Hot and humid again. Still Summer in Houston for a while yet. It was well over 100F yesterday and probably will be today too. Early morning temps are starting to move down, so Fall is coming, just not right now.
Did a lot of stuff yesterday, mostly detailed in the comments. Some of it has added items to my list, so there’s that. Nothing like problems popping up and derailing “normal”. Knowledge, money, and effort go a long way towards turning potential hardship into manageable problems.
Today I will do some follow up for our event, possibly some work at the rent house, and who knows what else. I’m sure it will be a day filled with me doing things. I’ve always taken pride in myself and my ability to get things done, and to solve problems. However, it sure would be nice to have a period without any interruptions from NEW problems.
It’s a great life if you don’t falter.
And if you stack and prepare for the problems you can foresee.
nick
Tuesday. Good morning!
Nick, for the guy who doesn’t do anything around there, you seem to be doing a lot of everything around there… I hope the level of recognition is improving.
Tourism and family stuff today. Going to Switzerland (Hi, Brad!) to visit Stein am Rhein, and later visit a relative recovering from a heart attack in a clinic near there.
Holidays are winding-down this week. Tomorrow evening will be time to pack the car, and Thursday morning we’ll begin the homeward journey.
Page weirdness: the jumping cursor yesterday wasn’t due to bumping a laptop mushpad, as I was/am typing on my phone. (I know that issue, which is why all my lappies immediately receive a wired mouse.) Something seems to have been off kilter in yesterday’s comments page. I haven’t re-tried to comment on it, but upon reading it, the page-wrapping
Have a good day!
Arguably, the F-150 is a capital tool, and Ford is taking advantage in order to bury the costs of their EV debacles. Unless the Fed resumes writing car loan paper, however, 10 year Treasuries going above 5% will kill sales as the loans become unaffordable.
Anyone besides OldGuy see the story about the horses? I’m trying to see if it’s a right vs left thing about who even saw the “news”. (even left leaning moderate vs somewhere right of center)
@denis, regarding page weirdness- I didn’t see anything, but I get cursor issues when I’ve ‘drag and dropped’ highlighted text into the comment box, vs cutting and pasting. And some times, everything gets turned into a wall of text no matter how many LF+CR are in text. (one of the comment modules strips out LF+CR if there are more than one in a row, to reduce whitespace and it might be the cause.)
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79F this morning. That will rise soon, and quickly.
Time to get some coffee started.
n
Gary, IN was a place we’d go drive thru to prove we were tough/brave when I was in High School. It was a shooting gallery then, and apparently still is. Off and on the “murder capital of the US”, alternating with Detroit and DC, it only dropped out of #1 when the population fell.
I’ve heard from various people that Gary and adjoining communities are seeing an influx of whites/hispanics and it might be getting a bit better. Of course there are those who oppose that.
n
Saturday’s NYT contained an article about wild horses. I just noticed the headline as I was skimming the contents.
(I don’t actually subscribe to the grey lady; the paper was delivered to me in lieu of the WSJ, which hadn’t arrived by the time the newspaper delivery lady began her rounds. Please don’t judge me! 😀 )
$60k is not even remotely realistic, even for a rich person’s toy.
A new F-150 for me is $75K. And that is without leather seats.
– both statements can be true. No way it will only cost $60K, and that much isn’t out of line for a nice truck. Of course this is a problem for buyers, but is the high cost because of monetary inflation, the cost of what’s actually in the truck, or high profit margins? Bagged ice from the machine near me went from $2 to $3 in a year or two. Steak is >$20/pound and up, nearly doubling. Charmin blue from costco was ~$20/bundle, now $29 without a sale. That’s a bunch of inflation, some monetary, some supply and demand, but in all sorts of things, that’s half again more in just a couple of years.
n
And speaking of FLASHLIGHTS…I just ordered this animal, in green.
https://www.fenixlighting.com/products/fenix-ld31-renegade-flashlight?variant=45402535428150
I get a nice 25% discount as a veteran making the price OK. 3200 lumens from a light this small is amazing. It will be the brightest light I have.
My last purchase, about 13 months ago, the King Ranch edition with leather seats, was $72K. There was a Lightning version in the showroom, with some added bling, that was listed at $102K. I am certain someone eventually bought it with an 84 month loan.
My truck has driving options. One of those options is “Rock Crawl”. Yeh, like I am going to take an expensive pickup and go banging on some rocks.
There’s a definite left-right divide just in this paragraph. Apparently, everyone agrees there are too many horses for the available range. Bleeding hearts want to systematically neuter the horses and let them die off of starvation until the population stabilizes. Realists say to step in and do what’s necessary to protect the herd, and if some people end up eating them, well that’s better than wasting the meat.
I love cats and dogs. But I also see the need for controlling their populations. Horses, cats, dogs, and elephants, like communists, are not people.
The same process happens with deer hunting. Limits, controls, and harvesting keep the population healthy, and sustainable.
