in it of late.

  101. 101.

    jonas

    @Andrew Abshier: Yeah, if he’s not hauling a four-horse trailer or a major piece of earthmoving equipment with that thing for work, he’s just being a douchebag poseur with compensation issues.

  102. 102.

    mrmoshpotato

    I wish turkeys could trample these shitsains to death while gobbling, “LEAVE US OUT OF YOUR CULTURAL WAR BULLSHIT, YOU SHITSTAIN CHICKEN FUCKERS!”

  106. 106.

    mrmoshpotato

    MarkWayne Mullin is caught between his need to signal his MANHOOD to every passer-by, and his state’s atypically high gas prices…

    Or is he caught between picking a first name?

    Hell, Bubba Bo Bob Brain had enough sense to not be such an assclown.

  108. 108.

    Searcher

    I technically paid about $16/lb for my Thanksgiving turkey this year, but that’s because I bought it from a 4-H fair auction.

    (I did 4-H as a kid, so I like to participate by bidding in the livestock auctions, and occasionally actually buying an animal.  [The county extension office always tries to win the first round on any kid’s first animal, so it’s great fun to help bid up on those rounds knowing you’re probably safe from having to pay for it.])

  110. 110.

    Ruckus

    @Baud:

    Diesel costs more likely because a lot of the cost usefulness of diesel is hidden in it’s heaviest usage, semi trucks and diesel locomotives, the major way everything is shipped/distributed in this country, and likely in most others as well. Most of us don’t experience the diesel cost directly. And when I do have to travel across LA I mostly use the electric commuter train. A 45 mile trip costs me $.35 while a 25 mile trip in the diesel/electric commuter train costs me $2.75 – each way. And both are cheaper than driving – gas is $4.50-4.80 gal around me here in SoCal.

  113. 113.

    citizen dave

    @glc: Thanks for sharing–hope it passes lightly and quickly.  I got my covid vaccine and flu shot a few weeks ago, but for some reason my wife is unvaxxed and un-flu-shotted this season so far.

    Related to the fuel discussion, this recent article that there are around 280 million E-bikes, scooters, etc., vs 20 Million EVs in the world, and the former group displace oil demand at a 4X rate than the EVs are at the moment.  The 2 and 3 wheelers are displacing around 1% of worldwide oil demand daily, 1 million barrels per day.  https://arstechnica.com/cars/2023/11/280-million-e-bikes-are-slashing-oil-demand-far-more-than-electric-vehicles/

  114. 114.

    jonas

    @Baud:I wish turkeys could fly.

    Wild turkeys can, at least for short distances. It’s pretty insane to see one. They’re huge birds and it takes you a second to register what it is.

  116. 116.

    jonas

    We forked over about $5/lb for a locally-raised, free-range bird this year, but the conventionally-raised turkeys at the nearby supermarket are on sale for $.99/lb. I think Aldi has them even cheaper. You can put on a perfectly nice Thanksgiving dinner with turkey, stuffing, and a couple of vegetable sides for 4-6 people for less than $100 this year, I bet.

  117. 117.

    Dave

    @Adam L Silverman: I had this one; gotta love the 90’s EXTREME spikes, leather, and edge. Definitely wouldn’t be a try hard.

    Also she had to put up with Reed so really can’t blame her.

  118. 118.

    Old School

    @mrmoshpotato:

    Or is he caught between picking a first name?

    Someone – I think it was Leslie Jones when she was hosting The Daily Show – joked that MarkWayne’s name came from:

    Nurse: “What’s the baby’s name going to be?”

    Mom: “I can’t think now.  Ask the father.”

    Boyfriend: “Mark.”

    His best friend: “Wayne.”

  120. 120.

    Matt McIrvin

    @NotMax: Yeah, my wife’s family had brand loyalty to diesel Volkswagens for ages–loved the high gas mileage. Of course the company was lying about emissions too, so it seemed kind of green.

    According to the government, the difference comes from a combination of supply/demand fluctuations and the different tax treatment. Demand for diesel seems to be less elastic than demand for gasoline, worldwide.

