July 2022 Archives

They keep using that word but I do not think it means what they think it means
(channeling my inner Inigo Montoya)

First photo:  This is true non-conformism.  The elites want to get rid of independent people - they want a populace dependent on their largesse.  Easier to control when you are handing out the free cheese.

Second photo: A bunch of useful idiots (Lenin's term, not mine).  They think that they will have a place at the grownups table after "The Revolution" but they do not know their history.  They will be lined up and shot once their usefulness is done and the Communists have seized power. Don't they realize that they are just being the tools of the man?  Willing brownshirts for the elitists?

Her office updated her itinerary today and a visit to Taiwan is not listed.
From FOX News:

Nancy Pelosi's Asia visit itinerary leaves out mention of possible stop in Taiwan
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's office announced early Sunday morning that she plans to visit at least four Asian countries during her trip to the region, but a stop in Taiwan was notably left out.

Pelosi is leading a Congressional delegation to the Indo-Pacific region that includes stops in Singapore, Malaysia, South Korea and Japan. The trip will center on mutual security, economic partnership and democratic governance in the Indo-Pacific region, her office said in a press release.

Cave to China.  Good call Nancy.  Our elites dance to their tune. They are owned by the Chinese.

From BoingBoing:

Today may or may not be George Jetson's birthday
Meet George Jetson. No, I'm not signing the theme song. I mean, get ready to meet him, because he is supposed to be born today. Or, ya know, maybe not. Welcome to one of the weirdest debates on the internet. The whole conversation began when studious fans of The Jetsons noticed that the show was supposed to take place a hundred years from its original airdate. Since the show came out in 1962, fans have come to believe that The Jetsons takes place in 2062. So why is 2022 significant? In an episode of the original series, George confirms that he's 40 years old.

With the aforementioned information in mind, Jetsons fans began to pore over every episode hoping to find a specific date for George's birthday. Why spend time on such an inane pursuit, you ask? There are few things more exciting to pedantic fans like myself than watching a piece of media that takes place in the future slowly become anachronistic. It ain't much, but it's honest work.

Used to love the show as a kid.  But...  They promised me a jetpack.  I want my jetpack!!!

Woke up about an hour ago.  Nothing much happening out there.

FInal two days of moving out. Get started before the day gets too hot to work.

It was 80°F outside around 8:00PM - it is now 82°
This little word of encouragement from Cliff Mass:

The Big Cooling is Weakened and Delayed. And some amazing temperatures today
I hate to tell you this, but the model solutions have shifted during the past several runs: the result is that the major cooling will be delayed for several days. Not good.

What has changed you ask?

The forecasts from a few days ago had a sharp trough of low pressure moving through on Monday, forcing cooling from off the ocean (see the upper-level (500 hPa) forecast made Wednesday afternoon for Monday at 5 AM).

I know it only happens once/year but still...

From Creative Destruction:

Court Rejects Google’s Attempt To Dismiss Rumble’s Antitrust Lawsuit, Ensuring Vast Discovery
A federal district court in California on Friday denied Google’s motion to dismiss a lawsuit alleging that the Silicon Valley giant is violating federal antitrust laws by preventing fair competition against its YouTube video platform. The lawsuit against the search engine giant, which has owned YouTube since its 2006 purchase for $1.65 billion, was brought in early 2021 by Rumble, the free speech competitor to YouTube. Its central claim is that Google’s abuse of its monopolistic stranglehold on search engines to destroy all competitors to its various other platforms is illegal under the Sherman Antitrust Act of 1890, which makes it unlawful to “monopolize, or attempt to monopolize…any part of the trade or commerce among the several States, or with foreign nations.”

It is rare for antitrust suits against the four Big Tech corporate giants (Google, Facebook, Apple and Amazon) to avoid early motions to dismiss. Friday’s decision against Google ensures that the suit now proceeds to the discovery stage, where Rumble will have the right to obtain from Google a broad and sweeping range of information about its practices, including internal documents on Google’s algorithmic manipulation of its search engine and the onerous requirements it imposes on companies dependent upon its infrastructure to all but force customers to use YouTube. 

Founded in 2013, Rumble began experiencing explosive growth in the run-up to the 2020 election. Americans were encountering escalating and aggressive Big Tech censorship of political content as the election approached. Conservative politicians, followed by a wide range of heterodox voices on the right and left, began migrating by the millions away from Google’s YouTube to Rumble, which has promised and thus provided far more permissive free speech rights. That was at the time when Google and other Big Tech platforms — at the urging of the Democratic-controlled Congress, began aggressively increasing its censorship of political video content on YouTube on the grounds of “disinformation” and “hate speech…”

It will be fun watching Google squirm - discovery requires them to produce internal documents. Everything.
Don't be Evil? That motto is going to be shown for what it is worth...

Memory hole anyone?  Who says that the media does not manipulate what we think about.
He didn't fit the narrative so into the memory hole he goes...

The repercussions from this will be interesting to say the least - from Honolulu station KHON:

Hawaii gets last shipment of coal: Expect to pay more
Hawaii is receiving its final shipment of coal this week, which Gov. David Ige called a huge step forward in the state’s transition to clean energy.

Coal is the cheapest but dirtiest source of power for Oahu. A law put in place a couple of years ago will finally shut down the island’s last coal burning power plant.

“In its time, coal was an important resource for Hawai‘i and I’d like to thank the workers who have run our last remaining coal plant,” Ige said in a statement. “Renewable energy projects to replace coal are coming online with more on the way.”

Liberals - always doing things that SOUND good versus doing things that DO good.  No acountability for their actions.
Wishes do not come true just because you wish for them really really hard...
A bit more:

As KHON2’s Always Investigating reports, replacement power projects are behind schedule due to unexpected global events with supply chain issues, so Oahu residents should prepare to pay even more for electricity this fall.

In the meantime, consumers can either cut back on power, try solar and batteries, or pay more for oil-generated power — which costs as much as five times more than coal.

Emphasis mine. Once again, the renewables are not in place to take over and the alternative to coal:  costs as much as five times more than coal

The idea sounds good but the implementation leaves the Hawai'ian people in a world of hurt.

Necessarily skyrocket?  Barkey's turn of phrase:
This video was posted June 25th, 2013 by Rep. Darrell Issa but it was filmed in January 2008 as part of an interview with the San Francisco Chronicle editorial board. *Resident Biden is just Obama's 3rd term.

Final push to empty out the house - last day is Monday.  Homeless after that 😁

I will miss being by the water but I am missing being in the mountains more.

Had to try it. It did not work out.  Now I know...

From American Military News:

Chinese army posts ‘preparing for war!’ on social media after Biden-Xi call
Just one day after President Joe Biden held a lengthy phone call with Chinese Communist Party leader Xi Jinping, China’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA) posted, “Preparing for war!” on the Chinese social media platform Weibo. 

According to the Chinese state-run news outlet Global Times, the post quickly garnered over 19,000 comments.

