First Class Duck

an opinionated and jaded traveler

[First Class Duck @FirstClassDuck]

@chait76 @antoniogm Honestly, just work hard, save your money, support your friends and family, be a friendly and compassionate person, and avoid being bitter. Just avoid chasing women for sex, and you’ll live a happy and healthy life. Just keep some platonic friends for brownies. :-)

[Matthew Yglesias @mattyglesias]

I think a lot about how none of my friends from growing up in Greenwich Village in the 80s and 90s could possibly afford apartments in that neighborhood the size of the ones we grew up in.

Downward mobility among objectively successful people induced by housing scarcity.

[NickFrank40 @NickyFrank30]

@Charlesaf3 My last left-wing boyfriend thinks the current left-wing sucks and is too full of autistic Gen Z incels who sound too much like MAGA.

[Jason, @jasonc_nc]

@Eric_Erins We’ve done a lot over the years to intentionally make apartments more expensive than they have to be, creating a sort of disincentive to drive demand towards detached homes.

[Matthew Lutz @MattLutzPhi]

@asymmetricinfo Because Platners campaign was heavily factional and members of his faction are livid at the thought that their victory could be taken away from them. (Josh is a Democrat and he's not acting this way...)

[Antifa Armored Division @GimmeFreeStuf14]

@asymmetricinfo My useless assessment:

1) They see him as the alpha male they've been desperate to recruit since ~2020

2) The DNC base is quite literally insane and many (including many outside Maine) would never forgive them for forcing him out

[Gigi @Gigi_chienergy]

The screwworm program wasn't charity, it was a $10 million fence that kept a billion-dollar problem from eating our own livestock alive. That's the thing with most USAID funding: it looks like "aid," but it's really cheap self-defense. Solve a problem there, and it never lands on our doorstep. But sure, let a bunch of guys who can't define DEI without Googling take a chainsaw to it. They didn't stop to ask, "Will this cut hurt us too?" Unless that's the point, burn it all down and call it efficiency.

As usual our inept agriculture secretary, blaming the Biden administration as usual, instead of offering a solution to the problem they created.

Texan here

A screwworm infestation is a nightmare for cattle, causing horrific wounds and economic devastation. For Texas, the situation has escalated dramatically in the last 24 hours with the first confirmed case of New World Screwworm (NWS) in over 60 years! This could have been avoided!

Infested animal can kill a cow in less than two weeks.

Treatment is extremely difficult and time-consuming, requiring the painful removal of every visible larva and deep disinfection of the wound. Ranchers no longer have much experience with this labor-intensive process, and there is currently no approved pharmaceutical treatment to make it easier.

This has triggered a massive economic threat. The USDA estimates that a widespread outbreak would drain an astonishing $1.8 billion from the Texas economy alone in livestock deaths, labor, and medication expenses.

How will this affect you? Tightening supplies will drive already high beef prices higher.

[First Class Duck @FirstClassDuck]

@constans @svgmzr Which makes sense given the local context of home owners or supers who may not have a car…

[First Class Duck @FirstClassDuck]

@motivatedjoy The problem is that a sizable chunk of the base is tired of being the party of moral seriousness, and they want to win and have *revenge* for everything the Trump has done.

[First Class Duck @FirstClassDuck]

@svgmzr @constans I don’t think I’ve ever seen my local Home Depot offer delivery for anything that wasn’t a large bulk order.

The assumption is that you either rent a truck, or figure out the best way to haul it home on your own. Delivery is just annoying for a lot of stuff here.

[Peter Moskos @PeterMoskos]

@TheRealDHR There were just so quick to redline. Like I can't even figure out, even by their standards, why Long Island City was redlined. They also hated stable working-class neighborhoods And this was "British and German."

[KC-10 Driver ✈️ 👨‍✈️ B-737 Wrangler @MCCCANM]

I stay away from politics as much as possible & will try to continue doing so, but as a guy who served in the military, let me just say:

The dude is a bad guy. A really bad guy. The kind you find a way of not being near once booze starts flowing or you’re gonna be in trouble.

[Liv Sage @sage_liv]

And if the US suffers any sort of defeat that renders the Coast Guard and other military branches ineffective, the risk of it being fatal skyrockets.

A lot of expats don’t seem to understand that their safety anywhere outside the majority white western world is because of US hegemony.

[First Class Duck @FirstClassDuck]

@AZinCLE @StatisticUrban @JoshJunker2 @EricMGarcia Chicago's Philadelphia? :-)

[First Class Duck @FirstClassDuck]

@emzanotti But we're in the same age range (early 40s), so there's no reason for you to be Centrum Silver...because that would imply that I need it too...

[First Class Duck @FirstClassDuck]

@motivatedjoy FWIW, US politics come up whenever I talk with my Canadian cousins for the same reasons.

Coincidentally, the affairs at Parliament Hill or Queen's Park come up far less often, and I'm the only one of their American family members with a slight clue of what's going on in Canada.

[First Class Duck @FirstClassDuck]

I'm going to need proof on the ownership of a highly profitable architecture firm. The cursory searches so far seem to indicate a small company in the Bronx, so again, it's not screaming rich girl to me.

As somebody who lost his dad in his twenties, I'm hesitant to assume that the money tree stays alive after the parent passes on. :-/

*She took private flying lessons and vacationed on private islands with multimillionaires in her 'bartending' (lol!) days*

It's weird, but I'm more willing to assume that (white) significant others paid for those things.

[First Class Duck @FirstClassDuck]

@nobodyknows2322 @AOC *spoiled little rich girl*

Maybe it's me, but I can't see her as the spoiled little rich girl. AOC in a world where her parents had more life insurance, or her dad lives is probably a different person on a different path, but I can't call her a rich girl.

[First Class Duck @FirstClassDuck]

@AZinCLE People long for the small township government of New Jersey but with the liberties of the unaccountable private sector running the show.

[mariana Z @mariana057]

Due to the high cost of energy, the light at the end of the tunnel has been switched off.

[Philipp Sandmann @philsandmann]

The AfD Party in Germany is the most anti-German party that exists. They are not patriots, they are traitors.