  121. 121.

    Miss Bianca

    Ugh. Flu shot yesterday, lethargy today. But this one doesn’t seem as bad as some in years past. I’ll take it. I wish I hadn’t had to do it right before Thanksgiving when I’m cooking (an EXPENSIVE turkey from Natural Grocer – what can I say, they caught me at a weak moment). I also wish the clinic gave shots on Fridays, but nooo…

    Anyway, think I’m feeling well enough to peruse TaMara’s post from a few days ago on spatchcocked turkey with bourbon-maple glaze – I may have to sally forth for a few ingredients later in the day.

  122. 122.

    jonas

    @Soprano2: So it sounds like he pushed back against a bunch of assholes who wanted to make money and fuck the consequences of it, and they fired him.

    What I’ve read suggests it was the other way around — the board thought Altman was getting out over his skis wanting to monetize AI in reckless ways. Now that they’ve lost, I guess we’ll see if he’s going to turn into another Musk-esque supervillain.

  126. 126.

    Mike in NC

    Thanksgiving at Mar-A-Lago: burnt turkey breast smothered in ketchup, obscenely priced for the loser guests. Just the way Fat Bastard enjoys it.

  127. 127.

    Geminid

    @steppy: Yes, it’s the 15% ethanol blend. That’s supposed to be suitable for vehicles built since 2001, so I could use it, but I hardly ever go by a Sheetz these days.

    I had the price wrong; it’s $1.99 a gallon.

  128. 128.

    mrmoshpotato

    @NotMax: I don’t know if you’re joking – and that’s fucked up.  And John McCain can go fuck himself – and bomb bomb bomb, bomb bomb himself.

  129. 129.

    narya

    @jonas: They’re also quite tasty, though the cooking is quite different than for domesticated birds. Basically, you can eat the breast/tenders–the meat is much more dense than poultry typically is. You cannot eat the legs/thighs as you would with other poultry, though; too many tendons and gristly bits. However, you can stick the legs/thighs/wings in a slow cooker with some red wine (for the acidity) and water, and then shred the meat from the aforementioned icky bits. The shredded meat is great for stews, tacos, posole, etc., and you also end up with stock.

  131. 131.

    mrmoshpotato

    @Mike in NC:

    Thanksgiving at Mar-A-Lago: burnt turkey breast smothered in ketchup, obscenely priced for the loser guests. Just the way Fat Bastard enjoys it.

    Thanksgiving at Mar-A-Lago: burnt CHARRED TO A CRISP turkey breast (and drier than that whore’s…) smothered in ketchup, obscenely priced for the loser guests. Just the way Fat Bastard enjoys it.

    Fixed.

  132. 132.

    Ruckus

    @jonas:

    The number of polished and waxed full sized pickups around here in  SoCal is amazing. I’d bet good money that most of them are empty and used for commuting and don’t have any of those bed scratches.

  133. 133.

    rikyrah

    @Baud:

    We found that the Times and the Post shared significant overlap in their domestic politics coverage, offering little insight into policy. Both emphasized the horse race and campaign palace intrigue, stories that functioned more to entertain readers than to educate them on essential differences between political parties. The main point of contrast we found between the two papers was that, while the Post delved more into topics Democrats generally want to discuss—affirmative action, police reform, LGBTQ rights—the Times tended to focus on subjects important to Republicans—China, immigration, and crime.

     

    Uh huh

    Uh huh

     

    Horrible political coverage…we knew that.

  134. 134.

    Matt McIrvin

    Seems to me like modern hybrid vehicles are bumping up against fundamental limits for how efficient an internal-combustion-engine powered vehicle can be without sacrificing on features, and maybe they can squeeze a bit more out of that by improving the engine or the hybrid drivetrain but it’s not going to be a huge difference. To go beyond that you either start paring the car down, or, more likely, switch to some mode of transport that doesn’t burn fossil fuel (EVs, e-bikes, public transit).

