DD Support Board and Research Team

[OMOLIVES]

Rates dropping. Buying debt getting more expensive. Slowly...

[janice shell]

Ahhhh....

Ahhhhhh. It was Bukele who altered the photos:

Bukele shared additional photos of them, quipping that Abrego Garcia had “miraculously risen from the ‘death camps’ & ‘torture,’ now sipping margaritas with Sen. Van Hollen in the tropical paradise of El Salvador!” He added that Abrego Garcia would stay in El Salvador’s custody.[/I]

https://www.politico.com/news/2025/04/17/white-house-defense-abrego-garcia-deportation-00298118

You can see the salted rims of the glasses. Which are not there in the real photos:

Kilmar Abrego Garcia, miraculously risen from the “death camps” & “torture”, now sipping margaritas with Sen. Van Hollen in the tropical paradise of El Salvador!🍹 pic.twitter.com/r6VWc6Fjtn

— Nayib Bukele (@nayibbukele) April 18, 2025

But... What if Trump didn't realize Bukele was having his little joke?

[janice shell]

Yes. And Bukele was the first to post photos of the meeting. Which is strange. Why would Bukele want to make Trump look like a fool? An NBC article says he was the first to post the photo of Abrego Garcia with Van Hollen.

And on X, there's what seems to be an "enhanced" photo of them drinking from glasses whose rims seemed to be salted. And whoever did it also made the cafe look a but more ritzy. I was beginning to rethink the relative benefits of CECOT.

So where is he now?

[bar1080]

NOW, Maryland Democrat, Van Hollen, says he met with Abrego Garcia in El Salvador

https://www.yahoo.com/news/man-deported-el-salvadorian-prison-015518059.html

[janice shell]

Sure is. But I'm sure it'll keep on growing.

[Rkramden]

That's a lot a sheet

[janice shell]

I see VPLM has 3.7 billion shares outstanding. WOW!!

[janice shell]

The Herter's story is good. I especially like the idea of the "fish call".

[DeerBalls]

WOW, YOU WILLY, WILLY GOOD AT MATH!!!! I have far, far more dan dat! Regularly speak with someone with 200mm+...

Your point????????

[jimr1717]

Excellent

[BullNBear52]

For the record, VPLM closed at $.0093, up about 75% off recent low!

And if you own a million shares you'll have a whopping $9300.00

[DeerBalls]

Always the same, "talk'n loud, saying nothing"! "Paid pimps"? I just hold a large position in VPLM... Why do you post your BS on VPLM? You're not short; there are no puts!

For the record, VPLM closed at $.0093, up about 75% off recent low!

[DeerBalls]

Spot on! VDH is one of the GREATS!

[sunspotter]

I bet he's not as sad as the paid pimps on social media flogging the VPLM dead horse..................

[DeerBalls]

Keep trying, little man! Haven't seen you on VPLM board... Are you sad? 🤣

[vp_007_99]

DXF on a climb and naked shorts is being thrown around like like a cow bell.

[Koog]

... go join Integral wherever he may be, as you both deserve each other wink

Integral is deceased. That was not a cool thing to say.

[davidsson10]

If memory serves, integral spelled his alias with a lowercase i.

I know, minor details....

[Koog]

On second thought, you said you were in Vancouver in 1984. The article says the notorious red light district was pushed to Downtown Eastside in the early '80's so you may have been driving there. Perhaps near the intersection of Main Street and Hastings Street?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Downtown_Eastside

[Paulie Cashews]

If you can't remember where the Vancouver prostitutes hung out, I'd suggest you consult this weighty tome:



Paulie's Pixel Palace

[Koog]

West end of Vancouver, likely David Street ("Davie"). Haven't been there but found this piece:
https://www.createastir.ca/articles/hookers-on-davie-the-cinematheque

[bar1080]

The Bar1080 Portfolio is exactly as I say it is: 20 individual mega-cap blue chips, A+-rated corp bonds, BBB+ rated muni bonds, and insured bank CDs.

JDSU.... I remember all the hot rubbish of the past half century, including JDSU.

[sunspotter]

I remember an acquaintance of mine in NJ (incidentally a low level member of the DeCavalacante family) telling me every single day between 1998 and 2000 how much his investment in JDSU had gone up.

Until it didn't.

[bar1080]

"Ahhh, memories, Hy's Steakhouse, the Pez, the value of the $$ back then 😇😊😍 Stocks going from .10-------------->$20+ in a day wink. And crashing to trips after 1999 as the newbie stock bettors of 1995 vanished from the market..

