Hot, humid, sunny, overcast, raining, cool, or some combination. Pretty sure we won’t see cold and dry though. Yesterday ended up nice after the rain cleared. It stayed cooler, and never got crazy bright.
I spent the day moving slowly, and not really functioning well. I did get a few things done, mainly in the bathroom. I fixed the flush handle on the toilet. I had a replacement but couldn’t figure out how to switch it to ‘left handed’… some superglue and accelerator fixed and issue with the old one. It works well now. I also took the time to fix a towel holder and the TP holder. The big box store fixtures do wear out over time. A little tightening of screws and they’ll work for a few more years. That bathroom is 13 years into a gut remodel, so they’ll get replaced eventually.
The rest of the day got eaten by doctor visits.
Funnily enough, today will be too. This time it’s the other kid getting her school, camp, and band physicals. I’m the stay at home dad, so it’s my job. It does make it harder to do the auction stuff.
I should say it makes it harder to do everything without motivation and good time management. Right now I’m lacking both. Working on it. Working…
Time for more ‘doing’.
And stacking. Time to replace some breakage in the stacks. Past time, but something I still need to get to.
Do some pulling out and examining of your own preps. There is likely some damage, and maybe more time has passed than you think. Then stack!
nick
Maybe of interest: Starlink is planning to build a big ground station just a mile or two from us. There is a big park of satellite dishes near us, lots of it commercial, some of it, um, “secret”. I think the US had (has?) some stuff there. Here’s a link from Google Maps, if you’re curious.
Anyway, Starlink wants to add _40_ satellite dishes of their own. New satellite dishes are tiny compared to the old ones: the antennae are protected by domes about 2 meters across. For scale, the biggest antennae currently in the park are around 25 meters across. Here’s a pic of a smaller ground station in Turkey.
The building permit should be issued by the end of June. One organization is planning to protest, because radio waves are evil. They also protest cell phone towers, etc.. Like my sister-in-law who is “allergic” to WiFi. If that’s the only objection, I expect the permit will be granted.
The analogy originates with the Geico Gecko.
Going back to the 80s, I don’t remember a time when Krispy Kreme hasn’t been in trouble financially. They got a bit of a reprieve in the 90s thanks to Bill Clinton.
My father once looked at the numbers of a franchise pre-Bill Clinton fame, and, at the time, the company placed a big burden on store owners to buy equipment and supplies from the parent.
Wow, Brad. You really are way down in the mountains!
Back when mobile telephony was new technology, a person in W1’s home village who was into homeopathy and crystals protested enough to prevent the erection of an antenna in the village.
The Telco neither forgot nor forgave. The protester is long since dead, but the village still has rubbish mobile phone reception, 2 mb/s “broadband”, and has been entirely left out of the local glass fibre installation works.
More ominous to me having grown up in Tampa is the Outback Steakhouse near work suddenly closing as of the first of the month. New signs went up this week for an all-you-can-eat buffet that I assume is not a Bloomin’ Brands chain and will be gone by the end of the year as well.
Bloomin’ Brands has been in trouble for a while. The company is Tampa’s last Fortune 500 corporation, and Bankruptcy or a buyout will be bad for the city’s image.
The Macaroni Grill and Joe’s Crab Shack near work, business traveler staples, have been closed for a while.
I assume all of the Joe’s Crab Shacks closed. When we were in Redondo Beach in April, the vacant Joe’s building surrounded by a fence was a huge blight in the touristy area near the Portofino, and the cancer was beginning to spread with two other smaller empty restaurant buildings.
McAllen still has a Macaroni Grill, part of a convention/business seminar complex propped up by tax money at various levels. My wife goes down there from time to time for DEA briefings.
The Federal Government employees don’t live in reality yet, DOGE or not.
When I worked at GTE in the 90s, tax money propped up a call center in McAllen.
That center was a popular destination for expense account trips because of Pancho’s in Nuevo Laredo.
A bill from Pancho’s fit well within the per diem even with a lot of alcohol.
Here in the US, the towers were hot button issues in a lot of communities well into the 2000s.
Whether or not the radiation dangers were real, the perception was enough to jeopardize real estate values near the sites.
Everyone wants a tenbagger return on a house in a 10-15 year timespan.
