Thoughts On A Sunday

What a difference a day makes!

Yesterday was hot and humid, 88ºF and a 71ºF dew point, with afternoon showers and thundershowers.

Today has been more normal with temps in the 70’s and low humidity. The windows are open, the A/C is off, and there are no chances of precipitation over the next few days. I plan to make use of the weather and get out on the lake after work the next few days. With the weather we’ve been experiencing over the past two months, heading out onto the lake has been a non-starter as being out there during the rain or shower or thunderstorm is not a good idea. It is also not a good idea to be out on the lake on the few weekends when the weather was good because of all the Cap’n Boneheads out on the lake. Having to be hypervigilant all the time is tiring and under those circumstances boating is not an enjoyable experience.

One upside to all of the wet weather despite the high temps and humidity has been that no one is talking about drought.

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As I mentioned in my post yesterday, I had thought about delving into the health problems linked to use of the mRNA Covid vaccines. Imagine my surprise when I see PJ Media beat me to it, though their post focuses primarily on what is being called “turbo cancers” rather than premature ovarian failure incidents I had come across.

I’m old enough to remember when the worst thing we had to worry about with mRNA vaccines was blood clots and myocarditis. Sadly, there’s a new concern with the mRNA COVID-19 vaccines: cancer.

According to a report, experts have observed a surge in cancer cases in people under 50, and it appears to exhibit distinct biological characteristics compared to cancers typically seen in older age groups.

While some experts believe that cancer rates have been increasing over the years due to factors such as lifestyle and diet, others believe the administration of mRNA COVID-19 vaccines may have led to the emergence of what they call “turbo cancers.”

There is no official medical definition for the term “turbo cancer,” but it is commonly used in reference to aggressive, rapidly developing cancers that show resistance to standard treatments. Turbo cancers particularly affect young and otherwise healthy individuals who have received a COVID-19 vaccination. It presents late, at an advanced stage, and quickly becomes fatal. (Emphasis mine.)

It should come as no surprise that regulatory agencies in the United States have yet to address this issue.

Ironically, these cancers are being blamed on “missed screenings”, but how many young people are routinely screened for cancer? In general, none. Only those with a predilection for cancer such as those who previously had cancer are routinely screened.

Another concerning thing is that this is not just being seen in the US, but worldwide.

As expected, the government and public health officials are telling us “Nothing to see here! Move along! Move along!”

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Another fallout from Covid – E-mails showing Fauci knew masks were ineffective against something like Covid but pushed their mandatory use anyway.

Former Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Anthony Fauci knew as early as October 2020 that masking was ineffective at preventing the transmission of Covid-19 after he read a Federalist article about it, emails obtained by the Functional Government Initiative (FGI) and shared with The Federalist reveal.

Despite showing awareness of a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) study — which showed a majority of Covid patients in the study became ill despite always wearing face coverings — and The Federalist’s reporting on it, Fauci published a paper weeks after the story that made no mention of masks’ shortcomings. In fact, for two more years, Fauci demanded universal masking and encouraged mandates requiring face coverings despite their uselessness.

Yet another thing to pin on Fauci.

How many deaths related to Covid are we going to be to lay at Fauci’s feet? If it wasn’t the untested vaccines, it was the lockdowns, the misguided ‘quarantines’, and knowingly misleading the public about the efficacy of masks, said masks causing problems of their own.

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How does one define irony? We’ll let Greenpeace Co-Founder Dr. Patrick Moore explain:

The reason the oil & gas companies are rolling in $$ is the Net-Zero fantasy that has restricted fossil fuels and made a windfall for the fossil fuel companies, all at our expense, due to Greenhouse etc. policies. Wake up citizens, you’ve been conned.

— Patrick Moore (@EcoSenseNow) July 27, 2023

And so it goes.

Moore is a big proponent of nuclear power, seeing it as one way to ensure carbon-free power in abundance while keeping the footprints of the power generation systems to a minimum. Wind and solar take up a lot land, causing the destruction of ecosystems that would have been better left alone and allowed it to continue sinking carbon from the atmosphere.

