HamsterRage

I always thought Timothy Zahn was an above average author, and to wrote more than a dozen of them.

Ok, a bunch of them are going to go along with a whole bunch of toques, scarves and mittens that she knitted to a place that supports Ukranian refugees (we're in Canada). Some others will go to a charity craft sale at my parents' retirement home.

I really don't get this at all.

On one hand, I get that inflation is just the expression of the supply/demand curve and that increasing interest rates makes it more expensive to borrow money and therefore lessens demand and should, theoretically drop inflation.

But...

Anyone with half a brain knows that this round of inflation wasn't caused by overheated demand. It was driven by supply chain issues caused by the pandemic, avian flu, climate change and the Ukraine war. The price of oil alone drove much of the inflation numbers, both directly and indirectly by increasing the cost of production and shipping of other goods.

Does anyone at the BOC seriously think that 10%+ inflation in groceries was caused by overheated demand? Do they seriously think that people should be buying less food to lower grocery demand and reduce prices? Do they think that people will?

Does anyone think that the 6-12 month waits for a new car that are typical now is because gazillions of people are suddenly wanting to buy all at the same time? OK, there probably is pent up demand due to the fact that virtually no new cars were available during the pandemic, and lots of people want EV cars now, but the truth is that availability is way down compared to pre-pandemic times.

I see talking heads from the finance sector on TV all the time saying stuff like, "We need to tame an overheated economy...". DO WE? And then claiming that the interest rate hikes are working because inflation has come down. Yeah, right. Far more likely is that the supply chain issues are getting resolved, and supplies are increasing.

The truth is that the BOC has only one knob that they can turn, and that's the interest rates. So they're going to turn it. And the prevailing wisdom says that it takes close to 18 months for interest rates hikes to have an impact. So the downturn in inflation that started at the beginning of the year has virtually NOTHING to do with the big jump in rates that happened last spring.

As to that 18 month lag, it's probably even longer this time around because of the mortgage situation in Canada. Those people with huge mortgages have, to large degree, 5 year terms. So a comparatively small number of those people have had to renew under the new rates. And even if rates start to come back down next year, we're still going to see an increasing proportion of those mortgagees get hit with huge increases to their payments. And that's going to suck money out of the economy - big time. Are those people already tightening their belts, before they renew? Probably to some extent, but there's nothing like seeing an extra $2K-3K come out of your bank account each month to make it real.

Whenever we visit the UK we set the GPS units to metric. I have no feel for what, "In 140 yards, turn right", means. So having directions in metric while the street signs are in Imperial actually works best.

They've found the best way to reduce the threat of Russia without committing troops.

Chiropractic is sneaky bullshit. At the root of it is a belief that all kinds of ailments can be cured by chiropractic "adjustments" - and we're not talking back aches and sore joints here. It's woo along the same lines as homeopathy and acupuncture.
But many/most chiropractors hide that bs, and seem to stick to back/joint issues. But in that case, are they really as qualified as a physiotherapist, osteopath, RMT or actual doctor? I mean, if their schools are teaching that you can cure, say, autism with a back adjustment, do you really want them treating you???

Unknown domains often get refused connections from mail servers. Also, it can be easy to get blacklisted.

My blog is hosted on GitHub pages and it supports Jekyll. I use the MinimalMistakes template.

I like the thicker boutique picks. V-Picks are good, and Chick'nPicks are awesome.

I retired now, but I still write code for my blog. I totally prefer to write with Kotlin. Java just feels clunky to me now.

I don't get it either. I've been using it on some older laptops because I wanted something lighter weight. It works well for me.

Well, thank you very much mr bot, but I posted this from Mastodon and the fact that it's even here is testimony that I got it right.