R.I.P – Dolly Parton, passed away today at age 80.
Horses are an invasive species.
Goodbye, Dolly.
One of the grand dames of entertainment, with an unbelievable career across the decades. Larger than life, but still maintained a stable home life. Truly stunning compared to just about anyone else. RIP Dolly.
————–
That NYT article is one editorial comment after another with some of the most inflammatory and biased language I’ve read in a long time. Are all NYT stories like that?
“Under Trump” that’s a pretty big umbrella. Wonder how many times “Under Biden” or “Under Obamma” was used in the same way?
Sometimes I wish I was coasting along in academia and had Lexus/Nexus to do searches like that. I’d bet that if they did use the umbrella phrase it was only positive subjects.
————–
Back is a lot better today. Still needed about an hour of stretching. I read while doing it, so I don’t get bored.
Still not sure what I’m doing this afternoon. I think I’ll see if the A/C unit in the garage will fire up. Probably should have been running it before now.
n
Sort of. North America had equines a few tens of thousands of years ago. I don’t know how close they were to modern horses, given the directed changes since humans domesticated them. As may be, the equines were rendered extinct by the ancestors of the American Indians. Must be part of that “living in harmony with nature” thing they had going on.
TN will now have a couple of days of mourning, Dollywood will close for a week, flags at half staff, a minute of silence where all vehicle motion will be prohibited in the state, and every bleeding politician in TN will have something to say. The local TV stations will be competing to see who can do the most coverage, then brag about it during their promotion video.
She was a good person, even as an entertainer. I was never partial to her music, too nasal and too country.
She did a lot for Sevier County and especially children’s reading where a free book was provided every month. Both my grandsons got free books.
My last purchase, about 13 months ago, the King Ranch edition with leather seats, was $72K. There was a Lightning version in the showroom, with some added bling, that was listed at $102K. I am certain someone eventually bought it with an 84 month loan.
Is that $72K the discount price or the MSRP price? You got a good deal.
There is a shortage of F-150s right now, one the factories burned down a few months ago, and the dealers around here are selling only at MSRP.
https://autos.yahoo.com/deals-and-buying-guides/articles/factory-fire-crippled-ford-f-134500080.html?guccounter=1
Lunar eclipse coming up!
$60k is not even remotely realistic, even for a rich person’s toy.
A new F-150 for me is $75K. And that is without leather seats.
– both statements can be true. No way it will only cost $60K, and that much isn’t out of line for a nice truck. Of course this is a problem for buyers, but is the high cost because of monetary inflation, the cost of what’s actually in the truck, or high profit margins? Bagged ice from the machine near me went from $2 to $3 in a year or two. Steak is >$20/pound and up, nearly doubling. Charmin blue from costco was ~$20/bundle, now $29 without a sale. That’s a bunch of inflation, some monetary, some supply and demand, but in all sorts of things, that’s half again more in just a couple of years.
The cost of electricity is up about 30% in the last two years in Texas. Hurricane Beryl did an enormous amount of damage to the Houston area and we are now paying for it. Plus the price of natural gas, the peaking fuel, is up about 25% over the last two years also from $2 to $3. But the cost to produce natural gas is about $5 which is being subsidized by the crude oil production.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hurricane_Beryl
The cost of energy is rapidly increasing across the USA and the usage of energy is rapidly increasing. It is a part of life to use more and more unless something happens to stop that. And energy is a part of everything due to the trucks moving stuff all around the place. And the price of diesel will probably go up again from $5 to $7 by the end of the year due to the Russia – Ukraine war and other issues like idiots in California, the UK, Germany, Hawaii, and other places shutting down the refineries.
The video that Parton’s family released was well written and well produced, but not over-produced, and came across as very sincere. Then they hit me squarely in the feels with the last still.
That was about $3K thousand off MSRP. Ford was having one of their promotions on new vehicles purchased.
Do you have a link? All I have seen is the local TV stations stumbling over themselves.
Never mind, I found it.
Goodbye, Dolly. You’ll be missed.
My favorite fact about Dolly Parton: she once lost a Dolly Parton Drag Lookalike contest. My favorite fact about her name: The (very large) cone inside the back of a J-79 jet engine was referred to as the ‘Dolly Parton’. I’m sure you can imagine the shape.
As a hetero male, I’m inclined to click on a link that promises women spilling out of skimpy outfits while brawling, but in this case, the outfits would be normal sized and the women are just extra large. And the article pokes at them several different times. THAT is the newsworthy part, a distinct change in the language used to report on something like this.
Even the restaurant is named “The Fatty” (el gordo)
Oh, and the coverage was more extensive than the outfits….
Taser, taser, taser…
Filed under why we can’t have nice things.
n
@Ray; how do I tell Fenix flashlights that I’m a veteran? No matter HOW good the light is, $90 is a bit steep. Thanks.