[davidsson10]

Yes, Vancouver is nice - real nice, in fact, if you know where to look, where to go, and what to do (and with whom) - but you haven't lived until you've devoted sufficient time to erasing your summer tan lines at Wreck Beach.

[shajandr]

In case I never gett around to Herter's stories (or my tormenting nemesis, AdminShelly, boots me from iHub), here is a Readers Digest version of that of which I write:

https://www.startribune.com/herter-s-catalog-is-long-gone-but-not-forgotten/291167741

It is at best a thumbnail sketch, butt enuff for you to gett the gist of why Herter's is a mythic presence still reverberating thru the gestalt of plaid flannel shirt-wearing NorthWoodsmen of both genders.

My favorite items in the Herter's catalogs were the huge bear traps (clamshell type with a big spring that snaps the pair of teeth on the bear's leg) and smaller ones for lesser game. And the weird "design your own rifle" where you could pick the stock, the action, the barrel/caliber, and the sights and Herter's would custom assemble it for you. If you wanted it monogrammed or something carved into the wood of the stock, they'd do that too - for a few bucks. They used a lot of European stuff - many Sako bolt actions from Finland, I recall. I think I still have an old Herter's catalog in a box in storage over at The Estancia. Perhaps I will search for it sometime.

Also, by way of correction, I previously stated that I bought a UToronto polo shirt - that was actually a long-sleeve rugby shirt. I am certain that I still have that in storage at The Estancia. Something else to search for there.

Canuckistan has a bunch of good Us - UWaterloo, UToronto, McGill, UCalgary, Simon FraserU, WesternU, McMaster, UAlberta. Merrikuns should CONsider sending their collitch kids to a Canadian U along with the numerous USA U options that are available. Just make shure if they are from a Sunbelt state that the kids understand that it gets very kalt and snowy in Canuckistan at least 6 months of the year. Butt if your kid chooses UToronto, don't make them live in the old dorms. Unless they already smoke three packs of cigarettes per day and are nott clean-freaks. Other than my dorm experience, it's a quite fine urbanische campus. And if your kid goes to a Canuck U, it's easy for you to reload their Tim Horton's gift card periodically to keep them caffeinated and donut sugar-high for exams.

If you're lucky, they may even learn how to stickhandle a puck and also how to fish. (These may be undergraduate majors at some Canuck Us - or at least required breadth courses.) Engineering students will be able to fix any model of snowmobile/snowmachine by junior year and overhaul most floatplane engines using only a Leatherman multitool and an abrasive stone by graduation. And they might even turn ~OUTT to be decent people with good manners - and a Nanaimo bar addiction.

These need to be MINT Nanaimo bars.

If your kidd comes home for holiday asking Santa for an ice auger and having direct knowledge of what a Zamboni machine does, don't despair, celebrate. To test them, offer them some pickled eggs; if they eat them, they have been irretrievably lost to the other side of the border. Buy them monogrammed snowshoes for Christmas.

[shajandr]

Tonight I present a few things from the B.C. era (or is this now kalt B.C.E. for Britische Columbiana Era?).

1. My first time in Vancouver was for the Terry Fox conference at UBC which, IIRC, was summer of '84. I stayed in the UBC dorms, which were quite modern and newische, kept up well, in great contradistinction to the UToronto dorm I stayed at for the Intl CONgress of Genetics which, IIRC, was mebbe '87 or thereabouts. The UT dorm room, as I previously have described here, was encrusted with a layer of stale cigarette smoke and general filth. The floor, surprisingly, was oak stripped flooring - as the dorm was old and built in an era when wooden flooring was typical - butt it had likely nott been cleaned in decades and the floor was dingy and covered with a greyische-black patina of pressed-down dirt and adhered cigarette smoke. By comparison, the UBC dorms were like something ~OUTT of The Jetsons. I was at UBC for about a week, venturing into Vancouver proper to explore - usually in the evening after the conference day ended.