    But that’s about personal transportation. The considerations are different for freight, which is less inefficient to begin with.

  135. 135.

    jonas

    @narya: A couple of years ago, we bought an “heirloom” turkey from a local farm. Looking at the guy’s flock, I couldn’t really tell them apart from wild birds. It doesn’t occur to me that we’ll have to adjust our cooking technique, though. So we pick up the dressed turkey a day or two before Thanksgiving, take it home, season it up, and throw it in the oven. Big mistake. Like you said, the breast meat is really the only edible part. The legs and wings turned into pure jerky.

  138. 138.

    Geminid

    @Matt McIrvin: A number of companies such as Cummins Engines and Bosch are developing hydrogen fuel cell-powered Class 8 tractors, the kind that pull semi-trailers. A few of these trucks are starting to show up on US roads, but they are more common in Europe.

    The EU is leaning into hydrogen as a component of their planned carbon-neutral energy economy, mainly for heavy transport and industries like steel production. The International Energy Agency’s projection for the year 2050 assigns hydrogen an 18% share of the future global energy mix.

  139. 139.

    Ceci n est pas mon nym

    @jonas: Some years ago I was briefly curious about heirloom turkeys, after hearing a talk by author Barbara Kingsolver. Her family was raising them.

    Those really were $100 turkeys.

    I didn’t pursue it. Bought the usual bird.

  141. 141.

    trollhattan

    @Ceci n est pas mon nym:

    We have a touristy area in the foothills and the cut-your-own tree places are advertising “Starting at $95.”

    It WILL be fresh, so there’s that. Don’t get sap on the top of your Suburban.

  142. 142.

    Chris Johnson

    @Adam L Silverman: This is one where I turned out to be the one adjacent to the field, so I can explain a bit more than that. I got Hacker News real mad at me for this speculation ;)

    I still have seen nothing to contradict my take: Altman’s Basilisk.

    Like Rosko’s Basilisk, it’s not of the nature of AI, it’s of the nature of human beings.

    The idea is that Altman was training an AI Altman to counsel him, sharing his stated beliefs. Translated to AGI, that means training a paranoid superintelligence with a persecution complex and the belief that the first superintelligent AI will conquer the world and rule everything. The board got wind and FREAKED OUT.

    And then they discovered it was all nothing. A glorified ChatGPT4 that, rather than being coaxed to act reassuring, had been coaxed to act creepy. No evil superbrain at all. Nothing to see.

    So either they were justified… because they were sitting on an evil supercomputer, and they were the baddies, and were responsible for the direction the training had taken… or they looked like clowns because they believed their own hype and had legally endangered their company by their panicky firing and frantic damage control.

    And all the while, it’d be over one of the boogeymen of AGI: the evil superintelligence being trained to take over the world. So, whether they were justified or they were panicking and acting like fools, they still could not explain why they did what they did. Shame, and guilt, and the suspicion that even if the bad end didn’t turn up this time… who’s to say what will happen next time someone diverts a bunch of compute resources and tries to create HAL-9000?

    Altman’s Basilisk. If you believe it’s so zero-sum that the first one to AGI and superintelligence will rule or destroy the world, you will intentionally try to produce an intelligence that does just that… even if that isn’t really very intelligent behavior at all.

    The thing is, we know full well that Altman has these beliefs, and they’re consistent with his reported upbringing that you mentioned: damaged people will be more likely to see the world in such a way that they’re battling monsters. I don’t believe for a second that any such Frankenstein monster was created, but I’m pretty sure it explains why such a trainwreck occurred. Those who fired Altman thought he was trying to create an AI monster and had to wrest it from his control immediately, damn the consequences. And ended up with egg on their faces, and now the whole power balance has shifted enormously in favor of the creating of just such a monster.

  143. 143.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Geminid: I’ve always been super skeptical about hydrogen as a fuel for personal cars, but for heavy transport it might make more sense.

  145. 145.

