June 2021 Archives

Today's auction - too damned high

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Great for the auctioneer and for the client but not so good for us poor schlubs trying to find a deal.

Example - from the auction:

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5" Angle grinder - final bid was for $125.00 - on top of this is sales tax plus another 13% auctioneer's premium ($16.25).
The model # 6123-30 is discontinued.  The replacement is # 6124-30 - from Northern Tool:

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So, you can get a brand new version of the same tool with full manufacturer's warranty and Free Shipping for $149.00.  You do have to pay sales tax (as before) but there is no additional 13% Auctioneer's Premium and you get the full manufacturer's warranty. It is brand new in the box.  All of a sudden, that great deal does not look too good. You are literally saving less than eight bucks for an older, discontinued, out-of-warranty tool.

The chain fall hoists went for around $80-$150 which is about half new price.  For something like this, I would need to examine them carefully as they can crack or fail under load.  Not good.  I am inclined to buy new.

Not to mention, the site is about 120 miles and two ferry rides away - they do not ship.
You have to go there and pick up in person.

Everything else was like that - bidding up to the point of absurd.

Couple more auctions in the pipeline but nothing with anything I am interested in...  Oh well...

The local utility is currently showing 19,847 customers without electric power.  Yikes. This is getting on to more than a week without refrigeration, cooking for some, air conditioning, pumps at gas stations, restaurants, grocery stores, radio stations, doctor's offices (hospitals have backup), etc...

What is really odd is that this is not featured more in the news.  Almost nothing nationally and the Detroit local news is more focused on the flooding than the electrical power outages. A few headlines:

I would be writing asking questions about the state of the infrastructure. Was there ever money in the city and state coffers to maintain and upgrade the infrastructure?  If not, why?  If there was once and there is none now, where did it go and why? Spent on some pet social program maybe? Sad state of affairs but nothing surprising for a Democrat stronghold.

I am ragging on Democrats for a reason.  Show me a Democrat-run city that has clean and safe streets, minimal homelessness, low crime, good educational system (their graduates are successful), well funded maintenance of infrastructure.

Taking things a step further - how about low incidence of mental health issues?  Gun and knife violence, homelessness and drug use - again: all the hallmarks of a well-run city. How are the middle class doing? Well? How about small businesses? That whole area was wealthy beyond compare.  Motor City. Vibrant culture. The workers were well paid, lots of really nice and well-maintained houses for all economic levels. People moved there from all over knowing that they could get a good job, raise their families and have a great life. What happened? Democrats.

I knew it - vaccine

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Time to start wearing my AFDB on a regular basis.

Politico is a proud member of the Democrat Media Cartel.  For them to publish something this critical of our beloved Vice President indicates that things are worse than we realize. From Politico:

‘Not a healthy environment’: Kamala Harris’ office rife with dissent
When Vice President Kamala Harris finally made the decision to visit the Mexico border last week, people inside her own office were blindsided by the news.

For days, aides and outside allies had been calling and texting with each other about the political fallout that a potential trip would entail. But when it became known that she was going to El Paso, it left many scrambling, including officials who were responsible for making travel arrangements and others outside the VP’s office charged with crafting the messaging across the administration.

The handling of the border visit was the latest chaotic moment for a staff that’s quickly become mired in them. Harris’ team is experiencing low morale, porous lines of communication and diminished trust among aides and senior officials. Much of the frustration internally is directed at Tina Flournoy, Harris’ chief of staff, a veteran of Democratic politics who began working for her earlier this year.

In interviews, 22 current and former vice presidential aides, administration officials and associates of Harris and Biden described a tense and at times dour office atmosphere. Aides and allies said Flournoy, in an apparent effort to protect Harris, has instead created an insular environment where ideas are ignored or met with harsh dismissals and decisions are dragged out. Often, they said, she refuses to take responsibility for delicate issues and blames staffers for the negative results that ensue.

She was over her head as a lawyer, let alone the California Attorney General, let alone Vice President.
I can't wait for the 25th Ammendment to kick in and her to ascend to the Presidency.
Welcome to the shit-show.

To work - picking up the coke

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Heading out shortly to get a couple hundred pounds of coke for blacksmithing. Couple moved to the island.  Had a coal-burning furnace in their old house and brought the coke with them - they use a little bit for their outdoor firepit (it has a distinctive odor - I like it, they do too) but don't need the rest.  Free.

Decidedly cooler today - actually kicked the space heater on a little bit.  73° and overcast outside - putting on some long pants before heading out. Dump run tomorrow - need to move some things around to the storage locker and sort some there first.

How hot was it

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Seen on the road:

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So true - coffee

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Bill Cosby released from prison

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Good news for Due Process.  Say what you will about Mr. Cosby and his actions, a deal was made, the government reneged and Mr. Cosby went to jail.

This has been rectified - it will be interesting to see if there is an appeal and/or a judgement.

And out the door - nuttin'

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Very quiet out there.  Putting in a few hours volunteering and then back home for a quick lunch and pick up the coke this afternoon.  Dump run today or tomorrow. Yard work. Usual stuff.

Yet another day in paradise

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Nice and cool - overcast.  Long pants and sweatshirt weather. Back to normal.

Out to work shortly - the usual morning routines first. Pick up the coke later this afternoon. Finally, cool enough and dry enough to do some yard work so get that started today and tomorrow as well.

Big nothing on the internet - no news that catches my eye. Small town in B.C. got up to 121°F during the heat wave. If this is verified (still up for question), it will set a record for this planet for 50° North latitude and above. We need to remember that this is weather and not climate.  We had a very similar heat event in 2009 - not as hot but only by a few degrees.

And then there is this tone-deaf idiot in the Biden administration.  From the New York Post:

Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm suggests climate change played role in Florida condo collapse
Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm suggested that climate change could have played a role in the deadly collapse of a Florida condo tower — and was ripped by experts and online critics alike for the “ghoulish” opinion.

If that is the level of her thought, no wonder energy prices are spiking.  What favors did she do to land that post?

Fun fun fun - ADS-B reciever

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Been tracking airplanes tonight.  I started with FlightAware (using one of their receivers) but they filter out all military aircraft  💩

I live across the bay from a large Naval Air Station and specifically wanted to see the good stuff. Been tinkering with some scripts but do not have anything running on my receiver as yet.  Was using this website and saw an aircraft that did not have any commercial designation attached - walked outside and saw a Growler right where the website said it would be. Very cool.  Should have the scripts running sometime soon.

This is very much of a set-it and forget-it device.  I will refer to it when I see something up in the air and I want to know what it is.  It will also be interesting to track events like Blue Angels performances, comings and goings of unusual aircraft from the Boeing museum and from the Arlington Air Show.

My one complaint is that since I live at the base of a large bluff, I do not have line-of-sight for anything South of here.  Had the thought this evening about offering this to the local Ham Radio club to locate on their repeater tower at the top of the island - a bit under 600' above sea level.

Quite the ride - from $9.99/lb to $12.99/lb in thirty days. Here are the first three photos and here is photo #4

And here we are today at $10.99:

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Forty-three days later - a buck more than where we started but still, $2 cheaper than it was 11 days ago.
Some wild and major fluctuations.  No comment from the meat department staff - I asked several times and they did not know what was happening. No word from corporate.

From New York City station WPIX:

Board of Elections appears to delete latest NYC mayoral primary numbers after acknowledging discrepancy
Just hours after New York City’s Board of Elections released ranked choice voting numbers showing a shrinking lead for mayoral contender Eric Adams, officials acknowledged a discrepancy in the ballot count.

Shortly after that, the results they’d posted to their site disappeared and a message read that unofficial results would be available starting Wednesday. The BOE did not explain why they removed the results.

Adams is a retired cop.  Very much into law and order. Democrat but in the classical conservative sense.
Kathryn Garcia is the candidate from the deep state.  They want her in office and are trying to make this happen.

Dearborn, Michigan power outages

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It was flooding - the rain was pretty heavy. From WDIV-TV, Detroit, MI:

Parts of Dearborn enter 4th day without power after flooding
Dearborn was among the worst hit by major flooding in the Metro Detroit area over the weekend. The severe storms also knocked out power to thousands.

Four days later, many neighborhoods, specifically in the South End area of Dearborn, are still in the dark.

DTE Energy power outages have ranged from more than 50,000 outages, down to below 15,000 outages over the last four days, but one thing remains consistent -- Dearborn is in the dark.

DTE Energy offered the following:

Two DTE substations in the Dearborn and Southwest Detroit areas sustained extensive damage from the heavy rains and resulting flooding that occurred overnight Friday into Saturday morning. The flooding in the substations left equipment inoperable, resulting in outages for approximately 12,000 customers.

Maybe they should spend more time and money on their infrastructure and less on their social programs.
Just sayin'

So true - the internet

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Fun at the vets office

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Showing their bias - Vogue

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Unreal:

And they spent five years without putting Melania on the cover - a real supermodel.
Vogue on the outside, vague on the inside.

A cultural icon:

And out - the usual stuff

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Nice day for a dog walk.  Take them in to coffee and then running a few errands to the North.

Dog food and stuff at Costco, Home Depot, bank, food coop...  Got the farmer's market this afternoon.

Working outside next couple of days - the lawn has gotten out of control. Dump run too.

Great post mortem of the heat event

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Local legend Cliff Mass does his usual wonderful analysis of the heat event:

The Big Heat Post Mortem and the Next Few Days
It's over.

Throughout the region, all-time temperature records have been broken, if not smashed. Just to name a few:

    • SeaTac hit 108F, beating the previous record of 103F.
    • Olympia reached 109F, exceeding the previous record of 105F
    • Quillayute, on the WA coast, zoomed to 110F, absolutely smashing the previous record of 99F
    • Portland hit 116F, incinerating the previous record of 107F.
    • In eastern Washington, Dallesport tied the all-time state record of 118F
    • East of I5, many locations in western Washington exceeded 110F yesterday.

Believe it or not.
Seattle now has a higher record maximum temperature than Miami, Atlanta, Washington DC, or Chicago. Portland's record high exceeded that of Houston, Austin, or San Diego.

Over 50 observing sites in western Washington surged above 110F

You want record high temperatures? Come to the Northwest!

Much more at the site - a very good look at a very unusual event.

I'll take it - weather forecast

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Sitting here smiling over my oatmeal:

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Racism in America - the truth

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Heh - triggering people

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The truth does that - fun to watch:

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A new day full of wonder

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And cool temperatures - got down to 64° last night. Currently 70°. I am happy. Dogs are happy.

Power is mostly back on in the Pacific Northwest - Vancouver Island still has a couple thousand people without power but their service is really tender.  Goes out a lot.  Dearborn, MI still has about 11K people without service (it was 47K two days ago)  - wonder if it was a substation that went out or something... Nothing on the news even now.

Slept in - quick surf and then out for dog walk, coffee and a few errands.

And down - 78°F

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Done watching videos - time for bed.  WA State is down to only 10K outages, Oregon at 787 and BC around 8K - I would hate to have to climb a pole this afternoon. Brutal.

Dearborn, MI is back online with only 14,984 customers out. Nothing in the news as yet as to what caused it. Their weather was not bad today - rainy but not hot.

mic drop

Dang - why didn't I think of that.

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Round dogs. Go and read here: Round Hot Dogs Exist and I Ate Several

These stories write themselves

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Of course it is San Francisco - from the Chronic:

Armed robbers held up news crew as it interviewed Oakland's chief of violence prevention
Two armed robbers held up a television news crew that was interviewing Oakland's director of violence prevention outside City Hall on Monday afternoon, just hours after the police chief warned of worsening crime amid cuts to the police budget.

Oakland police reported that the two suspects approached the newscasters at 3:09 p.m. and tried to steal a camera. After a scuffle, a security officer pulled out a gun and ordered the suspects to leave. They fled without the camera. No injuries were reported.

A statement from the Police Department described the incident but did not identify Guillermo Cespedes, head of the city’s Department of Violence Prevention, as a victim.

Reality meet narrative. Brings to mind that great quote from Frank Rizzo:

A conservative is a liberal who got mugged the night before.

So true. Hope that this is an object lesson to all involved.

A good question - food preperation

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96° and falling

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King County (Seattle) has 15K customers without power

Looking around the USA, Dearborn, Michigan is showing 47,145 customers without power. 81°F and raining. Odd...

The cold salad was perfect - satiating but not too much.

The gays may be loud. They do have an excellent PR department. I'm a numbers guy and the numbers do not lie.  About 4 out of every 100 people lie somewhere on the homosexual spectrum.  The majority just live a quiet life with their sweetie. The tranche who loudly display their pathologies - gender, etc... are a few percent of that 4 percent. A statistical rounding error. Noise.

This population is not evenly distributed.  If you were flaming and were born in some small town in Iowa, you would move to San Francisco stat.

Something that is very fun to see these days is large organizations bending over backwards to pander to this 4% at the expense of the other 96% of their clients.  Disney does gay days at their theme parks - this is the perfect way to do it. Quiet and everyone has a great time.  Don't forget your red shirt. The National Football League is going to discover that their idea was not the way to do it. From Russia Today:

‘Football is gay’: NFL releases bizarre video after player’s coming out
The National Football League has declared “football is gay” and “transgender” in a new ad. What seems like a mission to alienate the NFL’s red-blooded fanbase is a stunt backing Raiders star Carl Nassib, who recently came out.

A video released by the NFL on Monday features simple white text on a black background, declaring among other things that “football is gay,” “football is lesbian,” “football is queer,” and “football is transgender.” It ends with the league’s logo decorated in pride colors and with a promotion for The Trevor Project, a youth-focused LGBT charity.

One of the comments to their video summed it up perfectly:

“Football is football,” he wrote, “stop trying to push this s**t down our f*****g throats.”

Exactly.  The NFL has a responsibility to their fans as well as to their advertisers.  If their advertisers are not getting the audience they want, they will pull the funding. The fans may have favorite teams but there are a lot of other televised sports out there. Soccer (the other footbal) looks fun and certainly has a passionate fanbase...

End in sight?

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It was 103° about an hour ago.  It is now 101°

Cold salad for dinner. Forecast now calls for a break around 9:00 PM.  News from the coast is that the marine layer is coming ashore - cool breezes out there.

Been drinking water all day and probably peeing out 1/3 of what I drink.  Sweating like a pig. Been soaking the pups with the garden hose every hour or so - Truffle avoided it the first time but leashed her up and she now loves it.

Electricity? 2.2K customers out in Oregon, 3.8K in Western WA, about 9K in BC.
California does not publish the numbers directly - they show the locations but no aggregate totals.
This site has it at 7.7K out.

Some fun tomorrow - auction UPDATE

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UPDATE: Misread the city. More like five hours, 130+ miles and two ferry rides away.
Screw that. Some nice stuff but not driving that far in this heat.

A major shipyard about 40 miles away - VIGOR - MARINE REPAIR YARD

The preview is tomorrow - hoping that the temps have broken by then.  Supposed to get much cooler by tonight but it is 103°F outside now so not bloodly likely...

Another case of wishing that I had some extra room - some large machine tools going for very cheap.  What I am looking at are some welding accessories - rod ovens, comealongs, chain falls, plate holders, clamps, etc... Take a look at them tomorrow and see what the prices are like Wednesday morning - I'll bring my laptop to work and monitor the auction from there.

And it hit 100°F

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Still at 33% RH - 88° in the garage.  

Bleaghhh...

Been listening to a lot of Nile Rodgers and Chic.  Happy music.

General Milley - a bit of history

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The President of the United States is the Commander in Chief of the U.S. Armed Forces.
All of them. No question. No quibbles.
From the London Daily Mail:

'You can't f***ing talk to me like that': Trump screamed at Joint Chiefs Chairman Mark Milley in the Situation Room when he refused his order to take charge of the crackdown on George Floyd protesters

    • Trump and Milley got in a shouting match after Trump told Milley to take charge of the protest crackdown
    • 'I said you're in f---ing charge!' Trump told him, according to a new book
    • Milley told him it was not his responsibility
    • Trump called the account fake news, but senior officials confirmed it to author
    • Follows earlier excerpt of Trump reportedly telling Milley to 'crack skulls'
    • Two senior Trump administration officials told The New York Times that aides wrote a draft proclamation to invoke the Insurrection Act
    • The proclamation was drafted on June 1, 2020
    • That same day, Trump had given a fiery speech in which he threatened to invoke the Insurrection Act of 1807 and said he would call up the military
    • 'I will deploy the United States military and quickly solve the problem for them,' Trump had said in the speech
    • He 'was aware' the aides had drafted the document, one former official said
    • Trump never invoked the act and denied that he had wanted to deploy active-duty troops in a statement to The New York Times

Former President Donald Trump got in an obscenity-laced screaming match with Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark Milley as the president tried to get Milley to take charge of a crackdown on domestic protests last summer.

Trump berated the top military commander and Army General over the president's demand that Milley oversee the effort – which Milley resisted by invoking longstanding constraints on military interference in domestic affairs.

'I said you're in f***ing charge!' Trump yelled at Milley, according to a new Axios excerpt from Wall Street Journal reporter Michael Bender's book, Frankly, We Did Win This Election: The Inside Story of How Trump Lost.

'Well, I'm not in charge!' Milley shouted back, according to Bender, further stoking Trump's fury.

'You can't f***ing talk to me like that!' Trump responded.

#1) - President Trump did have the authority to call in the military.  The National Guard might have been a better choice but since they are run by each State, the chain of command is not quite as direct.  The Military does whatever their Commander tells them to do. More information? The Insurrection Act

The Insurrection Act of 1807 is a United States federal law (10 U.S.C. §§ 251–255) (until 2016, found at 10 US Code, Chapter 15, §§ 331-335, renumbered to 10 USC, Chapter 13, §§ 251-255) that governs the ability of the President of the United States to deploy military troops within the United States to put down lawlessness, insurrection, and rebellion.

#2) - If we had rounded up the ringleaders and handed out substantial sentences to the rioters, rioting would no longer have been "fun" or "edgy" for the kiddies and their acting out would have stopped inside of a day or two. We would be a lot better off.  Several thousand people would still be alive and several thousand businesses would still be serving their neighborhoods. The only "good" that came out of these "peaceful protests" was for the deep state and their ability to control us and to cement their power.

It was never about Justice.  It was about totalitarian control.

My only question is - where was this when it was soooo needed:

General Milley is scum and that is insulting some very wonderful scum.
Don Surber has the whole sordid story:

Milley bombs desert to change subjects
Having bombed in a congressional hearing last week, General Milley (pronounced Miley Cyrus) decided to throw some bombs in the Syrian desert to get everyone off his case. The general's little Social Justice Warrior speech turned off many a veteran and many a Trump supporter.

Milley is supposed to defend the American flag first, last, and always. Let others protect the Rainbow flag and the BLM banner.

The Pentagon announced, "At President Biden's direction, U.S. military forces earlier this evening conducted defensive precision airstrikes against facilities used by Iran-backed militia groups in the Iraq-Syria border region. The targets were selected because these facilities are utilized by Iran-backed militias that are engaged in unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) attacks against U.S. personnel and facilities in Iraq. Specifically, the U.S. strikes targeted operational and weapons storage facilities at two locations in Syria and one location in Iraq, both of which lie close to the border between those countries. Several Iran-backed militia groups, including Kata'ib Hezbollah (KH) and Kata'ib Sayyid al-Shuhada (KSS), used these facilities."

Biden acted on Milley's advice.

Much much more at the site. Lots of links and some interesting history.

Riding it out - temperature

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98°F outside with 33% RH.  81° in the garage so not bad with the fan running.

Got a sprinkler running on low outside and the birds are enjoying it. There is a barn swallow nest right at my front door - they built their nest on the closer of the screen door. They had finished it and were living there by the time I noticed it so letting them hang out there for the summer until the chicks are fledged.

Laying low until it cools off later tonight. Doing some laundry, decluttering the garage, cleaning house. Basic, low-key, low-energy stuff.

One of these is not like the other

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My new pup Truffle is very mouth-oriented. Found one of these in her mouth yesterday:

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Guess which one.

From Vox Day:

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Reminds me of this wonderful video from 11 years ago:

Me? 100% Austrian school. Anything else is ephemera. Do the numbers for yourself.

Talk about stupid - from McClatchy news:

Surfside official was sent disturbing report. He told board condo was ‘in good shape’
A month after an engineer’s report flagged “major structural damage” at Champlain Towers South, the chief building official for the town of Surfside told residents the condominium was “in very good shape,” according to minutes from a November 2018 board meeting obtained by the Miami Herald.

Ross Prieto, who left the post last year, had reviewed the engineer’s report, the minutes say. Records show condo board member Mara Chouela forwarded a copy to him two days earlier.

An email posted on the town’s website shows that Chouela sent Prieto two reports: the “structural field survey report” by engineer Frank Morabito of Morabito Consultants detailing the building’s structural deficiencies, and a mechanical and electrical engineering report by Thomas E. Henz. P.E. And it was Chouela who introduced Prieto at the meeting with five of the seven board members, along with property manager Alexandria Santamaria, condo board lawyer Marilyn Perez and interested residents who had gathered in the building’s recreation room.

And of course:

But this past Saturday, Prieto told the Herald he didn’t remember getting the report.

And of course, they have emails Prieto sent after the meeting saying that everything went well. Looks like the bottom line was simply money:

An estimate from Morabito at the time called for about $9 million in structural work. When he told residents, “of course everybody freaked,” Alvarez said. The average assessment for owners in the 136-unit building was about $100,000 apiece, she said.

Well, they saved their money and lost their lives. Hope that this is a wakeup call for other structures.

Curious as I am currently reading Henry Petroski's 2016 book: The Road Taken: The History and Future of America's Infrastructure.  Money set aside for infrastructure upgrades and repairs always seems to be shunted over to various pet projects and then, when something happens, it is some dire emergency that "came outta nowhere".
The Hernando DeSoto Bridge for example.
Closer to home? The West Seattle Bridge.
We need to change our priorities.

71°F outside and 63% RH - slept in this morning. Heading out soon to walk the pups and then get some coffee.

Spending today in the garage/shop which is the coolest room in the house in more ways than one.

Big wildfire started yesterday and is involving 20,000 acres of land - Eastern WA.  Lind, WA which is home to the wonderful Combine Demolition Derby

Down and up

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Outside temp is down to 81° from 97°, relative humidity is up from 36% to 53%

Calling it quits for the night - some videos and an early bedtime.  Getting up early to take the pups for a nice long walk and get my coffee when the place opens at 8:00 AM - sit and read for a while and then bail back home before it starts to warm up.  The garage stays pretty cool so spending tomorrow there.

Some power outages: 18K in Oregon, 11K in WA State. BC with 12K customers affected.

Some wildfires in Oregon but most are contained. Season is just starting though and there are burn bans posted everywhere. Fortunately, cooler weather is heading our way...

A case of moral equivalence

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Ok for one culture, not Ok for another. From the Black Entertainment Television website
This is from 2016 but just ran into it now - still as relevant now as it was then:

[He Did What?!] The Story Behind a Prominent #BLM Activist Accused of Pimping Out a 17-Year-Old
Prominent Black Lives Matter activist Charles Wade, who is also credited with co-founding the non-profit Operation Help or Hush, was arrested in April and charged with human trafficking and prostitution. He has denied the allegations, claiming that he was simply trying to help find a young woman somewhere to live.

As reported by the Daily Caller, the 33-year-old Wade was arrested after an undercover police officer answered an ad on a website called Backpage for a 23-year-old prostitute.

When the officer arrived to meet in College Park, Maryland, he learned that the girl in question was in fact 17 years of age and reportedly called Wade her "manager."

So basically, this young woman was Mr. Wade's slave. How white of him.

I tried googling his name. Lots and lots of hits on this story but nothing after.  It was inconvenient to the narrative so it was dropped like a hot potato and the media hushed it up. After all, it's such old news 'ya know...

ADS-B receiver - antenna

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Getting some good data from my really crappy antenna.  Three days of operation and I have 62 contacts from more than 250 miles away and 863 from 200-250 miles.  Pales in comparison to the 57,755 contacts from overhead to 50 miles but still, it's working.

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First up will be to get the other script running and then build a better antenna and mount it on the roof.  The receiver is very small and talks to the computer through a USB cable.  Going to try an active cable to see if I can mount the receiver directly connected to the antenna in a weatherproof box.  Cut down on signal loss.
Always stuff to experiment with. 

Staring down the barrel - weather

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Tomorrow is going to be a ball-buster followed by a major drop in temps.
Cliff Mass has the scoop:

Even More Extreme: Extraordinary Record Highs Followed by Perhaps the Most Rapid Cooling in Northwest History
If you are living west of the Cascade crest of Oregon and Washington, tomorrow will be a day you will never forget.

