Cool and clear, maybe not either. Got into the 80s yesterday! Spring is here! Yea! It was 71F at midnight.
Spent the day Saturday running around. Touching base with a couple of different aspects of my life…
Will spend as much of today as possible moving stuff around in storage units. Might end up paying for an extra month on my one unit after all. That will take pressure off me, but that isn’t really what I need, is it?
Upshot of my ‘taking the tenor of t he clans’ is nervousness, and uncertainty. Although everyone seems to be absolutely certain that Vlad is insane and will fail, I’m not sure of either of those things.
I spent a good deal of time re-reading some old posts and comments from around the time of the one I linked yesterday, or from the beginning of me posting and not just commenting. Lots of good discussion about beginning prepping around that time, June and July, 2016. Lot of voices we don’t hear very often these days.
DadCooks, check in please.
JLP, Spook, pcb_duffer, miles_teg, and others have not commented in a long time. If you guys are out there, check in!
A lot has changed in the last six years. A surprising amount of stuff has stayed pretty much the same. And some stuff has completely reversed (like cops being killed by blacks being the topic o the times…)
Definitely worth exploring the old posts and comments.
And I do have to say, while the things we were prepping for at the time didn’t come to pass, the wuflu did, and we were well served by our preps.
So stack it high, even if you don’t think the current justification is sensible, there will be something else to come along, and prove the ant smarter than the grasshopper.
nick
Indeed, I am struggling with the mouse on the MacBook Air I purchased. There is no button as several gestures can be used on the mouse. The exploration continues into a lot of nooks and crannies to see what I can find. It is a good machine and seems to operate fast. My next adventure is to install Photoshop and Lightroom and process some pictures. I don't think it will be as fast as my desktop, certainly faster than my Surface laptop, but I am expecting reasonable performance based on reviews.
I got a tire warning light on my truck when it got really cold. Tires were down to about 22 when they should be 34. Inflated and all was good. I need to check before I start the trip this week as the weather has warmed up considerably. The low inflation did affect my mileage a little bit but is hard to tell with the type of driving I do.
I read somewhere that the mileage is figure is optimized for a flat road, no wind, at 50 mph, at sea level, and 70F, windows closed, with all the fluids at their operational temperature. That is the point where the transmission is in the highest gear and the engine is doing the minimum RPMs. Probably something about throttle setting, air flow, and other factors calculated in the computer to minimize fuel flow. Technology generally above my pay grade.
I always find Edgar Wright interesting, but "Scott Pilgrim" is an acquired taste.
Wright is at his best with Simon Pegg and Nick Frost.
Yeah. Raster image. RAM usage is probably a lot higher.
A Generac "Wall" charged by solar and Generac would be the ultimate in awesomeness!
I think I posted before about a YT'er who built his worksheet with solar and a buried propane tank based generator. Sweet. There are vids on YT of people who built mini turbines and diverted a creek to power them. If I only had a big property with a robust creek that ran down a hill.
68 F here in the southwest side of Fort Bend County. The dog is wondering why it so warm now. I told her that it is going to get way warmer and that is why we have air conditioning here in the swamp. She said it is always cool in the house.
My house electric rate is getting ready to reset. I am getting hints that it will go from 9 cents/kwh to 13. That sucks. In August / September we will use almost 4,000 kwh.
SVG is also XML based which means the files can be revision controlled in Git.
Python and production of large science-y documents were the meaningful skills I picked up in grad school.
If you want to risk losing a day down a rabbit hole, look at graphviz. That tool further abstracts the production of certain types of diagrams, and SVG is one of its output formats.
This is just crazy:
New York City Mayor Eric Adams says masks will continue to be required for children under 5
Muh Science!!!
I forgot. Two words: "Hot Fuzz".
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Lqd-UwZmJ4
What astonishes me the most about "Hot Fuzz" is the amazing comedy performance Wright gets out of Timothy Dalton.
Yes, the walking stiff James Bond.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gj4QvsIPqSI
The agenda comes first. At least until they get a small war started with the Russians.
