Housing Market Decline to Worsen

Will house prices go down in 2023? Depending on who you ask, the forecast for 2023 is mixed. Most experts in the housing industry predict fewer buyer demand, lower prices, and higher borrowing rates. Rate increases, along with a shortage of availability, have pushed many purchasers to the sidelines. Home prices may fall slightly, but not drastically as they did in 2008. Some believe that the housing market will continue to outperform compared to the pre-pandemic.

Hence, there is no clarity regarding housing forecasts for 2023. CoreLogic, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, and Zillow all predict that home prices will grow next year albeit slightly. If inflation persists, the Fed could tighten more than anticipated by the financial markets. This would result in higher mortgage rates, which will impact the U.S. housing market. If inflation falls or a recession develops in the near future, the Fed may soften financial conditions.

Here's when the home prices can drop in 2022. While this may appear to be oversimplified, it is how markets work. Prices drop when demand is met. There is now an excessive demand for houses in several property markets, and there simply aren't enough homes to sell to prospective purchasers. Home construction has increased in recent years, although they are still far behind. Thus, big drops in housing prices would necessitate considerable drops in buyer demand.

Demand falls mostly as a result of higher interest rates or a general weakening of the economy. Rising interest rates would ultimately need far less demand and far more housing supply than we now have. Even if price growth slows this year, a fall in home prices is quite unlikely. As a result, there will be no fall in house values in 2022; rather, a pullback, which is natural for any asset class. In the United States, house price growth is forecasted to just “moderate” or slow down in 2022 as well as 2023.



By the end of the year, home price growth is anticipated to moderate to around 5 percent. The S&P CoreLogic Case-Shiller National Home Price Index increased 20,4% from a year earlier in April, down from 20,6% the previous month. The Case-Shiller Index is the three-month moving average of the prices of houses sold (i.e. February to April).  READ MORE...

Classic Sunday Morning Newspaper Cartoons

 

Ultraprocessed Foods Linked to Cancer

(CNN)Eating a lot of ultraprocessed foods significantly increases men's risk of colorectal cancer and can lead to heart disease and early death in both men and women, according to two new, large-scale studies of people in the United States and Italy published Wednesday in British medical journal The BMJ.

Ultraprocessed foods include prepackaged soups, sauces, frozen pizza, ready-to-eat meals and pleasure foods such as hot dogs, sausages, french fries, sodas, store-bought cookies, cakes, candies, doughnuts, ice cream and many more.

"Literally hundreds of studies link ultra-processed foods to obesity, cancer, cardiovascular disease, and overall mortality," said Marion Nestle, the Paulette Goddard professor emerita of nutrition, food studies and public health at New York University and author of numerous books on food politics and marketing, including 2015's "Soda Politics: Taking on Big Soda (and Winning)."

"These two studies continue the consistency: Ultraprocessed foods are unambiguously associated with an increased risk for chronic disease," said Nestle, who was not involved in either study.  READ MORE...

Fat Cat

 

Nomadic Horse Warriors That Invaded Europe

The charge of the Huns led by Attila (lived circa A.D. 406 to 453). 

(Image credit: SPCOLLECTION via Alamy Stock Photo)

The Huns were nomadic warriors, likely from Central Asia, who are best known for invading and terrorizing Europe in the fourth and fifth centuries A.D. and hastening the downfall of the Western Roman Empire. They were expert horsemen known for their ferocity in battle and their ruthlessness toward conquered peoples.

Under their brilliant military leader Attila (A.D. 406 to 453), known by Christians of the time as "the scourge of God," the Huns carved out a huge empire that encompassed large swathes of present-day Russia, Hungary and other parts of Europe, including Germany and France. 

Attila's army became so powerful that both the Western and Eastern Roman Empires regularly paid tribute to keep these warriors from attacking and plundering Roman provinces. But the Huns' empire didn't last. After Attila's death, the empire was divided between his three sons, who fought one another and were unable to keep the empire intact.



Today, the name "Hun" is synonymous with any barbaric, uncouth and destructive person, and the term conjures up images of mounted warriors involved in acts of abject cruelty, brutality and bellicosity. 

For centuries, this stereotype, which originated with Roman writers who suffered from the Huns' depredations, was the dominant image of the Huns. But the story of the Huns is much more complex than these images suggest.  READ MORE...

Beach Dogs & Balloon

 

Why Are Males Atrracted to Dominant Women?

In this article, “Why are men attracted to Dominant Women” I am going to discuss MY thoughts as to why men are attracted to dominant women. I am not referring to wrestlers or strong women but the personality element of Domination.

All women are different through and through, however you men may beg to differ…perhaps a few scorned ones!

Generally speaking the types of women that exist are Submissive, Dominant and the Self Sufficient aka. I Don’t Give a Fuck. Characteristics may prevail from each type however they primarily will favor one type.