Stock up on Iodine tablets and prepare to hunker down.  Move out of the large cities - if there is an EMP, the cash machines as well as the EBT cards will not function.  Squirrel away a bunch of cash in small bills.  Here we go...

I do hope that someone at TSMC remembers to stash a box of highway flares in their locker.  China wants the technology - this is one of the main reasons that they are making such overt moves on Taiwan.  Someone walking through their cleanrooms with a burning flare will shut down production for six months to a year if not outright destroy the fab line.

Not what the "elite" are trying to implement

Follow the money - gas prices are down a bit because *Resident Biden is draining our Strategic Reserve.
He is also refilling it at market prices - something the mainstream media is not telling you:

More here - from MarketWatch, May 1st, 2020

Here are the challenges Trump will face in effort to rescue the oil market
Oil has suffered from eye-opening declines, with U.S. prices on track for a loss of 69% so far this year. There are actions the U.S. may take to help stabilize the market, but efforts may come too late, and none are without obstacles.

The recent oil-price collapse significantly raises the likelihood that the Trump administration will move to lessen regulatory burdens placed on the U.S. oil industry, says David McCullough, partner in the energy and infrastructure practice of law firm Eversheds Sutherland.

This was a market correction and during this time, President Trump wanted to use the low prices to top off our Strategic Reserve.  But...

Filling up the SPR, to the tune of 77 million barrels of available storage space, may be the most effective option for the government to influence prices, says Paul Sheldon, chief geopolitical adviser for analytics at S&P Global Platts. It could also buy up to 365 million barrels of unproduced domestic crude, “utilizing legal authority to raise the government stockpile to 1 billion barrels.” The SPR had 636 million barrels as of April 24.

Congress would need to provide funds for this, and that appears improbable, given objections from Democrats, Sheldon says.

Those nutty Democrats - always a game to them.  Rope.  Tree. Some assembly required.
These people are idiots.

This little item from Reuters:

BASF readies more ammonia production cuts in gas supply crunch
Germany's BASF, the world's largest chemical company, is cutting ammonia production further due to soaring natural gas prices, it said on Wednesday, with potential ramifications from farming to fizzy drinks.

Germany's biggest ammonia maker SKW Piesteritz and number four Ineos also said they could not rule out production cuts as the country grapples with disruption to Russian gas supplies.

Ammonia plays a key role in the manufacturing of fertiliser, engineering plastics and diesel exhaust fluid. Its production also yields high-purity carbon dioxide (CO2) as a byproduct, which is needed by the meat and fizzy drinks industries.

"We are reducing production at facilities that require large volumes of natural gas, such as ammonia plants," BASF Chief Executive said in a media call after the release of quarterly results, confirming an earlier Reuters report.

They are not content with burning down food distribution facilities, they are now actively targeting the basic components - ammonia and therefore fertilizer.

A bit of background from InfoGalactic: The Haber process

The Haber process, also called the Haber–Bosch process, is an artificial nitrogen fixation process and is the main industrial procedure for the production of ammonia today. It is named after its inventors, the German chemists Fritz Haber and Carl Bosch, who developed it in the first half of the twentieth century. The process converts atmospheric nitrogen (N2) to ammonia (NH3) by a reaction with hydrogen (H2) using a metal catalyst under high temperatures and pressures:

Before the development of the Haber process, ammonia had been difficult to produce on an industrial scale with early methods such as the Birkeland–Eyde process and Frank–Caro process all being highly inefficient.

The Hydrogen is produced via steam reformation of Methane (CH4) and the resultant CO2 is captured and used for other industrial processes - carbonation, welding gas, chemical feedstocks for food production (stops oxidation and browning, preserves fruit), plastics, etc...  Cut off the natural gas (90% Methane) and you kill fertilizer production.

Heard this on my favorite radio station (WDVX) earlier today.
Identical-twin brothers singing close harmony. Their channel:  The Brother Brothers
Great sound, great song, great performance:

Very well explained at The Market Ticker:

Just ask yourself one question: When in history, ever, has someone who is running a scam stopped because they were asked nicely?

That's easy: Never.

Thus the options are only three:

1. The people continue to get screwed until they are literally rendered penniless in sufficient numbers that a civil uprising or worse occurs, which risks the complete destruction of the government and/or civil war.

2. The government enforces the law and a lot of people go to prison, most-particularly a lot of corporate CEOs, board members and other cartel operators such as virtually all of the medical system in the US today.

3. The people start enforcing judgement on their own until the government decides that #2 beats #1, which is where #3 will inevitably lead to.

Convince me I'm wrong in the comments, if you can.

Karl has a point there - read the rest.  Very good analysis.

It's offical despite how the White House tries to spin it.
From FOX News:

US economy enters technical recession after growth tumbles 0.9% in the second quarter
The U.S. economy shrank in the spring for the second consecutive quarter, meeting the criteria for a so-called technical recession as raging inflation and higher interest rates forced consumers and businesses to pull back on spending.

Elections have consequences.

Information wants to be free and yes, it is leaking out despite the best efforts of our government.
From Emerald Robinson’s The Right Way:

Why Is The CDC Hiding Excess Death Data?
There's 50,000 Sudden Adult Death Syndrome (SADS) & cancer deaths that have gone missing

The number of “non natural cause” deaths in America has skyrocketed so much that the CDC has simply stopped processing the data.

In fact, the CDC stopped updating cancer deaths in Week 50 of 2021.

Researchers who use the CDC’s “mortality statistics” cannot access the data at all.

This is just the smallest of excerpts - the post is a big one with lots of screen caps and links to other writers and researchers.  This is only the tip of the iceberg.

We have been lied to from the outset.  The big pharma industry saw the Wuhan Flu as an opportunity to bring mRNA technology to market.  It had never been used with the general public before - it was untested. The adverse reactions started happening and they could not stop the roll-out so they swept the adverse data under the statistical rug and began a massive Public Relations program to marginalize anyone who tried to make this public.

Heads need to roll here.  Literally.  We are talking many tens of thousands of unnecessary deaths.

Tip of the hat to Don Surber for this one minute breath of fresh air:

I remember when we had it on the ropes. They were not going to pursue enrichment.
From Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty:

Iran Seals Cameras Installed At Nuclear Facilities By UN Watchdog
Iran has collected and sealed cameras used by the UN atomic watchdog to monitor its nuclear program, the Fars news agency reported on July 26, citing the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran.

On July 25, Iran's nuclear chief, Mohammad Eslami, said 27 cameras installed by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) would not be reactivated until a deal is reached to restore a 2015 nuclear agreement with global powers.

Iran turned off the surveillance cameras at several nuclear facilities last month in response to a resolution from the IAEA board of governors demanding Iran cooperate with UN inspectors looking into undeclared nuclear sites.

Just wonderful. Just what we need - irrational fundamentalists with a big red button of their very own. They will lose with any scenario - Mecca will be a glass sheet if they try anything but the rest of the world will suffer along.

