Today is the anniversary of Robert Bruce Thompson’s death. Is it even possible that it was 8 years ago? So much has changed in our world, and here, yet so much still remains. Being prepared is better than not. We can get through disasters, and life will go on. There is an ‘after’. What you do ‘before’ makes a great deal of difference in what ‘after’ looks like. Community makes everything better.
Raise a glass for our absent friends- gone, but not forgotten. Still present, like the ripples in the pond. They live on through the changes they made in us, the people around them.
nick
Tuesday. Good morning!
Absent friends. I miss them. I miss RBT’s “voice” here, although I can often guess what he might have said about a particular topic. I miss Dr Pournelle too. The world is richer for having known them, but the internet is a thinner place without them.
I notice, as time goes by, that the cohort of sites on the internet that I consider worth looking at every day, or even regularly, is getting smaller and smaller. Maybe that is just the universe telling me to spend less time online and more time doing stuff myself.
48F as the coffee brews. Clear sky to the east.
There is a long list of people who have contributed to our lives. So many are no longer with us. It’s important to takes some time and reflect on how we got to where we are, and who helped us get here.
—————————
@denis, I think that is partly a function of reducing the size of the circles of “give a f#ck” that we have as the world situation degrades. Many people who were on my daily and weekly read list have stopped writing or are concerned with things closer to home. I’ll admit that even I have not written an actual “post” of more than 300-500 words on a specific topic in a long time.
When political blogging was new, and the pajama media was breaking stories, a9and paradigms), it was exciting and you could make a name for yourself and gather an audience. Now, how many times can you say “they are all corrupt” or “two sides of the same coin”, or “dumb people are doing dumb things again” before it all blurs together?
This young kid in MN getting visual evidence of the somali corruption is the next wave. Pair him with a ‘follow the money’ investigator, and we’ll have something again. Something for the attention impaired. We were starved for real information and alternative viewpoints, which blogging got for us. Could be that the next generation are starved for a way to participate in the creator economy, and x and youtube, and a camera in every hand will provide it for them.
nick
– how to lie with the truth.
n
https://redstate.com/nick-arama/2026/01/18/nick-sortor-robbed-in-minneapolis-fbi-is-on-it-n2198277
Nick Sortor was robbed over the weekend. He was filming out the window of his car when the device was literally ripped out of his hands. Fortunately, someone got it on another device. It was posted on “X” then taken down because it showed the perps. But not before someone ran the license plate and traced it back to a Somali autism scam center. Stay tuned.
If you put “Nick Sortor was robbed” into a search engine and look at the results, you’ll see a perfect illustration of “the problem”.
I did just that to find the above link, which was the first post I had seen on the subject, and found it way down the page after at least three links to Hindustan Times, a couple others in India, MSN, and the top from Newsweek.
The Newsweek report is actually decent, if you read it through.
Nick Sortor needs to be careful or they will murder him.
Watch the videos. Shirley works with a “follow the money” partner who has tracked the fraud for many years.
My thoughts exactly after watching the video. He needs to get some professional security before a mob gets nasty.
I wonder if these turd-bucket anti-ICE protestors will try to storm a Texas church?
You’ve probably seen VA and MD Dumbocrats trying to completely purge the Constitution from their States.
CWII will probably kick off before I do. I wonder if a 85 year old Blackhawk pilot is needed?
Just dropped this morning:
Adam Savage Tested:
The Surprising Flaws in 18650 Lithium-Ion Batteries
“The standard 18650 lithium-ion battery can be found in almost every modern household, whether in rechargeable battery packs, flashlights, or even replica lightsaber hilts. Alex Hao and Andreas Bastian of Lumafield visit the cave to share the results of CT scanning over a thousand lithium-ion batteries, and the hidden risks they uncovered in battery manufacturing defects and quality control inconsistencies.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Y23nfAOiXQ
X-ray inspection of 100 each 18650 lithium-ion batteries from 10 different manufacturers. Provides a very simple, graphic representation of some really bad manufacturing practices that have direct impact on safety.
Cheap batteries are characterized by impossible claims of physical capacity, obvious (upon inspection) missing components, fake labels, etc.
Bottom line: Brand names are better in performance and safety.
Inspection report available here:
https://www.lumafield.com/battery-report
Cheap batteries are one of the big problems with the cheap chinese crap flooding amazon. They fail quickly and get returned, so they end up in the returns markets.
There are a LOT of cheap battery items in the returns.
n
Surefire CR-123 batteries are all that I use or Fenix lights with the 18650 batteries for rechargable lights.
