Yes, Conrad Is Going to Squeeze All The Content He Can From This
Today, I shall be relating a tale of manglement stupidity, employee ineptness, being hit with a legal anvil from a mile up, and using a Youtube vloggers real handle - in this case 'Naiasonod'. Which possibly means 'Water Nymph of Hungarian Origin', or is complete nonsense. You choose. Art!
Zombie mutant ducks looking for human prey
Because leading with a bit of geography would be rather feeble, doncha think?
The geography that I learned of today is the 'Northern Neck Of Virginia', which, if Art will put down his bowl of coal -
Technically, it's one of the three peninsula of Virginia A STATE NAMED AFTER GOOD QUEEN BESS and is the setting for our HOA story.
So, Naiasonod and his wife, back when they were younger, bought up a half-acre of land and had a house built there. It's not mentioned explicitly by the duo, yet they are pretty wealthy, being able to afford to have a dwelling constructed to their designs. The locals were mostly poor folk, which - bonus! - meant there was no HOA to run/ruin <delete where applicable> things, as there was simply no spare money.
At this point, enter Ryan Homes. Art!
They start buying properties and building new ones. Any purchasers HAVE to join the HOA, as it's written into their sale contracts. Property values increase, and so do property taxes, meaning the poor people get priced out of their homes, sell up and move on. Naiasonod and wife look upon this with disapproval alone. Thanks to their wealth there's no chance of them being driven out, which they correctly interpreted as meaning the HOA would come after them. The harassment stopped for a while after 'One Expensive Lawyer' was involved. This was only a temporary solution, as Naiasonod reasoned whoever at RH was involved in doing common sense, logical, legal things got fired or left for a commune in Goa. Art!
AI Art Generator's idea of 'Naiasonod'
Naiasonod and wife move away from that neck of the woods in The Neck, retaining their house and renting it out. The HOA then tries harassing the tenants with all the benefits of the HOA, going so far as to send fake 'Eviction Notices' to the tenants, with a sinister warning inside about their tenant's rights not being respected. Art!
Ol' Nai retains a 'Very Expensive Lawyer' who challenges RH's legal team, who in reply insist that what they were doing was perfectly legal and if this was disputed, take them to court.
So Ol' Nai did. He wasn't a penniless local, he had verrrrry deep pockets and was going to see this out. The RH legal team may have hoped that he'd just give up if they prolonged the legal process, a blasé attitude that came back to bite them with teeth the size of steak knives.
When the court date arrived, RH's four lawyers were opposed by Ol' Nai himself and his single (costly!) lawyer, matters proceeding for an hour until the lawyers were all called into a meeting in the judges private chambers. Art!
The RH lawyers came out looking, so quote Ol' Nai, as if they were cats that had been urinated upon. His counsel sat down and said 'They're going to settle.'
So soon? exclaimed our landlord. He had expected them to drag the case out for weeks if not months, to run up his legal expenses.
'Well,' explained his attorney with a great deal of relish. 'Ryan Homes built and sold fifty-two homes in this County. They were all inspected at point of sale by a realtor. What did she not have?
One of these
The cost to become a qualified home inspector in the U.S. ranges from approximately $3,000 to $5,000 or more, with initial startup costs including training courses ($600–$3,700), exam fees ($50–$225), and license applications ($50–$250). Additional costs involve setting up a business, liability insurance, and purchasing inspection tools.
She probably thought 'What can possibly go wrong!' An awful lot, love.
RH basically caved and paid Ol' Nai $10,000 to not sue their collective bottom off. The real sting in the tail came from state and county fines, fees and settlements for the home owners who had to be compensated. Naiasonod calculated that the costs ran into the millions of dollars. Art!
Naiasonod doesn't relate what happened to the homes in question, but knowledgeable Commenters reckoned that they all had to be demolished.
Conrad, being diligent at digging, did try to see if he could find details of this case and see if the estate was destroyed. O my!
They have a terrible reputation and there are simply too many cases against them for me to be able to find this one.
From The Pits To The Heavens
Let's examine the second item in 'Spacedock's collection of 'Five Realistic Interstellar Craft'. This is the 'laser sail' concept, where incredibly high-powered lasers are played on an enormous sail in order to propel it. Art!
This one is more a Proof Of Concept, as the most prominent promoter of this idea, physicist Robert Forward, had his giant laser assembly being located around Mercury rather than in Earth's orbit. Art!
Excuse me, how is this 'realistic'? Lasers with a reach across the whole solar system and a lens construct bigger than any man-made artefact in history? Perhaps they mean 'Totally Not Made Up Physics' instead of 'Realistic'?
ANYWAY this lens allows the laser light to be focussed to distances of up to 40 light years, and is used to propel a small exploratory craft, powering it for 3 years to send it on it's laggardly way to Alpha Centauri, a sojourn lasting 40 years. Art!
How to bring such a sailcraft to a stop? Why, as above, you detach part of the sail, then use it to reflect the laser light backwards, thus braking the craft and allowing a crew to get out and have a nosey. Though they might be a bit past it having taken 40 years to get there.
Dateline Dubious
Conrad has been a bit slack in dating items in his Notebook, which is rather remiss. Hence I have economic data about how awful things are in the Sanjak Of Novi Pazar, and yet no way to date it.
Only joking, the info is about Mordorvia, and I think is up to the end of August, so perhaps written in September. Art!
10 years in the gulag for Conrad!
Overall the Ruffian banking system is trying to restrict orcses from withdrawing money from their bank accounts, because the banks have a liquidity problem: that is, they do not have enough cash to cover mass withdrawals.
JJS then moved onto the state deficit, which at the time he was broadcasting was a jaw-dropping $52 billion, or $6.6 billion per month. So, by now in early November, that will now be $65 billion and we're looking at $80 billion by year's end, as the Ruffians always lump together a ton of deficits in December. Art!
I may have gloated about this particular piece of economic misery already, but since it loves company, here we are again. The cut in price per barrel has led to a collapse of 15% or a whopping $200 billion per annum, which is one heck of a financial black hole to fill. The coal sector has lost $3 billion in Q1 and Q2 this year, the worst figures for 30 years. I can also add in even more economic gloom, as RZD, the state railway network, has posted a net loss of $4 billion across the year to date. For the same period in 2024 they posted a profit of $44 billion, a staggering drop of $48 billion. Oops. Art!
Another Cold War Warrior
Your daily fix of BOVINGTON TANK MUSEUM. I bet you've been thirsting for this update. Art!
This ancient bathtub is the Sinister's T-55, one of the most numerous tanks in history, made to the tune of 100,000. In it's day it was quite good, having a relatively large gun and decent armour protection, and being relatively small only 35 tons) compared to NATO tanks. The downside was that, as with later Sinister designs, it could not depress it's gun sufficiently to be able to fire from under cover, and it wasn't able to shoot accurately at long ranges.
The T-55 has made a reluctant comeback in Ukraine, as the models sent are 50 years old from Sinister-era stockpiles and are totally outclassed by anything but the Bob Semple. Art!
This is the state of one of the stored T-55s in 2011, and it won't have any better in the ensuing 11 years.
Here's One Conrad Get Behind
Manchester Airport's rip-off drop-off charges are extremely annoying and keep hiking upwards. They have swingeing fines if you breach their parking procedures, the pikers. Art!
HA!
No comments:
Post a Comment