Still wonder if they pay any Federal Income Taxes - I know that their very profitible Medical Imaging division is now a wholly-owned Chinese corporation. They spun off their household appliance division in 2014.
From the Albany, NY Times Union:

GE CEO reports progress but 'much is still uncertain'
General Electric Co. surprised Wall Street on Tuesday with higher-than-expected adjusted profit of $1.7 billion, up 81 percent from a year ago as CEO Larry Culp Jr. continues to cut costs and improve operations at the Boston-based industrial conglomerate.

Traders pushed GE's shares up more than 2 percent in early trading as the stock hit $70, its highest peak in a month.

"We are improving delivery, price, and cost performance via lean and decentralization," CEO Larry Culp said in a statement. "Notwithstanding this progress, much is still uncertain about the external pressures companies are facing at this moment."

Decentralization?  You consider this to be a good move in this era of supply-chain problems?  Is Larry planning to retire soon?  Let the chips fall where they may, I am outta here.  I got mine...

Uncertainty remains for GE's Capital Region workforce, which includes GE's power plant and renewable energy businesses in Schenectady that GE is planning to spin off as a separate company known as GE Vernova.

Renewable energy business is not profitible?  What a surprise...  As GE Vernova tanks, it will be quietly rebranded as Vernova and people will forget the parent. More:

GE's renewable energy business, which is currently based in Paris but will be merged with GE Power before its planned 2024 spin-off, lost $419 million during the second quarter, forcing GE to cut back on its expectations for the unit for the rest of the year. Orders were down 3 percent.

Another GE division, another country's ownership. Thomas Edison is quietly sobbing in his grave.  More:

The company said that the expiration of the federal renewable energy tax credit and global inflation have caused uncertainty in the renewable energy market, which still carries high business risks.

"Tax credit" meaning subsidy paid for by us taxpayers. Booo fscking Hooo...  And it is not just a minor turndown or market "adjustment"  More:

Through the first half of the year, GE received orders for 564 wind turbines (including offshore wind turbines), about half the number it received through the first six months of 2021.

That is going to hurt.  Maybe those things don't work after all...
They also got burned on solar in 2013.
Their new business motto: Don't bother to innovate - that's passé.  Cannibalize.

Facebook in case you were wondering - three headlines:

• Meta Reports Second Quarter 2022 Results
• Meta's revenue shrank for the first time in its history
• Facebook Parent Meta Reports First Ever Revenue Drop

Heh - pride goeth before the fall.
They have had their bubble, hope the employees were prudent in their savings...

By Guillermo del Toro no less...  First trailer:

Gaia theory?  A bit of hooey if you ask me but he did reallye as well.
From the New York Times:

James Lovelock, Whose Gaia Theory Saw the Earth as Alive, Dies at 103
James Lovelock, the maverick British ecologist whose work was essential to today’s understanding of man-made pollutants and their effect on climate and who captured the scientific world’s imagination with his Gaia theory, portraying the Earth as a living creature, died on Tuesday, his 103rd birthday, at his home in Dorset, in southwest England.

His family confirmed the death in a statement on Twitter, saying that until six months ago he “was still able to walk along the coast near his home in Dorset and take part in interviews, but his health deteriorated after a bad fall earlier this year.”

Dr. Lovelock’s breadth of knowledge extended from astronomy to zoology. In his later years he became an eminent proponent of nuclear power as a means to help solve global climate change and a pessimist about humankind’s capacity to survive a rapidly warming planet.

One of a kind - he will be missed.

Tyranny is always better organized than freedom
—Charles Péguy

Charles has a number of great aphorisms
An interesting character...

This is something that needs to be turned around.
We do have the technology to make this happen.

Cat memes are all well and good but it is time to start reclaiming our freedoms

This

Nothing much happening out there...  Final push on the house here so busy.

Minimal daytime posting until this weekend.

Only a taste of the free ice cream today - busy working.  Got three full days left at the house here.

Sad to leave but good - time to move on.

The King-makers see the writing on the wall and are trying to cut their losses.
What we see here is the leading edge coming from two major liberal media outlets.
Headlines link to full story:

• Sorry, Democrats: We're Stuck With Joe and Kamala
• GOP Sen. Chuck Grassley alleges widespread effort in FBI, Justice Dept to downplay negative information about Hunter Biden

When Newsweek and CBS are saying that there is little bit of rot at the top, you better believe that the entire barrel of fish has decomposed to a putrescent liquid. The mainstream media is ever-so-slowly e..a..s..i..n..g.... this new narrative into the brainpans of their faithful NPCs.  This is the Next Thing. We must rally around the Next Thing.

Heading up north - meeting with someone today.  Back to the island later this evening.

Slow news day so far...

Sooner the better - now would be too late in my book:

From Paramount Pictures:

Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves | Official Trailer (2023 Movie)
A charming thief and a band of unlikely adventurers undertake an epic heist to retrieve a lost relic, but things go dangerously awry when they run afoul of the wrong people.  Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves brings the rich world and playful spirit of the legendary roleplaying game to the big screen in a hilarious and action-packed adventure.

Looks like fun - let's hope that they didn't WOKE-ify it.

Some people at Google are trying to push a new programming language as the sucessor to C & C++
Rotsa ruck...  From TechRadar:

Google thinks its new programming language can topple C++
Google has revealed more on Carbon, a new programming language that the company believes could be the successor to C++.

Programming languages are constantly improving and developing, and have been replaced in recent years with models that are even easier to use. Apple’s own Swift language has opened up several possibilities to the less experienced that its predecessor, Objective-C, for example.

Many have dubbed Rust a C++ successor, however speaking at a recent event, Google Principal Software Engineer Chandler Carruth explained how the programming language that was initially a Mozilla product doesn’t have the same “bi-directional interoperability” as other tools, which introduces a type of ‘language barrier’ when ‘translating’ between different programming language.

And on and on and on...  And then, there is this little tidbit:

There are further benefits that extend beyond Carbon’s language, including ethical motives like the accessibility and inclusivity of the project’s culture.

They did not out and out say it but it sounds like Carbon is the first "WOKE" programming language.

I do have a fondness for "interesting" programming languages - learned TurboPascal for MS-DOS when it came out on the IBM-PC.  Been a fan of FORTH for a long time. Perl, LUA.  Recently, getting pretty good at Python - lots of 3rd-party libraries out there and it runs well on the Pi.

Betting that Carbon never really takes off outside of the Google WOKEery.

Nothing much happening out there - a nice quiet Sunday

Coffee place opens at 9:00AM today so working at home for now.

John Rich's latest:

Last push to get the house emptied out.  I turn the keys over on the 28th.  Close on the 29th. Not getting as much as I wanted to as there were some issues that did not become apparent until after I moved in.  The previous owners lied on their disclosure form.  Oh well...  At least the farm is in great shape and the place in NC is just as good.  Very happy to be getting out of WA State...

