Cool-ish, warming to hot. Because Houston. It got to 96F yesterday, and started warmer than the past several days. Then it rained and that cooled everything off a bit. Still was saturated though.
I got up far too early, dunno why, cooked my wife breakfast. Apparently there is this thing called “birthday week” where the birthday girl gets special treatment for the week, not just on the day. Who knew? I made an omelette. Saturday was a frittata. Of course there was bacon too.
Then I moved some stuff around and did some small jobs before deciding to finish the pressure washing and install my new 20ft flagpole. The rain came just as I was finishing that up. I poked at a few more small things after that. Dinner was a take and make meal from Costco. Those sou vide meals are cheaper than Burger King and a whole lot better, and they are very convenient. I usually freeze them until needed.
Today I’ll be working the list. I’ve got more stuff to move out of the house as part of the wife’s push to move stuff around. And I’ve got to do some ebay listing. Time to generate some cash, or at least start the process. I’ve got some outstanding invoices and other monies due me that I need to get on top of too.
And I’d like to take a load to auction. The scrap yard needs a visit too.
I’ve got prepping to do, mainly generator stuff, and I need to make some room to do it, and make some time. All while whittling away at the list.
Always be working. Always be stacking.
nick
and
Half of my YT home page is that junk. New channels crop up as quickly as I can mark them as “do not recommend”. Very annoying. (Though not as annoying as the typical teenager, so there’s that.)
I stand corrected. Just checked YT and in the first fifty or so thumbnails, about two looked like robo reads of Reddit posts, about two looked like human reads of Reddit posts, and none were “Fired from my job. Sixteen minutes later, the CFO was screaming.” YT must have purged them.
That said, I wonder why they were purged. The content was original, if low-quality. Maybe so few people watched that it wasn’t worth the server space.
John Hughes was a former ad executive who created a fantasy world for X-ers.
I don’t think Salma Hayek’s monologue in “Dogma” is wrong about the deal with the Devil.
If you don’t believe it, find a way to watch “National Lampoon’s Class Reunion”.
Ding ding ding ding.
At least one copy has to be stored somewhere on Google’s network ready to be spun up at a moment’s notice, and that has costs.
Warner wrote off the “Batgirl” movie because making sure the flick never saw the light of day actually saved the company money in addition to the tax advantages.
Fans would have tried to see a bad “Batgirl” flick if the rumors about Michael Keaton and Gal Gadot appearing as more than brief cameos turned out to be true.
I saw crossdressed Gal Gadot’s Wonder Woman in “The Flash” at a con last year, complete with strategically placed missing skirt panel.
Sony and Disney see small revenue streams from “Madame Web” since Netflix uses the flick as a loss leader to sell subscription upgrades to see “Anyone But You”.
>>an AI voice reading reddit threads over unrelated video stolen from elsewhere.
The ‘promises’ of AI delivered!
>>Mon. Sept. 22, 2025 – yes, we have no bananas
How do we keep the ‘monkey trick’ going??
Get them to work for peanuts?
————–
75F and the air is saturated.
Tea in mug soon.
——–
n
*more like curry
Establish a separate YouTube subaccount/channel with a pseudonym. Select that subaccount when you login, and watch/subscribe with that identity.
AI content doesn’t bother me, if it’s creative or useful. What does bother me is content that is just trolling for clicks – and then it doesn’t matter whether it’s AI or not. Just as an example: on X, when someone posts a provocative question: “Do you support torturing ducks! Yes or No?”. Or the useless YouTube videos y’all mentioned (though I am rarely on YT). What a waste of electrons, but apparently thousands of people disagree…
Week 2 of 4 crazy weeks…
Hey! I think I do better than that.
I will try again to contact SCE, I imagine as a state regulated monopoly they will eventually get something working. And they’ve been down for days before – they are in fact the most unreliable website that I deal with.
Though the power stays up wonderfully.
It feels like the hurricane season must be over, but the anniversary of Rita just happened, according to FB and my wife’s timeline.
It’s been a quiet year so far.
n
Back from the optometrist. No real changes, which is good.
A little gentle nagging about the cataracts.