The Fed will start buying the mortgage paper again if the floor of the housing market starts drifting towards the $240k number installed by Obama with the $8000 first time home buyer credit combined with 3% down mortgages.
Breaching the magic $240k number would be a political problem across a wide range of demographics.
The Dems have been pushing a $20,000 first time home buyer credit in the last few election cycles.
God help us if that happens.
Anti-drone rifle kit:
https://taskandpurpose.com/news/army-smart-shooter-rifle-optic-adoption/
Between modern sensors and computation I suspect relatively effective and inexpensive kit to become ubiquitous against low end drones.
Nothing is 100% effective of course.
Jam the GPS signal, but that’s illegal for civilians and not effective against military drones.
Looking at the video from the Air India crash, looking at the failure of the plane to gain altitude, and specifically the wings, it appears that the flaps have not been extended. That would severely affect lift at takeoff and landing speeds.
However, I suspect my assessment is incorrect. A plane as advanced as the 787 I don’t think the computers would allow the aircraft to reach V1 without flaps. To do so would require significant pilot intervention and override, if even possible.
A single engine failure would still allow takeoff with a much lower rate of climb. A dual engine failure, while possible, is highly unlikely without external events (Hudson Water Landing).
For that modern of an aircraft to slowly drop from the sky after takeoff indicates something really serious and bizarre happened. Along with the fatalities on the plane, there will be dozens killed and injured on the ground. This will be a major crash, maybe the most significant in dozens of years.
Dripping rain this morning.
5G frequencies don’t penetrate or travel very far at safe power levels. The result as 5G and FirstNet continue to roll out is a MIMO antenna halo on a pole pretty much ever block or two blocks in urban and suburban areas.
https://www.facebook.com/connellyforgreenville/posts/wonder-what-these-black-poles-are-these-are-small-cell-towers-that-are-being-pla/2419347654998330/
Depending on the deal your area struck, you can get slick brown fiberglas, wood, simple metal, or something much nicer. They are often installed right in the middle of a sidewalk. Very few people complaining about antennas any more as a national phenomenon, and even hams are making progress against HOAs and other restrictive codes.
n
Boeing design philosophy used to be to allow pilots override on almost anything … because strange things can happen in emergencies and the pilots need that kind of authority. A 787 might be different, but no flaps and gear down on a very hot day in India, even at near sea level, would be very bad.
The question then becomes: pilot error, design error, maintenance error?
Jam the GPS signal, but that’s illegal for civilians and not effective against military drones.
– only works against drones guided by GPS. FPV drones use unlicensed spectrum, mostly 2.4ghz but also illegally ham spectrum, to send video back to the pilot who is guiding the drone. GPS may be used, but isn’t required. Some will use dead reckoning. There was video of some guided by a trailing fiber…
Anti drone tech and weapons are things everyone wants. There are deployed systems and experimental systems, and complete snake oil systems, but detection and interdiction are the holy grails right now. Almost every page of my .mil and security contractor trade mags touts or begs for a solution.
Phallanx style air cannons shooting frangible clay pellets seems like a possible solution. Some kind of chaff or string that would stay in the air longer would be better.
The challenges are tough. Must not harm non-targets. Should degrade quickly in the environment. Must travel a decent distance. Must be able to intercept a small and stealthy target.
Most of the current devices seem to be directed energy weapons, either EMP guns or jammers. There are lasers out there though, and probably some more exotic stuff.
n
https://www.zerohedge.com/technology/micron-invest-200-billion-america-reinforce-global-chip-dominance
– lot of handouts involved, but we need domestic chip production.
n
Relatively few homes have a landline anymore, and the masses want that constant dopamine hit from the smartphone.
Of course, the masses also want that tenbagger return on their houses so HOAs will continue to be a challenge in places like Florida where the law favors the developers and property management companies.
Sarah Hoyt
Yep. Looking more and more likely. Heard a term, shelf change? in context it described a sudden jump from one level to another, without much inbetween. Greg Bear? said periodic? punctuated? evolution? IE, not a smooth and gradual change, until small things add up to big changes, but BIG and sudden changes that result in new equilibrium. That would be mass die off events, etc.
