Thur. Feb. 5, 2026 – two wongs make a white

By on February 5th, 2026 in culture, decline and fall, march to war

Cool, but maybe warmer later? The national forecast says Houston, and most of the country, will be clear for the next several days. Could be all the heat rises and it’s cold but clear. Could be something else. I’m going for cold and clear. Maybe mid 60s? We’ll see.

Yesterday was a mess. Didn’t get any sleep, so had to nap most of the morning. Then other stuff got in my way. I did get a couple of small things done, and made dinner, so there was that.

Today I’ve got plans to do a pickup and a venue visit, so I need to get moving this morning. After that, maybe the load from storage that didn’t happen yesterday? We’ll see.

In any case, SOMETHING will get started, worked on, or, if the universe is feeling kindly, finished.

I just can’t predict what.

So stack as that’s easiest, and get stuck in.

nick

68 Comments and discussion on "Thur. Feb. 5, 2026 – two wongs make a white"

  1. Denis says:

    Thursday. Good morning!

    The false spring of yesterday hasn’t hung on into today. It is cold and grey, but at least not raining.

    A colleague called in sick, so I am off to replace her in an all-day meeting. Joy. Ah, well. Talk among yourselves.

  2. brad says:

    I’ve never gone to reddit for anything.

    Reddit isn’t bad for some things. The nice thing is: you can choose specific communities. So, for example, I subscribe to the specifically Swiss groups, and also to a couple about science or space. This is a lot nicer than X, where everything comes mixed together in one giant feed.

    The bad thing about reddit is all the rest. Most of it is incredibly woke and left. In most groups, any sort of right-leaning comment will be met with a lot of hate, or just plain deleted. This is obviously a self-reinforcing internet bubble, because anyone conservative just gives up and goes away. So the lefties believe that they are the giant majority.

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  3. Nick Flandrey says:

    Cold this morning.  39F.   Clear sky though so that part was right.  I still think we might warm into the 60sF.

    Coffee is delicious.   Breakfast is almost ready.   Kids are moving.

    n

  4. Nick Flandrey says:

    UBS: SpaceX-xAI Merger Signals Rise Of “Orbital AI”

    by Tyler Durden

    Thursday, Feb 05, 2026 – 04:45 AM

    In September 2024, we penned a note that Elon Musk was on track to become the world’s first trillionaire by 2027, driven by what we described as “space race bets.” That call looks increasingly correct following the merger of Musk’s SpaceX and xAI earlier this week, a transaction that has lifted his net worth to $850 billion.

    https://www.zerohedge.com/ai/ubs-spacex-xai-merger-signals-rise-orbital-ai 

    It addresses the power consumption question, but it’s still AI, a solution in search of a problem.

    n

    added – it puts the computing infrastructure out of reach of all but state level bad actors too, which may be important at some point. It unfortunately also puts the “big red button” out of reach.

  5. ITGuy1998 says:

    There was a lot of talking about getting out and doing things before it’s too late.  Also, decluttering.

    This is my motivation for starting our serious travelling now. I’m 52, and still have at least 8 years of working ahead of me. My wife is 56, and is beginning to have some health issues. I can see her not being able to travel in 10 years. We have the means to do it, so we are. Plus, in some ways I think it’s easier to travel while working. We both have plenty of PTO for it, and we pay as we go. Southern Spain is this year, then Scotland and maybe Ireland will be the next European destination. We might slip another Hawaii visit in there too. Italy, Greece, France are also likely later targets. 

    Decluttering has also moved up on my list of priorities after helping dad deal with mom’s stuff. I definitely don’t have the neat gene, but I’m getting more obsessive about getting rid of clutter and better organization of stuff as I get older. 

  6. Nick Flandrey says:

    Interesting list, with some numbers instead of just percentages in the article.

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-15527815/cancer-caused-preventable-lifestyle-factors.html 

    The 30 cancer risk factors

    1. Tobacco smoking
    2. Alcohol consumption
    3. High BMI
    4. Insufficient physical activity
    5. Smokeless tobacco
    6. Suboptimal breastfeeding
    7. Air pollution
    8. Ultraviolet radiation
    9. Helicobacter pylori (H pylori)
    10. Human papillomavirus (HPV) 
    11. Hepatitis B
    12. Hepatitis C
    13. Epstein-Barr virus
    14. Human herpesvirus type 8 
    15. Schistosoma haematobium
    16. Human T-cell lymphotropic virus
    17. Opisthorchis viverrini and Clonorchis sinensis
    18. Asbestos
    19. Arsenic
    20. Benzene 
    21. Beryllium
    22. Cadmium 
    23. Chromium
    24. Diesel Engine Exhaust 
    25. Formaldehyde
    26. Nickel 
    27. Polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons
    28. Silica
    29. Sulphuric Acid
    30. Trichloroethylene