As a side note I compared the beam from my Surefire light to that of a Duracell. The Surefire wins hands down.
seen online:
“The reason why RAM has become four times more expensive is that a huge amount of RAM that has not yet been produced was purchased with non-existent money to be installed in GPUs that also have not yet been produced, in order to place them in data centers that have not yet been built, powered by infrastructure that may never appear, to satisfy demand that does not actually exist and to obtain profit that is mathematically impossible.”
I wonder if these turd-bucket anti-ICE protestors will try to storm a Texas church?
My church in Sugar Land, TX has three uniformed officers at every service. And we have a couple of plainclothes officers wandering around too. All Sherriff and Constable deputies.
But, we have many outside doors in our 250,000 ft2 facility. And we now keep many of them locked after a few incidents.
And our members are encouraged to be armed.
Headed out. My client texted me from Africa to say he couldn’t access his cameras. I can’t get to them remotely, although the nvr shows up on the network when I use the VPN. Something has gone wrong…
Time to roll a truck.
n
Work that is not yet possible for AI. There’s hope.
A lot of pensions and 401k plans depend on this financial circle jerk.
“Clean Sweep (Innkeeper Chronicles)” by Ilona Andrews
https://www.amazon.com/Clean-Sweep-Innkeeper-Chronicles-Andrews/dp/1494388588?tag=ttgnet-20/
Book number one of a six book paranormal science fiction fantasy romance series. I reread the well printed and well bound POD (print on demand) illustrated (kinda) trade paperback published by CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform in 2013 that I just bought new on Amazon as I gave away my previous copy to a friend. I own books two through six in the series and plan to read them again soon. Note that “Ilona Andrews” is the pseudonym for a husband and wife writing team.
Dina Demille is an innkeeper in Red Deer, Texas. Only her Victorian inn, the Gertrude Hunt, is not like a typical bed and breakfast, it is an intelligent magical haven for aliens coming to Earth or using Earth as a way station in their galactic travels. Dina does have a permanent guest, a retired Galactic aristocrat who is hiding from several bounty hunters, she paid for a permanent room and board. There are many inns on Earth, each inn is a sanctuary with powerful weapons to defend themselves and their residents. Dina’s inn was abandoned but she has restored it and has it back up to a two star rating out of five stars.
Dina does have a busybody neighbor who happens to be an alpha werewolf, Sean Evans. He has marked the entire neighborhood for any visitors, including the inn’s trees, enraging Dina’s Shih-Tzu-Chi, Beast. Sean was born on Earth from alien immigrant parents and refugees, also werewolfs and retired USA military like him. He was never told about their past by his parents but Dina is educating him.
A good quote from the book: “”People say that physics has laws,” I told him, walking to the bedroom door. “I prefer to view them as a set of flexible guidelines.””
The authors have a busy website at:
http://www.ilona-andrews.com
My rating: 6 out of 5 stars
Amazon rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars (9,596 reviews)
Lynn
They just dropped the Sunday morning forecast to 23 F for this weekend. This is getting serious. Remember, Texas has trouble below 25 F and above 105 F. But, the temperature is forecast to go above 32 F on Sunday, 34 F. That will keep the deep freeze from crashing the natural gas grid in Texas, maybe.
https://www.wunderground.com/forecast/us/tx/richmond?cm_ven=localwx_10day
The EPA totally screwed Texas and many other states in the 1990s and 2000s. The EPA allowed new gas turbines to be installed using natural gas only. Diesel fuel takes longer to burn due to the atomization step and causes more nitrous oxides to be formed. So many of the gas turbine power plants do not have a diesel backup of a weeks fuel at the plant site. They do not even have the diesel piping and control circuitry installed. So when the natural gas grid is curtailed, these power plants go down in a hurry, that is about 10% (SWAG) of the electric power generation in Texas.
Newer gas turbines are built using the 10% only usage emergency rule so they do not have to follow the extreme low nox rules from the EPA. They all have about a weeks worth of diesel on site, that saved the Texas grid, ERCOT, in Feb 2021 from going down totally and kept three of the nuclear power plants online out of the four in Texas.
Headed out. My client texted me from Africa to say he couldn’t access his cameras. I can’t get to them remotely, although the nvr shows up on the network when I use the VPN. Something has gone wrong…
Time to roll a truck.
n
This is why he keeps you around. You are available in a tight situation when somebody else might take 2 or 3 days to get out there.
Engage Maximum Amish Grift, Cap’n!!!
Pam Grier Stuns America With Incredible Announcement That She Is a Time Traveler From the Past
Sure, she witnessed lynchings. Next up will be cotton picking.
Hollyweird.
seen online:
“The reason why RAM has become four times more expensive is that a huge amount of RAM that has not yet been produced was purchased with non-existent money to be installed in GPUs that also have not yet been produced, in order to place them in data centers that have not yet been built, powered by infrastructure that may never appear, to satisfy demand that does not actually exist and to obtain profit that is mathematically impossible.”