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And that’s the news from Lake Winnipesaukee, where the weather has approved, people are out boating again, and where I don’t care if it’s going to be Monday again because I’m taking the day off.

Nuke 'Em!

I had thought to address the ongoing problem of the health issues connected to the mRNA Covid vaccines, but I couldn’t wrap my head around it as it kept drifting back to a post I read on Instapundit about nuclear power and how it is one way to ‘save the planet’.

To be honest, I didn’t read the linked article as it was the comments to Glenn Reynolds post that were more telling.

There were almost 100 comments with most of them in favor of reviving the nuclear power industry. As often happens, there were also a couple of trolls trying to throw a monkey wrench into the discussion. (Fortunately they were well known trolls so pretty much everyone ignored them.)

One of the common threads in the comments dealt with the use of small modular reactors (SMRs) rather than returning to the One Big Reactor paradigm. There was also a lot of discussion about using Molten Salt Reactors (MSRs) and Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactors (LFTRs) which have a number of advantages, particularly when it comes to safety and their ability to ‘burn’ nuclear waste from existing Generation I and Generation II nuclear power plants as fuel, reducing the amount of high-level nuclear waste in the process. (This is a short 5 minute tutorial on LFTRs.)

One of the upsides to SMRs is that they aren’t built like ‘traditional’ nuclear reactors. Instead they are factory built, trucked to the power plant site, then offloaded and installed. SMRs can be clustered together to provide a lot of generating capacity at a single site or installed in a number of different sites, creating a distributed power generation system. Such a system wouldn’t require nearly as much in the way of high capacity transmission lines as needed in the traditional One Big Power Station model.

The great thing is that nuclear provides carbon-free, dispatchable, weather/time-of-day independent, and reliable base load power. The argument will be made by the Greens and Watermelon Environmentalists that nuclear isn’t carbon-free due to the construction required, but the same argument can be made for wind and solar. All of them will generate CO2 during construction, maintenance, repair, and decommissioning, but the argument can be made that nuclear generates a lot less CO2 throughout its service life and generates a lot more power than the two favorite renewables of the Greens.

That modern nuclear power won’t generate the high-level waste that present nuclear power plants generate, a big plus. That it can also be used to ‘burn’ existing nuclear waste is another big plus. Another plus – between the spent fuel (the high-level nuclear waste) and the amount of thorium available, we would have enough fuel to last for a thousand years or more. And maybe by the time we run out of fuel, fusion will have been perfected!

It’s time to turn our attention back to nuclear power if we want to be able to keep living a modern life, one of abundant clean energy and a 21^st Century way of life rather than being forced back to an early 18^th existence so many of the Greens and Watermelon Environmentalists want for us.

Friday (Not So) Funny - Medieval Tech Comes Of Age

If WRBA decides they need to take away all of our firearms, we have an answer.

Thoughts On A Sunday

For the first time in weeks we aren’t seeing rain on the weekend.

Friday afternoon and evening we were treated to a number of thundershowers, but since then it’s been sunny, warm, and dry. Even the smoky haze from the Canadian wildfires is gone...for now. I wish I could say I spent some time out on the lake, but one thing I try very hard to avoid is being out on the lake on weekends as there are so many people out there which makes it a less than pleasant experience. Most of my boating is restricted to the week, usually late in the day after work. However, this year it seems to have been raining or threatening rain every afternoon I tried to head out on the lake. As such, I have made it out onto the lake only twice since the Official Weekend Pundit Lake Winnipesaukee Runabout was put in the water back in May. That’s pretty pathetic.

Still, compared to other parts of the US, we’ve had it easy. Friends in Florida have been dealing with triple-digit temps and to hear it from the “We’re all gonna DIE!” media hysteria, people will burst into flames should they venture outside. (Yes, a bit of hyperbole, but it sounds like something they would do.)

On the other hand it is summer and we’re also dealing with El Nino, or in this case, a ‘super’ El Nino. From what I’ve seen on some sites elsewhere, this weather isn’t unprecedented, the world having experienced something like this back in the 1930’s. (Does the term “Dust Bowl” ring a bell?)