    Matt McIrvin

    @NotMax: Electric cars have their disadvantages but at least you CAN in principle charge them up at home. A technology that requires a whole new filling-station infrastructure to be rolled out worldwide doesn’t seem promising for personal vehicles.

  146. 146.

    wjca

    @Baud: Diesel appears to always have cost more than gasoline, and prices have also come down recently along the same track.

    Only if, by “always” you mean “this century”.  Before that, diesel was routinely cheaper.  Significantly cheaper.

  147. 147.

    Another Scott

    @BellyCat: Diesel used to be cheaper than regular.  That was one of the reasons why I bought my previous car (2004 VW Jetta TDI wagon.  I got 42-44 MPG commuting with it, and 50 MPG on the highway if I was gentle.).  The price went up when they were required to refine it more to get out the sulfur.  And stayed up after that (being as expensive or more expensive than premium).

    Diesel releases about 13% more CO2 per gallon than gasoline, so unless you’re getting 13% better mileage than a comparable vehicle, then you’re making things worse for the atmosphere.  And that is before you get to the increased NOx (smog) and particulates.  Hybrids and electrics and air pollution concerns killed the argument for diesels for most new cars and light-duty trucks.

    My present car is a 2023 Kia Niro PHEV.  I get close to 40 miles out of a charge (rated at 31 miles) in the spring/summer (lower in the fall winter) and 50 MPG in hybrid-only mode.  It’s perfect for my commute (about 98% electric) and lets me take normal trips without having to carry around 0.5-1 ton of batteries (the Niro PHEV battery weighs 220 pounds).

    Diesel’s day has come and gone for non-heavy-duty trucks, buses, etc.  (And hybrid / electric / alternative fuel buses have been a thing for a while now.)  Few people should be driving diesels now…

    [/TMI]

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  148. 148.

    RevRick

    @OzarkHillbilly: There are 19-20 gallons of gasoline in a barrel of oil, 10-12 gallons of diesel in a barrel, and 4 gallons of kerosene/jet fuel in a barrel, which is 42 gallons of crude. We ship diesel to Europe where demand is high and import gasoline from them. The price reflects yield per barrel and worldwide demand.

  150. 150.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Another Scott: Several years ago Volkswagen released this limited-edition hybrid diesel thing that got, like, 200 mpg. And I recall it getting buzz among New Agey people who said it proved that all the 100-mpg carburetor conspiracy stories were true, because, look, they could have done this all along!

    Nope. Read the story and you realize that this vehicle is an interesting intellectual exercise but it’s been pared to the bone to maximize fuel efficiency at the expense of absolutely everything else. It was an ultra-lightweight two-seater that had no accessories and no cargo hauling capacity and hardly any power. I don’t think it was street-legal in most of the US.

  152. 152.

    trollhattan

    @RevRick: ​
    True, and to that end European refineries are designed around producing diesel while ours are prioritized to gasoline.

    Something else that occurred several years back was the elimination of high-sulfur crude as refinery stock because the resulting high-sulfur gas and diesel would poison the emission controls (O2 sensors and catalytic converters for gasoline, NOX and particulate controls for diesel), raising production costs.

    California has the extra hurdle of summer/winter formulations, also for emissions reasons.

    We can’t go all-EV soon enough.

  153. 153.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Another Scott: Yeah. My Sonata hybrid (not a plug-in) gets maybe 52 MPG under regular use in the summer and more like 46 in the winter, and that doesn’t sound that much better than a conventional diesel Jetta except that really it is, considering both price and emissions.

    (The worst was during a super-rare arctic cold snap last winter during which it briefly got down to about 15 below zero Fahrenheit; the car started and ran fine under those conditions, but MPG dropped to the twenties, basically the efficiency of the non-hybrid Sonata.)

    I could have done better than that just by buying a smaller car–a lot of hybrid compacts get 60+ MPG these days. But my work commute is actually mostly by bus or by WFH these days; I bought the car as the high-efficiency family cruiser.

  154. 154.

    Another Scott

    @Matt McIrvin:

    I think you’re thinking of the XL1. They made 250 of them, but only sold 200 to the public in Europe..