Europe before WWI vs after WWII – one generation.
n
I have an AT&T connection to my house but in the 6 years we’ve lived here I’ve never had service from them and guess I never will because frankly I have vowed to never use them. I do have Spectrum cable and have TV, internet and use Vonage and PhonePower for ip phone. Cell service for just our personal phone from VW. Spectrum is no darling and far too expensive but I do get 300 on the internet.
AT&T won’t upgrade the service here to fiber. Buried in ground no conduit so no fiber for you. F’em. I used 5G in places, both AT&T and VW. Fast yes, but not as fast as coax and congests easily.
Well, well, well: The manifest at NextSpaceFlight is showing preliminary notifications of a Project Kuiper satellite launch by SpaceX:
https://nextspaceflight.com/launches/details/7378
I bet that sticks in Bezo’s craw.
In completely unrelated news the senior VP in charge of New Glenn is stepping away from the job to spend a year with his family…
Case in point
https://www.photonics.com/Articles/Directed_Energy_Technologies_Mount_an_Energetic/p5/a70765
– notice the power levels they are talking about in the article. Crazy levels are achievable and deployed.
Note the problems though, like dirty optical windows… kinda hard to avoid dirt on a battlefield.
And that the air itself is often a problem…
n
Yes, pilots need the authority to override anything the computer spouts. But it should be an obvious action. What pilot would ignore the multiple alarms and warnings that I am certain would exist if an aircraft as advanced as the 787 was not in proper takeoff configuration?
Unless enough speed was obtained. Surely the computers would have calculated that speed and displayed that speed on the airspeed indicator. Speeds which the copilot/first officer should be monitoring and calling out the numbers when VR is reached and V2 is reached.
It is also possible it was a fuel issue and the engines were starved for fuel. To me that would have been obvious when the ground speeds failed to climb and would be indicated on the engine management screen as a lack of power.
Or maybe the plane slipped on cow dung.
Greta Thunberg set a new record. She is the first hostage where her captors forced her release.
You assume the pilot was completely qualified to operate that particular aircraft.
With that part of the world, I make no assumptions about qualification even if they have the right paper.
If they are doing optical tracking, that is only 99.9% under ideal circumstances in my experience.
The ORT optical tracking hardware we developed internally at the tolling company came from a system developed overseas after 9/11 to track inbound missiles on commercial jets.
Not that the jets could do anything about an inbound missole, but that would verify the cause of the crash.
Yes, it’s such an obvious mistake that it’s hard to believe someone – an entire long-haul crew – made it.
bad fuel, maybe, but no reports of other aircraft having that issue, and reportedly they only used half the runway on TO, so plenty of acceleration.
the black box will tell the story.
p.s. Annunciators aren’t as useful as people think, there are multiple cases of pilots and others, under extreme stress, reporting that they never heard them. Stall warnings, etc.. The brain blocks them out.
AT&T fiber is under different regulation than landline phone service, and that division is free to pick and choose territories.
Texas sold its soul for fiber outside of the places where Verizon ran FIOS.
Well, if you could make a system that tracks & kills 99.9% of drones then Mr. P and Mr. Z would both like to make you an offer…. (Was it Bofors that sold AA tech to the Allies & Axis both, in WW2?)
But there are drones, and then there are drones, and then there are other drones.
The drone some poor sod of an infantryman is likely to encounter is probably different from the one used against a tank, which in turn is different from one used against a hardened airfield.
Like a military “gun” that might vary from a 9mm to a 155mm cannon, drone countermeasures will be a suite of technologies that attrit, but do not eliminate. the threat.
Lidar and low power radar from auto sensor tech will probably play a role.
Brevard Sheriff warns violent protesters could end up ‘graveyard dead
https://floridapolitics.com/archives/743187-graveyard-dead/
Reasonable policies.
BREAKING: California Democratic Senator @AlexPadilla4CA just crashed DHS Secretary Noem’s press conference in LA and was forcibly removed.
You mean 8 hours and 3 landings in a Cessna 150 is not qualified. Shocked I am, shocked.
GIGO.
Also, don’t call it Surely.
There is almost always a “pilot error” component. I wonder how long before whatever safety investigators release findings. The findings could save lives. Looking at you 737 Max.
Someone needs to develop a “slap-o-warn”. Ron Popeil where are you when we need you?