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Just when the media is telling us we’re seeing unprecedented temperatures this summer, temperatures we’ve never seen before, an article from Real Clear Science calls such media claims “Unprecedented Propaganda”, and with good reason. A number images and one chart in the RCS piece present historical temperature data up to present day and show the unprecedented temperatures aren’t unprecedented at all.

This chart shows an interesting view of the percentage of US reporting temperatures above 95ºF:

The above isn’t something I would have expected. One does have to keep in mind that we’re still in the middle of summer so I expect we’ll see more stations reporting 95ºF+ temps before the summer is over.

Keeping in mind the same caveat, here’s a graphic showing US station locations seeing temperatures above 100ºF and 110ºF so far this year:

The following graphic shows the same type of data, but for the year 1936:

This shows that those “unprecedented” temperatures the media is crowing about aren’t so unprecedented after all. But they do fit the narrative they’re selling.

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My first thought upon reading this was “What a bunch of crybabies!”

What is “this”?

74 percent of college students would report professors for saying something offensive.

The problem is that college students, particularly ‘woke’ students, are so easily offended by the littlest thing these days. Trivial things are blown so out of proportion that the offended student sounds deranged, yet the college administration is likely to sanction the professor. Instead, the administration should be telling these snowflakes “Grow up, you wuss!!”.

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It seems some people are never satisfied, even when it comes to history. The latest target of such dissatisfaction is the movie Oppenheimer, the history of J. Robert Oppenheimer and the Manhattan Project.

It seems one feminist academic has criticized the film because no women speak until 20 minutes into the film. Considering the actual Manhattan Project personnel were primarily white men 50 years of age or older, why would a women’s speaking role matter?

Another complaint from the same feminist academic: “No people of color appear for at least 30 minutes, and I believe there are 2 black men in the entire movie.” So? How many ‘people of color’ were directly involved in the Manhattan Project, particularly at the Los Alamos site?

Oh, we should also add the Indians as yet another group being ‘victimized’ by the movie.

As the main article states, “Apparently, the race to be victimized by ‘Oppenheimer’ is on.”

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And that’s the news from Lake Winnipesaukee, where the weather is nice for a change, the A/C is off, and where I wish Monday wasn’t coming again so soon.

The 'Woke' Strike Again

Unless you have been avoiding social media in it’s entirety you may have heard about how some woke a**holes became offended about the new music video by Jason Aldean called “Try That In A Small Town”, claiming it’s racist. They went so far as to bully the CMT network into pulling the music video from its rotation because of it’s allegedly racist lyrics and images.

It is as one commenter to the video posted below wrote, “It seems the only people angry about the video are Guilty White Liberals and Angry White Female Liberals, both of which are usually ‘the racists in the room’.” Certainly the people on whose behalf these woke folk are being offended are wondering what the heck these idiots are talking about since they don’t see it as racist in any way shape or form.



It seems the woke are wearing out their welcome, ‘canceling’ people and companies they see as unworthy...though they are the only ones who believe that. The attack on Jason Aldean’s video as racist is yet another lie by these disingenuous and self-righteous busybodies with nothing better to do than make other people miserable, even those they are supposedly ‘helping’.

Friday Funny - Think Of Others' Suffering!

Thoughts On A Sunday

We’re back into the rain, with flash flood watches posted over last night and watches and warnings posted as of this morning as heavy rain makes it way through the area. On top of that, tornado warnings were posted in three southern counties this morning. We generally will see a tornado watch posted a couple of times during the summer and a warning posted maybe once every few years. But two tornado warnings at the same time is something I can not recall ever seeing in over 40 years of living here, let alone two three four on the same day.

The heavy rains are going to cause problems, not so much today as down the road. Lakes and ponds are full, with some being well above their nominal ‘full’ level. Even Lake Winnipesaukee is at least a half foot above full level and is expected to get even higher. If it does, I have no doubt the Marine Patrol will declare all 72 square miles of the lake one big “No Wake” zone. That will certainly make recreational boating problematic as no one will be allowed to go more than 6 MPH which will make travel to anywhere on the lake slow and lengthy. They won’t be able to lower the level of the lake until those downriver have had their levels lowered.