    Rated at 260 mpg.

    In February 2012, Volkswagen confirmed that it would build a limited series of XL1s starting in 2013.[19] The production version of the plug-in diesel-electric hybrid was unveiled at the 2013 Geneva Motor Show.[20]

    As with the 2011 concept XL1, it is powered by an 800 cm3 two-cylinder diesel engine with 35 kW (47 hp) and a 20 kW (27 hp) electric motor. The combined power output is 51 kW (68 hp) and torque is 140 N⋅m (100 lb⋅ft).[21] Power is delivered to the rear wheels through a seven-speed dual-clutch gearbox. The wheels are fitted with low rolling resistance tyres sized 115/80 R15 (front) and 145/55 R16 (rear).[22] The drag coefficient has increased slightly from 0.186 to 0.189.[23] The production version delivers an all-electric range of 50 km (31 mi),[20][21] in addition to a 10-litre fuel tank[23] which allows for over 400 km (250 mi) of real-life driving until the car needs to be refueled.[23]

    It was an interesting, and impractical, engineering exercise. And, given VW’s behavior in Dieselgate, probably wouldn’t have gotten that mileage if it was tuned to pass EPA emissions standards.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  155. 155.

    Bill Arnold

    @jonas:

    Wild turkeys can, at least for short distances. It’s pretty insane to see one.

    I once watched a flock of over 50 wild turkeys take off about a kilometer away and fly over my house and land near the road.
    (I counted, and the count was well over 50.)
    They are loud flyers, and not just at takeoff; the wing noises when gliding are noisy.
    Regularly get occasional smaller flocks landing close to the house.
    Favorite, though, is the multi-hen families, the youngsters being shepherded (?what is the verb?) by the hens. The movements resemble the movements of groups of combat soldiers, with a focus on keep behind cover whenever possible.

  156. 156.

    Barbara

    Joe Biden brought Thanksgiving prices down so much, republicans are now soy boys who spend 5 times the average person just to complain.

    Except that they didn’t become soy boys just to complain — they were always soy boys.  At least the DC types are.  The CPAC guy Schlapp who is combating allegations of hitting on aides put out a tweet a couple of years ago about how bad Biden was because his dishwasher had broken and the new one would not be available for more than a year.  Helpful people noted that Home Depot had 300 dishwasher models in stock that could be delivered within a few days — but of course, he was almost certainly talking about one of the high end suppliers like Thermidor, which have had unusually difficult supply chain issues.

    They are as soft as anyone they whine about, usually softer.

  157. 157.

    RevRick

    @Matt McIrvin: The main problem with hydrogen is that because the molecule is so small, it invades every pore, thus making metals and gaskets, and the like brittle. The second problem is that it only delivers 1/6th the energy density of gasoline.

    The average American BTW consumes about 21 barrels of crude oil per year. The energy output of this consumption is equal to owning about 600 slaves.

  158. 158.

    Geminid

    @Matt McIrvin: You ought to check out the topic “hydrogen power” some time. There is a lot happening in this field both in production methods and applications.

  159. 159.

    Another Scott

    @RevRick: Hydrogen also has the potential to make greenhouse warming worse via changing the chemistry of the atmosphere.

    Nature (from June 2023):

    Abstract

    With increasing global interest in molecular hydrogen to replace fossil fuels, more attention is being paid to potential leakages of hydrogen into the atmosphere and its environmental consequences. Hydrogen is not directly a greenhouse gas, but its chemical reactions change the abundances of the greenhouse gases methane, ozone, and stratospheric water vapor, as well as aerosols. Here, we use a model ensemble of five global atmospheric chemistry models to estimate the 100-year time-horizon Global Warming Potential (GWP100) of hydrogen. We estimate a hydrogen GWP100 of 11.6 ± 2.8 (one standard deviation). The uncertainty range covers soil uptake, photochemical production of hydrogen, the lifetimes of hydrogen and methane, and the hydroxyl radical feedback on methane and hydrogen. The hydrogen-induced changes are robust across the different models. It will be important to keep hydrogen leakages at a minimum to accomplish the benefits of switching to a hydrogen economy.

