Hot still. And crazy humid at the BOL. I’m hoping Houston is a little better. Not counting on it. Yesterday at the BOL it went over 100F and the air was saturated. It was still 88F at 9pm and felt like it. I’ll be happy when Fall arrives. Until I’m too cold…
Did a bunch of stuff yesterday before finally leaving the BOL at 9pm. Look at yesterday’s comments to see how little I actually did…
Today is mostly about pickups. One in Alvin, a couple others scattered around. I could push the Alvin pickup to tomorrow, but IDK if I’ll have any better plan then. I’d like to at least cluster a couple.
And I’ve got other stuff to do today now that I’m home. Kid taxi is one of them. Grrr.
Stacking is easy.
Do it. You know you want to.
nick
Wednesday. Good morning!
Nothing to report. Work, work, work. September is the punishment for holidays in August…
Have a beautiful day.
Must resist the urge to channel SteveF!
Eh? Why? I’m awesome! The world needs more of me.
If he’s going to do it, he’d better get cracking. Between the inevitable Obama- and Biden-appointed judges issuing halts and the physical time it takes to get an idle refinery running again, if he signs the order today, his successor might see them producing some output.
I see what you did there! 😀
It’s not just incompetent foreign truckers that are a menace:
Pilots Predicted Last Weekend’s Crash. We Found the Forums
My parents talked about the deposits being so close to the surface in Santa Barbara that the rocks at the beach were coated with oil.
No one will ever be permitted to drill off of that coastline, however. God forbid.
The pass between the Coastal Range and the Cascades is another chokepoint at times in winter for anything moved by truck.
A gap in Tesla’s vaunted charging network existed for about a decade between Grant’s Pass and Eureka because the Lithia Auto Group is a big employer in and around around Medford, but the rise of the Dutch Bros. diversity project coffee chain, headquartered until recently in an old strip mall on the other side of town, broke the dealer network’s political power.
78F at 6am, and gonna get warmer.
Coffee in my belly. Donut in my belly. Time to do some stuff? No, because all my auction stuff starts no earlier than 10am, and some later than that.
I’ll have to do some other stuff.
n
Yeah like about three blocks from my house
Sat on the couch last night and managed to post this on Mondays page instead of Tuesday —-
Took W1 for sushi tonight. Early 5 pm and almost empty still. She told the waitress and cook it was ‘her’ 54th anniversary. I said it was too bad her husband didn’t come along. Good start. We were going to get a couple of drinks after but our usual watering hole wasn’t open. Went to the local premium ice cream joint and blew 25 on a root beer float and root beer freeze, Wild time for people in their 70s.
As in more units, or a larger unit?
Apple’s big event is today. May be a folding phone priced over $2K. Yikes! If there is a new Apple TV I will probably be buying one. I might trade my M4 MacBook for a new M6, maybe. Depends on the screen improvements.
I weigh a fraction of what I did when I was 18.
An improper fraction, but still.
The lack of basic airmanship is telling. You can’t plant a plane that size halfway down the runway and expect to stop. They should have executed a go-around before they even crossed the threshold. The pilot should be exposed soon.
Chinese pilot, “We Toolow” or Sumting Wong”.
Are the pilots still alive?
I would think that a used 767 would still be a $100 million plane to entrust to incompetent pilots.
There is an insurance company there today asking uncomfortable questions along with the NTSB. I will bet that the insurance company ends up weaseling out of coverage.
The USPS is getting more incompetent by the day. We did not get mail at the office or home yesterday. I know that we are RFDs but that is no excuse.
I just watched the Apple “Event” on YouTube.
I gotta say, I like the iPhone Duo (folding phone). Available in October, so there will be more hands on before I make a decision. I’d like to see one in the store to check out the Books app.
Starting at $1,999 is steep, but I’ll only be 71 once.
I was reading the late night posts from yesterday and responded to Lynn’s comments on the California fuel crisis there. Reposting:
“aggressive litigation from activist groups,”
DOJ needs to look hard at the funders. Smells like enemy action.