“Blame Social Media, Guns, Vacuums — Anything but Transgenders” by Ann Coulter
https://anncoulter.com/2025/09/18/blame-social-media-guns-vacuums-anything-but-transgenders/
“The biggest development coming out of Charlie Kirk’s murder last week is that the gun isn’t to blame. This time, “social media” did it.”
“On Sunday, The New York Times published an idiotic op-ed to that effect by Nathan Taylor Pemberton, who “writes about extremism and American politics,” and whose last article for The Nation magazine was presciently titled: “Why the Right Fantasizes About Death and Destruction.” So we know he’s a fair broker.”
“Long after it had been established that Kirk’s shooter, Tyler Robinson, was in a romantic relationship with a transgender, Pemberton proclaimed: “The only thing that can be said conclusively about Mr. Robinson, at this moment, is that he was a chronically online, white American male.””
“Really? Was that the only thing that stuck out about the accused shooter?”
Does anyone still read the New York Times ?
Back from the optometrist. No real changes, which is good.
A little gentle nagging about the cataracts.
I am getting mine done before the fall of the USA. 2029 will be here soon.
LLMs use it for training. Kinda makes you wonder about some of the “answers” they spit out, doesn’t it?
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-15108635/jason-alan-miller-child-porn-carnival-cruise-eight-children-pregnant-wife.html
I think ICE has too much power to search, and in too many places, but it did pay off in this case.
n
Refusal to provide the pass code or access to the device will result in at least a 24 hold in a jail cell. The device will be destroyed as agents attempt to extract the contents. Torture behind closed doors sans working video cameras is not entirely out of the question. No food or water for 24 hours with only a small, used, paint bucket in the corner for relief. Planting of drugs in the clothes that have been confiscated is also not out of the question. Piss some agents off and they will get even, using illegal means if necessary. I have no trust in the integrity of any agent when it comes to a balance between their job and my rights.
@Alan
“Come on, ante up the silver when they come for the gold…why have them make two trips? ”
This lot of Dems gets back in power and they will make one trip for the gold and silver and as well as your copper pipes, and check your fillings.
End of November. That’s when “hurricane season” ends in meteorological terms, but The Gulf always has the potential and must be monitored.
During a “quiet” year in 1988, Tampa got hit by a unnamed tropical wave which felt a lot like something more serious right before Thanksgiving.
A little more than four years later, in March 1993, the “No Name” storm event did enough flooding and wind damage that a lot of actuary tables and building codes were rewritten around Tampa, particularly in North Pinellas County.
Horrific moment high school football player fractures rival’s spine in senseless attack
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/othersports/article-15119711/Horrific-moment-high-school-football-player-fractures-rivals-spine.html
300-pounder (est from photo) does big splash on defenseless player down on the field.
He should have been stripped and horsewhipped on the spot.
Since we can’t have real punishment commensurate with the offense, we’ll have to settle for a lifetime ban from football and a huge civil suit. The Michigan Athletic Commission should take care of the former, but since they only have state jurisdiction, and we know the parents will just try to move to another state, the lifetime ban on football should be part of the multi-million dollar civil judgement, with the court levying another $1 million if violated.
That’s not going to happen. Tell the AI imitating Don Meredith to stand by.
American researchers perfect magnets from abundant materials that could replace Chinese rare-earth minerals
https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/china-weaponized-science-against-us-weve-figured-out-key-element-missed
Iron nitride magnets with 200°C Curie point.
Nice.
And if the work was done with U.S. taxpayer’s money, the patent should be nationalized by the government.
Should apply to all taxpayer funded patents. Also, all research thus funded needs datasets published, raw data and “adjusted” data. Also, once you accept the money, your paper needs to be published. If not to a journal, then placed into the public domain.
No more suppressing studies that don’t toe the narrative line. Like vaccination safety or efficacy.
Is it time for my semi-annual reference to Eisenhower’s farewell address?
“Should apply to all taxpayer funded patents. Also, all research thus funded needs datasets published, raw data and “adjusted” data. Also, once you accept the money, your paper needs to be published. If not to a journal, then placed into the public domain.”
