Time to Chill [DOT 12/3/22]

12/3/22 MegMegMcGee 18

I’m cycling off the cold meds and feeling much better. Still gonna lay low and hold the couch down this weekend. Hope you guys all had a good week!

Good enough reason to stay inside:

Cold blast brings deep freeze to the South, snow to the Northeast
https://www.cnn.com/2022/03/12/weather/winter-storm-freeze-saturday/index.html

Russia-Ukraine war latest news: conflict at ‘strategic turning point’, says Zelenskiy; fears Belarus could join invasion – live
https://www.theguardian.com/world/live/2022/mar/12/ukraine-news-russia-war-ceasefire-broken-humanitarian-corridors-kyiv-russian-invasion-live-vladimir-putin-volodymyr-zelenskiy-latest-updates-live

“Ha Ha!”
Schadenfreude at sea: The Internet is watching with glee as Russian oligarchs’ yachts are seized
https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/03/10/russian-oligarch-yacht-tracking/

Sprots!
Gregg Popovich sets NBA coaching wins record, cements spot among best ever
https://sports.yahoo.com/gregg-popovich-sets-nba-coaching-wins-record-cements-spot-among-best-ever-041129045.html

Stonks!

Dow falls 200 points, notches its fifth straight week of losses as Russia-Ukraine war drags on
https://www.cnbc.com/2022/03/10/stock-market-futures-open-to-close-news.html

This thread is pretty crazy. How did they not notice?

If we all chip in…

Have a great Saturday. Brain Drain will be by shortly to keep you entertained.

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18 Comments

  1. hayfever season just started and is kicking my ass

    i get lots of room in the shops and streets now tho *sniffs n sneezles along looking miserable*

    anyways…looks like russia has lost patience and i just going to flatten everything in ukraine now…well try to anyway

    i expect news coming from over there to get increasingly horrible…

    • welp my local news live blog just reported that russia has threathened to attack arms shipments if we dont stop sending them to ukraine…..reasonably sure that would be considered attacking nato assets

  2. The Wayne Newton Las Vegas estate is all well and good but allow me to point you to what could be the Deadsplinter Manhattan clubhouse:

    https://www.bhsusa.com/manhattan/midtown-east/322-east-57th-street-45b/coop/21611548

    Now I’ll tell you why, and just skip along to the next comment if you want, because I have a feeling this is going to be long and crazy, even for me.

    This is indeed a Very Good Building. The listing doesn’t mention this but there are only 18 units in the building, all of which are duplexes like this one except for the penthouse, which is a triplex. This apartment had been occupied by the same family for over 50 years, which is a big plus, shows the building is stable.

    I was curious as to why the price was only $3.5 million, considering.

    1. Just down the block, a mere half dozen doorfronts away, is Sutton Place. Sadly, this is not technically Sutton Place, it is the more prosaic Midtown East. In fact this building is a little too close to Second Avenue, now how home to very unappealing (expensive though they are) and ugly new high-rise towers.

    2. 57th Street is one of the few crosstown streets that is not one-way, so it gets a lot of traffic. It eventually connects to the FDR Drive, so even more traffic.

    3. It is a co-op, so Board approval, etc., but I’ll handle them.

    4. It allows 50% financing. The best co-ops allow no financing at all, it’s cash on the barrelhead, and you must prove liquid assets to cover maintenance for years to come.

    5. Speaking of maintenance, at $8K a month that’s a little high, but that includes property taxes.

    6. This is a positive for us but a negative overall: it can be used as a pied-à-terre. That is a huge no-no in the best co-ops; they want everyone to be in place most of the time and not gallivanting and/or letting friends and relatives camp out like it’s some sort of youth hostel or AirBnB or some other kind of unsavory use.

    7. “Laundry in the basement.” Well, technically, I’m sure that’s true, and I’m sure there’s no washer/dryer hookup within the unit, but there wouldn’t be, the building went up almost a century ago. No, you’d send the laundry out then and you would today. It wouldn’t surprise me if a local laundry has a contract with this building but if not I can ask discreetly about who the other residents use. I wouldn’t ask the other residents directly, that would be unthinkable, I’d ask the door staff who, for better or worse, know everything.

    I think that about covers it. This isn’t ideal but it would be a good way for us to get a foot in the door, so to speak.

    • PS: It never ceases to amaze me how illiterate real estate brokers are. Notice that the listing states that Orson Wells (sic; Welles) and even more egregiously Lilly Ponds (double sic; Lily Pons) were previous shareholders, which means residents. But Lilly Ponds would be a great drag name.

    • What a jarring contrast between those bedrooms, that bathroom, the kitchen and the living room. Did they remodel a single room every decade or two?

      That being said, let’s DS timeshare it!

      • The part that I found the most… interesting,** was the gallery/ front-row seating section of that first bedroom…

        Also, i feel the need to point out that we need *a little more money upfront,* because when this becomes Casa de La Deadsplinter, we will need to put a puppy-railing along that starcase’s open edge, since so many of us have small and/or elderly dogs who could accidentally find themselves falling over the open edge!