I priced a Dell desktop yesterday. Jumping from an Intel I7 and 16 GB ram to an Intel I9 and 32 GB ram jumped the price up $700. That was crazy.
“BREAKING: Trump DOJ subpoenas Walz, Frey, Minn officials for conspiring to impede federal law enforcement: report:”
https://thepostmillennial.com/breaking-trump-doj-subpoenas-walz-frey-minn-officials-for-conspiring-to-impede-federal-law-enforcement-report
“The subpoenas were served to the offices of Governor Tim Walz, Attorney General Keith Ellison, Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey, St Paul Mayor Kaohly Her, and Ramsey and Hennepin Counties.”
Please do not show up ! And when arrested, invoke the 5th.
Watcha want to bet that DOJ already has a couple of whistleblowers ?
Hat tip to:
https://thelibertydaily.com/
The Klinton’s didn’t show, so I’m not holding my breath.
A beautiful day, shirtsleeves and shorts, so I did a 1hr & 5,000 step walk.
—–
The little diesel truck heater keeps on trucking. I ran it from 10pm to 10am and it drank about 0.65gal set to 3/10. The outside air temperature dopped from 39F to 28F by morning, the 1600sf house internal temperature dropped from 65F to 63F in that time.
If you were expecting zero power available a propane or kerosene heater is the way to go, but this is a nice alternative.
The stock tanked today on analyst forecasts of weak demand.
Chipzilla is up. Never count Chipzilla out.
>>This young kid in MN getting visual evidence of the somali corruption is the next wave. Pair him with a ‘follow the money’ investigator, and we’ll have something again. Something for the attention impaired. We were starved for real information and alternative viewpoints, which blogging got for us. Could be that the next generation are starved for a way to participate in the creator economy, and x and youtube, and a camera in every hand will provide it for them.
Take Don Lemon et al as an example – DOJ says it will ‘pursue charges’ against Don Lemon, anti-ICE protesters for St. Paul church invasion – let’s see what really comes out of this, Lemon in an orange jumpsuit, or does it fall into the ‘round file?’
>> Going low carb is hard. We’re addicted to sugar and carbs. The Induction phase of Atkins is the worst, because it’s trying to break that addiction and the habits that come with it. On the other hand, you see results quickly which is motivating. You have to be hard core though. It doesn’t take much cheating to break you out of ketosis and then all your suffering was for naught.
W2 went through a similar ‘purge’ (just proteins and veggies) right before she started on Zepbound (GLP-1 combined with GIP) and Nick’s right, it is tough, but the rewards are worthwhile as you see the pounds come off.
I’ve been thinking about a GiveSendGo fundraiser for a new desk for Pam Bondi.
If she keeps piling up evidence and investigations on her desk, without ever actually doing anything with them, her desk could collapse. She needs something extra strong to hold them up.
She needs a new job description. “Prosecutor” kind of implies you actually, well, prosecute someone.
The Klinton’s didn’t show, so I’m not holding my breath.
That was Congress, not the DOJ. The DOJ moved a prosecution team into Minneapolis last week.
Home.
I couldn’t find anything wrong with the NVR or anyplace settings might have changed. I did set up a couple of port forwarding rules so I could access the NVR remotely, and tried a bunch of stuff. Eventually, I just rebooted the stupid thing, and that worked.
He pays me well to be available, so I take good care of him.
——————-
Chicken helper tonight, with costco canned chicken. The brisket wasn’t quite thawed when I needed to put it in the crockpot, so that’ll be tomorrow’s dinner.
I need to look, but I think this has beat my previous record for not buying meat at the grocery store. Was 8 weeks. (other than one big pork butt.)
n
“Usha Vance announces she’s pregnant”
https://thehill.com/blogs/in-the-know/5697520-usha-vance-pregnant/
““We’re very excited to share the news that Usha is pregnant with our fourth child, a boy,” the Vances said in a joint statement shared on social media on Tuesday.”
““Usha and the baby are doing well, and we are all looking forward to welcoming him in late July,” the statement said.”
Interesting and congratulations to them.
“Propaganda”
https://areaocho.com/propaganda-6/
“2 What we are seeing in real time, is an insurrection. There is nothing else to call it. This is a state, multiple states, in fact, that are openly defying Federal authority. The governor has said he is calling out the national guard to support local law enforcement. Support them in doing what? Defying or even attempting to arrest ICE agents, in my opinion. This is a thinly veiled threat.”