Should apply to all taxpayer funded patents: Yes.
all research thus funded needs datasets published, raw data and “adjusted” data: Yes, with the last 25% of any grant not released until those standards are met, and the paper is written and released.
All papers with more than 20% public funding should be freely available to the public, not behind a journal’s paywall.
See “work for hire”.
yes, we have no bananas
I bought bananas at HEB last night. A clump of six for a $1.00 or so. A bargain.
LLMs use it for training. Kinda makes you wonder about some of the “answers” they spit out, doesn’t it?
I am still bothered that grok gave me two wildly different and buggy answers to the same question a couple of weeks ago. My question was “what is the mass of insects on Earth compared to the mass of humans”. I did not check any of the other smartypants AIs, I figured that they are all buggy.
ISWYDT
Was that a pun???
I will try again to contact SCE, I imagine as a state regulated monopoly they will eventually get something working. And they’ve been down for days before – they are in fact the most unreliable website that I deal with.
Though the power stays up wonderfully.
You are getting the better choice of the situation, reliable and affordable. You could be getting the not reliable AND expensive choice that the earth warmists want to inflict on all of us.
The factual (or seemingly factual) answers given by LLMs should be treated with the same suspicion as the answers gotten from Wikipedia. The answers may be correct but you need to check every assertion before relying on it. Some LLMs will give links to sources. You should check every link. If any is dead or irrelevant to the claims, the answer is not to be trusted unless it can be verified by other means.
There have been recent claims of solutions to the problem of false information, called “hallucinations”. They have to do with changing the rewards for various kinds of answers. The problem has been that the models are rewarded for giving answers, not rewarded for “I can’t answer that” answers, and not particularly penalized for incorrect answers. We’ll see how well the change works in practice. If we can start getting “I don’t know” rather than lies, LLMs will become much more useful.
ISWYDT – I see what you did there.
Why yes, you did. That was the low hanging fruit of the Pun Tree.
Threaten to shoot the robodog.
I am getting mine done before the fall of the USA. 2029 will be here soon.
In fact, with the spending arguments that the drunken sailors in Congress and Trump are having, I am starting to believe that 2029 is becoming the outlier for the financial apocalypse of the USA, the failure of the USA Dollar.
Being one of the approximate 20% of the USA, the seniors group (65 and older), I agree with Lionel Shriver that our group will be treated with kid gloves. But, we will all be subject to the failure of the Dollar.
I still heartily recommend reading “The Mandibles: A Family, 2029-2047” by Lionel Shriver. The failure of the Dollar will suck for everyone.
https://www.amazon.com/Mandibles-Family-2029-2047-Lionel-Shriver/dp/006232828X?tag=ttgnet-20
In fact, I need to put this on my reread list and think about it some more in my prepping. Right now, I have around 20% of my assets in the public stock market and 10% of my assets in the private stock market. I may need to significantly reduce that. But, a desperate federal government will be going door to door for gold some day in the not so distant future.
And if you do buy gold, I would buy it anonymously.
“Selling Out”
https://areaocho.com/selling-out-2/
“Rep. María Elvira Salazar (R-FL) has introduced the Dignity Act to allow illegals to stay in the US if they’ve succeeded in illegally being here for five years or more.”
There is no dignity here.
The DNC and the RNC are two halves of The War Party. Nothing else matters.
You’d better also be prepared to be a felon when you try to use it to buy groceries after the fall.
I suppose that’s covered by the Mandibles book, too. Haven’t read it yet, and I got my fill of dystopian fiction when I was a survivalist back in the 70’s. “Earth Abides”, “No Blade of Grass”, “Alas, Babylon”.
ISWYDT
I know, technically they aren’t arachnid…
No, because then the AI will go John Whack on you.
Nonsense. Perhaps 10% have the capacity to create basically-functional software, though I suspect that the number is considerably lower.
Double nonsense. Maybe 0.1 percent can create software of any complexity. Creating software requires understanding complex relationships between data and reality. This why 80 % of all known software projects fail. I suspect the actual failure rate is much higher.