One thing I feel safe in saying about all the rain we’ve received over the past couple of months:

The drought up here in northern New England is definitely over.

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Is SloJoe done?

There have been some reports that a number of top Democrats know Joe Biden will not run for a second term. Why this is a surprise puzzles me. Considering Biden’s continuing metal decline, there should be no question that SloJoe will be in no condition to campaign, let alone serve a second term in the unlikely scenario of him being re-elected.

The [CNN] report states that “top Democrats and donors” are having conversations with potential presidential candidates within the party because the pace of Biden’s apparent campaign is so slow.

The report cites “almost two dozen current Biden aides, top Democratic operatives and donors, and alumni of other recent campaigns,” who are concerned that “multiple big donors aren’t locking in,” and that “Grassroots emails are sometimes bringing in just a few thousand dollars.”

The piece adds that “Those who are placing the calls to the prospective Democrat candidates are telling them that despite what 80-year-old Biden has said, and despite launching his campaign, he actually will not run for president.”

As we highlighted earlier this week, even leftist shills for the Democrats are raging about how dodderingly foolish Biden is appearing on a daily basis.

WRBA can only go so far to prop up SloJoe and make him seem cogent and lucid. It will soon reach the point where it will be impossible to hide it any more. Biden certainly won’t be able to repeat the “Campaign From The Basement” as was pulled off in 2020.

That CNN is reporting this makes me wonder if “The Fix” is in. I have to wonder if SloJoe will even realize he isn’t running…

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Since we’re on the topic of Joe Biden, there’s this:

Just how creepy is Joe Biden?

This creepy.

“Finland will never be the same.”

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We’re at one weather extreme here in New England while Arizona is at another. Of the two, I’m not sure who’s getting the better end of the deal.

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Is there anything that can’t be claimed to be racist?

Apparently not.

The latest “racist” thing?

Home security cameras.

Do you have a home security system? Well, gosh darn it, you are an evil white supremacist racist because a black guy might be arrested for breaking into your home.

According to Wired, home security systems do not make your property and family any safer, but they are used to “target certain groups for suspicion of crime based on skin color, ethnicity, religion, of the country of origin.”

Really? And here I thought that things like home security cameras just record and don’t make decisions whether or not to record based on anything. They record everything, period. How is any of that racist?

But wait! There’s more!

It’s also about vigilantes (which knows are racists) and how home security cameras turn homeowners with them into vigilantes. As one commenter wrote about the ‘stupid’ of this claim:

"Homeowners shouldn't be able to act as vigilantes"?

Sending something recorded on their property to the police isn't acting as a vigilante.

Hanging someone from a tree or street light or summarily executing them with a shot to the back of the head is acting like a vigilante. Beating someone for committing acts of violence against a neighbor is acting like a vigilante. Sending something recorded on their property to the local "Vigilance Committee" so they can administer street justice is acting like a vigilante.

Criminals need to be reminded that the police aren't there to protect the people from criminals. They are there to protect the criminals from the people who will exact a justice of their own.

It sounds more like they want to make it easier for criminals to commit and get away with criminal acts. But if law enforcement cannot act because of such stupidity, I expect the vigilantes the moron who made this claim is afraid of will do exactly what it is he/she/it is afraid they will do.

I guess this is also racist. But if everything is racist, then nothing is racist, right?

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And that’s the news from Lake Winnipesaukee, where the lake level is rising, the rain is still falling, and where we’ll be filling in the washouts on Monday.

Traffic Woes

I spent that last couple of hours pondering which subject I should cover tonight. There are so many, but most of them I find it difficult to find a different take to pontificate with. Others would likely take me a few days to do even a poor job. Then after running some errands it came to me.

Traffic.

I have to admit to being spoiled when it comes to traffic, living in a semi-rural area in a rural state. It isn’t often I have to deal with city traffic, or city-like traffic. However, over the past three days I have had to deal with, and worse, traffic like what one would see on a late afternoon/early evening on the Friday of a holiday weekend...but on a Thursday.

