Raise a glass to absent friends and those who gave their all.
—————————————————————
Cool, warming later. Hopefully, a nice sunny day. I spent yesterday in bed, and plan to do the same today.
Talk amongst yourselves.
n
Stack.
Mon. May 25, 2026 – Memorial Day
51 Comments and discussion on "Mon. May 25, 2026 – Memorial Day"
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Whit Monday. Good morning.
Today is a holiday here. Don’t yet know what I will do with the day off, but W1 is home from her travels, so I expect there will be plenty of “honey dos”.
Old skool doc sounds good, Nick. Hope you feel better soon.
Lynn, I have been where you are and it is heartbreaking. I can only second what Paul said – hugs.
SteveF, alas, I dreamt neither of biscuits, nor bikinis nor cake. I must have slept like a rock. Maybe I will bake a cake… Hmm. That sounds like a job for a holiday.
Starlink Mini? I’ve heard that they offer a program specifically for backup situations – minimal fee for a small amount of data each month, and then a higher fee when you actually use it. I know nothing about Starlink, but I read about this somewhere…
Why? We haven’t had a landline in years. Mobile phones and internet surely cover all needs? If you really want a “house phone”, it could be another mobile with a very limited plan.
Transgenderism is actually classified as a mental illness. It requires psychological support, not surgery. The wokists have destroyed a lot of lives by pushing this agenda, not only the trans-folks themselves, but the women whose spaced have been invaded, etc..
Swiss decentralization: Whether it is a holiday or not depends on exactly where you live. In some places it is, in others not, in still others it’s a kind of “half-holiday”.
We’re coming up on our next major vote. 12 years ago, we voted to require Switzerland to regulate immigration, because we have way too much of it. The parliament basically ignored the result, doing just a bit of hand-waving, even though the requirement is now part of the Constitution. They were so terribly worried about pissing off the EU. Which would happen, because most of our immigration comes from the free-movement agreement with the EU.
Anyway, this time, the initiative is much harsher, putting a top limit on the total Swiss population, and requiring dramatic measures if the government doesn’t find ways to keep the population below that limit. Of course, the politicians are freaking out, because they will have to do something, and whatever route they pick will piss off someone.
Right now, it’s about 50/50 whether the measure passes…
Politicians need to be reminded of their position in relation to the populace. Burning in effigy might do it. Or not in effigy.
Application to the US is left as an exercise for the reader.
Traditional phone service is still tightly regulated in Texas, and any outage or signal quality issues have to be addressed promptly.
We’ve discussed before how this state “swims naked” when it comes to infrastructure, and, occasionally, the tide rolls out, usually as part of a natural disaster.
During the 2021 freeze, for instance, it was revealed that many of the cell towers around here did not have the required diesel backup generator capacity to cover extended power outages, including the site closest to my house.
By June 2021, the site had a brand new Cat diesel generator. A big one.
To be fair, my cable line remained active that day, but only because I had my own UPS on the modem and primary router.
The line from Doonesbury is, “That’s one lively effigy.”
“Confirmation” is a big business opportunity in the US, something that the two pediatric hospital chains serving the Austin area were pursuing before the Texas Legislature and Governor pulled the plug in 2023.
The RINOs, including the Attorney General who now wants to be a Senator, looked the other way until that point that they needed a distraction from the screw job that is laughingly known as property tax “reform” in the state which was enacted by the Legislature and through an election in November of that year.
The pediatric hospital chain serving Brownsville was also pursuing … something … with a new facility and support infrastructure near I-69 (I’m not kidding about the number) on the edge of town which was nearly complete the last time we went to South Padre Island a couple of years ago.
Vanguard has a short term Treasury fund where they do the math and manage the buying/selling for you in return for an 0.20% expense ratio. It might be worth experimenting with a few grand.
As much as I loathe the company’s politics, the US is arguably in more trouble if Vanguard fails than if the Treasury defaults on the debt payments.
The Geico Gecko famously claims that his wife’s inheritance will consist of a 90/10 split of an S&P 500 mutual fund and a short term Treasury fund. I assume he’s using Vanguard’s funds, but he won’t specify.
