Cool and wet again. Hopefully not actual rain, but it is possible. It did stop raining for a short while yesterday. I took the Expy for my pickup anyway as I didn’t want to rearrange the pickup in the rain. Good thing, as the rain started back up.
So I did get the pickup done, but barely. Expy is full… and then I needed to unload some at the secondary on my way home to get D1 from school. Except that there was a massive traffic delay. Took me 2 1/2 hours to get 15 miles, and that is with my aggression turned to 11. Had to skip dropping off at my secondary in order to not leave the kid too long past due. Still picked her up almost 2 hours late. By that point I was WOUND UP.
Got pizza and calmed down. Did some auction sorting to make up for my slackitude. Spent some time working on pipes and watching youtube videos. They are going through some really aggressive attempts to monetize the audience. Listening to music in the car was maddening. Ads in between every song. Music paused when another app took focus, with a super smarmy message popup… “Do you want your music to keep playing when the app is in the background? Just buy a subscription!” They are making the user experience miserable to sell the subs.
Oddly when I watched last night, I didn’t get the “Oh you’re using an ad blocker, that’s not allowed” message. Guess some lawyers got involved. Louis Rossmann had some things to say about it on his channel. They might have been in violation of EU rules about running code on users’ machines without getting permission first. And in the US, I’m pretty sure the rePlay TV case determined that you can’t FORCE people to watch commercials.
Getting a pi-hole set up is moved up the priority list too.
So many things on that list.
Non-prepping hobby meeting today, with our quarterly swapfest too. I’ve got some things to sell, so I don’t want to miss it. Then it is ‘load the truck and head out’ time. In fact it’s ‘load the truck and trailer.’ I’ve got enough stuff for this trip I’ve rented a small trailer too. It’s much cheaper than gas for a second trip, and takes less time. I just need it to not be raining… I can still get most of it, but not all, if it’s raining.
Lotta preps involved, lotta stacking. Time to get busy.
Stack some yourself.
nick
The movie channels had to be kept fully stocked as cable pushed into the suburbs, in order to justify the $8 (!) add on to the $20 (!!) basic cable bill. ‘Good’ PG movies were particularly important since the major channels had a policy against ‘R’ movies airing before 8 PM.
“The Last Starfighter” was yet another 80s classic which only generated buzz after endless replays on HBO.
Not many people owned commerciallly-produced movies at home until the late 80s, when the studios realized they could make far more money selling a high quality VHS tape with a limited lifespan for $30 than they could depending on rental stores buying copies at $90 or the pennies from cable revenue, which was hard to track back in the analog days.
Yep, “Hollywood” has repeatedly gotten it wrong wrt the effects of new technology.
Overcast, some sun trying to poke thru. Weather map shows a band of stuff moving thru and past us, headed NE. Cool, but not actively wet. Soon as I get the females out the door to GS camp, I’m headed out myself.
n
I generally like Oswalt’s performances, but, yeah, he is a woke PLT. His worst trait is being a vile little troll behind a keyboard or mic. My 9-year-old chihuahua could kick his ass. When his wife OD’d, he had his back-up-wife in place in several months. That made me wonder how despicable he is.
On The Last Starfighter:
I like the movie so much, I bought the Blu Ray. Every kids dream come true. The SFX are first gen digi-funky, but the action and dialog is great.
Streaming is the studios’ financial Waterloo, but the audience is conditioned to the immediacy and low cost at this point so there really is no turning back by putting physical media back on the shelf except for special interest releases.
Hollywood’s gotten it wrong, along with all governments, almost all corporations, trend watchers, technology forecasters, …
“Prediction is very difficult, especially if it’s about the future.”
Is prediction easy if it’s about the past?
I don’t know about great, but near the end of the movie where the bad guys are losing there is some dialog:
Evil Alien Crewman: What do we do now?
Evil Alien Admiral: We die.
Those lines got used a lot when my brothers and friends and I screwed up somewhere … out of gas in the middle of the sacramento river at night … broken axle in the mountains … dinged my Dads car.
Almost 20:20 I’d say.
Depends. Have the revisionists gotten to the history books?
Oswalt’s addition to the cast was probably the price Hollywood extracted from the Japanese for another “Ghostbusters” sequel which ignores the 2016 … reboot?
Sony is also not giving up “Spiderman” rights and there will be a pricetag associated with that. They already had to cut Disney in on “Doctor Who” so the damage done to that franchise will be permanent.
Diarrhetic splatter on the chamberpot of Hollywood history.
It was really surprising considering the pedigree of the creative team. The odd thing is that, since the film, everyone involved in some significant way seems to have experienced career malaise.