NYC pays lip service to opening up for the sake of the tourism dollar, but my wife and daughter are heading there this week for a school trip with vaccination cards and masks required for many venues.
We attended a meeting about the trip last night, a few hundred people in the local ISD’s PAC capable of seating 1500 (!). Despite the social distancing possible, many parents still showed up in masks, mostly Asian.
Ours is the ISD in Texas occasionally making national headlines because what started as a simple p*ssing contest between parents and the Superintendent over masks ballooned into serious embarrassment for the district.
https://www.foxnews.com/us/texas-superintendent-ex-mistress-abortion-assault-allegations-court-document
Still, many of the parents in the district want the Superintendent to return.
76F and sunny with reasonable 83%RH. That is nearly perfect weather by Houston standards. Well, 'sunny' is perhaps an overstatement. Occasional sun shining thru overcast might be more accurate.
Time to eat, caffeinate, and starte ye olde daye.
n
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2022/03/04/bald-eagle-takings-bidens-interior-department-protects-big-wind/
Before Obama raised the limit to 4,200, it was 1,100. I couldn't find the history of the 1,100 in a brief search but at least 93% (14,732 of 15,832) is due to the combined efforts of Obama and Biden.*
I'd call that a Democrat problem.
Murderers.
If there is such a thing as a "blood diamond" then windpower is "blood energy".
BTW, the link to
https://www.fws.gov/program/national-eagle-repository
doesn't work.
Do Natives feel really brave when sporting feathers from an eagle harvested by a "cuisinart of the sky"?
And check out the AWS motto at the bottom of the page:
Hypocrites.
Next time a green weinie waxes poetic about wind energy, ask them how they feel about more than 4 bald eagles per day on average being legally butchered.
Orange Man Bad mentioned birds being killed in his third debate with Porridge Head Biden. Boy, did he draw the wrath of Politico and the rest of the
"fact-checkers"prog/greenie spin machine (my fave is Electrek). Be fun to circle back and ask, if Trump was sooooo wroooong, how it is we need to permit for 15,832?*from the linked Federal Register
https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2022/02/01/2022-02040/eagle-permits-updated-bald-eagle-population-estimates-and-take-limits
If the "actual take" of 490 in 2020 is accurate, it appears that two successive Democrat administrations have felt it necessary to increase the limit above the 1,100 limit that existed before 2009.
"America’s green energy push has been going on for decades. It never sleeps. And it is both anti-environmental and corrupt."
–Jim Weigand
@Greg Norton
"The agenda comes first. At least until they get a small war started with the Russians.
NYC pays lip service to opening up for the sake of the tourism dollar, but my wife and daughter are heading there this week for a school trip with vaccination cards and masks required for many venues."
Government declares emergency and invokes extraordinary powers.
Emergency goes away.
Government keeps emergency powers.
Months or years later, our nimble court system declares lawsuits "moot", plaintiffs "lack standing".
Analysis shows government solutions caused more problems than they solved.
Seems like everything is on track.
— the narrative is shifting.
n
Aye, que loco…
— don't carry dope into foreign countries.
— homosexuality is illegal in Russia.
— Thinking that Sheila Jackson Lee can do anything for anyone is laughable.
— "High profile"?? it is to laugh. The number of people that would recognize this woman in a lineup is probably 5 digits.
the feeling of self importance among these people is astounding….
–maybe they should have considered those things BEFORE she went to Russia.
It cracks me up when someone who claims oppression in the US runs into the rest of the world, who are NOT tolerant of blacks, gays, or drug use.
The US is not the world.
n
I casually looked for the MPG ratings for my truck. 15.8 is a little low but that's over 800 miles.
It's a mile of dirt road to the paved road. That's bad for the ol' MPG.
The route to Fort Worth for Thanksgiving was up US281 to Hico. Turn right, go a couple of blocks, turn left and up through Glen Rose. Pretty country but hilly. Eventually you get to I-20.
The built in GPS did a good job. Even after I missed an exit because I was in the wrong lane.
It was windy. Strong north wind about 20 to 30 MPH.
Coming home I went west on 20 to 281. It may be a few more miles but it's pretty flat. Of course the wind had settled so no tailwind boost for me.
