Hot and humid again. It will probably top 100F today with humidity about the same, although yesterday my weather station said it was only 49%RH. It was cool with a breeze in the shade, if you were soaking wet with sweat, and the portacool felt cool… Still, hot and humid, and in the sun it’s broiling.
Spent the morning doing small stuff. After I finished the LED tape lighting for the deck, I did some tree trimming and pruning. Did some other minor stuff too, and eventually spent an hour floating in the lake with a drink in hand. The lake is very warm, but does have cooler currents moving through it. Relaxing felt good.
Then it was a monster fireworks show, and time reading under the stars.
A good day all in all.
Today I’ll be taking the decorations down and doing “leaving the BOL” stuff. I’ll be back before too long when W takes the kids to spend time with her parents. I’ll have a big project to do the week they’re gone. Not sure yet which it will be, but I’m sure it will be a lot of work.
Always be working, amiright? I think so. and stacking.
nick
Not today! Today is Schützenfest. The Musikverein were just here, waking me with a fanfare. Time for a swift breakfast, then into uniform and off to Mass with the Schützen, then brunch, followed by Königsschießen.
When the birdie falls down, the Schützenkönig for the year ahead has been chosen, the gubs go back in the safe, then we party!
Meatspace, baby!
Have an excellent day.
Photos, or it didn’t happen! 🙂
I must have been channeling SteveF yesterday. Friends invited me to share their Chinese takeaway. One of their Old English Bantam hens decided she was going to stand on my shoulder and eat from my plate. Chickens like Chinese, including spicy chicken!
Chickens are cannibalistic little wretches and they don’t have the receptors in their mouths for some kinds of spices to attach to.
76 F here and Mr. Fusion is coming up on the east horizon. The mortars were not so bad last night but the few that shook my house were huge. I think some of my neighbors bought nothing but the grand finale packs, maybe 10 each of those, instead of the solitary packs. Much less smoke this morning.
Gotta get some food so I can take my meds and go to church. I left the wife sleeping, I think she will do virtual church today, youtube. No bible class at church so I will join Mom after at her song service and lunch.
You know, eating lunch with a bunch of octogenerians and nonogenerians is not as much fun as it sounds.
Chickens are cannibalistic little wretches
Chickens are a bunch of small velociraptors. If they were four foot tall, you would have serious problems with them. paul can probably validate this with emus.
I can only imagine how dangerous ostridges could be. I suspect they can gut you quickly.
Elon tried to end the IC engine half ton pickup market so he promised delivery for $40k knowing it could never happen. $100 deposits at a time when the country had plenty of Biden Bux looking for a use beyond arbitrage on Switch or PS5 consoles was genius.
Btw, Moms song service at the assisted living is virtual also. The director puts a youtube video church song collection up in the crafts room and the old people sing along.
I serve communion to Mom after lunch if I remember. I buy little cups of juice and a cracker from Big River for us.
Gonna be 100 F here today like yesterday. We just about died walking two miles in the 95 F heat yesterday. I need to remember to bring water for the dog, she was panting heavily yesterday and I carried her for a while. That double coat of hers is bloody hot, we need to shave her again.
Local PBS had “Sherlock: A Study In Scarlet” pushing 10 PM, and my hopes were high for a marathon.
Sadly, it was not to be and the station switched to the national Ken Burns money grubbing feed at the top of the hour.
It must be pledge season.
Since we were away from home and my video backlog for the weekend, I scanned the hotel cable channels and found “Apollo 13” and “The Patriot” on … BBC America?!?
Hollywood has semi forgiven Gibson, but the British howled about the historical inaccuracies of “The Patriot” upon release so I was surprised that I saw the flick on BBC America.
OTOH, the British do need a revolution of their own right now, before the authorities really do reach the brutality level of Jason Isaacs’ character.
The people in the UK want their country back along with air conditioning … and Buc-ee’s.
BTW, absent miracles, Sony and Microsoft have effectively ended their gaming platforms with recent announcements.
Nintendo’s platform is salvageable but they need new flagship games and physical media.
We were in Fredericksburg for a few days, heading back home shortly.
The affordable restaurants are mostly gone.