        😉💖

        **jarring, DEFINITELY jarring, as an introvert!🤣🤣🤣

  3. I thought this was interesting and entirely typical for us serfs in New York State. If you think this is bewildering, all our bills are like this, the cable bill, the (residential) gas bill, the electric bill. Tax upon tax, charge upon charge.

    1. How much do New Yorkers pay at the pump?

    There’s a combination of state and local taxes New Yorkers pay when they buy gas. All told, the state charges about 33.3 cents per gallon of gas, according to the state Division of Budget. But that’s a baseline. 

    Depending on where you are buying gas, the sales tax also comes into play. Some counties have a local sales tax of 7%, others set their tax at 8%. 

    Within some counties, there is a sales tax rate for cities that is slightly higher. In New York City, the sales tax rate is 8 7/8 cents, according to the state Department of Taxation and Finance. On average and based on recent per gallon prices, New Yorkers pay 14 cents a gallon in sales tax. All told, that leads to a tax charge of 47.3 cents per gallon to 48.05 cents a gallon. 

    2. A combination of taxes?

    You don’t just pay a sales tax or a gas tax when buying fuel for your car. New York charges a 17.3-cent charge per gallon for the petroleum business tax. There is an 8-cent motor fuel tax. The state sales tax amounts to 8 cents per gallon. There is also a Metropolitan Commuter Transportation District Sales Tax of three-quarters of a cent per gallon.

  4. My last comment, then I’ll leave you all in peace:

    Gov. Kathy Hochul announced Thursday 21 nominations to be added to the State and National Registers of Historic Places, five of which are in New York City.

    One of the nominees is a huge housing project built in 1949 in East New York (Brooklyn), very far away indeed from Sutton place.

    Here’s a very Potemkin Village-ish rendering of the Boulevard Houses:

    https://www.hudsoninc.com/projects/boulevard-houses/

    Here’s the considerably more grim reality:

    https://bklyner.com/linden-boulevard-houses-fire/

  5. Okay, I have so many questions. Why would police surveil a public defender? Presumably something to do with her clients? That seems totally counter-productive and a massive waste of time. What would they hope to learn? Why write these reports if there’s nothing to report? Seriously, wouldn’t you just write up a report if you saw “something” you needed to report? I mean, they’ve got to be paying somebody to write up sightings of Petey the dog.

    I have thrown myself on the mercy of Google and received no answers.

  6. Follow-up to yesterday:

    Disney suspends political contributions in Florida as CEO apologizes for silence on ‘don’t say gay’

    Paywall, so I’m gonna RIP ya:

    Walt Disney CEO Bob Chapek is pausing all of the company’s political donations in Florida after the passage of the “don’t say gay” bill and apologized to employees for his silence during the months-long debate on the measure.

    In a letter sent to Disney workers, Chapek said the bill was “not just an issue about a bill in Florida, but instead yet another challenge to basic human rights.”

    “You needed me to be a stronger ally in the fight for equal rights and I let you down,” he wrote. “I am sorry. … But I’m an ally you can count on, and I will be an outspoken champion for the protections, visibility and opportunity you deserve.”

    The decision by the largest employer in Central Florida could have a major impact on election fundraising for both parties, and it escalates in his war of words with Gov. Ron DeSantis, who accused the company of being “woke” a day earlier for opposing the bill.

    Disney has given about $55 million to Republicans, Democrats and political committees in the state over the past 28 years, including about $5 million in 2020 and more than $2 million so far in 2022, state records show.

    The company has also given more than $100,000 to the Friends of Ron DeSantis PAC since 2019.

    I’d say we can file this under “leopards eating my face.”

    • If he wants to salvage this, he needs to dump his political consultants. This represents a huge misreading of the situation, and if they think they can believe GOP spin that there are ways to finesse this for more than a month, max, they’re delusional.

      They need to stop reading insider newsletters massaging the statements of the Florida GOP and start reading Jack Chick. They see Disney as Satan. It’s really that simple.

      • DeSantis won’t backtrack. He’s gonna double-down on this. I’m telling you, I thought the dude was cynically manipulating MAGAs. I’m becoming convinced that he actually believes his fascist shit.

  7. Only in Florida, y’all.

    More human remains found in gator-infested nature preserve in Florida where an arm, leg were found

    Okay, gonna give all of you that are planning murders a couple tips. If you’re squeamish, stop right now.

    Still with me? Okay:

    1. Gators can smell carcasses from up to 4 miles away.

    2. Gators can dig, and have been known to dig burrows up to 65 feet in length.

    3. Gators prefer rotten meat because it’s soft.

    When you hide your victim’s body, avoiding “gator-infested” locations should be a priority. I’m sure you had a good reason to gakk somebody, and I’d hate to see you get caught because you’re not familiar with Floridian fauna.

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