And since those funders have a lot of overlap with the Democrat Party, there should be a $100 million ad buy explaining to everyone why they can’t get gas.
The federal government should treat this in two stages:
First, ensure the supply for military and federal purposes, as well as industries vital to defense.
Two, put the California government on notice that if state government fails the state of California will be dissolved and returned to territory status under federal control.
As a territory the residents of the former state of California will be able to subdivide and petition for statehood, with part of the requirement a plan for rescinding failed policies and ensuring election security.
But the first consequence should be every illegal alien out within seven days. No funds, no baggage, only skin.
ADDED:
Trump can use the Defense Production Act and tell state government and the activist judges to pound sand. If he gets any crap from the judges they should get charged with treason and thrown into a holding facility on a cutter anchored somewhere in the ocean that gets maximum chop.
The industries vital to defense should have the military set up to dispense gasoline on site to cover the commuter’s needs. Maybe set up a nice little grocery store, too, to save unnecessary trips.
I watched the event on Apple TV. I am not yet willing to pay $2K, starting price, for a phone. I am leaning to the iPhone 18 pro because of the improvements in the camera. Variable aperture was not mentioned on the folding phone or MagSafe charging. I have a 15 Pro which will be three releases behind for me. Enough to consider the upgrade. About $900 with trade I am not getting some payment plan with a provider that locks me in for two years. I did that once, never again.
Impressive technology when you consider my watch has more computing power, more memory, more storage (excluding tapes), than that maxed out Burroughs B-3500 I used in the USAF 55 years ago that was the size of a tennis court, consumed more power in an hour than my home in a week. But I doubt my watch can run nine 9 track tape drives, two printers, a card reader, and a card punch at the same time.
My parents talked about the deposits being so close to the surface in Santa Barbara that the rocks at the beach were coated with oil.
No one will ever be permitted to drill off of that coastline, however. God forbid.
IIRC, there are still six operating crude oil and natural gas wells way off the beach, like 10 to 20 miles, over the horizon from the 1950s and 1960s. Each has a pipeline running back to land. There are dozens more but their output has run out and they need to be redrilled. California will not let them do it.
There have been tar balls on the Gulf of America beaches all of my life. You need to be careful not to step on them, the jellyfish, or the catfish skeletons.
The Duo’s main camera is the same as the Pro’s. It only has 2X optical on the telephoto. It supports ProRes and I “think” variable aperture. MagSafe of course and wired charging. No FaceID, only TouchID.
Get your VA discount. $200 off which is substantial.
And Apple Pencil later this year.
Well it could but the connector space is limited.
I weigh a fraction of what I did when I was 18.
An improper fraction, but still.
https://www.mathsisfun.com/improper-fractions.html
“An improper fraction has a top number larger than (or equal to) the bottom number.”
“It is usually “top-heavy“”
Math nerd terminology.
Mosdef on the Mil discount and trade in of my 16 Pro Max.
“Apple wins Patent Detailing a new Stretchable Display Architecture for Curved Devices and Wearables”
https://x.com/PatentlyApple/status/2097302725788852681
“Apple has secured a granted patent covering a display architecture designed to stretch around complex surfaces while preserving the stability and reliability of individual OLED pixels, potentially giving the company another technical route toward displays that conform more closely to curved electronic-device housings.”
“Rather than attempting to make every component of an OLED panel equally elastic, Apple divides the display into relatively rigid pixel islands connected through highly stretchable regions. The approach allows the flexible portions to absorb mechanical deformation while protecting the more delicate OLED structures inside individual islands. Apple specifically describes the technology as enabling portions of a display to accommodate compound curvature — curvature along multiple axes rather than simply bending around a single radius.”
“Obviously Apple doesn’t give away what the initial target device(s) will be. It simply lists a wide array of possible devices taking advantage of this invention, such as: a MacBook, iMac, iPad, iPhone, Apple Watch, a pendant device, smartglasses, other wearable or miniature devices and more.”