Heading over to the storage unit to get the last of the furniture out - take a load to the farm Monday when I drive up.

From 90 Miles:

How to make them all go away - from AskVG:

How to Uninstall and Remove All Built-in Apps in Windows 10
In previous tutorial, we told you about different ways to uninstall modern apps in Windows 10 operating system:

The methods given in above mentioned tutorial can’t uninstall all built-in apps. There are many built-in apps such as Photos, Music, OneNote, Xbox, People, Camera, etc which come preinstalled with Windows 10 and you can’t uninstall them.

But there is an advanced method which can be used to get rid of all or specific built-in apps in Windows 10. You can remove any desired bundled app in Windows 10 with the help of this method.

The method we are talking about, includes use of PowerShell program present in Windows 10. You can use some commands in PowerShell to remove all or some modern apps which came bundled with Windows 10.

Handy stuff - granted, they are there but you do not have to use them.  Still, nice to remove what you do not need.

Betting there is more to this story than they are telling outright
From the London Daily Mail

US records first two CHILD monkeypox cases: California toddler and an infant in D.C. were likely infected by 'household contacts' and both had contact with gay or bisexual men, CDC chief says

• • One is a toddler in California while the other infant is not a US resident and was 'transiting through' Washington D.C., officials said
  • Both children are 'doing well' and likely were infected by 'household contacts'
  • Dr Rochelle Walensky said they had contact with gay or bisexual men
  • It was not clear when they caught the virus, or what symptoms they had
  • This is the first time the virus has been detected among children in the US
  • Children under the age of eight are at high risk of severe monkeypox
  • A boy under 10 years old has also tested positive for the virus in the Netherlands

Gay I do not mind - knock yourself out.  Pedophilia is something else entirely. 
Rope. Tree. Some assembly required.
The Middle Easterners are on the right track here...

Excellent writeup on the money laundering going on with immigration.   Same thing is happening with the homeless too.  Going to continue too because if they actually fixed the problem, there would be no reason for their agency to continue and the sweet taxpayer money would be cut off. From the New York Post:

Government using charities to hide just how much money is going to illegal immigration
If you’re a taxpayer — in New York or anywhere in the US – you’re getting scammed by groups like United Way, Catholic Charities and the Central American Refugee Center (CARECEN). You may think these are charities. Truth is, these groups are hauling in millions in taxpayer dollars — your money — under government contracts to facilitate illegal immigration.

It’s money laundering. Democratic politicians want to maximize illegal immigration, but they don’t want their fingerprints on it. The remedy: pay so-called charities that will do the work for them. Who’s in on this scam? President Joe Biden, and politicians across the country including Gov. Kathy Hochul, DC Mayor Muriel Bowser and our own Mayor Eric Adams.

Even before crossing the border, migrants still in Mexico are being handed debit cards loaded with $800 a month to enable them to pay for necessities. The gift cards are distributed by the non-profit Organization for Migration, thanks to money provided by the US State Department.

After crossing and surrendering to US Border agents, many migrants are directed to Catholic Charities, which provides them with hotel rooms, meals and clothing, and sometimes pays for their bus or plane tickets to their chosen destinations. Sister Norma Pimentel, executive director of Catholic Charities of the Rio Grande Valley explains that the mission is merely to “give a cup of water in Jesus’ name.”

This is our money being spent without us having a say in it.
Taxation without representation.
Isn't this how it all started some 244+ years ago?

Complete with government cover-up.
Nothing new at all - from the London Daily Mail:

'Evil in the heart of America': Shocking doc exposes mystery surrounding alleged 1988 prostitution ring, detailing child victims' horrific claims of being flown across US and abused by high-powered officials - and their accusations of 'cover up' by the FBI

• • In the 1980s, the alleged victims claimed a man named Lawrence King ran an underground club in Omaha, Nebraska, through which he, along with politicians and businessmen, forced children to have sex with them
  • In 1990, a Nebraska county grand jury concluded that the claims were a 'hoax,' and a federal grand jury later agreed that the allegations had no base
  • However, in 1993, a film crew flew to the state to look into it further, interviewing the alleged victims and others who were said to be involved as part of a documentary on the matter
  • The supposed victims told documentary makers that the government forced them into silence by threatening them, using scare tactics, and even murder - with one even alleging they killed his brother to keep him quiet
  • Days before the movie was supposed to premiere on the Discovery Channel, it got shut down with no explanation. Now it has finally been released and was uploaded to Real Women/Real Stories ' YouTube page
  • The documentary has left many to wonder, was the prostitution ring real and did the government hide it or was it all an elaborate, made-up story?

Much much more at the site. Pedo Joe? Our *Resident.
So well known that there is even a website about it.

Can't balkanize people when they are all friends.

The Creative Process in a Nutshell
1. This is awesome
2. This is tricky
3. This is shit
4. I am shit
5. This might be OK
6. This is awesome

Presented for your consideration - from America's Newspaper of Record:

Joe Biden Calls Obama To Wish Him A Speedy Recovery After Hearing The President Has COVID
After learning that the president had contracted the Coronavirus, Joe Biden quickly called up Barack Obama to wish him a speedy recovery.

"Hey, man, this is Pedo Peter. How you holdin' up? I heard on the news you got COVID-19. Come on, man, you should've called me!" Biden reportedly told Obama's personal assistant.

Biden continued speaking while waiting to be transferred to Obama. "I just want you to know that you're my rock. I love you, man. Sending thoughts and pringles your way. Libbenshneblet. End of note."

Sources familiar with the matter claim that by the time Obama picked up the phone, Biden had gotten most of his inappropriate racist comments out of the way. The pair had a friendly conversation in which Biden wished his friend good health and asked how the trip to Saudi Arabia went.

Dr. Jill Biden reportedly walked in on the conversation and then playfully shook her head in disbelief. "That's our Joe!" she laughed to herself.

At publishing time, President Obama sent some more executive orders for Dr. Jill Biden to get her husband to sign.

So spot on, it is not funny...

From Aesop at Raconteur Report:

Bring it...

Deep-state go bye-bye - getting rid of some unelected bureaucrats
From Jonathan Swan writing at Axios:

A radical plan for Trump’s second term
Former President Trump’s top allies are preparing to radically reshape the federal government if he is re-elected, purging potentially thousands of civil servants and filling career posts with loyalists to him and his "America First” ideology, people involved in the discussions tell Axios.

The impact could go well beyond typical conservative targets such as the Environmental Protection Agency and the Internal Revenue Service. Trump allies are working on plans that would potentially strip layers at the Justice Department — including the FBI, and reaching into national security, intelligence, the State Department and the Pentagon, sources close to the former president say.

During his presidency, Trump often complained about what he called “the deep state.”

The heart of the plan is derived from an executive order known as “Schedule F,” developed and refined in secret over most of the second half of Trump’s term and launched 13 days before the 2020 election.

