Quote from: RE on Jun 01, 2026, 05:56 AMBack in the 70s & 80s when I did my Summer Euro Tours on the rails. on a motorcycle, in a rent-a-car and on a sailboat,there wasn't a countrry I visited where Yanks weren't the most despised touristas, by far.

Wow! Pretty good for a kid wandering Europe on money earned from delivering groceries and whatnot to help support mom because of a dead beat dad. Shit I could barely afford to hitchhike to the Cabinet Mountains of Montana to try out some survivalist skills back then.

Quote from: RE on May 31, 2026, 10:42 AMThe answer to insurance company rip offs is simple.  Don't own anything worth insuring. 😀  For me, even my life isn't worth insuring.  lol,[/color]
RE

Interesting experiences with insurance you've had.

Every insurance claim I've ever made has been paid in full. Motorcycle crash into a car resulting in substantial damage to their cage and my totalled motorcycle with a loan, all paid before I was able to sit down comfortably after the fracture of the spine. Every windshield that ever got cracked on my cars, including the 3 the daughter collected in just 8 months while in college. OTHER insurance companies of folks who totalled my cars paid up without complaint. Never had an issue. Doesn't mean I won't have one of course. No problem with medical insurance either, come to think of it. Mine, my parents as I handled their affairs, the daughters home owner insurance when she had an issue....still a small sample size but....markedly different than yours RE.

 

Quote from: Haniel on May 27, 2026, 06:36 PMEvening dudes. Been a while.

What did I miss? 

THE END!!!!

Didn't you notice?

I can't speak for all Ameerikans, but I'm well aware of it.  Back in the 70s & 80s when I did my Summer Euro Tours on the rails. on a motorcycle, in a rent-a-car and on a sailboat,there wasn't a countrry I visited where Yanks weren't the most despised touristas, by far.  I took to sewing an Australian flag on my backback and greeting everyone I met with a "G'day, mate" in a passable Down Under accent and proved my bona fides with my fairly thorough knowledge of Sydney, Bondi Beach and the arcane rules of Australian Rules Football.  I did get caught a couple of times when I had to flash my passport at border crossings, but by then I was friends and my new traveling companions were very sympathetic to my plight of being from the Great Satan.  I can't imagine how bad it must be by now.  I'd be terrified of either being kidnapped, beaten to a bloody pulp or shot on sight.

RE

Quote from: K-Dog on May 31, 2026, 09:16 AMThis is a true sign of collapse.


Insurance companies will be the first to fully embrace A.I.  It is the perfect way to deny claims.  While everyone else is using A.I. to simply log customer complaints in the round file, insurance companies will be ruining lives.

I have always considered insurance to be a total ripoff.  My one experience was with my one and only New Car I bought with my ex-wife.  I had to carry a full policy including repairs and collision besides liability and when the tranny quit they refused to pay for it because I didn't have all the receipts for my engine oil changes, which I did myself. Never mind I kept a log book of all the changes and engine oil has nothing to do with a tranny failure.  After that, I only carried liability, and only for a couple of months when I had to renew my registration.  Otherwise, I drove the other 50 years of my driving life uninsured, except for my trucking years where the company I leased to picked up the tab.  I saved over $50K in premium payments this way just on liability, double that if you include collision, repairs, fire and theft.  Fortunately of course I was a fabulous driver and went accident free my entire life, including 1M miles behind the wheel of a big rig.  Never carried any other type of insurance..

The whole biz model is designed around refusing claims.  The more claims they refuse, the bigger the profits.  There is no other way for the biz to make money, other than taking the money you pay and either investing it or handing out loans.

AI will definitely make getting claims paid in disputes, where it is already almost impossible to win.  The Insurance Company holds all the cards and a huge legaL dept stuffed with Harvard and Yale Law School grads while you have Jo Schmo from Devry Night School who you met at the bar and handled your divorce. LOL.  I'm sure their IT depts are now also stuffed with AI algo designers from Cal Tech and MIT working day and night with their own AI Agents designing new algos to rip you off while they burn gigawatts of electricity on supercomputers raising your power bill for your McMansion and EV car while they do it.

The answer to insurance company rip offs is simple.  Don't own anything worth insuring. 😀  For me, even my life isn't worth insuring.  lol,

RE

This is a true sign of collapse.




Insurance companies will be the first to fully embrace A.I.  It is the perfect way to deny claims.  While everyone else is using A.I. to simply log customer complaints in the round file, insurance companies will be ruining lives.

Dr. Alan Gonzalez, MSF's deputy director of operations, said in a statement. "Nobody knows the true scale and severity of this outbreak."

Will it escape Africa?  Given there is NO TREATMENT & NO VACCINE available yet, it seems pretty likely to cause significant DEATH inside the Dark Continent.  How many Dead will we end up with?  Will it top 1000?  1M? 1 BILLION ?!?!? 😬👿 What's the over-under on this?  Will it have legs or will it peter out?

The more cases we get, the more likely it becomes there will be mutations.  If it goes airborne or crosses species, we're cooked.  If it hits the Avian population that will bring it to Europe pretty quickly.

On the positive side, if it gets bad enough we won't have to worry about Hormuz and the Oil trade. 😀

RE

And that is merely the headline federal debt number. When you add in private debt - corporate, household, municipal, bank - the United States now sits atop over $100 trillion in total outstanding obligations. In fact, total business debt alone has skyrocketed to $22 trillion, or 70% of GDP - the same percentage that ushered in the Global Financial Crisis in 2008. That alone should terrify any rational investor. Oh, and then there's the unfunded liabilities, which add another $80 trillion to the dung pile.

No worries.  Raise the Debt Ceiling to $INFINITY$ !  Or Infinity to the power of Infinity!  No wait...Mint a $200T Platinum Coin and pay the whole thing off with that!  Can we apply for that new Bioluminescent VISA Card?

I really have to wonder WTF buys the Toilet Paper at the Treasury Auctions these days and where they get the money to buy the bonds?  Do they sell Nvidia stock?  Do they pay for it with BTC?  Maybe they borrow it from Luxemborg? 

Clearly, The Smartest Guys in the Room now are equipped with the best AI Super Cooled Super Conducting Paralle Processing Super Computers and understand this far better than the rest of us mere mortals, so just Pahhty On!

RE

No point tracking his private jet as a doom thermometer.  Thiel has already flown.