Cooler today, at least to start. Then warmer. Still supposed to be clear for a few days. It got chilly last night. This is the time of year in Houston where we run A/C during the day and heat at night…
Did a bunch of small things yesterday, including laundry and cutting my hair. Shaved too. Spent a fair amount of time sorting paperwork and various other things into bins. I am making a little progress on cleaning and organizing my office, but it’s slow going. Stuff does tend to pile up.
Today will be a continuation of yesterday’s tasks. A bit of network change, a bit of Christmas decor coming down, a bit of sorting and organizing. Some cleaning. Some cooking too, if I get to it. We’ve been eating mostly leftovers and quick to make food. W is cleaning up her computers and fully moving into the macbook.
D2 starts up school activities on Monday, although class doesn’t start until Wednesday. I’ve got an appointment Monday afternoon, and maybe a pickup, so anything I get done today is something I don’t have to find time for on Monday.
Baby steps are still steps, right? Right.
Still gotta stack though, as the changes and instability in the world don’t seem to be decreasing.
nick
First post. Nothing to say except, well, never mind.
Ray – man of action – few words. Good Morning. Pretty wet around here. Yesterday was rain all morning into the afternoon. More today, May actually have to drain some water out of pool.
Drought is over this year in California but don’t expect the ruling class to relax any restrictions. Screwsome must lead the way and save the rest of the country.
Had my tiny little fire while I read something new. It’s caught my interest, so I’ll mention it later.
It wasn’t too cold when I went out, but I started up the Mr Heater and was pretty chilled by the time I came in. Time for a hot shower and attempting to sleep.
I had my shower at 12 am and went to bed with my alarm set for 645 am. I picked up a book and was going to read only the first chapter. At 230 am, it was suggested that I turn out the light now. I very reluctantly agreed at the end of chapter 11. When the alarm rang at 645 am, I think I rose three feet off the bed.
I have been watching the reaction by the dumbocrats about Venezuela. Most in congress are mad because congress was not notified and put in the loop. Based on what I have seen dumbocrats do in the past any operation would have been a disaster. Liberal judges involved, information leaked, a royal f-fest.
I have some misgivings about the U.S. taking over and “run” the country. Would that not be considered an invasion? What are we getting on Russia’s case for Ukraine then almost doing the same thing in Venezuela? Maybe my skull is too thick to even remotely understand.
The people in Venezuela are celebrating, well a big chunk of them anyway.
Seeing the news there were 150 aircraft launched from multiple bases in the operation. There was a covert team in the country with a person inside the Venezuelan government. That is a lot of resources to pull off the operation. There had to be a lot of secrecy to mobilize that many resources to accomplish the capture of the Venezuelan president.
Was it the right thing to do? Will this cause problems with other countries? Mexico is already pissed off when Mexico should really be worried. As should any country that is supplying drugs to the U.S.
All this global foreign policy is obviously well above my pay grade.
Venezuela has been waiting for the invasion since Chavez came to power and motivated the professional class to flee the country.
Unforgiveable: Space Force Officers Lose Home, Family Cat In Targeted Arson Attack
https://hotair.com/headlines/2026/01/03/unforgiveable-space-force-officers-lose-home-family-cat-in-targeted-arson-attack-n3810443
Targeting Federal employees. Multiple Federal crimes. Maximum penalties.
Killing the cat? Flensing and immersion in vinegar twice daily for the term of incarceration. Debride when screams drop below 110dB.
The family was probably looking at real estate while on vacation in Florida, dreaming of that tenbagger score from one last injection of off base housing allowance money into the household’s bottom line.
Based on the graffiti, I doubt it was anti-military sentiment as the family claims, but that is coming.
I’m suspicious of the arson story too. It has the feel of a lie that got out of control.
———-
54F and a bit grey this morning. I awoke thinking it was Monday and someone missed taking the kid to her thing…
Got up anyway because we’ve all been sleeping too late and tomorrow really is Monday.
Coffee is almost brewed.
n
I believe tRump will send covert special forces teams to Mexico real soon. Sheinbumfuk has done nothing to stifle the cartels. There are articles about why cartels survive since there is no other income from the head down to the mules. There is an answer. Kill them. Kill ALL of them. Brutal, yes. But no more brutal than the cartels themselves. Beheadings, hanging, killing whole families, burned to death in a tire necklace, torture, etc. A bullet to the head or missile up the ass is kind.
One of the few ‘success’ stories of federal law enforcement is organized crime. If you remove the head enough times, you significantly reduce the pool of smart, capable, and ambitious leaders, weakening the organization.
There is an argument that this approach results in a less restrained and more violent leadership, but we’ve already got that in the cartels.
