Cool again. Clear too. Maybe warmer later? It was gorgeous yesterday. Loving this weather. Windows down, stereo cranked… National map has us in the clear for at least a couple of days more. Weehaa…
Did a bunch of stuff yesterday. Internet and truck stuff in the morning, then kid stuff in the afternoon, with hobby stuff in between. There are some details in yesterday’s comments.
Today I’ve got a couple of pickups, and some other stuff to do, as well as the normal kid taxi duties. It’ll be a busy day. They are all shaping up to be busy for the next few weeks as school ends and summer begins. I have a feeling that the next four years of High School and college will be a flurry of activity. Hopefully there will be time in there for some contemplation and remembrance.
Hopefully, the world won’t implode.
If it does, stacks will help.
nick
Tuesday is the least-respected day of the week.
71F and overcast. But there is still coffee in the cupboard, and in my cup. Heavy cream too.
Kid’s lunch is made. Treats for her historical dinner party are in the bag. Costume is on the floor, ready.
Just have to achieve sentience.
n
– that would be us. And that was last year.
n
So much for the market temper tantrum. All of my numbers are back where they were before the announcement about tariffs.
I’m surprised that Williamson is way down at #22.
The Colonists have been busy establishing new developments up Ronald Reagan west of Georgetown.
The corner near my house where Dutch Bros. and Tim Hortons have been slugging it out since the New Year now has four more fast food places under construction simultaneously.
That corner is strategically located between the Colonist developments and where most of them seem to work at Dell and HPE (legacy Austin Compaq campus).
No signs yet, but my wife heard that one building is Panda Express.
Drs are so conditioned against smoking that they are killing people by saying vaping is safer…
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-14703051/organs-failing-die-habit-americans-loyda-cordero-galiero.html
Smoking, inhaling smoke, is self limiting. It hurts. Vaping, not so much. This isn’t the first story about someone destroying their lungs with vaping, never mind the dubious chemicals they’re ingesting.
n
I never got stuck on smoking. I tried in 1969 at my first USAF assignment. I was in a room with three others, two of which smoked heavily. I thought I would give it a try. After a week I gave it up. Just really nasty. Even though I did not smoke, my clothes always reeked of the stench.
I never got hooked on coffee in spite of every office having a pot (which violated regulations but everyone looked the other way). There was always two of the 20 gallon coffee pots in the mess hall that were full of coffee.
Booze was also cheap. I got drunk twice and opted to never again get that way. I still will have the occasional glass of wine while in Europe. I have done the tasting tour at Jack Daniels. And that is about it.
Cigarettes and booze was cheap on base because there were no state taxes as military installations are considered federal property. The lack of tax is no longer the case as booze and cigarettes are now taxed at state rates and the money given to the states.
The military, when I left in 1979, was aggressively clamping down on smoking and drinking. Smoking was in the process of being banned in the offices. Everything was still tax free, but the end was in sight. A couple of my supervisors always had a bottle of booze in their desk drawer that they used to “enhance” their coffee experience. Now that will get a person in significant trouble.
Basic training in 1969 people that smoked got more breaks than those of us that did not smoke. I also did not understand how the parade grounds, which were off limits, always had several cigarette butts scattered around when I was part of a detail to police the parade grounds.
Not for my one grandfather. He smoked Camel cigarettes, the short ones without filters. He would consume two to three packs a day. My other grandfather smoked a pipe a few times a day. Of course back then, according the ads on TV, 4 out of 5 doctors recommended Camel cigarettes. Which was an outright lie or the survey participants consisted only of doctors that smoked Camel cigarettes.
They used to add stuff to keep the cigarette burning, and to enhance addictiveness. 3 pack a day smokers were rare, although my first construction job, laboring for a bricklayer, had one. He smoked Lucky Strike no filters. Outdoors, on the jobsite all day, he could smoke constantly.
