Planning for 2024

Lots of exciting plans on this thread! Dustin, I think you are right to focus on family. We never know when things might take a turn for the worst. Johann, always interested to hear about your endeavors into learning language, music, and fashion!

As for me, I need to get back in the swing of things with school. 2023 definitely did not go as expected. After finally putting my foot down on trying to get myself exited from day-to-day operations with the first NGO to be able to get into school, we had a primary leadership change that caused huge distractions from people not getting along. I also seem to have become the person that everyone calls for their major problems, likely because I'm the one with no children or family connections so people think I have endless free time - regardless of if that is true. I spent a lot of time this year dealing with other people's problems along with issues with the city. I wanted to apply to law school in the fall but that did not happened due to time constraints. Hopefully 2024 can be a year for me to finish the grad degree, start getting more of my health issues resolved (after my doctors keep quitting), and get back into better shape. Maybe, if I am lucky, meet someone after years of healing from my last relationship and keeping men at arms length who I know are not actually ready for a relationship. I have had all the dating apps/websites on pause for quite a while... might try getting on something new like Raya this year.

 

Nearly every day I have what I anticipate is a chatbot engaging my LinkedIn. Always female and wanting me to converse via WhatsApp or Telegram.

 

I get a text about once a week or so from a stranger. I always block and report. On Skype I get a female wanting to friend me about once a month. I think they’re all scams

 

I get the same on LinkedIn. They're all generically worded. I just ignore them.

 

According to my elementary school indoctrination classes, socialism is, indeed, defined as "public ownership of means of production". I think we all agree that, at least if it means "all means of production", or even "most", that's a terrible idea. This is why even Bernie doesn't advocate for it, and smarter Progressives (like Elisabeth Warren) outright deny being Socialist.

Also, I think to a large degree lefties do use the word to sound edgy. Mostly those who are living in a bubble, at least partially protected from harm that accrues when the other side uses that "edge" to scare the populace and keep power. Just like a bunch of latte revolutionaries coined the slogan "Defund The Police" to sound like Civil Rights-era folk who really had to clash with the police. Thus gifting the Grand Old Fascist Party a convenient attack line, in process hurting mainstream Dems' chances to gain more power and, by extension, any chance for meaningful police reform (and all the other stuff they claim they want). Foot Shooting Marksmanship Award.

basically, I do not like the vocal Bernie fandom, nor St Bernard himself. While agreeing with like 80% of the guy's actual policy positions.

 

Not many plans, beyond the imperative to publish something, anything, scholarly. May go back to school at one point, but first have to see how much my tuition benefit will cost me in taxes when my wife will use it for her MBA. Will continue to facilitate my kids' achievements, and will try to get enough sleep and start exercising at least on a somewhat regular basis. Oh, and finish my Woodbadge ticket with Boy Scouts and teach a few merit badge classes.

 

The criminal gang set up a whole village staffed with slaves and everything to run their scam here.

https://www.cnn.com/videos/world/2023/12/22/myanmar-pig-butchering-scams-watson-pkg-intl-ldn-vpx.cnn

 

Pretty easy to do in a failed state like Myanmar. The gang was Chinese and likely the gangsters were afraid to operate on their home turf. They probably bribed the military junta that's trying to hold on, to look the other way. The military junta only controls about 25% of the country. It's an awful place. Don't book a vacation there. Go to Yemen instead. Or Somalia, perhaps.

I'm still shaking my head. I can't imagine how a victim as dumb as this could ever have amassed a million dollars in the first place, the sum that was stolen from him.

I have no sympathy. Stupid is as stupid does. Let his bad example be a warning to other stupid wealthy people.

 

The article mentions slaves - and yes, that's what the people "hired" for the scam were turned into. The man interviewed in the video was an IT job applicant from India. He was to have his job interview in Thailand, but the interviewer (a gangster) tricked him into crossing the border into Myanmar.