You’d better also be prepared to be a felon when you try to use it to buy groceries after the fall.
I suppose that’s covered by the Mandibles book, too. Haven’t read it yet, and I got my fill of dystopian fiction when I was a survivalist back in the 70’s. “Earth Abides”, “No Blade of Grass”, “Alas, Babylon”.
Yes, the book goes extensively into the 18 years following the failure of the USA Dollar. The separation of the USA into several countries is covered. Using the hoarded gold is difficult.
Gold is a store of value, and portable. It’s meant to get you thru a failure or collapse and into the next economy.
And there are ALWAYS people who want gold.
n
And that’s one reason why gold is a problem. You’re not supposed to be self-reliant and able to get through crises on your own. You’re supposed to be reliant on what the government does for you.
The other reason that gold is a problem is that it can’t be arbitrarily inflated to facilitate government deficit spending.
We’re putting Jimmy Kimmel back on the air tonight so here’s a shiny thing.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_pa1KLXuW0Y
““Rep. María Elvira Salazar (R-FL) has introduced the Dignity Act to allow illegals to stay in the US if they’ve succeeded in illegally being here for five years or more.”
Not just no…
@Jenny – You can take the kid to this one. IIRC there are some naughty words but not anything she hasn’t heard at home.
We have tickets for an IMAX screening starting in about an hour.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IROHmHj3Wso
“Apollo 13” is the second best film about engineering ever made.
What is number one?
The making of Hoover Dam ?
Let’s see if all those stations that said they wouldn’t carry
KimmelHimmler, don’t carry him. I’ll bet it is zero, but I’ll use Mr. Lynn’s gold stash to make the bet.Again, this isn’t about free speech. But it is (d)ifferent when celebriturds do it so blame
tRumpHitler for suspending Himmler. Himmler is way under water and should be fully cancelled, but this is Disney, so further down the drain they go.Bridge Over the River Kwai?
I get e-mail from 39dollar glasses dot com. Sometimes I go looking. Yeah, my current pair of glasses were bought in July 2014. Good glasses. May be the best I’ve ever had. I suppose I need to hie myself to the eye doc.
While I’m on a tear, hey, you jerks that code web pages, when you want me to change my password, TELL ME it has to be eight or more characters. Meatless living in Mom’s basement jerks.
I asked at Wal-mart a couple of months ago. You have to have an appointment. Bummer. Around $80 for the exam and prescription. Another 20 or 30 to get dilated. I don’t want to get dilated in Marble Falls but the doc wants, I will. I guess the price is fair, I really don’t know.
I think the lady running the front desk is the eye doctor. I liked her, anyway.
The entrance is sort of narrow and twisty. The front office is about 15×15. Kind of small. They have a sign saying “no shopping carts”. Three shopping carts would fill the available space. I asked if folks really bring carts in. She said yes, and they always have a dog i the cart!
Anyway. I need to make an appointment. And hope for a cloudy rainy day if I get dilated.
SCE is back up and claims I owe $9, so no billing this month (an under $10 thing?). Ridiculous.
Well, sometimes they give their payers money back, as part of the bread and circuses that California uses to keep the masses happy, this may be part of that, I can’t be bothered to look.
I will check again next week though.
@Paul: I used Walmart for optometry before I joined up with Kaiser under Medicare, and have used $39 Glasses before, it’s actually a pretty good deal.
“Apollo 13” is about engineering? Huh. I thought the movie was about Tom Hanks ACTING.. ←- do say that like Master Thespian from Saturday Night Live.
English melonfarmer, do you speak it?
PREVALENT? PREVALENT???
layers and layers of editors…
n
Well, that (Monday, it’s just gone midnight here) was an exciting day. Mad busy at work, but it is somehow satisfying to demonstrate mastery of one’s craft and to do so under time pressure.
This evening was the opening outing of hunting season, the best season of the year. It couldn’t have been a nicer contrast to the hectic work day, out in the woods, fresh air and exercise.
A young red deer stag (US Elk) was incautious enough to look for his evening meal where I could see him. He was standing on a clear fell when he received the good news, but do you think he had the grace to fall down there where he could be found? Of course not; although hit mortally, his final gallop took him eighty metres into a really nasty, dense bit of new growth forestry.
