TODAY IS 24 OCTOBER 2021

Can't complain much about today. Humanity and Planet Earth seem safe from any kind of world war or imminent disaster. Only 68 days left in 2021. Back in history, October 24 in 1929 was a Black Thursday, when the American stock market crashed. By 1932 the market had dropped by 73%. The equivalent would be the Dow Jones, currently at 35,677, falling to 9,833.

My fantasy baseball season is over, for I primarily had players from the Los Angeles Dodgers playing the Boston Red Sox in the World Series. Instead, the Atlanta Braves will go to the Houston Astros for Game 1 on Tuesday. My fantasy regular teams did okay in 8-team leagues: first, two seconds and a third. Fantasy NFL not doing well. Not playing fantasy NBA. NCAA basketball begins on November 9. Remember, Saturday night of November 6 is when daylight savings time ends.

When I lived in DC, the Sunday Washington Post was an event. Now and then, I added the Sunday New York Times. Here is what the NYT said this morning:

The U.S. has suffered through five coronavirus pandemic waves. Experts are not predicting much of a next wave this winter. Here is the article you can read. Great graphics!
President Joe Biden's $3.5 trillion 10-year spending bill with all the wishes of liberal Democrats for social welfare and the environment will be pared down to $1.9 trillion. Forget about free community college, free dental, free vision/hearing coverage and high penalties for environmental polluters. This is the one supposedly being snuck through using reconciliation, where only a Democratic majority is needed. While Arizona Senator Krysten Sinema has been a hindrance, it is Senator Joe Manchin who has been effective in whittling down this package.

There is still that other $1.2 trillion Bipartisan Infrastructure Framework that has passed the Senate. The House is holding back to insure that the larger wish list bill passes first. Both will get through sometime this month or next, but not at the original $4.7 trillion total level.

Around 80,000 Afghan refugees were evacuated. 23,000 or so are being housed at seven military bases in the U.S. The rest are being processed at 14 staging bases throughout the Middle East and Europe, with Kosovo handling the most.

Here are a few more items I can now delete from my desktop. I'll start with why there is a bite on the Apple logo. Has to do with byte and Adam&Eve.

Next, the future of Amazon. You think, maybe, workers will be eliminated? There are no unions in their U.S. facilities.

Did you know?

Some entertainment from Britain's Got Talent:

Click on this to learn who won the competition this year. They apparently allow more cleavage in the UK. Whoops, that was five years ago, for Simon looked a lot younger, and it was one hour and 42 minutes long. The winner in 2020 was a comedic pianist, John Courtenay, and here is his journey. Only 16 minutes. The pandemic cancelled this series in 2021. Will return next year.

HONOLULU TO SEATTLE

The story of the day is Hurricane Milton, now a Category 4 at 145 MPH, with a track that has moved further south and the eye projected to make landfall just south of Sarasota. Good news for Tampa, which is 73 miles north. Milton will crash into Florida as a Category 4, and is huge, so a lot of problems can still be expected in Tampa Bay with storm surge. If the eye had crossed into the state just north of Tampa, the damage would have been catastrophic. Milton is a fast-moving storm, currently at 17 MPH, so as bad as the rainfall will be over Florida, again, a blessing. The eye will make landfall around 10PM EDT today, and will move into the Atlantic Ocean north of Palm Bay Thursday morning. My first trip to Seattle was in June of 1962 just after I graduated from Stanford University. Caught a bus. Was called the Century 21 Exposition . Also the Seattle World's Fair. 10 million joined me on a six-month run. My first. These a...

WHY YOU SHOULD CONVERT TO A JAPANESE HIGH TECH TOILET

Did you know that Oktoberfest in Germany is mostly in September? The very first day of Oktoberfest 2021 was supposed to be today, September 18, extending into October 3. Well, as in 2020, Oktoberfest was cancelled. So why is it called by that month when it is held mostly in September? The first celebration in 1810 was in October. Did you also know that Oktoberfest is held only in Munich? These days seven million drink more than a liter ( about three typical cans ) of beer each, costing around $11. Except for my wife and I when we followed the crowd to board the S-Bahn to the fairgrounds near Old Town. It was drizzling a bit. We bought a large pretzel outside of a typical barn where beer is served. We did not know that you needed to get this inside the hall. So no one came to serve us beer. After a while we decided to have lunch, and the restaurant we settled on only served wine. Thus, we might have been the ...

THE FIRST 84 YEARS OF MY LIFE

The first half of my life was spent preparing myself for my final 42 years. This was a mostly trying and stressful period involving a less than ideal youth, then struggles to get through school, my first few jobs and accompanying life, ending two months later on a Sunday with Part 15E , so it was a spiritual conclusion to my final transition. I never did count the number of actual postings, but I suspect it was around 25 parts. The ending had to do with golf, the disappearance and re-appearance of an 8-iron cover. That was the final clue to whether the beyond after death would be eternal gloom or Heaven. Today, I provide only one transition, but hint about a final one, for this, after all, is Sunday. I'm 84 years old, so let me summarize what happened during the first phase, from 0-42, and follow with the years 42-84. As this is 2024, that key transition year was 1982. I can't seem to find this photo, but as a one-year old baby, I was fat....

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