Yeah, the various involved parties will want to know whether they need to issue an advisory right away, or not.
it’s almost always a chain of events, bad design and bad piloting (737 max), bad maintenance and bad design(dc10 engine replacement), etc, etc.. Pick any two…
“Ideal circumstances” means a fixed area surveyed down to the cm and no more than six meters high with mostly clear conditions.
That doesn’t describe many battlefield situations.
Our spec was 99.95%, but that last .05 was actually impossible with the computing and network hardware of five years ago. I doubt things have changed.
Missing 20 cars out of 20,000 in a morning shift on an express lane into town was only money, not lives.
“Power Key (Perry Rhodan #78)” by K. H. Scheer
https://www.amazon.com/Power-Key-Perry-Rhodan-78/dp/B0012G1582?tag=ttgnet-20/
Book number seventy-eight of a series of one hundred and thirty-six space opera books in English. The original German books, actually pamphlets, number in the thousands with several spinoffs. The English books started with two translated German stories per book translated by Wendayne Ackerman and transitioned to one story per book with the sixth book. And then they transition back to two stories in book #109/110. The Ace publisher dropped out at #118, so Forrest and Wendayne Ackerman published books #119 to #136 in pamphlets before stopping in 1978. The German books were written from 1961 to present time, having sold two billion copies and even recently been rebooted again. I read the well printed and well bound book published by Ace in 1975 that I had to be very careful with due to age. I bought an almost complete box of Perry Rhodans a decade or two ago on ebay that I am finally getting to since I lost my original Perry Rhodans in The Great Flood of 1989. In fact, I now own book #1 to book #106, plus the Atlan books, and some of the Lemuria books.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perry_Rhodan
BTW, this is actually book number 86 of the German pamphlets written in 1963. There is a very good explanation of the plot in German on the Perrypedia German website of all of the PR books. There is automatic Google translation available for English, Spanish, Dutch, Japanese, French, and Portuguese.
https://www.perrypedia.de/wiki/Der_Schl%C3%BCssel_zur_Macht
There is alternate synopsis site at:
https://www.perryrhodan.us/summaries/86#
In this alternate universe, USSF Major Perry Rhodan and his three fellow astronauts blasted off in a three stage rocket to the Moon in their 1971. The first stage of the rocket was chemical, the second and third stages were nuclear. After crashing on the Moon due to a strange radio interference, they discover a massive crashed alien spaceship with an aged male scientist (Khrest), a female commander (Thora), and a crew of 500. It has been over seventy years since then and the Solar Empire has flourished with tens of millions of people and many spaceships headquartered in the Gobi desert, the city of Terrania. Perry Rhodan has been elected by the people of Earth to be the World Administrator and keep them from being taken over by the robot administrator of Arkon.
Perry Rhodan has been informed by Atlan and Khrest that the Robot Regent of the Arkonide Empire probably has a secret deactivation circuit. And the Robot Regent is recruiting sentients to replace the robot commanders of the vast Arkonide spaceship fleets. So Perry Rhodan, Bell, and 200 scientist soldiers change themselves to look like Zalites and transport themselves to the Zalit home world, just three light years away from Arkon. The groups then are transported to the Arkon home system for integration into the Arkonide space ships.
Two observations:
1. Forrest Ackerman should have put two or three of the translated stories in each book. Having two stories in the first five books worked out well. Just having one story in the book is too short and would never allow the translated books to catch up to the German originals.
2. Anyone liking Perry Rhodan and wanting a more up to date story should read the totally awesome “Mutineer’s Moon” Dahak series of three books by David Weber.
https://www.amazon.com/Mutineers-Moon-Dahak-David-Weber/dp/0671720856?tag=ttgnet-20/
My rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars
Amazon rating: 5 out of 5 stars (1 reviews)
Lynn
BC: Fearless Raptors
https://www.gocomics.com/bc/2025/06/11
Raptor got goosed.
BC: Potholes
https://www.gocomics.com/bc/2025/06/12
This is why I drive around with three tons of Steel XXXX Aluminum wrapped around me.