    – so being fat causes cancer?   And trichloroethylene exposure is #30?   That’s pretty damn far down into the weeds, with the bottom 12 being mostly occupational exposures.

    n

  7. brad says:

    it’s still AI, a solution in search of a problem

    AI is incredibly useful. I use it literally everyday, for one thing or another. For my work, it is a huge productivity boost. Just as an example: today I wanted an idea for an halfway fun student exercise, but my imagination was blank. Hey, AI, give me a suggestion! Which it did, along with the suggested guidelines. With minor adaptations, I used it.

    What I cannot estimate, is the cost effectiveness. I pay around $20/month. Does that cover the running costs for my queries? No idea, not a clue.

    Of course, the vast majority of users are just using the free plans. Sooner or later that will either end, or be enshittified with advertising.

    Orbital AI

    I’m not convinced that orbital compute is the way to go. You have the launch costs, you have heat dissapation problems, and you have a limited lifetime until the orbits decay. Eventually, there are going to be problems with satellite traffic control. Can this really be less expensive than normal data centers? But, what the heck, maybe it’s worth a try…

    The 30 cancer risk factors

    Ok, we get nailed by 2 and 8. Nothing else as far as I can imagine. Alcohol? Hey – you have to have some risks in your life.

  8. brad says:

    FWIW, I just asked ChatGPT if my subscription covers the costs of answering my questions. The answer was: For the average user, yes. For someone like me, who asks lots of harder, technical questions, probably not – likely, I am subsidized by the lighter users.

    While I currently pay for ChatGPT, I am also trying out the free model of Claude. First impressions are very good. For one thing, it’s a lot more concise than ChatGPT. ChatGPT is sometimes ridiculously wordy. If impressions remain good, I will probably switch over at some point.

  9. Nick Flandrey says:

    @brad, how do you know it’s not making stuff up?

    n

  10. dkreck says:

    @brad, how do you know it’s not making stuff up?

    Like politicians? 

  11. EdH says:

    transaction that has lifted his net worth to $850 billion.

    Was it Robert Heinlein or Jerry Pournelle  who predicted that space would create the world’s first trillionaire?
     

    I am not sure that we have a need for that much AI in space, but it does move regulation/shakedown opportunities from the city/county/state/federal to just Federal.  Musk has battled with all of them in the past.  

    And, as somebody pointed out over at Ambient Irony, “It’s also really hard to subpoena the contents of a satellite’s hard drive.”

  12. lpdbw says:

    How interesting that list members 18 through 30 are in alphabetical order.

    It’s almost like they made it up.

    Also, mRNA isn’t on the list.

    I’m not surprised, since the CDC stopped issuing cancer incidence stats in 2020.

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  13. drwilliams says:

    The last twelve are probably statistically equal. 
    The entire list is a weighted average.  As such, nickel exposure, for example, is high risk to those who have it, and effectively zero for everyone else. 

  14. Nick Flandrey says:

    @ lpdbw,  I didn’t even notice the alphabetical…   very suspicious indeed.

    n

  15. Nick Flandrey says:

    talc and roundup  aren’t on the list.

    n

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  16. drwilliams says:

    … so the list is for the population, not the individual. 

  17. Nick Flandrey says:

    nor is red meat.

    and yet we’re told that those are all high risk.

    n

  18. Nick Flandrey says:

    Where’s formaldehyde?  I was told that living in a mobile home with manufactured wood products off gassing formaldehyde would give me nasal cancer for sure.

    —-

    They also don’t differentiate between cigarette smoking and pipe/cigar smoking.   One you pull into your lungs, the others it’s only incidental. 

    n

  19. MrAtoz says:

    @brad, how do you know it’s not making stuff up?

    From YouTube

    The 3-Rule Prompt That Stops ChatGPT, Gemini, and Claude From Guessing

    I know I bookmarked this for some reason.

  20. Alan says:

    >>talc and roundup  aren’t on the list. 

    It also doesn’t call out that some (many?) of these are likely causatives for non-cancers that are nasty diseases. 

    Round-up, benzene and other VOCs were in common use around our house when I still lived at home and we didn’t worry about side effects. 