Still 59F and still overcast. Gonna pick up my trailer now…
n
Something for amateur sky-watchers to find:
Article here, among other places.
If they’re Craftsman they have a lifetime replacement guarantee.
“NuScale, UAMPS terminate small modular reactor project in Idaho”
https://www.utilitydive.com/news/nuscale-uamps-terminate-small-modular-nuclear-reactor-smr-project-idaho/699281/
“NuScale and the Utah Associated Municipal Power Systems determined that the 462-MW project would likely not reach a sufficient subscription level to continue toward deployment.”
Bummer. The Navy Nuclear Reactor School is in Idaho. It would be a good place for the SMRs. I turned an invite to go to that school for six months back in 1983 to get a reactor operators license.
Progress:
OUT: Losing your handbag at the theater.
IN: Losing your handbag in low earth orbit.
Bill Gates TerraPower is still moving forward with their plans to build a “demonstration project”.
Packing up my food. I have a truck and trailer full, but didn’t get the patio set in this trip. Oh well. As soon as I grab a snack I’m outta here.
n
The TerraPower reactor site is in Wyoming, a project with PacifiCorp, another racket of the Geico Gecko.
>> Almost 20:20 I’d say.
In hindsight.
Yep, “Hollywood” has repeatedly gotten it wrong wrt the effects of new technology.
New technology is hard to move to for any one. It is often a deep chasm with a one way bridge.
I have not moved us from being a desktop app to being a intertube app over the development cost (estimated at five million dollars that we did not have) and the licensing issues. I just cannot get my mind around the licensing issues. We have enough trouble having people license a single copy of our software on a laptop and share it between twenty users. I can just imagine what people would do sharing a single login and password.
Giffords Can’t Hide From Their Founder’s “No More Guns” Demand
https://bearingarms.com/camedwards/2023/11/11/giffords-cant-hide-from-their-founders-no-more-guns-demand-n77161
By Philip Elliott April 26, 2023 8:57 PM EDT
This article is part of The D.C. Brief, TIME’s politics newsletter.
https://time.com/6274979/gabby-giffords-gun-control/
When someone shows you who they are, believe them.
I’m honestly somewhat surprised that Time hasn’t conveniently taken their story offline so gun owners can’t link back to their story quoting Gabby Giffords on her fundamental goal for her organization.
Cam Edwards, Bearing Arms, Nov 11, 2023
I think Mr. Edwards has a point. At this time the lying gun grabbers at Time haven’t been bold enough to try to memory hole the story, but it will probably happen as a two-step process: first a paywall, then a disappearance.
Click click save.
A million points of light–a million hard drives.
Wow, the housing crash has started. A price drop for a new house from $400K to $350K.
https://www.har.com/homedetail/4734-seabourne-landing-dr-rosenberg-tx-77469/14917069?lid=8204769
There are many more price drops coming.
Arlo and Janis: Remembrances
https://www.gocomics.com/arloandjanis/2023/11/11
I stood around a Marine Corps base in California for five hours one evening in 2007 as 200+ Marines looked for a missing bayonet all over the 500 square mile base. They were jumping on a 747 in the morning at Edwards AFB to fly to Kuwait. They finally found the missing bayonet around midnight. I suspect that they raided the armory and stole another bayonet. Or, somebody drove to a Army Navy store and bought another bayonet.
Earlier, I got to watch a Gunnery Sergeant with two platoons of Marines flame thrower an ant bed with a government issued can of Off and a cigarette lighter. I felt sorry for the Iraqis.
“OK, You Convinced Me”
https://areaocho.com/ok-you-convinced-me/
“Sweeping Raids, Giant Camps and Mass Deportations: Inside Trump’s 2025 Immigration Plans”
https://dnyuz.com/2023/11/11/sweeping-raids-giant-camps-and-mass-deportations-inside-trumps-2025-immigration-plans/
I was convinced a long time ago.
It is a well-established principle of law that people who break the law should not profit from doing so.
Anyone who entered this country illegally and did not turn themselves in has committed a crime against the United States. Anyone who did turn themselves in, or who was caught, and was assigned a court date but failed to show has likewise committed a crime.
Going forward, the policy would be a choice between immediate deportation and prison by Executive Order.
Any non-citizen working without meeting the legal requirements should be charged with a felony and given the choice between immediate deportation and prison awaiting trial. Anyone employing such people as anything more than casual labor (the Home Depot Defense) should likewise be charged with a felony.
Any financial entity facilitating the transfer of illegally obtained funds OUS should be audited and pay a fine of up to ten times the total funds transferred.
We have laws that provide for legal immigration. Anything other than that is unlawful. Any public official who ignores or facilitates unlawful immigration is in violation of their oath of office and should be imprisoned awaiting trial unless they want to immigrate to a country that would take them.