The town’s vaunted “Classic” Pizza Hut makes an attempt at affordable nostalgia, but, rather than being the end result of a retro themed remodel by the franchise owner, the restaurant benefits from never having remodeled.
We’ll see what private equity does with the chain.
Last night’s fireworks mergered into a steady roar that went on for hours. So many that individual noises were hard to hear, it was like being near a waterfall or the ocean, never heard anything like it.
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Sunday morning, 6:30am, and some jerk is playing music so loud I can hear it from probably a half mile away.
Just what is wrong with people?
Books have been written on this topic.
For purposes of comments on a forum post, it may be better to ask what is not wrong with people.
People. Can’t live with them, can’t shoot them.
Mostly. Yet.
BTW, absent miracles, Sony and Microsoft have effectively ended their gaming platforms with recent announcements.
Nintendo’s platform is salvageable but they need new flagship games and physical media.
So where is all of the gaming going now?
Most gaming is on PCs now, according to both The Child and a number of things I’ve seen on the internet.
“First $1 Billion, Now $50 Million: Khanna Says Wealth Tax “Must Not Stop At Billionaires””
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/first-1-billion-now-50-million-khanna-says-wealth-tax-must-not-stop-billionaires
“And anyone curious where a “normalized” wealth tax eventually settles can consult the countries that already normalized one. Norway’s kicks in around $160,000 of net worth. The Netherlands taxes deemed returns on assets above roughly €57,000. Swiss cantons start in the low six figures. The European wealth taxes that stayed rich-only – France, Sweden, Germany, Austria, Denmark – were repealed as revenue duds. The ones that survived did so by reaching the middle class. The slippery slope is quite literally the only way these things ‘work.’ “
Must be nice to give away other people’s money. This tax is all about envy and theft, breaking two of God’s commandments.
Mark my words, when we get this in the USA, it will end up below $100,000. That is where the real money is at.
Fireworks last night were louder but less numerous than prior years. Our semi-stray cats were freaked out; one (the least domesticated) came into the house and stayed with us until 2 AM. The other has spent all morning in the house alternately sleeping and behaving weirdly.
Neither is an indoor cat, although both come into the house to get fed daily.
It may take them days to get back to normal.
MOST birds cannot “taste” spices. Wild Birds Unlimited sells hot-pepper flavored bird seed as “squirrel-proof”; squirrels CAN taste hot peppers and DO NOT LIKE IT. Birds don’t appear to notice it. The extra cost for “squirrel-proof” bird seed is enough to deter me from buying it.
I wonder..
I have had heard people say this about birds before. My personal experience is that I had birds eat every single bud off five of my trees one year. I sprayed with a liquid pepper spray, and the birds stayed away and the buds came back and the trees leafed out.
I am not saying that biologist who autopsy bird tongues and counted taste receptors are wrong (I have known serveral biologists who could count to ten…), but I am saying that spraying with pepper worked.
So, perhaps they can’t taste it but it upsets their stomach?
Well, I’m up, have coffee in front of me, and a belly full of Eggos.
Realized I posted my comments yesterday on July 3 page so I copied them to the end of yesterday.
50 minutes is a really long time for fireworks.
Then the guy on the other side of the point got his going, and someone on the other side of the lake did some… so we got a lot of fireworks last night.
What we didn’t get was all the random guys making noise for days leading up to the 4th. And we didn’t get much random stuff after either. We also had several families that didn’t come up for the weekend.
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WRT controllable t-stats, all the electric meters have been replaced in Houston with remote readable (and remote controllable) meters. They did it without asking or fanfare. They use low power bluetooth to connect to central hubs that then upload. Look at the FCC online antenna map for your area and you can see them. Some in other places use a version of powerline ethernet to connect back. IDK if any place has used them to shut off subscribers yet though.
They don’t really need your t-stat if they can shut off everything.
————
Build up your ability to provide your own infrastructure.
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Time to finish my coffee and get dressed. The work isn’t gonna do itself.
n
I buy special bird seed blobs that have the hot stuff that squirrels can taste but don’t affect birds. It seems to work really well. A tip for anyone considering such a product. Handle the seed blob with gloved hands. Using ungloved hands, washing multiple times, will still get your attention when taking a leak (well for those us that can write our name in the snow). It is a very unpleasant experience. Even with gloved hands, washing the hands multiple times before discharging wastewater from the one-eyed wonder worm is recommended.