It started with a trip to a town next to Manchester, NH to meet up with the older WP Sister. I was taking the WP Mom to meet up with her so she could spend a few days with her and the younger WP sister. Traffic on the way south was very heavy and I could see the traffic heading the opposite direction was even heavier. Heading home was an adventure, taking almost twice as long to get home as it took make the meet with my sister,and that trip took 50% longer than it should have. It was bumper-to-bumper traffic most of the way back until I was able to bail off the highway and take back roads that paralleled the the highways but were carrying normal traffic.

It was certainly unexpected for a Thursday.

Yesterday was a repeat, but this time going to a place I visit regularly to meet up with a work friend for lunch. A trip that normally took 20 minutes to make, even on a Friday, took me 45 minutes. It took almost that long to make the trip back. Again, traffic was bumper to bumper and for no reason I could discern. Even close to The Gulch traffic was quite heavy.

Today I had a number of errands to run. I usually run them starting just after 7 in the morning, finishing the first batch by 8:30. I start the second batch just after lunch.

The reason for the gap is that normally traffic gets heavy, at least heavy for around here, starting around 10 as people head out to go grocery shopping or hit Walmart or have breakfast at a local diner or run other errands. It stays that way until just after noon. But it didn’t happen that way today.

As soon as I left The Gulch the traffic was heavy. This was at 7:15. I got to my first stop – Walmart - and found I had to park quite some distance away as the lot had far more cars and trucks than I usually see. It was not the quick 20 minute ‘in-and-out’ shopping trip it usually is for me. Rather, it took almost twice as long. The trip to my second stop was usually 5 minutes, but it took quite a bit longer as traffic was backed up at each of the three traffic lights I had to go through to get to my next stop. Then it was off to my last stop before returning to The Gulch, a trip that normally takes 10 minutes took twice that long as yet again the traffic was backed up, but this time through the five traffic lights along the route. At least the trip between my third stop and home wasn’t too bad.

In the 18 years I have lived in my town and all the times I have run those morning errands I have never seen traffic like this.

And then there were my afternoon errands which saw pretty much the same kind of traffic.

Is this just an anomalous phenomenon that won’t be seen again until Labor Day weekend, or is it becoming the new normal, at least here? I hope it isn’t the latter.

I certainly can’t speak about traffic elsewhere in the state, but here in central New Hampshire it’s not what I normally see, even on holiday weekends.

Friday Funny - Pepperoni

This proves there is no such thing as too much pepperoni when it comes to pizza.

Thoughts On A Sunday

I was hoping we’d have a full weekend of sunny weather but Mother Nature decided otherwise, giving us hot and humid weather for Saturday and cloudy/humid/warm/rainy weather today. Very heavy rain is expected for tomorrow, with a possibility of up to 5 inches of rain in New Hampshire and Vermont. Lake levels are already above normal here in central New Hampshire, with Lake Winnipesaukee being a half foot above the nominal ‘full’ level. One lake downriver from Winnipesaukee has a lake-wide ‘No Wake’ zone declared by the NH Marine Patrol because the water level is too high.

I haven’t seen anything like this for a number of years, the last time being 2007 when there had been so much rain and snow melt during spring that many docks on Lake Winnipesaukee were under water and there was a lot of debris floating in the lake. Going at anything above headway speed would have caused erosion along the shores and also put boats in jeopardy if they hit any of the floating debris.

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Speaking of the heat and humidity, whenever I hear the media crowing about temperatures across the globe being the highest on record, I cringe. As I said to the youngest WP Sister (who is visiting The Gulch this weekend), “on record” doesn’t really mean much because those records go back about 160 years, a proverbial ‘blink of an eye’ in meteorological time. The ‘record’ doesn’t include the Little Ice Age, the Medieval Warm Period, or the Roman Warm Period, the two warm periods being warmer than the present “highest temperatures on record”. Hence the cringe whenever the media makes that claim. But then, it’s the media’s job to support the Climate Change narrative no matter what.

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Have you noticed there are times when the ‘woke’ would be better served by saying nothing but can’t help themselves, and by opening their mouths end up having karma slap them in the face?

This has been seen recently when Ben & Jerry’s released a statement “calling for the return of ‘stolen indigenous land’ in the United States.” It didn’t take long before that statement came back to bite them.