    But now, some ~50 years later, can I prove causation of my degenerative neurological disease? Not easily… 

  21. SteveF says:

    What about marriage? I’m virtually certain that being married causes cancer, or at least greatly increases the risk. If it’s not in the list, it’s because this statistic is being suppressed.

  22. SteveF says:

    I’m in favor of orbital data centers for the sole reason that we can then honestly say that our data is backed up to the cloud.

  23. ITGuy1998 says:

    I’m in favor of orbital data centers for the sole reason that we can then honestly say that our data is backed up to the cloud.

    No no no. Clouds can’t live in space. You data will be in heaven. 

  24. Brad says:

    how do you know it’s not making stuff up?

    For something like “give me an idea for a student project” it doesn’t matter. The content was solid – I can judge that.

    For answering general questions, you can ask for links to references. I haven’t caught it in a hallucination in a long time.

    But then: my questions are probably pretty mundane.

  25. SteveF says:

    I use several LLMs extensively for work and occasionally for personal use. About half of my use is programming or programming-adjacent. The other half is any screwball question that comes to mind.* Hallucinations abound, anything from making up references to calling a function incorrectly to totally missing the user’s intent. The systems are better than they were a year ago but still can’t be trusted.

     * eg, last week I had a conversation which summarized as, I have a time machine and want to become the ancestor of every living human. What’s the most efficient way to do this? I then turned the conversation toward, I’ve changed my mind. I want to get my freak on by acquiring a harem with a member of every protohuman species. How should I go about it? Lest you wonder, these are not actual hidden desires of mine. I was putting together something to annoy my daughter. “Sorry, Pumpkin, but you’ll never be able to get married. Every man on Earth is your cousin.”

  26. Nick Flandrey says:

    Did my pickup.   Nice day to be driving around.  

    Met with the venue and got pix for our Bored of Directors…

    Time for another pickup and maybe a run from storage too.

    But first, lunch.

    n

  27. Ken Mitchell says:

    All men are NOT brothers.  

    But we are all, LITERALLY, cousins, of whatever distant degree.

    I was doing my and my wife’s genealogy many years ago. We traced my mother’s family tree, or one distant branch of it, to the “Germanna colony” in Virginia in 1724.  We also traced her mother’s family tree, or one branch of it, to the Germanna colony in 1724. It’s likely that they were at least neighbors, and possibly related. If so, that would mean that we might be 24th cousins! 

  28. SteveF says:

    If so, that would mean that we might be 24th cousins!

    You know what that means, of course. You have to move to Arkansas and lose ¾ of your teeth.

  29. SteveF says:

    Quite some years ago, a family reunion had been arranged to meet at a county fair, hang out a few hours, then go to a nearby distant cousin’s house for a barbecue. I got to the designated meeting place, hung out a few minutes, then started flirting with a cutie who was also just hanging out. Yep, you guessed it. Second cousin. Not only that, she was sixteen. I was in my early 20s, so I wasn’t enormously older, but still. The only saving grace was that our mothers came up before either of us got too flirty. “Oh, you’ve met already. Are you getting along?” Yes, mom, we were getting along very well. Too well, if anything.

  30. Lynn says:

    “Democrats’ Demands for DHS Funding Are Here—They Would Destroy ICE As We Know It”

       https://townhall.com/tipsheet/josephchalfant/2026/02/04/democrats-demands-for-dhs-funding-are-herethey-would-destroy-ice-as-we-know-it-n2670714

    “They have made this clear for weeks, but Democrats have officially announced their desire to end the use of probable-cause administrative warrants and instead require officers to seek a judicial warrant to conduct operations. Federal agents would be entirely handicapped by this measure, and would slow deportations to a near stop.”

    “Two of their demands require that ICE agents de-mask and display their names on their uniforms. Radical leftists have made it a habit to doxx federal agents, and this demand is a direct nod to the most rabid of the Democrats’ base.”

    “Democrats are seeking to restrict officers from conducting operations at “sensitive locations” which include medical facilities, schools, child-care facilities, and churches. The two key locations listed by the Democrats are polling places and courts. Virginia Democrats have already advanced legislation to ensure that voting booths are essentially sanctuary spaces for illegals, despite their insistence that they aren’t voting in their elections. Courts are also notable due to the policies of sanctuary cities that do not allow police to cooperate with federal law enforcement on immigration law. Dangerous illegal criminals are routinely released back onto the streets at courthouses, and federal officers are required to be on location to round them back up.”