The latest model runs, all at very high resolution, show even more profound extremes than previously predicted. And the end of the event will be extraordinary, with temperatures falling by as much as 50F within a few hours.

A couple of patterns lined up just right to cause this.  One for the record-books.
Much more at his site.  Circles and arrows and a paragraph on the back.

Gun crime - a simple observation

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Nothing takes the wind out of the sails of an anti-gun argument like the truth.
Here is just one example:

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Photoshop but still

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Sure feels like it - know this intersection off of I-5 South of Tacoma (near the mall):

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John McAfee's own words:

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Truth. A political murder.

Talk about shooting yourself in the foot for future work.

I think that it is a given that the current media infatuation with WOKE is just that and like every other fad, this too shall pass.  It will soon be relegated to the dustbin of history.  "What the @#$ were they smoking?" will be the comment from the future. My thought is just like people now are being censured for tweets they made a few years ago, this petulant little act is going to bite Ms. Berry on her ass.  From Legal Insurrection:

Olympic Hammer Thrower Gwen Berry Turns Away From American Flag, “P*ssed” National Anthem Played
Gwen Berry, a hammer thrower who qualified for the U.S. Olympic team during the trials, apparently is trying out for the wrong country’s Olympic team. During the trials, she turned away from the American flag and said she was “pissed” that the “Star Spangled Banner” was played while she stood on the podium for a bronze trial medal.

Berry says it felt like a “set up” to be forced to endure the horrific torture of seeing the flag and of hearing the national anthem . . . . of the country whose Olympic team she wants to join. Surreal.

Bronze, not Silver and not Gold.  She was never going to get the A-list endorsements to begin with.  And now, she will be known as: "the woman who did what?" whenever her name comes up for consideration. I think that it is safe to say that her career is not over, it never started.  She killed it. Her responsibility.  She owns it.

The sell-by date on WOKE is rapidly approaching and I am safe in saying that this is true for all people, all races, all cultures. WOKE is childish posturing - nothing less, nothing more. Look at me.  I am special.

And back home for the evening

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Got up to 97°F and 36% humdiddity.  Time for a nice shower.

Event went very well - lots of people came out to the tour.  No concrete numbers but several studios are reporting best-in-recent-history sales numbers, one person sold out completely yesterday and another person sold eight of her large paintings. Our agregate average is about 5,000 unique visitors each weekend so it will be interesting to see what pencils out this year.  Numbers in a couple weeks.

Got a box fan sitting in front of an open window blowing on me as I sit and decompress. Was hydrating all day but still - unseasonable. Waiting for the reduced solar activity to hit and for the overall temps to start cooling off.  We can use another Maunder Minimum about now.

Back later tonight

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Working the booth - supposed to be even hotter today. WOOF!

I may bail out early and just close up - this is the last day so not expecting that many people to show up.

Some friends are having an open house for their farm - swing by there on the way home.  I get most of my produce from them - good stuff and only two miles from where I live.

Nice and cool this morning - 73°F  See what happens.

Nothing much on the internet.

Quite the speech - President Trump

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Did not watch it last night but will do this evening - he is in great form.
He closed with this:

We must never forget this country does not belong to them. It belongs to you, the American people. This is your home. This nation is your heritage and our magnificent American liberty is your God-given right. The people of this land will not be ruled and talked down to by corrupt politicians, petty tyrants, left-wing bullies or socialist bureaucrats in a place called Washington D.C. It’s not gonna happen.

Our ancestors are the people that crossed an ocean for the right to live and pray and speak as they saw fit. They are the people who risked everything. They risked everything. Think of what, you’re here, and you’re generally happy, not necessarily 100% because of what took place. But they are the people who risked their lives to boldly declare their independence and then defeated the most powerful military on Earth to win their freedom.

Brave, incredible, brilliant people. And our ancestors are the people who tamed the great wilderness, settled the vast continent, laid down the railroads, raised up the skyscrapers and poured out their blood, sweat and tears to build this country into the greatest nation in the history of the world and we’re not going to let it go. We will respect our heroes, like George Washington and Abraham Lincoln and Thomas Jefferson.

They will not be taken from us. America is still the nation that conquered the wild west, that vanquished murderous dictators that ended the evil empires and that sent a brave, young man from Ohio to the Moon. There’s no mountain we cannot climb. There’s no summit we cannot reach. There is nothing that we cannot do, there is absolutely nothing that we cannot match. There is no challenge that you will let us down. You will never let us down.

The people of Ohio will never let us down. The people of our country will never let us down. We will not bend. We will not break. We will not yield. We will never give in. We will never give up. We will never back down. We will never, ever surrender. My fellow Americans, our movement is far from over. In fact, our fight has only just begun.

We are one movement, one people, one family, and one glorious nation under God. So with American pride swelling in our hearts, and American courage stirring in our souls, I say these words to you tonight.

We will make America powerful again. We will make America wealthy again. We will make America strong again. We will make America proud again. We will make America safe again. And we will make America great again! Thank you Ohio. Thank you. Thank you very much.

Just WOW!  Downright Presidential. Comapre and contrast with the current *Resident.

Last of the busy days for a while

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Tomorrow is the final day of the tour. Back to whatever passes for a normal schedule around here.

Got a big event I am responsible for in November so it is actually time to start on that but the preliminary work will be pretty easy. It will not get hectic until the last few weeks and that is still four months away.

"A" loaned me a video of Robert Irwin - he is an artist who has done a lot of site-specific installations and works with light and perception. Same genre as James Turrell who is one of my favorites. Had fun watching it.

Been exploring what is needed to get the military aircraft flights to show up on my ADS-B receiver.  Need to spend some time banging my head on the desk to get the script running so doing that next week.  The FlightAware website will take your data and attach it to a lot more information.  You see something on the screen, click on it and in addition to the call sign, bearing, speed and altitude, FlightAware will also provide you with the flight number, departure and destination and a lot more information (make and model, etc...).  The "unfiltered" website will not do that, just the raw data so some filtering is needed.  It will give you the military aircraft though so this will satisfy my curiosity. Fun project...

Time to get some sleep - no nap this evening.

Say it isn't so - from Icelandic media outlet Stundin:

Key witness in Assange case admits to lies in indictment
A major witness in the United States’ Department of Justice case against Julian Assange has admitted to fabricating key accusations in the indictment against the Wikileaks founder. The witness, who has a documented history with sociopathy and has received several convictions for sexual abuse of minors and wide-ranging financial fraud, made the admission in a newly published interview in Stundin where he also confessed to having continued his crime spree whilst working with the Department of Justice and FBI and receiving a promise of immunity from prosecution.

The man in question, Sigurdur Ingi Thordarson, was recruited by US authorities to build a case against Assange after misleading them to believe he was previously a close associate of his. In fact he had volunteered on a limited basis to raise money for Wikileaks in 2010 but was found to have used that opportunity to embezzle more than $50,000 from the organization. Julian Assange was visiting Thordarson’s home country of Iceland around this time due to his work with Icelandic media and members of parliament in preparing the Icelandic Modern Media Initiative, a press freedom project that produced a parliamentary resolution supporting whistleblowers and investigative journalism.

The United States is currently seeking Assange’s extradition from the United Kingdom in order to try him for espionage relating to the release of leaked classified documents. If convicted, he could face up to 175 years in prison. The indictment has sparked fears for press freedoms in the United States and beyond and prompted strong statements in support of Assange from Amnesty International, Reporters without borders, the editorial staff of the Washington Post and many others.

US officials presented an updated version of an indictment against him to a Magistrate court in London last summer. The veracity of the information contained therein is now directly contradicted by the main witness, whose testimony it is based on.

Alas, our government has a history of dirty tricks: here, here, here and here for starters.  Both sides of the fence.

Florida condo update #2

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They knew but did not do anything.  New York Times:

Engineer Warned of ‘Major Structural Damage’ at Florida Condo Complex
Three years before the deadly collapse of the Champlain Towers South condominium complex near Miami, a consultant found alarming evidence of “major structural damage” to the concrete slab below the pool deck and “abundant” cracking and crumbling of the columns, beams and walls of the parking garage under the 13-story building.

The engineer’s report helped shape plans for a multimillion-dollar repair project that was set to get underway soon — more than two and a half years after the building managers were warned — but the building suffered a catastrophic collapse in the middle of the night on Thursday, crushing sleeping residents in a massive heap of debris.

The complex’s management association had disclosed some of the problems in the wake of the collapse, but it was not until city officials released the 2018 report late Friday that the full nature of the concrete and rebar damage — most of it probably caused by persistent water leaks and years of exposure to the corrosive salt air along the South Florida coast — became chillingly apparent.

And of course, I am betting that the assets for the corporation that owns the building are being stripped out and moved offshore. A bankrupt shell is all that will remain.  These people need to be held accountable for their lack of responsibility.

Joe Biden's F-15 and Nuke comment

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An American entrepreneur steps up to the plate - from The Newspaper of Record:

Elon Musk Unveils New Tesla F-15
Entrepreneur and all-around slightly insane man Elon Musk announced today he is releasing a new Tesla model: the F-15.

The all-electric fighter jet will be in production by the fall and is available for preorder now.

"We've revolutionized the electric car, and now, we're taking to the skies," Musk said at the official unveiling of the product held at the new Tesla factory in Texas. "Behold, I give you the power of flight!" Workers pulled a canvas sheet off the F-15 and revealed the sleek, next-generation fighter aircraft to the press gathered on the all-new Tesla runway.

"This puppy has it all: autopilot, a nearly 2000-mph top speed, advanced radar detection systems, and, of course, a giant tablet-like display in the center of the dashboard, just because we can!"

Musk also confirmed the F-15 can park itself, and you can even summon it with the push of a button on your key fob: handy for those trips to the grocery store or when you're trying to overthrow the government and need to make a quick getaway. "Don't leave home or attempt to topple a tyrannical government without it!"

"Tunnels!" he added for no reason in particular, leaving many onlookers confused.

At publishing time, Musk had confirmed that consumers can only purchase the F-15 using Dogecoin.

Be the first on your block. Reserve a space at your local airfield.

Currently 94°F outside and it was up to 96°F at 4:00 PM. Again, this is in deep shade about 12 feet from the ocean. Hot. Tomorrow is supposed to be hotter. This is nothing unusual, we had a bad heat wave in 2009 that lasted for almost three weeks in July and August. We get them about every ten years.

Fun meeting with the jeweler this afternoon - kindred spirit and had a lot to talk about. We both hung around Seattle the same time but did not cross paths then.  Know a lot of the same people and places.

Cold salad for dinner. Hydrating.

Day two under our belts

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Had two people come in to help man the booth today so the time passed quickly. Tomorrow should be a bit easier - hotter weather but fewer people.  Get there in the morning and last as long as we can.

Heading out to visit with a new artist on the island - check out her studio.  She is not on the tour this year but invited me to come by - does jewelry with a very similar style as my blacksmithing only on a much smaller scale.

Found out yesterday that my good popup tent was yet another casulty of the storage locker theft.  Ordered a replacement online but we had to use my old one which is a bit broken and not repairable (metal fatigue and cracking in the aluminum - no silver bullet to fix).

Pups were happy to see me - they are a bit uncertain what with this being the second day in a row that they have been consigned to the garage all the day. Especially the little one - her previous person kept her in a crate for 6-8 hours/day weekdays so there was a lot of seperation anxiety when she came to live here. One more day.

Back in a bit.

Studio Tour - day two

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Working the booth this morning and hopefully handing it off around 2:00 PM to some volunteers.

Hotter today than yesterday - tomorrow is going to be the worst.
Got one of these in the forecast: Excessive Heat Warning

Nothing unusual - we get these every couple of years.  Not global warming. Still...

Back later this afternoon:  pups out for a walk, coffee, pups back home and then manning the booth for a couple of hours.

At least he is being honest about his loyalties - from The Liberty Daily:

Nike Abandons American Roots as CEO Declares They Are ‘a Brand of China and for China’
It wouldn’t be fair to say Nike CEO John Donahoe hates America. He just loves China a whole lot more. He declared as much during an earnings call when he told everyone “we are a brand of China and for China” while touting how big they were in the Communist nation.

“We are the largest sport brand there, and we are a brand of China and for China,” Donahoe said. “And the biggest asset we have in China is the consumer equity. Consumers feel a strong, deep connection to the NIKE, Jordan and Converse brands in China. And it’s real.”

The statement came after pressure from Beijing to walk back comments made by Nike Corporate about the Uyghur crisis. The statement was resurfaced as many nations engaged sanctions over kidnapping, torture, and murder by the government in the region.

It's all about profits, cost of manufacture and that sweet slave labor that China is supplying.
With all this talk about reperations, how about some for the Uyghurs?

Preliminary results to be announced this Monday - from the Gateway Pundit:

HISTORY MADE AS FINAL ARIZONA BALLOT INSPECTIONS COMPLETED
Huge Preliminary Report Expected Monday When True Number of Ballot Totals Announced

Earlier this afternoon, volunteers slammed a box closed and cheered in celebration after the final ballots were inspected.

TGP reported that the results will be released in two phases:
1.) On Monday we may see a preliminary report, which details the accuracy of the number of certified ballots.
2.) We then expect to see a full forensic report which details the forensic images and ballot findings.
This is HUGE.

On Monday, we will know the true number of ballots that were cast in Maricopa County. If it is drastically different than the number of certified ballots, as expected with the discrepancies found, there will be severe consequences for Doug Ducey and Katie Hobbs.

The Arizona State Senate will need to consider decertifying the results if they cannot prove that Biden was the winner. Attorney General Mark Brnovich will need to initiate an investigation into those involved in the scam and the cover-up.

Obvious that there was cheating.  Very blatent cheating from the reports that have come out.
We live in interesting times indeed...

Wanna bet it was Lactated Ringer's?

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Iran developing a vaccine?  If I were a drinking man, there would be beer all over my monitor and keyboard.
From Breitbart:

Ayatollah Khamenei Gets Homemade Coronavirus Vaccine on TV
Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei received his first dose of “CovIran Barekat,” a Chinese coronavirus vaccine candidate allegedly produced by Iranian scientists, in a ceremony broadcast live on Iranian state television Friday, Iran’s state-run PressTV reported.

“On Friday morning, Ayatollah Khamenei received his first dose of the CovIran Barekat vaccine, which was approved for emergency mass application by the country’s Health Ministry earlier this month,” the Tehran-based news outlet reported.

“After receiving the vaccine, the Leader thanked all those who were involved in the development of the homegrown vaccine, which was produced as part of a project led by the Headquarters for the Execution of Imam Khomeini’s Order, a charitable organization headed by Mohammad Mokhber,” according to PressTV.

Photo at the site - guy has serious wet noodles for arms. Does he work at all?
A 6-year-old could trounce him at arm wrestling.

Here: Lactated Ringer's - totally safe if you wanted to fake an injection.

Couple hundred comments on the site noting that the one Doctor was wearing his mask wrong and the way the syringe was being held and the shot administered were very very wrong. I don't think I am going to Iran for Medical Tourism anytime soon.

And back again - good call

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Much better - still sleepy but not fall-asleep-in-my-chair sleepy.

Doing a big bowl of ramen for a late dinner.

Tired

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Skipping dinner - a couple hour nap is what I need. Barely keep my eyes open.

Hit me all of a sudden - got a lot of sun this afternoon. Been hydrating really well - no worries on that account.  Just sleepy.

From the Dallas, Texas NBC affiliate:

District Attorney Will Not Seek Death Penalty for Billy Chemirmir
The Dallas County District Attorney announced Thursday that he will not seek the death penalty for an accused serial killer charged with capital murder.

Investigators suspect Billy Chemirmir smothered at least 18 elderly women… and robbed them.

He has pleaded not guilty

Hint: Skin color makes a difference. Content of character? Still waiting for that one.

Derek Chauvin sentencing

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A show trial - they are afraid of the riots if he got off easy. From The Epoch Times:

Derek Chauvin Sentenced to More Than 22 Years in Prison Over George Floyd’s Death
Former Minneapolis officer Derek Chauvin on Friday was sentenced to 22 1/2 years in prison for second-degree murder months after he was convicted in the death of George Floyd, coming hours after a judge denied his request for a new trial.

The sentence was handed down by Hennepin County District Court Judge Peter Cahill, who said in the hearing that he didn’t “base [his] sentence on public opinion” or to “send any messages.” Cahill said that he handed down the sentence due to the “particular cruelty” Chauvin exhibited during Floyd’s death.

Odd - Cahill was a Bush appointee. Guess people are really afraid of the reaction if it was brought to light that Floyd died from a drug overdose and that he was not a choirboy. He was a violent thug who was committing a crime when he was arrested and yes, he resisted arrest and struggled with the four officers.

This will be retried in a year once everything quiets down. At least I hope. Chauvin followed the established procedures.  Floyd was heard on several video recordings complaining about not being able to breathe well before he was put on the ground.  He kept complaining when he was down which you can not do if you are being choked.  The knee was on his shoulder blade.

This divisiveness is Obama's legacy.  Get people riled up against each other and they can not unite to form a unified front.  Then, you can get away with anything.  Election fraud? Murder? Anything.

Baked and ready for a nap

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Not that kind of baked.  Spent too much time in the sun baked. The temp here is 89°F and the outside thermo is about 12 feet from the water under an awning and out of the shade.  True air temperature, not an artifact.  Fixing a light salad for dinner and getting an early bedtime.

Had a lot of fun and the reports from the various studios show that there was a great crowd of people passing through - excellent for island tourism as well as the individual artists.

More fun and games with the ADS-B reciever. One of the reasons I got it is that there is a major Naval Air Station across the strait.  No military aircraft were showing up though. Turns out the FedGov filters the feed. Turns out that there is a renegade website that delivers unfiltered data.  Guess who is going to be doing a bit more programming this evening... They have a script that can be run to feed the data to this site independent of the other site. It needs a bunch of configuration - not as "user friendly" as the one I am currently using but that never stopped me.

I can't do what? Hold my beer.

Quick shower, fix dinner and surf for a bit.

Getting ready for the weekend

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Finishing up here.  Take the pups out for a nice walk as they are going to be spending the next eight hours in the garage.  I would love to have them with me but it is going to be really hot this weekend and there is no way to keep them cool while I am working for the tour.

Set up the booth this morning, run it for a while and then hand it off to the other voulinteers while I drive around to the studios and take photos. Should be fun.

The aircraft reciever is working perfectly. Picking up craft in a 100 mile radius - it will be interesting to see what a good antenna will do.  Not getting anything to the South but that is not unexpected as there is a high bluff blocking line of sight. Here is what I see. Color indicates altitude.

20210625-ads-b.jpg

Needless to say, posting will be minimal until late evenings...

Florida condo update #1

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Crap - from the Miami Herald:

Number of missing in Surfside condo collapse rises to 159, Miami-Dade mayor says
The arduous and heartbreaking task of recovering the bodies of victims at the site of the collapse of the Champlain Towers South condo in Surfside began overnight and continued into a somber Friday morning in an unfolding tragedy that is feared to be the worst building failure in Florida history.

Miami-Dade Mayor Daniella Levine-Cava said Friday morning that the number of people who are unaccounted for in Thursday’s building collapse increased to 159 — dramatically higher than the 99 reported earlier. The official death toll rose to four, as three more people were found in the rubble.

She said 120 people are now accounted for but stressed that all the numbers are “fluid” because some residents may not have been in the building when it collapsed.

“Unfortunately, this has been a tragic night,” Levine Cava said, while stressing that rescuers will “continue searching because we still have hope that we will find people alive.”

Prayers going out. Hard time for everyone.

Environmentalists - hypocrites

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In one meme:

20210625-enviro.jpg

But the pipeline is in our back yard 'ya see... We can do something about that.

Cobbled together an antenna (OK, OK - a short hunk of wire stuck onto a coax connector), stuck it outside on the end of a fence, loaded the software onto an SD card and the durned thing booted right up and started running.

Going to give it a day to collect data - already have stuff coming in but want to get 24 hours before I start publicizing it. Fun stuff - let it run in the background and check in every so often.  It will be interesting when someone asks about "that airplane" that was flying overhead. They have a cell phone app that links in to your account.

Next up? Build a better antenna and make a permanent mount.
A lot of fun?  $20 plus tax?  win/win

Bringing materials for the booth this weekend. Going to be visiting each studio taking photos so getting the camera ready for that. Should be a fun (if hot) weekend.

From various accounts, there is 31 terabytes of data out there that is going to be made public.
Stuff the current regime would rather not have made public.
His suicide murder activated a deadman switch and it will be all over the net soon.

Conspiracy? Could be but what if it was true...

The Florida condo collapse

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Many people unaccounted for.  This story from USA Today really gives me the chills:

Collapsed Miami condo had been sinking into Earth as early as the 1990s, researchers say
A Florida high-rise that collapsed early Thursday was determined to be unstable a year ago, according to a researcher at Florida International University.

The building, which was constructed in 1981, has been sinking at an alarming rate since the 1990s, according to a study in 2020 by Shimon Wdowinski, a professor in the Department of Earth and Environment.

When Wdowinski saw the news that the Champlain Towers South condominium in Surfside collapsed, he instantly remembered it from the study, he said.

“I looked at it this morning and said, ‘Oh my god.’ We did detect that,” he said.

It will take a year or two for the engineering to be certain but this looks like a case of kicking the bureaucratic can down the road.  Nobody stood up and just said STOP.

Unh Oh... Western Digital My Book

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Not good news - from Bleeping Computer:

WD My Book NAS devices are being remotely wiped clean worldwide
Western Digital My Book NAS owners worldwide found that their devices have been mysteriously factory reset and all of their files deleted.

WD My Book is a network-attached storage device that looks like a small vertical book that you can stand on your desk. The WD My Book Live app allows owners to access their files and manage their devices remotely, even if the NAS is behind a firewall or router.

Today, WD My Book owners worldwide suddenly found that all of their files were mysteriously deleted, and they could no longer log into the device via a browser or an app.

When they attempted to log in via the Web dashboard, the device stated that they had an "Invalid password."

I own a few of these - use them as external hard drives. Costco sells them for cheap.  Nice, quiet, reliable.  The first thing I do is delete all the software that had been preinstalled.  I use different software for backups.

And, of course:

BleepingComputer has contacted Western Digital with questions but has not received a response at this time.

Wonder if they were pushing an update.  I avoid cloud computing whenever possible.

Surprise - trust in media

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Guess what... From Poynter:

US ranks last among 46 countries in trust in media, Reuters Institute report finds
The United States ranks last in media trust — at 29% — among 92,000 news consumers surveyed in 46 countries, a report released Wednesday found. That’s worse than Poland, worse than the Philippines, worse than Peru. (Finland leads at 65%.)

The annual digital news report from the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism at Oxford also found some improvement in trust in nearly all the countries surveyed — probably thanks to COVID-19 coverage — but not in the U.S. where the low rating was flat year to year.

One explanation, though not necessarily the only one, is the extreme political polarization in the U.S. This study, like many others, found extremely high levels of distrust — 75% of those who identify as being on the right thought coverage of their views is unfair.

A bunch of pander bears.  The media is the propaganda arm of the Democrat party.  Nothing more. Nothing less.

The fun never stops over there - from The Jerusalem Post:

Iran nuclear centrifuge facility substantially damaged in attack - sources
A sabotage operation against one of the buildings of Iran’s Atomic Energy Organization (IAEO) caused major damage – despite Iranian denials, The Jerusalem Post learned on Wednesday night.

Although Iran has claimed throughout the day that the sabotage failed and caused no damage or casualties, the Post has been given strong indications otherwise, though it has no way to independently confirm.

The Post also reported that the attacked site was likely one of Iran’s centrifuge manufacturing sites, which meant a major setback for the Islamic Republic’s uranium enrichment program for nuclear weapons.

Heh - they want to get "The Bomb"  Let's give them one - detonated about 80 miles above ground. Shut them down for a while.

Last day before the studio tour - going to be three days of crazy.

Really hot weather in the forecast as well - unseasonably hot for this area. Supposed to be even hotter down South though - Seattle and Portland are going to get creamed with temps above 100°F.

More spew later this afternoon...

Prayers going out to Miami

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Huge building collapse - from Miami station WSVN:

At least 1 dead, 35 rescued after partial building collapse at Champlain Towers in Surfside
At least one person has died and 35 others have been rescued after a partial building collapsed in Surfside.

The collapse happened at the Champlain Towers South Condo near 88th Street and Collins Avenue, just before 1:30 a.m., Thursday.

More than 80 Miami-Dade Fire Rescue units responded to the scene. Rescue crews from other cities have also responded to the scene to assist.

The pictures or horrific.