Pipe and cigar smoking is different as you don’t purposely inhale. You do get some “second hand” smoke and even that is irritating, but you don’t do it on purpose.
n
Even at three packs a day, that was pretty close to the human limit. How many 5 pack a day smokers have you ever heard of?
LSMFT. (If you remember, you are old).
>>Tuesday is the least-respected day of the week.
https://youtu.be/oQPDCkJn9Zw?si=cxMj__C2-hi7Fbgd
Kiddie porn was the new problem in the military 15 years ago when I started my first grad school attempt. The Forensics class I took had Jesse Kornblum of the OSI speak about combating the issue on military PCs.
On duty!
Roberts could have ended this nonsense during tRump’s first term. That tells you something.
Winston’s taste good…
Like a cigarette should…
My current employer goes totally medieval on smokers. I think it is partially a health issue – the boss’s name is on a local hospital – but also an acknowledgement of the problems tech companies face with smoker cabals in their ranks.
I’ve noticed the problems for a while, but this is the first place I’ve worked where management has done anything driving them out.
We threw a party for a friend that turned 21. It was early 70’s, and one of the guys had a buddy who was in the military. Birthday boy was presented with a 40-oz bottle of Jim Beam. Base price was less than two bucks.
During my tours in Korea, booze was liquid gold in the Ville. Most people got their monthly limit to negotiate, uh, “services”, on the outside.
re: Vaping
The poison’s in the dose. I’m not surprised to hear about extreme cases where people are non-stop vapers, and who knows what added chemicals they use. I’ve known some vapers who consider it a hobby and do it non-stop.
Two of my boys quit smoking cigarettes by vaping. They got their nicotine fix without all the other chemicals, and one weaned slowly off the vape; the other quit vape cold-turkey.
Part of smoking is the ritual. I have fond memories of packing tobacco into my pipes, lighting it the first time to dry the tobacco, tamping, relighting, etc. Now I don’t even know where a good tobacconist is. Sometimes, I’d go into the store just to walk through the cigar humidor and smell it.
My grandfather did all tamping, on lit tobacco, with his fingers. His skin was so thick he never felt the heat. He could grab both leads of a 110 volt line and not feel a thing. He had to moisten his fingers to get any sensation. I remember watching the flames of his strike anywhere matches, that he lit by rubbing on his pants, curl around his finger while lighting his pipe.
My son went through TSA with his two year expired Texas Drivers License with no problems or comments this morning. I was ecpecting a comment at minimum.
His expired TDL did have the Real ID mark though.
Most addictions have the ritual component. And that needs to be broken as well as the physical addiction, when you’re trying to quit. Removing yourself from the triggers of the behavior helps too.
Cigarette smoking is incredibly addictive. My best friend in high school smoked a lot. His parents gave him cartons of Marlboros as birthday gifts. He developed a cocaine addiction, and it escalated to the point where his enablers were intravenous users. He realized he was about to inject the shite, and decided to quit. He quit cold turkey, without help, just stayed in bed for a couple of weeks, toughing it out. It took him several YEARS of gradual reduction to quit smoking cigarettes. THAT is a huge difference and cements in my mind the addictiveness.
Vaping seems to hit the same triggers and to be as difficult to quit, since most people massively increase their nic intake when they vape. As for reducing consumption of harmful chemicals, I think that’s wishful thinking and not factual. It might reduce some of the byproducts of burning, but that soup is still heated and volatilized, and no one knows what’s in most of it.
I think it’s important to realize that widespread cigarette smoking, especially of factory produced blends, is a relatively new way of consuming tobacco. It was deservedly short lived in the grand scheme of things. Vaping should follow the same path.
————
There are arguments to be made that caffeine and nicotine fueled the Enlightenment and later the post WWII industrial boom. Both have medical effects that enhance certain aspects of performance. Both fueled the American Revolution and subsequent government too.
