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eDJ_ said:
Matthew Desmond [works at some silly college]..."Poverty, by America"
Page 126-127
We should bump up the top marginal tax bracket- perhaps to 50%...
The Federal income tax is progressive...
Click to expand...
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[off-topic]
We should eliminate 99.ad infinitum% of bureaucrats.
And anytime I see 'progressive', I think 'BOLSHEVIKS'... you might remember, those people murdered about a billion of our families and friends, destroyed hundreds of cultures, and thrive on chaos.
.
[edited to add]
(We could eliminate all bureaucrats, but somebody would probably have a problem with my simple natural solutions...)
.
.
I got on a 'Florida' kick.
Here are my favorites:
a -- Tim Dorsey -- WHEN ELVES ATTACK.
I was gasping, laughing so hard, I put it down and walked away to recover, then busted out laughing again just looking at the cover.
That happened almost every paragraph.
Sometimes, every sentence.
Involuntary seepage?
.
b -- Randy Wayne White -- NIGHT VISION.
The eighteenth in this outstanding series about a Marine Biologist living on a small island, his cohorts at the marina, and their zany madcap misadventures.
Is the orphan girl in direct communication with deities?
Stay 2nd ('tuned') to find out!
 
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Not a Novel or larger volume of work but still significant.
Lieutenant Colonel Stanislav Petrov who is credited with saving the world from a Nuclear Holocaust in September 26, 1983.

Stanaslav Petrov.jpg

What was the day human civilization came closest to extinction?

September 26, 1983, in the Serpukhov-15 bunker in Moscow , Lieutenant Colonel Stanislav Petrov, 44, was on duty. His responsibility was to identify a possible nuclear attack by the United States against the USSR, given the period of the full 'cold war'. In the event of an attack,
Petrov would notify his superiors and they would launch hundreds of nuclear missiles against the United States. These were the procedures.

After midnight, computers indicated that the United States had launched a missile attack flying at 24,000 km/h toward the Soviet Union. With only 13 minutes to the target, Petrov had the feeling that this was a mistake, because if the Americans had wanted to attack, they would
not have launched just one missile. So he decided to delay , assuming that it was a system error.

In the next 5 minutes, four more missile alarms went off .

A tense atmosphere gripped the room, the red button to release the nuclear warheads flashed, and everyone looked at Petrov, waiting for his reaction. He had 8 minutes to decide the fate of humanity . If he told his superiors, it would be the end of the world. Computers indicated
the attack, satellites showed nothing, and ground-based radars could detect the missiles only when they were already clearly visible.

Petrov trusted his instincts and decided not to release any nuclear warheads because he thought it was just a false alarm, since he couldn't understand how the United States had launched only five nuclear warheads towards Moscow. The paradox? Petrov wasn't supposed to work that day, he was resting. He replaced his colleague who stayed home with the flu. How strange fate is, huh ?
 
eDJ_ said:
Not a Novel or larger volume of work but still significant.
Lieutenant Colonel Stanislav Petrov who is credited with saving the world from a Nuclear Holocaust in September 26, 1983.

View attachment 35924

What was the day human civilization came closest to extinction?

September 26, 1983, in the Serpukhov-15 bunker in Moscow , Lieutenant Colonel Stanislav Petrov, 44, was on duty. His responsibility was to identify a possible nuclear attack by the United States against the USSR, given the period of the full 'cold war'. In the event of an attack,
Petrov would notify his superiors and they would launch hundreds of nuclear missiles against the United States. These were the procedures.

After midnight, computers indicated that the United States had launched a missile attack flying at 24,000 km/h toward the Soviet Union. With only 13 minutes to the target, Petrov had the feeling that this was a mistake, because if the Americans had wanted to attack, they would
not have launched just one missile. So he decided to delay , assuming that it was a system error.

In the next 5 minutes, four more missile alarms went off .

A tense atmosphere gripped the room, the red button to release the nuclear warheads flashed, and everyone looked at Petrov, waiting for his reaction. He had 8 minutes to decide the fate of humanity . If he told his superiors, it would be the end of the world. Computers indicated
the attack, satellites showed nothing, and ground-based radars could detect the missiles only when they were already clearly visible.

Petrov trusted his instincts and decided not to release any nuclear warheads because he thought it was just a false alarm, since he couldn't understand how the United States had launched only five nuclear warheads towards Moscow. The paradox? Petrov wasn't supposed to work that day, he was resting. He replaced his colleague who stayed home with the flu. How strange fate is, huh ?
Click to expand...
That is crazy. At first I read that as Colonel Sanders, who saved us from bland fried chicken.
 
eDJ_ said:
Not a Novel or larger volume of work but still significant.
Lieutenant Colonel Stanislav Petrov who is credited with saving the world from a Nuclear Holocaust in September 26, 1983.

View attachment 35924

What was the day human civilization came closest to extinction?