My first shock, as a young single man driving alone in a car, was that seemingly at every stoplight in downtown Vancouver at night there were numerous (innumerable) prostitutes who would approach my stopped car and chat me up for "a date" or "to party". It was like flies swarming fresh carrion in the road. Very aggressive streetwalkers! I recall one downtown street was just crazy with this - I have lost the name of the street and CONsulted an online street map hoping it would jog my memory. It hasn't. My recollection is that it was some kind of name like Bank Street and that it was definitely a main street downtown at least two lanes each direction and one of the most trafficked streets. From the street map, my two best guesses are that it was either Burrard or Howe (notorious Howe of the pennystock bucketshops). If any of the Vancouverites can clarify this street for me, I would like to put this uncertainty of my memory to bed, so to speak. No, I didn't partake - many of the swam of streetwalkers looked in rough/badd condition and drugged/tattooed/wasted. And soooo aggressive - I guess it was a very competitive line of work in Vancouver at that time.

Later, I took the ferry to Vancouver Island and went to Victoria, as usual with no lodging reservation nor research. I found ~OUTT the hard way that there were no motel rooms available in my impoverished price range. The bigg swanky hotel The Empress, had vacancies butt which cost more for one night than my net income was in three weeks. So I slept on a park bench overlooking the inner harbour where there was a small/medium cruise ship docked to provide some illumination. (I did a similar bench sleep in Seattle on 1st or 2nd Avenue - a rough neighborhood - not very restful. Both times I did not have my car available to sleep in - that was actually OK in which to sleep decently. I sleep in cars frequently with no real prollem - just as I can easily sleep on airplanes - weird for a career insomniac, eh?) I slept in the car up on a gravel service road on the ski hill at Lake Louise (in June), only to awaken with a dead battery! This was in the era of no cell phones, so I faced a long walk down the switchback gravel road to find a phone to call a tow service. As I walked down, who was driving up the road butt one of the Lake Louise ski hill's maintenance trucks. The driver picked me up, drove to my car, and we jump-started it. Again, Canuckian niceness on duty!

2. Another time (I've been to Vancouver several times and cannot keep the order straight) I was in Vancouver was on DaSqu_w and my honeymoon. We rented a car for two weeks and drove around BC and Alberta hitting the provincial and national parks and other sites. We were heading to Vancouver Island, by car ferry at Twassen. We just missed the ferry and parked in the waiting area awaiting the next ferry - which, IIRC, was about 45 minutes to an hour-and-a-half later. There is a smallische cafe at the Twassen ferry landing so we got ~OUTT of the rental car and went into the cafe for hot chocolate. I foolishly locked the keys in the rental car! When we were returning to the car, I found that ~OUTT. Asking the ferry landing workers for help, they called a tow service from somewhere in or around Twassen. The tow guy arrived and used a metal strip with a notch cut into on side to jimmy the door lock up. I paid him and we immediately got in the rental car and were the very last car to load onto the ferry - the BC Ferries folks had held the ferry for the few minutes delay when they saw the tow man working on the door of our car - as I've said, Canadians are nice. The BC Ferries workers knew - from when we asked for their help - that we were on our honeymoon and they didn't want us to miss that ferry again once they saw the tow man arrive. Nice folks.

On my first time to Victoria (see #1, supra) I didn't ferry my car to the island. This time, we had a car and went to Nanaimo. We had to see the home of the Nanaimo bar - a Canuck labmate at Lunatic Labs had brought Nanaimo bars to a potluck and we had to have his wife (an
anesthesiology resident at the U that hosts Lunatic Labs) give the recipe to DaSqu_w. Nanaimo bars, properly made, are ubersupergood. We then went (I think) a bit further north and got on a car ferry that landed at Horseshoe Bay - which had all kinds of renegade logs floating about, but the ferry captain managed to avoid them all. Yeah, we did all the touristy stuph - Butchart Gardens, etc. and we slept in decent hotels/motels (nott The Empress, we were too poor for that one) - butt better than a park bench.

3. My Canadian lab mate who brought the Nanaimo bars to a potluck, was a postdoc who basically followed his wife who matched at the U for an anesthesiology residency. He is a son of two Jewish (Orthodox) refugees from WW2 who came to Montreal, opened a luggage store - retail/resale/repair - which was successful. They then moved their family to Toronto and opened their luggage store there, and were successful. My friend, Larry, went on to various successful senior management positions in a number of Canadian biotech companies and he has since retired - and, by coincidence, lives in Victoria where he runs a Jewish non-profit organization. Unlike his parents, he is nott Orthodox - indeed he's nott particularly religious (and his wife is a very blonde Swedish-Canadian non-Jew) - butt he is into the heritage and culture and I think does this community thing as a homage to his parents - who were lucky to have survived WW2. To him, his retirement service to the community is a way of saying thanks. He is a VERY cool dude. Really amazing human (and a boffo tennis player). I am sooo lucky to have met him - that contact has improved my life in so many ways. And he looks today, deep in his 60s, purty much just like he did in his 30s - and he still plays tennis regularly. Super dude. Uber nice. I just cannot say enuff about the guy.