It’s long past time to actively go after these killers.
n
It has been wet here.
On the way home last night from (watching the 49ers lose at) my brother’s place I was driving through tule fog … in the high desert.
Not very thick, but it brought back memories of the heavy fog in the California Delta, back in the day.
I can understand why the Dems are so outraged about Venezuela.
There’s probably a significant amount of drug money that flows directly into the Dems coffers, and the drugs on the streets help keep the riff-raff under control in the blue shiitehole cities.
The immigration policy under the previous administration made smuggling refugees across the Darien Gap a very lucrative enterprise. Some of that money, no doubt, made it into campaign coffers in the US.
In the runup to the election last year, I heard Cutie Pie drop a stat that human trafficking across the Darien Gap exceeded the NFL’s revenue in 2023.
Republicans, including Trump, do need to get a grip that Venezuelans are not Cubans, however. The expats go on self interest first, and, in South Florida, they are very involved with Dem politics, both in terms of financing and, increasingly, running for office themselves.
With Tyrant Maduro’s Arrest Expect Cartel Ties and Money Transfers to the US Democrat Party to Finally Be Revealed
n
Ha, ha. Mr. Nick downvoted by the troll.
Nah. The Deep State wants the oil flows from Venezuela to resume which requires restoration of the professional class in the country, but that’s the limit of what The Orange Man will be allowed to do.
Given an alternative place to live and practice, a doctor is not going to stick around and barter services for a couple of chickens and a pie much less eat a zoo animal. That has been the dilemma of the Chavez/Maduro “revolution” for 27 years.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/yourmoney/article-15422821/prices-everyday-items-rise-america.html
n
Maybe we need an H-1B-MD visa.
Sponsors must be public facilities in counties with less than 75,000 population, and recipients must sign a contract requiring them to practice in the sponsoring county or another county with less than 75,000 population* for 20 years.
*They are not obligated to work for their sponsor for more than 5 years. If they chose to continue working in the county where they were sponsored, the original census population continues to be used to qualify. If they move to a different county the current census population is used and they must work for a public facility.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/yourmoney/article-15427659/mom-pop-bankruptcy-recession-main-street.html
n
@Nick – Did you go with the 13″ MacBook Air M4 for Christmas?
https://www.bestbuy.com/site/promo/select-macbook-models
The AMA is way ahead of you with their MBBS → MD scheme.
The US schools should start opening in about a decade if I have the timetable correct.
No Americans need apply.
My wife’s former employer in Vantucky has three MBBS grads in their MD Internal Medicine residency program.
Did you go with the 13″ MacBook Air M4
–yep. Best price was at Costco, but they only had the one color at the price. Same spec, different colors were ~200-300USD more.
n
M5 Air is probably shipping soon along with the mystery laptop based on the iPhone chip.
I’ve already started seeing memes asking if Trump can come pick up Mark Carney.
BTW, is it just me, or is ‘Carney’ literally the best name for a politician ever?
“BTW, is it just me, or is ‘Carney’ literally the best name for a politician ever?”
Only because Joey Buttofuco was a body shop owner.
My first guess is we need more NPs and PAs to handle the sniffles cases, and more high IQ white American doctors from American med schools. “White” including 3rd generation Americans of East Asian descent. Why should an American medical school receive funding from our government to educate foreigners?
You are operating under the assumption that Javier or Mohammed from Whatsamatta U. med school in Burkina Faso is any better than a witch doctor.
H*ll, even most white doctors are worthless. Between Obamacare, Standard of Care, Corporate medicine, and Big Pharma leading doctors around by their … Noses, I’d say the fewer doctors we have overall, the better off we’d be. If they’re going to act as stupid as LLMs, why not replace them with LLMs?
Here are some hard, cold facts:
Better food would lead to better health.
Type 2 diabetes can, in most cases, be reversed. Without medication. Quickly.
No vaccine* has ever been tested against a placebo, but they still claim they’re safe and effective. When pressed, they’ll admit people die from them. As from all medications, even aspirin and Ivermectin, although for IVM your risks are way lower than aspirin.
Medical errors are responsible for about as many deaths nationally as suicides; more than murders. That’s if you use the lowest estimates. I suspect more, because doctors bury their mistakes and they get to name the cause of death.
Yes, there are conditions and disabilities that come as a result of work or accident or aging or cancer that need expert management. We have contributors here who demonstrate that. The problem is that people think doctors are like mechanics, only better. What they are like, is mechanics, except they believe they know everything and won’t learn new stuff or express any skepticism about Big Pharma.
* HPV vaccine apparently had a flawed study against placebo. With mixed results.
Cash price for gas was $4.799 at a local Arco, usually close to lowest in town.