From 154 metres away, he didn’t look so big, but it turns out that a 104kg (230lb) dead weight king of the forest is quite the difficult object to drag out of the brush. It took three of us and a concerted effort. Fortunately, we could get a 4*4 right to the edge of the forestry. I will surely be stiff and sore tomorrow (later today).
I will probably sleep like a log after all that. A good day. Cherish each one.
Goodnight, friends!
@denis, congrats on a successful hunt. Does the retrieval help mean you have to split the meat 4 ways?
n
Cheap spectacles? I have had good results with Zenni Optical. I usually get them to make me a pair or three whenever I get a new prescription from the doctor and order good glasses from my regular optician. That way I have a few sacrificial spares to have as reserves for travelling, or to wear when doing things that are not friendly to expensive spectacles. Recommended.
Now goodnight, really.
Yeah. That Medicare stuff. I dunno. I haven’t used any of it. I last went to the doctor just after I turned 50. It’s coming out of my paycheck. They were like “why are you wasting our time?”
Turning 50 and getting a check-up wasn’t a good enough reason. Guess, take a stab, at how many times I’ve been to the doctor since.
Well. The new Medicare handbook arrived the other day. And stuff from the Part D folks. Still $zero a month but a 30 day supply of pills is going to cost $15 instead of $10. And now that I know this, all of the junkmail goes directly into the trash.
Thank you, Nick!
This evening, I was hunting on public land. The local authority has a framework contract with a local game dealer, but they do give the hunter who shot the animal the first option to purchase the carcass. Thereafter, the other hunters taking part can express interest, and the game dealer takes whatever goes unclaimed.
Prices are very reasonable, 5 bucks a kilo, the animal being weighed after field dressing and removing the head. With a good butcher, usable meat is somewhere between 40 and 50 percent of the carcass weight.
In my case this evening, I don’t have freezer space for such a large beast, and I didn’t hear that anyone else expressed interest, so it probably will go to the game dealer tomorrow.
It is not customary to divvy up the animal among those helping one gather it in, and everyone anyway mucks in to help. What we do instead, is to celebrate shooting a stag by bringing beer, soft drinks and a charcuterie board to the next meetup, for a social gathering after dark. I will be the benefactor next time, as Diana was gracious to me this evening. I think it is a nice tradition.
Now, really, goodnight. I mean it this time; I am shattered, despite the adrenaline buzz.
The eyedrops my optometrist uses to dilate my eyes for the retina exam make me a little loopy – about the same as when I have a 100°F fever – and not safe to drive myself home. Be prepared, in case you are similarly affected.
@paul
Check out Zenni. After seeing them sponsor Professor of Rock for a couple years, I went to their website and signed up, before I had a new prescription. Caught a 20% off sale on lenses and bought three pair. One with top level density, two one step down. All with the top-tier surface coating. Averaged about $100 each. Very satisfied with the presciption. I’ve had them for a year and the resistance to scratches seems to be very high.
@Denis
What was the instrument of dispatch?
BC: A Woman’s Weight
https://www.gocomics.com/bc/2025/09/22
And there in lies an instant argument with elevated voices.
“Don’t Just Cancel Kimmel, End Broadcast TV” by James Hickman
https://www.schiffsovereign.com/trends/153568-153568/
Tempting.
““Totally Unacceptable”: Indians Rage Over Trump’s $100,000 Fee on H-1B Visas”
https://thelibertydaily.com/totally-unacceptable-indians-rage-trumps-100000-fee-h/
We have a winner !
Ok. I do my best to miss political speeches. That’s just me. Let me read it. I don’t want the drama of “ein volk, ein Reich, ein Furhur!”. Ok?
Anyway. https://www.coffeeandcovid.com/p/echoes-of-gaul-monday-september-22
Ya know, I don’t care what party you vote for or if you are a furry lesbian friend of Hannibal Lector. I don’t. Do your thing. Leave me and my dogs alone lest I go John Wick on your ass.