The reporting for this series draws on extensive interviews over a period of more than three months with more than two dozen people close to the former president, and others who have firsthand knowledge of the work underway to prepare for a potential second term. Most spoke on condition of anonymity to describe sensitive planning and avoid Trump’s ire.

More at the site - Axios has a liberal bias so they are not liking this one bit.  Kudos to them for accurate reporting.

Absolutely wonderful - someone has to do this.  Glad that it is President Trump and glad that he will be starting in 2025

She is interviewing for a position in the *Resident Biden administration regime
From Dan Bongino:

Counting down the days - Thursday the 28th is the last day I will sleep in the house here.   Glad to be moving...

Time to vote with my feet and move to an area where I don't always have to treat the government like a networking error to be routed around...

Quick trip up and down - picking up some shelving for the big trailer and starting to clear out the equipment barn.

Nothing much happening out there. People in the large cities are still batshit crazy - that is going to continue for some time until they wake up.  Not holding my breath...

Well done 12 minute video - you can watch it at 1.5X and get everything:

From the Frontline Covid-19 Critical Care Alliance

Heat waves everywhere.  It's summer.  Increased demand for air conditioning.
Slight problem - from MSN:

There’s such a thing as too much sun for solar panels, and Europe’s solar industry is starting to buckle
With clear skies and near-constant sunlight, European summers should be high season for the solar power industry.

But while solar panels feed on sunlight, Europe is in the grips of a record-breaking heatwave, and extreme heat is no friend to solar energy producers.

The heat that has been scorching parts of the U.K. and western and southern Europe has set temperature records, started wildfires, damaged infrastructure, and is leaving behind a mounting death toll.

High temperatures have sent electricity demand in Europe soaring, and combined with an ongoing shortage of natural gas on the continent since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, renewable energy sources such as solar have had to step up.

And the problem:

Solar panels around . the . world are manufactured and tested to function optimally at around 77°F, or 25°C, and the range in which most solar panels can still operate at peak efficiency is between 15°C and 35°C. Any hotter, and utility and installation companies warn that a panel’s efficiency can start dropping fast.

So... Fine in theory but when you really really need them, they are running at 25% lower output. You can cool them - water cooling is easy to do as there is only one active side but that is expensive and requires energy.  A lot of half-baked ideas are being rushed to market because of government subsidies (read: taxpayer dollars).  How about nuclear? Proven technology. Safe (especially LFTR)  Instead, these unelected government officials are blowing taxpayer dollars on pipe dreams.

Not as bad as it initially looked.
One transformer involved but the others took up the slack and there was no interruption.
From Reuters:

Hoover Dam transformer fire put out without interruption to power grid
A transformer caught fire at Nevada's Hoover Dam on Tuesday and was quickly extinguished by the fire brigade without any injuries or interruption to the power grid, the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation said.

Video circulating on social media, apparently taken by a tourist, showed a small explosion and smoke and fire coming from the base of the dam, the largest in the United States and the source for a 2,080-megawatt hydroelectric plant, enough for about 1.3 million households.

Photos at the site.

From British tech journal The Register:

Electrical engineers on the brink of extinction threaten entire tech ecosystems
Intel has produced some unbelievable graphs in its time: projected Itanium market share, next node power consumption, multicore performance boosts.

The graph the company showed at the latest VLSI Symposium, however, was a real shocker.

While computer science course take-up had gone up by over 90 percent in the past 50 years, electrical engineering (EE) had declined by the same amount. The electronics graduate has become rarer than an Intel-based smartphone.

That part of the technology industry which makes actual things has always been divided between hardies and softies, soldering iron versus compiler, oscilloscope versus debugger. But the balance is lost. Something is very wrong at the heart of our technology creation supply chain. Where have all the hardies gone?

They talk about the history of electronics - how kids started getting interested:

For most of the history of electronics, there was a clear on-ramp for this, and an industry that didn't need to sell itself because it was inherently cool for geeks. Look at the biographies of the great names in electronics, such as Intel co-founder Robert Noyce or the father of the information age Claude Shannon, and you find them as teenage geeks pulling apart, then rebuilding, then designing radios and guitar amplifiers. The post-war generation tore down military surplus gear to teach themselves how it worked and mine components to build their own inventions.

This was practical magic, and you could start your apprenticeship by taking the back off a broken wireless. If you had the urge, it was easy to ignite the fascination. Then came the pull of working on the front line of the Cold War, the space age, the era of technological innovation. The industry had its supply of fresh creativity guaranteed.

This remained broadly true until the turn of the 21st century. A reasonably bright kid would realize that the family CRT television was in fact a particle accelerator with its own multi-kilovolt high-voltage generator, plus any amount of repurposable bits and pieces. You can have a lot of fun with that. There were old analog gadgets all over the place. You could peer inside Granny's radio and follow the signal path, component by component. That's all gone now.

That was certainly my beginning - my Dad taught me how to solder at six years old and we were always working on some project or another.  The article posits part of the decline on the layering of firmware on top of the hardware - and a wonderful turn of phrase:

By one measure we're surrounded by more electronics in our homes than entire nations had years back. Your granny's radio had maybe 10 transistors; a smart speaker, billions. But it's a computer, like your flat-screen television is a computer, like your phone and your audio system and even your light bulbs are computers. The electronics have sunk out of sight, beneath thick alluvial layers of software, and it will do nothing without that software. Any budding geek will expend their youthful vigor on that software first, because it's where the animating genius of technology now resides. We have literally cut ourselves off from a primary wellspring of fascination.

Emphasis mine - a wonderful description.  More at the site and yes, there is hope in the Maker culture but a thoughtful article and something worth considering.

Generator hall - looks pretty major:

Las Vegas Review-Journal is reporting:

Explosion reported at Hoover Dam
Boulder City authorities said they were responding to a report of an emergency call at Hoover Dam on Tuesday morning.

“Boulder City Fire Department is en route to an emergency call at Hoover Dam,” a Twitter alert from the city said. “No further information is available at this time.”

Further details were not released, but the alert came as a Twitter user identified as Kristy Hairston posted a short video clip of a small fire and a large cloud of black smoke rising from a segment of the dam structure.

This is just happening so no details as yet.  Generator hall so it will impact their power production.

Something to be avoided at all costs.  I use gmail out of convenience but have a POP3 email account on a server that I pay for (this website and a couple others that I host). Likewise, software subscription - if I buy some application, I want to be able to own it and to use it ten years from now if I need to.  If I want additional features, I will pay to update.

I am specifically not using Adobe software for this very reason. Darktable is an excellent free alternative to Lightroom and the Afinity suite (under $200 for all three) is perfect for photo editing and desktop publishing. Inkscape (free) for vector editing and DaVinci Resolve for video/audio editing and processing - I ponied up for the commercial version of that for $300 but used the free version for a couple years.