    Hat tip to:

       https://thelibertydaily.com/

    I am surprised that they just do not demand shutting down ICE altogether.

    Of course, there are many groups under the DHS umbrella.  ICE, FBI, TSA, Coast Guard, DOJ, etc, etc, etc.  Shut down DHS and a lot of things go away.

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  31. Lynn says:

    All men are NOT brothers.  

    I have hundreds of millions of brothers in Christ.  Sisters in Christ also.

    You can tell by how much we disagree and fight over very stupid things.

  32. Brad says:

    Last week I had a conversation which summarized as, I have a time machine and want to become the ancestor of every living human. What’s the most efficient way to do this?

    I did say that my questions are mundane. SteveF apparently ticks differently.

    ICE agents de-mask and display their names on their uniforms

    Honestly, yes. If the protesters are not supposed to wear masks, neither should the officers. Names are maybe different.

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  33. Lynn says:

    “Buy Some More Ammo”

       https://areaocho.com/buy-some-more-ammo/

    “Watch this video, then buy more ammo.”

    https://twitter.com/i/status/2018926702177730562

    My son spent a few years in Uncle Sam’s Misguided Children. He says that most of the female USMC soldiers are freaking crazy and it looks like Divemedic found one.  I did meet one of his friends, a female USMC MP, and she was almost as conservative as me.  She was six months pregnant, looked three months, and claimed to still do a 100 situps every morning.

  34. Ken Mitchell says:

    Cousins marrying has historically been EXTREMELY common. Yes, first cousin marriages can generate some genetic defects by doubling the impact of recessive genes. Not always; Queen Victoria married her first cousin Prince Albert. Most of the “royal houses” of Europe were some degree of cousins married to each other. First cousin relationships are generally considered incestuous in the US, because the common ancestor is a grandfather or grandmother.

    SECOND cousins have a lower but non-zero risk, but the Catholic Church allows it, and it isn’t (generally speaking) considered incest. 

    THIRD cousins, where the common ancestor is a great-great grandfather or grandmother, are essentially unrelated to each other. 

    In pre-1800 villages around the world, it was almost impossible that two random young people from the village would NOT be 3rd or 4th cousins. 

    James Burke, in one of his “Day the Universe Changed” episodes, postulated that one of the major second-order effects of James Watt’s steam engine was a genetic engineering breakthrough. With the invention of the railroad, it was possible to meet and marry a person from a different village, perhaps very far away. This “hybrid vigor”, first in England and later in America, was one of the major causes of British and American expansion. Here, with the steamship and the railroad, it was possible and even likely that you would meet and marry somebody not from the next village over, but from an entirely different COUNTRY.

    Here’s another example. Pre-1800, Japanese people were stereotypically small and somewhat scrawny. (Sumo wrestlers excepted!) Planters in Hawaii imported a LOT of Japanese farm laborers, both men and women. Nisei, the children of the Japanese immigrants, were a commonly little larger than their parents. Sensei, the fully-Japanese grandchildren of Japanese immigrants, raised in America and fed Americanized diets, were practically “normal” sized, a combination of hybrid vigor AND a diet that wasn’t fishheads and rice.

  35. Ken Mitchell says:

    Second cousin. Not only that, she was sixteen. I was in my early 20s, so I wasn’t enormously older, but still.

    Second cousin relationships are legal everywhere, if sometimes “frowned upon” by family or society. 

  36. MrAtoz says:

    Last week I had a conversation which summarized as, I have a time machine and want to become the ancestor of every living human. What’s the most efficient way to do this?

    My Sweet Summer Papa. I knew it was true.

  37. paul says:

    I thought the insulation guy was coming today at 1pm.  Maybe I misunderstood.  I didn’t write anything down. Nope, he called at 2:30 and apologized for being tied up in Bandera.  So tomorrow, mid morning.

    A few more days after 34 years isn’t going to matter. 

  38. Nick Flandrey says:

    Cousins marrying has historically been EXTREMELY common. Yes, first cousin marriages can generate some genetic defects by doubling the impact of recessive genes. Not always; Queen Victoria married her first cousin Prince Albert. Most of the “royal houses” of Europe were some degree of cousins married to each other. 

    – and most of the royal houses of europe are rife with genetic defects…

    I think Greg has expressed the idea that Megan Marple and her ‘touch of the tarbrush’ (my words not his) are designed to bring some fresh genes into the windsor line….