Refineries, pipelines and gas stations are closing at a mad pace here in California, $7-8$ isn’t out of the question this year.
Garfield: Predicting the future
https://www.gocomics.com/garfield/2026/01/03
Predicting the pizza delivery is the one exception to the Niels Bohr law, the Nobel laureate in Physics and father of the atomic model, who is quoted as saying, “Prediction is very difficult, especially if it’s about the future!”.
https://blogs.cranfield.ac.uk/cbp/forecasting-prediction-is-very-difficult-especially-if-its-about-the-future/
@EdH, too bad you can’t stack gas in any meaningful way. You could stack diesel…
Ordinary station down the street had 87 octane at $2.20 this week.
n
My local HEB grocery/gas is still $2.119. No surcharge for credit.
Cash price for gas was $4.799 at a local Arco, usually close to lowest in town.
Refineries, pipelines and gas stations are closing at a mad pace here in California, $7-8$ isn’t out of the question this year.
$2.199 per US gallon here in south Texas.
Companies and refineries are leaving the state. Too many regulations and taxes. Newsom and his clowns are really putting California into the crapper.
A “60 Minutes” story on “Atlas” the latest humanoid robot from Boston Dynamics.
Watch the video in the story.
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/how-boston-dynamics-upgraded-atlas-robot-and-whats-next-60-minutes/
@lpdbw
“You are operating under the assumption that Javier or Mohammed from Whatsamatta U. med school in Burkina Faso is any better than a witch doctor.”
No, actually I was operating under the implicit assumption that we would only admit qualified doctors acceptable to small towns in the more rural parts of America, which would be heavily weighted towards countries not typically represented on the H-1B tech list.
I suspect that many physicians from the UK, Canada, and Europe have had quite their fill of national health, power cuts, assisted suicide, preferences for foreign invaders, and suppression of free speech, and would be quite interested in an exit strategy.
– justice for the justice was swift in this case…
n
Musk controls ⅔ of the satellites currently in orbit. He’s about to move almost HALF of those… F’ing incredible.
https://thesilicongraybeard.blogspot.com/2026/01/spacex-begins-significant.html
his factory is making 10 satellites a DAY. I bet there were years when 10 satellites weren’t finished.
n
Data point: Shell station gas is $2.83 / gal in SE Idaho.
No money for the pipe dream unless the Feds get involved.
Gas is $2.35 a gallon in the the Montgomery area of Alabama.
In 1959 there were 9 successful launches.
1960: 7 (some only partially successful).
I looked at a couple of web pages, and I have serious doubts about their counting in succeeding years.
Between communication satellites, ISS launches, and military stuff, I would guess It’s been a long time since a year with less than 10 satellites.
Even amateur radio has 8 active satellites, and a whole bunch of dead ones. I just built a tape-measure Yagi-Uda antenna to listen to them, and someday may build or buy a circularly polarized one to make contacts via satellite.
The Yagi antenna is really for direction finding, but it’s multi-purpose.
@ lpdbw – huh, space launches were a bit busier than I thought. Still nothing like today’s pace.
I’ve got an “arrow-Sat-tenna” that is supposed to be for handheld satellite work. Never tried it even though my main radio was designed around satellite work (FT 847). But then I don’t really talk on the radio.
——–
No tiny little fire tonight.
Time for an attempt at an early bed.
n
Even amateur radio has 8 active satellites
– yeah, but they rode on the back of other sats…
n
Oil in perspective:
https://www.zerohedge.com/energy/visualizing-all-worlds-oil-reserves-country
That graphic doesn’t capture quality… canada has tar sands… very different from light sweet crude.
n
Oil in perspective:
https://www.zerohedge.com/energy/visualizing-all-worlds-oil-reserves-country
Totally bogus. First, all of the middle east numbers are suspect since it is political for them. The crude oil produced in Iraq has been produced for over 3,500 years now (read book of Daniel in Bible). Nobody really knows how big those reservoirs are.
Second, the USA is about two trillion barrels at the moment and rapidly climbing. Permian Basin is producing right at five million barrels of crude oil per day. The other shale plays in the USA (two in Texas, one in Pennsylvania, one in Dakotas, and the Rockies) are also producing five million barrels per day also. There is another three million barrels per day of production, North Slope, Gulf of Mexico, central Texas, Louisiana, Utah, Colorado, California, etc. The shale plays are all super giant reservoirs.
Third, the amount of natural gas being produced worldwide is growing at 3 to 5% per year. This is displacing crude oil. 1/3 to ¼ of that natural gas is being converted to LNG with around 45 ??? operating LNG liquefaction plants. 24 ??? of those liquefaction plants are in the USA with ten ??? more being built now at $12 billion each.