This is just a taste of what big tech working with big government has in store for us
From the MIT Technology Review:

A million-word novel got censored before it was even shared. Now Chinese users want answers.
Imagine you are working on your novel on your home computer. It’s nearly finished; you have already written approximately one million words. All of a sudden, the online word processing software tells you that you can no longer open the draft because it contains illegal information. Within an instant, all your words are lost.

This is what happened in June to a Chinese novelist writing under the alias Mitu. She had been working with WPS, a domestic version of cloud-based word processing software such as Google Docs or Microsoft Office 365. In the Chinese literature forum Lkong on June 25, Mitu accused WPS of “spying on and locking my draft,” citing the presence of illegal content.

The news blew up on social media on July 11 after a few prominent influencer accounts belatedly picked it up. It became the top trending topic on Weibo that day, with users questioning whether WPS is infringing on their privacy. Since then, The Economic Observer, a Chinese publication, has reported that several other online novelists have had their drafts locked for unclear reasons in the past.

Mitu’s complaint triggered a social media discussion in China about censorship and tech platform responsibility. It has also highlighted the tension between Chinese users’ increasing awareness of privacy and tech companies’ obligation to censor on behalf of the government. “This is a case where perhaps we are seeing that these two things indeed might collide,” says Tom Nunlist, an analyst on China’s cyber and data policy at the Beijing-based research group Trivium China

Just say no.  These "elites" want to "nudge" us into what they think is best for us.
They are idiots. Out of touch. Solipsists. Sociopaths.

Always back up locally.  Also, have one portable hard drive that you keep somewhere else - a friends house - something.  If your house or office burns down, you want to be able to recover your data.  Do not leave the portable hard drive connected to your computer - too many instances of ransomware out there.  They encrypt your data and require payment to restore them.

Looks like Russia just upped the ante - wondering how the greens are going to react.
From Reuters:

Russia's Gazprom tells Europe gas halt beyond its control
Russia's Gazprom has told customers in Europe it cannot guarantee gas supplies because of 'extraordinary' circumstances, according to a letter seen by Reuters, upping the ante in an economic tit-for-tat with the West over Moscow's invasion of Ukraine.

Dated July 14, the letter from the Russian state gas monopoly, said it was declaring force majeure on supplies, starting from June 14.

Known as an 'act of God' clause, force majeure is standard in business contracts and spells out extreme circumstances that excuse a party from their legal obligations.

Looks like Germany is going to be hurting this winter:

Uniper, Germany's biggest importer of Russian gas, was among the customers who said they had received a letter, and that it had formally rejected the claim as unjustified.

RWE, Germany's largest power producer and another importer of Russian gas, also said it has received a force majeure notice.

More at the site.  The west is playing "tough" with Russia - their proxy war in Ukraine, the economic sanctions, etc...  Now Russia has their nuts in a vice. Who blinks first.  Europe and Germany especially was selling green energy as the next big thing.  Now? Epic fail.

Getting stuff done - clearing out the storage barn on the island.

House almost emptied out - closes on the 29th of this month so 12 more days of island living...  It will be good to be gone.  Some good times and met some wonderful people but time to move on.

Took a break - nothing happening out there.  Back to work.

Reading between the lines - from Danish pharma manufacturer Bavarian Nordic:

U.S. GOVERNMENT ORDERS ANOTHER 2.5 MILLION DOSES OF MONKEYPOX VACCINES FROM BAVARIAN NORDIC

• • Bavarian Nordic to supply an additional 2.5 million doses of JYNNEOS® vaccine, bringing deliveries in 2022 and 2023 to a total of nearly 7 million doses
  • Filling capacity is being expanded with a U.S. based contract manufacturer who will fill the vaccines using existing bulk vaccine from previous orders from BARDA
  • Tech transfer to the contract manufacturer and manufacturing planned for 2022
  • Company upgrades its financial guidance for 2022

COPENHAGEN, Denmark, July 15, 2022 – Bavarian Nordic A/S (OMX: BAVA) announced today that the U.S. Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA), part of the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and Response at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, has ordered an additional 2.5 million doses of liquid-frozen JYNNEOS®, a non-replicating smallpox vaccine and the only FDA-approved vaccine against monkeypox.

The new order follows two previous orders from BARDA in June and July 2022 for 500,000 and 2.5 million doses respectively which, together with an order from BARDA in 2020 for 1.4 million doses, will bring the total deliveries in 2022 and 2023 to nearly 7 million doses.

And how does monkeypox propagate?  Most common spread is among gay men. Figure it out for yourself...

Slow news day out there.

Heading out for coffee in an hour - clean up here a bit first.

Maybe find something to post later this afternoon.

From The New York Post:

Nancy Pelosi’s husband buys millions in computer-chip stocks before big subsidy vote
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s husband purchased up to $5 million in stock options on a computer-chip company ahead of a vote on legislation next week that would deliver billions of dollars in subsidies to boost the chip-manufacturing industry, new financial disclosures show.

Paul Pelosi purchased on June 17, 20,000 shares of Nvidia, a top semiconductor company, worth between $1 million and $5 million, the Daily Caller reported, citing disclosure reports filed by the House speaker.

Senators are expected to convene as early as Tuesday to vote on a bipartisan competition bill to set aside $52 billion to boost domestic semiconductor manufacturing and give tax credits for production, Reuters reported.

Martha Stuart went to prison for insider trading of ImClone Stock.  Shouldn't the Speaker of the House, the #2 person in line for the Presidency, be held to a higher standard?  An entertainer; a television and media personality is one thing.  A person who represents We The People is something a lot more serious. That position carries a lot more responsibility.

How many BOTs on twitter?  How many spammers in print?
From Bleeping Computer:

Hackers pose as journalists to breach news media org’s networks
Researchers following the activities of advanced persistent (APT) threat groups originating from China, North Korea, Iran, and Turkey say that journalists and media organizations have remained a constant target for state-aligned actors.

The adversaries are either masquerading or attacking these targets because they have unique access to non-public information that could help expand a cyberespionage operation.

More at the site including samples - simple stuff mostly...  IP Address capture, social engineering.  No "real" hacking.
Stuff people like us should be doing in the privacy of our own subterranian heaily-armed compounds.
We have computers too...

Got shit done.  Always a good feeling.

Got the roadmap for the next couple of weeks figured out too - an even better feeling.

Spot on - written by Rich Lyons:

Heading to the farm today - back tomorrow late afternoon.

Two papers, two separate research groups — same conclusion:

Inhibition of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus replication in a lethal SARS-CoV BALB/c mouse model by stinging nettle lectin, Urtica dioica agglutinin

Carbohydrate-Binding Protein from Stinging Nettle as Fusion Inhibitor for SARS-CoV-2 Variants of Concern

Right there in front of us all along...
Just like Ivermectin

Of course, big pharma will ignore this since it cannot be patented and monetized.