“As I Have Been Saying for 5 Years”
https://areaocho.com/as-i-have-been-saying-for-5-years/
“We are seeing an in progress Communist coup of this nation. It is being funded by our own tax dollars, controlled by the Democratic Party, coordinated through the US intelligence agencies, and following the CIA insurgency manual nearly to the letter. Now we see reports from Peter over at Bayou Renaissance Man that there are financial statements linking the Democrat party directly to the riots and rioters. I am working to confirm that report right now.”
Since the CIA and FBI are complicit in this, I doubt that any hard proof will be found.
Boeing design philosophy used to be to allow pilots override on almost anything … because strange things can happen in emergencies and the pilots need that kind of authority. A 787 might be different, but no flaps and gear down on a very hot day in India, even at near sea level, would be very bad.
The question then becomes: pilot error, design error, maintenance error?
That plane was delivered to Air India in 2014. Pilot error or maintenance error. This plane has flown for many thousands of hours without an incident so I doubt design error.
I believe that the copilot is suppose to visually verify that the flaps are down before the brakes are released for takeoff as a part of the takeoff check list.
Anti-drone rifle kit:
https://taskandpurpose.com/news/army-smart-shooter-rifle-optic-adoption/
Between modern sensors and computation I suspect relatively effective and inexpensive kit to become ubiquitous against low end drones.
Nothing is 100% effective of course.
That is a battery burner par excellence. So the first failure mechanism is that the batteries probably only last two hours of runtime. I hope that the batteries can be switched easily and that the infantryman has quite a few spares with him.
My son loved the thermal night vision in Iraq on his second tour. But the air conditioner built into the thermal night vision went through a set of batteries every two hours.
The saga of our landline continues. We have one only because of a connectivity requirement with some old analogue-only hardware installed in the house.
The copper cable connection was lost on 23 May. During my first call to the incumbent telco tech support, the drone said they “tested the line remotely” and that the problem must be on our side of the demarcation. I wasn’t at home to check it, so I had to take that at face value.
Once back home, I physically tested the line myself – dead as a dodo, no carrier, no voltage. Dead. I called telco TS again and persuaded them to schedule a technician to visit. This was at 3pm, the technician who was supposed to arrive by 5pm didn’t feel like it, so he closed the support ticket as “resolved” and no-showed.
Called telco TS again after the no-show, got an appointment for a different technician the following day. He did show up. Proper old-school electrician. He tested competently, and determined there was a disruption of the telco’s infrastructure outside our property. He had the good grace to confirm that in writing and to order a crew with shovels to dig for the broken cable.
Broken cable subcontractor and his crew came the day before yesterday. He said, “copper line is broken, switch to fibre”, closed the ticket as “resolved”, and disappeared. Apparently it was too warm out for digging.
Called telco TS again today. Read the drone the Riot Act: outage reported on 23 May, still no resolution. One no-show, and two false “resolved”s. He scheduled a “senior technician” to come next Wednesday.
When I got off the phone to telco today, I called our hardware provider for a quote to install an analog to cellphone-service converter. It’ll probably cost a few hundred bucks.
I fully intend to hold telco’s feet to the fire until they dig for and repair their copper line at ridiculous expense to themselves. I will hold out for some fungible compensation for the outage and the inconvenience, as well as for the cost of the paid service to which I cannot connect due to their prolonged outage. Then, I will cancel the landline service and switch to their competitor’s cellular network. I certainly won’t be switching to Telco’s fibre either. Grr.
“Colour revolution”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colour_revolution
“The colour revolutions (also spelt, color revolutions)[1] were a series of often non-violent protests and accompanying (attempted or successful) changes of government and society that took place in post-Soviet states (particularly Georgia, Ukraine, and Kyrgyzstan) and the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia during the early 21st century.[2] The aim of the colour revolutions was to establish Western-style democracies. They were primarily triggered by election results widely viewed as falsified. The colour revolutions were marked by the use of the internet as a method of communication,[3] as well as a strong role of non-governmental organizations in the protests.”
The key word there is non-violent. The riots in LA and other places are very violent from what I see.
We did one of those for MIL when we moved her into a senior living facility. Got a box from Verizon, cellular, connection to the phone appeared to the phone as copper. $30.00 a month. Kept the same landline phone number.
My copper line was out for 10 days but AT&T eventually resolved the problem by running a new line.