Not that I believe The Gecko for a minute since he is also a Dem shill and the inheritance reality won’t hit until after he assumes room temperature, but the company currently holds $400 billion in Treasuries so he knows a bit about that market.
I hold Treasuries in Treasury Direct and another institutional investor company’s fund. The risk with the fund I use is that they have a “stable value” strategy for principal which means the management involves derivatives.
Ironically, “stable value” funds are probably the riskiest in most employers’ 401(k) plans. I debated this point for 10 years with my partner at the Death Star.
“How do bonds lose money?”
Pinhead. He viewed himself as a “sophisticated” investor to the point of even trying to run his own advising newsletter.
The Starlink/SpaceX chapter of The Pizza Box Dream isn’t finished, and, during my career spanning the last 30 years, I’ve seen a lot of lives and capital destroyed in pursuit of that goal of firing the phone and cable companies.
The IPO filing for SpaceX has some scary cash burn rates, specifically targeting AI spending.
Don’t fall into this trap. The go-to manual is the DSM, which evolved over several decades. It’s produced by psychiatrists.
I am critical of all doctors, but psychiatrists and psychologists are in a category of their own. There is a well-known phenomenon that the majority of people who pursue these studies do so because they are f’d in the head. Ultimately, they have a much higher than normal suicide rate.
A lay person with common sense will look at a kook and mentally classify them as “almost normal”, “a little weird”, “needs managed”, “a danger to themselves and others”, and “must be institutionalized”.
Over the decades, psychiatrists have forced normal people to adapt to the crazies, rather than manage or control the crazies to protect the normies. This accelerated under the Tip O’Neill years when all the institutions were decommissioned.
I don’t keep up, because I don’t want to deal with crazy, but many things that were listed as mental illness in older DSMs were dropped. These may fall in the “a little weird” or “needs managed” area, or they may be worse. Much worse.
Trans can sometimes fall into the “a little weird”/”needs managed” category, but instead what we have today is “confirmation”, which means completely adopting and adapting to their mental illness, and pretending it’s normal. Giving them surgeries and powerful hormone treatments that turn them from abnormal sad cases into dangerous violent time bombs.
The bell curve applies whether you want it to or not. Outliers can be helpful, or harmful, to your community and civilization. Pretending they aren’t outliers or forcing people to treat them as normal is harmful. Let the weird be weird, but point them out, publicly.
And above all else, protect the children from those who would do them harm.
What’s this about Texas Children’s Hospital?
It isn’t just “confirmation” surgeries. I give you Dr. Peter Hotez, frequent talking head on CNN, PMSNBC, et. al. during the “pandemic”.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s1uZAl4_nN0
I am sitting here enjoying my morning coffee watching a couple quail and their chicks scavenge through the yard for water and seed.
I suspect the parents know I’m here but don’t consider me a threat until I stand up. One parent stays on the ground with the chicks, the other is up on a fence looking about.
A couple years ago I just casually stuck a bowl under my birdbath to catch the overflow, turns out to be quite the draw for rabbits and quail and other critters.
https://www.chicagotribune.com/2026/05/20/schlitz-beer-last-batch-milwaukee/
The 70’s and the 80’s were the “Enswillification” of American beer brands. Most if not all of the iconic American beers are owned by Eurotrash or worse that have continued the process, spending billions on marketing and pennies on ingredients. I haven’t been to the UK or the EU for years, but I fear I would not recognize the products in their pubs, either.
Fritz Maytag bought the Anchor Steam Brewery in 1965 and birthed the microbrewery revolution in the U.S. with his proselytization and openness to sharing information. Imports surged in the 1970’s and showed the market potential as the startups slowly built out and gained market share. Playboy magazine helped with their advocacy of the better American beers such as Michelob and the German beers such as St. Pauli Girl.
Large American breweries periodically showed that they were capable of brewing good beer, either by contracting to small brands or bringing out their own. One notable effort was the manufacture of Löwenbräu by Miller in the 1970’s, which quickly turned down the path the enswillification. A-B brought out a number of specialty beers under their Michelob brand, but only AmberBock survived for any length of time–it continues to struggle as it suffers from not being “craft beer” or “local”.