If Ben & Jerry’s wants to really put its money where its mouth is, it would give back the land upon which Ben & Jerry’s headquarters is built. In fact, that’s what members of the Nulhegan Band of the Coosuk Abenaki Nation are calling for.

“We are always interested in reclaiming the stewardship of our lands throughout our traditional territories and providing opportunities to uplift our communities,” Chief Don Stevens of the Nulhegan Band of the Coosuk Abenaki Nation told Newsweek when asked if his tribe would like to see the land returned.

Is Ben & Jerry’s serious, or were they just virtue signaling?

My thought - They were virtue signaling and were figuring it would have to be others who would have to give back the indigenous lands, if at all. They weren’t expecting the Abenaki to call their bluff. What has Ben & Jerry’s done in response to the Abenaki’s response?

Absolutely nothing.

I think that would be the definition of hypocrisy.

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If we needed yet another sign that Portland, Oregon needs to be destroyed, this is it:

Portland Govt Tells Staff Not to Say ‘Pregnant Women’, ‘Breast Feeding’ and ‘Citizens’ in “Woke” Language Directive

As Portland struggles to manage crime and an increase in homelessness, city staff members are being told to adopt a more “culturally conscious” vocabulary that includes not using words such as “women,” “Caucasian” or “citizen.”

The Office of Equity and Human Rights pushed an Inclusive Writing Guide in June as part of a “city-wide collaboration” to alter commonly used terms that they feel have evolved.

The guide suggested removing femininity from terms commonly used for women, including replacing “pregnant women” with “pregnant people” to be inclusive of those “who have this experience [pregnancy] but do not identify as women.”

Portland officials also advised staffers to “instead of women’s health rights, say reproductive rights, instead of feminine hygiene products, say menstrual products or period products, and instead of breastfeeding, say chest feeding.”

I wonder how long it will take them to force languages with gendered words like Spanish or French, just to name two, to create gender neutral words to replace them. Yeah, I’m sure that will go over well with the millions and millions of people who speak those languages. I expect the response to such demands will be along the lines of “¡Oh diablos, no!” and “Oh putain non !”

Have you noticed that the “inclusive, non-offensive” language is neither inclusive or non-offensive. It offends me to no end. It offends a very large percentage of the population all in the name of not offending an extremely small percentage of the population, many of whom could care less.

The only safe option is to nuke Portland from orbit. It’s the only way to be sure we destroy the xenomorphs running the city.

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Is Hollywood finally waking up to the fact the DEI, a racist, leftist, anti-American movement that poisons everything it touches is a loser when it comes to the bottom line? Are they learning the lesson so many other woke corporations have learned, that being “Get woke, go broke”? Or are they gonna stay stupid?

An example of what’s happening:

Hollywood is suffering “diversity fatigue”, insiders have said, after four leading inclusion executives left high-profile roles in the space of 10 days.

The departures came at three major studios and the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

Commentators in Hollywood suggested it showed “diversity fatigue” and it led to complaints that the entertainment industry was not fully committed to implementing inclusivity policies.

--snip--

Among those leaving was Disney’s chief diversity officer Latondra Newton.

Her job was to produce entertainment that “reflects a global audience and sustain a welcoming and inclusive workplace for everyone”.

Disney has produced one bomb after another, losing something like $900 million on its last eight releases. Disney’s losing streak is generally attributed to its left-wing, “woke” ideology. Are companies still trying to fulfill their legal duty to make money for their shareholders? If so, heads needed to roll at Disney.

Studios can only afford to lose money for so long before they go bankrupt or the shareholders start firing people on the Board and telling C-level executives they should “seek employment elsewhere”. Considering the stinkers that have been coming out of Hollywood for the past few years, the moviegoers staying away from the theaters in droves, and even streaming revenues for these stinkers in the cellar, is it any wonder that at least some of Hollywood has decided ‘woke’ isn’t working. Like what happened back in the 1970’s, Hollywood’s ‘message’ movies are box office bombs. Hollywood learned the lesson back then and stopped making them. The movie industry started making money again. Hopefully they’ll learn the lesson this time, too. If they don’t, they won’t be around too much longer.