I think I've gone through Glen Rose for the last time. Too many stretches of one lane and some old fool running 50 in a 70 and few passing zones.
I think my mileage will improve. I think I might reach 25,000 by the end of the month. It's still a new truck.
My old Dodge 3/4 ton truck did 10 MPG. I got 12 once, that was between San Antonio and Edinburg. The '02 half ton Dodge showed 13 to 17 on the display. I never drove it to Edinburg.
My Frontier is "top of the line" loaded. I think the only options missing are the moon-roof, leather upholstery, and power seats on both front seats. Possibly remote start. Nothing I care about. I've read hints of being able to press un-lock on the fob a few extra times and the windows would go down. That might be nice on a sunny July day in the Wal-Mart parking lot. But I'll manage to suffer without the feature.
15.8 MPG isn't too bad. I have the big engine, automatic tranny, and four wheel drive. I can tow ~6200 pounds which means I can tow a couple of heads of cattle in a trailer and perhaps someday a little travel trailer.
I did look at the new Ranger. Even if it is a Ford. The only engine is a 4 cylinder turbo and you can tow all of 2000 pounds. Pass.
Rebuilt the two raised garden beds this weekend. The first was constructed out of 6' cedar fence pickets and 4×4 pressure treated posts. Height was width of 3 pickets. Overall 12'x4'.
The second was the same as the first, except regular fence pickets, as no cedar were available. It hasn't held up nearly as well. I replaced everything, including the posts. I also had to fix the weed barrier under half of it, so that meant moving lots of dirt.
I went ahead and replaced the boards on the first one as well. Only the boards in contact with the ground were really bad, along with 2 posts that got replaced.
Next up is to redo the sprinkler systems for those beds. I've decided I'm going to put a box in the ground in the back of each, and from there just use removable tubing that can be removed/adjusted at will. Shouldn't be too hard to do, since I already have the water going to those two spots. Should only take 3 trips to Lowes…
Even within the US, the African American general demographic is not keen on LGBT, and casting preference/gender identity as a civil rights issue is considered *really* offensive, albeit behind closed doors.
"Griner currently plays for the Russian team, UMMC Ekaterinburg. Griner has played with the team since 2015 during the WNBA offseason."
https://www.cnn.com/2022/03/05/world/brittney-griner-arrest-russia/index.html
Not a tourist. Worked in Russian for 7 years. Flaunted their laws.
Marijuana is a U.S. Schedule 1 drug. If we were a nation of laws, this is another one we would enforce. Instead, we don't enforce it, and have let it be legalized in some states. In other states not, and you can get arrested for possession, but a gay black WNBA player would get a pass or it would clearly be "racism".
Moscow is not going to give this stupid idiot a pass.To most of the world she is a pampered princess and it's going to be difficult to gin up any international support.
ADDED:
“Legal” marijuana businesses are failing in Cali, ‘cuz taxes are too high.
So yes, if you are one of the 75% there who vote with their wallets and buy the free-market version, you can still get arrested for not paying the tax.
Work to get the law changed, and then break it. Prog heaven.
https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2022/03/another-industry-destroyed-by-taxes.php
'Indians, Africans and Middle Easterners, go to ANOTHER border': Nigerian student documents terrifying four-day escape from Kyiv… only to face racist guards at Polish boundary
-yup, nations control their borders. and seriously? Nigerians in Ukraine?
n
Should only take 3 trips to Lowes…
— from your lips to God’s ear…
n
Makes more sense than Nigerians coming into the US across the Mexican border.
On a more meta level, what those two cases suggest is that shirt is getting real, and all the make believe tolerance is burning away in the flame of conflict.
People are going to 'tribe up' to coin a really awkward phrase.
n
(or if you wanted to get all pseudo science-y, their self identified alliegences are going to drop down a couple of levels of abstraction, from world, to nation, to state/region, to family. Welcome back to low trust society.)
Makes more sense than Nigerians coming into the US
—US culture celebrates and rewards blackness. Europe, not so much.
n
A beautiful sunny day, though not particularly warm.