US. Texas. Swimming naked. The union tech ran the line and connected all of the equipment, but contract illegal labor came back a few days later and did a half-a**ed job burying the line.
I use the copper for fax and 2FA for my Vanguard account.
The telco does not try to market fiber to me. I am on a special do-not-call list for grumpy ex-employees.
The list is about to get much larger. My old office in Tampa voted unanimously to defy the “return to office” mandate so the Death Star shoved them all out the door to Cap Gemini and/or early retirements, impact to the product – IBM’s primary VPN client – be damned.
My son loved the thermal night vision in Iraq on his second tour. But the air conditioner built into the thermal night vision went through a set of batteries every two hours.
More weight: there appears to be some sort of natural law where the infantry men’s load out will always be 65 pounds. Started with at least the Romans and continues to the current day.
“NextDecade locks in $9-B EPC deals with Bechtel for Rio Grande LNG trains”
https://www.gasprocessingnews.com/news/2025/06/nextdecade-locks-in-9-b-epc-deals-with-bechtel-for-rio-grande-lng-trains/?oly_enc_id=8020E7639790J0C
Now that the evil and crazy Biden is gone, we are getting back to business of creating and selling energy in the USA. And here come another $12 billion LNG plant that will create and ship 5 million tons of LNG per year, made from Texas natural gas. This is a whole lot better than flaring the natural gas which happens now.
“AFPM/API: President Trump officially overturns California (U.S.) gas car ban”
https://www.gasprocessingnews.com/news/2025/06/afpmapi-president-trump-officially-overturns-california-us-gas-car-ban/
“Fuel & Petrochemical Manufacturers (AFPM) President and CEO Chet Thompson and American Petroleum Institute (API) President and CEO Mike Sommers issued the following statement on today’s signing of a Congressional Review Act (CRA) resolution overturning EPA’s 2024 authorization of California’s ban on sales of new gas cars:”
““The President and Congress just delivered a major win for the American people by overturning California’s gas car ban and the state’s attempt to tell consumers what they can and can’t drive. Today’s historic signing is critical for protecting U.S. families, manufacturing workers and our national energy security. We thank President Trump for keeping his promise to American voters to end these extreme and restrictive policies.””
Oh those crazies in California, next they will be mandating horses and buggies to replace gasoline cars and diesel trucks.
My son loved the thermal night vision in Iraq on his second tour. But the air conditioner built into the thermal night vision went through a set of batteries every two hours.
More weight: there appears to be some sort of natural law where the infantry men’s load out will always be 65 pounds. Started with at least the Romans and continues to the current day.
His body armour alone weighed 65 lbs. His M249 weighed 17 lbs and the 200 round drums weighed 5 lbs each. He carried six drums for a while and gave most of them up after a while.
One of the reasons he left the Marine Corps was that he was tired of being a pack mule.
Crusoe Energy powers AI systems using gas which would otherwise get flared.
They were the Wall Street AI darling for most of last year until Coreweave started moving to IPO.
Beer money with CRWV, kids. That’s all I will say.
Just like the media won’t do cross-reference of crime stats with race/nationalilty, they won’t do commercial air crashes with sex/race/nationality either.
IIRC, none of the 737 Max crashes happened to a white American crew.
Which doesn’t excuse bad design, but it does point out the value of good training and experience.
Stories of Indians (dot) cheating at tests and interviews are legion. I personally saw it at the hospital in Houston. The consultant who showed up for the job was most definitely not the person who did the phone interview. No skills, and almost no English, and the one who interviewed knew his stuff and could speak such that he was mostly understood. Still that annoying rushed highly-accented pseudo-British stuff, but he could put together sentences correctly.
I could be here all night writing about the things I’ve witnessed firsthand from that demographic across two CS Masters programs and, now, working at one of the largest employers of H1B labor in Texas.
LOL Lieu is an idiot:
Rep. Ted Lieu Tells the National Guard Troops They Are Following Unlawful Orders
As a commenter pointed out, Lieu is a retired COL drawing a pension and is subject to recall and UCMJ for the rest of his life (Air Force JAG, what a dick). Just like me, not the dick part, Mr. Ray. tRump should announce at his next presser “I’m thinking of recalling Lieu to Active Duty and charging him with treason, insurrection, and conduct unbecoming of an officer…” tRump doesn’t even have to carry it out, just the threat will cause PLT heads to explode.