I’m not going to say that consuming tobacco is beneficial, but I will say that some of the side effects can be beneficial under some circumstances. To ignore that is not honest. Like anything that has been politicized the truth is no longer interesting to most people.
n
“Is Britain on the Brink of Civil War?”
https://dailysceptic.org/2025/05/12/is-britain-on-the-brink-of-civil-war/
“According to David Betz, Professor of War in the Modern World at King’s College London, many of the preconditions for civil war exist in Britain today. Using academic studies on social cohesion, civil war causation theory and social attitudes surveys, he argues that the following preconditions are in place: elite overreach, factional polarisation, a collapse in trust, economic pressures, and the perceived downgrading of the majority population in a previously homogeneous society, are all present in contemporary Britain.”
I have been wondering this for years.
Hat tip to:
https://thelibertydaily.com/
Friday the 13th falls on a Tuesday this month. What a day. Grr.
Someone else must have the rental car reservation.
Tampa Airport has private security checking Id and tickets/shopping passes going to the airsides, and my wife got grief over an expired license the last time we flew through TPA on Southwest.
Salma Hayek gives a whole new meaning to “Golden Girls”. We live in the future, where 58 years old can look like this…
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-14707155/Salma-Hayek-58-lands-cover-Sports-Illustrated-Swimsuit-issue.html
She’s not the only one from my youth to still look hot either.
n
No, but Labour is Dead Government Walking right now.
I really do believe that the new season of “Clarkson’s Farm” will deliver the kill shot that forces Starmer to call the election.
Related: My favorite quote regarding gun control arguments:
The facts, although interesting, are irrelevant.
Realize SI would have given the cover to Karla Sofia Gascon if … her … cough …. career hadn’t melted down in a public way this Winter.
Disney probably paid for the replacement last minute cover shoot. IIRC, The Eternals will appear in ”Avengers: Doomsday”.
If “Doomsday” doesn’t work, The Mouse is done.
MrsAtoz doesn’t have a Real ID DL (don’t ask). She likes to whip out her military ID at TSA, but they pointed out it is expired and may stop taking it (if they aren’t too lazy to look). Why the goobermint didn’t put “Indef” on all retired IDs is beyond me. Some do, some don’t (like ours). We are supposed to get a new military ID by the end of 2026 to be in the “new” system. We’ll probably be chipped, Iris scanned, and DNA sampled.
We both have Passports/Cards, too.
And what’s up with the geezerettes in SI? VS learned their lesson with the fugs, slugs, and fattys.
Gascon arguably took Pamela Anderson’s nomination slot for “The Last Showgirl” prior to the career meltdown.
Anderson looked good even drabbed down in “The Last Showgirl”.
Not a great movie, but very good.
LOL. The LSM/PLTs/Dumbos/Trannys are freaking out over “Trumponomics”. Alas, I have to wait to get a new DJI drone thanks to the tRump dUmp. Hopefully DJI will realize they are losing a $ billion market in the US and say “fcuk it”. They aren’t selling the one I want in the US until things settle down.
The SI cover probably goes to the highest bid.
Again, you’re lucky the model was “assigned female at birth”.
I saw something the other day about Dylan Mulvaney getting money for her dream project of a “Legally Blonde” reboot.
No one needs a “South Park” ripping more than that individual, but they won’t touch … her.
Always have her Passport Card handy. You never know when the TSA guy is having a bad day,
”Sure, you have rights, but how badly do you need to make that flight, lady?”
And smokers often got extra time off in the form of “smoke breaks”, while non-smokers were expected to continue working.
while non-smokers were expected to continue working.
– one of the shops in Hollywood brought me back in for a while to work on a specific project. I THINK it was some recreated scenery for closeups or reshoots during the live action Jungle Book. Something about not being able to get the trained monkeys into whatever foreign land they were using for location shoots…
anyway, I got partnered with a very talented sculptor/carpenter. He smoked 2 packs a day and because it was Cali, during the shift against smoking, he had to suddenly go out of the shop to smoke. I figured out that he was getting paid two hours of overtime EVERY DAY to smoke cigarettes. I started going out and talking to him while he smoked. Boss asked me why I wasn’t working, I told him. Told him the math too, cuz I’m more management than labor… It wasn’t too long before you could only smoke on your 15 minute break.