I’m intrigued by the fact that “invasive” species are all species that Man brought with them, deliberately or not. Otherwise, they are species expanding their range due to climate variations.
I also think that Man became the original invasive species due to the development and expansion of agriculture. Stable beer supplies have had a very high cost.
Horses ARE an invasive species, in the Americas. Apparently, men hunted American horses to extinction in pre-historic times. The Incas and Aztecs had no horses.
Spanish conquistadores brought horses from Europe in the early 1500s, and enough of them were released, or escaped, or were stolen, to repopulate the species here.
Hey, you low-down, four-flushing, dirty, rotten, horse-thievin’ polecat, I already said that!
@Mr. Mitchell: The site uses ID.ME during check out to verify veteran status. If you don’t have an ID.ME account, it is a good idea to get one. Apple uses the site for their veteran store, IRS uses the site, the VA uses the site.
Yeh, it is. But with the veteran discount the price was $75.00. Still steep but worth it, in my opinion. The lights are cheaper than SureFire. RBT and I had this running, ahem, argument, about lights. My position was that a person should have at least one, possibly two, flashlights of superior quality. Then stash cheap ones around the house. RBT was all for cheap lights.
I still think that way, but even the cheap ones now are quite good. Three lights, with batteries, at Home Depot for $12.00. When the batteries die, throw the light away. But having one, or two, really good, reliable, and bright lights is valuable.
The Fenix lights are really bright and have a good beam. You can feel the heat from the LED in your hand if the light is pointed at your hand within a few inches. Hold it too long and it will burn. I recommend the lights from Fenix.
Nope, I was wrong. The MSRP on the White hybrid V6 Powerboost Platinum F-150 4×4 is $87,545 before TT&L. The Autonation Ford Katy price is $75,875 + TT&L. So they are “discounting” them. And they do have 170 F-150s on the lot plus 150 ordered of which this is one.
https://www.autonationfordkaty.com/new/Ford/2026-Ford-F-150-d2ac30a6ac184d2738b6adbe0b8d0292.htm
But this one does not have the Max Tow package that I love: big 36 gallon tank, 5 row radiator, transmission oil cooler, etc.
TT&L is 6.25% Texas state tax, title, and license.
And I don’t want no stinking moon roof whatever in the world that is.
And I may want the 5.0L Coyote V8 instead of the high revving over boosted V6 motor that fails if you look wrong at it.
President Trump has ordered that flags fly at half staff for a week to honor Dolly Parton.
@Ray; Thanks much!
@SteveF; Somehow, I had missed that comment.
I use ID.me on quite a few sites to get Veteran discounts. That is also how I signed up for Home Depot and Lowe’s military discount program. 10% on most items.
King Ranch has all the goodies of the Platinum with Platinum adding a strip across the bed gate and costing 3K more.
It is a bigger opening in the roof extending further back than a sun roof. I have opened mine once. Unfortunately, the upper trim levels come with the option.
It’s called a “Moon Roof” because no sane person ever opens it in the daytime; you’d fry your skull! I had one in my old PT Cruiser, and it was nice in the evenings, or on CLOUDY days. Not good on sunny or rainy days.
Anyone besides OldGuy see the story about the horses? I’m trying to see if it’s a right vs left thing about who even saw the “news”. (even left leaning moderate vs somewhere right of center)
Yes, I have seen the news item every couple of years for the last 20 or 30 years as BLM tries to reduce the number of wild horses in the billions of acres that they supposedly manage. It is a fact of life as horses, and stray cattle, require a lot of resources that the desert areas of the USA do not have very much of. It is about saving the desert tortoise and other rare beasties. And even the rattlesnakes that I kill every time I see one or ten.
King Ranch has all the goodies of the Platinum with Platinum adding a strip across the bed gate and costing 3K more.
Yeah, I want the 4A (AWD) transmission option that puts the electric viscous coupling in the 4×4 box for rainy days. You have to get the Lariat, Platinum, or King Ranch trim options that also include leather seats. But my wife tells me that my buttocks do not deserve leather seats.
The same process happens with deer hunting. Limits, controls, and harvesting keep the population healthy, and sustainable.
The feral pig population is growing so fast here in Texas that there is not even a season anymore. In fact, I am not sure that you even have a license to hunt them as they are classified as nuisance critters.
I did have a half dozen white tails, no racks, right next to my office driveway last night. I waved and blinked my headlights at them as I drove by them, just 20 feet away.
I didn’t watch the taco-stand hippo wrestling video, and the stills for the dailymail article only show 3 of the participants, but I am in awe of the 3 comments they chose to reproduce from the video:
‘This video weighs 10,482 pounds,’ commented one user, which received over 3,000 likes.
‘They tased the big one like she was Godzilla,’ another added.
‘This is why aliens won’t contact us,’ a third said.