OK, welp that's alI have for tonight on Vancouver/Victoria. Hope you enjoyed it. Zero politics content.

If you Vancouverites know which street had the highest CONcentration of aggressive streetwalkers, lemme know. These memory lapses bugg the hell~OUTTa me until I resolve them. Please tell me so I can move on with my life absent this burr under my mental saddle. TIA.

Din't have time or will to gett to Herter's tonight. Mebbe some night in DaFuture. I am shure you're all (especiallyBullBear) sitting on the edge of your bated breath to learn about the legend of Herter's, the fabled mail order retailing demigod of NorthWoods ~OUTTdoor sportsvolk.

[Involuntary-Recluse]

Ahhh, memories, Hy's Steakhouse, the Pez, the value of the $$ back then 😇😊😍
Stocks going from .10-------------->$20+ in a day


Good times....

[1manband]

Really? That is very interesting. Sounds like it is better to buy a pizza elsewhere then carry it in and throw it in his face. No use giving them a penny of business.

Back in the day, a number of VSE operators and promoters were prominent investors in various downtown restaurants, bars and clubs. It was a great way for them to spread their BS and find new marks. But those days are largely gone. These days, the scammers prefer to keep a lower public profile and use the internet to spread their lies.

[fung_derf]

LOL....I have no clue. However, the owner and his wife are penny stock scammers of VPLM

[1manband]

I take it is fortunate that I haven't eaten there?

Good to know.

[janice shell]

Yes, but some tourist really do seem just to be ticking things off a list. I think the problem is that many try to do and see too much. They're in a different place every day. They get tired, and it all runs together.

[fung_derf]

If I send you some money, will you buy a pizza then throw it at the owner?

[1manband]

Sorry, I haven't eaten there.

[fung_derf]

Have you ever eaten at Bellagio Cafe? If so, impressions?

https://www.yelp.com/biz/bellaggio-cafe-vancouver-3

[janice shell]

The name came about because it started as a tea shop that sold a pound a tea with a couple of extra ounces, so people started calling it overweight tea, which later became Overwaitea as a phonetic spelling.

That makes sense. Though no one would ever guess the reason for the name without knowing the background.

[Buckey]

I have a Tims every morning about 9:15 am. I order it on the way on app to avoid drive thru. walk in pick it up leave a quarter tip and off I go on errands or back home. Never have a donut. Maybe once a week add on a breakfast wrap.

Most mornings I see 4 or 5 older folks ( than me) in there I may wave at or even the odd time go over and say Hi

[BullNBear52]

Have fun.

[BullNBear52]

Sorry but I disagree. I can remember every place I have been in life and I'm sure you can remember every place you have been in Italy.

Your mind is your own camera to what you have seen in life.

[BullNBear52]

Their trip objective seems to have been collecting pictures. Nott my idea of an ~OUTTdoor adventure or nature experience. They may as well have stayed home and watched a video of the parks. I found it depressing in the same way as Yellowstone, Yosemite, and now Glacier have become drive-thru theme parks for the masses. Why do these people even bother - just get the videos.

Well there goes the tourist trade. Why do Canadians come down to the US in the summer time to places like Bar Harbor, ME or the beaches in the Carolinas? I suspect it's the warmer waters at the beaches and to experience something different than the great white north.

National Parks in the US like Yellowstone, Yosemite, the Grand Tetons and the Grand Canyon are like no other places in the US.

Why do people visit Ireland or France which is where I am heading this summer? Simply to experience first hand the beauty of the land and eat the food and of course drink the beverages.

I could watch a Yankee game on TV but it would not be the same of taking our son to the Stadium and him catching a baseball hit right at him.

In 2023, travel and tourism contributed approximately 9.1% of global GDP, a significant decrease from 10.4% in 2019. In the U.S., the sector represented 2.97% of the GDP in 2022. While the global contribution has declined, the U.S. sector saw a positive rebound in 2023, exceeding pre-pandemic levels with a $2.36 trillion contribution to the GDP.

[BullNBear52]

I think you're forgetting we had a trade deal with Canada and Trump threw that out and came up with USMCA. Now Trump has thrown that out and doubled down on Canada.