Most of the small craft beers are near swill–small batch and local does not equate to quality–neither does ordering brewing supplies in a “kit”. We are in the midst of a twenty year infatuation with hops and fruit which has destroyed many good brewers (and semi-good such as Leinenkugel), and the evolving culmination of the enswillification process is not beer but soda pop with alcohol which is not brewed but formulated from ingredients purchased in tanker cars.
https://townhall.com/tipsheet/dmitri-bolt/2026/05/25/more-europeans-die-because-of-a-lack-of-ac-then-americans-die-to-gun-violence-n2676549
Note that most of Europe is at a higher latitude that New York City.
Up for a while. Want to cycle some of the DM and PE out of my system. And eat.
Of course if the coughing is still crazy bad, I’m going back to sleep.
Coffee is ready, and an egg sandwich.
D2 is playing her power washing simulator game. It’s “So satisfying”.
n
Schlitz was drunk a lot in my youth. It was cheap and found everywhere.
Even when young in the 1970s and used to my father’s bitter Olympia I thought it pretty vile. We would bring it to parties because it was cheap, but we drank the good stuff (Bud, Coors, Lol) before we opened a single can of it.
Preach it, brother! Sadly, it is the same this side of the big pond.
There are at least three micro-breweries close to the BOL, and I would gladly support them if I could, but not one of them makes anything I can drink without gagging.
Nowadays it mostly Firestone and Guiness. Consumption is way below my youth level.
Schlitz was
drunkrented a lot in my youth.Fixed it for you.
Don’t tell me, let me guess: suggesting that she vacuum or put away the dishes from the dishwasher or even run a real power washer on the house and cars results in looks of abject horror and betrayal.
Remembering Sgt. Jared Monti: The Full Story Behind ‘I Drive Your Truck’
https://pjmedia.com/tim-o-brien/2026/05/25/remembering-sgt-jared-monti-the-story-behind-i-drive-your-truck-n4953219
Lee Brice – I Drive Your Truck (Acoustic) // The George Jones Sessions
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=luWKI-QIIgY
When I was a young man I read a story about soldiers on a ship called the Rodger Young.
His story is here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rodger_Young
and the song, and its story, are here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HHR4K5OkbG4
“run a real power washer”
You could put your eye out!
Walk it off, cupcake! Get over it!
Heinlein’s Starship Troopers? (The novel, not the, er, cinematic, er, masterpiece)
Heinlein’s Starship Troopers used the starship named “Rodger Young” in honor of that very soldier, and the troopship was named for him. And the “recall beacon” for the pickup ship played, Heinlein wrote, that song.
The movie “Starship Troopers” had the same name as the book, but the director of the movie said that he was PROUD of the fact that he had never read the book, and the movie contained NONE of the book’s plot elements. In the BOOK, the Mobile Infantry was all male. In the MOVIE, the only really memorable scene was a naked co-ed shower scene, and that was, frankly, the best part of the movie.
Casting? “Juan Rico” was a Filipino, so the director cast Casper van Diem, the whitest actor in the world, to play that role
I think I just discovered another* underlying reason why I’ve never had much respect for Gary Westfahl :
“I further acknowledge that, on two previous occasions, I found myself contractually obliged to praise Simmons, and that I contrived to find a way to do so without lapsing into blatant insincerity.”
which is as authentic and lawyerly as “write me the check and I will make the case”
*in addition to association with George Slusser, and a general feeling that reading him was like looking for insights in a rice cake
There’s more and better flavor in a urinal cake than a rice cake.
————-
Skipped the good stuff for the last 4 hours, and woke every 15 minutes. Even my skin is hurting. W misread the z pak instructions so didn’t give me the double dose to start. The online guidance is not to double any doses. So I won’t. Could be for the best as I was nauseous with just one, two might have triggered a core dump.
As soon as I finish my food, I’m taking the good stuff and going back to bed.
I’ve got stuff to do this week, that can’t be put off, so I need to be at least functional on Wed.
n
The inquiring mind wants to know how you are able to make the comparison.