Yep.
The simplest solution (for lefties) is a ‘kilowatt diet”. Proles like us will get an allowance, then it shuts off, or jumps to $5/kwh or something If we exceed the allowance.
And while rooftop solar will be mandatory, the panels must feed into the grid. No on-site storage allowed.
Windows PCs, but the bubble associated with the Monkey Trick will have to end soon to avoid an industry crash similar to what happened in the 80s.
GPUs and memory are at a premium right now.
Everyone will be a paper millionaire when the Dems get the $20k first time home buyer tax credit.
We took a quick trip to visit our son a few hours South of us. We left Friday afternoon around 3:30. We drove through Birmingham right around 5 PM and it was a ghost town. I hesitated to say anything about the traffic in case I jinxed us. We left early this morning and traffic was even lighter, but that was expected as we left the hotel at 630 AM.
He is settling into his apartment and new city very well. He’s enjoying his job and is already making friends and socializing with management. Apparently pickleball is the new golf, and most of his management plays (he does too).
His birthday is Monday, so we took him out Saturday evening for a nice dinner. The restaurant was almost empty, Even considering the holiday, I didn’t expect that.
We heard fireworks at the hotel, but they didn’t last long.
We caught the last part of Apollo 13 Saturday night and watched a little of the Patriot before bed.
Down voted by some atheist commie pinko bastard. Or a Catholic.
BBC America has a lot of political incorrectness right now.
I couldn’t decide if “Apollo 13” was there due to the anniversary year or Universal dumping the film on the basic cable network due to the rumors about Tom Hanks being in the Epstein files.
I didn’t see anyone running a “Jaws” marathon like TBS has done in recent years.
Went to the family house yesterday to help make sense of some of my brother’s stuff, to give my mom a couple copies of the newspaper with the obituary, to pick up papers that I’ll need to deal with such as titles for the vehicles, and to read the riot act to one nephew who’d been shamelessly going through shelves and the barn and filing cabinets that were none of his business and snagging things that he thought he should get.
While there, my mom, sister, and I were collectively grumbling about to-do lists and how they never get shorter no matter how diligently you work on them. I’d thought that maybe it was just Nick and me who had this problem but apparently not.
The big Spec’s near work went out of business and became a pickleball … bar?
That’s not the only one around Austin.
Can. Probably shouldn’t. Yet.
Schützenfest was the bees knees, apart from a short shower of rain right at the start. That cleared quickly, and much merriment ensues…
No party for me. I have to get on the road back to base.
I am the latter, and was appalled. Therefore, I believe it was the former.
I thought it was just Nick and me…
Scientific American Sold as Publisher Divests Itself of the Bud Light of Science Journals
Hopefully, the new owners will reboot the publication’s priorities. Otherwise, they will find it harder to rebrand the product than Bud Light.
The union issued a sharply worded statement calling the layoffs “blatant union-busting“.
https://legalinsurrection.com/2026/07/scientific-american-sold-as-publisher-divests-itself-of-the-bud-light-of-science-journals/
Doubtless staffed by a bunch of self-righteous PLT prigs, based on years of debased output. Haven’t looked at the cv’s, which would be meaningless without knowing who got canned, but it’s certain that they are top-heavy with lefty “science” writers without real science backgrounds: sustainable-eco this that and worse.
Sold to LabX Media Group, a Canadian company.
They got rid of 15 out of 40. Better to can the lot. If there is a serious effort to get back to real scinece, the result will be like Bari Weiss taking over CBS news, and there will be some little flocker who thinks he is Scot Peepee.
If they must keep some, my advice would be to hire an independent outside firm to administer tests: 1) of their ability to take a journal article and write 300 words on the topic for SA Online, 2) chemistry, biology and physics, 3) statistics, 4) engineering economics.
It is 128 F in the sun in my backyard. I measured this myself.
My truck said it was 102 F in the HEB parking lot. And 97 F at my office by the river.
https://hotair.com/josh-hammer/2026/07/05/congress-can-still-ban-birthright-citizenship-heres-how-n3816599
As they are.