The reason you have found yourself on my site and reading this blog post, already demonstrates that you too are intrigued or perhaps thrilled by these women. So I hope I nail this on the head! Here it is…

Now, I am not saying that this is entirely the case as every relationship is different but you get what I mean. You see dominant females are the female equivalent to needy alpha males who set the boundaries in life. A real and true dominant person in real life you see will often have a tendency to be bossy and know how to make life hell! Once in a relationship these women tend to start issuing orders, standards and the rules she expects you her man to follow. And boy, if these rules are not attained to does she get pissed!

The result of failure to follow these is DRAMA and we all know how much you guys love that, NOT! This sometimes resorts in the monogamy Mr. Nice Guy route of ”anything for an easy life”. Dominants will tend to be high- drama, high maintenance and inflict high stress levels on you!

By now, I have probably put you off dominants forever however they do have some positive traits.
Dominant Women are often:
Very Smart
    What manipulators aren’t?
Confident
    Strong people always allure sexual appeal, even the most unattractive women!
Addictive
    It’s nature, because it’s something you want but can’t always have for your own sanity reasons!

So, what I am saying is that the men that often fall for fun, feminine Dominants do so only to get in return drama and rules. Which ultimately ends in the man running away as far as he bloody well can!

Domination is therefore a fantasy and one that will never go away because for men, who are natural born leaders. It is something they think they would perhaps like, but in reality don’t! No body enjoys being told what to do all the time… Fantasy Domination sessions are therefore here to stay to help vent that addiction. It also allows it to remain temporary by letting men live there life by there own rules and be dominated when they chose to be under veto!  SOURCE:  Sara Lips Wrestling

Going Into Space

 

NASA scrubbed the launching of the unmanned Artemis Space craft whose mission was to circle the moon while stress tests were going to be performed and then about a month later, Artemis would return to earth.  This would be a precursor flight where NASA had plans to later send a manned flight to circlle the moon and land on the moon for the purpose of constructing living structures for future flights.  These living structures would become a base station for flights to Mars.  Eventually, we would construct living structures on Mars.

While NASA is a government agency, their efforts does not preclude private companies like SpaceX, Blue Origin, or Virgin Galactic from doing the same thing...  however,  it is entirely possible that these private companies would move faster than our Federal Government.   Our government would also not be able to stop other countries like China and Russia from doing the same thing.

Now here is the problem...

If the US spends all its money on social welfare programs and going GREEN, then they will have very little money left to explore outer space.  People will support social programs but will not support space exploration.

Whoever gets into space first will have a strategic military advantage...   in other words, they would have the HIGH GROUND.

The timeline for this to be a serious issue is 2030 which is only 7 years away.

If China does not spend money on GOING GREEN they will have all the money they need to explore space, especially if they join with Russia to make it happen.

By 2040, China/Russia could have built a military outpost in Outer Space while we are still focused on Electric Vehicles, Solar Energy, Open Immigrartrion, and Free College Education and making sure the blacks continue to hold the "balls" of the white population in their political vises.

However, as long as I have my student loan paid off, I don't give a rat's ass or a shit about what the Chinese and Russians might do...   it ain't personal...   I just want what I want and I want it right now...  pay up you wealthy bastards...

Cat in Snow

 

A Writing System 4,000 Years Old

This bull-head vessel spout is from Susa and dates back around 4,000 years. Linear Elamite was used in the same time and place. (Image credit: Photo courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum of Art)



A mysterious ancient writing system called Linear Elamite, used between about 2300 B.C. and 1800 B.C. in what is now southern Iran, might have finally been deciphered, although some experts are skeptical about the findings. 

What's more, it's unclear whether all the artifacts used to decipher the writings were legally acquired.

Only about 40 known examples of Linear Elamite survive today, making the script challenging to decode, but researchers say they've largely accomplished just that, they wrote in a paper published in July in the journal Zeitschrift für Assyriologie und Vorderasiatische Archäologie(opens in new tab) (German for the "Journal of Assyriology and Near Eastern Archaeology"). 

Key to their decipherment was the analysis of eight inscriptions on silver beakers.

Other research teams had previously decoded different Linear Elamite inscriptions, and the new study's authors built on this previous work by comparing the writing system in the eight Linear Elamite inscriptions with cuneiform (an already-deciphered script used in what is now the Middle East) texts that date to around the same time period and likely contain the names of the same rulers and their titles and use some of the same phrases to describes the rulers.  READ MORE...

Dog & Kitten

 

As Our Planet Burns

While nations rally to reduce their carbon emissions, and try to adapt at-risk places to hotter conditions, there is an elephant in the room: for large portions of the world, local conditions are becoming too extreme and there is no way to adapt. People will have to move to survive.