Or Hegseth could just recall him, charge him, put him in the can and strip his pension. FAFO.
Fun with math on Facebook…. 115 DVDs and 25 BDs for $150. The 25 BDs include a set of nine Fast and Furious movies. Nine is enough?
BDs count by disc, DVDs by case. That’s cool. New Math, right?
Nine DVDs went right onto the “Library Thrift Shop” stack. Hey, I now have the BD set of Fast and Furious, that’s five DVDs. There are a couple more I won’t watch because of zero interest in snowboarding and a couple I already have. I have the first Fast and Furious, that will go onto the library stack when I find it. It was ok, kind of mindless, not offensive, not worth buying the sequels. I’ll watch the rest now that I have them.
Pretty good haul. 106 DVDs to watch. About 20 right off look like stinkers but they’ll get a twenty minute chance. Plus the BDs.
Today’s haul is added onto the “to watch” stacks I already had. Uh. After I finish watching Voyager. Then I have Enterprise followed by Picard and Babylon 5 and Battlestar Glactica.
About that Library stack. Years ago Half Priced Books would buy CDs from you. I forget the price, a couple/three bucks each. I forget if they gave cash or just store credit. This was about 30 years ago. I took a bunch of CDs and guess what? CDs w/o a bar code come from the record clubs and folks get their 15 free albums and stiff the record clubs. Who knew? Yeah, summer child here. I didn’t sell any CDs.
I wonder if they buy DVDs? If they pay enough to make it worth the gasoline to go to Austin? A project for later.
Newly Discovered Dinosaur Is T. Rex’s Awkward Cousin
https://gizmodo.com/newly-discovered-dinosaur-is-t-rexs-awkward-cousin-2000613842
Had a stutter and couldn’t dance?
I had some good stuff in today’s mail. A letter from the county saying I have the ag exemption on the land and then another letter saying I have homestead and over-65 exemptions on the house. All for this year and future years.
Phew.
Probate is slow. Jeebus, so so slow. So pay attention. Put your spouse on the deeds. She or he will be a co-owner and when you pass it’s just simpler.
It’s felt like a clumsy process. Nah, it ain’t because it was two guys married to each other. I haven’t had that vibe from anyone. They treat old widow women that have naught but vague ideas of the finances the same way. And over here, I’m the guy that ran the finances, he made more money but my job was to take care of it.
I can’t imagine dealing with this if I were in my late 70’s after 50+ years of marriage and being the partner that had no idea of how the money works. No wonder some old women look scared all of the time.
.
“Quantum Leap” has a great BluRay set which needs to be paired with “Enterprise”.
Throw in “Lower Decks”, the only “new” “Star Trek” which is canon besides the “Strange New Worlds” episode “Those Old Scientists”, the “Lower Decks” crossover directed by Jonathan Frakes.
“Strange New Worlds” was renewed today to finish with five seasons, but I have no idea as to why.
Man, if ever a country had it coming, it is Iran.
Too bad, I have liked or at least respected the Iranians I have met.
But these old world feuds last forever.
I can’t imagine dealing with this if I were in my late 70’s after 50+ years of marriage and being the partner that had no idea of how the money works. No wonder some old women look scared all of the time.
Especially when the widow finds out that the house and farm are mortgaged to the max and then some.
Why It’s Impossible To Manufacture In America
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xewpuM1eJRg
Not perfect, but worth the time.
Stop it at 15:15 and study the wages graph. That’s the result of decades of purposeful destruction of American manufacturing.
In the 1970’s plastic injection tooling was designed, built, and run in the USA. A kid could graduate high school, spend two years at a trade school, and then land a job as an entry-level tool and die man for good money.
I knew a world-class plastic injection molder that built his business from scratch. He went to a trade show, saw an interesting novel product, came back and built a mold to make a knockoff. In a couple of weeks. I still have aat least one–saw it in my garage last weekend, after not knowing were it was for years. .
In the 80’s they started to ship tooling to Asia to make parts. Then they designed the tooling and had parts made in Japan. Then Korea. The early Chinese molds were crap, and sometimes shipped to the U.S. to be reworked and made functional. Now they are world-class and China owns the market. It took decades. There are niche products molded in the U.S. Heart valves don’t come from China.