Billy Strings and his Dad - City Opera House in Traverse City, MI

It's in the news now but I wrote about it January 13th and January 23rd 2022
From this January 13th article in Trains

BNSF unions threaten strike over attendance policy (updated)
Members of the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen and the Transportation Division of the International Association of Sheet Metal, Air, Rail, and Transportation union, who work for the BNSF Railway, initiated steps to go on strike following the railroad’s announcement of its so-called “Hi-Viz” attendance policy. Collectively, the unions represent more than 17,000 active members at the BNSF.

Things are going to get interesting - from this July 13th article at Railway Age:

BLET Members Vote ‘Yes’ on Nationwide Strike Authorization
Nearly 100% of Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen members have voted in support of a nationwide strike, which BLET National President Dennis R. Pierce is calling “a showing of solidarity and unity.”

The National Mediation Board (NMB) on June 14 set in motion a 90-day-maximum time clock toward a national railroad shutdown. It released BLET and 11 other rail craft unions (bargaining in two coalitions collectively representing some 115,000 rail workers) from NMB-guided mediation with most Class I freight railroads and many smaller ones, ending attempts to negotiate, voluntarily, amendments to existing wage, benefits and work rules agreements.

This triggered a “cooling off period,” which is set to expire at 12:01 a.m. EDT on July 18, 2022. At that point, self-help is available to the parties, unless President Joe Biden appoints a Presidential Emergency Board (PEB) pursuant to Section 10 of the Railway Labor Act. A PEB would halt any strike or lockout by the parties, and would investigate and issue a report and recommendations concerning the dispute.

Something to remember is that in addition to all the "normal" cargo (building supplies, grain, animal feed, industrial materials) that railways transport, they also transport our oil and propane.  We were going to build a large pipeline but somebody nixed that on their first day on the job.  Look for fuel prices to spike even more if this goes through...

It will be interesting to see if Biden's handlers appoints a Presidential Emergency Board.  We all know that they want to crash our economy so they can institute their own government.  Midterm elections can not happen soon enough...

From the US Drug Enforcement Administration:

DEA Los Angeles Field Division Makes Historic Seizure of Approximately 1 Million Fentanyl Pills
The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) Los Angeles Field Division High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area (HIDTA) Group 48, seized approximately 1 million fake pills containing fentanyl in Inglewood, Calif. earlier this month. This record-breaking bust is the largest seizure of fentanyl pills DEA has made in California.

HIDTA 48, along with the DEA New York Division Tactical Diversion Squad and Hawthorne Police Department, in May began investigating a Los Angeles-area drug trafficking organization believed to be linked to the Sinaloa Cartel. During the investigation, DEA agents identified Southern California narcotic couriers and stash house managers who were responsible for distributing narcotics to other drug distributors in the area.

A federal search warrant was executed on July 5, 2022 at an Inglewood residence resulted in the seizure of approximately 1 million fake pills containing fentanyl. The seized fake pills were intended for retail distribution and have an estimated street value of $15 to $20 million dollars.

“This massive seizure disrupted the flow of dangerous amounts of fentanyl into our streets and probably saved many lives,” said DEA Special Agent in Charge Bill Bodner. “The deceptive marketing coupled with the ease of accessibility makes these small and seemingly innocuous pills a significant threat to the health and safety of all our communities. A staggering number of teens and young adults are unaware that they are ingesting fentanyl in these fake pills and are being poisoned.”

There is no logical reason for keeping the borders open like this. The only explanation that fits is that Pelosi and Schumer are paid off by the cartels.  How much Nancy?  How much Chuck?  Thirty pieces of silver?

Let's not forget that the precursor chemicals come to the Mexican labs from China

An excerpt of his July 7th, 2022 speech to the State Duma leaders and party faction heads
From The Kremlin:

To reiterate, even in the countries that are still satellites of the United States, there is a growing understanding that their ruling elites’ blind obedience to their overlord, as a rule, does not necessarily coincide with their national interests, and most often simply and even radically contradicts them. Eventually, everyone will have to face this growing sentiment in society.

Today, these ruling elites are raising the degree to which they manipulate the public consciousness right before our eyes. The ruling classes of the Western countries, which are supranational and globalist in nature, realised that their policies are increasingly detached from reality, common sense and the truth, and they have started resorting to openly despotic methods.

The West, which once declared such principles of democracy as freedom of speech, pluralism and respect for dissenting opinions, has now degenerated into the opposite: totalitarianism. This includes censorship, media bans, and the arbitrary treatment of journalists and public figures.

These kinds of prohibitions have been extended not only to the information space, but also to politics, culture, education, and art – to all spheres of public life in the Western countries. And, they are imposing this on the world; they are trying to impose this model, a model of totalitarian liberalism, including the notorious cancel culture of widespread bans.

However, the truth and reality is that the people in most of these countries do not want this life or this future, and really do not want the formal semblance of sovereignty, they want substantive, real sovereignty and are simply tired of kneeling, of humiliating themselves before those who consider themselves exceptional, and of serving their interests even to their own detriment.

Today we hear that they want to defeat us on the battlefield. Well, what can I say? Let them try. We have already heard a lot about the West wanting to fight us ”to the last Ukrainian.“ This is a tragedy for the Ukrainian people, but that seems to be where it is going. But everyone should know that, by and large, we have not started anything in earnest yet.

At the same time, we are not rejecting peace talks, but those who are rejecting them should know that the longer it goes on, the harder it will be for them to negotiate with us.

Just a taste - Putin speaks the truth.  Much more at the site.

Where is their baseload?  Wind and solar are not baseload.  They can not provide power 24/7

From ERCOT (Electric Reliability Council of Texas) - their power grid manager - Monday, July 10th:

ERCOT Issues Conservation Appeal to Texans and Texas Businesses
With extreme hot weather driving record power demand across Texas, the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) is issuing a Conservation Appeal, asking Texans and Texas businesses to voluntarily conserve electricity

There is a chart at the site - their installed capacity of wind is 35,162MW - the available power is 2,698 or about 8%   Solar is doing a bit better at 81%.  They need to cut the crap and build some nukes.  LFTR - Thorium is the way to go...

From Knuckledraggin'

From Peter at Bayou Renaissance Man:

An early warning system concerning the people around us
A friend reposted this on one of her social media pages. I won't link to it or identify her, in order to preserve her anonymity: but I think her point is worth sharing. The link below, and highlights in orange, are my emphasis.

The covid bull**** did us all a favor. I know that sounds crazy, but hear me out for a minute. All the people demanding more lockdowns, that the unvaccinated be punished, that vaccine passports be required, that mask mandates remain in place forever, and all that **** are all speaking loudly and openly about it. Those are the people who are a threat to anyone who wants to remain free. They are the people who will report your activities to the government. They are the secret police. They're the people who will expose the Jews hiding in your attic, metaphorically. Take careful note of who those people are. Smile. Be polite. Tell them nothing. Do not invite them to your home. Do not make friends with them. Watch your communications carefully when they're around, and don't talk to any of their friends or family they haven't cut off. Those people may not be quite so far gone, but they are also an information security risk, because they will casually and unthinkingly tell their friend in the secret police anything you tell them. Because of this covid disaster, we no longer have to wonder who in our local area is a threat. They have self-identified, and we should act accordingly.