I was shopping, groceries and a side trip to Home Depot. I didn’t mask up, I’d say about 80% of people still are.
Multiple gas stations in town are posting over five dollars a gallon for regular here in the California High Desert. I am at 3/4 of a tank, time to top off…
The RAM 1500 (5.7L hemi) is averaging about 20mpg, mixed city and highway, not bad.
Yeah. Guilt for slavery. Y'all* can have have your guilt trips and enjoy them.
* That's a generic y'all. Not intended towards anyone here.
Most of my ancestors were in northern Germany (sliding east through Prussia towards Poland) while the USA had slavery.
I'm pretty much… If you seem to be a good guy, not an a-hole, not a scammer, not swiping things from my house, I'm cool. I don't care about skin color. Just be honest. It's not that hard.
It seems to be harder for some people and for some cultures.
Apropos of nothing. Watching British TV, commercial for Amex. Fine print on the screen:
60.1% APR
What the… I thought there were anti-usury laws?
>> I think I posted before about a YT'er who built his worksheet with solar and a buried propane tank based generator. Sweet. There are vids on YT of people who built mini turbines and diverted a creek to power them. If I only had a big property with a robust creek that ran down a hill.
@lynn, so how far are you from the Brazos River?
>> Wife of WNBA star Brittney Griner, 31, says they are desperately working to get her home after she was detained on arrival at Moscow airport three weeks ago with 'cannabis-filled vape pen'
Some more detail…
Anybody getting involved with illegal drugs in other countries should be streaming some of these episodes.
Nobody in Oklahoma wants a Tony-mobile anyway, right? At least not til the Jesus truck starts production.
https://electrek.co/2022/03/03/tesla-fears-having-to-shut-down-service-centers-oklahoma-new-bill-passes-committee/
***Nobody in Oklahoma wants a Tony-mobile anyway, right? At least not til the Jesus truck starts production.***
Possibly we will see some “XYZ Tribal Casino & Tesla Dealership” in Oklahoma’s near future?
Lots of tribal land is available, as the article points out. Plus Dallas is not that far from a lot of the population centers in Oklahoma.
https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/russian-banks-switch-chinese-card-system-amex-joins-visa-mastercard-suspending-russian
the move away from the western financial system continues.
n
Too late for anybody to have done the RIGHT thing about Brittney Griner, which would have been to tell her "Don't go to Russia. It isn't a safe place, and nobody can protect you there."
And ESPECIALLY don't take drugs outside the USA. Lots of furriners don't like gays, and don't like drugs, and will be remarkably quick to imprison gay druggies for no particular reason.
for no particular reason.
— you mean OTHER THAN the drugs and homosexuality…
which are both good enough reasons in Russia.
And probably not coincidentally why these two girls now have husbands….
https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=tatu
n
The Bearded Singers
Updated the laptop to Win11. Went smoothly; took about an hour, including download. This is on the laptop with SSD on C and D, so an upgrade to a C/spinner might take a bit longer. System has 24G RAM.
System came back up on the lock screen, logged in, all looks like before. Except the taskbar icons, which were centered. Easy enough to move them back to the left.
I like the new compact look of the Start menu. Things are as snappy as before.
Nice to have the new 2TB SSD as the D drive, where all the data is. File operations happen much faster.
Essay on a problem I see, why we don't want it to arrive, and some suggestions for averting it. Same essay posted to two sites. 3750 words.
https://www.dailypundit.com/dailypundit.wordpress/2022/03/06/idiocracy-on-the-horizon/
http://coldfury.com/2022/03/06/idiocracy-on-the-horizon/
I did look at the new Ranger. Even if it is a Ford. The only engine is a 4 cylinder turbo and you can tow all of 2000 pounds. Pass.
Weekend warrior truck. Commuter vehicle Mon – Friday, fix the fence on Saturday.
>> I think I posted before about a YT'er who built his worksheet with solar and a buried propane tank based generator. Sweet. There are vids on YT of people who built mini turbines and diverted a creek to power them. If I only had a big property with a robust creek that ran down a hill.
@lynn, so how far are you from the Brazos River?