Over the next fifty years, hotter temperatures combined with more intense humidity are set to make large swathes of the globe lethal to live in. Fleeing the tropics, the coasts, and formerly arable lands, huge populations will need to seek new homes; you will be among them, or you will be receiving them. 

This migration has already begun—we have all seen the streams of people fleeing drought-hit areas in Latin America, Africa, and Asia where farming and other rural livelihoods have become impossible.

The number of migrants has doubled globally over the past decade, and the issue of what to do about rapidly increasing populations of displaced people will only become greater and more urgent as the planet heats.

We can—and we must—prepare. Developing a radical plan for humanity to survive a far hotter world includes building vast new cities in the more tolerable far north while abandoning huge areas of the unendurable tropics. 

It involves adapting our food, energy, and infrastructure to a changed environment and demography as billions of people are displaced and seek new homes.  READ MORE...

KItten Attacked

 

Talking to Voyager Again

NASA’S VOYAGER 1 is on a fraught and unknowable journey into deep space. Some 14.6 billion miles from Earth, it and its sister craft, Voyager 2, are the furthest human-made objects from our planet, having made it beyond the edges of the Solar System and out into the interstellar medium. 

At such distances, anything can go wrong. Add to that the fact that these are old craft: The Voyagers launched in the 1970s. 

So when Voyager 1 started to send home weird, garbled nonsense instead of telemetry data in May of this year, NASA engineers might have been forgiven for calling it a day and pouring one out for perhaps the most successful space mission of all time.


But that’s not how NASA works. Instead, they started working on a remote diagnosis and fix for the record-breaking spacecraft. Now, some four months later, they are triumphant. 

Voyager 1 is back online and communicating perfectly with ground control as if it never happened. In fact, the fix turned out to be relatively simple — or as simple as anything can be with a 22-hour communications lag in each direction and billions of miles of space in between.  READ MORE...

Birds

 

America Is No Longer America

While this sounds a little hard to believe especially because America will always be America until the name is changed...  its core has been changed and she will never be the same...  so let me explain...

It all started with WHITE WEALTH and WHITE ARROGANCE...  believing that whites were somehow better than everyone else as if we had a God given right to believe that...

Whites persecuted Native Americans

Whites persecuted African Americans

Whites persecuted the poor and uneducated

But the biggest issue facing America was that the WEALTHY felt that they were above the law in all respects and used their wealth to manipulate politics and business into their direction and according to their will.

For years there was a silent majority that kept their mouth's shut and did what they were told but resented it.

Then in 2015, Trump came on the scene and he represented this silent majority and they saw him as their savior/leader and responded accordingly.

Trump was an outsider and did not play by the rules and instantly encountered this intense animosity against him.

And that when THE SHIT HIT THE FAN and America got turned upside down.

The mainstream media joined the liberals and progressives to do whatever they needed to do to STOP TRUMP, STOP his POWER and Stop his INFLUENCE on the PUBLIC...

EVERYTHING that is going on in America which includes:

• Stopping Dependence on Oil
• Stop Producing Domestic Gasoline
• BLM - CRT - WOKENESS - Cancel Culture
• White Supremacy
• Bad Cops Hurting Blacks
• Crime and Violence
• Going Green
• Illegal Immigration
• Illegal drugs pouring into the US
• No worries about North Korea
• Not interfering in Ukraine
• Letting Iran become Nuclear
• Support China in doing whatever
• Spending money out the ass
• Forgiving student debt
• Raising taxes

All of this is BECAUSE OF TRUMP and who he is and how he has been able to influence 50% of the American population...

The other side is trying to end this influence regardless of the cost to the country...

TRUMP's ACTIONS and subsequent reactions to his actions is destroying this country quicker than stink on shit and unless we stop it soon, we will reach a point of no return...  and will start regretting our actions and all their unintended consequences.

All the illegal immigrants that are coming into the US from Mexico...  do you think they are going to live like we do?

No, they are going to continue to live like they did in Mexico or they did in other countries.

Our neigborhoods will begin to have areas that look like the slums and will lower property values...  but, by then it will be too late because all we cared about was STOPPING TRUMP.

How easily the American public has been able to become so easily influenced by Trump and then influenced again by those who HATE TRUMP...

The Older Customer

I purchased an HP computer because it was cheaper than the rest and I thought that since I was doing just word processing, it would not be a problem...

WRONG...

After a week, I wanted to throw the HP into the trash and buy a Dell or Lenovo, both of which I have had before and found them both acceptable just more expensive.

My first problem is that the keyboard is not the same nor is the operating system and the damn computer wants to go to Google Docs rather than MS.  GD is inferior in my opinion to MS and is not acceptable for Kindle Publishing on Amazon.

The second big issue was that, the computer is slower than molassas and the touch screen does not work half the time and when it does there is a 15 second delay in reaction time, especially when you are trying to close out a window or a doc.