    ———-

    Got my first real kiss from my cousin, in the kitchen of my aunt and uncle’s house, and it blew my mind.     I was very interested in girls after that.   (she was 6 years older, blonde, 6ft, and country girl gorgeous, and everyone had been drinking all day)

    n

  39. Nick Flandrey says:

    Princesses Beatrice and Eugenie are a visual warning to get out of your tiny gene pool.   

    The Royal Family in the nordic states seems to have pulled it off.

    n

    although this one has a lot of forehead and not much chin.

    https://www.townandcountrymag.com/society/tradition/a70223572/marius-borg-hoiby-arrest-february-2026/

  40. Nick Flandrey says:

    Looks like the crazy carhartt wearing MN chick got arrested 

    https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2026/02/minneapolis-viral-relationship-anarchist-anti-ice-agitator-elizabeth/ 

    God save us from middle aged white single moms.

    n

  41. Lynn says:

    “Whoopi Goldberg Requested Epstein Jet Fly Her to Monaco Charity Event”

        https://newsbusters.org/blogs/nb/nicholas-fondacaro/2026/02/04/whoopi-goldberg-requested-epstein-jet-fly-her-monaco-charity

    It is a big club and you do not want to be a part of it.

  42. Nick Flandrey says:

    So I’m looking at my crypto.

    I’ve got a total investment of $450 across BTC, BCH, ETH, and LTC.   The basket is worth $409 today six years later.

    BTC 150 > ~200 — meh

    BCH 50  > 100 — hooray, doubled!

    ETH 50 > 45

    LTC 200 > 60 — boo hoo hoo

    Don’t follow me for financial advice.

    n

  43. Ken Mitchell says:

    – and most of the royal houses of europe are rife with genetic defects…

    The most common, of course, being haemophilia. 

    And first-cousin marriage is PREFERRED in many Muslim nations such as Somalia.

  44. Ray Thompson says:

    And first-cousin marriage is PREFERRED in many Muslim nations such as Somalia.

    In the rural Appalachian mountains that is a rookie move.

  45. paul says:

    I have about 350 DVDs I might watch again.  Easily a hundred I won’t but I might.  Plus about 100 LaserDiscs. Just an estimate.

    I have about 200 as yet un-watched movies.  That’s a low number because there are several box sets in the pile.   There’s stuff I bought.  That batch of 150 or so I bought on Facebook.  My Mom moved it with almost 200 DVDs.  I mixed it all together. 

    The Trash Pile, AKA the Library Thrift Shop  pile is a pinch over 100 discs.  Duplicates and stinkers.  The Thrift Shop has closed so it’s all going to Goodwill someday.  I hear Half Priced Books buys DVDs but I don’t know if there is a daily limit or if you don’t get cash, just a store credit.  Goodwill is easy, right next door to Walmart. 

    So why is it that the back of the case is all “rated PG for Sexy Blood” and in “color” and “dual layer disc” but what I want to know How Long Is The Movie!  It’s almost always in tiny print, so tiny that if the printer was using a inked ribbon on a dot matrix printer you’d be reading the fabric.  I mean, 3 point type?   Is toner that expensive?

    I’ve been grabbing five or six movies at a time and stacking them next to the LaserDisc player.  The plan is to watch whatever is there.  No choosing.  Just watch.  If it sucks, Thrift Shop stack.  Some movies are OK but they go to the Thrift Shop stack, too, because “I watched it and I’ll never regain the time I wasted”.

    The above is just a rant about making the length of a movie hard to find.  I don’t want to start some 133 minute movie (jeebus, two hours and 13 minutes?)(after you get past the damned previews)(you have seen the pictures of my living room, that stool next to the chair gets hard on my skinny butt)  at quarter of five when I’m going to have to pause it for dog supper and a Buddy walk.

    Grumpy grump here. 

  46. Nightraker says:

    Grumpy grump here. 

    Probably not grump remover: IMDB.com will show runtime for any title…. 🙂

  47. Greg Norton says:

    I think Greg has expressed the idea that Megan Marple and her ‘touch of the tarbrush’ (my words not his) are designed to bring some fresh genes into the windsor line….

    Diana was the fresh genetics introduced into the bloodline. 

    The handlers tasked Harry and Meghan with producing a White House occupant who will serve at least two terms starting around the time Prince George ascends to the throne in the 2060s.

    The master plan is still proceeding as designed. All of the drama is intentional, designed to create sympathy for the Windsors as the scheme unfolds

    Even Andrew was a known quantity.