The office, about a quarter mile. The house, about five miles.
No obstructions are allowed on the Brazos River without millions of permits. In fact, all of the water in the Brazos River is owned by Dow Chemical (part of the WW II handouts to get things done).
I have no flowing water on either property. Just two ponds on office property.
Back when I was a back-to-the-lander, I looked into micro-hydro.
When you work the numbers, it's as much about head as it is about flow. Head is the height differential between your turbine and the level of the mill-pond. Doubling head increases your output power as much as doubling flow does, and doesn't require doubling pipe size.
Unfortunately, most midwestern and Southern rivers are long, slow, and flat. Flat means no head at all, unless you build a huge dam.
Here's one of the online calculators I found with a quick DDG search.
@SteveF
Good essay. The usual "kill the messenger" reaction won't diminish the truth.
Be interesting to see where the discussion goes.
Wisconsin Special Counsel Finds ‘Widespread Election Fraud’ In 2020 Nursing Homes
By: Margot Cleveland
March 03, 2022
https://thefederalist.com/2022/03/03/wisconsin-special-counsel-finds-widespread-election-fraud-in-2020-nursing-homes/
Multiple gas stations in town are posting over five dollars a gallon for regular here in the California High Desert. I am at 3/4 of a tank, time to top off…
Our local Shell station went to $3.85/gal yesterday from $3.45.
Do we need to treat this like a hurricane, keep your gas tanks full at all times ? I must admit, I had not thought of gasoline shortages in the USA. Especially Texas.
I’ve been in the habit for years of never letting the tank drop below mid level. I also just topped off the 16 gallon storage tank, errr, the corvette.
@stevef, one thing you didn't touch on is that IQ is not necessarily passed to children, and high IQ can pop up in low IQ families… which is an argument FOR making sure the kids of all are healthy and well educated.
I think that pre-natal and early childhood nutrition are vital to having adults who can reach their genetic potential, and avoiding their opposite–malnourished and drug addicted babies, crack babies, and fetal alcohol syndrome plays a societal role too.
Not only do the lower IQ parents have (usually) lower IQ offspring, they further handicap them with poor life choices both pre- and post- birth.
Populations expand, then they contract or collapse. The history of the world is full of examples. Sucks for us to be living in one of those times.
n
A lot of people across socio-economic classes cannot have the Measles vaccine due to allergy issues and maintaining herd immunity is essential. As the 2019 Measles Pandemic originating in SW WA State Demonstrated, the virus will not remain contained in a deliberately unvaccinated group for long, with the most common transmission vector in that particular situation being healthcare facilities.
Fortunately, in Clark County, WA, the population of deliberately unvaccinated was small and isolated due to religious views, but even with the limited number of cases, the outbreak met the classic definition of "pandemic". The case count would have been much worse among a less isolated demographic group.
This vid of adam savage and some guy painting details on a toy model from the Star Wars universe is really interesting, even more for the comments about how they did it at ILM on Star Wars and Star Trek models, than for the model painting techniques themselves.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uzF351VecZA
If you have an interest in either movie universe, movie special effects models, or model making, you'll probably enjoy it a lot.
n
@drwilliams, I'd guess 98 in 100 that get the usage of 'beard' in this case…
Although the crew here are more literate, and older than most.
n
Speaking of older, here's a great playlist with old favorite artists, but less familiar tunes. Brought to us courtesy of a video game. It's great that a whole new generation of listeners and fans were created by the game. Also points out the immersive nature of modern gaming, and the importance of gaming in the world economy- it's big, really big.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FHF6q1mBiFs
n
really effing tired of ISE500
"Sony unveils new gold-plated Walkman"
https://www.fox5ny.com/news/sony-unveils-new-gold-plated-walkman
"NEW YORK – Sony has announced two new Walkman music players, for the audiophile with an eye for nostalgia and some quite deep pockets.
The NW-WM1AM2 and NW-WM1ZM2 are priced at $1,600 and an eye-watering $3,200, respectively, but those price tags come with some pretty fancy bells and whistles."
Wow.
Peak decadence.
n