Good riddance to bad rubbish.

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And that’s the news from Lake Winnipesaukee where the weather is weird, the summerfolk are weirder, and I’m actually glad Monday is returning for once.

Is The AirBnB Market Declining?

Over the past three years I have been watching the AirBnB and VRBO (Vacation Rental By Owner) phenomenon explode, at least on a local level. A lot of houses, cottages, and condos were bought with use as short term rentals (STRs) in mind. While not all STRs fall into this category as sometimes people will rent out their own home for a few weeks every year, the ones I am talking about are used for this purpose year round. That certainly applies here in the Lakes Region of New Hampshire where there are three tourist seasons – summer (boating, swimming, fishing, hiking, camping), fall (foliage), and winter (skiing, snowmobiling, ice fishing) – and AirBnB’s have been in demand, at least until recently.

Like many other towns and cities in other states, towns in this part of New Hampshire have been trying to deal with the impact of STRs on both the neighborhoods and the housing market. Our town started having issues with some of the STRs, specifically those which were consistently used as ‘party’ houses, which drove the town to develop some regulations. Ours aren’t draconian, aren’t onerous, and deal more with making sure the town knows who owns them as well as making sure they are safe. It took our town three years to come up with a set of acceptable regulations which were voted on and accepted at town meeting.

However, I have a feeling that some of those regulations will become moot. As I mentioned above, it seems the demand for STRs, specifically AirBnBs and VRBOs, have fallen off in my town. It’s even worse elsewhere like the Southwest and Mountain West where rentals have fallen by as much as 50%, and why some AirBnB owners are likely to sell their properties.

These Airbnb owners are getting ready to sell because of "Airbnb bust", a downturn in the short-term rental market that started in the second half of 2022, with Airbnb operators in some cities facing a 50% decline in revenue. These declining revenues are the result of a slowdown in post-pandemic travel demand to go along with a massive increase in Airbnb supply, trends which are now causing many Airbnb operators to lose money on their rental.

I believe these losses will cause a wave of distressed selling from Airbnb operators in 2023 and 2024, particularly in cities where:

1) revenue has crashed the most, and

2) Airbnb supply increased the most

If you're a homebuyer or real estate investor it's important to understand the exposure your city and neighborhood has to the Airbnb crash, particularly the timing and depth of the downturn. Because when it all shakes out, I believe that there will be some great buying opportunities for homebuyers and investors across the real estate spectrum.

The housing market around here was affected by investors buying up homes, paying above asking price and in many cases paying cash. Some investors got into bidding wars which drove the selling price through the roof. One such property I am familiar with – an 1800 square foot chalet - was listed for just over $300,000. It sold for $700,000. That is insane, particularly for that particular house. It is used as an STR and was renting for $2650 per week last year. There are others here in our town that are similar, including one that is just behind The Gulch. What surprising is that that particular one has only had two renters over the past six weeks – one during Motorcycle Week in mid-June and one which checked in just today. The place was empty during the week of Fourth of July as was the other AirBnB just down the road from The Gulch. That is unusual. Some other local AirBnB’s I have checked regularly were showing a few unbooked weeks between now and Labor Day. That’s entirely different from last year.

Does this indicate we’ll see the same level of booking fall-off as has been seen elsewhere? If so, when can we expect owners to drop their prices or sell their poorly performing investments? If they do sell, do they expect they’ll be able to sell them for whatever they overpaid to acquire them?

It will be interesting to see how all of this shakes out.

Friday Funny - The Irony Of Nature

Thoughts On A Sunday

As all three of my readers may have noticed, I didn’t post last night. It wasn’t from “lack of wanna” or having no subject worth posting about. It was more a matter of not getting back to The Gulch until quite late last night as I went to a concert at our local venue. Two old friends of mine and I went to see Chicago at the Bank of New Hampshire Pavilion at Meadowbrook Farm.

Other than a few people here and there, most of the audience were in their 50’s, 60’s, and 70’s. As more than a couple of venue staff and security personnel said, “We don’t expect there will be any problems, at least not with this crowd. A lot of them will be staying up past their usual bedtime…”

It was a great concert and with only two exceptions I knew all the songs they performed.