But you know, when the President and Vice President and a good part of congress show up to your memorial service…. well. Kind of a big deal.
I watched about 25 minutes of Trump talking. It looks like he is just talking, no script. Like sitting on the front porch and sipping a beer and just talking. No teleprompters were shown.
I never saw Carter or Reagan or Bush or Clinton or The Shrub or Obama do this. They always had a speech to read from.
No. Keep broadcast TV. Perhaps reduce the number of channels available. Down towards VHF because UHF doesn’t have the range. Channels 2 thru 13. Freaking cell phones need more frequency, give them the UHF freqs.
But for us in the sticks, I need over the air TV. The cable TV stops at the railroad tracks. Internet is a mix of hot spotting cell data or my wISP folks (who have sorta vanished).
I don’t need a lot of TV. The three networks and PBS are plenty. And with digital, what? Eight sub-channels per station?
“Harden (Lee Harden Series (The Remaining Universe) #1)” by D. J. Molles
https://www.amazon.com/Harden-Lee-Remaining-Universe-Book/dp/069217656X?tag=ttgnet-20/
Book number nine of a eighteen book apocalyptic science fiction series. The series is segmented into eight books (two of the books are novellas), six books, and four books. I read the well printed and well bound POD (print on demand) trade paperback published by D. J. Molles Books in 2018 that I purchased new in 2025 from Amazon. I have ordered books ten and eleven and will read them soon.
Captain Lee Harden of the US Army is a member of the US Special Forces. His duty is to live in his remote US Army built home with a steel and lead concrete bunker underneath it. Any time the US government gets nervous, he goes down into his bunker with his dog and locks the vault door. He then talks with his supervisor daily over the internet until released by his supervisor to leave the bunker. His duty is to stay in the bunker during any event and come out thirty days after he has zero contact with his supervisor. Then it is his duty to find groups of people to restore order in his portion of the USA.
Then one day, Captain Harden has been sitting in his bunker for a couple of weeks and his supervisor does not call. A plague has been sweeping the planet and things are getting more dire by the day. Apparently the infected do not die but their brains are mostly wiped out. Zombies. A month later, Captain Harden and his dog emerge from their bunker to find a total disaster with infected roaming the countryside.
Captain Harden’s home and bunker were burned out after everything to eat or shoot was stolen by a gang of bad guys. But he has a secret, he has ten bunkers built by the U.S. Army strategically located around the state. And only he can open the bunkers. But the bad guys are chasing Captain Harden to get the rest of the food and ammo from him. And nobody trusts anybody.
It has been three years since book number six. Captain Harden and his remaining team members are living at Fort Bragg and running missions as needed from there. But their food and fuel supplies are running low so they are looking for fuel. With more fuel, they can run the tractors longer and plant more fields. If, they can keep the infected and primals off the farmers.
The author has a website at:
https://djmolles.com/blog/the-remaining-universe-reading-order
My rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars
Amazon rating: 4.6 out of 5 stars (2,544 reviews)
Lynn
He glared at it and it died. Strangest thing anyone had ever seen. The authorities want to round him up as a threat to public safety but they’re not sure how to go about it. “What if he glares at us?”
Wah! Wah! Wah! Cry some more, entitled little babies! I’ll use the salt to season the beef I’ll have for supper.
Does Trump ever use a script? Maybe for the State of the Union address but I’m not sure even about that. As I understand it, he just carries a couple of 3×5 cards with some specific facts he wants to get right, and a couple cards were all he needed for 2-hour campaign speeches.
I was randomly looking at crap on Big River. Hey, here’s a phone with 11,000 mega watts or whatever on the battery. Like a couple of months of just sitting a waiting for a call. 72 hours of talk time. Lots of of RAM and storage and it “waterproof” and rated to be dropped from 5 feet up onto concrete. Sounds great. It really does. Dang thing is probably Russian but maybe that’s ok. I don’t have a problem with Russians. They white, right?
The price looks decent. Unlocked. Android 15 for the OS. T-Mobile. Would my current Verizon sim card work? No clue, but, unlocked, right? My sim should work. Of course, when the battery goes bad you have to buy a new phone…. joy… but the folks in China need a job, right?