Yah, Ray beat me to it. Except that my mind is not so inquiring. I’m not sure that I want to know the source of this knowledge. Pretty sure I don’t, in fact.
Drove up to my mom’s and brother’s house to take care of a few things. Mom’s getting old and worn down and probably couldn’t have carried some of thing things I moved on the best day of her life. Brother is in bad shape. Chemo is still working, mostly, but he’s getting to the point that the side effects aren’t worth adding a few months to his life expectancy. He’s not happy about it but you play the hand you’re dealt.
The only nuisance is that an hour of carrying things and taking care of some heavy chores took a scant hour but involved two and a half hours of driving, round trip.
Weather’s been miserable for the past several days but is very nice this afternoon. When I got back, mid-afternoon, I checked on the birds and they were very demanding about being let out. Some of them have different behavior and different awwwwwwwks when they want a treat, when something is wrong, or they want FREEDOM!!!!! They’ve been out a couple hours and are having a good ol’ time, running between favored places for scratching and foraging.
Apropos nothing, it sure would be nice if certain individuals could avoid pooping on their food bin and water tank.
I put an unopened bottle of olive oil in the fridge. The label says 100% pure oil from Portugal, Italy, and Greece.
The oil clouded over night. There was perhaps at most a quarter teaspoon of clear fluid at the top of the bottle. I rolled the bottle around to see how thick the oil was. Thinner than pancake syrup.
This morning the oil was a solid. The color of milk or lard. I guess the agitation of moving the bottle around triggered a ? reaction. There’s a word for it that escapes.
I put the bottle on the counter and after a couple of hours it looked like it did before I ever put it the fridge.
So, I guess it really is 100% olive oil.
Crystalization?
A guzzler.
On this Memorial Day, The City of Minneapolis would like you to remember, uh, St. Floyd, not those who gave their lives for the FUSA:
City of Minneapolis Says to Gather This Memorial Day and Celebrate the Life of George Floyd
Minnesota has been totally flushed down the commode with DEI and PLT.
https://townhall.com/tipsheet/josephchalfant/2026/05/25/trump-mega-supporter-dies-after-brutal-assault-n2676627
The skirmishes are increasing.
n
Wow, second dose of the z pack seems to have made a noticeable difference already. A lot of my brain fog has cleared and the crap in my chest is changing.
Time to eat some dinner and take more of the good stuff and go back to bed. No school for the kids means no alarm clock for me… I think I can make this week work if I take most of tomorrow for recovery too.
n
I sometimes leave the chicken run open at night (with the birds safe in the metal and wood coop), usually when I’ve given them some trimmings or leftovers or such which they ended up not wanting. I figure that some forest critter, rabbit, or other would want it. Almost every time, that turns out to be correct. The chickens have the choice to be picky (assuming that the leftovers are digestible to them and they just don’t much care for it) because they always have at least pellets and cracked corn and usually quite a bit beyond that in a given day. Critters have to scrounge as best they can and can’t turn down pineapple rinds, some kind of rice-spice-vegetable slop that my wife made which came out wrong, and so on. Especially in early Spring or late Autumn, when the pickings are slim indeed.
Anyway, when the run is open, the water tank is always almost dry in the morning. There’s a creek out back which would presumably be enough for the critters. Maybe that’s farther than some skunks or woodchucks want to travel, or maybe this is just more convenient. I have a bird feeder with a low-light camera in the run but never remember to check it, so I have to deduce that the critters are lapping up water from the cup. The summertime water tank has one cup and three buttons. Defying expectation, my chickens were smart enough to figure out how to get water from the little buttons, not just from the cup. The other day, after they’d knocked the water tank over and consequently had gone up to six hours without water, all eight clustered around it after I filled it, all managing to get at least a little right away.
Such watering holes are known to predators, and prey will profit from avoiding them when they have other options.
Understood, but needs must. There’s been a lot of rain lately and there are probably little puddles on the forest floor but that’s not always the case. I’m not sure how most forest and field critters handle water if they aren’t herd animals with some members keeping watch.
