Check out Liberty Puzzles. You can even visit their storefront if you are in Boulder CO. My husband had one made for me a while back. The best thing is giving it as a gift; the recipient has no clue what the picture is. They will supply a box with or without the photo. My daughter and I had an absolute blast putting it together. And she figured out that it was a photo of the two us based on a piece with her eye on it!
Also, they don't cost $9K! A custom puzzle goes for $150-180. Non-custom puzzles have a range of prices. All are challenging. Forget looking for straight pieces for the edge. There are very few. And each puzzle is filled with whimsies.
I love puzzles. The closest thing to doing nothing while looking busy. I always had one on the dining room table when I had a big house.
You forgot to mention Trump's frivolous lawsuits, like suing Paramount over Harris' interview. Supposedly helping her campaign by editing her interview even tho she lost. Just so happens there is a negotiation going on that needs gov't approval. So they settle for millions. How many times has he sued companies who have something before the government that needs approval. And they all have settled for big buck. Smells like a bribe to me.
JVL, you should try round puzzles. They may not be a thing now, but my Gram has some that are quite old and they are hard to do. The pieces can have curves....
The empire’s nationalizing mining companies while blackmailing Apple, inflation’s creeping back like mold under a prosperity gospel rug, and everyone’s just doomscrolling memes and debating $9,000 jigsaw puzzles like Nero with a fidget spinner.
This ain’t late-stage capitalism. It’s late-stage attention span.
But yeah, let’s definitely panic about five city-owned grocery stores.
We are a family of puzzlers, who constantly have a puzzle going on an expandable dining room table. Our grandson, who is now 6, amazed us with his visual and spatial skills when at age five, he could pick out pieces of a 1,000-piece puzzle and say "I know exactly where this goes," and he wasn't wrong. We've been keeping him entertained and watching his puzzle-solving skills develop since then, much like G-Money Thanks for the brand suggestions, which I will investigate. We've mostly completed Buffalo and Dowdle puzzles, because they were readily available and depicted landscapes we loved: London, Pickle Ball, National Parks, Palm Springs, Niagara Falls. No other comments section on the internet has people talking about the ordinary, yet passionate, pleasure of solving puzzles. Yet, here we are. And that's why the Bulwark is so awesome!
JBL, if you really want a premium, US made puzzle, look at https://libertypuzzles.com/ out of Boulder Colorado. Their puzzles have spoiled us for other makers. My father actually had a custom puzzle made from one of his western slope pictures for our Christmas present last year.
The biggest challenge with politics is what I call the boy-who-cried-wolf problem. We're warned, quite sensibly, during the campaign that tariffs are a tax on American businesses usually passed on to American transporters. But they're not here. Then (... sighs ...) he's voted in and inaugurated and starts making policy. The stock market does it's plunge, then he lays off and it resets (kind of). The price hikes don't show up because these things takes time. And again, and again, and again. There's this gap between people are told to expect financially, which may even be true, and what people are currently experiencing. Inflation takes time to show up, and businesses had strategies to mitigate some of that in the short-term. It won't work forever.
Meanwhile, a thousand other things are going on, even at the economic level. We bombed Iran and made a lot of our cheap imported labor too afraid to come in to work. I'm not convinced either of those explain the rising prices, but people could be excused for thinking they do. Because people connect current results to recent actions.
I don't think that's a particular American stupidity. People are just fickle and impatient these days across the board, and Trump is really, really good at overloading our fickle little neo-cortexes.
Which isn't to say we shouldn't do better as information consumers. I'm not sure what the solution is, and I'm certainly as guilty as anyone else; for all I try to be rational and look at context and not just the shiny new factoid right in front of me. I also think people need time for new facts to sink in and become "real" for them. Tariffs are old but new to a lot of us whippersnappers; it's something most of us need time and space to make sense of. Using familiar concepts to frame it helps; I call them a tax on imports myself. But really, people need to do the work of really understanding how this impacts them and what's causing it, and for a lot of people today they're not just going to accept it because someone told them. Blame too many voices yelling out too many contradictory things, and none of them being held accountable for getting it wrong.