“Trump ‘Giving Serious Consideration’ to Renaming Lake Ontario as Cross-Border Trade Wars Roll On”
https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2026/08/25/trump-giving-serious-consideration-to-renaming-lake-ontario-as-cross-border-trade-wars-roll-on/
““The United States is giving serious consideration to changing the name of Lake Ontario to Lake America in that we don’t expect to doing much business with Ontario any longer,” the president wrote on Truth Social. “Thank you for your attention to this matter!””
Canada is threatening to cut off electricity sales to New York state in response. If only New York state had a few operating nuclear power plants that rogue governor shut down a few years ago.
Hat tip to:
https://thelibertydaily.com/
The video that Parton’s family released was well written and well produced, but not over-produced, and came across as very sincere. Then they hit me squarely in the feels with the last still.
https://thelibertydaily.com/dolly-parton-dead-80/
Now do wetbacks.
“SpaceX unveils Starbase launch site in Louisiana, moves up orbital data center launch timeline”
https://finance.yahoo.com/markets/stocks/article/spacex-unveils-starbase-launch-site-in-louisiana-moves-up-orbital-data-center-launch-timeline-142539276.html
“Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry said SpaceX will invest $100 billion to build the facility, with construction starting in 2027 and the first Starship launches targeted for 2029. Musk added that Starbase will “ultimately have over a dozen launch towers, enabling more than 30 Starship flights per day.””
This is getting real, very real. That is a very serious goal.
I am still waiting on the daily orbital flight announcements, 30 minutes from Houston to Tokyo. Free barf bags included for the 15 minutes of free fall.
A couple of years ago I looked into arranging a hog hunt here in Texas for my son and me.
What I was looking for was free or low cost, open hunting. I figured if they were such pests, that would be easy. I’d pay a few bucks for the opportunity, and the landowner would end up with less of a hog problem.
All I could find was guided hunts, at a pretty high cost, and if you wanted to keep the meat, there were butchering and packing fees that were also quite high. To be fair, if you search online, that’s what you mostly would find. But the prices were way higher than I expected. For those prices, I’d expect Montana elk or at least Wyoming antelope.
I don’t have the right contacts I guess. Maybe I’ll reach out on ham radio. My Medical and IT communities tend not to be rural agriculture operators.
I am in awe of the 3 comments they chose to reproduce
– we’ll see if this marks a shift in public treatment of the loudmouth fighting big back demographic, or if the interns were left alone with the password to the site.
n
Re: Louisiana Starbase
One of the articles I read posited that the reason for LA vs. TX or FL is for polar launches. They said a polar orbit could put the LEO datacenters in constant sunlight, thus generating continuous solar power, where equatorial orbits would require heavy batteries.
You could launch South from LA and except for central America you’d be over water most of the time. TX means you have to fly over Mexico, and FL you have to fly over South America and pesky Caribbean islands, like Cuba.
I don’t know my orbital mechanics well enough to know if that makes sense. But it sounds plausible.
That’s a big floor plan and 2027s are due soon.
“Release the Dogs of War (The Kurtherian Gambit #10)” by Michael Anderle
https://www.amazon.com/Release-Dogs-War-Kurtherian-Gambit/dp/1981790055?tag=ttgnet-20/
Book number ten of a twenty-one book science fiction and paranormal fantasy series. There is also an eleven book follow on series and several other books related to the The Kurtherian Gambit Universe, over 200 books in total. I read the well printed and well bound POD (print on demand) trade paperback self published by the author in 2016 that I bought new on Amazon in 2026. I own the next book in the series already. The related series are listed at:
https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pe.cgi?46598
The series is a cross between science fiction and paranormal fantasy. A thousand plus years ago, an alien space ship crash landed in the Baltics. A man, Michael, found the space ship, went inside, and was forever changed into the first vampire using alien nanocytes. However, there were werewolves and werebears already existing on Earth and they still exist.
Michael has sired vampires and they have sired vampires. But only one of the vampire “children” is a daywalker like Michael. And Michael enforces strict rules among the vampires and the weres, no blood drinking, no letting humans know of them, etc. Violators of Michael’s rules face swift termination.
But it has been thousand years since Michael was changed and he now sleeps for years at a time. Michael’s helpers found a young woman named Bethany Anne working for the USA government who is dying of a rare blood disease. Michael took her to the alien space ship to become the second first generation vampire on Earth. Bethany Anne has created a huge workforce and they are swiftly moving ahead with incredibly advanced AI and space access technology. Now the nation states are concerned and want the secrets of the gravitic drives and the other technology that the TQB Entrprises have created.
This series is real pulp like old science fiction with lots of action and dialogue. I love it !
Warning: this series might be damaging to your savings account since there are so many books.
The author has a website at:
https://lmbpn.com/
My rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars
Amazon rating: 4.7 out of 5 stars (3,780 reviews)
Lynn
“Hispanic Chamber of Commerce Exclusive Cash Reward”
$1000.
Papi wants a “man’s” truck.
As I put the meat back in the freeze, I’m surprised by how many bags failed.