“At the heart of Apple’s design are discrete rigid pixel islands, each containing one or more OLED pixels, sitting on a flexible polymer substrate. The islands themselves can have a tensile-strain threshold below 1%, while the interconnecting regions may tolerate strain exceeding 10%, 15% or even 20%. Apple says the resulting display as a whole could sustain tensile strain greater than 3%, including configurations around 5% or within a 3% to 10% range.”
Stretchable OLED. Impressive. I wonder what the life will be.
I was reading the late night posts from yesterday and responded to Lynn’s comments on the California fuel crisis there. Reposting:
“aggressive litigation from activist groups,”
DOJ needs to look hard at the funders. Smells like enemy action.
The military fuel storages in California are almost empty. I suspect that most of the military are filling their personal vehicles from those storages also.
Two, put the California government on notice that if state government fails the state of California will be dissolved and returned to territory status under federal control.
As a territory the residents of the former state of California will be able to subdivide and petition for statehood, with part of the requirement a plan for rescinding failed policies and ensuring election security.
I like this idea. It would work.
Yesterday, in response to @Lynn’s post about excessive traffic on his web server, I said that you could use htaccess directives to block traffic (like AI bots, etc) by blocking their unique user agents. He could use the web server logs to identify the ‘user agent’ value in the bogus/excessive requests, and block those specific user agents with htaccess directives.
I need to correct that – the blocking is done via the ‘robots.txt’ file, not the ‘htaccess’ file. The directives can be formatted like this one, which blocks the ChatGPT user-agent ‘GPTBot’ that it uses:
# Blocks ChatGPT bot scanning
User-agent: GPTBot
Disallow: /That directive in the robots.txt file will block access to all site files/folders by that user-agent. Of course, that assumes that the machine using that user-agent is properly respecting the directives in the robots.txt file. I suspect that the commercial AI agents scraping sites are doing that properly, and using the user-agent values that they have documented.
The ‘browser’ (any HTTP request) can set up any user-agent value, as can specific ‘browsing’ programs. I think that Nick user a customized user-agent value for some of his web site access – he’s mentioned it before.
An analysis of the actual server logs will tell you the user-agent values used by the bogus traffic. Then decide whether to block by that user-agent value. Of course, you don’t want to block commonly used ‘public’ user-agent values.
Note that WordPress sites (like this one) normally use a ‘virtual’ robots.txt file, so that the directives therein can be modified by a plugin. An actual robots.txt file will override the virtual file, so the WordPress admin needs to be aware of that. You can see the virtual robots.txt file on any WordPress site by adding a parameters of “?robots=1” to the site’s URL. You might find interesting information about how the big WordPress sites use this feature to block specific user-agents to protect files from access by bots.
“Disgruntled AI researcher: This technology ‘could kill us all by the end of the decade’”
https://finance.yahoo.com/technology/article/disgruntled-ai-researcher-this-technology-could-kill-us-all-by-the-end-of-the-decade-165859921.html
“A researcher who worked for both OpenAI (OPAI.PVT) and Anthropic (ANTH.PVT) says the companies are “gambling with our lives,” prompting him to resign and leave the industry.”
“”Do not underestimate the power of this technology,” Jacob Coxon wrote in a widely shared thread on Tuesday evening. “These will soon be superhuman systems that can hack anything, revolutionize any field overnight, and acquire real power and resources. We have all witnessed the progress in each of these domains, and progress is not slowing.””
“Coxon, who said he resigned from Anthropic this week, said the threat is coming from inside the house”
“”The people building AI earnestly believe that it could kill us all by the end of the decade. This is not a marketing stunt. If anything, many executives and senior researchers will couch their phrasing in the press to sound sensible — but I hear the same people express fear privately. No other human activity poses this level of danger,” he wrote.”
“Anthropic and OpenAI are arguably the two frontrunners in the furious race to develop and scale artificial intelligence. Both are set to go public at massive valuations as markets continue to bet heavily on the technology’s potential, despite a historic debt run-up across the industry.”
Chicken Little, the boy who cried wolf, or a real cry for help in the wilderness?