From the Supreme Court of the State of New York:
A 33 page PDF disciplinary proceeding - an excerpt:

The Attorney Grievance Committee moves for an order, pursuant to Judiciary Law §90(2) and the Rules for Attorney Disciplinary Matters (22 NYCRR) §1240.9(a)(5), immediately suspending respondent from the practice of law based upon claimed violations of rules 3.3(a); 4.1; 8.4(c) and 8.4(h) of the Rules of Professional Conduct (22 NYCRR 1200.0) (Rules of Conduct or RPC). Respondent was admitted to practice as an attorney and counselor at law in the State of New York on June 25, 1969, under the name Rudolph William Giuliani. He maintains a law office within the First Judicial Department.

For the reasons that follow, we conclude that there is uncontroverted evidence that respondent communicated demonstrably false and misleading statements to courts, lawmakers and the public at large in his capacity as lawyer for former President Donald J. Trump and the Trump campaign in connection with Trump’s failed effort at reelection in 2020. These false statements were made to improperly bolster respondent’s narrative that due to widespread voter fraud, victory in the 2020 United States presidential election was stolen from his client. We conclude that respondent’s conduct immediately threatens the public interest and warrants interim suspension from the practice of law, pending further proceedings before the Attorney Grievance Committee (sometimes AGC or Committee).

So the question remains - if there was no voter fraud, why are they so "touchy".

If there was no voter fraud, why not open up all the states to audit, prove to the general public that there was no voter fraud, have a really good laugh at the expense of President Trump and the 80+ million people who voted for him and then get on with everyone's lives.

You could do that if there was no voter fraud.

Instead, they keep pulling crap like this.

Truth - the road ahead

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From Vanderleun:

20210623-road.jpg

Planning on being here for another 20-30 at least but yes, that is about right.

HELL NO!  I do not have one of everything... YET...

No scandal there.  Oops... From the non-partisan Election Integrity Project - California

Dear Secretary Weber,
Based on its analysis of the VoteCal voter registration and voting history files of February 9, 2021, Election Integrity Project® California, Inc. (EIPCa) submits the following findings. This analysis exposed over 7,700 registrants each of whom have two votes credited to their Registration ID number in the November 2020 election and almost 124,000 more votes counted than voters with histories for that election. There are also more than 1.8 million ineligible registrants in the state. Finally, EIPCa identified over 108,000 who have had their out-of-country or out-of-state birthplaces inexplicably changed to California or United States by the on-line or DMV voter registration systems. EIPCa is submitting its findings for investigation as described in this letter and contained in an encrypted Excel report transmitted today to Sam Burgess in your VoteCal department.

Importantly, this report follows two EIPCa Findings Reports submitted earlier. The first on 4/30/21. The second on 5/18/21. These reports have been ignored. Further, Mr. Burgess has not responded to reminders that he needs to contact EIPCa to obtain the passwords for encrypted Excel files.

Respectfully, so this current Findings Report is not simply ignored as the two prior reports have been, EIPCa is submitting it pursuant to the policy of California election law generally as exemplified in California’s Voter Bill of Rights §2300(a)(9)(B). This statute states: “You have the right to ask questions of the… elections officials regarding election procedures and to receive an answer or be directed to the appropriate official for an answer.” Pursuant to this policy, EIPCa submits its questions under each of the findings below, with the reasonable expectation that responses will be timely provided.

Four pages of inconvenient truths for the Democrats. Lots of "funny stuff" going on. Malarkey all the way. They also note the trend of Ineligible Registrations has gone up by 72% since 2017 - a steep rise.  They got away with a little bit of it so now they are emboldened and are trying to get away with a lot. Again, not surprising.  The Democrats have nothing to offer and so, to stay in power, they have to cheat and lie.

Score - free coal

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Took one look at it and started grinning.  It was not coal.  It was coke.  About 400 pounds of pure coke - perfect for forging. Picking it up on Tuesday.

It is free but they hinted that they were putting up some hummingbird feeders and needed an angle bracket for one of them. Something with an eagle would be nice. Ordered a really pretty one from one of my metal suppliers - I think they will be happy. Simple project.

The coke sells for about $80/100# picked up (200 miles away) so this is a huge deal for me.

20210623-npc.jpg

Paid for on Joe Biden's credit card - London Daily Mail:

'We're at your door, open it': How ex-Secret Service agents swooped on Hunter after he accidentally paid Russian prostitute $25K after night at LA hotel on account 'linked to dad Joe Biden', reveals laptop

    • Text messages and receipts show that Hunter Biden may have accidentally spent his father's money on an escort in 2018, according to a report by the New York Post
    • The woman's name was Yanna, an escort from Emerald Fantasy Girls
    • He had spent a number of nights in May, 2018 with the woman at Hollywood Hotel The Jeremy and owed her $8,000, according to the report
    • Receipts on his laptop obtained by the Post show, however, that transactions he thought had failed started going through, leading to overcharges of $25,000
    • Hunter would later get most of the money back, but he is soon contacted by someone identified as Robert Savage III, a former Secret Service agent
    • Texts between the two indicate that Savage is concerned about an account related to 'Celtic' a code name for Joe Biden when he was vice president

Joe Biden might have inadvertently paid for a series of wild nights his son Hunter had with a prostitute at a Los Angeles hotel in 2018, according to a New York Post report.

It was early May that year when Hunter Biden ordered Yanna, an escort, who billed herself as 'Russian, Green Eyes, Thin Brunette, an elite courtesan' from his favorite site, Emerald Fantasy Girls, according to the files obtained by the New York Post from his 2017 Macbook Pro.

Much much more at the site - photos, screen caps, links. The connection is 100% bulletproof.
The family is rotten to the core.  1,800+ comments - some good ones.

And out again

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Looking at some free coal, running a few errands and back home to work in the yard.

More spew in a couple of hours...

Best and brightest - Iran

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It's what happens when you substitute ideology for education. From the London Daily Mail:

Two Iranian fighter jet pilots are killed when ejector seats activate before take-off 'and smash them into hangar roof'

    • Fatal accident happened when the jet's ejector seats malfunctioned, activated
    • Took place at the Dezful Vahdati Air Force Base, 444km south of capital Tehran
    • Iranian State TV identified the F-5 pilots as Kianoush Basati and Hossein Nami

Two Iranian fighter jet pilots were killed on Tuesday when their ejector seats activated before take-off, smashing them into the hangar roof.

State broadcaster IRIB reported the F-5 fighter jet had a 'technical problem' that killed both the pilots, identified as as Kianoush Basati and Hossein Nami.

The report said the incident unfolded at Dezful Vahdati Air Force Base, approximately 270 miles south of the capital Tehran, and near the Iraq border.

According to BBC Persian, ejector seats were 'wrongly activated' for both the front and rear cockpit pilots. Both men 'lost their lives due to a severe impact with the roof of the hangar', the report added.

Quick trip to Allah - hope they enjoy those 72 raisins.

Memo to self - flying a kite

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A cautionary tale from Seattle station Q13:

Man in critical condition after getting shocked, burned from flying kite at Bremerton park
A man is in critical condition after getting shocked while flying his kite at a Bremerton park on Sunday.

According to Bremerton Battalion Chief Brad Richard, the man was flying a makeshift kite made out of steel cable and a fishing rod around 7 p.m. at the Evergreen Rotary Park.

The kite drifted into PSE’s high-energy transmission lines and shocked the man. He suffered severe burns.

The level of dumb is epic. How could they not think of this.

Crap - RIP John McAffee

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He lived his own life - one of the more interesting tech people out there. From National File:

John McAfee Found Dead In Spanish Jail Cell
Cybersecurity entrepreneur, cryptocurrency advocate, and former U.S. presidential candidate John McAfee has been found dead in his jail cell in Sant Esteve de Sesrovires, Barcelona, Spain within hours of a court’s ruling that he would be extradited to the United States on charges of tax evasion and failure to disclose income.

According to Spanish outlet El Pais, the 75-year-old McAfee was found “dead in the cell, and the prison medical services have intervened to carry out resuscitation maneuvers, according to the Department of Justice, but they have not been able to save his life.”

“The Mossos are investigating what happened, and everything points to a suicide, as reported by the Department of Justice,” the report states. McAfee had described the extradition request as “politically motivated,’ and noted that he was “public enemy #1” of the United States government.

The US wanted him on tax evasion. He lived his life on his own terms - had fun and did good things. Quite the character. Would have been a great pirate 200 years ago. His final tweet is here:

But then again, there is THIS tweet from November 30th, 2019

An investigation is in order - even if only for the ability of an American Citizen to suicide while being held for extradition. That is major by itself.

Looks like availability is going to be tight - two headlines from industry websites:

You are thinking: "Oh, that doesn't affect me - I go through a can of WD-40 maybe once/year"
How often do you change the oil in your vehicle?
How much does it cost to run the truck that brings groceries to your local store?
What about the oil-change for the Amazon truck?

Like ripples in a pond...

Gray morning

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Woke up to fog and overcast and 58°F - Seriously WTF? Had some strong wind from the South - something blew in last night. Forecast is for this today and partly tomorrow and then returning to sunshine and heat.

Heading out to my volunteer gig - quick dog walk and coffee first.

Just what I need...

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Another project.

Been having a lot of fun playing around with the Raspberry Pi, learning Python and generally staring at buggy code.

Was reading some blog posts (here, here, here, here, here) about someone's ADS-B system. There is a large military airport across the water from me so I sprang for their receiver ($20). They give you the app for the Pi and if you choose to upload your data, they will give you an executive subscription to their flight tracking service.  Looks like a win/win situation to me as I can find out what is happening overhead (sometimes really curious) and they can use the data from my system.

I'll post more as I start getting data - got to hack together an antenna and get everything set up first.

Her history is not a pleasant read - one such example:

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Her interests are not in line with what is best for America or for her constituents.
And nobody is standing up to her for fear of their own history being brought to light.
The squad is naked. They are wearing no clothes.

Tip 'o the hat to 90 Miles who has links to a lot more on Ms. Omar.

Portland, OR - delusional

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A perfect example of what happens when you let your city become a petri dish for the progressive narrative.
Hint: it turns in to a third-world shit-hole.  Always has, always will. From Portland, OR station KATU:

LPGA pulls longest running non-major tournament from Portland, cites safety concerns
The Cambia Portland Classic will celebrate 50 years this year, but the tournament won't be held in Portland. It's moving to West Linn.

The tournament, which is the longest running non-major competition on the LPGA tour, is traditionally held at the Columbia Edgewater Country Club. In a letter to members, the country club board president said the move is because of safety concerns.

"Their reason for departure center around the City of Portland’s response to safety and security around the city. With LPGA players, Media, Sponsors, and thousands of spectators coming into town this fall, the tournament organizers had concerns about the safety of the city and opted to find a venue out of the city limits," Ken Smith said in the letter. "At this point, we are unsure about future years of the tournament and where it will be conducted. But we will keep you informed of any updates as we learn more in the coming months."

The tournament is now scheduled to be at the Oregon Golf Club Sept. 16 through Sept. 19.

And meanwhile, the Portland tourism office spent several hundreds of thousands of dollars running this as full-page advertisements in newspapers including the New York Times:

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"loudest voices on the West Coast?" more like spoiled toddlers who need to have their iPhones taken away.

There is a convention on the coast that I like to attend.  I was there last in 2017 and spent a wonderful afternoon in Portland on my way back home.  Planned it.  Got off I-5 and shopped at Powell's, had some meals, walked around the downtown. I spent a couple hundred bucks there having a good time.  Now?  I am checking the gas before I get within 20 miles and driving straight through. Not stopping. Portland?  You did this to yourself.  Actions have consequences.  No ammount of PR is going to bring me back.  I will need to see tangible results, not hear platitudes.

Heh - sucks to be you Iran

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From American Military News:

US seizes Iran’s state TV website, two other Iran-linked media websites
This week the U.S. Justice Department seized the websites of multiple Iranian media sites, including Iran’s state-run Press TV.

Currently, the websites for Press TV, the Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting’s (IRIB) Al-Alam TV channel and the Yemeni Al-Masirah TV — which is operated by the Iran-linked Yemeni Houthi movement — all have a Department of Justice disclaimer image announcing the website seizures.

The DOJ disclaimer on each website states the particular domain “has been seized by the United States Government in accordance with a seizure warrant issued pursuant to the 18 U.S.C. §§ 981, 982, and 50 U.S.C. 1701-1705 as part of a law enforcement action by the Bureau of Industry and Security, Office of Export Enforcement and Federal Bureau of Investigation.”

Surprised that they did not host their own websites or that they did not go with one of the dark web hosts out there.

That has to rankle - they supposedly have some moral "high ground" but they get smacked down and their lunch money stolen by the Great Satan every time they turn around. Sucks to be them.

'Nuff said

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Corruption - January 6th

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From My Pensieve:

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Just wow - Chris Jones

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He is running as a Democrat but he carries a good message.
Great campaign ad - we need more people like him

We The People are hungry for good leadership. I remember in WA State in 2020, Inslee's competition was a police chief from a small town in Eastern, WA with virtually no experience.  Loren Culp still got 40% of the vote.

Lazy morning - slept in

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Wonderful. Clear skies, low tide and getting warm. Heading out soon for an early dog walk and some coffee and then running a few errands to the North. Costco, etc...

I do my last "Presidential Act" today - dropping off some flowers and a Thank You card to a local business who has been helping us a lot. Farmer's Market today too so hang out there for a little while.  My other favorite farm is hosting an open house Sunday so attending that.

Breakfast and quick surf first...

Woo Hoo!!!

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From Peter Grant:

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Nigel Farage on the G7 meeting

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Spot on - from Rumble:

His comment on Mr. Biden:

"He Spent Most of the Conference Grinning Inanely...  I'm Not Sure He Even Knew He Was in the UK"

From The Western Journal:

More Non-White Voters Approve of Photo ID for Voting Than White Voters: Poll
For months Democrats in Washington have vehemently opposed photo ID requirements for potential voters, and they have argued that minorities tend to agree with them. According to a new poll from Monmouth University, that is not the case.

Monmouth conducted the poll by phone between the dates of June 9 and June 14. It contained 39 questions relating to American elections, and 810 adults in the U.S. participated. The poll’s margin of error was +/- 3.5 percentage points.

In one poll question, respondents were asked, “In general, do you support or oppose requiring voters to show a photo I.D. in order to vote?” The results were heavily supportive of requiring photo ID.

Overall, 80 percent of respondents said they support the requirement. Only 18 percent opposed it, while 2 percent said it “depends” and 1 percent said they did not know.

Those numbers by themselves represent a pretty strong case that requiring photo ID is an idea supported by the majority of Americans. But a deeper dive into the data reveals even more surprising results.

Heh - the numbers are in direct contradiction to the Democrat narrative.

Tacos hit the spot - yum!!!

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Had them just before the meeting - finishing off one more now. The marinade was perfect for the flank steak - lime juice, soy sauce, salt, sugar, garlic powder, smoked paprika - pretty basic.  On a whim, I added pickled Sushi Ginger and it really set it off. I was wishing that I had some pineapple to grill but the ginger was a really nice acidic compliment to everything else. Got about a pound of leftovers so tacos for the next week or so as well (not every night).

Meeting went well - had a lot to cover but got everything knocked off in just under an hour.

Got a few things to take care of tomorrow and this weekend is going to be an absolute blur but looking forward to a day or two at a more relaxed pace. The following week will be consumed with luxurious sloth and torpor.

Tacos tonight

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Hot weather? Check.
Great day for BBQ? Check.
Flank steak and Guac in the freezer? Check.

Sounds like Taco TuesdayMonday. Got the meat thawing out in some marinade and dinner should be served in two hours.  My last Board meeting as President at 6:30. Woo Hoo!!!

An excellent mental excercise:

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On June 15th, Project Veritas released a report from FOX News Reporter Ivory Heckler citing corruption and censorship in the workplace.  My comment was:

And, if we know anything about James O'Keefe, he has several hours more stuff in the vault ready to be released.  Let FOX try to spin this one - they were caught feeding us disinformation.  Not doing their fscking job.

Yep - from Conservative Brief:

Meteorologist Announces During Broadcast That She Will Expose ‘Discrimination’ At CBS
A CBS New meteorologist from Detroit interrupted her weather broadcast to inform viewers that she would be going to Project Veritas to expose discrimination in her workplace.

“Today we saw temperatures above normal again topping out at 85 degrees at Metro Airport. Plenty of sunshine today, but all good things must come to an end and that starts as early as tomorrow morning with showers moving in around 8 a.m,” April Moss said during her Monday broadcast, before telling viewers about her future broadcast with Project Veritas.

“I will be sitting down this week with Project Veritas to discuss the discrimination that CBS is enforcing upon its employees,” she said. “Tune into Project Veritas for my full story.”

Nothing at the Project Veritas website as yet but I am betting that it will be their usual thorough job.
And, that they have a bunch more of these primed and ready to go...

The Truth. Nothing but.

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About as plain as you can get.  From Chris Lynch:

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Not the Babylon Bee

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Sometimes, reality is stranger than satire - from The Daily Wire:

Youth Protest Group Inspired By Greta Thunberg Disbands, Accuses Itself Of Racism
“Under the suggestion and guidance of the BIPOC members” of the group, a New Zealand youth environmental protest group inspired by teen activist Greta Thunberg disbanded, accusing itself of racism.

School Strike 4 Climate’s Auckland chapter wrote on June 12:

School Strike 4 Climate Auckland is disbanding as an organisation. This is under the suggestion and guidance of the BIPOC (Black, Indigenous and People of Colour) members of our group, as well as individual BIPOC activists and organisations. We are not holding any more climate strikes in the Auckland region. … BIPOC communities are disproportionately affected by climate change, so the fight for climate justice should be led by their voices and needs, not Pākehā ones.

“Pākehā” means white New Zealanders.

The group continued that there was an “urgent need to decolonise the organization”

Not activism.  Mental illness. Plain and simple.

So true - Joe McCarthy

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There is so much revisionist history around these hearings:

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Warren Buffet?  One of the richest people in the world and owner of a number of railroad companies.
From Just The News:

Feds could send billions in tax dollars to Amtrak for Northeast Corridor
The federal government could allocate nearly $6.6 billion in grants to Amtrak over the next five years for "activities associated with the Northeast Corridor."

The money is included in the $78 billion Surface Transportation Investment Act of 2021. The bill, which the Senate Committee on Commerce advanced this week, allocates $36 billion for rail projects, including $25 billion over five years for intercity passenger rail.

"This bill protects Amtrak's treasured long-distance routes, provides funding to address the Northeast Corridor project backlog, and encourages expansion of passenger rail corridors with State support," according to a fact sheet on the bill.

Buffet does not own Amtrack but he should.  It has lost money since day one.  It needs to be broken up and privatized.

What Warren is smiling about is that his railroad cars will be rolling over some nicely maintained track, switched in some upgraded yards, all on the taxpayer dime.

From Legal Insurrection, November 4, 2019:

Trump, CA. Gov. Newsom Exchange Twitter Fire Over State’s Wildfires, Blackouts

They quote from these Tweets by President Trump (President Trump's twitter account is still being censored)

“The Governor of California, @GavinNewsom, has done a terrible job of forest management. I told him from the first day we met that he must ‘clean’ his forest floors regardless of what his bosses, the environmentalists, DEMAND of him. Must also do burns and cut fire stoppers…..” Trump tweeted.

“Every year, as the fire’s rage & California burns, it is the same thing-and then he comes to the Federal Government for $$$ help. No more,” the tweet continues. “Get your act together Governor. You don’t see close to the level of burn in other states…But our teams are working well together in…..

“….putting these massive, and many, fires out. Great firefighters! Also, open up the ridiculously closed water lanes coming down from the North. Don’t pour it out into the Pacific Ocean. Should be done immediately. California desperately needs water, and you can have it now!”

The Governor of California, @GavinNewsom, has done a terrible job of forest management. I told him from the first day we met that he must “clean” his forest floors regardless of what his bosses, the environmentalists, DEMAND of him. Must also do burns and cut fire stoppers…..

Fast forward to now: The Hill, April 9, 2021:

California to spend $500 million to fight off wildfires
California plans to spend more than half a billion dollars on forest management to reduce the risk of fires after a devastating wildfire season.

California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) on Thursday announced a deal with state legislature leadership to draw down $536 million to kick off projects to prepare for the upcoming wildfire season. The new plan is in budget legislation Newsom said will be considered by lawmakers as early as Monday and signed by Tuesday.

A nice "Thank you" would be in order but it will never happen.
After all, it was Newsom's BIG IDEA - he came up with this brilliant plan all by himself.

Got a point there

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Want to see the liberals really squeal?  Cut the benefits.
Zero problem with having a safety net but it should be just that and not be a lifestyle.

Wonder how fast it will take for his handlers to capitulate on every demand. From FOX News:

Iran's president-elect won’t meet Biden, demands US ‘lift all oppressive sanctions’
Iran's president-elect said Monday he wouldn't meet with President Joe Biden nor negotiate over Tehran's ballistic missile program and its support of regional militias, sticking to a hardline position following his landslide victory in last week's election.

Judiciary chief Ebrahim Raisi also described himself as a "defender of human rights" when asked about his involvement in the 1988 mass execution of some 5,000 people. It marked the first time he's been put on the spot on live television over that dark moment in Iranian history at the end of the Iran-Iraq war.

"The U.S. is obliged to lift all oppressive sanctions against Iran," Raisi said at the news conference.

Well, that Orange Man was mean to them.  If we are nice to them, they will be nice to us.
Clueless.

Best wishes for Solstice 2021

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Coming up in about an hour.

Time to light a candle on the hearth. Not exactly a bonfire to dance around but it's the spirit.

Could not be happening to a nicer regime - from The Jerusalem Post:

Iran's Bushehr nuclear power plant has emergency shutdown - state TV
Iran's Bushehr nuclear power plant underwent an emergency shutdown, Iranian media reported on Sunday.

The Iranian Atomic Energy Organization reported that a technical defect in the power plant led to the plant being temporarily shut down and disconnected from the national electricity grid, according to the Iranian Fars News Agency. The AEO stated that the plant would be reconnected to the electricity grid in the next few days.

The deputy coordinator of the Iran Power Transmission, Generation and Distribution Company (​TAVANIR) told Fars that the plant was temporarily closed for "technical repairs," which would continue for about three to four days.

Only a few comments at the site but they are spot-on.  This one in particular:

Wait for the right moment and then cut off the wider electricity supply. A few summer days without aircon, refrigeration and other basic necessities might get millions of angry people out onto the street. It could be enough to provoke a 'Ceausescu moment'.

Perfect solution.  The people would be so much better off if they threw off the chains of tyrany and opression. I could not imagine living in a state controlled by terror. They need to join the rest of civilization and enjoy life. Boot the kleptocrats out of office.

A nice side-benefit of the election audit - from Washington Examiner:

Georgia secretary of state removes 100,000 'outdated' voter files
Georgia's secretary of state is poised to remove more than 100,000 "outdated" names from the state's voter registration rolls unless those on the list take immediate action.

Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger released the full list of people who could be affected by the registration update on Friday.

"Making sure Georgia's voter rolls are up to date is key to ensuring the integrity of our elections," the Republican said in a statement. "There is no legitimate reason to keep ineligible voters on the rolls."

He seriously thinks that he can hold onto his job? After what he allowed last November?

Just found out that one of the participants in the upcoming Studio Tour has been diagnosed with that Chinese virus.

No further news but damnit...

Time to put on Mr. Stinky Wizzleteats and dance along:

Glorious day

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Temps in the low 80's - light high clouds but lots of sunshine.

Finishing off lunch and getting ready to work in the yard for a little while.  Do some paperwork, laundry and general house cleaning. Basic life stuff.

Big meeting tomorrow evening - my last for the arts organization for the foreseeable future. Got to make sure my tenure's paperwork is complete for the new President coming in next Month.

Done with lunch - back to work 'ya bum!!!

Looks like Pennsylvania will be checking the results too. From the Pennsylvania Capitol-Star:

Pa. election audit a ‘very real possibility,’ top Pa. Senate Republican says after meeting activists
The Pennsylvania state Senate committee chair in charge of overseeing elections said a forensic audit was a “very real possibility” Thursday after meeting with activists Wednesday.

Senate State Government Committee Chairman Dave Argall, R-Schuylkill, told the Capital-Star that he was considering subpoenas for ballot information, but had not considered which jurisdictions would be subpoenaed yet.

“There are a lot of things under consideration right now, and I told them to check back in a week or two and we hope to have some more detail,” Argall told the Capital-Star of the meeting.

The Democrats tried to hard - too many hijinks, too many bad numbers, too many questions, too many lies.
Add to this how hard they are trying to shut these audits down - if the voting was OK, there would be no problems.

Moving some artist panels - these are 3X6 foot tall flat panels with carpet on them for hanging artwork as a temporary display. I have a bunch of them and loaned them out - getting them back this morning.  Also running a few errands, dog walk, coffee and doing some paperwork.