    Trump was the wildcard, but he’s been brought to heel now.

  48. Greg Norton says:

    I use several LLMs extensively for work and occasionally for personal use. About half of my use is programming or programming-adjacent. The other half is any screwball question that comes to mind.* Hallucinations abound, anything from making up references to calling a function incorrectly to totally missing the user’s intent. The systems are better than they were a year ago but still can’t be trusted.

    My employer’s stock tanked so we are getting the heavy push to go “all in” on AI this week because the servers are the only thing selling for the company and margins are thin.

  49. Greg Norton says:

    What I cannot estimate, is the cost effectiveness. I pay around $20/month. Does that cover the running costs for my queries? No idea, not a clue.

    The subscription fees don’t begin to touch the currency debasement in the US which will be required to build out the infrastructure, and the fees won’t cover the coming bailout of OpenAI courtesy of the Federal taxpayers.

  50. Greg Norton says:

    God save us from middle aged white single moms.

    They’re deciding elections.

    Kick Cornyn out in the primary in a few weeks, and James Talerico will set up a shadow Senate office in Round Rock for the next nine months.

    Guess who will staff it.

    If you are a die hard “Cornyn must go” type, then go vote in the Dem primary for Jasmine Crockett. She would lose to Paxton or Cornyn.

    Cornyn could get away without debating Crockett like Rick Scott (RINO-FL) did to his loon Dem opponent in Florida in 2024.

  51. Ken Mitchell says:

    Harry is most probably NOT King Chuck’s son. He’s most probably the spawn of Diana and James Hewett, Diana’s riding instructor. 

  52. SteveF says:

    My Sweet Summer Papa. I knew it was true.

    !!!! I hadn’t even thought of that.

    The LLM (Gemini 3 Pro, in case anyone cares; I chose it more or less at random from my several accounts) recommended several strategies. IIRC, the one it said would be easiest was to go back to the population bottleneck around 70,000 years ago and impregnate as few as three females, one each in geographically separated tribes. Dividing 70,000 years by 20 years per generation gives 3500 generations. So I guess you can call me “my sweet summer great^3498-grandpapa”.

    In that conversation, I asked a follow-up question, Am I not carrying a whole zoo of bacteria and viruses which people in the past would not be evolved to survive? If I contact a tribe, wouldn’t I be most likely to kill them all by accident? The LLM said, Hmm, good point. You might want to load up on antibiotics before you start your trip. (paraphrased)

    The LLM also gave advice on winning over the tribe (and more importantly the tribe’s leader), such as by bringing bags of sugar and salt and some steel knives.

  53. Lynn says:

    And first-cousin marriage is PREFERRED in many Muslim nations such as Somalia.

    In the rural Appalachian mountains that is a rookie move.

    My father-in-law, ¼ or ½ Cherokee ???, left the Appalachians in upper state New York in 1951, found a ½ Cherokee woman in Texas in 1954 and married her.  Most of the Appalachians have Cherokee ??? forebears who escaped the horrible Trail Of Tears journey in 1830 to 1850 by marrying a white person.  His 4 ft 10 inch Cherokee ??? grandmother was born around the Civil War and lived until 1970 or so.  My wife remembers talking with her and brushing her long straight white hair.

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trail_of_Tears

  54. Greg Norton says:

    Harry is most probably NOT King Chuck’s son. He’s most probably the spawn of Diana and James Hewett, Diana’s riding instructor. 

    That doesn’t matter. Harry and Meghan just had to produce at least one natural-born US citizen who could occupy the White House.

    The Windsor handlers and Prince Phillip cooked up the scheme on election night 1960 when they watched the mutt Irish bootlegger’s son walk away with the White House after Nixon opted not to look into the funny business in Chicago with the voting machines of that era.

    “Bloody hell, we could engineer a setup like that if some low life potato eater like Joe Kennedy could pull it off.”

  55. Lynn says:

    “High Electric Bills a Political Choice in America”

        https://economiccollapse.report/high-electric-bills-a-political-choice-in-america/

    ““If you have expensive energy in your state…it’s because politicians and regulators chose to do that,” Wright said in a recent interview with the Wall Street Journal. “It is not bad luck, it is not marketplace…there is no reason to have these rapid increases in electricity prices – no reason, but politics.””

    “This is correct, and the disparity that exists in electricity bills in red states and blue states can be easily seen in a national map published by the U.S. Energy Information Agency (EIA), along with its supporting data.”

