Gordie, howe you doing?
I once woke up in a simulation. 13987 days separated a two mile call from becoming a 3400 mile call.
On October 9, 1876, Alexander Graham Bell and Thomas A. Watson talked by telephone to each other over a two-mile wire stretched between Cambridge and Boston. It was the first wire conversation ever held. Yesterday afternoon [on January 25, 1915], the same two men talked by telephone to each other over a 3,400-mile wire between New York and San Francisco. Dr. Bell, the veteran inventor of the telephone, was in New York, and Mr. Watson, his former associate, was on the other side of the continent.[112]
Now if I was in a genuine simulation I would have been dating Mabel Grosvenor but I wasn’t. I had to meet a clerk to request a landline. 3 months he said and 30 dollars. Is that the cost of the line, I asked? Nope. That’s the cost of getting it to you in 3 months. The wait time is 13 years. I see, I muttered and promptly opened my wallet. Then I woke up. What would you do? Would you wait 13 years or open your wallet? Everyone knew the clerk’s wages were too low. Inflation had chipped away at salaries that were already meagre beyond imagining. Corruption was not only unavoidable it was also necessary.
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Donald Trump has cleared the way for the opening of a $4.5bn bridge between Canada and Michigan 13 years after the project’s inception, claiming he had secured a better deal from the other side.
The Gordie Howe International Bridge is now expected to open on July 27 after the US president dropped his objections to the project. “May we both have many years of success with this wonderful new development!!!” Trump posted on his Truth Social site on Saturday. The bridge has long been a source of tension in US-Canada relations, which have taken a turn for the worse in Trump’s second term. In February, Trump said he would not open the bridge “until the United States is fully compensated” by Canada in a rambling post perceived as a response to Ottawa’s renewed trade ties with China. It later emerged the billionaire owners of the rival Ambassador Bridge, which already connects Canada and the US via Detroit, donated $1mn to a Super Pac supporting Trump.
The wait wasn’t too long.
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Filings released in February showed Matthew Moroun, whose company operates the 100-year-old bridge that connects Michigan and Ontario, on January 16 gave $1mn to Maga Inc. The Detroit-based Moroun family are longtime Republican donors who have battled for years to shut down the Gordie Howe Bridge, as they fear a loss of toll income from an alternative route for Canada-US travel. The White House and the Super Pac denied any link between the donation and Trump’s objection to the project. On Friday evening, Canada’s government said both sides had agreed to “co-operative measures focused on toll governance,” as well as the establishment of a 15-year economic development fund tied to a portion of profits from bridge operations. Canada’s infrastructure minister Gregor Robertson said opening the bridge would generate billions of dollars in economic activity for decades. “(This) will create new opportunities, strengthen our economy, and bring economic benefits on both sides of the border for generations to come,” he said The Detroit–Windsor corridor handles more than 4mn truck crossings annually and nearly $70bn in two-way trade, according to the Detroit Regional Chamber. The Gordie Howe bridge spans the Detroit River between Windsor, Ontario and Detroit, Michigan and is a six-lane, cable-stayed bridge with a main span of 853 metres, the longest of its kind in North America, and extends approximately 2.5km. The planned ribbon-cutting ceremony in June was delayed as the Trump administration looked to renegotiate a longstanding agreement between Canada and the US.
Doesn’t he look like Andy Garcia? I think he looks like Andy.
It is my continuing thesis the bloodlines are everywhere. Especially in Hollywood.
YouTube also managed to dig up an old video that manages to seem extraordinarily uncontrived.
Dr. Bell was a Scottish born, American-Canadian.