Got my final board of director's meeting tomorrow night so want to get all my ducks in a row for that as well.

Today and tomorrow are going to be really nice so need to do a bunch of yard work on top of everything else.

Like it says on the box: Long day - literally

Wishing everyone a wonderful Solstice.

Schadenfreude - lovely sweet schadenfreude. From Associated Press:

Prosecutors seek ‘very substantial’ prison time for Avenatti
Prosecutors urged a judge Wednesday to impose a “very substantial” prison sentence on Michael Avenatti for trying to extort millions of dollars from Nike.

Prosecutors noted in a Manhattan federal court submission that Probation Office officials recommend an eight-year prison term for the California attorney who gained fame three years ago through his representation of porn star Stormy Daniels against then-President Donald Trump.

“The defendant, a prominent attorney and media personality with a large public following, betrayed his client and sought to enrich himself by weaponizing his public profile in an attempt to extort a publicly-traded company out of tens of millions of dollars. This was an egregious abuse of trust, and it warrants real and serious punishment,” prosecutors wrote.

The government said Avenatti, representing the director of a youth basketball program in Los Angeles, tried to force the apparel maker to pay him up to $25 million to keep him quiet about allegations of corruption involving Nike and college athletics.

Publicity does not equal ability.  Just because people are talking about you does not mean that you are good or effective. He is going to have some quality time to meditate on that. Really hope he doesn't try to stage a big splashy comeback when he is released but I bet he is planning that right now.

If I were in his shoes, I would just fade away but that is not in his DNA. Much to our amusement.

And done.

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Got an early morning tomorrow and a full day of work. Minimal posting.

Nothing happening online.

Video or two and it's lights out for this kid.

A wonderful repast

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First farm dinner of the season tonight.

Bruchetta
Green salad with herbs, cherries and oven-roasted pepitas
Pickled radishes
Oven-roasted carrots, beets, daikon radish with rosemary
Cilantro Quinoa
Choice of several fritatta's (fritattae?)
Focaccia Bread
Desert was a strawberry rhubarb cobbler with fresh whipped goat cream.

Live music throughout and a nice 20 minute farm walk before desert. Pleasently stuffed.

Ran into some new people, some old friends, two island artists... About 50 people in attendence.

Busy day today

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Running a few errands and then a farm dinner tonight - first of the season.

Really good food and wonderful people. Home away from home.

California of course - from Yahoo News/Los Angeles Times:

California offers $100 million to rescue its struggling legal marijuana industry
The California Legislature on Monday approved a $100-million plan to bolster California’s legal marijuana industry, which continues to struggle to compete with the large illicit pot market nearly five years after voters approved sales for recreational use.

Los Angeles will be the biggest beneficiary of the money, which was proposed by Gov. Gavin Newsom to be provided as grants to cities and counties to help cannabis businesses transition from provisional to regular licenses.

The California government can not even manage selling pot for a profit. Talk about clueless.
Just another grift with just another "reason" to justify it.
Distributing tax dollars to your cronies.

The real problem is that there is no accountability in public service - if you screw up, you get moved to another position. Often with an increase in pay "for your troubles". The moke does not get fired. Clueless idiots.

And outta here for the day

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More later..

Good point there - race

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A bit curious - earthquakes

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A bit of stress-relieving or leading up to something bigger?
Small (2.n Mag) but shallow - 1-3km depth getting deeper as they head South.
The site I get this from is here: USGS Magnitude 2.5+ Earthquakes, Past Day
It dynamically updates so these quakes will fall off the screen tomorrow.  Coincidence or harbinger?

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Had to run up North for a few errands and stopped at Costco for gas and a few things.
The Tri Tip is up another dollar.  From $9.99/lb to $12.99/lb in thirty days.
Here are the first three photos documenting this and here is photo number four:

20210618-tt04.jpg

Again, note that it is the same SKU #33708 and the same store number #662
Asked the butchers and they said that they had not been told anything. This is corporate's decision.

Just wonderful - ka-boom

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Port Hadlock is across the Sound from where I live. Near to Port Townsend which is a gorgeous old Victorian town but a cess-pit of liberalism. From the WA State The Olympian:

2 hurt in bomb explosion at Olympic Peninsula residence
A bomb detonated at a residence on the Olympic Peninsula in Port Hadlock Tuesday night, causing the suspected bomb maker’s arm to be amputated and injuring his 6-year-old granddaughter.

The unidentified 46-year-old Port Hadlock man’s left arm was amputated in the explosion in an outbuilding on the property, the Peninsula Daily News reported.

Jefferson County Sheriff’s Office Sgt. Brett Anglin said the man also suffered chest injuries, and his granddaughter sustained burns to her face.

Nothing much more - we will see if there is a Manifesto.  Cases like this, there is always a Manifesto.

Wonder if he was affiliated with the Loompanics crowd. The Anarchist's Cookbook had some pretty egregious errors.

Friday morning - usual stuff

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Working today so heading out for dog walk and coffee.  It is going to be fairly warm so running back home after coffee and leaving the pups in the garage for the day. The parking lot at the store has no shade anywhere.

Nothing much happening out there - the usual slow Friday news day...

Coca-Cola - the shareholders speak

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Coca-Cola is a corporation. They are run by a board of directors and they have a CEO and other officers but at heart, they are owned by their shareholders and it is those shareholders who have a say over the direction of the business. From Paul Mirengoff writing at Powerline:

CONCERNED SHAREHOLDERS TAKE ACTION AGAINST COKE’S RACIST DEMANDS
In January 2021, the general counsel of Coca-Cola sent a letter to the law firms that represent it. The letter demanded, among other things, that these firms “commit that at least 30% of each of billed associate and partner time will be from diverse attorneys, and of such amounts at least half will be from Black attorneys.”

In response to this outrageous policy, the American Civil Rights Project (of which I am a board member) has sent a letter to the company on behalf of concerned Coca-Cola shareholders. The letter demands that the Coke either (1) publicly retract the discriminatory outside-counsel policies it announced in January or (2) provide access to the corporate records related to the decision of Coca-Cola’s officers and directors to adopt and retain those illegal policies.

And the upshot was this missive - the conclusion:

The letter concludes with this demand:

The Stockholders therefore demand that you immediately publicly retract the Policies in their entirety. If we do not receive a response to these demands within 30 business days, we will understand. . .Coke. . .to have refused to address these matters themselves. At that point, the Stockholders will be forced to seek judicial relief to protect Coke and the Stockholders’ interests in the company from your continued breaches of your fiduciary duties.

I hope that after you have reviewed this letter, you will be in touch to inform us of how Coke will comply with these demands.

The letter is dated June 11, 2021. The clock is ticking.

People for generations to come will visit Atlanta to see the smoking crater where the Coca-Cola boardroom used to be. If they do not come to their collective senses that is.

China nuke plant - update #7

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Commentary more than actual hard data but this is from someone who has lived in China:

It is an AFDB: Aluminum Foil Deflector Beanie

20210617-afdb.jpg

'Ya know: SCIENCE...

The liberals want to get rid of the Police and install their own brownshirts.  The Police are accountable to the General Public and are charged with upholding the laws on the books. Brownshirts are not. Brownshirts work only for the tyrants.  They are only accountable to the tyrants.

Looks like the People's Republic of Portland is half-way there - from Portland station KXL:

Entire Portland Police Rapid Response Team Resigns
FM News 101 learned late Wednesday night that in response to the criminal indictment of Officer Corey Budworth, the bureaus entire Rapid Response Team resigned. Sources with the Police Bureau say the team voted unanimously to disband.

The Rapid Response Team is a group of volunteer officers who respond to civil disobedience, demonstrations, and riots.

Used to be a wonderful city.  Home to a lot of fun places - Powell's Books. Now? I would not get off I-5 if I had to. Check the gas before entering Oregon. It is going to get a lot worse before it starts to get better.  If it starts to get better.

Fun YouTube channel: Macro Room

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Great imagination and shooting skills - the channel is here: Macro Room

Spending - four possibilities

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From The Silicon Graybeard:

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The rest of their post is well worth reading.

CNN / ratings / toilet

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Schadenfreude - from FOX News:

CNN’s Brian Stelter draws smallest audience of 2021 as ‘Reliable Sources’ gets crushed by ‘MediaBuzz’
CNN’s "Reliable Sources" with Brian Stelter has failed to attract one million viewers for 11-straight weeks and averaged only 752,000 on Sunday for its smallest audience of 2021. 

And this:

Fox News’ "MediaBuzz," which is Stelter’s direct timeslot competition, averaged 1.1 million viewers to beat the struggling CNN show by a whopping 41 percent. Fox News aired 12 different programs on Sunday alone that attracted a larger audience than "Reliable Sources." 

And from The Daily Wire:

Ratings Free Fall: CNN’s Brian Stelter Loses 72% Of Viewers In 2021
The ratings of CNN’s “Reliable Sources” plunged to their lowest level of the year this weekend, even as host Brian Stelter continues to dedicate every episode to criticizing the credibility of Fox News.

In all, his show has lost 72% of its viewers since its high point on January 10.

Looks like We The People are wising up to reality.

The peaceful protest at the Capitol Building? The Democrats are trying to use this as a latter-day Reichstag Fire and clamp down on those pesky freedom-loving Citizens. Unfortunatly for their narrative, it looks like it was pre-planned and that the FBI had a big hand in setting it up.  From Russia Today:

Media hushes up report suggesting FBI involvement in Capitol riot, as White House turns anti-terrorism efforts on American people
Court filings suggest that FBI operatives were among the mob who stormed the US Capitol in January, and may have set up the riot. With the riot used as justification for new terrorism policy, the media is downplaying the story.

Fox News broadcast possibly the most consequential report in recent cable news history on Tuesday night. Fox host Tucker Carlson alleged that the Capitol Hill riot on January 6 – dubbed an “insurrection,” an “assault on our democracy,” and “domestic terrorism” – may have been, at least partly, an inside job.

Carlson’s claims were first made a day earlier by Revolver News, an upstart right-wing news site. Revolver pored over charging documents against members of the ‘Oath Keepers’ and ‘Proud Boys’ militias who took part in the riots, and discovered that alongside the rioters were dozens of “unindicted co-conspirators.” These co-conspirators (UCCs for short) allegedly committed crimes equal to or greater than those of the militia members, but were kept anonymous in the court documents and not charged.

Interesting - according to the testimony, there were numerous attempts to goad people into acts of violence.  All indicators point to these being instigated by outside agitators seeking to incite a riot.  This looks more and more like a false flag operation than anything any Trump supporters did.  After all, we have video of the Capitol Police opening the doors and waving people inside.

The FBI has a long history of infiltrating various groups and inciting hostile activities.  This is something the article spends some time on citing chapter and verse. Time to fire the top 30% of their bureaucracy and seriously audit the doings of the other 70% - rotten to the core.

But this one is pure gold:

Presenting the news - no bias here

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CNN - two websites.  One for the USA and one for Europe. Same coverage? Different stories.

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From Kyle Becker:

CNN Heralds Biden Foreign Trip Victory to Americans, But CNN’s European Readers See: ‘Putin Got Exactly What He Wanted’
CNN’s duplicity doesn’t even stop when it comes to unfair treatment of Republicans and softball treatment of Democrats. It even treats Americans differently by playing it more straight and objective with U.S. news coverage with the rest of the world.

Much more at the site besides these two screen-caps.  Links and story. Not unexpected given the morality and ethics of the people involved. Got to push that narrative.

So true - socialism and free shit

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From Chris Lynch:

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Very interesting - N-acetylcysteine

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From NOQ Report:

NAC Being Studied for Use Against Covid-19, So Of Course Amazon Just Banned It

    • The U.S. Food and Drug Administration is suddenly cracking down on N-acetylcysteine (NAC), claiming it is excluded from the definition of a dietary supplement. As a result, Amazon has removed all listings featuring NAC-containing supplements
    • The trade group for the supplement industry, the Council for Responsible Nutrition, is challenging the FDA’s position, calling it “legally invalid,” and is urging its members to continue selling NAC supplements
    • NAC supplements have been sold for 57 years, and the FDA has never taken action against it — until now, when 16 clinical trials are investigating its usefulness against COVID-19
    • NAC is a precursor to reduced glutathione, which appears to play a crucial role in COVID-19. There’s evidence glutathione deficiency may worsen COVID-19 severity
    • NAC inhibits expression of proinflammatory cytokines that can trigger a cytokine storm, improves T cell response, benefits a variety of lung problems, and inhibits the hypercoagulation that can result in stroke and/or blood clots that impair the ability to exchange oxygen in the lungs

N-acetylcysteine (NAC), a precursor to reduced glutathione, appears to play an important role in COVID-19. According to an April 2020 literature analysis, glutathione deficiency may be associated with COVID-19 severity, leading the author to conclude that NAC may be useful both for its prevention and treatment.

NAC has a long history of use as a poison control remedy for acetaminophen poisoning in the emergency room. It neutralizes the toxic effects of the drug by recharging glutathione, thereby preventing liver damage. But the idea that NAC can also be helpful against viral infections is not new. Previous studies, have found it reduces viral replication of certain viruses, including the influenza virus.

In one such study, the number needed to treat (NNT) was 0.5, which means for every two people treated with NAC, one will be protected against symptomatic influenza. That’s significantly better than influenza vaccines, which have an NNV (number needed to vaccinate) of 71, meaning 71 people must be vaccinated to prevent a single case of confirmed influenza. It’s even better than vitamin D, which has an NNT of 33.

Been taking NAC as a part of my semi-daily regimen for the last ten years or so. One of those things that doesn't have absolutely concrete benefits but the anecdotal benefits are persuasive and the stuff is cheap enough that chucking a few pills down the hatch every other day makes sense.

I have a new hobby!!!

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Surfing one of the more arcane byways of the internet and ran into this offering:

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Complete Tattoo Kit w/ 2 Machines, Power Supply, Needles, 4 Inks
This complete beginner tattoo kit by Rehab Ink has everything needed to create amazing body art. It includes a pro-quality power supply, a stainless steel foot pedal control, a clip cord with stainless contacts to connect to the tattoo machine, and a US 3-prong grounded plug. 2 tattoo machines are also included, designed for both lining and shading, and featuring low-vibration frames, upgraded brass contacts, and dual 10-wrap coils. 4 shots of tattoo ink (2ml each) will help get you started (Black Outlining and Graywash Shading by Kuro Sumi/Forest Gump Green and Monthly Red by Millenium Colorworks-colors may be substituted if those shown are unavailable at time of purchase) and a black, angled metal ink cap stand along with 100 clear caps will provide you with a professional setup (each cap is 1/2" tall x 1/2" wide and holds .5ml of ink). 5 needles are included for use with the machine (Round Liners: 5RL, 7RL / Round Shaders: 5RS, 7RS / Magnums: 7M1) as well as 5 combo needles with 3/4" silica gel grip tubes (5RL, 7RL, 5RS, 7RS, 7M1). All needles are pre-sterilized with ethylene oxide gas and are individually blister packed. Adding to the kit are 10 anti-microbial, heat and UV-resistant rubber bands (these wrap around the tattoo machine and provide correct tension against the needle) along with 10 grommets (these join the needles to the machine's A-bar), 10 spare o-rings, and 6 extra coil washers for machine fine-tuning. A tube of aftercare anti-scar ointment is also included with a pair of black latex gloves, and a skin marking pen with tips at both ends (regular and ultra-fine). Rounding out this kit is an 8-1/2" x 11" sheet of spirit 4-ply thermal paper to transfer stencils onto skin (can be hand traced or used in a thermal or dot matrix printer), transfer paper instructions, a 2-sided piece of practice skin (designs on front, blank on rear), and a how-to instructional eBook!

All this for only $37.99... Free shipping to my door...  Woohooo...
Going to make some serious money tattooing all my friends and neighbors. Maybe set up a table at the coffee shop...

Assuming that the parent company is somewhere in China - they have a US office in Florida.

On June 8th of this year, I posted that Costco's price for Tri Tip beef had gone up by a dollar.
Now? Another dollar increase. Here are the three photos - I am counting the days from the Pack Date:

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When I was there yesterday, I picked up a Chuck steak. I love Tri Tip but this is way too much for what it is worth.
Note that it is the same SKU on all labels as well as the same store number. This is the raw data. This is inflation.

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The Big Guy? Joseph the elder gets a cut off of Hunter's grift: here, here, here for starters.

Wuhan - the real story

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From the London Daily Mail:

'No yellow!' Hunter Biden used slur to refer to Asians in 2019 texts with his cousin Caroline who asked if he preferred 'foreign or domestic' women - as he's already been blasted as racist for using the n-word

    • Hunter Biden referred to Asians with the offensive term 'yellow' in a 2019 text conversation with his cousin Caroline Biden
    • In the January 2019 texts, Caroline and Hunter were discussing setting him up with her rich, model friends
    • Caroline asked Hunter: 'Do you want foreign or domestic. I can't give you f***ing Asian sorry. I'm not doing it'
    • Hunter replied: 'Domesticated foreigner is fine. No yellow'
    • His father Joe vowed last month to 'stop the hatred and the bias' against Asians
    • Caroline, daughter of Joe Biden's brother Jim, was trying to help Hunter get over Hallie, brother Beau's widow and his lover
    • This comes after DailyMail.com revealed Hunter used the n-word multiple times in banter with his lawyer

Much more at the site - screen caps, photos, etc... The fruit did not fall far from the tree.

No conflict of interest here - none at all.  From FOX News:

CNN faces conflict of interest concerns after Biden selects exec's spouse for ambassador to Israel
President Biden selected the spouse of a top CNN executive as his nominee for U.S. ambassador to Israel on Tuesday, raising ethical concerns as experts feel the selection poses a "potential conflict of interest" for the liberal network.

Thomas Nides, a Morgan Stanley executive and former senior State Department official, has been nominated for the post. His wife, CNN senior vice president of newsgathering Virginia Moseley, "oversees all of CNN's breaking news coverage and domestic newsgathering," according to CNN’s website. Moseley is also responsible for "all coverage plans for the network's White House, Congressional, Justice Department, Defense, National Security reporting teams and more."

Nothing new here. Saw it with Bill Clinton, saw it with Barky Obama and we are seeing it now. Just one big happy family.

China nuke plant - update #6

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Looks like problems with the fuel rods. From the New York Times:

China Denies Radiation Leak at Reactor but Admits Fuel Rod Damage
The Chinese government said on Wednesday that “about five” of the uranium fuel rods inside a nuclear power plant in southeastern China had been damaged, but added that no radiation had leaked out of reactors at the site.

Only "about five" - pants on fire. Who made the fuel rods?  Chinese I bet.
From Chinese news outlet: Xinhua

China says no abnormalities in radiation level around Taishan nuclear plant
No abnormalities or radiation leaks have been detected in the vicinity of the Taishan nuclear power plant in south China's Guangdong Province, the country's environment authorities said Wednesday.

The Ministry of Ecology and Environment (MEE) made the remarks in response to recent CNN reports on the situation concerning the plant, noting that its two French-designed nuclear power units have been operating in a safe and stable manner.

Then why all the fuss and bother? Why is this getting such publicity but so little actual data?

Time will tell.  Holding off on taking the iodine pills but dug them out of my prep stash and have them ready if needed.

Shooting fish in a barrel.  Biden is totally outmatched.
Biden's fallback position was the usual cranky old man. Angry at everything.
From the London Daily Mail:

Biden threatens cyber response against Putin and gives him a 'red-line list' of 16 no-hack infrastructure locations - then snaps at press and says is NOT confident the Russian president will change

    • Joe Biden threatened retaliation against Vladimir Putin for cyber attacks
    • Biden said he had 'told President Putin we need some basic rules of the road that we can all abide by', adding that 'I did what I came to do'
    • Putin described Biden as 'very different' from Donald Trump
    • He held a press conference after his nearly-three hour meeting with Biden; Biden speaks next
    • He started off complimentary of Biden but then grew snipping as he was questioned on Russian activities
    • Putin was critical of gun violence in America and deflected questions on dissident Alexi Navalny
    • 'You don't have time to open your mouth and you're shot dead,' he said
    • Biden went after a CNN reporter who pressed him on why he was confident Putin would change

Much more at the site - it would be delicious schadenfreude if it was not our own Nation. Our own *Resident.

Supposed to be a nice day

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Clouds burning off and sunshine happening for the rest of the day.  5% precip in the forecast.

Nothing much going on in the world.  The Biden/Putin "summit" is happening. See what the fallout is from that.  Both Russia and China are holding huge military drills in the Pacific. Rattling sabers.

More stuff is coming out about the January 6th Reichstag Fire Capitol Riot - looks like some government agencies (lookin' at you FBI) had a hand in promoting it.  A lot of the people arrested that day have been in solitary confinement since then. Can't let people know what really went on.  Have to keep pushing the narrative. Uber alles.

Off for dog walk, coffee, work and a few errands - back this afternoon...

JP Sears traces the events of the last decade:

Got to love all the downvotes. You know you are over the target when you are receiving flak...
His channel is here: Awaken With JP

Absolutely wonderful 2:16 video.  Love it. Love his music too.

Not surprising but still - they billed themselves as one of the good guys. 
From Project Veritas:

BREAKING: Fox 26 Reporter Releases tape of ‘Corruption,’ ‘Censorship.’ Fox Corp Boss told Hecker “cease & desist” posting on Hydroxychloroquine & ‘Poor African-Americans’ don’t care about Bitcoin. “Viewers being Deceived”

    • Fox 26 reporter Ivory Hecker was suspended today, after announcing live on-air that she had decided to come to Project Veritas for what she described as pure “corruption” at the Houston affiliate – She said the station’s actions are an affront to real journalism and claimed leadership prioritizes corporate interests over the viewer.
    • Hecker obtained recordings of her superiors telling her to prioritize the opinion of the station’s General Manager, and the company’s CEO, above that of the audience.
    • Hecker: “What’s happening within Fox Corp is an operation of prioritizing corporate interests above the viewer's interest and, therefore, operating in a deceptive way.”
    • She also obtained audio of Fox 26’s VP and News Director, Susan Schiller, telling Hecker to “cease and desist” posting about Hydroxychloroquine on social media.
    • Hecker interviewed Dr. Joseph Varon, MD, Chief of Critical Care and COVID-19 Unit at United Memorial Medical Center in Houston, who told her of his success using Hydroxychloroquine on certain patients.
    • Hecker: “The viewers are being deceived by a carefully crafted narrative in some stories.”
    • Things turned racial behind the scenes, according to Hecker, who recorded her superior, Lee Meier, as they judged the newsworthiness of a story based on specific demographics -- on one occasion, a Fox 26 executive said that a “poor African-American audience” wouldn’t care about Bitcoin stories.
    • Hecker said the decision to shy away from these topics was not made in the interest of the public good, but rather, in line with the leadership of Fox Corp and Fox’s advertisers -- one of which is the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
    • Hecker: "There's a narrative. Yes, it is unspoken. But if you accidentally step outside the narrative, if you don't sense what that narrative is and go with it, there will be grave consequences for you.”
    • Hecker: “Fox came at my throat for standing up against censorship.”
    • Hecker had a call with Fox 26 earlier today in which she was asked to return her reporting equipment to the station.
    • Ivory's mother Renee has set up a crowdfunding support page for her daughter at the Christian website GiveSendGo.com
    • Fox 26 Houston has responded through a company spokesperson: "FOX 26 adheres to the highest editorial standards of accuracy and impartiality. This incident involves nothing more than a disgruntled former employee seeking publicity by promoting a false narrative produced through selective editing and misrepresentation."

Project Veritas released a new video today featuring a sit-down interview with recently-suspended Fox 26 reporter, Ivory Hecker, who blew the whistle on her own network for what she says are acts of deception. She claims the station’s editorial decisions are an affront to honest journalism. 

Hecker, who serves as a dayside reporter primarily for the five and six o’clock news, came forward to Project Veritas with recordings of her colleagues and superiors showing a pattern of “censorship” on COVID-19 and Bitcoin-related stories. She also highlighted a pattern of submission among the local affiliate’s leadership to Fox’s corporate interests, rather than acting in the interest of transparency with its viewers.

“Viewers are being deceived about some of the things that are going on,” Hecker told Veritas.

Much much more at the site - this kinda jumped out at me:

Jennifer Bourgeois, Sales Coordinator for Fox 26, admitted on tape that the CDC is heavily influencing stations such as theirs due to the amount of money they are pouring into ad campaigns – and how that, in turn, affects the network’s coverage of major health issues. 

'Scuse me but isn't the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention supposed to be a non-partisan agency?

And, if we know anything about James O'Keefe, he has several hours more stuff in the vault ready to be released.  Let FOX try to spin this one - they were caught feeding us disinformation.  Not doing their fscking job.