If we are wealthy enough as a country to offer illegal alien invaders a paid ticket home, then we are also wealthy enough to put a bounty on them that can be claimed by U.S. citizens identifying embedded invaders and prioritizing them for immediate removal.
Capital One sent an e-mail that the card was going to be renewed soon. If your address is correct, do nothing. Otherwise call us.
It’s been two years and almost three months. It’s all paid off.
Ok, well, y’all don’t need to send a new card. “That department is closed on weekends.” Of course it is.
Of course. And of course I’m not going to send a copy of the death certificate. HIPPA, right?
It’s just a thing. They can send a card. It will just go in the folder with the statements.
Patriotic music…
https://twitter.com/i/status/2073151060718629179
Pit bulls are like…
https://twitter.com/i/status/2061005225876435040
just watch them all…
https://hotair.com/david-strom/2026/07/05/sunday-smiles-n3816634
The movie “Project Hail Mary” is free with Amazon Prime now. I am watching it again.
https://www.foxnews.com/sports/trump-called-fifa-president-review-folarin-balogun-red-card-usa-belgium-match
Good. That’s was a terrible call.
Paul, Re Capital One card: Cut inn half and mail it to the address on the statement with a short note saying he is deceased and if they want a copy of the death certificate they can purchase it themselves.
Closed most of my late wife’s accounts by doing that. Those that continued to mail her, I ignored and trashed their mailings.
Thanks Bob! That’s a good idea.
Tonight’s movie was The Hurricane Heist”. I liked it. Parts of it don’t make any sense. Like, the US Mint has a place to shred worn out paper bills located in Alabama or Mississippi? Like in Gulfport? Why not at one of the Federal Reserve Banks?
Anyway. There’s like 600 million in cash that has not been shredded because the bad guys have disabled the giant paper shredder. But somehow the Feds don’t know. So they get the cash loaded into three tractor trailer rigs and here comes a major Cat 5 hurricane.
Nice special effects.
The movie ended and it felt like I missed the last page of a novel.
And then the big bonus of ten minutes of screen credits. Lot’s of H1B names in there. And really, who cares who works for the folks that cater lunch? sheesh.
Anyway. It’s on the keeper stack. I’ll watch it again.
“111 Million U.S. Adults Do Not Have a Job and America Spends More Than a Trillion Dollars per Year on a Social Safety Net for Them”
https://thelibertydaily.com/111-million-u-s-adults-do-not-have/
This is bad, very bad.
They believe in Uncle Santa Claus more than they believe in supporting themselves.
The Cap One card is the last thing. Well, the Baylor Scott and White emails about Important Stuff are annoying…. and his PC doesn’t exist anymore so forget logging into his account.
Anyway. It’s all cool. I ran the checkbook. He made more money but I took care of the rest, like paying the bills. “Hey, I wanna buy this pistol.” How much? Ok, do it. Or ok, week after next. It worked for us.
He had a friend in San Antonio. Got hit by a car. Scored an unknown amount of cash. Oh, hey. Viking River Cruises. He was invited. Just gotta pay airfare and groceries. For a trip from Sweden to somewhere Baltic and back to Germany and then Danmark. He was going to turn it down. I said “get your ass on that air plane”.
How are we going to pay for this? No problem, I’ll pull the money from my credit union account. But get your ass on the plane and have a good time!
Years ago, at work, in the break room, in front of a lot of other folks, one of the bosses asked me, why the (me) Cash Controller of the store drives such a shitty truck.
I figure he was trying to do a flex on me. For some reason I’m too dense to understand.
I said it’s an ok truck. Working a/c would be nice but ya know, I get in it to go home, I open the windows and I drive home naked. My take home is like $305 a week if I get a couple of hours of overtime.
Right about then here comes Amy The Admin to scold us about sharing what we make an hour. Hey, chill out Amy. Let me finish answering the question.
I was putting $50 a week into the 401k. Plus $50 a week into the credit union account. So, yeah, a car payment is not in my budget.
But I get to drive home naked. Top that.
I loved working there and fucking with their heads.