“The left is going to take over the government. Not by force. The useful idiots are going to help them. At the next election or two, the left will gain enough power to begin the purge. It’s coming. I’ve been saying it since the Floyd riots in 2020. S*** is going to get ugly. It’s taking longer than I thought, but this is perhaps being moderated a bit by the average American’s attention span.”
We are getting closer and closer to Civil War. If so, it will not go well for all of us. Kurt Schlichter has written extensively on what he thinks a split of the USA between the blue states and red states would look like, “People’s Republic (Kelly Turnbull/PEOPLE’S REPUBLIC)”:
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1539018954?tag=ttgnet-20
IDK if it was the Chicken helper or the chicken but it tasted terrible. Bitter. So it went into the trash and we had leftover carnitas.
I hate throwing out food, but it didn’t taste good.
——-
n
– maybe we’ll be getting even more vibrancy.
n
And that’s about as much as they have to say about HEB… The bulk of the article is about aldi/lidl/trader joes.
n
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/yourmoney/article-15470985/costco-walmart-trader-joes-heb-grocery-ranking.html
Wow, iOS 26 sucks.
If I ‘flick’ up the messaging app to get out it now moves over to the right, its left edge still partially visible on the screen. If i use it a second time it is visible on the left edge of the screen as well. If i open and flick away Safari the left bit disappears, but so do all app icons for 1-2s.
It reminds me of an underpowered android tablet i was issued years ago, clunky and ugly. But this is a 2025 iPad M3 with 128GB.
“– maybe we’ll be getting even more vibrancy.”
If Biden had won the election the outbreak would be to Canada.
If you tap/hold the bottom of the app and slide up a ⅓ let go you should see all of your open apps. Flick up on one closes it. It’s been like that for many versions.
dead bunnies through a straw.
FIFY
All VA benefit plans are subject to periodic review. How many ex-military personnel do you estimate are in the Minneapolis PD.
How many Natioal Guard do you suppose are collecting disability benefits now?
Wind, fire, flood and oops!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uDcG7SuCPj8
Re: “People’s Republic”…..
I read the first few Kelly Turnbull books while I still lived in northern Cacafornia, near Sacramento. When my wife abruptly declared, in the fall of 2019, that “We need to get out of California!”, Texas was one of the places that I suggested we consider. We did, and it took a while (and the whole Covid nonsense) to get moving, but we did. (She had been a life-long Californian; a “Valley Girl” before the Valley Girl phenomenon. I had been a military brat before enlisting, but we’d lived near Sacramento for the previous 35 years.) She picked this house just outside of San Antonio from Zillow and Google Maps, with the assistance of a local realtor. The first time we actually saw the place was when driving up the driveway, a month after finalizing the purchase.
One of the factors I considered was that if the USA did disintegrate, that the “Republic of Texas” would probably be a better than average place to lock down. I have had no reason to reconsider that idea.
Old Food: Dinner tonight was concocted based on Kraft Macaroni and Cheese, with a 2022 expiration date. The cheese powder had turned dark orange, but it TASTED OK. I had added canned tuna and a can of mushrooms, so it was a special “Ken treat”.
The ⅓ thing still works, as you say it has done that for a long time, but if I am in messenger full screen and flick up it moves almost offscreen to the right of the usual screen of app icons, rather than disappearing. Sometimes it shows up on both sides at the same time, 3/8″ or so, sandwiching the icons in between.
Very ugly and intrusive.
That’s the new thing.
I am guessing something with the new windowing is a suspect.
The Sweep for me/innkeeper books are entertaining. The only quibble I have is that she (the hero) just keeps pulling more and more tricks out of the bag. It’s not about creative use of what the reader knows she has, it’s always a big powerful thing she just suddenly reveals.
Still fun books though.
n
That was one of the things that bugged me about the Harry Potter books. Each book revealed a new, highly unlikely magical trait or ability. Some of it fell into the “Laugh In” category of “Very interesting. But STUPID!”
I remember the Brains Benton and Hardy Boys used a similar trope regarding constantly changing hobbies and interests revealed in story that just happened to address the clue de jour. Still good reading. Maybe I’ll check out the innkeeper books.
They’re fun, and the concept is pretty original. There is some weirdness toward the end of the series, iirc, but I did read them all, and would read more.
I’ve noticed in indy publishing that the base premise of a book or series is sometimes just a bit too far out of what’s normal for commercial fiction. It can be interesting to read, but you know why someone rejected the idea in a pitch meeting. Like the uplifted cats living in a biker girl’s junkyard, in an alien ship; or powerful generations of innkeepers keeping the world safely in ignorance of aliens…
Fun, but just a little far…
n
Minds conceive a premise, but then getting it past marketing… Indies don’t have the overhead of physically printing, binding and distribution which lowers the bar.