The ridiculous thing is that Cali has oil pumps in peoples’ back yards. They’re all over the place. They might have shut them down since it’s been 23 years since I left but you could see them going up and down as you were driving around.
There are warehouses in Los Angeles with nothing in them but a pump-jack and oil storage tank(s) in them.
California was never a US Territory.
I was reading the late night posts from yesterday and responded to Lynn’s comments on the California fuel crisis there. Reposting:
“aggressive litigation from activist groups,”
DOJ needs to look hard at the funders. Smells like enemy action.
Most of the groups are probably NGOs funded by USAID.
“We have met the enemy and they are us.”
California was never a US Territory.
Huh, I leared something today.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Statehood_Act
I guess that Trump could reverse that statehood process and make it a territory for being idiots and causing a failure of the west coast.
Monty: AI Friend
https://www.gocomics.com/monty/2026/09/09
Uh, that is no friend.
Rename it West America.
Rename it West America.
I believe some of the inhabitants want to name that section Jefferson.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jefferson_(proposed_Pacific_state)
No, name it Left America.
Although many (including Trump) believe Trump can do anything, removing a state from the USA would be extremely difficult.
A U.S. state cannot unilaterally leave or be “removed” from the United States.
In practice, a state could change its status only through an extraordinary agreement involving the state, Congress, and probably the constitutional-amendment process—not by a state referendum alone. Nor by any ‘presidential decree’.
““You Better Get Ready for … War”: Socialists Call for “War in the Streets” and the End of Capitalism”
https://texasinsider.org/articles/you-better-get-ready-for-war-socialists-call-for-war-in-the-streets-and-the-end-of-capitalism
“The Democratic Socialists of America is now larger and more powerful than at any time in our history.”
““You better get ready for … war.” Across the country, radicals are openly planning for the next stage of their movement, and notably, the Democratic establishment is not part of their plans. Despite the talk of a “Big Tent Party,” socialists are riding high on a surge of support and talking purges and revolution.”
“In Chicago, radicals gathered for a conference on Marxism during what many view as the heyday of socialism in the United States. The Democratic Socialists of America is now larger and more powerful than at any time in our history. Socialist candidates are winning elections across the country as Democratic establishment figures from Sen. Chuck Schumer (D., N.Y.) to Gov. Gavin Newsom pander to the movement.”
“Speakers in Chicago used the conference to push supporters to the next stage in the movement, including some openly calling for violence and the end to capitalism.”
Civil War may be coming soon. Soon as in the next couple of years.
“Why We’re Losing the Iran War” by Matt Bracken
https://steelcutter.substack.com/p/why-were-losing-the-iran-war
“The US is fighting a 21st Century war with a 20th Century military”
“We’re fighting this war on the other side of the planet, and our personnel and extremely expensive and difficult to replace assets are sitting exposed above ground. Iran is fighting on its home turf, using its geography to great advantage.”
“Iran is six times bigger than Colorado, with significantly higher mountains (up to 18,000 feet). Tunneling into solid granite is something Iranian engineers mastered decades ago. Locating and striking a tunnel entrance with a multi-million-dollar standoff weapon does little to nothing to stop Iran from launching their ballistic missiles. These “missile cities” are built like gopher towns, with many entrances. Earthmoving equipment is on standby to clear temporarily blocked entrances, while the others remain operational.”
Wow, Bracken is incredibly negative. And it is true that we do not have any warships in the straits of Hormuz?
That has come up here before as well as the compromise which admitted Oregon as a state in 1859 with a “whites only” residency restriction which ran until ~ 100 years ago.
Why the downvote? Is not taking advantage of every discount considered normal? Tell you what, next time something is on sale refuse to buy it until the price is back up to normal.
They’re serious about Jefferson in extreme SW Oregon and parts of NW California.
When we left Vantucky, the two counties around Coos Bay were fighting a tax war with the OR Governor over law enforcement coverage at night.
In those two counties, if you don’t live within a city, you didn’t get law enforcement response between Midnight and 6 AM if you dialed 911, and the State of Oregon was miffed about that situation.
I was reminded today that Dr. Jerry Pournelle passed away on 8 Sep 2017.