Any humanitarian exceptions to the above should be extremely limited in number by statute, with any departures proposed as a stand-alone bill in Congress with no unrelated provisions.
ADDED:
One thing that could be done is the immediate reassignment of the expanded IRStasi to immigration enforcement. And then make anyone “authorized” to bear arms in any non-military part of the government subject to the same kind of reassignment.
Say what? And have the democrats lose all those extra votes?
@Ray
Any public official who ignores or facilitates unlawful immigration is in violation of their oath of office and should be imprisoned awaiting trial unless they want to immigrate to a country that would take them.
If they want the votes they could run in their new country.
Or we could just write the law so that they get to deliver humanitarian aid to Gaza personally.
Which brings up another possibility: Given Joe and Jill the option of being the new ambassadors-at-large to Gaza, and then make sure there’s no “space available” for weekly trips to Delaware.
““Climate Emergency!” says Andrew Dessler (old vinegar in a new bottle)”
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2023/11/10/climate-emergency-says-andrew-dessler-old-vinegar-in-a-new-bottle/
“Twelve years ago, Dessler opined to the readers of the Houston Chronicle that Texas’s “hellish summer of 2011” would be the new normal. “Get used to it,” he said. “The weather of the 21st century will be very much like the hot and dry weather of 2011.” Another outlier finally happened in 2023, but for reasons that scientists are still trying to ascertain since the “greenhouse signal” is less about Texas summer afternoons than Siberian winter nights.”
“What an embarrassment … to Texas A&M, the science profession, and himself.”
My Alma Mater, TAMU, should fire this guy and revoke his tenure for incompetence.
Arrived at the BOL safely. A bit harrowing on the back roads with condensation making them slick. No rain, but heavy mist in Conroe and north for a while, had to use the wipers.
Thinking that I might take the dog for a walk. Gotta check the dock first though.
n
Former Baltimore City State’s Attorney Marilyn Mosby Found Guilty On Two Counts Of Perjury
“Mosby faces a maximum sentence of five years in prison for each of the two perjury counts.”
https://legalinsurrection.com/2023/11/former-baltimore-city-states-attorney-marilyn-mosby-found-guilty-on-two-counts-of-perjury/
Lot’s of rounds being bought in the cop bars in Baltimore tonight.
“If foreign students came to our campuses and began attacking Black students, gay students, trans students, or Muslim students, would there be any hesitation in suspending them even if that risked their deportation? Why the double standard for Jews, I wonder?”
https://twitter.com/AndrewPessin/status/1723389615250219253
MIT admin afraid their might be “visa issues”.
Well, just never mind, then.
TED Explores: A New Climate Vision
UN propaganda header:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pcT0wwfLBMk
The latest communist-backed p.o.s. paid for by your tax dollars and aired on your local tax-supported PBS (Propaganda B.S.) station to keep the indoctrination going.
My quick calculation is slightly less than $12k monthly take home required to qualify for a payment at the best rate, currently 7.85%. I figured $8000 in property taxes and $2400 in homeowners insurance, both probably low.
Four bedrooms in 2200 sq ft. A cr*p shack with a three car garage.
The builder is in serious trouble.
“The Best Science Fiction Books of 2023” by Dan Livingston
https://best-sci-fi-books.com/the-best-science-fiction-books-of-2023/
I have not read any of the list yet. I will get “System Collapse” next week and am rereading books one through six before I read it.
I also look forward to reading “Starter Villain” when it comes out in MMPB.
Had a nice little relaxing hour on the dock. Shortwave was a bit weak but the flagpole brought it in. Good music.
Off to bed, had to run the heat to warm up the house a bit.
n
>> If convicted of making false mortgage applications, Mosby faces a maximum prison sentence of 30 years for each of the two counts.
Do you really think she’ll get anywhere near the maximum sentence? Hey, with the right “donation” the WH ‘cocaine boy’ could slip a federal pardon into the next batch of Plug’s auto-pen documents.
>> Any non-citizen working without meeting the legal requirements should be charged with a felony and given the choice between immediate deportation
Every illegal cretin that we can round up (except those in NYFC and Kali) should be “volunteering…
https://nypost.com/2023/11/11/news/americans-flock-to-help-in-israel-after-hamas-massacre/
Only worth posting for this one line in the story:
Such disrespect!
https://nypost.com/2023/11/11/news/biden-needs-assistance-from-arlington-honor-guard-after-laying-wreath/
Oh, and of course, the requisite Beau reference.
And some excitement in Austin…
https://nypost.com/2023/11/11/news/four-dead-in-austin-texas-hostage-situation/