And OF COURSE Big River is messing with the prices. How the same phone goes from $150 ish to $320 ish the next day, well, it’s annoying.
But Big River has some kind of trade in deal. Like I did with my Kindle. Gives ya up to $650 back. Let me rummage and see if I still have a Blackberry in the wastebasket. But I have an LG V20 with a cracked screen. And another LG V20 that was his phone. And I just bought a new battery for my phone…. so, push all this off out a year.
I ended up looking at cell plans. T-Mobile has a pre-paid deal with I forget how much data, 6 GB? and unlimited calling and texts plus it’s all nationwide for $15 a month. And with 5G too.
Future projects. Yep. I got one.
Not quite 8 PM and it’s pitch dark outside. Joy.
But I did just buy a few FLASHLIGHTS.
Grin.
Even I, who does support the orange man, will acknowledge that he does like to hear himself talk.
Compare and contrast to the previous potato though, who could barely manage 30 minutes before slurring, whispering, losing his place, reading the stage directions from the prompter, etc, or calling out for someone who is dead to take the stage…
And yeah, we missed Charlie Kirk for the most part because he wasn’t witnessing to us, he was witnessing to people his own age and younger. He was out in the wild, on street corners, in college halls, and talking. I knew him only from clips of him debating. But yeah, he was a big deal.
n
@paul, I switched to the ATT version of Tmobile’s 55+ senior plan, and they still haven’t applied the discount. I’m paying $70 instead of 80, but it SHOULD be $40… the operator said it would take a month or two for the discount to be applied.
Thieving SOBs.
n
Yeah, I bet it’s challenging.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-15123407/barack-michelle-obama-italy-steven-spielberg-yacht.html
n
Oh. Poor baby. Does gorilla Mike beat you? Go on, say you like it.
Alas, SteveF, I haven’t perfected the “looks can kill” stare yet. 🙂
Dr Williams, the instrument of dispatch was by happenstance* my Czech mountain rifle, a Brno ZK 99 single-shot break-barrel. Short, light and handy.
Can’t find a good link just now, but this one is similar in appearance:
https://www.armes.be/en/carabines/brno-zk-99-11
My ZK 99 is in calibre 6.5mm*57R. A classic cartridge for mountain hunting in Europe. Low recoil, but flat trajectory and excellent terminal ballistics.
6.5*57mm is not very different functionally from the 6.5 Creedmore, which is popular in the US these days, but it’s a much older cartridge, rather similar to the good old .257 Roberts. It is available in both a rimmed and a rimless version, depending on whether the rifle is magazine fed or break-barrel.
This is the ammunition, 131- grain semi-jacketed softpoint:
https://www.sellier-bellot.cz/en/products/rifle-ammunition/rifle-ammunition-sp/detail/168/
The projectile made a neat entry wound just rear of the right shoulder, turned the lung/heart interface to soup and stopped inside the hide on the opposite side. Exemplary performance. Not an erg wasted. A heavier bullet would probably have exited, leaving a blood trail, which is always good in the field, although it was not decisive yesterday.
The rifle has a Meopta Optika5 3-12*44 scope (1-inch tube). Fantastic optic for a very reasonable price, particularly considering it includes a parallax adjustment knob.
The scope mount is an original from Brno rifles, that was on the rifle when I got it, albeit then with an inferior scope. The mount gets the Optika nice and low to the bore axis. I do have an expedient cheek riser, as the rifle has the Bavarian-style hogsback stock, which tends to be perfect for iron sights and is very recoil friendly, but is a little too low for seeing through a scope.
The Brno wears a German Niggeloh neoprene sling, which is a premium item, but not quite as good in use as my favourite Limbsaver Kodiak rubber sling. I think I have a spare black Kodiak somewhere, so it will go on the Czech as soon as I locate it.
* Happenstance because my usual rifle for blood is a .308 Ruger American Predator with a Vixen 1.5-8*42 illuminated reticle scope in no-name Picatinny rings, shooting 180-grain Winchester silvertips. I forgot to pack it when leaving for the BOL earlier in the week, so I had to use what was on hand in the safe. It turned out very well. The Brno is actually 3 for three outings. Its previous two shots accounted for a Chamois in the Austrian Alps, and a mouflon in eastern Germany.