I miss his commentaries.
RIP.
I’m sure Dr. Pournelle would be delighted with what is happening at SpaceX.
The last time we were out in California, I wanted to go by the Chaos Manor house since we were in the vicinity, but we lost a bunch of time at the Griffith Observatory, hiking the three mile round trip from where we parked to the complex and back.
Next time.
BTW, the guide books lie about the easy accessibility to the Griffith Observatory.
Like everything else Colonists have on their bucket lists, the place is overrun during daylight hours.
Tonight’s movie was Terminator. I don’t think I have ever watched it. Pretty much everyone dies but the star of the movie. Shrug.
“California was never a US Territory.”
Splitting hairs. It was never part of a formally declared “organized territory” , but is referred to as an “unorganized territory”* .
If “returned” was incorrect–use “degraded”, “devolved”, “reclassified” . “Stitcanned” would also work.
Although never formally termed “territory”, the lands ceded from Mexico after the war became the property of the United States. Inasmuch as California and other states not formerly territories were required to adopt a state constitution prior to becoming states of the union–just as former territories–it is reasonable that abandonment of that constitution, either formally or de facto, should give cause for the federal government to consider repeal of the California Admissions Act.
I don’t know of any requirement that would prevent repeal of that act by a new act passed by a simple majority vote of both houses of congress and signature of the president.
should have included this link in the above post:
Organized vs. unorganized territories
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Territories_of_the_United_States#Formerly_unorganized_territories
“Terminator 2” or “T2” is the high water mark of that franchise. I went to a 35th Anniversary screening of the movie last week.
My wife and I laughed after the movie, “When is Linda Hamilton going to be outside our house with a sniper rifle aimed at your head?”
“Not me. Note that the engineer in the movie was a high paid diversity hire living in the hills above LA in a house with a pool. Even then, that was a million easy.”
The original flick was another one of those movies in the 80s which went nowhere until it hit HBO.
Fraudulent Cancer Research Papers Increased 10x in Recent Years
https://hotair.com/david-strom/2026/09/09/fraudulent-cancer-research-papers-increased-10x-in-recent-years-n3818816
Every endeavor dominated by liberals becomes characterized by fraud.
Author David Strom references an earlier article he wrote in 2023:
Innovation in science has slowed to a crawl
https://hotair.com/david-strom/2023/01/06/innovation-in-science-has-slowed-to-a-crawl-n522086
Tonight’s movie was Terminator. I don’t think I have ever watched it. Pretty much everyone dies but the star of the movie. Shrug.
Nah, the Terminator died too.
Oh wait, you mean Sarah Connor lived “grin”.
The second movie, “Terminator 2: Judgement Day”, is freaking awesome.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terminator_2:_Judgment_Day
“Terminator 2” or “T2” is the high water mark of that franchise.
Good writing, bigger budget, and perfectly timed to take advantage of better DGI.
One of the best counter-examples to “sequels are always worse”.
AI Has Solved One of Math’s $1 Million Millennium Prize Problem
https://www.quantamagazine.org/ai-has-solved-one-of-maths-1-million-millennium-prize-problems-20260908/
Golly! Who could have predicted that?
I think that Nick user a customized user-agent value for some of his web site access – he’s mentioned it before.
– yes, because
programmersweb developers are lazy and teh sux. All they seem to be doing is checking version number of FFox, without knowing that there is a supported stable version for ‘legacy’ OSs that has a lower version number. This makes Chase.com unusable because they lock me out, not because my browser won’t work on their site. Google calendar gives me an “unsupported browser” banner telling me to upgrade. In both cases, it works fine when I use the agent switcher add on to pretend I’m using the mainstream version of FFox.I can’t just leave it set though, because sites that use cloudflare authentication (like my auction site, hibid.com) sometimes fail to see me as “human” if the user agent switcher is active.
Teh sux.
—————-
@paul, I’ve watched all and parts of Terminator an unknown but quite large number of times. When I was in college, we had a 50″ rear projected tv, the thing was huge when people still watched 13″ tvs at home, and someone would have Terminator on every afternoon and most nights. “your clothes, give them to me.” Of course, the terminator, Sarah Conner, and her baby are all back for the next one.