It’s less than 10%, maybe less than 5%, and they failed after being frozen, so not right away. Could be from rough handling, or could be pinholes?
Still, it’s far more than you’d want, and it’s not just packages more than 3-4 years old.
Also, monetary inflation and demand both, as Ribeye Roast was $3.77 /pound in 2020. Only steaks are listed on HEB’s website, but the choice ones are freaking $15.50 a pound. That’s FIVE times the cost in six years.
n
My neighbor’s new design Bronco only comes out of the garage on sunny days with the high temperatures in the 60s-80s.
Although I wouldn’t want to drive around the hot Texas heat (or anywhere) with the sun beating down on my head, opening the moon/sunroof on intitial entry into the car allows for quick release of built-up interior heat on sunny/hot days. Then close it with the AC on full blast.
Somehow, Dolly’s $1 Million dollar donation towards the early development of the Moderna jab at Vanderbilt has been omitted from most of the obit reels.
I have seen mention of that in several of the news reports of her life. And immediately thought that there would be some pushback of that donation here. I don’t think that it significantly negates any of her good work.
But thanks for being predictable.
Her stance on the jab was mentioned in most of the non-corporate stuff I’ve seen. People remember.
n
added – and really, she put up her own money to help with what looked like a very serious and threatening issue, with no idea what the outcome would be.
I don’t think you can fault the donation, and only mostly fault the support for the jab. And I’d ask when in the timeline she gave that support. If late, after side effects were reported, then bad, if early before any ill effects were known, neutral.
If only there was a means of deploying a company-sized group within 3 hours to essentially anywhere on earth, within 3 hours of a major military base, allowing same-day service to localized threats. Nah, couldn’t be anything like that. SpaceX is a civilian company with no links to the US government.
Always happy to be of service.
>>Bagged ice from the machine near me went from $2 to $3 in a year or two.
Our Costco sells bagged ice. Not sure what the current price is though…
#SortaUsefulTips
Tone controls. Equalizers. That fixes the too nasal sound.
Too country? Or too Christian? There’s plenty of crossover there. I don’t know. Don’t care. I like story songs.
I think “Coat Of Many Colors” is my favorite.
And I’m gonna go there. God got another angel in the choir.
Cheap bags. Or the vac sealer pulled enough juice to break the seal.
I hold bags to the light to make sure the seal is good. I’ve never had a bag go bad from bouncing around in the freezer.
Sometimes I get everything bagged and formed a bit, instead of a lump of stuff, into sa shape that will sort of stack in the freezer. Then I freeze them for a few hours. Sets the juices. Then vac seal.
For example, Boneless chicken thighs, with “up to 20%” solution, yeah. bag ’em, flatten the bags, and freeze until firm but still mushy. Why still mushy? So the vac sealer can suck out all of the air.
Same thing with a spiral cut ham.
I’m out by Burnet. I’m told I have hogs here. I hear them once in a while. But if ya want to come hunting hogs of 40 acres, come on. Free.
Say Hi and maybe after your day of hunting we can sit around and have beers.
Keep all the meat, save the bones and guts to toss onto mosque sites.
It was over 100F in the shade here, and reading 105F in the sun. Just standing in the garage has my skin prickling all over with sweat.
I turned on the A/C window unit, and it’s blowing air and the compressor sounds like it’s running but it doesn’t seem very cool. I’m gonna get a thermometer and see what the air is. I think it stopped making cold 2 years ago?
n
I put a sunroof in my ’78 Volare wagon. Bought the kit at Pep Boys. Like, a hundred bucks. Which was big money to me at the time.
The worst part of the installation processes was drilling a hole in the roof of the car so I could use the saber saw to cut the hole.
It never leaked. It was great! Open it all the way on a hot day to vent the heat. Open it a little and the cigarette smoke blew right out.
I miss my wagon.
Ordered an internal SATA bluray drive on ebay. $130 for used. I could have gotten a used pull on amazon for $66 but three weeks shipping time from china. And there were one or two other used options on ebay but the price was very similar. Double the price for new… and 4x for one that will do 4K. WTAF?
Y’all might remember I put a cracked cd in my drive to rip it and the thing exploded and (probably) destroyed the DVD drive. I figure if I have to pull the pc and the drive I might as well upgrade so I can rip bluray as well. I think I might just add a DVD drive from the stacks to do most of the ripping and save the expensive BD player for blu disks.
More things on the list.
n
Today’s adventure in cuisine was ok.
I had an 8 ounce package of chorizo. Packed like breakfast sausage. I squeezed it out of the package into a frying pan. Let it cook a bit. Add a handful of tater tots. Uh, like pre-diced potatoes, ok? Smashed the tots into pieces and then added half a dozen scrambled eggs. The results are well, edible. Bland. Needs salt and pepper.
But I had a couple of chorizo con papas y eggs tacos for supper. I’m not hungry. And there is more for tomorrow!
Well. Better than nuking a TV dinner.