A good time was had by all!

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It looks like Mother Nature isn’t going to play nice this weekend. It’s going to be raining, and when it isn’t raining it’s going to be warm and very humid around here. I’m not holding out much hope that there won’t be thunderstorms the evening of the Fourth, meaning it will be dicey catching the fireworks from the Official Weekend Pundit Lake Winnipesaukee Runabout as the last place I want to be during the thunderstorm is out in the middle of a lake.

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To show you just how bad things have gotten, it seems that some of those deeply steeped in Progressive ideology have an unreasoning fear, distrust, and loathing of those whose beliefs differ from theirs. It even goes so far as to divide families. But the following example shows the hypocrisy of at least one Progressive...and her equally Progressive mother.

A Progressive bride feels uncomfortable with the idea of her conservative uncle attending her wedding, so asks her mother to write to the uncle (the mother’s brother) to explain why he’s not being invited to the wedding.

He did not reply. He also did not send wedding gift...and the bride’s mother is upset he didn’t send the $1000 he’s gifted to family members during their weddings.

[The bride] says she was counting on receiving the same type of gift.

My husband says I should drop it – but I can’t. Dave’s behavior is upsetting and embarrassing to me.

How can I get my brother to recognize and change his petty behavior?

Please don’t tell me that I’m the one who started this by not inviting my brother to the wedding. After all, he’s a grown man, while my daughter is young and just starting out.

So, they dis-invite an uncle they disagree with politically but otherwise get along with, telling him why he’s not welcome, but expect him to provide a wedding gift? They don’t want him, just his money.

The absolute gall of these people.

The advice columnist to whom this was addressed didn’t cut this woman any slack either, telling her “So far, your silent brother is the only family member who is behaving appropriately. He’s steering clear, which is exactly what you have asked him to do.”

Indeed.

(H/T Instapundit)

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From the “Just When I Thought They Couldn’t Get Any Stupider” Department comes this:

Climate Cops Denounce Ice in Cocktails

For years the hospitality industry has seen diners clamoring for foods that prioritize climate-friendly practices, such as local and seasonal ingredients that are grown or raised with carbon footprints in mind. Yet cocktail culture hasn’t been hit with the same scrutiny. As the American West experiences water scarcity and energy prices remain volatile, the protocol for properly made cocktails doesn’t look sustainable. Is it possible to make satisfying cocktails without so much ice?

Really? Ice in cocktails is driving climate change?

Then I have a counter to that, that being that many of the alcoholic beverages the climate clowns like to drink are major contributors to CO2. The fermentation process generates a lot of carbon dioxide, so much so that buildings where the the various vats and barrels are housed need to be properly ventilated to keep the ambient CO2 levels from reaching lethal concentrations.

If there are no alcoholic beverages then there is no need for any ice, right? So we should ban those horrible alcoholic beverages outright if they are so concerned about climate change...right?

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Who’da thunk that teaching actual biological science could get one fired for “for ‘religious preaching’ in his class.”

A biology professor at St. Philip’s College in San Antonio, Texas claimed that he was fired after he taught a lesson explaining that sex is determined by X and Y chromosomes.

The professor, Johnson Varkey, claimed that he was let go from the college for “religious preaching” in his class. Over the course of 20 years, Varkey taught human anatomy and physiology to more than 1,500 students, according to the New York Post.

During a lesson on the human reproductive system on Nov. 28, 2022, Varkey made remarks about how X and Y chromosomes determine a person’s sex. Four students reportedly walked out of his class as a result of these remarks.

So, because the professor disdained the use of woke ‘science’, i.e. another version of Lysenkoism which has little to do with actual science, and stated something that any biologist knows is true, he’s been fired for preaching religion in a science class? How is that in any way ‘religion’?

The plague of ‘wokism’ is spreading and has been infecting academia and society to the detriment of both.

If science is required to meet the political constraints of 21st century Lysenkoism, then it isn’t science, period.

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And that’s the news from Lake Winnipesaukee where the ran continues to fall, the prospects for fireworks on the Fourth seem dismal, and it appears too many people have forgotten how to drive in the rain.