September 26, 1983, in the Serpukhov-15 bunker in Moscow , Lieutenant Colonel Stanislav Petrov, 44, was on duty. His responsibility was to identify a possible nuclear attack by the United States against the USSR, given the period of the full 'cold war'. In the event of an attack,
Petrov would notify his superiors and they would launch hundreds of nuclear missiles against the United States. These were the procedures.

After midnight, computers indicated that the United States had launched a missile attack flying at 24,000 km/h toward the Soviet Union. With only 13 minutes to the target, Petrov had the feeling that this was a mistake, because if the Americans had wanted to attack, they would
not have launched just one missile. So he decided to delay , assuming that it was a system error.

In the next 5 minutes, four more missile alarms went off .

A tense atmosphere gripped the room, the red button to release the nuclear warheads flashed, and everyone looked at Petrov, waiting for his reaction. He had 8 minutes to decide the fate of humanity . If he told his superiors, it would be the end of the world. Computers indicated
the attack, satellites showed nothing, and ground-based radars could detect the missiles only when they were already clearly visible.

Petrov trusted his instincts and decided not to release any nuclear warheads because he thought it was just a false alarm, since he couldn't understand how the United States had launched only five nuclear warheads towards Moscow. The paradox? Petrov wasn't supposed to work that day, he was resting. He replaced his colleague who stayed home with the flu. How strange fate is, huh ?
Click to expand...
That isn’t the only time.
 
Available on Kindle Unlimited, Abandoned A Lively Deadmarsh Novel, series. Very reminiscent of Stephen King’s The Shining. I am on the fourth and final book in the series. If you liked SK’s book, you will probably like this series.
 
Did you know you can check out 24 books at a time with Kindle Unlimited? But, if you check out a boxed set it counts as one book. Because of that, I currently have 60 books checked out. Most of them are quite short, between 250 to <400 pages. Something I can read in 5 to 6 hours usually. In between KU and Libby, where I can check out 20 books at a time, I stay covered for reading material.
 
I didn’t know that, but I buy most of my ebooks thru BookBub, which is a great resource.

https://www.bookbub.com/

I only let them send me one email a week, and try to stick with the books that are free, but most are $1.99-$2.99, very reasonable.

I had three of the Penn Cage books already, indulged in two more, so I am reading the first 5 of the series, in order.

Very good reading. ☺️
 
I'm getting some short stories published. I read an Aircraft Journal & saw a note to send in your short stories to be published so Monday I spent about an hour writing how I learned to fly for well under $1000 & e-mailed it to them. It was AirVenture week at Oshkosh so I didn't look for a reply but got an e-mail Friday saying they wanted to publish it & 4 or 5 more. This is the plane I flew under the Mackinac bridge out of necessity so I have to add that & send a picture. Old pilots love to talk flying & my 1938 Taylorcraft hung in a barn for 50 years as the owner never came back from WW2 & my Beech Bonanza was the sister ship to the one Buddy Holley died in.
 
71q1n0DB6lL._SL1000_.jpg
Tucumcari Tonite! which is, you guessed it, a history of Tucumcari, NM.
https://www.amazon.com/Tucumcari-Tonite-Railroads-Waning-Western/dp/0826363393
I grabbed it off a library shelf because I remembered driving down I-40 and seeing all those "Tucumcari Tonight" billboards years ago (don't know if they're still up). The motel I stayed in the one time I actually went through there, the Blue Swallow, was featured on the front cover so I got even more excited.

It's well written but pretty dry and old-school. It would be worth the effort to read it if you're interested in history -- or the Tucumcari/Amarillo area -- or railroads (it has a lot on that). Or if you're interested in the rise and fall of small American towns. People tried **so hard** to keep it alive. I guess all those Tucumcari Tonight billboards were a part of that struggle! It looks like the town never really recovered from the I-40 bypass plus a botched 1970s urban renewal.

Seems like the towns that were too broke to do urban renewal in the 1970s ended up winners because they still have cool downtown buildings.

I read it while I was doing Early Voting poll worker. I actually got two books read, it was that slow. (That doesn't necessarily mean people aren't voting, just that they have so many other options to vote, also it was "just" a primary election for state/local offices.) Thank God the polling place was in a library!
 
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PROVIDENCE by Australia author Max Barry.
.
This's the history of a massive sentient star-ship exploring the void with its four human crew.
Since the ship operates without human input, our crew were chosen for their commercially-viable soap-opera good-looks, so the folks back home could admire and respect them.
.
I acquired the novel at the Buck-N-A-Quarter Store.
.
Some tales are so juicy, I read a few pages, then set it aside for a day or two to enjoy that lovely after-glow.
PROVIDENCE is intelligent and -- hopefully -- predictive of our potential.
www.amazon.com/Providence-Max-Barry/dp/0593085175
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keyword -- 'unburdened by what was (waves left hand behind head)'
 
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