Sony stopped making blank BluRay media, and PS5 will be their last console with a drive.
The writing is on the wall since Sony licenses the format and collects a fee for every disc.
you will own nothing and you will like it.
And if we want to, we’ll steal back anything you thought you owned.
n
Tone controls. Equalizers. That fixes the too nasal sound.
Too country? Or too Christian? There’s plenty of crossover there. I don’t know. Don’t care. I like story songs.
I think “Coat Of Many Colors” is my favorite.
And I’m gonna go there. God got another angel in the choir.
An incredibly talented lady. And that is a great song especially with her singing it.
She could turn the ‘twang’ up or down, as well as the ‘cornpone.’
Listened to her alot while traveling all over the country as a kid, since dad bought the 8tracks and he liked country…
n
Boston’s Rockin’ Debut: Fifty Years of ‘More Than a Feeling’ (It’s Been Such a Long Time)
https://twitchy.com/warren-squire/2026/08/25/50-years-of-bostons-more-than-a-feeling-debut-album-rock-classic-n2431688
One of the most iconic albums of all time and the band isn’t in the rock and roll hall of shame. Just goes to show what happens when you put a bunch of PLT’s in charge of anything: enshittification.
Ted Nugent isn’t there either, and “Queen of the Forest” was the first rock song played on “WKRP in Cincinnati”.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9VH4yV3ich0
I am one of the most vocal against the so-called vaccine on this site, and I don’t fault Dolly.
We were panicked by our government, and the Chinese government, into believing the deadliest pandemic since the great plague was coming. A million dollar donation to finding a cure was nothing to her; she gave away $500 million to charities in her life.
I would be disappointed to find out she funded it after its faults were known, but there are people out there (waving at OldGuy and CowboySlim (RIP)) who will die believing the propaganda.
OBTW, it was released today that there was a special arm of the government paying influencers to tout the vaccine. Including to pregnant women, even after Fauci wrote in his diary that he know how bad it was.
The Left Is Furious With Trump’s Latest Decision on the Kennedy Center
https://townhall.com/news/josephchalfant/2026/08/25/the-libs-are-furious-with-trumps-latest-decision-on-the-kennedy-center-n2681878
Close it and let it sit. If the libs want to keep it, they can mount a massive fundraising effort and pay for the renovation. You guys gave Harris a billion dollars and got nothing, surely you can find the scratch?
Perhaps someday, but even when it becomes possible to reliably land a Starship on minimally-improved terrain, the problem will always be how to get it BACK. It will never be able to lift off without a launch tower and a Super Heavy booster. And a million pounds of propellant. It’s too heavy to be transported by air, and too big for rail. A dirigible, perhaps, or an airship?
They are currently towing one at sea, having just arrived at Christmas Island, Australia, with a rope tied around one of the Raptor exhaust bells. A heavy-lift ship could probably do it, but how many of those are around?
“I Can’t Stop Watching This Amazon Delivery Drone Drop Someone’s Package in Their Pool”
https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/cant-stop-watching-botched-amazon-drone-delivery-videos-swimming-pool.html?utm_source=firefox-newtab-en-us
“Welcome to the future.”
OK, that is awesome.
Yes, she was. And well liked by anyone that came in contact. She also donated a lot of money to the people affected by the fires in Gatlinburg. I just never cared for her music, like almost all country music. She did a lot of good things, much more than almost any performing artist of her time.
She has been missing personal appearances the last few months, has not been out in public, missed the opening of the newest ride at Dollywood. I suspected something was really wrong with her health and people were just not being told. Her death, to me, was not entirely unexpected.
I can think of a lot of people whom I would very much like to see become worm food other than Dolly Parton.
Perhaps someday, but even when it becomes possible to reliably land a Starship on minimally-improved terrain, the problem will always be how to get it BACK. It will never be able to lift off without a launch tower and a Super Heavy booster. And a million pounds of propellant. It’s too heavy to be transported by air, and too big for rail. A dirigible, perhaps, or an airship?
“The vehicle’s tanks hold 1,500 t (3,300,000 lb) of propellant,[22] consisting of 1,170 t (2,580,000 lb) of liquid oxygen and 330 t (730,000 lb) of liquid methane.[d]”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SpaceX_Starship
I had not realized that there was that much fuel in the booster alone. At $2/gal of LNG and 6 lbs/gal, that is $244,000 for the LNG alone. I am not sure of the cost for LOx but I guess $1/gal might cover it.
So, $1 million per flight for the fuel. That is going to make the daily 30 minute sub orbital from Houston to Tokyo and back fairly expensive at $5,000 per passenger (200 passengers) each way for the fuel alone.
Tear it down and turn the land into a park. WHAT a PERFECT troll. Ok. I’m laughing my butt off over here.
Add a free needle clinic.
Sure. Add a free needle clinic. But do pre dose the needles with poison.