Something to remember

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From Woodsterman:

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Fun times in Chicago

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Looks like their mayor is missing some basic leadership skills.  Typical.
From The Liberty Daily:

Leaked Email Shows Lori Lightfoot Channeling ‘The Shining’ In Unhinged Rant About Office Time
No matter how hard I try to stay on top of every bit of news that ever happens in America, occasionally something slips past me. That happened this weekend when Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot demonstrated how unhinged from reality she really is in a leaked email about her precious office time.

First reported by the Chicago Tribune, the Mayor repeated every line of her rant for effect. It was an embarrassing display of childishness that some compared to the theme of Stephen King’s “The Shining” where the main character types repeatedly, “All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.”

Copies of the emails at the site for your enjoyment.  This is not how to manage people or lead an organization.

She is not losing it.  She never had it.  She was credentialed.  Black. Lesbian. Paid her dues. It was her "turn".
Ability to manage a city? Never entered the equation. Accountability? Don't make me laugh...

President Putin does remember 2011

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And is doing an epic troll of Biden the elder.  From Trending Politics:

Vladimir Putin Trolls Joe Biden For His “Good Memory”
During an NBC interview before the planned meeting between Russian President Vladimir Putin and President Joe Biden, Putin appeared to troll Biden for his “good memory” in relation to comments that he allegedly previously made.

“Well, President Biden says — one time when you met, you were inches away from each other, close to each other,” reporter Keir Simmons started. “And he said to you, ‘I’m looking in your eyes, and I can’t see a soul.’ And you said, ‘We understand each other.’ Do you remember that exchange?”

“As far as soul, I’m not sure. One has to think about what soul is. But I do not remember this particular part of our conversations, to be honest with you. I do not remember,” Putin said, adding, “And— as far as soul goes, that’s something for the church.”

Putin added later on in the interview, “I do not remember this, something wrong with my memory.”

“He says it was about it was 10 years ago, 10 years ago when he was vice president, he says,” the reporter persisted.

“Well, he probably has a good memory,” Putin replied, clearly poking fun at Biden’s mental decline.

Video of the full interview and transcript of this segment at the site. Elder abuse. It will be interesting to see if the video of the upcoming meeting is released - Putin is running rings around our Nation and the Democrat Party in particular. I wish we could hire him to clean our Washington D.C. - come over here for a few years, do a grand reset and then go back to running Russia...

And out for a couple of hours

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Heading to Costco today instead of tomorrow.  Getting low on staples.

Farmer's market today - swing by there on my way home.

Cloudy with off-and-on sunshine.  T-storms are forecast for later today.  Good!  Some scattered activity to the west - see what develops as the day wears on.

China nuke plant - update #5

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A bit over the top in their reporting but...  From American Military News:

Chinese nuclear plant likely leaking near 126 million people; disaster possible; US investigating reports say
On Monday a French nuclear company, Framatome, announced it is supporting efforts to resolve a “performance issue” with its Taishan Nuclear Power Plant in China’s heavily populated Guangdong Province, raising concerns about a potential nuclear leak.

The nuclear plant is located in Guangdong, which according to Chinese census estimates for 2020, has an estimated population of about 126 million people. The plant is also located about 84 miles from Hong Kong.

CNN reported, citing U.S. officials and Department of Energy documents it reviewed, that the U.S. government has been assessing a reported leak at the nuclear plant for the last week. Those documents, obtained by CNN, warned of a potential “imminent radiological threat” at the power plant.

A letter sent from the French company to the Department of Energy (DOE) and obtained by CNN warned Chinese safety regulators were reportedly raising the acceptable limits for radiation detection in the area surrounding the power plant, in an effort to avoid having to shut the plant down.

Emphaisis mine - that is so reassuring and chilling at the same time.

Let's see:  we figure that the safe limit for human exposure to ionizing radiation is 10 units of X.  Whoops - we are seeing 12 units of X.  Let's just raise the safe limit to 20 units of X. No problem. No danger. Nothing to see here folks - just keep moving.

And it is not like China has a sterling record of nuclear power.

China nuke plant - update #4

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This is not about the plant but about following the money behind the plant.
From The National Pulse:

Hunter Biden Invested Millions In Chinese Communist Party Firm Operating Nuclear Plant Reportedly Experiencing Leak
A nuclear power plant believed to be experiencing a leak posing an “imminent radiological threat” is run by China General Nuclear Power Corporation: a state-owned firm that has enjoyed millions of dollars in investment from President Joe Biden’s son Hunter.

The details:

BHR Partners – the private equity firm where Hunter Biden served as a director since 2013 – was a $10 million cornerstone investor in CGN’s initial public offering. Occurring in 2014, the IPO was the second largest of the entire year, valued at over $3 billion.

The company, which Hunter Biden reportedly retains a sizable stake in, still lists GCN as part of its portfolio on its website.

The links are pretty damning. Hunter is in bed with the Chinese. Dirty and corrupt.  The whole family.

In their dreams - from Newsmax:

Biden Plans to 'Warn' Putin in Talks That May Last 5 Hours
President Joe Biden plans to warn Russian President Vladimir Putin that the U.S. will respond to actions that conflict with its national interests during a meeting scheduled for 1 p.m. Wednesday in Geneva, according to White House officials.

The White House expects the meeting to last four to five hours, but doesn’t anticipate any concrete policy announcements to come from it, the officials said. Biden instead wants to use his first sit-down with the Russian leader to lay out the circumstances in which U.S. will retaliate against Russia and also find areas to cooperate.

“I’m always ready,” Biden said Tuesday when asked by reporters during a meeting with the Swiss president if he’s prepared to meet Putin.

This would almost be fun to see if it was not elder abuse and our *Resident. Biden was never sharp to begin with - he is a flaccid compliant swamp creature and has been for his entire political career. When are we going to talk about term limits for these people.  We need a Convention of States and pass an Amendment.

Red sky at night

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Sailor's delight - certainly bearing out this morning.  Gorgeous sunset yesterday - some rain last night and now, sun breaking through the clouds.  Looks to be a good day for defraging the van. After coffee and a dog run of course.

Russian President Putin is meeting with our *Resident Biden in two days in Switzerland.
President Putin is asking the US Government to reveal the name of the person who shot Ashli Babbitt:

Been how many days and we still do not know who murdered her? Makes me wonder if this meeting with Biden will be any less humiliating than this one in 2011.

As Joe Biden’s White House stenographer, I stood directly behind Putin at a distance of five feet. Biden, seated across from Putin at an elegant conference table, was about 12 feet from me.

About 10 minutes into the meeting, Vice President Biden attempted to start lecturing about his decades-old part in U.S.-Russian negotiations with the dreaded phrase, “I’ve been around a long time. The first time I was here…”

And… cut.

Joe Biden got about one sentence further into that spiel when off went his microphone, off went the lights for the TV cameras, and stern Russian voices were commanding the press to leave. And leave they did.

They went out quickly and efficiently, with videocameras popping off of tripods. Equipment snapping shut. Portable lights clattering down retractable poles. No one spoke, and no one dared linger.

This was Putin in all his KGB ruthlessness. Whether by some prearranged signal or simply an undisclosed time limit, he had pulled the plug and done the unthinkable: he’d stolen Joe Biden’s audience and rendered him speechless. Shut him down in mid-sentence with the flick of an invisible switch.

Across the table, I could see Vice President of the United States Joe Biden, in the now dimly lit room, looking as duped as an exhausted fish in the bottom of a boat. No protest, no complaint. No, hey, I wasn’t finished. Nothing. He was humiliated.

To me, the revelation was the premeditated precision of the snub. Putin or his team had likely plotted this all out. They knew exactly what bait to use, exactly how Joe Biden would take it, and then when he did, they reeled him helplessly in.

The Russian President and his delegation sat calmly and coldly as their American counterparts realized their blustery leader’s big moment had been stolen right out from under him. The most powerful man in Russia had neither fear nor respect for Joe Biden. He had just played with him for sport.

That was ten years ago.  I doubt that Joe Biden even remembers the incident. Much more at the site - it goes beyond this. President Putin is still having fun - from Sean Hannity at FOX News:

Putin challenged President Biden to an on-air conversation to discuss Biden’s latest warning that Putin would "pay a price," following a report containing evidence of attempted Russian-interference in the 2020 election.

"I’ve just thought of this now," Putin told a reporter in Moscow Thursday. "I want to invite President Biden to continue our discussion, but on the condition that we do it actually live. But with no delays, directly in an open, direct discussion."

What we are seeing is not politics, it is elder abuse.

Memo to self - Protein shakes

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Do not chill them too much. They are an emulsion and if you chill them too much, the emulsion will break.

Talk about funky mouthfeel.  Blech...

222 - trolling...

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Any idiots out there?

Home for the evening

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Ran up North to get some frozen veggies to replace those I lost in the chest freezer.  I'll be going to Costco Wednesday and will pick up a couple of TriTips and some chicken - ditto. The restaurant wholesaler for the Ahi Tuna steaks - bring the big cooler and stop at my welding store for some dry ice before doing the run.

Big salad and a protein bar for dinner - the height of culinary adventure.  I have yet to break down the chuck steak or to make the pot roast - maybe tomorrow or maybe Wednesday.  See how the flow goes.

Surf a bit while I eat - just sitting down.

Time to step up hummingbird nectar production and put out the rest of the feeders (2 out now, do 4 max) - refilled them on the morning of the 12th - two days ago. They are more than half empty already. Greedy lil' buggers.  Love them to bits.

Heh - get woke? Go broke.

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Latest business to discover this is the television network Nickelodeon - from The Daily Wire:

Nickelodeon Ratings Crash Amid LGBTQ Push
There’s growing evidence that Nickelodeon’s hard push to promote the LGBTQ agenda to children is having a negative impact on the network’s ratings.

In the last two weeks, both Nickelodeon and its preschool-targeted network, Nick Jr., have released videos championing “trans,” “queer,” and “pansexual” inclusion. One video that sparked mass outrage depicted a cartoon version of drag queen Nina West singing about various LGBTQIA groups “[loving] each other so proudly” on “Blues Clues and You,” a show for two- to five-year olds. That same video showed a female-to-male transgender beaver who appeared to have post-operative surgical scars on its chest. 

In a separate live action video Nickelodeon posted to YouTube last week, West explains the meanings behind various LGBTQ Pride flags through a song. These latest videos come after the network began overtly celebrating “Pride” month several years ago and implied in 2020 that its most popular character, SpongeBob SquarePants, is gay.

The company also recently announced that its reboot of “Rugrats,” a popular series that originally ran throughout the 1990s to 2004, will feature a single lesbian mom. Natalie Morales, the actress who plays the character, commented, “I think it’s just so great because examples of living your life happily and healthily as an out queer person is just such a beacon for young queer people who may not have examples of that.”

And the numbers?

Since July of 2017, Nickelodeon’s viewership has dropped from 1.3 million average viewers per week to a June of 2021 average of only 372,000. In only four years, Nickelodeon has dropped more than two thirds of its audience.

The evidence speaks for itself.

From Seattle station KING 5:

Wildfire 'smoke taint' compromises Woodinville winery's 2020 vintage
Wine that tastes like an ashtray -- that's what happened to a Woodinville winery's latest vintage, due to last year's wildfires in Washington, Oregon and California.

Betz Family Winery announced Tuesday it will not release wine from its 2020 vintage due to "smoke taint," which impacted their grapes used for wine.

Betz Family has a tasting room and winery in Woodinville but their vineyards are located in drier eastern Washington, along the Columbia River valley, Walla Walla and Yakima Valley.

Wildfires from September and October last year impacted their grapes in varying degrees. "You can just smell the smoke literally on the bunches," said Bridgit Griessel of Betz Family Winery.

Changes to the flavor profile of the wine became apparent during the fermentation process and lab tests confirmed the smoke taint, Griessel said.

Yikes - they knew about it going in but fermentation completely rewrites the flavor profile so maybe they were hoping to get lucky. A bit more from the story:

Hundreds of barrels of red wine from the 2020 vintage will not be bottled and potentially be kept for an indefinite amount of time to further study the impacts of smoke taint, according to Betz Family Winery.

That is going to suck big-time too - the barrels are $400 each or thereabouts (wide range in price/quality) and once the taint gets into the wood, it will color anything else put into it.

Who knows, the wine might clear up after a few years.  They could always sell it to a blender (hello? Mogen-David?) or a rectifier and have them distil it down to pure ethanol but that would be a huge loss of revenue.

Their website is here: Betz Family Wine and we can see that their "entry-level red wine" sells for $35/bottle. Other offerings are in the $50-on-up range.  This is a big loss of revenue for them.

The difference 252 days make

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From one story to another - not surprising really:

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It was never about the facts.  It was about pushing the narrative and getting that Orange Man out of D.C.

China nuke plant - update #3

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These are what I am using - pack of 14 for $10: IOSAT Potassium Iodide Tablets USP, 130 mg

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Transport across the Pacific is going to take 3-5 days so you will be fine if you order now. Some of the comments note that what they recieved had a bad expiration date and was packed differently than what is pictured in the listing. Caveat emptor.

China nuke plant - update #2

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WHOOPS!  I was confusing this reactor with the one coming online in Finland.  Both of these are the new generation pressurised water reactors but the Chinese unit has been online for four years already - not a few months.

More about the design here: EPR Nuclear Reactor

China nuke plant - update #1

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Curious - from the Hong Kong Free Press:

‘Imminent radiological threat’: French firm seeks to resolve issue at Chinese nuclear plant near Hong Kong
A French nuclear firm said Monday it was working to resolve a “performance issue” at a plant it part-owns in China’s southern Guangdong province following a US media report of a potential leak there.

Yadda yadda yadda...   And then this caught my eye:

EDF later said that there was an “increase in the concentration of certain noble gases in the primary circuit of reactor no. 1” at Taishan, referring to a part of the reactor’s cooling system.

Noble gases are elements like argon, helium and neon which have low chemical reactivity.

Errrr...  'ya all forgot to mention Xenon.  Xenon is critical. Remember this:  Iodine Pit - it's a thing.  Google it.
From the entry at InfoGalactic:  Iodine Pit

Iodine pit, also called iodine hole and xenon pit, is a temporary disabling of a nuclear reactor due to buildup of short-lived nuclear poisons in the core of a nuclear reactor. The main isotope responsible is xenon-135, mainly produced by natural decay of iodine-135. Iodine-135 is a weak neutron absorber, while xenon-135 is the most powerful known neutron absorber. When xenon-135 builds up in the fuel rods of a reactor, it significantly lowers their reactivity, by absorbing a significant amount of the neutrons which provide the nuclear reaction.

The presence of iodine-135 and xenon-135 in the reactor is one of the main reasons for its power fluctuations in reaction to change of control rod positions.

The buildup of short-lived fission products acting as nuclear poisons is called reactor poisoning, or xenon poisoning. Buildup of stable or long-lived neutron poisons is called reactor slagging.

Again, this is a new reactor design.  This is not an established design, this is a so-called "3rd generation" PBW Reactor. You can run the core hot to get rid of the Xenon but its rate of decay is not known for this core (new reactor design - duhhh) and the danger of overshooting and overheating the core is a possibility.  This is what started the whole ball rolling at Chernobyl.

I am getting my iodine pills out this afternoon - they are in my prepper stash.  Just to be safe.

Just keep moving along

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Nothing to see here folks - from the South China Morning Post:

China’s Taishan nuclear plant ‘operating safely’, French firm says
A French company responsible for maintenance at a nuclear power plant in southern China said the facility was operating safely, amid reports of a “radiological threat” at the plant.

Framatome, a French designer and supplier of nuclear reactors, said on Monday that the Taishan Nuclear Power Plant in the southern Chinese province of Guangdong, was operating safely.

“According to the data available, the plant is operating within the safety parameters,” it said.

The company also said staff were working to help fix a “performance issue” at the plant.

The reactor is brand new - this is their 3rd generation PWR which just came online about a month ago.  That they are still using Uranium boggles the mind.  Thorium in a molten salt reactor is so much safer and much more efficient. Night and day - much cheaper to build and run too.

If there is a release, it will show up on the West coast in about a week given the prevaling winds. Got some iodine pills - see if they are needed...

Celebrations

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Flag Day

Birthday of US. Army

Birthday of President Donald John Trump

Less rainy today

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Forecast is showing only 40% chance of precip. Overcast and cool - visibility about 3-4 miles. Can't see Whidbey Island.

Day two of puttering around - need to visit the bank and make some phone calls but that is the extent of my to-do list. House cleaning, defrag the van if it stays dry. Fun stuff.

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When a major mainstream media outlet reports on it, it is serious. From NBC News:

'Don't ban us for being Jewish': Jewish TikTok creators say they feel silenced by the platform
Since early May, every Friday evening, Julia Massey said she gets the same notification from TikTok: She’s been banned from posting for a week.

Massey, 19, of California, a Jewish creator on the app, said she could be posting a video of herself baking a loaf of challah or a clip of her cat, but the outcome is always the same.

“It just repeats and repeats until I’m basically entirely incapable of interacting whatsoever on the app,” she said. Massey consistently uploads videos to her account, but she said it's been a fight to get those videos to stay up.

And not just her - not by a long shot:

Comment sections on the content of Jewish TikTokers are often filled with antisemitic remarks, stereotypes and slurs. Some Jewish creators say they have to think about whether they want to disclose their Judaism on the app, knowing the harassment they’re likely to be subjected to.

And TikTok itself:

But recently some Jewish creators said they feel the app is subjecting them to a type of censorship by regularly flagging and removing their content. Nearly a half-dozen Jewish creators told NBC News that their videos are being banned and removed for allegedly violating TikTok’s community guidelines for things like hateful behavior, hamstringing their ability to use the app. Most of those creators said when they appeal their bans or video removals, the app says the punishment was made in error.

More stories at the site - the article closes with this:

"Jews don’t feel safe on TikTok," he said. "We feel it’s very toxic to us just for the same basic, fun TikToks we’re posting like everybody else."

And if this is what one mainstream media outlet is covering, you can only imagine how much more is going on.  Talking tip of the iceberg here.

The people teaching our children have been failing in their jobs.  If these kids were taught history, they would understand what evil this is and they would not go there.  It is like they are worshiping the devil - turning away from the light.  They may assume a position of power that way but it is very transitory and the repercussions are something I would not want to wish on anyone.  Actions have consequences whether you like it or not.

Compromise - dinner

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Picked up a baked chicken breast.  Cheap, good protein and will be tasty with the rice and sesame oil and bok choi.

Not the Ahi I was salivating for but one needs to be able to adapt in this ever-changing world.

Well crap... Freezer fun

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Was thinking about doing some Hawaiian food for dinner tonight.  I have some really nice frozen sashimi-grade Ahi Tuna steaks in the freezer.  Lightly pan-seared in some toasted sesame oil and plated over some rice and some steamed Bok Choi.

Make that HAD...  Opened the freezer and everything was at room temperature.  Failed.  Power is good to it and it must have failed in the last few days or so as I have been using it.  Looking at about $150 worth of tuna plus another couple hundred for some steaks and such.  Have to re-buy my staples too - WalMart carries a really nice frozen pearl onion I love for soups and stews. Chopped organic Kale. Bunch of good food gone to waste.

Promptly placed an order for two of these: CDN TA20 Audio Visual Refrigerator Freezer Alarm  Pack of two for under $30 - I have another freezer in the garage. Should have done this years ago.

Was heading to the store to check my mailbox - I'll see what they have for seafood.  I have some Spam here - also a nice taste of the Islands. Not what I was thinking about though...

Puttering around

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Raining off and on - had a front move through about 90 minutes ago. Got really warm (+15°F), burst of rainfall and is now slowly cooling down again.  Was up to 81°F - is now 71°. Day started at 63°.

Working inside - decluttering the kitchen and living room. Vaccuming.  Basic house maintenence.  Van still needs to have the crap processed and triaged but will wait for a sunny day for that.

Picked up a chuck roast at Costco a few days ago - going to portion that out and freeze a bunch.  Have not done pot roast in a long time and this is very good weather for that.  Sous Vide of course.  Yummy.

Back to work...

Was reminded of this today - decent software: uBlock Origin - Free, open-source ad content blocker

I go a different route and use MVPS HOSTS

Gotta love this little-reported news item from Associated Press:

US closes Trump-era office for victims of immigrant crime
The Biden administration said Friday it has dismantled a Trump-era government office to help victims of crimes committed by immigrants, a move that symbolizes President Joe Biden’s rejection of former President Donald Trump’s repeated efforts to link immigrants to crime.

Trump created the Victim Of Immigration Crime Engagement Office, known by its acronym VOICE, by executive order during his first week in office in January 2017.

This was and still is a major problem - Trump did this as soon as he could.  His whole Presidency was spent advocating for the rights of legal American Citizens. But wait, they are going to use the globalist trope of: "Build back better"

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement said it was replacing VOICE with a “more comprehensive and inclusive victim support system.”

VOICE will be replaced by The Victims Engagement and Services Line, which will combine longstanding existing services, such as methods for people to report abuse and mistreatment in immigration detention centers and a notification system for lawyers and others with a vested interest in immigration cases.

The new office will add a service for potential recipients of visas designated for victims of human trafficking or violent crimes in the United States.

So they have disbanded the original office - people with five years experience have been scattered to the winds. They are starting over from scratch and one of their core principles is to treat incoming illegals as victims.  To spend our tax dollars taking care of them when many of our own citizens are being predated on by these "helpless refugees".

The Democrats require a dependent under-class to survive.  The party was born in the Southern Plantations and they have not evolved. They still require their slaves to function.  People who think what they are told to think. People who act how they are told to act. People who say what they are told to say.  People who do what they are told to do.

They can not survive on their own merits, on their own ideas, on their own philosophies.  They have nothing so they have to cheat and drag our civilization down into the gutter.

A point of clarity - gender

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From ABC News:

Millions of rounds of ammunition stolen on Mexican highway
Two trailer loads of small-caliber ammunition bound for the United States were stolen by armed assailants on a highway in Mexico’s most violent state, Guanajuato, the manufacturer said Friday.

A company representative said about 98.5% of the millions of rounds of ammo stolen earlier this week were .22 caliber, which is seldom used by Mexican drug cartels.

“These will be of no use to them, given that they don’t use these weapons,” said security analyst Juan Ibarrola, who also acts as spokesman for the Tecnos Industries company

The .22 rounds are used mainly in rifles for target practice or extremely small game. Mexican cartels prefer larger, high-velocity ammunition for AK-47 and AR-15 rifles or 9 mm weapons.

The total quantity was not clear, but was estimated to be about 7 million rounds. The ammunition is sold in the United States under the Aguila brand.

A lot to unload - .22 sells for just under 25¢ / round. 7 million rounds = $1.75M MSRP  Figure they are going to have to transport the two trailers, unload and repackage them and fence them, they would be looking at about $500K.  A nice chunk of change but a lot of work for it. Lots of people to buy off.

One of my pistols (rather, one I had before that horrible boating accident of 2014), is was a Kel-Tec PMR-30 - a lot of fun to shoot. Not a defensive round by any means.

Good news from the G7 meeting

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From America's Newspaper of Record:

World's Economy Saved As Giant Crack In Earth Swallows Up All G7 Conference Attendees
A time of peace and prosperity has broken out across the earth after a sudden earthquake opened up a crack in the earth's crust and swallowed up all G7 world leaders in mere seconds.

Witnesses reported feeling a low rumble beneath their feet as Joe Biden, Justin Trudeau, Angela Merkel, and others gathered on the green grass for a photo op. The rumble grew to a roar as the ground below them opened up and dragged every G7 leader into the depths of the earth. The ground then closed up over them and they were never heard from again.

"Hey guys, please remember to use my preferred pronouns," Trudeau had begun to say. "We need to be sensitive to-- AAAHHHHHHHHHHhhhhhhhhhhhh!"

Experts are unsure who will be taking over the important work of running the planet, issuing random lockdown orders, and fighting climate change in the absence of such brilliant and courageous leaders.

"This is such a disaster. What will we ever do without them?" said 1 or 2 people around the world.

World governments have assured their citizens they will continue the important work of building back better for everyone. American citizens will be mourning the terrible loss this weekend with backyard barbecues.

News like this just warms my heart.  The best thing these people could do is just get back and stand out of the way.  They are not elite, they are just credentialed and know nothing about the real world.

Arkancide body count: +1

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From The Gateway Pundit:

Reporter Who Broke Clinton-Lynch Tarmac Story Found DEAD in His Apartment
The ABC journalist who broke the infamous story about the 2016 tarmac meeting between Bill Clinton and then-Attorney General Loretta Lynch has been found dead in his apartment.

The body of Christopher Sign, 45, was found in his Birmingham, Alabama apartment on Saturday morning around 8 a.m. His death is being investigated as a suicide, according to police Lt. Keith Czeskleba.