    “EIA’s data shows the states with the highest rates include Democratic strongholds like California, New York, Hawaii, and the New England states. Meanwhile, the states with the lowest utility bills include the reddest of red states like Louisiana, Arkansas, Oklahoma, Texas, Nebraska, Wyoming, Idaho, North Dakota, and Iowa. This all ties directly in with the findings in a recent study by the Institute for Energy Research that I wrote about in January.”

    “In the recent Winter Storm Fern, the ERCOT-managed Texas grid, which proved to be the national poster child for grid failure in 2021, came through as a shining object lesson on how to fix past mistakes while remaining one of the 10 states with the lowest utility rates.”

    Yup.

  56. Ray Thompson says:

    High Electric Bills a Political Choice in America

    My daily electricity cost jumped from an average of about $4.00-$5.00 (about 35 KWH) a day for the last 2.5 months to $8.50-$9.00 (about 60 KWH) a day starting about January 24, 2026. It is when the cold spell hit and I ran two electric heaters. One is in the RV to keep it about 50 degrees. The other is in the garage to do the same thing to keep the pipes in the garage from freezing.

    I turned off the heater in the garage three days ago as the low temperature was to remain above 20F. I do have insulated garage doors that seal fairly well. The heater in the RV remains active.

    I am on an even pay plan and pay $176.00 a month for the entire year. In May everything gets adjusted. Most of the time I run a credit balance. This year I think I may owe some money.

    I do know that running the pool pump adds about $1.00 a day in electrical cost, running about 16 hours a day. 1HP 220V centrifugal pump. I have two of them, one as backup. I had one fail, purchased a new pump, had the failed one repaired and rewound as the windings failed somewhere. The new pump started leaking around the pump shaft after a few years, so I replaced it with the rewound unit. I rebuilt the leaking pump and put new seals in the pump. Then swapped the units again. No leaks in about eight years.

  57. Nick Flandrey says:

    See,  that’s prepping.

    n

  58. SteveF says:

    Ray, can you get heat tape to wrap around the pipes? And are the pipes in the basement accessible?

    I wrapped the pipes in the basement and crawlspace of my house about 30 years ago, then put insulation over the heat tape. Didn’t have any problems even when outside temperature hit -15F and the basement got down to about 20F. Much less electricity use than heating the entire basement.

  59. Ray Thompson says:

    My high usage last year was 1.8 MWH during the month of July. I pay about $0.1405 per KWH. The electricity comes from TVA, sold to my utility district. The meter is read daily. I have no idea what time of day or if the reading time is roughly the same each day.

    Down the road I foresee demand metering where the cost gets really high during periods of high demand. Currently I don’t think the utility can cut off the meter remotely as they have not ever done so. I would not be surprised if that feature is present, but that takes a fairly big relay or thyristor (with heatsink) to control 200 amperes. The meters are not that large.

  60. Ray Thompson says:

    Ray, can you get heat tape to wrap around the pipes?

    Yes, but it would take a lot of heat tape.

    And are the pipes in the basement accessible?

    All the pipes are accessible. The ones in the basement are in conditioned space so there is no issue there. It is the pipes in the ceiling in the garage that are most vulnerable. Running the heater when it gets really cold keeps the temperature above 50F and running a single heater is probably cheaper than running a hundred feet of heat tape.

    I don’t have to use the garage heater often, only when it gets below 20F. If it gets below zero, there is a vent in the heating ducts that can be opened to put some forced air heat into the garage.

    There have been a few days since I have lived here where the temperature got below zero, several days in the single digits. I have not had any issues.

  61. Greg Norton says:

    “In the recent Winter Storm Fern, the ERCOT-managed Texas grid, which proved to be the national poster child for grid failure in 2021, came through as a shining object lesson on how to fix past mistakes while remaining one of the 10 states with the lowest utility rates.”

    Next weekend will be a “triple witching hour” holiday weekend like 2021.

    A freeze next Sunday night, the 15th, followed by a couple of days of below freezing temperatures in Central Texas spanning the President’s Day holiday and Lunar New Year would be a real test of the system, unlike last weekend.

    No one will be on the job at any level of government in Austin after noon on Thursday, just like what happened 2021.