Then all the press will be about how Trump Park is an open air drug bazaar and homeless camp.
n
John F. Kennedy Park.
Hillary Clinton Walkway.
Vince Foster Memorial Bench.
Add a free needle clinic.
Ugh.
I accidentally stepped on a needle in the Houston Montrose UtoteM ??? store parking lot in 1989. It went right through my flip flop into the bottom of my foot. I was living a block over in my brother’s garage apartment during the week when I came back to work in Houston. Hurt like a you know what when I pulled it out.
Given the people of that neighborhood, I was wondering if the needle was for drug use, and given the 1980s, I wondered if the idiot had AIDs. My brother lived there because it was cheap and by his girlfriend.
So, I am NOT for free needles. They will just drop them on the ground wherever.
Burnham’s ‘Climate Tsar’ Has Racked Up 250,000 Air Miles on Taxpayer-Funded Flights
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2026/08/23/burnhams-climate-tsar-has-racked-up-250000-air-miles-on-taxpayer-funded-flights/
The climate zealots always dive headfirst into the public trough.
“It would take you 27 years to rack up the equivalent emissions driving a Range Rover.”
Boot her and ban her from ever using fossil fuels again.
She has been missing personal appearances the last few months, has not been out in public, missed the opening of the newest ride at Dollywood. I suspected something was really wrong with her health and people were just not being told. Her death, to me, was not entirely unexpected.
Sounds like kidney cancer. She apparently was getting treated for it for a couple of years and then it hit her hard. Sad.
https://pagesix.com/2026/08/25/celebrity-news/dolly-partons-cause-of-death-revealed/
Hillary Clinton: The Rise of Socialism Is Healthy
https://hotair.com/david-strom/2026/08/25/hillary-clinton-the-rise-of-socialism-is-healthy-n3818345
We can help them out with their commitment by implementing a special tax on socialists: 100% of all assets over $1 million.
They can opt out by writing a paragraph explaining why they should be exempt, if they can be more persuasive than poor people writing a paragraph explaining why they should get a share of the assets over a million bucks.
All entries written with a #2 Ticonderoga on a yellow pad. No AI help allowed.
“So, I am NOT for free needles. They will just drop them on the ground wherever.”
But the Kennedy legacy!
Mary Jo Kopechne Bridge
You don’t. Think of it more as a parachute capable of carrying company-level assets to the jumping-off point for the mission. The follow-on force extracts the company, or reinforces depending on the mission, and the Starship is either recovered afterwards or blown in place. Or becomes the centerpiece of a forward operating base. Unit cost has been estimated between $200 and $450 million dollars, so a bit more than a 747, so it’s not that expensive in a national security context.
I believe that we came within one Supreme Court decision of yellow stars on the “unclean” and camps.
I didn’t wish the woman ill, but never forget.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OjbSWebA3Ko
Check out the accent from the doctor. Faith and Beghorrah, he’s a fine Irish lad.
How much did we know by March 5, 2021?
Twenty years ago today*, revisionist astronomers adopted a new definition of planet, and kicked Pluto out of the club.
Astronomers have been trying to defend it ever since.
Here’s a poor attempt, published in Scientific American:
Sorry, Pluto’s still not a planet
https://www.yahoo.com/news/science/articles/sorry-pluto-still-not-planet-110000089.html
Appearing in a publication that has been gutted by leftists, it’s not persuasive going in.
Consisting largely of a straw argument that claims that moons are better candidates for planethood that Pluto, it’s easy to blow up most of it thusly:
Pluto is not a moon.
As for any reason to give a fig about the revisions of the current crop of astronomers, let’s give them a science test at the next meeting: Define woman.
Yeah, FOAD.
*Lest you wonder, let me save you the bother: The meeting was in Prague, not Paris.
The local TV station is running a one-hour special on Dolly Parton. Which means it was produced sometime in the past and was not put together in 8 hours. The station knew something was amiss.
more on Pluto:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pluto
scroll down to “Classification”
“less than five percent of astronomers voted for it, the decision was not representative of the entire astronomical community”
“Researchers on both sides of the debate gathered in August 2008, at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory for a conference that included back-to-back talks on the IAU definition of a planet.[91] Entitled “The Great Planet Debate”,[92] the conference published a post-conference press release indicating that scientists could not come to a consensus about the definition of planet.”
So they can’t even claim the “consensus” fig leaf.
Obvious solution: name it the William Jefferson Clinton Memorial Park
EDIT: Dang it, something came up and I was delayed and multiple at-least-as-good suggestions came in before I clicked Submit Your Comment.
Planet definition; the whole impetus for the “define a planet” debate was because because a team of astronomers had “discovered” an object larger than Pluto and further out. It was originally described as the “Tenth Planet”, and the discoverers wanted to name it “Xena”, after the heroine of the TV show “Xena: Warrior Princess”.