Is that a uniquely American stupidity? If so, it would be really interesting to work out why. I suspect it has more to do with our limited brains struggling to keep up with a world that sometimes moves too fast for us, and that's more just the human, modern condition. The real problem is probably with the wheels coming off the cart in the American environment, more than particular Americans navigating that world particularly badly.
I've never been a puzzler, but my mom was and is. In recent decades she's developed health problems that make bending over a table for long stretches hard, so she's switched to electronic versions on her tablet. She says it's better than giving it up entirely, but she really misses the time not staring at a screen.
I write and read fanfic for my hobby, so even when I'm "off" I'm still looking at a screen. There's also the alerts and multitasking, which I try to turn off but always seem to sneak in. I do think there's a lot to be said for not constantly overwhelming our brain with the bright lights and colors. Plus there's really no replacement for the satisfying thunk of a physical puzzle piece slotting into place. Not to say tech doesn't have its advantages (I love having a whole library stashed away on my tablet when I'm on the bus!), but the old ways definitely have their allure and place, too.
Bunch of Cobble Hill puzzles on my shelf! The mindfulness aspect of puzzle assembly, the way you often communicate silently with those working alongside… i love that aspect.
I am not buying sorry.Oren Cass made a good point regarding the non-inflationary impact of tariffs.I don't buy it all but I 'll give it more credence than what your spinning today.Isn't the accepted rate we want 2% ? I would say housing likely having a bigger impact.
I would also argue,much like 2017/18 retailer absorbed much of the tariff impact,today they are probably betting on the come that the rates will drop.If they don't the real loser will not be consumers but the intermediary who was to absorb the share of this cost to stay competitive .
And a $25 puzzle cost from $12 is slight .After the lecture on inflation.I know the quality level is different but on an absolute level almost twice the cost is not minor.
Pretty remarkable. What is astonishing to me is how people don’t know what socialism is! And how a social democracy is not the same as socialism (owning the means of production). The MAGAs in my life (sigh ) would scream bloody murder if Biden did this.
Check out Liberty Puzzles. You can even visit their storefront if you are in Boulder CO. My husband had one made for me a while back. The best thing is giving it as a gift; the recipient has no clue what the picture is. They will supply a box with or without the photo. My daughter and I had an absolute blast putting it together. And she figured out that it was a photo of the two us based on a piece with her eye on it!
Also, they don't cost $9K! A custom puzzle goes for $150-180. Non-custom puzzles have a range of prices. All are challenging. Forget looking for straight pieces for the edge. There are very few. And each puzzle is filled with whimsies.
I love puzzles. The closest thing to doing nothing while looking busy. I always had one on the dining room table when I had a big house.
You forgot to mention Trump's frivolous lawsuits, like suing Paramount over Harris' interview. Supposedly helping her campaign by editing her interview even tho she lost. Just so happens there is a negotiation going on that needs gov't approval. So they settle for millions. How many times has he sued companies who have something before the government that needs approval. And they all have settled for big buck. Smells like a bribe to me.
https://theamericanscholar.org/puzzled/
JVL, you should try round puzzles. They may not be a thing now, but my Gram has some that are quite old and they are hard to do. The pieces can have curves....
Springbok. Excellent puzzles. Estate sales, yard sales, eBay . . . definitely check them out.
Yes, unserious, frivolous, vapid, and ignorant. The American people are not capable of sustaining a liberal democracy.
JVL - Your public library might have puzzles to check out.
The empire’s nationalizing mining companies while blackmailing Apple, inflation’s creeping back like mold under a prosperity gospel rug, and everyone’s just doomscrolling memes and debating $9,000 jigsaw puzzles like Nero with a fidget spinner.
This ain’t late-stage capitalism. It’s late-stage attention span.
But yeah, let’s definitely panic about five city-owned grocery stores.
We always do puzzles during the holidays for just the reasons you mention.
We are a family of puzzlers, who constantly have a puzzle going on an expandable dining room table. Our grandson, who is now 6, amazed us with his visual and spatial skills when at age five, he could pick out pieces of a 1,000-piece puzzle and say "I know exactly where this goes," and he wasn't wrong. We've been keeping him entertained and watching his puzzle-solving skills develop since then, much like G-Money Thanks for the brand suggestions, which I will investigate. We've mostly completed Buffalo and Dowdle puzzles, because they were readily available and depicted landscapes we loved: London, Pickle Ball, National Parks, Palm Springs, Niagara Falls. No other comments section on the internet has people talking about the ordinary, yet passionate, pleasure of solving puzzles. Yet, here we are. And that's why the Bulwark is so awesome!