[BullNBear52]

The retaliatory move means companies and individuals in Hong Kong will have to pay private couriers such as FedEx and DHL to deliver packages, further driving up costs for consumers on top of US levies.

Which means that anything an individual wants to buy from Hong Kong will have to pay the extra shipping costs.

I've ordered a couple of novelty hats from a Chinese company and they ship through the USPS once they clear customs in the US. Takes about 3-4 weeks for delivery.

[hedge_fun]

The article cited something published (and unpublished).......

in the Federal Register. How would anyone know what was being referenced?

But what you think I should spend countless hours trying to determine what that is?

Amusing.

BTW, I never cited the Federal Register as fake news.

I posted an article and you cited the article and the federal register as fake news

This is such a teachable moment. It's gonna be fun.

[BullNBear52]

You're repeating yourself which you seem fond of doing. I posted an article and you cited the article and the federal register as fake news with nothing to say why it's fake.

[1manband]

I miss Overwaitea. None of the old stores still have that name, although the parent company of the various grocery chains by the same owner retains the name.

The name came about because it started as a tea shop that sold a pound a tea with a couple of extra ounces, so people started calling it overweight tea, which later became Overwaitea as a phonetic spelling.

Another part of historic Vancouver that has faded away.

Overwaitea is part of the Jim Pattison Group, which is a mega-conglomerate around Western Canada owned by just one man - Jim Pattison (DUH!). If you go to Vancouver, it sometimes seems like Pattison owns everything in town, but it helps that he likes to put his name on his brands and assets, so his name is highly visible.

In the US, he has various assets, too, but his best known are probably Guiness World Records and Ripley's Believe it or Not!

[shajandr]

Excellent dog video - forwarded to DaSqu_w.

In re: Pork made in Alberta

The phrase "makin' bacon" comes to mind. As a kidd, I worked on the Reynolds' pig farm for awhile (they had a relatively good-sized pig operation - nott a feedlot, butt they ran between 500 to 1,000 pigs at any given time - nott a small hobby farm furshure - and the nextdoor farm was that of my 7th and 8th grade science teacher - I can't imagine living next to the Reynolds pig operation - when it was windy you could smell it a cuppla miles away) - you cannot gett that horrible pigshit stench ~OUTT of your clothes, your body, or your hair unless you wash multiple times. Pigs are the worst smelling farmische animules to deal with.

[janice shell]

And tourists everywhere do that. They're exhausted, and have seen a million places in a week. They all look the same. So they just get off the bus, take some photos, and get back on the bus.

Once they get home, they won't remember where they were when they took 'em.

[janice shell]

The name does strongly suggest "overweight". Odd. But the prices are good, if that's recent. So the pork is "made in" Alberta?

Funny dog:

I can't stop laughing 😅pic.twitter.com/GLG29pDH9t

— Learn Something (@cooltechtipz) April 15, 2025

[shajandr]

Tim's donuts are pretty good. They also sell breakfast and other sandwiches, soups, etc. - like an upscale Culvers. Donuts are a foundation of a good ice-fishing breakfast, providing the energy needed to maintain body heat during a long day on DaIce.

There used to be a smallische chain grocery store in western Canada called Overwaitea - which I thought was an odd name as their goal is to sell groceries. The name suggests "overweight" to people who, thus prompted by the name, may truncate their grocery purchases in consideration of their body mass. I have shopped at a couple/few of these stores back in the day. I think in eastern BC or Kamloops and also in Alberta by Banff/Yoho/Jasper. The last time I was at Banff/Jasper was with DaSqu_w and DaSun in or about the early '00s and by then it was swarming with Chinese and Japanese on tourist buses. It had become Yellowstone-ized since I first visited in the '80s and then '90s. Really sad to see these very urbanische Asians step off DaBus, take some photos of each other in front of a glacier or standing on one, then get right back on the bus. Their trip objective seems to have been collecting pictures. Nott my idea of an ~OUTTdoor adventure or nature experience. They may as well have stayed home and watched a video of the parks. I found it depressing in the same way as Yellowstone, Yosemite, and now Glacier have become drive-thru theme parks for the masses. Why do these people even bother - just get the videos.

Overweighty - now defunct - prolly because they didn't have good donuts and did nott also sell bait

[janice shell]

I know. But for you it's mostly the Tim Horton's donuts.

I've not seen much of Canada. I've only been to Montreal a few times.