The International Astronomical Unuion hated that name, and worked around it by re-defining Pluto as a “dwarf planet” with fake criteria. (A planet must orbit the Sun, be spherical because of its own gravity, and have “cleared its orbit” of other objects. Not even Earth qualifies with that 3rd requirement. Nor does Jupiter or Saturn.) So “Xena” got the name “Eris” and other similar trans-Neptunian objects each got the “dwarf planet” designation.
Pluto is a planet. Screw the IAU.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eris_(dwarf_planet)
Dolly Parton was already 80 and had been ill for a while. News stations often pre-write obituaries, or create “special programming” to be prepared for the inevitable. Every famous or quasi-famous person has a “stock” obit prepared that only needs minor edits before being released.
Even after @Greg’s evidence, I’m still feeling charitable towards Dolly.
Gullible and credulous, but not evil. She believed what experts and authorities told her, and acted accordingly.
I also believe @Greg’s opinion about camps for ze skippy.
Not quite enough. If you were paying attention, understood math, and realized the official story sounded fishy, and the official propaganda and narrative were overblown, then you could be suspicious but not certain either way. At that time, the gankiest part was the short development time and approval, but that could be hand-waved away by the EUA and supposed severity of the disease.
It was 6 weeks after that when Houston Methodist announced their mandate, the first in the nation, and in 2 more months I was jobless. I’d say on March 5 I was only skeptical, and my position was that I’d wait a few months to see what happened. Mid-April I realized I needed to step up my research due to the mandate, and by June I knew how it was going to play out.
At the time, I still thought the mRNA vax might end up being a good thing. I just didn’t see enough data to bet my life on it. Since then I’ve learned a lot more, and little of it is good.
I was fortunate enough to be almost prepared for retirement anyway. I had to move up my SS; I planned on taking it at 70, and had to at 67, and going on Medicare instead of commercial health insurance. 3 more years of contributing to my 401k would have been nice. I was already accumulating more in traditional savings anyway, and that would have continued.
@Ken Mitchell
Note the author of the SA screed.
Didn’t CowboySlim live in the Panama City/Mexico Beach area of Florida?
That place never really recovered from Hurricane Michael before the illness kabuki started and killed the tourism industry which drove the economy, prolonging the rebuilding process.
I see that CBS is airing a special report at 10pm PDT (so maybe already aired in TX) about Dolly Parton’s passing. I’m sure that it was previously prepared; a common practice, as stated by @KenMitchell.
No, a SoCal desert rat, like me and JimB.
Made the 100th comment just above…
Gah, fell asleep after dinner, in my chair. Indian with rice. Didn’t go out of the green zone, but woke up when blood sugar got back down to around 100, my normal baseline. Pretty steep curves on the up and down.
———–
Gonna get a shower and bed.
n
https://www.zerohedge.com/technology/bluetooth-glitch-exposes-alibabas-secret-tracking-users-developer-says
Just another trick. And another side channel way to collect data.
n
“Judge Rules for Doctor Who Prescribed Ivermectin for Covid”
https://thelibertydaily.com/judge-rules-doctor-who-prescribed-ivermectin-covid/
“(The Epoch Times)—A doctor’s lawsuit against Maine’s medical board can proceed, a federal judge has ruled.”
“An order from the Maine Board of Licensure in Medicine that Dr. Meryl Nass undergo a psychological evaluation for allegedly spreading misinformation about COVID-19 was “based on no evidence or process,” including no probable cause, U.S. District Judge Lance Walker said in an Aug. 20 decision.”
Now hold the medical board personally responsible for half of the Koof deaths in Maine.
Four years. She’s been punished and trying to get her reputation back for four years. She was ordered to get a psych evaluation for ordering ivermectin for a patient. Her medical board called her crazy.
And at this point, the judge only ruled that her lawsuit can continue, and not be dismissed. Nothing has been settled.
Calling people with opposing views crazy and punishing them by forcing them into treatment or camps is a very socialist technique.
They did it with Jordan Peterson too, almost driving him to suicide. Over his refusal to say certain words.
n
“Fleet of ‘doomsday planes’ spotted over US hours after CIA boss visits Moscow”
https://endtimeheadlines.org/2026/08/fleet-of-doomsday-planes-spotted-over-us-hours-after-cia-boss-visits-moscow/
“Several of America’s so-called “doomsday planes” were observed circling over the United States on Tuesday, mere hours after the CIA director made an unannounced visit to Moscow.”
“According to a report from the Daily Mail, flight trackers detected at least five Boeing E-6 Mercury aircraft operating along the West Coast and across the central United States.”
“These large, unmarked jets—built on the airframes of aging Boeing 707s—are designed to survive a nuclear attack and serve as airborne command posts if ground-based military facilities are destroyed.”
I am guessing that Putin told Trump that he is going to nuke Berlin and Kiev today.
These people are making me want to build a bomb shelter in my backyard.
108 comments. Is that a record?
109. I couldn’t resist.
110, just to best Mr. Atoz.
111 because it looks cool… l