The Japanese thought they were going to run the USA out of the videocassette business. I have videocassettes from the early 80’s and from the late 90’s. The difference in weight and complexity and part count is astonishing, driven by innovation at a US company that refused to be driven out of the business. By the time the product class was obsolete the Japanese might have made a nickel, but they didn’t make a second one to rub together.
American manufacturing took a century to build, culminating in the juggernaut that produced the men and means to fight WWII on two fronts. Immediately after WWII, our undefeated enemies started their counterattack. Not arms this time. Destroy the educational system, destroy manufacturing, destroy the American work ethic. Read the news and tell me that you don’t think it’s an unbroken line from then to now.
It’s going to take decades to rebuild. We don’t have decades.
And the path does not lead through $75 grill brushes and $10 an ounce hot sauce.
70s. Many 50-something women, X-ers, have no idea how it works, but they’re empowered, like Brie in those Nissan commercials.
https://redstate.com/jimthompson/2025/06/12/dems-former-star-theater-kid-michael-avenatti-has-his-sentence-increased-to-11-years-n2190421
Democrats. Trash and scumbags. But I repeat myself.
Israel is bombing Iran with dozens of F-35 airplanes. Six locations including the Natanz nuclear facility and Tehran.
https://dailycaller.com/2025/06/12/israel-reportedly-strikes-iran/
It is about time Israel dumps on Iran.
“Israel launches preemptive strike on Iranian nuclear sites, military targets”
https://www.jpost.com/middle-east/article-857575
“According to the IDF, Iran has enough uranium to weaponize it to nuclear levels to 15 nuclear weapons within days”
“Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu stated Iran is gearing up to produce tens of thousands of ballistic missiles, which could kill millions of Israelis even without nuclear weapons, but imagine if any of them had nuclear weapons on them.”
https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2025/06/israel-attacks-iran.php
BREAKING: Judge Rules Trump Cannot Use the National Guard to Stop Riots in Los Angeles
https://twitchy.com/aaronwalker/2025/06/12/breaking-judge-rules-trump-cannot-use-the-national-guard-to-stop-la-rioting-n2414202
Yet another lightning move by a court.
The American people have a right to know how such amazing opinion writing speed came to Judge Breyer. Or alternatively, where Judge Breyer got the help.
Right up there with Biden’s autopen, and the poster child for them all, Obamacare.
BREAKING: Judge Rules Trump Cannot Use the National Guard to Stop Riots in Los Angeles
This is the point that Trump just ignores the federal judge.
Remember, Lincoln arrested everyone who disagreed with him, mostly newspaper editors.
My son thinks that the first nuclear weapon will be used in the Middle East within two weeks.
Alittle closer to home for me, the freaking lake is rising at my BOL, and probably is flooding inside the dockhouse again. That would explain why I can’t connect to my weatherstation if the UPS is underwater… this time there is a ton of stuff sitting on the lower flooded area, including my wife’s dobsonian, a humidor, UPS, speakers, my shortwave… FFS, we just got the last of it painted last week. Two years in a row in 20 years is just f’d up. I’m not sure yet, she’s just looking at the online water level numbers, but someone will be heading up this weekend after all.
n
“Appeals court temporarily lifts judge’s block on Trump’s National Guard deployment ”
https://thehill.com/regulation/court-battles/5348353-appeals-court-temporarily-lifts-judges-block-on-trumps-national-guard-deployment/
“The ruling from the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals landed mere hours after U.S. District Judge Charles Breyer ordered the president to return control of the troops to California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) by Friday afternoon.”
Hat tip to:
https://thelibertydaily.com/
the first nuclear weapon will be used in the Middle East within two weeks.
– isn’t that why the israelis launched their attack? To prevent that?
——-
I’m going to bed. Lots of driving tomorrow.
n
the first nuclear weapon will be used in the Middle East within two weeks.
– isn’t that why the israelis launched their attack? To prevent that?
Yes, to prevent a nuclear weapon from being used on them by Iran.
But what happens when the rest of the Middle East comes after them ? Will Israel use nuclear weapons on their attackers in desperation ?