Detail enough? 🙂
Goodnight, again.
Paul. Have a look at the Ulefone brand, “Armor” line, available on Big River. It covers all those bases. I am very happy with mine, which I bought as a two-models behind the latest for a very reasonable price, around 200 bucks. I get a week between charges, decent camera, ruggedness, dual SIMs and inductive charging. The only downside is mine is too old for esims, so I will probably replace it with a slightly more recent model soon.
Okay. One intense dream sequence about the space capsule door failing and one astronaut getting sucked out the opening.
No gore, but lots of mechanical noises, intense music, and fast cuts.
“The Wind Rises” nails engineering.
We will need terrestrial TV and radio advertising to rebuild retailing.
Tom Hanks is “Tom Hanks”. Gary Sinese and Ed Harris act.
The movie is shameless with Omega Speedmaster Professional placement.
“The Wind Rises” nails engineering.
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2013293/
Huh.
Compare and contrast Trump with Kamala, who, to borrow a line from Sky News Australia’s Rita Panihi, “always seems a bit too ‘refreshed’”.
Trump rambled and roamed all over the place with Joe Rogan for a couple of hours in his appearance before the election, but, to his credit, Trump showed up to Rogan’s Austin studios and met the terms, taking the risk where Kamala would not.
@Denis
That was my first thought.
Sounds like a fine rifle in the hands of a good marksman.
Thanks for the details.
Visitors here by country… lost the table with the paste.
Top 10 Countries
1.United States
3,011
2.United Kingdom
199
3.South Africa
172
4.Belgium
96
5.Canada
44
6.Ireland
43
7.Australia
40
8.Argentina
23
9.Germany
22
10.China
18
Some of that has to be VPN traffic, right?
n
So the diversity initiative has been working?
Re: visitors by country…
Depending on the source of the data, those countries may not be actual people. Unless the source of your data has filtered out bots and search engines and other ‘non-people’. And also depends on pages associated with those visitors.
Most hosting places have two ‘stats’ programs that parse the site ‘request’ logs. AWSTATS is one commonly available; WEBALIZER is another;. Both take a bit of time to figure out and get useful information.
There are a few programs (some free/open source) that will take the raw access log files and then you can parse them with SQL-like queries to dig down and/or exclude requests that might be bots to get you some more useful information. Can’t remember the name of the one I used to use, but there are many out there. I do recall the one I used being a time sink.
BREAKING: Sinclair Refuses to Air Kimmel
https://hotair.com/ed-morrissey/2025/09/22/breaking-sinclair-refuses-to-air-kimmel-n3807073
So Disney either didn’t bother to discuss the situation with Sinclair, or ignored what they heard.
If Sinclair has to argue in court they will doubtless claim necessity in the face of violations of FCC regulations. Something tells me that the FCC will be moving forward with their investigation with all possible speed.
Maybe Disney will try to split the baby and see if Kimmel wants to trim his income by 39%? But are Sinclair and Nexstar the only affiliates that are disgusted with Kimmel and the one-week vacay that wasn’t even a wist slap?
Face merkin futures down 39% in after-hours trading.
No. Keep broadcast TV. Perhaps reduce the number of channels available. Down towards VHF because UHF doesn’t have the range. Channels 2 thru 13. Freaking cell phones need more frequency, give them the UHF freqs.
But for us in the sticks, I need over the air TV. The cable TV stops at the railroad tracks. Internet is a mix of hot spotting cell data or my wISP folks (who have sorta vanished).
I don’t need a lot of TV. The three networks and PBS are plenty. And with digital, what? Eight sub-channels per station?
I would not hold my breath that broadcast tv is going to last against the internet. Broadcast radio either. Both seem to be barely holding their nose above water from what I hear.
Plus, the FCC is getting ready to investigate broadcast tv for serving the public good on a equal basis. Given that the broadcast tv networks are 98% liberal and shedding customers like crazy, that will probably not go over well.