——————
One of the school activity support groups needed some sewing done on some weird clear but iridescent fabric. Of course it frays when you look at it wrong, so why not make banners out of it?? I pulled a 4 thread serger out of my stacks to stitch the edges and reinforce them. W did the work, but I had the machine! I want all the machines to make or repair anything…
—————–
Ol’ Abe Lincoln the usurper used the power of a Federal army to enforce his will on the southern states, exactly as the Founders feared. There’s no leaving the union after that.
Dunno if the Fedgov can kick one out. They’d probably try to sell it, like Alaska back to the Russians.
n
Are we talking about the same movie?
What I watched was “the terminator” was a game hunter. An alien from elsewhere hunting humans in somewhere tropical. Like in a Yucatan climate. Collecting skulls as trophies.
It’s right at the beginning of the movie, a space ship dropped off a shuttle craft.
Arnold beat him and the hunter blew himself up.
Gotta go walk Buddy the Beagle. Snoring like a chainsaw…..
“9/11 Proved We Need Less Third World Immigration And Instead We Got More”
https://thefederalist.com/2026/09/09/9-11-proved-we-need-less-third-world-immigration-and-instead-we-got-more/
“As we approach the 25th anniversary of the 9/11 Islamic terrorist attacks, Americans are still taking their shoes off, throwing out water bottles, and undergoing full-body scans before boarding an airplane. It’s all part of the security protocols Washington established after 19 Muslim terrorists came to the country, hijacked four planes, and murdered nearly 3,000 people.”
“And while the government changed the way Americans travel in response to the 9/11 attacks, it refused to do the one thing that would have prevented the terrorist attack (and many future ones) in the first place: stop letting in Third World foreigners.”
“If there was one obvious lesson from 9/11, it was that immigration is a national security threat and admitting people from Third World countries where there is instability, hostility, and anti-American sentiment carries risks that no airport scanner can fix.”
Hat tip to:
https://thelibertydaily.com/
OpenAI researchers or their AI agents may have gained access to (and benefited from) the work that he and Alpöge did using OpenAI’s models.
– so the open AI guys watched what people are doing with their models and decided to front run the contest?? Bet that’s not in the terms of service… until now.
n
A hungry director with something to prove helps.
Cameron had to prove that the first flick wasn’t a fluke.
The CGI in the flick totals less than three minutes. Otherwise, “Terminator 2” is a masterpiece of practical effects and Stan Winston makeup.
Terminator 2 and Aliens (A2) beat the originals and are both excellen.
@paul, sounds like you watched Predator. Features Arnold, but he’s just a guy…
n
I Made a Wood Bat as Illegal as Possible
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LOYiUXB9hQA
Nice billet of ash turned slightly oversize, then bored for cork, finished with lacquer, and given a havy coat of spray adhesive (pseudo pin tar).
Watching this guy hammering 400’+ repeatedly was fun.
But I’d like to consult on a Mark II.
“The CGI in the flick [T2] totals less than three minutes.”
Indeed. The cheaper it got, the more it was used, until the tipping point to ensh*ttification and the raison d’être, no plot or acting needed.
The transporter dissolves in the original Star Trek were only a few seconds per episode, horrendously expensive, and took weeks to deliver, but Roddenberry knew he had the signature shot. Unsurpassed until Stargate SG1.
Ol’ Abe Lincoln the usurper used the power of a Federal army to enforce his will on the southern states, exactly as the Founders feared. There’s no leaving the union after that.
Dunno if the Fedgov can kick one out. They’d probably try to sell it, like Alaska back to the Russians.
No, we are not going to kick California out. Not unless, we split the country into two countries as Kurt Schlichter’s awesome Kelly Turnbull books discussed.