Reminds me of a movie from the ‘50’s or ‘60’s I saw (part of) a long time ago. Similar plot, but the catch was the crooks had made counterfeit money and swapped it for the money to be shredded after the inspection of the notes. They watched the incinerator smokestack because the counterfeit money generated a different color of smoke, so they knew it was safe to started moving the stolen cash.
Home safe. Chased a rainbow for the first hour. I’ve never seen one that stuck around that long. For part of the time it was a double rainbow…
Weird to be driving home in daylight.
Missed almost all the storm cells. Got a free car wash from one, took about 4 minutes.
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Hearing some random fireworks tonight. Some big thunder and lightning off in the distance too.
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Most of the time I drive my 23yo beater truck. Runs good. A/C works. Doesn’t advertise “rob this guy”.
If I want to look nicer or take the kids somewhere, I drive the 9 yo Expedition. It still looks nice and a big SUV reads as “reasonably successful.” That’s about all I want to telegraph to people.
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WRT the wealth tax, remember Clinton with “we’re only taxing the rich”? Well, I made $30k that year and I was hit with additional taxes. The ALWAYS want more money.
n
Lots of missing numbers:
and bald-faced stupidity:
U.S Population: 1930: 123 million; 1026: 345 million.
Average Size of Single-Family Homes in the U.S.: 1975: 1620; 2014: 2657
Apples are not oranges or pears. Dishonest, dumbash, or both?
Give me a hammer and five minutes and I will recalibrate Mr. Snyder’s concept of “real pain”. There is so little information available online about his background that I can only conclude that he is intentionally vague because he has very little background that qualifies him as having the ability to form an opinion. His photo shows a man in his apparent forties, from which I conclude that he was not alive in the Great Depression or even 1975, and has no memory of either time–and indeed may have no direct knowledge of life before the internet. His writing shows that he is not intelligent enough to choose good sources or make comparisons between events only a few years apart, and his book titles appear to be pandering to an audience intent on their own victimization as opposed to working to right the listing ship that is our society.
Mr. Snyder is always a glass half empty guy and needs a block of salt near his pronouncements. Of his 111 million not employed number, 60 odd million are retirees. Some millions are legitimately disabled. Some unknown (to me) number are home makers. I’m sure that leaves an appalling, growing millions of fraudsters or at least questionable beneficiaries, but not as alarming as the headline number.
When I worked for a company that had it’s major income from Section 8 housing subsidies, I noted that it was nigh impossible for a single mother to work her way out of the program. We also had a majority of elderly clients that paid their 30-ish % of their social security for their independent living apartment.
The state authority bureaucrats audited some 20% of residents’ files every year to recertify the subsidy calculation. The most common missing documentation was the copy of the social security card. Hmmm.
I also note that I was not considered a federal employee and received no bennies to speak of.
Storm didn’t last long, but it did get everything really wet. Tomorrow should be steamy!
Time for bed.
n
“This is just a test of the emergency notification system”
Breaking news: China test fires long-range ballistic missile: https://nl.nytimes.com/f/newsletter/dNTTmGnT6r7G0WHr6Ecpgw~~/AAAAARA~/Gui3ttllNiMqNq1Oj2u9WigpMjEnQ3a_xFZQ6wZvDHPYfp-nQHBE1T_kznk1bj8C1JWfuDdqqY1WqlHvZerXw1_c9LJ9ecSoqYcfw-58INiDAyjnXLrhiNkwtJn-c2w14JttCPHXAIhDEONDYoKnxlgST71noX22AGfmtYbleAaLOBsyJhmIyT6CbM3QPdETe99IegdjMEtvkZZdzeKFesI9Fj4SMOny8AYFfUoEXEw5a7s46JKftgz4ZpV4cZuKq9gXmuXol5ro7ULILiUqQVV17x635w6N8qWn3C_zAj4JUwxVFfPe-tyX5UOfqkiijqgMiXsvAD4sikO9GFEUX1TJpU9u-tOI52L43xbI9gZr51eUnVMf6bS5p-gncAzL
@alan – there’s a lot of tracking codes in that link ….which I am reluctant to click on.
But the story can be found in anyone’s favorite News feed with a simple search.