Incompetent Time Traveling Haters:
https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhjyQSSFWSMOHFw5yvcQKzyk0ZM-pirq4X3qt4NNJ8a3WnkPTMuniTJ3aRp7qZWuOEfc-E1y10wjkSOGxG5GEbBlG5T0VEoposrqa8sC0qSNJTp2dZ7e1fXFwacAgWSo0VGiy4KZHNr-9_u2jq8C4gpd1ZbSaskmUDyL_z2uYECK2kaS4z_bemIitfM0bc/s766/Meme%20-%20sax%20haters.png
From:
https://bayourenaissanceman.blogspot.com/2026/05/memes-that-made-me-laugh-313.html
The IPO filing for SpaceX has some scary cash burn rates, specifically targeting AI spending.
A failed rocket motor costs a lot more than just the parts and assembly of the rocket motor. Typically the contents of the rocket are at least a quarter billion dollars.
Musk is following Heinlein’s stories about D. D. Harriman exactly. It is almost as if Musk read the stories and took notes.
Trans can sometimes fall into the “a little weird”/”needs managed” category, but instead what we have today is “confirmation”, which means completely adopting and adapting to their mental illness, and pretending it’s normal. Giving them surgeries and powerful hormone treatments that turn them from abnormal sad cases into dangerous violent time bombs.
The bell curve applies whether you want it to or not. Outliers can be helpful, or harmful, to your community and civilization. Pretending they aren’t outliers or forcing people to treat them as normal is harmful. Let the weird be weird, but point them out, publicly.
And above all else, protect the children from those who would do them harm.
Whatever you do, keep the children from joining the Mutilated. I don’t think that we can stop the doctors from giving them horrible drugs in their formative years though.
Wow, second dose of the z pack seems to have made a noticeable difference already. A lot of my brain fog has cleared and the crap in my chest is changing.
Z Packs are awesome for sinus infections.
There’s more and better flavor in a urinal cake than a rice cake.
Is this a fresh or used urinal cake ???
Weather’s been miserable for the past several days but is very nice this afternoon. When I got back, mid-afternoon, I checked on the birds and they were very demanding about being let out. Some of them have different behavior and different awwwwwwwks when they want a treat, when something is wrong, or they want FREEDOM!!!!! They’ve been out a couple hours and are having a good ol’ time, running between favored places for scratching and foraging.
Apropos nothing, it sure would be nice if certain individuals could avoid pooping on their food bin and water tank.
Just be glad that they are not four feet tall. Frankly, ostriches and emus scare the you know what out of me.
Drove up to my mom’s and brother’s house to take care of a few things. Mom’s getting old and worn down and probably couldn’t have carried some of thing things I moved on the best day of her life. Brother is in bad shape. Chemo is still working, mostly, but he’s getting to the point that the side effects aren’t worth adding a few months to his life expectancy. He’s not happy about it but you play the hand you’re dealt.
Chemo sucks. My wife took 16 shots 21 years ago and has resolved not to do that again. The day her scalp felt like it was on fire was the kicker. She found a recipe online that started with shaving her head, using an astringent to clean, and then using a linseed oil to moisten it moderated the effects somewhat.
https://townhall.com/tipsheet/josephchalfant/2026/05/25/trump-mega-supporter-dies-after-brutal-assault-n2676627
The skirmishes are increasing.
https://areaocho.com/the-score/
They are going after standout individuals now.
“Terrified Seattle neighborhood builds massive barricade across streets amid horrific crime wave”
https://nypost.com/2026/05/25/us-news/west-coast-neighborhood-builds-massive-barricade-amid-crime-wave/
“Residents in a troubled Seattle neighborhood have begun erecting large homemade barricades across residential streets after a surge of gun violence left many fearing for their safety.”
“Neighbors living near Aurora Avenue say repeated shootings, alleged prostitution activity and late-night chaos have pushed the community to a breaking point.”
Is this the future of the USA?
Hat tip to:
https://thelibertydaily.com/
“It Was Never About The Climate”
https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/it-was-never-about-climate
“Why haven’t you ever seen a climate change protest before the Chinese embassy anywhere?”