JBL, if you really want a premium, US made puzzle, look at https://libertypuzzles.com/ out of Boulder Colorado. Their puzzles have spoiled us for other makers. My father actually had a custom puzzle made from one of his western slope pictures for our Christmas present last year.
On the non-puzzle, politics side of this....
The biggest challenge with politics is what I call the boy-who-cried-wolf problem. We're warned, quite sensibly, during the campaign that tariffs are a tax on American businesses usually passed on to American transporters. But they're not here. Then (... sighs ...) he's voted in and inaugurated and starts making policy. The stock market does it's plunge, then he lays off and it resets (kind of). The price hikes don't show up because these things takes time. And again, and again, and again. There's this gap between people are told to expect financially, which may even be true, and what people are currently experiencing. Inflation takes time to show up, and businesses had strategies to mitigate some of that in the short-term. It won't work forever.
Meanwhile, a thousand other things are going on, even at the economic level. We bombed Iran and made a lot of our cheap imported labor too afraid to come in to work. I'm not convinced either of those explain the rising prices, but people could be excused for thinking they do. Because people connect current results to recent actions.
I don't think that's a particular American stupidity. People are just fickle and impatient these days across the board, and Trump is really, really good at overloading our fickle little neo-cortexes.
Which isn't to say we shouldn't do better as information consumers. I'm not sure what the solution is, and I'm certainly as guilty as anyone else; for all I try to be rational and look at context and not just the shiny new factoid right in front of me. I also think people need time for new facts to sink in and become "real" for them. Tariffs are old but new to a lot of us whippersnappers; it's something most of us need time and space to make sense of. Using familiar concepts to frame it helps; I call them a tax on imports myself. But really, people need to do the work of really understanding how this impacts them and what's causing it, and for a lot of people today they're not just going to accept it because someone told them. Blame too many voices yelling out too many contradictory things, and none of them being held accountable for getting it wrong.
Is that a uniquely American stupidity? If so, it would be really interesting to work out why. I suspect it has more to do with our limited brains struggling to keep up with a world that sometimes moves too fast for us, and that's more just the human, modern condition. The real problem is probably with the wheels coming off the cart in the American environment, more than particular Americans navigating that world particularly badly.
I've never been a puzzler, but my mom was and is. In recent decades she's developed health problems that make bending over a table for long stretches hard, so she's switched to electronic versions on her tablet. She says it's better than giving it up entirely, but she really misses the time not staring at a screen.
I write and read fanfic for my hobby, so even when I'm "off" I'm still looking at a screen. There's also the alerts and multitasking, which I try to turn off but always seem to sneak in. I do think there's a lot to be said for not constantly overwhelming our brain with the bright lights and colors. Plus there's really no replacement for the satisfying thunk of a physical puzzle piece slotting into place. Not to say tech doesn't have its advantages (I love having a whole library stashed away on my tablet when I'm on the bus!), but the old ways definitely have their allure and place, too.
Bunch of Cobble Hill puzzles on my shelf! The mindfulness aspect of puzzle assembly, the way you often communicate silently with those working alongside… i love that aspect.
I am not buying sorry.Oren Cass made a good point regarding the non-inflationary impact of tariffs.I don't buy it all but I 'll give it more credence than what your spinning today.Isn't the accepted rate we want 2% ? I would say housing likely having a bigger impact.
I would also argue,much like 2017/18 retailer absorbed much of the tariff impact,today they are probably betting on the come that the rates will drop.If they don't the real loser will not be consumers but the intermediary who was to absorb the share of this cost to stay competitive .
And a $25 puzzle cost from $12 is slight .After the lecture on inflation.I know the quality level is different but on an absolute level almost twice the cost is not minor.
Pretty remarkable. What is astonishing to me is how people don’t know what socialism is! And how a social democracy is not the same as socialism (owning the means of production). The MAGAs in my life (sigh ) would scream bloody murder if Biden did this.