He wrote a book about the event: Secret on the Tarmac
From the Amazon book description:

“The plan was perfect. No cameras, no microphones, no prying eyes and plenty of security. The setting for a clandestine meeting could not have been better. Former President Bill Clinton exited Attorney General Loretta Lynch’s private plane 20-minutes after he boarded. Both thought they got away with it. Both were wrong. Amid a heated Presidential race, federal investigations involving emails and Benghazi and society looking for clarity on the future of the country, the secret tarmac meeting would only complicate things. The secret meeting would have never been revealed if it weren’t for a veteran journalist and a trusted source.” 

Arkancide? From the website:

Arkancide is the unfortunate habit of potential witnesses to the Clintons' dirty dealings in Arkansas suddenly deciding to shoot themselves twice in the back of the head. Police and Coroners in Arkansas, notably Fahmy Malak who answered to Governor Bill Clinton, automatically described these shootings as "suicides."

After Bill Clinton became President the phenomenon spilled over to Washington D.C. when Hillary Clinton's ex-lover Vincent Foster was "Arkancided."

Our political system has been too corrupt for too long. I want my Nation back again.

Woke in Austin, Texas

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Austin is a liberal redoubt in the heart of conservative Texas. Former Texas Governor Rick Perry referred to Austin as “a blueberry in the tomato soup”. Their media certainly reflect this. There was a major shooting on Saturday. One of the suspects is in custody and the other is still at large.  The Austin American-Statesman had this to say:

What we know about the suspect
Police have only released a vague description of the suspected shooter as of Saturday morning. The Austin American-Statesman is not including the description as it is too vague at this time to be useful in identifying the shooter and such publication could be harmful in perpetuating stereotypes and potentially put innocent individuals at risk. If more detailed information is released, we will update our reporting.

From Breitbart (Chacon is the Austin Police Chief):

Chacon said his officers are attempting to locate the suspected shooter described as a “skinny” black male with locs-style hair. No motive has been released at this time.

Perpetuating stereotypes?  What?  Black gun violence? Look at any of the analyses and blacks are more than twice as likely to die by gun than whites. Also, about 70% of all white gun deaths are suicide - 19% for blacks so the initial numbers are even worse. This is a major problem in America and nobody has the political stones to address it.

And the fun begins

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A few weeks early.  A nearby neighbor seems to have visited a local reservation and returned with several boxes of things that go Ka-Boom. Fun.  There are a few houses that must spend several thousands on their 4th of July displays.  Beats going out to watch any municipal display.  Glacier, WA does a really nice one but these are just as good.

Truffle has been having some issues with the sudden noise but she is quieting down.  She has had no problem with me shooting so it's just an acclimatization thing, not a fear response.

Head outside to fill the hummingbird feeders and see what is happening out there - still pretty light out. Put T-Dog on a lead just to be sure. Bear is zero problem.

Been working on the new garage computer - installing some utilities (here, here, here, here, here for starters) the bookkeeping software as well as the shop management software.  Drivers for the two label printers. Various handy utilities.

Microsoft really really really wants you to join the Borg Collective.  It forces you to assimilate set up an account with them and uses that to log in.  Only later can you go into the admin functions and change your account to a local log-in.  Click yes, I really wanna do that.  Click confirm, I understand that I am choosing to leave the Borg. Click verify, I am certain that I want to set up a local account.

I understand that they have to monetize their investment but sheesh - they are driving a lot of people right into the Linux community. I wish they would put a Sod Off button - start from the very beginning with a local login. Also grumbling to myself as I wanted to put a new battery in the motherboard.  I have a pack of about 10 of them but can not find them. Oh well...

Raining lightly - stopped working on the van around 5:00 - soup for dinner. Sleeping in tomorrow - two days of rest and relaxation but there are worries on the horizon.  I finished the book I was reading (fascinating story well told) and have nothing queued up for next. Browsed the library this morning after coffee but nothing caught my eye. Starting to go through withdrawal. Deep slow breaths...

They are not winning.  They are advancing but the night is still young.
From The Liberty Daily:

State Senator to AG Garland: ‘You Will Not Touch Arizona Ballots or Machines Unless You Want to Spend Time in an Arizona Prison’
Arizona State Senator Wendy Rogers is known for speaking her mind. Democrats, Republicans, it doesn’t matter. She feels how she feels and represents the people of her state the only way she knows how: Through decisive action and clear words.

Her latest message was to Attorney General Merrick Garland who has threatened to get the Department of Justice involved in stopping the Maricopa election audit.

“You will not touch Arizona ballots or machines unless you want to spend time in an Arizona prison. Maybe you should focus on stopping terrorism. The Justice Department is one of the most corrupt institutions in the USA,” she Tweeted.

Heh - we have had some really "stellar" AGs in recent history. Even under President Trump.
Classic case of "Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?" That saying has been popular since the first century.
Nothing happens without a reason and that reason should be pretty evident - nothing new.

What really grinds my gears is thinking about how much more productive, how much happier, how much more creative we as a Nation would be if we did not have all this stupidity and corruption in our government. Even if there was just some small measure of accountability for people's works and deeds. Get rid of the overhead and the dead weight.

A day of triage

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Unloading the van - did a bunch when I got home a few days ago but since today turned out nice (sunny and warm), I'm setting up a table and going to town. Here is what I am dealing with:

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Finished a light lunch (apple slices and peanut butter) and time to get my butt in gear.

Planning to spray some weeds too - just received a garden sprayer rated for acid use.  Been using dilute Muriatic Acid to get rid of the horsetails.  Their physical structure is silica based and the acid dissolves this.  Knocks 'em out. Tried a regular sprayer and it worked but failed after 20 minutes or so.  See what happens. I had been using a plastic watering can before but that didn't pinpoint where I wanted the spray to go - wasted a lot. This puppy costs about 3X what a Home Depot cheap sprayer costs but it is really solid and if it works? Buy Once, Cry Once.

Nothing happening out on the intarwebs - slow weekend.  G7 is the usual deep-state love-fest. Biden is right at home.

Good point there:

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Pushback to the grift - good news

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Not reported by the mainstream media but....  From the London Daily Mail:

Father of police victim Michael Brown joins anti-BLM leadership movement as more chapters demand to know where $90MILLION is being spent after $3m property empire of Patrisse Cullors was exposed

    • The original ten chapters of Black Lives Matter are demanding accountability and transparency from the Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation
    • Michael Brown Sr. is perhaps the most notable name to join the BLM 10 Plus movement
    • His son Michael Brown, 18, was killed by a white police officer in Ferguson, Missouri in 2014
    • Brown's death and the violence between police and protesters in the aftermath have been largely credited for the early spread of BLM
    • The revelations of Black Lives Matter infighting comes after co-founder Patrisse Cullors announced her resignation from the foundation
    • News reports revealed Cullors owns four residential properties in upscale - and predominantly white - California and Georgia neighborhoods

The father of a black teen shot dead by police has joined-in demands to know what Black Lives Matter's $90 million funds have been used for after its co-founder's $3 million property portfolio was exposed.

Michael Brown Sr - whose 18 year-old son Michael Brown was shot dead by a cop in Ferguson, Missouri, in 2014, added his name to the BLM 10 Plus movement. It is comprised of the original 10 Black Lives Matter chapters, and is seeking transparency and accountability from BLM about how its cash has been used.

Much more at the site - the founders are living large.  It was all a grift - for them, not for the people.
Typical - "trained marxists" indeed. True colors.

Outlets like the Daily Mail are covering these stories.  CNN? NY Times?

- - - crickets - - -

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Red skies in morning

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Sailor take warning - glorious sunrise this morning but rain is in the forecast for tomorrow. Something is moving in.

Bit of a temblor near Olympia, WA but it was about 30 miles deep so no appreciable damage.

Woke feeling nice and rested - take care of some stuff here, fill the hummingbird feeders and head out for some coffee before work. Breakfast and surf first.

Asset tags - having some fun

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I have been looking at getting some non-removable plastic asset tags for my tools. Inventory them and allow for positive identification if I am out working at a site.  Looks like some people have been having fun - a few photos:

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Pretty cheap too - couple of bucks.  Get a few and sprinkle them around.

Feeling it - downright sleepy

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Definitely feeling the lack of sleep - time for a few viddies and an early bedtime.

Working tomorrow - supposed to be less rainy than today but another "leg" of this wet front is due Sunday so not making any outdoors plans. Cooled off quite a bit too - got the suplemental heaters running in the bathroom and the bedroom.  Take the chill off. Spending Sunday and Monday puttering around the house - sorting through crap and getting ready for another load from the farm.

Looks perfectly legit doesn't it?

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Looks interesting: Photopea

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Adware unless you want to pay for it - web based photo editor. Looks reasonably powerful.
Check out Photopea

I prefer the Affinity line of software - works great for me and reasonably priced. Photo, Designer, Publisher

All you need is the headline

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Sending VP Harris to South America was a disaster.
Don Surber has an excellent take on the whole matter but, all you really need is his headline:

WH sends someone to clean up Kamala's mess

We are sending another diplo mission down there.
This time, someone with a brain.
History is not going to be kind to either Ms. Harris or Mr. Biden. Or their handlers for that matter.

Out for a few errands

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Bank, county permit office, storage unit, mailbox, library.

Back in a little while. Absolutely dead out there.  It's like the rest of the world is at 0°K - nothing moving.

From Dr. Tony Philips at Spaceweather:

The Termination Event
Something big may be about to happen on the sun. “We call it the Termination Event,” says Scott McIntosh, a solar physicist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR), “and it’s very, very close to happening.”

If you’ve never heard of the Termination Event, you’re not alone. Many researchers have never heard of it either. It’s a relatively new idea in solar physics championed by McIntosh and colleague Bob Leamon of the University of Maryland – Baltimore County. According to the two scientists, vast bands of magnetism are drifting across the surface of the sun. When oppositely-charged bands collide at the equator, they annihilate (or “terminate”). There’s no explosion; this is magnetism, not anti-matter. Nevertheless, the Termination Event is a big deal. It can kickstart the next solar cycle into a higher gear.

“If the Terminator Event happens soon, as we expect, new Solar Cycle 25 could have a magnitude that rivals the top few since record-keeping began,” says McIntosh.

More at the site - this might make things interesting for our weather.  Also good news for ham radio as increased solar activity makes for much better long-range communications. The more we learn, the more we realize that we don't know squat...

And nothing on the web

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Eating lunch and surfing - nothing there.

Someone dropped off some Mitutoyo boxes at the thrift store and I started seriously drooling. There are a lot of retired professionals on this island and occasionally, some good bits get donated.  These were just some part-specific Go/NoGo gauge blocks. No dial indicators or Jo Blocks or anything like that.  Not today anyway. Darn.

Nothing online.

Dashing all the way

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Insomnia last night - got a good five hours in but that was it.  Heading out for some coffee and to work.

More this afternoon...

Curious - plastic resin

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The feedstock for much of what we use.  Bags, Bottles, Clothing, Cutlery, Straws, etc...
There is a shortage starting to show up so availability of these is going to be grim.

The enviros will be happy with the shortage of these obvious uses but when they start missing tool handles, laptop cases, insulating spacers and brackets in their electronics, hiking and camping gear, eyeglass frames, TV chassis, automobile parts.  Looking at a multiple-whammy with inflation, scarcity, stoopid politicians and know-nothing economists. Time to hunker down and ride it out.

That @#$% Computer - postponed

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Brought down two more of the same computers and Windows 10 upgraded just fine on both of them. One of them had a Magic Smoke issue with the power supply but had a replacement unit and worked fine after swaping out. The @#$% machine will go back to the end of the line - probably install Linux only and run it as a dedicated file server for the music and photo machines. Getting to the point where that would be a handy thing to have.

Puttering around with some stuff here - brought a bunch of clothes down so sorting through those.  Too much crap...

A good question - the 1%

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If you want it done right...

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Do it yourself - and they are perfectly within their rights. States Rights trump the Federales.  From Breitbart:

Texas to Build Its Own Border Barriers, Says Governor
Texas Governor Greg Abbott told Breitbart Texas the State will immediately begin building border barriers in areas where migrants can easily cross the Rio Grande border with Mexico. The barriers will, in part, enable state law enforcement to arrest migrants for violations of state law.

“The influx across the border is out of control, and the Biden Administration has shown that is not going to step up and do its job,” Governor Abbott told Breitbart Texas shortly before Thursday’s border summit in Del Rio, Texas. “And amidst reports of even more people coming in across the border, we know we have to step up and do more.”

Abbott said Texas will immediately begin construction of border barriers in areas like Del Rio where migrants can easily cross unsecured sections of the border with Mexico. The governor picked Del Rio for the Border Summit due to the massive increases in illegal border crossings in this region. Del Rio Sector agents apprehended 27,890 migrants — a 1,118 percent increase over the May 2020 report of 2,289, Breitbart Texas reported on Thursday.

Good - the people running Biden have no interest in stopping the flood. Up to the good citizens of Texas.

Back from the farm

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Productive trip - van is full so heading to the storage unit tomorrow after work.

Quick surf and get some dinner...

More fun and games - ransomware

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Latest kerfuffle from the script-kiddies.  From the London Daily Mail:

Cyber criminals target Congress: 60 members from both parties are left UNABLE TO ACCESS data for weeks in latest ransomware hack

    • In latest ransomware attack, members of Congress are hacked
    • At least 60 lawmakers left unable to access constituent data for weeks
    • Target was iConstituent, a tech vendor that provides constituent services
    • Issue is still being resolved as lawmaker frustration grows
    • Unclear who is responsible for attack
    • US government and companies have been targeted by Russian cyber hackers
    • President Biden will discuss matter with Putin when they meet next week

At least 60 members of Congress from both parties have been unable to access data for weeks in the latest ransomware attack to strike the United States.

The target was iConstituent, a tech vendor that provides constituent outreach services to dozens of House offices, including a newsletter service that allows lawmakers to communicate with residents in their districts and a service to track constituent casework.

It's the latest cyber attack after a series of hacks against the US executive branch and American companies have left many institutions feeling vulnerable and the Biden administration struggling to deal with the situation.

Simple solution really - back up your fscking data. Early. Often. Simple really.
Ransomware hits?  Give them the finger and restore your data - back to normal in 20 minutes or so.

Industrial businesses have no need to expose their internal network to the internet.
If they get hacked, it's their own damn fault. Really really really need to access it?  Use a VPN.

Got another large operation up there. From the Sacramento, CA CBS Affiliate:

Nearly $100 Million Worth Of Marijuana Eradicated From Illegal Grows Across Stanislaus County
Authorities eradicated nearly $100 million worth of marijuana from several illegal grows throughout Stanislaus County.

According to the Stanislaus County Sheriff’s Office, the operation resulted in 74,088 plants destroyed from 34 grows. That included 39,883 fully budded plants, and more than 1,687 pounds of fully processed plants.

Authorities also seized 46 guns, $172,347 in cash and either arrested or cited 83 people.

This is several hundred miles north of the bust in Antelope Valley.  Got zero problem with pot - do not smoke it myself as it just puts me to sleep.  Illegal operations run by criminals are a different story - crime needs to pay.  Get these goblins off the street - they have no benefit to society.

I love that these operations are being rolled up at the beginning of the growing season.  They spent all their money on the infrastructure and will not reap any profit.  Much better than hitting them after the last harvest in the fall.

First Operation Ironside and now this.
Got a very large Mexican Cartel operation near Los Angeles - from LA Station KTLA:

Deputies plan to bulldoze 500 illegal marijuana grows in Antelope Valley after massive bust
Authorities seized tens of millions of dollars worth of illegal marijuana grown in the high desert Tuesday as part of an effort to curtail the black market’s grip on Southern California.

Twenty-three people were arrested in the crackdown Tuesday in the Antelope Valley, 70 miles north of Los Angeles, and officials planned to bulldoze 500 illegal grows in the area over the coming days.

So-called recreational marijuana became legal in California in 2018, but the black market continues to flourish.

They could have continued flying under the radar but they got greedy:

Villanueva did not have an immediate count of the amount of marijuana seized Tuesday, but he said officials were measuring it by the tons. Lancaster Mayor R. Rex Parris said Tuesday’s operation had found $380 million worth of infrastructure and marijuana in the area.

Unspecified cartels operating the illegal marijuana grows were stealing millions of gallons of water, the sheriff said. Armed cartel members were taking from wells maintained by alfalfa, potato and carrot farmers in the middle of the night, as well as breaking fire hydrants and operating their own illegal wells.

Villanueva said the illegal grows breed violence, citing several murders related to the Antelope Valley’s black market. In April, a robbery at a cultivation site resulted in a shootout.

Best and brightest. A stirling example of open borders and what they bring us.

Pandemic? What pandemic?

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This pandemic?

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Thanks to Ann Barnhardt for the link. A lot more good ones at the site.

It's his texts.  From the London Daily Mail:

Hunter Biden addressed his white lawyer as 'n***a' multiple times, used phrases like 'true dat n***a' and bantered 'I only love you because you're black,' in shocking texts unearthed days after Joe's emotional Tulsa speech decrying racism

    • Text messages obtained by DailyMail.com reveal Hunter Biden used the n-word multiple times in banter with his lawyer
    • The president's son, 51, flippantly addressed corporate attorney George Mesires, who is white, by the racial slur, with phrases including 'true dat n***a'
    • In a December 2018 conversation, Hunter asked Mesires: 'How much money do I owe you. Becaause (sic) n***a you better not be charging me Hennessy rates.'
    • In another chat a month later, Hunter cracked jokes about his penis and then told Mesires 'I only love you because you're black'
    • 'It's so annoying when you interject with frivolity,' the Chicago lawyer replied
    • The damning texts have emerged just days after his father, President Joe Biden gave a speech decrying racism on the 100th anniversary of the Tulsa massacre
    • Biden has sought to portray racial justice as a top priority for his administration
    • Hunter also saved a meme with a photo of his father hugging Barack Obama with a caption describing a joke conversation
    • 'Obama: Gonna miss you, man Joe: Can I say it? Just this once? Obama: *sigh* go ahead Joe: You my n***a, Barack'

Much much more at the site.  This guy is entitled and corrupt as hell. Toxic.
The whole family is a piece of work.

And at the farm

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Uneventful journey up North - took the back road; the scenic route. Early dinner enroute so spending the evening surfing.  In town tomorrow morning and then to work emptying out a room at the farmhouse.  D has been stuffing all my crap in there so I take a van load down to sort through whenever I am up.  The place is looking really nice and could not have a better person working up here.  Known her for a long time. Good people.

See what has happened in the world during my long absence  from the WWW

Two photos from Costco - same cut of meat.
I love Tri-Tip - lends itself to smoking as well as Sous Vide cooking:

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Three weeks and one day. One dollar/pound price increase. 110% increase.

Oh no; says the government hacks.  Inflation is only a percent or two says the government hacks.

This is looking more and more like the Carter presidency every single day.
At least, after Jimmy, we had President Reagan.

Done with morning routine & lunch, final bit 'o crap loaded into the van.

Dump run. Back home for some emails and then heading North to the farm.

Feels good to be getting rid of this stuff.  I am selling things on Craigslist too.

Backup early and often

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With all the stories about large organizations being held for ransom, computer backups are in the news again.

Backing up your data is not hard.  Just backup the stuff you want to keep.

A hard drive crashing is not a matter of "IF", it is a matter of "WHEN"

I use disk imaging software for my backups but was recently turned on to Cobian Gravity - an excellent and free backup tool.

Trying it out after I get back from the farm and will let you know how it goes...

Good news from Don Surber:

Minneapolis citizens file a mostly peaceful lawsuit
A Minneapolis couple and their neighbors sued the city and Democrat Mayor Jacob Frey for failing to keep residents safe amid a 21% spike in violent crime over the past year.

Defund the Police may prove to be very expensive.

The George Floyd riots created a wave of lawlessness, as well as the departure of police officers en masse because they now know the city does not have their back. Minneapolis is a zoo. George Floyd Square is at times a shooting gallery. A mostly peaceful shooting gallery.

The city had 48 homicides in 2019.

It had 84 in 2020, a 75% increase.

Hence the legal action.

Make the people running these shitholes suffer the consequences of their actions. It would take courage to first stand up to the mob but after those first few times, the mob will dry up and blow away.  They only have power if you yield it to them.

A reader had this wonderful Fargo reference:

MPLS used to be inhabited by Marge Gundersons. Now the city is run by a bunch of Jerry Lundegaards.

So true - apt characterization.

Helmets - great commercial

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An observation - some people

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From 90 Miles:

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So true

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As well as making Obama the 2nd worst President in recent history:

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From Reuters:

Spy phones 'in gangsters' back pockets' betray hundreds to police
A global sting in which organised crime gangs were sold encrypted phones that law enforcement officials could monitor has led to more than 800 arrests and the confiscation of drugs, weapons, cash and luxury cars, officials said on Tuesday.

The operation by the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation, Australian and European police ensnared suspects in Australia, Asia, Europe, South America and the Middle East involved in the global narcotics trade, the officials said.

Millions of dollars in cash were seized in raids around the world, along with 30 tonnes of drugs including more than eight tonnes of cocaine.

Simple and clever - the best way to go:

In a pattern repeated elsewhere, one Australian underworld figure began distributing phones containing the app to his associates, believing their communications were secure because the phones had been rebuilt to remove all capabilities, including voice and camera functions, apart from ANOM.

As a result, there was no attempt to conceal or code the details of the messages - which police were reading.

"It was there to be seen, including 'we’ll have a speedboat meet you at this point', 'this is who will do this' and so on," Australian Federal Police Commissioner Reece Kershaw said.

Get these mokes off the streets. Very clever use of tech.

Curious for several reasons

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This story from the Wall Street Journal raises more questions than it answers:

U.S. Retrieves Millions in Ransom Paid to Colonial Pipeline Hackers
U.S. authorities have recovered millions of dollars in digital currency paid to the hackers who hit a major East Coast fuel pipeline with a ransomware attack last month, in a law-enforcement operation that officials said demonstrated progress undermining criminals’ ability to disrupt American commerce and critical infrastructure for profit.

Investigators seized about 64 bitcoin, valued at roughly $2.3 million, from a virtual wallet—the alleged proceeds from the ransom hack carried out by a suspected Russian-based criminal gang on Colonial Pipeline Co., the Justice Department said.

“The extortionists will never see this money,” Stephanie Hinds, acting U.S. attorney for the Northern District of California, where the seizure warrant was obtained, told reporters. “This case demonstrates our resolve to develop methods to prevent evildoers from converting new methods of payment into tools and extortion for undeserved profits.”

#1) - So... Despite what they say, Bitcoin is not secure. The USA can get into anyone's wallet.

#2) - I love the phrasing: "suspected Russian-based criminal gang".  What if it was the USA to begin with?

#3) - What if this was a false-flag operation by agents in the USA to paint the Russians in a bad light?

#4) - What if this was a dry-run?  What if agents in the USA were planning to take down large swaths of the economy and the infrastructure and in the ensuing chaos, institute a totalitarian regime.  One World Government whether you like it or not.

Just thinking out loud here...

Happy 30th Birthday - PGP

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PGP? Pretty Good Privacy - Philip Zimmermann's cryptography program.
From Philip's Blog:

PGP Marks 30th Anniversary - 6 June 2021
Today marks the 30th anniversary of the release of PGP 1.0.

It was on this day in 1991 that Pretty Good Privacy was uploaded to the Internet. I had sent it to a couple of my friends for distribution the day before. This set in motion a decade of struggle to end the US export controls on strong cryptographic software. After PGP version 1.0 was released, a number of volunteer engineers came forward and we made many improvements. In September 1992 we released PGP 2.0 in ten foreign languages, running on several different platforms, upgraded with new functionality, including the distinctive trust model that enabled PGP to become the most widely used method of email encryption.

I became the target of a criminal investigation for violating the Arms Export Control Act by allowing PGP to spread around the world. This further propelled PGP's popularity. The government dropped the investigation in early 1996, but the policy debate raged on, until the US export restrictions finally collapsed in 2000. PGP ignited the decade of the Crypto Wars, resulting in all the western democracies dropping their restrictions on the use of strong cryptography. It was a storied and thrilling decade, and a triumph of activism for the right to have a private conversation.

I wanted PGP to be used for human rights applications. I wanted it to spread all over the world, especially to places where people needed protection from their own governments. But I couldn't say that out loud during the criminal investigation, because it would help the prosecutor prove intent.

The most dramatic PGP stories came from outside the US. PGP helped enable the safe evacuation of 8000 civilians from mortal danger during the Kosovo conflict. While attending the 2014 Cybersecurity Hall of Fame ceremony, a guy from the HUMINT community approached me to thank me because he said he had some colleagues who were alive today because of PGP. Human rights groups documenting war crimes in Guatemala, protecting witnesses from reprisals from the military. Human rights workers in the Balkans. Political resistance in Burma in the 1990s. There were so many stories like that over the years.