Yeah, it was kind of a dick move, but the smokers were bleeding the company for 10-12 hours of overtime a week. Each.
n
Letterman killed pipe smoking cold with a running gag one summer after a particularly memorable “Dave’s Video Collection” segment with a VHS tape, “How to Smoke a Pipe”.
I don’t even remember the gag other than implied homosexuality between two “brothers of the briar” greeting each other in the video, but, for several weeks after the sketch, “Pipe Smoker” was a pejorative on the show.
Hollywood is fast becoming a side hustle for tech companies, and the one constant we’ve noticed in cities where tech dominates the economy is that they don’t want to pay for decent healthcare benefits, even the companies with “Legend of” level billionare founders.
Paramount is about to become one of Larry Ellison (Oracle’s) hobby companies with the Skydance merger, and Warner Bros., at $8/share and $40 billion in debt can’t be far behind, most likely heading to Apple along with Pixar following the Disney Bankruptcy.
My current employer has self-financed benefits, but United administers the plans. Right before the United CEO was assassinated last year, I had routine blood work denied and sent to my wife’s BCBS to cover. The bill took six months to pay.
@Greg
I just don’t see that. It would be a first in my lifetime of UK politics. With the enormous margin of the recent win; no Party would choose to go into a new election. More likely, would be for the Labour Party to choose a new leader, who would almost automatically become the new Prime Minister. The problem with that is a change would most likely be to the left, making them likely even less electable at the next General Election (Like what happened to Jeremy Corbyn.) Higher probability that Starmer will drop all his principles (he doesn’t have any), as he has just done on legal immigration, and drop Net Zero, plus whatever he feels will get him re-elected.
X just became unusable. This may be the biggest blessing to me so far this year.
Auto play and auto scrolling suck.
Went and picked up the wife’s new vehicle. She decided on a new Honda Pilot. The difference in price to a similar one year old vehicle was less than 8%, and the warranty more than makes up the difference. Plus Honda is offering 2.99% financing… so she went with new.
It’s a glass cockpit, and I’m sure that stuff won’t last forever. The damn screens are constantly popping up warnings, scolds, and settings. The 360 degree camera is a nice feature, if a bit creepy. Doesn’t matter as I will only drive it a few times a year. She likes it.
————–
spent some time working on my hobby website. Mostly just making tweaks, trying to get used to the tools and where stuff is. I hadn’t finished some setup step, so I didn’t have a page with all the blog posts on it. When I finished that, the page was broken, missing the header and footer. I figured out how to add those back to the template. It’s a steep learning curve, and I’m still just poking at it with sticks.
President liked the online store setup, and now wants a calendar or upcoming events area. So I’m looking at that. From one of his comments, I don’t think he’d actually looked at the site in the last year. He’s had plenty to say about it during the year though. F me.
————–
Had to do something other than watch auctions close…
Now it’s time to start getting ready for bed. I really am trying to get to bed earlier. 4 hours a night isn’t cutting it.
n
Man, I barely won anything tonight. Nothing for my hobby, and only one meerschaum pipe out of a dozen pipes I was bidding on. No accessories. Barely any new things for the household. Skunked I say.
———–
while I was watching auctions close, I was trying to get google analytics set up and configured properly for this place and my hobby site. Dunno if it worked as there is some lag in the reporting, and a bunch of stuff that can be set up wrong. I’d like to get some solid numbers and see if it’s changed much over the years.
———–
And I still need to go to bed.
n
>>Realize that if you got your wish and the switch to Daylight Savings Time ended, the sun would be up at 4:19 AM local time.
Seems to work okay for Arizona (and Hawaii).
Time for bed – maybe before @nick…of course my “bad” sleep habits don’t help with my health issues.
Later folks…