It surprised me to learn this fact about modern, 21st Century slavery: There are four times as many slaves today, in the world, as the total number of captured Africans shipped to the Americas, from 1525 to 1866.

50 million slaves world-wide today. 12.5 million captured Africans shipped to the Americas, 1525-1866. (10.7 million of whom survived the voyage.) All are terrible, terrible numbers.

 

If it makes you feel any better, I get these texts from strangers who turn out to be women who have supposedly text the wrong number and then try and start up a "friendship." Scams, no doubt!

 

I agree that this appears to be a scam - what could be the end game? "Friend me...please send me money?"

 

That, or - "Please marry me so I can come and live in America."

 

"Pig slaughtering", as @Bill Huffman noted. The goal is to convince you to invest in a fake crypto exchange controlled by the scammers. That account will show consistent and massive profits, until you try to withdraw anything. Then you'll be told that there are fees to get your money out, taxes, etc., and they'll keep stringing you for more and more money until you realize the whole thing is a scam.

It's pig slaughtering (the opposite of salami slicing) because the goal is to get one person for a large amount of money instead of a large number of people for small quantities. Scams can continue for years at a time and involve the loss of hundreds of thousands or even millions of dollars.

 

Except, you can't just go to the store, put them on the belt, pay for them, bag up and be done....

 

I've been pretty quiet on DI lately (relative to my usual!) But happy that I went on my first run of 2024 and baked my first loaf of bread.

 

At 64, my weight had crept up over the years to 255. (I'm 5'11".) I decided to reverse that. It had taken decades to go from 180 to 255, but I decided to go back. I'm at 216 now, headed to something sub-200. I have a gym membership and that gym has a basketball court. I was quite a baller in my youth, and I think I'm going to spend some of my down time lacing up my adidas Pros and working on my mid-range jumper. Because....I can again.

 

Good morning. I owe all the results of my January 19th big news. First, I left UNISA in September 2021. After over 12 years, I was going nowhere. My chair and I were not getting along at all ( we have mended fences, for he is the foremost authority in my field), but it was just not working. As a failsafe mechanism, I started at Liberty University in August 2009. I could not and did not trust my chair to get me to the finish line. I appealed to my co-chair at UNISA and he did not help at all. I tried to get the three of us to have a conference, but my co-chair always backed out. He said it was the chair's show and he would support whatever he decided. At LU, I had to start over. When I say I had to start over, I mean from scratch. My MA from NCCU did not transfer over because it was too old (courses). My five courses I took at UH did not for the same reason. None of the eleven courses I took at UNISA did either because the registrar told me, "They transfer when you finish the degree". Perfect. So, I found an amazing chair at LU (FDR historian), as we met five years ago. I was able to take what I did at UNISA ( it was never formally turned in, the committee never saw anything..seriously). and as of 3 pm, January 19, 2024, I have finally earned my PhD in History from LU. (with corrections, of course). Let me say this:

1. First, I am very thankful for LU. They have been a Godsend. No religion was never pushed down my throat. Not once. I am a God fearing UMC, so many of the SBC ideals are not my cup of tea.
2. Everyone in the program is of different faiths. Two of the faculty members are not SBC, they are Presbyterian. I know some folks on here say that is a problem for them ( religion) but it never ever way for me.
3. As I have stated many times, UNISA is for everyone. I just had a chair and co chair that either did not help or just felt this was more work than they first thought ( a direct statement from my chair to a great friend of mine)
4. I plan to walk in May 2024.
5. LU is not for everyone either. It is tough. There are four comps classes at the end you have to pass to move forward. We lost a lot of folks in that. You have to read at least 2-3 books per week, 2 book reviews, an oral exam and a 6 hour written exam with at least 20 sources. Most of my written exams were 20-25 pages.
6. I graduate with a 3.96 GPA and this is in addition to working full time ( running a library), teaching 3-3 classes a semester, working as at USA Swim Official ( 12-14 meets a year). Add to that, they were 8 week intense courses ( they have the option of 16 week now).

That is my story.