Groundbreaking software - putting communications security in the hands of everyone.  The deep state was very active back then too.  It was pissed but the cat was out of the bag.  Phil was put through Hell for this but there was nothing that they could do.

Read the whole thing as this is coming into play again with the current deep state machinations. We trust our phones and our social media but we really should not.  You never know who might be listening - especially when 95% of your electronics is manufactured by one nation.  The iPhone may be designed in the USA but who knows what might have been added to the design when it went into production - back door?

And almost done for the day

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Van all loaded up and ready - hit the dump and recycling before coffee tomorrow.  There is a large ag field nearby and will take the pups for a run there.  They are doing grass for hay so no crops to worry about. Not good to have them frolicking about in a strawberry patch or some such.

Nothing worth commenting on out there - surf for a little bit and see if anything new has cropped up.

Early start tomorrow - want to be at the farm in the afternoon.  Meeting with someone at 2:00 PM and leaving immediately after.

And almost done for today

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Got the van ready for a big dump run tomorrow and then up to the farm tomorrow afternoon. The fun never stops around here...

Putter around a bit more - some email as well as attempt #347 to get that @#$% computer to upgrade to Windows 10. This has been interesting.

Shopping went well - bought the first 25# bag of sugar this season for the hummingbirds - had about 10-15 pounds left over from last winter. Usually go through two bags. I was running really low about a month ago but picked up a 10# bag at WalMart to tide me over until now. Also picked up some dog food. Stopped at Home Depot as well: a better grass shear and some drain cleaner.

Still decluttering the garage - work on that while it is still light out. Rain stopped and sun came out so turned into a nice day.

Me in a nutshell

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A sobering wake-up call. From RedState:

High-Ranking Chinese Defector Has 'Direct Knowledge' of Several Chinese Special Weapons Programs
A person believed to be among the highest-ranking defectors ever to the United States from the People’s Republic of China has been working with the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) for months, sources inside the intelligence community have told RedState on condition of anonymity. The defector has direct knowledge of special weapons programs in China, including bioweapons programs, those sources say.

And many of our "intelligence services" were kept in the dark - a bit more:

RedState’s sources say that’s partially true. FBI Director Christopher Wray was “ambushed” with the information, they say, and Langley was also unaware. Sources say DIA leadership kept the defector within their Clandestine Services network to prevent Langley and the State Department from accessing the person, whose existence was kept from other agencies because DIA leadership believes there are Chinese spies or sources inside the FBI, CIA, and several other federal agencies.

Emphasis mine - that is our problem. The deep-state has its tendrils in our most important agencies.

The moke is a walking scandal factory.  THIS one from 2016 - London Daily Mail:

Hunter Biden was hired by a Romanian real estate tycoon to overturn his bribery conviction through a massive propaganda campaign with help from VP Joe's government connections and former FBI director Louis Freeh

    • Romanian real estate tycoon Gabriel Popoviciu was convicted in his home country in 2016 of bribery
    • He bribed a university official to buy a 550-acre plot of government-owned land for a drastically reduced price
    • Popoviciu hired Hunter Biden that year as part of an influence campaign to persuade anti-corruption prosecutors to cut a deal or drop the case
    • DailyMail.com can now reveal the extensive propaganda and persuasion campaign planned for the Romanian criminal
    • Hunter brought in political heavyweight Louis Freeh, the former director of the FBI, to use his US law enforcement contacts for Popoviciu's advantage
    • Hunter's involvement included meeting with U.S. officials and plotting a media blitz in favor of the foreign tycoon, all while his father was Vice President
    • Despite the planned influence and media campaign, Hunter and his colleagues' attempts failed and Popoviciu was sentenced to nine years in prison in 2016

Hunter Biden and a former FBI director were hired by a Romanian tycoon later convicted of bribery - and represented him in meetings with top U.S. officials - emails from Hunter's laptop show.

A bit more:

Emails show Hunter's colleagues, partners in law firm Boies Schiller Flexner, Christopher Boies and Michael Gottlieb, seeking to set up meetings with the US Ambassador to Romania, after discussing among themselves whether he would intervene in Popoviciu's case.

Hunter brought in political heavyweight and family friend Louis Freeh, the former director of the FBI, to use his US law enforcement contacts for Popoviciu's advantage, and was offered a referral fee as a result.

Hunter and his colleagues also discussed a media campaign, including to major U.S. publication the Wall Street Journal, to support their client who was later found guilty of bribery.

Quite the rogues gallery in all senses of the phrase.
Much much more at the site - screen-caps of the emails, names, places, dates. Jailtime anyone?

Still cloudy but the sun is peeking through and it has stopped raining.

Dog walk and coffee. Getting some things from Home Depot and Costco.  Maybe even prepare for a dump run tomorrow before I go to the farm.

Back later this afternoon for more puttering and maybe some crap-gathering.

Zero problem with people coming in - they just need to go through channels.
From the London Daily Mail:

Supreme Court unanimously BLOCKS 400,000 immigrants who entered the US illegally and were allowed to stay on 'humanitarian grounds' from applying for a green card

    • The justices were acting in an appeal from a married couple from El Salvador
    • Jose Sanchez and Sonia Gonzalez entered the US illegally in 1997 and 1998
    • They were granted protected status after they fled after a series of earthquakes
    • Liberal Justice Elena Kagan said status 'does not come with an admission ticket'
    • Biden administration had opposed the immigrants in this case
    • Decision comes on the first day of VP Kamala Harris' trip to Guatemala

And a bit more:

The justices, acting in an appeal by a married couple from El Salvador who were granted so-called Temporary Protected Status, upheld a lower court ruling that barred their applications for permanent residency, also known as a green card, because of their unlawful entry.

Yeah - they were in the US of A but did nothing to qualify for citizenship. Did not try to make their status legal. The clock runs out and all of a sudden, they are the aggrieved party. It does not work that way.

Some curious numbers about the border - from The Epoch Times:

10,864 Venezuelans Pour Into Texas Border Region, Up From 135 Last Year
On any given day in Del Rio, hundreds of Venezuelans wade across the Rio Grande from Mexico into the United States. They’re carrying more belongings than illegal aliens from most other countries. One woman, who said she was a photographer back home, had her professional Nikon camera equipment in her backpack.

And a bit more:

Many Venezuelans told The Epoch Times they flew to Cancún then Monterrey, in Mexico, before crossing the river into Del Rio. Some came via Colombia.

A large portion intend to live in Florida—in particular Orlando, Tampa, and Miami—where they already have family members.

The surge has mainly occurred over the last few months. On March 8, the Biden administration said it would grant temporary protected status to Venezuelans already in the United States, allowing an estimated 320,000 people to apply to legally live and work in the country for 18 months.

And of course, they will turn around and go home after the 18 months have elapsed.

This is classic Cloward-Piven strategy - collapse the system and in the ensuing chaos, you can install your own choice of government without having to go through the usual pesky procedures like elections and congressional approval.

Also wonderful news from Fort Worth, Texas - FOX News:

Mattie Parker wins over Deborah Peoples in Fort Worth mayor race
Mattie Parker has defeated Deborah Peoples in Saturday’s runoff election to decide who will replace longtime Fort Worth Mayor Betsy Price.

Parker won over Peoples with 54% of the vote, and will be sworn in as the mayor of Fort Worth on June 15.

This race a nonpartisan race, but there were partisan overtones.

Peoples, a former executive with AT&T and the former chair of the Tarrant County Democratic Party, has been backed by Beto O’Rourke and the Texas Democratic Party.

And the differences between the two were pretty much party-line divisions:

Peoples focused on her message, called One Forth Worth, wanting all voices to be included.

All Hail Diversity - how about something specific? No? All she had was some feel-good narrative

Parker said she wants the city to take off and not be in the shadow of Dallas anymore.

"It’s the economy, it’s the world class infrastructure, it’s education for every neighborhood, and offering growth and opportunity for all residents and cutting that red tape that is there," Parker said. "Back to working together, being consensus builders because that is the number one job as a mayor."

Specific. Promises and accountability.
Fort Worth is the 14th largest City in the USA - it deserves a strong leader.

Turning around and reporting the COVID numbers accurately. Finally.
What has it been? Over 500+ days of fraudulent numbers? Eighteen months? A year and a half?
From Alameda County, California - Health Care Services Agency
The final paragraph is the money shot:

Example scenario to illustrate the difference between the current practice of reporting COVID-19 deaths in
Alameda County and how this differs from the State’s guidelines: Using the older definition of COVID-19
deaths, a resident who had COVID-19 but died due to another cause, like a car accident, this person would
be included in the total number of reported COVID-19 deaths for Alameda County. Under the updated
definition of COVID-19 deaths, this person would not be included in the total because COVID-19 was not a
contributing factor in the death.

Yes, you read that correctly the first time.

Now that this manufactured crisis is past, now that they were able to ram through a fraudulent election, now that that nasty Orange Man is no longer living at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, now that they can get on with their communist agenda... NOW, they can report the numbers accurately.

More Dr. Fauci emails

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From America's Newspaper of Record:

Exclusive: The Babylon Bee Has Acquired More Leaked Dr. Fauci Emails
By now, you've probably seen the Dr. Fauci emails that were leaked to the media.

We are pleased to announce we have obtained additional Fauci emails that are much juicier than the ones the media has shown you so far! These emails will give you an unprecedented look behind the scenes as Dr. Fauci responded to the global pandemic!

Fifteen at the site - here are three of them:

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Twelve more at the site - newsworthy.

Over three million views since June 4th, 2021 - two days. Epic.

100% Spot On. Lyrics here. Love this line: 

Damn dog, we're all afraid to speak the truth
And the more afraid we get, the more we hate the ones who do
You're ashamed to be American, okay that's cool
'Cause honestly, we are all ashamed of you too

A voice for our time. Really like his work.

Mmmmm - Chinese food

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Hate the current tyrants - love the cuisine.  Heading out out North for some dinner and a wee bit of retail therapy.

Made good progress on the garage.

Wonderful news - had enough

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Looks like some people have had enough crap - from Conservative Playbook:

Harbinger? Texas Border Town With 85% Hispanic Population Flips Red, Elects Republican Mayor
McAllen, Texas, is a blue city. At least it was. Yesterday, it officially flipped to red as Javier Villalobos defeated Democrat Veronica Vela Whitacre by a narrow margin in the mayoral runoff election.

Despite being safely blue with a huge majority of Hispanic voters, the border town has been one of the many to experience massive human smuggling activities ever since Democrats took control in Washington DC. Illegal immigration was at the heart of the campaigns on both sides, but it’s hard for a Democrat to have credibility by opposing illegal immigration when their party is embracing open borders policies.

For those in cities and states affected by the Democrats’ border crisis, this race could be a harbinger for future elections as well as a roadmap for future Republican success. With the economy fading fast after showing signs of recovery in the last few months under President Trump, the border crisis will act as a separate reminder of the Democratic Party’s failures.

Pay attention to McAllen, Texas, GOP. If opposing open borders in a city with an 85% Hispanic population can resonate, it should be the rallying cry for a red wave in 2022.

Good.  The Democrats are playing lip service to We The People but they are not representing their constituents. Witness the long-term Democratic strongholds - Seattle, Portland, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Minneapolis, Detroit, Chicago and more. All qualify for being shithole cities with rampant crime and violence. Drug use. Mental health.

Looks like people are waking up.

BSL-4? Biosafety Level 4 - think Wuhan Institute of Virology and their safety track record.
From Financial Times:

Scientists fear future leaks as top-level labs proliferate
Maximum security laboratories used to carry out the most dangerous biological research have proliferated in the past decade, scientists say, warning that lax controls at some locations could lead to another pandemic. 

At least 59 maximum biosafety level 4 labs (BSL-4) are planned, under construction or in operation across the world, spanning 23 countries including the UK, US, China, India, Gabon and Côte d’Ivoire. They include the Chinese facility at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, now at the centre of a renewed US intelligence investigation into whether Covid-19 could have leaked from its lab.

Gregory Koblentz, an associate professor of biodefence at George Mason University, and Filippa Lentzos at King’s College London, who mapped the facilities, found that of the 42 labs where planning data was available, half were built in the last decade.

Three-quarters of all the BSL-4 labs were in urban centres. And only three of the 23 countries have national policies that provide oversight of so-called dual-use research, where experiments that are conducted for civilian purposes can also be adapted for military ends.

Now this just gives me the warm fuzzies.  Makes me feel good all over.
To quote the old joke: Be assured that absolutely nothing can go wrong, go wrong, go wrong...

Got a point there - the CIA

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Heading out for dog walk and coffee - just a couple hours later than usual.

A very decadent morning spent doing nothing.

Working in the garage a little bit this afternoon - need to declutter. An ongoing need.

Curious - VAERS

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VAERS?  =  Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System
The VAERS Website has been down for over 48 hours now. Routine maintenence?

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Inconvenient truths?

UPDATE: The last recorded screen capture at The Internet Archive was on Thursday, June 3rd. Up until then, they had been capturing four and five copies of the site almost every single day.  After that last capture on the 3rd? Nothing.  They have been monitoring this site since their first capture on May 20th, 2005.

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Hmmmm...  Very curious

Pause to remember

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77th Anniversary of D-Day today. Memorial Day is not just one long weekend.  It is every day.

Time to do a bit of hoarding

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Usually sleep about 7-8 hours - wake up for a bit around 2-3 AM or so and drift back to sleep. Sometimes I'll get up for an hour or two. Went to sleep last night knowing that I could sleep in and was out for ten hours. Decadent but luxurious.

Cool and overcast - rain sprinkles off and on. Your basic spring in the Pacific Northwet. Puttering around here today and tomorrow - farm on Tuesday.

Karl Denninger hits it out of the park - a blast of truth:

Ransomware: Cut The Head Off The Snake

... ... deletia ... ...

Ransomware is rather simple, really: Don't do stupid things with critical control and infrastructure equipment.  As I've said before the real problem isn't "ransomware" per-se; it has no value unless the ransom can be paid and further, unless said infrastructure is connected to the Internet either directly or indirectly (e.g. through some other device) it can't get on the network in the first place.

I'd be more than happy to redesign anyone's infrastructure so that this can't happen.  You could run Windows XP on that network if you wanted to and, other than by direct, intentional sabotage by an employee nothing's getting in there.

But -- your snowflakes that work there couldn't use their computer on their desk to play on Facesucker, Instascrew or the myriad other time-wasting things they do.  They couldn't run their "side hustle" on the company dime or play around on Tinder.  Their phone wouldn't work in the building network and the USB ports would either be disabled in firmware or stuffed full of hot glue to prevent someone from jamming a thumb drive in there contaminated with whatever.  And there could be no exceptions, including out of the CEOs and CTO's offices, which is where a lot of them originate these days because, well, privilege with office.  Nope.

Without both policy and enforcement you have nothing and that means putting a stop to the cryfest from people up and down the line.  You're here to do a job, period, and here are the parameters.  Violate them, you will get caught and my boot is going to be up your ass ejecting you out the door no matter who you are.

What he said. Simply put - the employee has absolutly zero need to connect to the internet on a work machine during working hours.  Emails and connections to other sites can be surveiled and routed through a good firewall. Privacy? Don't make me laugh - this IS work related is it not?

Have a couple of older systems set up in the break room if you must.

I have listened to these "ministers" from time to time - fascinating in their grift.
They wear the cloak of righteousness to cover their venal lust for money and power.
That lust is so transparent too - people should be able to see through it.

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So very true - fact checking

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Found at 90 Miles:

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A news aggregator will crawl the web looking for news items of interest and they will compile these (aggregate them) and display them on a website - usually, just a headline and a teaser 'graph or two. They make their money via advertising and promotional placement. Drudge Report is one of the first and best known.

NewsBreak is more recent (six years old) and seems to cover the news pretty well.
Turns out they have a deep dark secret.
From The Epoch Times:

News Break App Founded, Controlled, and Backed by Chinese Entities
Connections between China and News Break, a top news aggregation app in the United States, have been exposed.

On May 23, the Boston-based The Wire China website published an in-depth investigation revealing News Break’s deep ties with China.

News Break began in 2015, when Jeff Zheng founded Particle Media Inc. in Delaware.

Jeff Zheng is also the founder Chinese news app Yidian Zixun.

Before the investigation was published, the Yidian’s website listed the establishment of Particle Media as a milestone in the company’s growth, with the following description:

“In April 2015, Yidian Zixun established Particle Media, an affiliate company in Silicon Valley, to launch its global strategic deployment, and the English version of Yidian Zixun, News Break, was recommended by the U.S. App store twice in a row and has become a popular news aggregation application in the United States.”

Much much more at the site - lots of links.  They are a house organ of the Chinese Communist Party.  They are being careful to not be blatant about it but I bet that the "nudge" is happening all the time in their reportage.

Doubt me?  I can prove it with one image:

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I cropped my screen-cap so you can read the URL clearly. I am searching newsbreak.com for Tiananmen Square and they are returning zero results. Does not exist. No historical significance. Nope. Nada. Nothing to see here.

Not a peep about the June 4, 1989 massacre by the Communist Chinese army of from 300 to "thousands" of students and protestors with 10,000 arrested. Brings to mind this quote:

To learn who rules over you, simply find out who you are not allowed to criticize.
― Kevin Alfred Strom

I do not agree with Mr. Strom on 99.9% of what he has to say but on this particular matter, he absolutely nails it.

Errands done - clouding over

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Ran into someone from Seattle - small world.

Back for the evening - sleeping in tomorrow.

Getting blustery outside - temps have risen from 52°F to 60°.  Front moving through. Winds out of the NNW which is unusual - usually the South in this neck of the woods. Small craft advisory until late tonight.

Doing some soup for dinner - toast some bread to go with. The local grocery store carries a brand of demi-baguette that I like.  These are par-baked and arrive at the store frozen.  Picked up a box of 32 a couple of weeks ago. Fresh-baked bread in about 20 minutes. I thaw them out overnight - they will keep in that state for 2-3 days. Toaster oven to finish off...

Getting stuff done here. Sunshine but lots of clouds.  Cool. Basic spring weather with lots more on the way.

I am a climate skeptic.  I do not deny that we have been in a warming trend from the early part of this century through the last 10-20 years.  To me though, the idea that we are responsible for this and that our un-checked actions will cause catastrophic climate change is just pure hubris.  We are not that powerful - the Earth's climate mechanisms are more powerful and larger than we could ever aspire.

A great look at The Greenhouse Effect from a Physicist:

Mathematical Proof of the Greenhouse Effect
I am sometimes shocked by the number of climate change skeptics who are certain that the “Greenhouse Effect” (GHE) isn’t real.

As a physicist, I’m as certain of the reality of the Greenhouse Effect as I am that 1 + 1 = 2.

The GHE depends on physical principles that have been well-known and well-tested for 137 years. There really should be no question as to its reality, among anyone who knows and respects science.

Note that being certain about the GHE being real is different than being certain about Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW), the hypothesis that human-caused increases in the concentrations of “greenhouse gases” in the atmosphere are causing highly problematic changes in the Earth’s climate.

AGW is a far more complex phenomenon than the GHE alone. One can be skeptical about AGW while totally accepting the reality of the GHE.

I know many readers are deeply skeptical about AGW. I encourage you to consider finding a way to honor your beliefs without denying the reality of the GHE.

The writer:  Bob Wentworth, Ph.D. takes us through an analysis of our climate dynamics, a look at the Stefan-Boltzmann Law and he runs the numbers.  The conclusion is interesting. A wee bit of explanation first.  The sunlight that warms us is referred to short-wave radiation.  Visible light.  The Earth absorbs this energy and warms. The Earth then re-radiates or gives off its heat through long-wave radiation.  Infrared light. The greenhouse gasses are those gasses which block the long-wave or LW radiation and trap all of the heat inside the Earth's atmosphere.

Bob's conclusion:

In other words:

    1. If there were no LW-absorbing (or LW-scattering) materials in Earth’s atmosphere, and it emitted the same average LW radiant exitance (upwelling LW radiation) to space (which would be expected in steady-state if the absorbed insolation was held constant), then the average surface temperature could not be warmer than Tₑ = 259 K (-14℃).
    2. Given that Earth’s atmosphere does include LW-absorbing and LW-scattering materials which allow there to be more LW radiation emitted by the surface than what reaches space, the average surface of the Earth can be no higher than 294 K (21℃).

Given that the average surface temperature of the Earth is typically estimated to be about 288 K (15℃), this satisfies the constraint of being no higher than 294 K (21℃).

So - given absolutely zero greenhouse activity, we would be a snowball.  -14°C is pretty damned cold.
Our present "average" temperature is 15°C which pencils out to 59°F - sounds about right.

Given an absolute balls-out maximum warming, CO2 production cranked up to eleven, our average temperature could only rise to 21°C - 69.8°F. Somewhat warmer but not dangerous by any stretch of the imagination. Not catastrophic. Not at all. What's the worry?

Bob gives all the math if you want to work through it yourself.  Basic high-school algebra and the relationships being used here have been known for the last 137 years.  They have been tested and tested again and have been shown to be perfect. Accurate. No fudging or cherry-picking allowed in science.

As a Coda here, my concern is that we are heading into a period of cooling similar to the Maunder Minimum.  Our sun has been very quiet recently. Our governments need to explore this and take action as more people die from cold than die from heat.  If this is going to be happening, we need to prepare.

This had its genesis in December 2020 with this story: A bit of irony - The North Face clothing

Fast forward to this wonderful thank you from Chris Wright, CEO of Liberty Energy:

The millenials say whatever is fashionable at the time but they do not understand the realities or the history. A bad combination. Clueless.  Give up their polypropyline clothing?  Their iPhones? Not on their lives.

Counting some votes - California

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Stories like this make my blood boil - from the Santa Barbara News-Press:

Anatomy of an investigation into a non-investigation
Approximately 3,000 mail-in ballots counted in the Nov. 3 election were supposedly cast by UCSB students residing in a voting precinct that, along with other dorm buildings, includes the Francisco Torres/Santa Catalina Residence Hall at 6850 El Colegio Road in Goleta.

Problem: Due to COVID-19, the Torres Building, which normally accommodates 1,300 students, was empty and locked down through most of 2020, as were all other UCSB dorms.

This means no students/voters were residing inside the Torres Building (nor any of the other dorms) during the election season.

It also means these ballots were fraudulent.

That’s because there’s a second problem: These ballots could not legally have been forwarded to students where they were actually living.

Why not?

Because forwarding ballots to alternative addresses is a felony.

Some good points - crap like this is rampant. Time to make it not cool.
Time for these people to suffer the consequences of their actions.

And back - working

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Fun day at the store -  having a light lunch and heading out to the library and bank. Working at home today through Monday.

Surf's up?

Another day, another cuppa coffee

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Heading out - dog walk, coffee and volunteering at the thrift store.

Overcast and cool - rained last night. More of same forecast for the next week.

Farm Tuesday - picked up some strawberries at the farmer's market yesterday but they were a ways from being ripe.  Nice color but still very woody mouthfeel. Still wolfed down the bowl though.

Working at home today - more spew later.

Presented for your consideration - from the London Daily Mail:

Conservative commentator Matt Walsh raises $104,000 for AOC's Puerto Rican grandmother after she blamed Trump for her 'abuela's' falling-apart house - but now she's REFUSING to accept the donations

    • Matt Walsh, a blogger for right-leaning Daily Wire, raised more than $104,000 to help repair home of Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's grandmother
    • 'One cannot be certain of the cost to repair grandma’s house, but most of the work could be completed for the price of AOC’s shiny Tesla Model 3,' he wrote
    • Walsh wrote that he would donate the money if AOC accepted it, though there is no indication she will; DailyMail.com has reached out to Walsh and AOC
    • GoFundMe and Walsh confirmed on Saturday that the donations were rejected and that all donors will have their money refunded
    • Ocasio-Cortez was slammed on Twitter for posting images of her grandma's hurricane-torn house in Puerto Rico instead of helping her
    • Several users excoriated AOC for choosing to spend money on a new Tesla instead of sending part of her $174,000 congressional salary to her grandma
    • One user pointed out that she rents two apartments, including in a luxury building in Washington D.C. where one-bedroom units start at $2,500 per month
    • 'Honey, you drive a Tesla and have two apartments,' a congressional candidate tweeted. 'If your grandmother is living poor that's because you don't help her'
    • AOC blamed Trump for the condition of her grandma's home, claiming he needed to send more aid to Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria

These stories write themselves - she is clueless.

A very fine whine

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This guy still around? From Breitbart:

Recent Attacks on Me ‘Really Very Much an Attack on Science’
On Friday’s broadcast of MSNBC’s “Rachel Maddow Show,” White House Chief Medical Adviser Dr. Anthony Fauci stated that the recent criticisms of him are “really very much an attack on science,” and “the thread going through what’s happening now is very much an anti-science approach.”