    As you say, hydrogen is a tiny molecule, so preventing leaks is a problem, especially if one wants to dramatically scale-up production, distribution, etc…

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  161. 161.

    Geminid

    @Matt McIrvin: Yes, hydrogen is unlikely to power many future personal vehicles. Its main use in transport will be for heavier trucks and buses, and possibly aircraft. vehicles

    As far as distribution goes, one part of the Infrastructure bill will fund seven regional “hydrogen hubs” to ramp up production and distribution. The Department of Energy just awarded the bids for all seven and there a lot of current reporting on this.

    I think we’ll get a good idea of the suitability of hydrogen power generally in the latter half of this decade.

  162. 162.

    Paul in KY

    @Phylllis: Back when I was in USAF, at Homestead AFB, occasionally when I was at comissary would see these retirees who must have come in to do their Annual grocery shopping. 20 carts completely filled with stuff. Overloaded each cart.

  164. 164.

    Paul in KY

    @BellyCat: There’s an enormous market for diesel. Much of the rest of world uses it much more than we do (and our trucks use the crap out of it).

  165. 165.

    JaneE

    An “ordinary” turkey at the same store with the same weight would have been about $13 something.

    He is apparently willing and able to spend over $100 for antibiotic-free, vegetarian fed, organic and a few more buzzword practices which probably affect the taste of the bird less than they reflect the values of  the eater of the bird.  If grandma has the same environmental values and the cash to put her money where her mouth is, she also knows that spending more for a bird that reflects her concerns is a choice.  Biden and inflation are not the ones forcing her to spend that extra $100.

  167. 167.

    RevRick

    @Another Scott: We keep looking for some magical energy solution that will allow us to preserve our middle class lifestyle, built around sprawling suburbs. But every solution brings its own unique complexity and cost.
    We may be facing not a problem, but a predicament.

  168. 168.

    Another Scott

    @RevRick: Yup.

    I’ve mentioned before that my MIL lived in a boarding house in DC in 1941.  Suburbs weren’t really a thing yet.  It wasn’t that long ago.

    We, as Americans, and as modern humans, don’t have to live the way we do now.  We haven’t always lived this way.  There’s nothing that says that we live in the best possible world now…

    There are huge advantages to cities, and city life and infrastructure can be improved from where we are now.  We need to think better and bigger.  Burning ancient complex hydrocarbons, or burning anything really, isn’t essential any more.  PVs, wind, fuel cells, etc., can give us the electric power we need to do an awful lot of stuff.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  169. 169.

    RevRick

    @mrmoshpotato: 59 cents? You was robbed! Here in the Philly region several store chains have deals where if you spend $400 in November at their store, they’ll give you a free turkey or ham. Which is how we acquired ours.

  172. 172.

    Geminid

    @RevRick: Evidently those rubes over in the EU have have fallen for this “magical solution.” But they don’t think it’s magical, just a useful part of their clean enetgy transition.

  173. 173.

    Chris T.

    @John S.:

    I knew this BS about turkey was circulating when a coworker asked me yesterday about prices here in WA. “I heard turkeys cost more than $100 there.”

    You should tell them: “No, they’re $1 million a pound. But we can all afford it because Amazon pay starts at $500k/hour.”

  174. 174.

    Chris T.

    @BellyCat:

    Don’t understand why diesel, which is less refined and relied upon by the construction, farming, and overland shipping industries, is so much more expensive than gasoline.

    Prices are not determined by costs. They’re determined by “what the market will bear”. If the market meets the conditions for a “free market” with “elastic supply and demand”, which is a pretty damned big “if”, “the market” will, through supply-and-demand, equalize (or “clear” in economic terms) at just above the cost. Neither petrol nor diesel markets are “free” in economic terms.

    Basically diesel is priced like it is because they can get away with it.

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