Misallocations

Long week, but I survived, and here we are now.  Funny; I have four episodes of J! on Tivo, and I was going to watch them all tonight, but stuff and life intervenes, and while I will get to one or two in a bit...well, there is a weekend to catch up.  And I should be able to.  I could have watched tonight's live -- met a friend for dinner at Danny Boy's, and while I was home in time... I don't want to watch out of turn, if possible.  Alas.  Also need to read some more; I am ahead of my yearly list, but the ratio of books added to books read is not exactly disappearing.  Ugh.  

From Trend to Transformation: Off-Premises Dining Now Essential for Restaurant Consumers, Operators
This is fascinating to me; I mean, to me, one of the best things to do is to eat live in a restaurant and get the full sense of it -- the service, the ambiance, etc.  Also, when you look at the costs of delivery and such... that is a significant chunk of the cost, isn't it?  You could eat out more live if you actually went to the place!  Oh well, the world-is-a-changing, but in some ways I am a fixed point in it.

How PBS, NPR lost funding -- and bipartisan support -- under Trump : NPR
This could be me, but anyone who listens to NPR (I seldom do, but when I do) cannot but notice a liberal bias, so that line of argument is crap.  Then, of course, there is the notion that we should not be spending so much money in the first place, and this is the easiest place to cut.  I would also note that I find it hard to believe that those who really want this sort of funding could easily pay for it themselves -- in addition to my usual jibes about these people not exactly missing any meals or not having the cash to say, give to any Democratic politician, there is the fact that if you -- or any other liberal -- want to help contribute...they could.

Debt Reckoning, by Mary Childs
Interesting and completely true.  Very few people think this way, mainly because no one ever sees the downside of this.  I mean, we just put it off in a way that we cannot do it with our personal finances, and that is highly problematic, to put it mildly.

I could not help but notice that today I was able to pay all the food pantry bills, send out the exterminator report, handle the correspondence, etc... and that when I go there Sunday after Mass, there will be more.  Sigh.  I guess I should be pleased at the progress, but...