  62. drwilliams says:

    Trump Takes a Sledgehammer to Deportation Process and Sets Up a Court Fight With Another Activist Judge

    When it goes into effect, we’ll see every loony-left judge around the nation issuing injunctions, and then the court fight will start. I’m not an authority on federal administrative procedures, but this rule looks like the administration took the time to do it right. It lays out the authority for every rule change; provides an exhaustive history of how we got to this point; and justifies each action. So while we know it will come under attack-by-lawfare, there is good reason to believe this rule will survive.

    https://redstate.com/streiff/2026/02/05/trump-takes-a-sledgehammer-to-deportation-process-and-sets-up-a-court-fight-with-another-activist-judge-n2198884

    Getting due process 3, 4, 5 times or more is ridiculous.

    Anyone who gets a final deportation order and doesn’t take immediate action to appeal should be closed out of the legal system and deported. If they fail to surrender for deportation they should have a bounty placed on them starting at $500 and increasing to $1,000 after three months and $2,000 after a year. After two years just append “dead or alive”.

  63. Nick Flandrey says:

    I had forgotten about this guy and his channel.  He’s a very special kind of crazy.

    https://www.youtube.com/@Attoparsec/videos    Attoparsec

    I thought my process was fractal in nature with every task preceded by an ever increasing number of other tasks.

    n

  64. drwilliams says:

    148,319 absentee ballots were counted in the 2020 General Election from Fulton County…

    but only 125,784 voters are recorded as casting an absentee ballot.

    There are 25,534 more ballots counted than there are voters recorded as having voted by absentee ballot in Fulton County in 2020.

    https://x.com/KevinMoncla/status/2016989656307367970

    54-40 or Fight!

    If our ancestors were ready to fight for the position of a line on a a map. why should we be any less if these demands are not met to ensure the accuracy of the next election?

    Voter rolls audited to remove non-compliant addresses, felons, non-citizens, and any other violations of the voter laws.

    Voter ID consisting of Real ID, a current passport, or confirmation of identity using the same fancy system the TSA is now charging $45 for a 10-day window, with address valid for the polling place.

    Paper ballots–no electronic voting.

    Businesses shall be closed on Election Day.

    Non-citizens shall stay home on Election Day.

    No absentee voting unless necessitated by medical incapacitation or by military service, and those ballots must be received by Election Day.

    All non-absentee ballots must be cast in person on Election Day.

    All ballots must be sequestered after counting and all totals must pass cross-checks before the votes are considered valid.

    All vote totals must be ready for reporting with 48-hours. Failure to report will result in disenfranchisement of the precinct and immediate arrest and imprisonment of the voting officials, with no bail pending trial for Voting Crime.

    Any attempt to  taint the voting process will be considered a Voting Crime.

    Conviction of a Voting Crime will result in a 24-hour sentence to be tied to a post in front of an earthen berm with all laws pertaining to the public discharge of firearms suspended.

  65. drwilliams says:

    @Nick

    from your link above:

    Cheap cranes don’t have to suck

    “no nasty recursive deadlock”

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SYfMLoiJ0Vw

    Leading to a new teeshirt:

    Recursive Deadlock,

    A concept well-recognized by our forebears an immortalized in song:

    “There’s a hole in my bucket!”

  66. Lynn says:

    “A BRILLIANT take on cows, methane, and climate”

        https://wattsupwiththat.com/2026/02/05/a-brilliant-take-on-cows-methane-and-climate/

    “Cattle are often thought to contribute to climate change because they belch methane (CH4), a greenhouse gas. While this is true, cattle do belch methane, it is actually part of an important natural cycle, known as the biogenic carbon cycle.”

    “Activist: “Every cow adds carbon to the atmosphere.”
    Farmer: “Only if the total number of cows is increasing.”
    Activist: “What?”
    Farmer: “Stable populations are carbon neutral. Methane breaks down in twelve years back to CO2. Same CO2 the grass absorbed last year.”
    Activist: “But it’s still emissions…”
    Farmer: “It’s a cycle. Carbon goes: grass to cow to methane to CO2 to grass. Round and round.”
    Activist: “That’s not how it works.”
    Farmer: “That’s exactly how the biogenic carbon cycle works.”
    Activist: “I’ve never heard of that.”
    Farmer: “Because admitting ruminants are climate neutral doesn’t sell plant-based products.”
    Activist: “You’re making this up.”
    Farmer: “Published research. Look up ‘biogenic carbon cycle.’ I’ll wait.””

    Mess with natural cycles at your risk.  Usually the risk is very high.

    10
  67. Nick Flandrey says:

    Well aye wuz gonna – go to bed early.  Didn’t happen.  Time to go anyway.

    n

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