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07XXD1TVX?tag=ttgnet-20
What Trump is reputedly thinking about doing is turning California into a Military Reservation under the control of the USA Military. The current legal think is that the President can do this under the Defense Production Act.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defense_Production_Act_of_1950
If our military bases in California, of which there are many, cannot be serviced by the current state, then the thinking is that Trump turns the entire state into a military reservation and takes it over.
Trump has four to six weeks before California runs out of diesel and gasoline.
“Dunno if the Fedgov can kick one out. They’d probably try to sell it, like Alaska back to the Russians.”
If you can’t drive a car responsibly, or raise a child, the government takes them away.
If you can’t run a state responsibly and you’re headed for an economic brick wall at 100mph with no brakes, then you and your government get retired.
The unorganized territory that became the state of California was the property of the U.S. government. It can revert to the U.S. government, the criminals in charge can go to gulags, 4-5 new states can be drawn, and the illegal aliens can be evacuated by school bus, JATO units, or a conveyor that forms them into a human jetty to dam the sea of sh*t that the Mexican criminals are sending north to pollute the waters.
“
TrumpCalifornia has four to six weeks before California runs out of diesel and gasoline.”Screwsum would look good chained to the stays of a rickshaw as a diesel alternative.
Alternatively, he’d look good imortalized on a replica Nicolae and Elena Ceaușescu Wall along with Bonta, Bass, Pelosi, and mthe rest of his party of traitors.
Newsom is done. He has no clue about what to do in California.
Ironically, his family money came from his father acting as consigliere for the Getty family as in Getty Oil up until he became a judge in the 70s.
Daddy Newsom may have been at the table when Getty Oil bought ESPN from the network’s founders in the late 70s.
It is a big club, and you aren’t in it.
“Misplaced (Valley of Fire #1)” by John Van Stry
https://www.amazon.com/Misplaced-Valley-Fire-John-Stry/dp/B0F2JB5DF2?tag=ttgnet-20
Book number one of a three book science fiction space opera series. This is continuation of a series of two books set in the 2100s and a series of six books set in the 3000s, ending two years prior to this series. I read the well printed and well bound POD (print on demand) trade paperback published by Raconteur Press in 2025 that I bought in 2026. I have ordered the following two books in the series.
I love Space Opera. And I love pulp science fiction. This series is both and a great example of the merging of the two. In fact, this series reminds me very much of the Robert Heinlein juvenile books, the Piers Anthony “Bio of a Space Tyrant” series, the “Mutineer’s Moon” series by David Weber, and the Perry Rhodan series. The dialog is very frequent and the action moves along quickly.
In the far distant future, The Solarian Imperium consists of 38 star systems including Earth and the Sol system which were made uninhabitable in the War of Succession. Emperor Chase Morgan is the latest in a long line of Morgans ruling the Imperium. His family keeps power because they are genetically modified with machine interfaces in their DNA. So are all of the Nobles: the Earls, the Dukes, the Counts, and the Barons. Any machine of any importance, and especially the space ships and the military weapons, requires a human with machine interface to tell the AI what to do. And the Imperial family machine interface in their DNA is the best of all the interfaces and has special rights with all of the machines in the Imperium. And nobody knows or understands how tight the Imperial human machine interfaces are with every AI in the Imperium.
Eric Wolfram and his sister Candi (Candace) are living with Dar (Dartanion) in his scrap yard on a frontier planet outside the Solarium Imperium. Dar rescued them at ages 7 and 10 from a drunkard who was not taking care of them. They were refugees from a space ship that was attacked by pirates where their father, mother, and older brother were killed. They took a lifeboat to the nearest planet. Both Eric and his sister have a DNA machine interface of at least the Ducal level. And Eric is growing up and running with a bad crowd.
The author has a website at:
https://jvanstry.blogspot.com/
My rating: 5 out of 5 stars (I am tempted for a 6 star, will reread soon)
Amazon rating: 4.7 out of 5 stars (1,174 reviews)
Lynn
Two black cats. And distant gunfire as someone mag dumped. Nice tiny little fire.
Time for bed though. But first a shower to get the smoke off me.
And a snack.
n
Huh, I just noticed I don’t have a category tag for the economy. Maybe I should add one.
n