Of course, after 6 month of annoyance, one gets familiar and all is accepted but not forgiven and then next time I look to buy, HP will e the last brand name on the list.  I was to told by the people at BB that there would be no problems...  some 20 something geek who knew more than me at age 9 than I know at 74...  of course, he has no problem...  but the employee did not have enough experience to properly interface with the older customer.

That does not happen often at BB as I find these people very good and helpful when talking with older buyers...  but it does make you wonder where BB might be going.

This is the world we created for ourselves and this is the world that we must live in until a group of leaders realize they were wrong and sets about changing it back.

College Bound or NOT...

Just because Biden has forgiven current student debt does not mean this government forgiveness will continue...  in case you are considering going to college after high school.

But, is this something you really want to do?

• Were you a good student?
• Did you like to learn?
• Did you want to retain knowledge?
• Did you learn more on your own?

Granted, going to college today is not like going to college was 50 years ago...   and, that is the problem that I want to discuss.

College today is watered down so that students can pass through easily and colleges and universities can increase their revenues.

The other issue is that when more and more students graduate from college, there will be less and less jobs for college students...  Great supply, low demand, mean salaries go down...  the labor market become diluted with too many college students...  and, because the courses have been watered down, companies have to teach student what they did not learn in college.

Needless to say, that will piss your employer off.

You don't need a college degree to be a:

• Restaurant manager
• Building contractor
• Computer programmer
• Open your own food market
• Repair foreign cars
• Refurbish houses - home repair

Truck drivers like 18-wheelers who have their CDL can make $150,000 to $200,000 annually.

Before I left North Carolina in 1990, plumbers and electricians were making so much money that most of them own half a dozen or more rentals properties that provided them with an extra income that they did not need, so they built their home on the lake...  just like the multimillionaires...  piss the millionaires off big time...

One of my college roommates dropped out of college and started flipping houses.  By the time I got out of college with my 4 year degree 7 years later because I went into the military for a couple of years, this dropout had stopped flipping houses and was flipping apartment complexes.  He was already worth several millions of dollars if he were to sell off his property and pay off his debt.

When I was 48 years of age, he had already retired and was living off interest from $10 million or $4,000 each month.

Here is something to think about.

My neighbor is a 60 year old legal Mexican immigrant who has been in this country a little over 20 years.  He started out in Mexico as a cabinet maker and when he immigrated to Texas, he got on a crew building house.  Five years later he move to TN because his wife is from this area and started his own home building company with him and 2-3 others.

In 2022, he is building his last house for himself and his wife.  He owns and rents 10 houses which gives him an income of $10000 each month.  Or, he can end his rental contracts and sell his houses with no debt to pay off.

He has no college degree and no technical or trade degree...  all his knowledge and experience comes from on-the-job.

Once this last house is done, we will play chess and drink non-alcoholic Sangria.

Think long and hard if you want to go to college and make sure that you really understand what you are getting yourself into.

T. G. I. F.

There is something about Friday arriving that completely changes the work week around from being miserable to somewhat acceptable.  Just one more day of working for the man...  that is to say, unless you are the man.

While college and university professors don't make that much money, they really have the best jobs for what they are being asked to do and how much actual time they are working.

Most colleges and universities want you to teach 12 hours a week or 4 three-hour courses.  At most small college or universities that results in Monday through Thursday with only a half day on Friday especially if you are in the Business Department.

So, in addition to teaching, you must put in about 2 hours per day as office hours in case the student(s) want to come talk with you.  So, now we are looking at 22 hours of work.  You can use those office hours to grade papers or prepare for your classes.

Most colleges and universities then require you to serve on 2 committees that meet each week or each month for 2 hours...  so, if it is weekly then that is another 4 hours or 26 hours of work.  Sometimes these meeting last 3 hours so typically if you count all of it up, college and university professors work 30 hours a week or less.

If you are a department head, then you teach less, but you are pretty much guaranteed you will be working 40-50 hours each week.

Now, if you are a professor, you don't work when the students are not there.  So, you have several days at Thanksgiving, a couple of weeks at Christmas.  And, during the summer, you don't work at all unless you volunteer for summer classes.

Now, the students have a fall and spring break for a week and during those breaks you are required to work 40 hours each of those weeks.

But, there is a catch.

If you want tenure, then you must publish and that requires you to spend those weekly hours from 30-40 researching to become published.  Once you have tenure, you cannot be fired...  but, you have to continue publishing.  Tenured faculty are also required to teach less hours in the classroom as an incentive...  maybe only 9 hours each week and lots of those classes can be taught by grad students.

The last 5 years of my 45 year career was teaching business classes at a small college that became a university.  It was a great way to end one's career.  Plus, I only lived 2 miles from the campus.

Sea Animals