Perfect venue to complain too - nobody watches her show - ratings are way down.

Good news for hoplophiles everywhere - from the New York Post:

US judge overturns California’s ban on assault weapons
A federal judge on Friday overturned California’s long-standing assault weapons ban on constitutional grounds.

US District Judge Roger Benitez of San Diego ruled that the 1989 ban on military-style rifles deprives state residents of their right to bear arms.

“Under no level of heightened scrutiny can the law survive,” Benitez said.

“Like the Swiss Army knife, the popular AR-15 rifle is a perfect combination of home defense weapon and homeland defense equipment. Good for both home and battle,” the judge said in his ruling’s introduction.

More murders are committed by pistol than by rifle.  More murders are committed by blunt-force trauma than by rifle. From the good Judge:

“This is an average case about average guns used in average ways for average purposes,” the ruling said. “One is to be forgiven if one is persuaded by news media and others that the nation is awash with murderous AR-15 assault rifles. The facts, however, do not support this hyperbole, and facts matter.”

“In California, murder by knife occurs seven times more often than murder by rifle,” he added.

Indeed. Nice to see common sense prevail.

A quotable man - Thomas Carlyle

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Lived in Scotland from December 4, 1795 - February 5, 1881
Here are just a few:

Man is a tool-using animal. Without tools he is nothing, with tools he is all.

No pressure, no diamonds.

A loving heart is the beginning of all knowledge.

And a few that are especially germaine today:

I do not believe in the collective wisdom of individual ignorance.

Teach a parrot the terms 'supply and demand' and you've got an economist.

In the long-run every Government is the exact symbol of its People, with their wisdom and unwisdom; we have to say, Like People like Government.

You may not remember his name but you certainly remember the Killdozer.
From All That's Interesting:

The Story Of Marvin Heemeyer’s Revenge And His Killdozer
When Marvin Heemeyer of Granby, Colorado, reached a dead end in his fight with the zoning commission, the logical response would have been to petition them again and await a future response. After all, Marvin Heemeyer was said to be a logical man, so it makes sense that he would take a logical approach.

Instead, Marvin Heemeyer went home, outfitted his Komatsu D355A bulldozer with armored plates, and drove it through the town knocking down 13 buildings and causing $7 million worth of damage with his makeshift “killdozer.”

Marvin Heemeyer’s fight with the city had begun three years before his killdozer rampage.

I have posted about him before here and here, on the original date (and this update) as well as this local copycat.
Don't piss off your local welder...

We do not like your narrative.  It does not jive with our narrative. We are only concerned with our narrative.
From Nick Clegg, their VP of Global Affairs:

In Response to Oversight Board, Trump Suspended for Two Years; Will Only Be Reinstated if Conditions Permit
Last month, the Oversight Board upheld Facebook’s suspension of former US President Donald Trump’s Facebook and Instagram accounts following his praise for people engaged in violence at the Capitol on January 6. But in doing so, the board criticized the open-ended nature of the suspension, stating that “it was not appropriate for Facebook to impose the indeterminate and standardless penalty of indefinite suspension.” The board instructed us to review the decision and respond in a way that is clear and proportionate, and made a number of recommendations on how to improve our policies and processes.

Gonna take our ball and go home.  Sniffle.
Don't want to play with you meanies any more.
Fscking six year old kids.

It would be laughable if there were not so many millions of ill-informed people hanging off their every word.

And thinking about it - they must be really afraid of what he has to say.  That in and of itself says a LOT

Gain of Function

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More coming to light - from the London Daily Mail:

State Department staff warned officials NOT to investigate Wuhan lab's gain-of-function research because it would 'open a can of worms' and expose US funding

    • New report in Vanity Fair exposes the tug-of-war over COVID origin investigation
    • Trump appointee in State Department was warned by staff to back off lab theory
    • Staffers feared it would expose US funding for gain-of-function research
    • WIV received grants for the research through nonprofit EcoHealth Alliance
    • EcoHealth head Peter Daszak spearheaded effort to crush lab leak theory
    • Top WIV scientist admitted in 2019 that some Chinese labs were 'neglected'
    • Former Trump Secretary of State Mike Pompeo says the National Institute of Health tried to suppress the department's investigation
    • Pompeo said there was pushback in his own department from people who did not agree with him or Trump
    • He also said he had to deal with 'internal debate' from the NIH

Career staffers at the State Department 'warned' officials not to investigate the possibility that COVID-19 leaked from a Wuhan lab, fearing it would expose U.S. funding for gain-of-function research there, according to a new report.

Thomas DiNanno, former acting assistant secretary of the State Department's Bureau of Arms Control, Verification, and Compliance raised the concern in a memo reported by Vanity Fair on Thursday.

DiNanno wrote that staff from two bureaus, his own and the Bureau of International Security and Nonproliferation, 'warned' leaders 'not to pursue an investigation into the origin of COVID-19' because it would 'open a can of worms' if it continued.

Waiting for the heads to start rolling but not really holding my breath.

Dr. Fauci didn't hang himself

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Not if. When. Arkancide:

20210604-arkancide.jpg

Here's your list - approved

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From My Pensieve - nails it

20210604-approved.jpg

Yeah - he changed his birth name to something else - pandering to the Latinx crowd (who hate that term BTW).
From FOX News:

De Blasio hits back after 7 of 8 NYC mayoral candidates say they don't want his endorsement
During a bitter debate, Wednesday night over who would be the next leader of the nation’s biggest city, almost all Democratic candidates for New York City mayor were on the same page about one thing: steering clear of the incumbent's endorsement.

"It just proves they’re politicians now," Mayor Bill de Blasio shot back during a press conference Thursday morning.

Only Andrew Yang, an entrepreneur, who first ran for president in the Democratic primary, raised his hand when asked who would accept an endorsement from the mayor, though he continued to rail against him throughout the night. Yang also said he would accept an endorsement from embattled Gov. Andrew Cuomo.

"Candidates do what candidates do. Sometimes they think they’re doing the smart thing or the clever thing and sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t," de Blasio said of the candidates’ resounding rebuke of him throughout the night.

Heh - if I was following in his footsteps, I would want as much distance as possible as well.

What a moron.

And out for work

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Nuttin' on the internets. Back this afternoon.

The big farmer's market starts up this afternoon so attending that - a social event as much as a shopping one.  A lot of fun.

Still dealing with that @#$% computer - more on that later. Looks like Linux and WINE. And yes, I did update all the drivers and the BIOS. Grrrrr...

China owes us big-time. From Newsmax:

Trump Says Fauci Exposed, China Should Pay $10 Trillion in Damages
Former President Donald Trump on Thursday blasted infectious disease expert and White House medical adviser Anthony Fauci for early misinformation on the coronavirus pandemic — and demanded China pay the United States $10 trillion for ''the death and destruction they have caused.''

In statements issued on his Save America website, Trump laid into Fauci after the release by news outlets of thousands of emails Fauci sent and received since early last year.

Much more at the site. Is Fauci a traitor working for the Chinese Communist Party or is he just in way over his head.  My guess is actually the latter. His alliance with the Chinese government is just based on money and not ideology.  The end result is the same though - he needs to be spending some serious time behind bars.  Serve as a reminder to people that incompetence will not be rewarded any more.

Now this is curious - Ivermectin

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Looks like it has another trick up its sleeve.  Not bad for the by-product of a bacteria found near a golf course in Kawana, about 80 miles southwest of Tokyo (and no where else in the world so far). It won its discoverers the 2015 Nobel Prize for Medicine. From the US National Library of Medicine, National Institutes of Health (January 2021):

Ivermectin, a potential anticancer drug derived from an antiparasitic drug
Ivermectin has powerful antitumor effects, including the inhibition of proliferation, metastasis, and angiogenic activity, in a variety of cancer cells. This may be related to the regulation of multiple signaling pathways by ivermectin through PAK1 kinase. On the other hand, ivermectin promotes programmed cancer cell death, including apoptosis, autophagy and pyroptosis. Ivermectin induces apoptosis and autophagy is mutually regulated. Interestingly, ivermectin can also inhibit tumor stem cells and reverse multidrug resistance and exerts the optimal effect when used in combination with other chemotherapy drugs.

So we know it does parasites both internal and external.  We know that it is relativly harmless to mamals (side effects are more irritative - itching skin, red eyes, etc...). Here is a bit about it's anti-virus properties:

IVM not only has strong effects on parasites but also has potential antiviral effects. IVM can inhibit the replication of flavivirus by targeting the NS3 helicase; it also blocks the nuclear transport of viral proteins by acting on α/β-mediated nuclear transport and exerts antiviral activity against the HIV-1 and dengue viruses. Recent studies have also pointed out that it has a promising inhibitory effect on the SARS-CoV-2 virus, which has caused a global outbreak in 2020. In addition, IVM shows potential for clinical application in asthma and neurological diseases. Recently scientists have discovered that IVM has a strong anticancer effect.

Emphasis mine.  Now we find out that it has anti-cancer properties.  Is there anything that it can not do?
A gift from God? I would not be surprised.
Tip of the hat to Ann Barnhardt for the link.

Sad really:

20210603-country.jpg

If Kennedy (or someone like him) were running today, he would get my vote in a heartbeat.
No wonder the deep-state had him killed.

And out until this afternoon

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Heading up to Bellingham to pick up an order. Dog walk and coffee first of course.

UPDATE:  The order was scheduled to be there today but they do not have it.  Grumble...
Running a few errands today but no long trips up North.

This tells you all that you could ever want to know about AOC - from the London Daily Mail:

'Sell your $70,000 Tesla': Critics slam 'Learjet liberal' AOC for not 'helping' her grandmother after she posted photos of her Puerto Rican home ravaged by Hurricane Maria - and blamed TRUMP!

    • Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez was slammed on Twitter for posting images of her grandma's Hurricane-torn house in Puerto Rico instead of helping her
    • Several users excoriated AOC for choosing to spend money on a new Tesla instead of sending part of her $174,000 congressional salary to her grandma
    • One user pointed out that she rents two apartments, including in a luxury building in Washington D.C. where one-bedroom units start at $2,500 per month
    • 'Honey, you drive a Tesla and have two apartments,' a congressional candidate tweeted. 'If your grandmother is living poor that's because you don't help her'
    • AOC blamed Trump for the condition of her grandma's home, claiming he needed to send more aid to Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez was slammed on Twitter Wednesday for not helping her grandmother and instead posting images of her dilapidated home in Puerto Rico and blaming Trump for not sending aid after Hurricane Maria.

Critics were quick to jump on the post questioning why the progressive congresswoman, who makes $174,000 and drives a Tesla, isn't sending money to help her grandmother.

'Just over a week ago, my abuela fell ill. I went to Puerto Rico to see her- my 1st time in a year+ bc of COVID,' Ocasio-Cortez wrote on Twitter.

'This is her home,' she continued, posting two pictures of mostly-empty rooms where the ceiling is falling in and plastic buckets on the ground are collecting water. Also in the images are one chair, one dresser and a tarp on the ground.

'Hurricane María relief hasn't arrived. Trump blocked relief $ for PR. People are being forced to flee ancestral homes, & developers are taking them,' the New York congresswoman wrote.

Using her own grandmother's misfortunes for personal gain and Trump bashing. Much much more at the site including her furiously backpedaling. Schadenfreude is delicious.

MABA - Make Alexandria Bartend Again - That her major in college was Economics boggles the mind.

More fun in Iran

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Turns out, it is not just the ship and the refinery.
Don Surber puts two and two together - a fun post:

Mossad chief retires. Iranian ship catches fire.
What do you get a spy who is retiring from Mossad after 28 years? A gold watch seems insufficient.

How about a steep drop in Iran's production of enriched uranium?

Or maybe the sinking of an Iranian ship.

Or maybe destroying an Iranian oil refinery.

Can't decide? Do all three.

DEBKA reported, "The nuclear watchdog reported a substantial drop in production at Natanz, Iran’s main nuclear enrichment site on Monday, June 1, at the same time as a farewell event was taking place in Tel Aviv to mark Yossi Cohen’s departure from 28 years as a member of the Mossad spy agency and the last five as its director.

Quite the retirement gift. Interesting that the Mossad chiefs serve a single term of five years.  No entrenchment there.  Our own government could do well by doing this. No term limits is about 80% of how the deep-state stays in power.

Penultimate meeting as President - woo hoo!!!

Our Studio Tour starts on the 25th of this month so a busy couple of weeks.  I am still not ready to exhibit so will be "floating" from studio to studio taking photos.

Met a couple new members this afternoon - we set up outside and distributed several thousand brochures and posters. Left about a thousand at the library for members that were not able to make it today. Went well.  Good people at the library.

The pups are wondering what is up as I have been leaving them at home - for the first time in Truffle's time with me. Six months. Her previous "person" had put her in a crate every single business day so was worried that she might regress and really freak out.  She had major separation anxiety but she is doing a lot better. A little manic this last time today but earlier today and yesterday were fine.

One of the new members has a 12-year-old son who is majorly into the Forged in Fire series. We talked about blacksmithing for a while. She does jewelry - same stuff, just a different scale.

Got the laptop charging up - use that for the meeting.  Google meets runs really well on a Chromebook.  I also run Linux on it so a fun little box - long battery life and very lightweight.

Quick lunch and heading out to the storage unit to pick up two dollies and a hand truck for this afternoon's labors.
Meeting up there at 3:30 or so.

Gorgeous day - not as hot as yesterday. Sunshine is wonderful. Nice breeze blowing.

Working at the library until 6:00 PM and then home for a 6:30 PM meeting.

Off tomorrow - that day will be filled with advanced puttering. Been getting really good at puttering.

20210601-racism.jpg

Here are over 3,200 pages of emails to and from Dr. Fauci - some good stuff there and very little redaction.

I figured that his usefulness to the regime was about over and that he was going to be made the fall-guy in a show trial.  This puts the lid on his coffin.

Curious - Iran refinery

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Seems to be a bit of a fire problem over there.  From the Associated Press:

Massive fire breaks out at oil refinery near Iran’s capital
A massive fire broke out Wednesday night at the oil refinery serving Iran’s capital, sending thick plumes of black smoke over Tehran. It wasn’t immediately clear if there were injuries.

The fire struck the state-owned Tondgooyan Petrochemical Co. to the south of Tehran, said Mansour Darajati, the director-general of the capital’s crisis management team.

Firefighters believe it struck a pipeline for liquefied petroleum gas at the facility, Darajati told Iranian state television. He did not elaborate.

Associated Press journalists in central Tehran, some 20 kilometers (12.5 miles) away, could see the black smoke rise in the distance. Another AP journalist saw flames shooting into the sky from the site.

Heh - see how you like terrorism now that it is happening to you instead of the other way around.
Sucks doesn't it...

And I am outta here - dog walk

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Going to be another very hot day so taking the pups out for an early walk before it heats up.

Busy today - volunteering for the local community center, accepting delivery of the brochures for our Studio Tour later this month and then running the monthly General Meeting for the org.

Broke out the tee shirts and short pants yesterday but still keeping the space heaters out until end of this month - we could easilly have another cold snap or two.

Nothing else happening out there.

Fun news to wake up to - from FOX News:

Iran's largest warship catches fire, sinks in Gulf of Oman
The Iranian navy's largest warship caught fire and sank Wednesday in the Gulf of Oman, according to reports.

The support warship Kharg sank under unclear circumstances near the Iranian port of Jask, about 790 miles southeast of Tehran, semiofficial news agencies reported.

Firefighters tried to contain the blaze, which ignited around 2:25 a.m., but efforts to save the Kharg – named after the island that serves as the main oil terminal for Iran – were unsuccessful, according to the Fars and Tasnim news agencies.

Just a little spot of bad luck - that's all... 😁

My kind of camping

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Still not drinking alcohol but this does sound like a nice way to close out the day:

20210601-camping.jpg

Had some time so I burned a Blu-Ray disk successfully.  The burning software read through the disk and verified it so I know it was an error-free burn.  Went to run setup.exe and it errored out on me - telling me to reboot the machine and run it again.

I do not know what it is about that particular machine but it is being nothing but trouble.  Going to download MalwareBytes and do a deep system scan.  Went through and uninstalled anything and everything I could think of.  It had been a home machine for a long time (almost ten years) so there were a lot of crufty files and old odd bits of software. This is Windows 7 we are talking about so maybe it picked up something along the way.  I'll know in an hour or so.  Running the Windows Disk Cleanup utility to nuke any old files first.  Defrag and then try the deep scan. Turning the network connection off when I do not need it of course...

Then, some videos and an early bedtime - volunteering tomorrow morning, meeting up with some people at the local library for the Arts Group and then moderating an online meeting that evening. Tomorrow's forecast calls for Hot Hot Hot.

Gorgeous sunset - finally cooling off outside and nice colors in the sky. The dogs are staying home tomorrow - they will be pissed but better that than suffering in a hot car.

Nothing that does not agree with the destruction that we are seeing. From the Washington Examiner:

Obama says Biden is 'finishing' the job of his administration
Former President Barack Obama said President Joe Biden is "finishing the job" of his administration in an interview released on Tuesday.

Obama told the New York Times that his former vice president is finishing the goals laid out during his time in office, noting that 90% of his former staffers "are continuing and building on the policies we talked about, whether it’s the Affordable Care Act or our climate change agenda and the Paris [climate deal]."

“I think that what we’re seeing now is Joe and the administration are essentially finishing the job,” Obama added.

Joe is just a meat-puppet at this point. They change his depends regularly, give him pudding on Thursdays and let him ogle the very young girls so he is happy. He is not aware of what he is doing or where he really is. The good news is that he does have people telling him what to do, what to say and what to think.  Hate to think of what we would have if he were really running the show by himself.

This is Barky's third term and it will cement his legacy as a failed ideologue and the worst President in recent history.

Hot day today

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Got up to the high 80's - car had the air temp at 92°F

Kept the pups at home - too hot for them and the pavement would have been bad on their feet.  They hung out in the garage while I went to the market.

Feel like taking a nap. Got some really nice salad fixings for dinner tonight.

20210601-dress90s.jpg

Curious... Very very curious...

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It is not a conspiracy theory if it actually happens. From Russia Today:

Trump expects to get reinstated as president by August, New York Times’ Maggie Haberman claims, sparking storm
Maggie Haberman, a CNN analyst and Washington correspondent for the New York Times, sparked controversy on social media after she claimed former President Donald Trump has been telling people he will soon return to the presidency.

“Trump has been telling a number of people he’s in contact with that he expects he will get reinstated by August,” claimed Haberman on Twitter Tuesday, adding that she was “simply sharing the information.”

I would not mind that at all.  It would also bring the scandal to a boil during the November election cycle.  Hopefully, a lot of people would not get the results they wanted and/or paid Dominion for.

Pray for India

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Our new Ambassador is a braying ninny. From Legal Insurrection:

Biden Will Nominate LA Mayor Eric Garcetti as Ambassador to India
The last few times the Legal Insurrection team covered Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti, we called for his resignation over the appalling homelessness crisis and reviewed his harsh COVID-restrictions.

However, incompetence and thuggish behaviors are Democratic Party qualifications. This could explain why Biden wants Garcetti to serve as ambassador to India, one of our foremost allies.

Garcetti, a close Biden ally who served as co-chair for the president’s 2020 campaign, had been considered for a cabinet position, but a sexual harassment lawsuit against one of his aides may have lessened his chances, Axios reported Tuesday.

In December, Garcetti said he turned down a potential position at the White House because of the coronavirus crisis.

“As the administration reached out to me about serving,” he said, “I let them know early this week that my city needs me now, and that I want to be here, and that I need to be here.”

Perhaps this is India’s punishment for its explicit support for President Donald Trump?

Perhaps - we do import a lot from India.  Mahindra is the world's largest manufacturer of farm equipment and tractors. India's machine tools are a not as good as those from Taiwan but they are a hella lot better than those from China. I have a fly-press from India and love it. Lots of tooling for my lathe and mill too.

Very clever - from The Epoch Times:

Texas Counties Start Charging Illegal Aliens With Child Endangerment, Trespass
The tens of thousands of illegal aliens that evade Border Patrol every month—hoping to slip undetected to large cities up north—are now being confronted by sheriffs who are starting to charge them for trespassing, evading arrest on foot, and endangering the life or health of a child.

Seeing no solutions to the border crisis from the federal government, some counties are looking at all possible means to rein in the high-speed vehicle pursuits, trespassing, break-ins, vehicle thefts, and other crimes that are increasing in their communities.

“I’m going to start here, locally. If we catch them, we’re going to start prosecuting these people that are trespassing on y’all’s property,” Kinney County Sheriff Brad Coe told an appreciative crowd in Brackettville, Texas, on May 22. “And whatever other legitimate charge we can stack on there to try to deter them from coming to Kinney County. We’re going to try to hold these people accountable.”

Neighboring Edwards County is doing the same.

And word will get back across the border. Want to move here?  There are perfectly legal ways to do this.  There is a lot of support from charitable organizations to do this.  Doing this illegally wrecks the system and costs us taxpayers a lot of money that we do not have to spend.

And, lest we forget - the Mexican prisons are being opened shades of the Mariel boatlift (hint: it's not all "helpless" children)

Most of the illegal aliens passing through Kinney County are adult males who have crossed the border in the Del Rio Border Patrol Sector—usually into the small cities of Del Rio or Eagle Pass.

The sector is experiencing record-breaking numbers, and so far in the current fiscal year (which began on Oct. 1, 2020), Border Patrol has apprehended illegal aliens from 70 countries, according to information obtained by The Epoch Times.

Border Patrol in the Del Rio Sector has apprehended 95 sex offenders this fiscal year, compared to six during the same period in fiscal 2020. Apprehension of criminals has topped 813 compared to 161 in the same period in fiscal 2020.

Best and brightest. Come here, go on the dole, don't assimilate. Recipe for greatness.

And out - farmer's market

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Pick up some veggies and salad fixings. Socialize and maybe get a dish of ice cream.

Got some books waiting for me at the library and need to check in there about tomorrow - meeting there with some other people.

I'll try burning the disk when I get home.

The fun never stops.

Some headlines - Iran and Israel

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Thank you *Resident Biden - you did this.  You own this. You are just Obama's third term of office.

Disgusting. Our tax dollars going to fund terrorism against one of our greatest allies.

Back from WalMart

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Nobody had what I was looking for.  WalMart had some single-layer DVDs for a great price but they were 4.7GB capacity.  The ISO I need to write is 5.7GB. Not gonna happen. Ditto for Office Depot and Best-Buy. I did pick up a pack of ten Blu-Ray disks at Office Despot for $18 which is an OK price - see if they work.  I have a stand-alone reader/writer.

Ordered a spindle of dual-layer disks from Amazon - 8.5GB capacity.  I might be taking a couple day break in getting that computer up and running.  Not that there is any dearth of stuff to do around here. Having a light lunch (apple slices and fresh-ground peanut butter + protein shake) and head out to the Farmer's Market. Surf's up.

A quick coffee - heading to WalMart

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Did not linger as long as I usually do over coffee - had to get a couple of emails out regarding tomorrow's meeting. Heading out to pick up some blank CDs (the local computer store is only consulting - they do not stock anything - if it were me, I would carry a couple hundred bucks worth of various cables, consumables, etc. but...)

Gorgeous cloudless day - the local Farmer's Markets are opening up - today is the small one and planning to swing by to shop on my way home. Will take some photos of course.

And out for a bit - WalMart

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Dog walk, coffee and pick up some CD blanks.

Got the agenda written and sent out - meeting is tomorrow night.  Big one - elect the officers and board for 2022.  I am bowing out - was President for a while and now it is time to move on.

Nothing much happening.  The Georga election audit is 50% done - announced that yesterday evening. It will be interesting to see the outcome - all of the signs point to massive fraud.

From The Gateway Pundit:

Biden Imports Oil from Iran After Shutting Down Keystone Pipeline and Putting US Oil Workers Out of Work
Canceling the Keystone Pipeline costs over 11,000 construction jobs and 42,100 jobs throughout the US during the construction process according to the US State Department.

Then in May Joe Biden and his handlers waved American economic sanctions on Russia in order to streamline construction on the Nord Stream 2 pipeline to Germany.

And then this past weekend we found out Joe Biden imported oil from the terror regime in Iran that is committed to destroying Israel and has murdered tens of thousands of its own citizens.

Iran is a sponsor of terrorism throughout the world. There are laws in place prohibiting any business in the USA from doing business with them and we have very stringent Federal sanctions with them - no foreign aid, no business with them, etc.. Especially, no buying oil from them.

Looks for the Middle East to erupt in violence as more money is put into bombs. 900+ comments. This is evil.

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