Wise words - more at the site.

Watch.  You will be better for it.

A raised eyebrow from the London Daily Mail:

That was fast! Fired CNN anchor Chris Cuomo is spotted in the Hamptons one day after his 're-brand' and Instagram dispatch from Ukraine's eastern front

• • Chris Cuomo, 51, was spotted walking around Sag Harbor, New York on Tuesday
  • The former CNN anchor was with his friend Gregg Bello, who has supported him since his firing last year
  • Their Hamptons outing comes just a day after Cuomo appeared to be reporting live from Ukraine
  • Cuomo traveled to Ukraine at the end of June and spent time with his 'brother' Sean Penn
  • On Monday, Cuomo posted a series of videos from the eastern front and told America to 'pay attention'
  • Cuomo also announced he was rebranding himself as a 'free agent' as he reported from the war zone
  • A day after he appeared to be in a war zone, Cuomo was strolling around the Hamptons in casual clothing
  • He has also started selling merchandise on his website that include t-shirts, mugs and baseball hats
  • Cuomo was fired by CNN last year for advising his brother through a sexual misconduct scandal

Once a putz, always a putz...

Getting a little bit ahead of himself???  From Sundance:

Biden Leaves Town and California Governor Gavin Newsom Shows up at the White House
Democrats are historically known for the optics of their politics.  With that in mind, is it coincidental that California Governor Gavin Newsom, one of the leading people that leftists want to see run in 2024, shows up to tour the White House the day after Joe Biden leaves town?

Gavin Newsom is turning California into Somalia, so it would make sense for him to be the next one in line to continue the chaos.

Considering what he has done to California, he would be a perfect fit to take over.

From Breitbart:

Ship of Fools: 62 Percent of Biden Officials Who Handle Economic Policy Have Zero Years Business Experience Per Report
An explosive new analysis published by the Committee to Unleash Prosperity reveals that Democrat President Joe Biden’s administration has very few business-oriented officials in the administration and that the vast majority of people handling economic policy for the United States government under Biden have no business experience whatsoever.

The 15-page report, authored by economist Steve Moore and the Committee to Unleash Prosperity‘s executive director Jon Decker, was provided to Breitbart News exclusively ahead of its public release. The headline of the report is: “Not Ready for Prime Time Players: Majority of Biden Appointees have Zero Years of Business Experience.” The report analyzes the backgrounds of the “top 68 officials in the Biden administration, starting with the president himself, and including cabinet members, regulatory officials, and White House advisers.”

In the executive summary, the authors detail some key findings in the report. First and foremost, 62 percent of Biden’s top political appointees and staffers “who deal with economic policy, regulation, commerce, energy and finance have virtually no business experience.”

What’s more, only one out of eight Biden officials has what the authors deem “extensive business experience,” and the average level of business experience across the Biden administration is about 2.4 years. The median years of business experience among Biden’s top appointees is zero, since so few have any experience in the private sector, and the “vast majority of the Biden economic/commerce team members are professional politicians, lawyers, community organizers, lobbyists, or government employees.”

Being able to manage the affairs of a nation is a totally different skillset than being able to get elected in today's social milieu.  This is a bug and not a feature.  We need to fix this sooner rather than later.

Got a loopy relative who's a bit hard to manage?  From LifeSite News:

Canada looks to expand assisted suicide law to include mental illness
Dr Ramona Coelho is a family physician in London, Ontario, whose practice includes caring for marginalized patients and those living with mental illness and disabilities. In her article “Medical assistance in dying overused in Canada even before expansion,” Coelho explained how Canada’s euthanasia law has become the most permissive regime in the world.

Zero problem with assisted suicide - I would take that option if I had a terminal illness or dementia.  but...  The article lists a few examples of this gone wrong. It then outlines how - like any bureaucracy - MAiD is looking to expand its scope:

Canada’s MAiD law currently allows suicide facilitation for persons with disabilities and is on track to expand in March 2023 to those living with mental illness. The first report of the federal special joint committee on MAiD suggests it will not only ignore all the problems caused by MAiD, but also further entrench and expand MAiD in Canada.

Just wonderful - Uncle Albert is getting troublesome.  Let's hand him over to the Doctors - they will take care of him...

We have seen this before - Hitler murdered the infirm, mentally ill, mentally retarded, physically handicapped right along with the Jews and the Homosexuals.  Been done before in history too.  Eugenics anyone?

Idiocy in the legal system - from Seattle station KOMO:

Bellevue catalytic converter thief arrested, released a day later
Police said new surveillance video shows a prolific thief in action stealing a catalytic converter from a Bellevue family's car.

Investigators say it was part of a multi-week crime spree, including thefts in a school parking lot.

While police finally arrested the suspect, Dan Pham, he's no longer in jail because a judge released him.

He admitted to the thefts - sold them on Facebook marketplace.

Out of date. From The Daily Wire:

Biden Dismisses Record-High Inflation News As ‘Out-Of-Date’
President Joe Biden responded to news of inflation reaching a fresh four-decade high by arguing that the report is outdated.

The Consumer Price Index (CPI) rose 9.1% between June 2021 and June 2022, according to a Wednesday morning report from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, exceeding the Dow Jones estimate of 8.8%. While Biden acknowledged that the inflation reading was “unacceptably high,” he deflected by asserting that the data are “also out-of-date.”

I know one thing that is out of date and it is not these numbers.

His handlers are not doing a good job.  Barkey's third term is crumbling into ashes.

The Big Guy?  Read here

What am I doing now?

This is elder abuse...

Prices for everything.  Bidenomics. From the US Bureau of Labor Statistics

CONSUMER PRICE INDEX - JUNE 2022
The Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers (CPI-U) increased 1.3 percent in June on a seasonally adjusted basis after rising 1.0 percent in May, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today. Over the last 12 months, the all items index increased 9.1 percent before seasonal adjustment.

Thanks Joe's handlers... Nice job crashing the system. Only took 18 months.

Interesting in that the estimates were for 8.8% - bit of a surprise there...

From News To Keep You Out Of The Camps:

• • NYC government video
  • "Congress is bringing back the idea of a 'limited' nuclear war"
  • Michael Yon: "Nuclear attack is just as likely to come from OGUS as Russia, China, or anyone else"
  • "Powerful tendency for protracted wars to escalate"
  • "Impossible for The West to defeat without going nuclear"
  • "Biden and top subordinates have refused to publicly acknowledge the danger of nuclear war"
  • "Poor and misleading advice given by America’s top military officers"
  • "You bring war to people, they bring it back to you"
  • "Biden is sleepwalking U.S. into nuclear war"
  • "Nuclear war can't be ruled out"
  • "Our rulers are careerist buffoons... imagining they can win a nuclear war"
  • Today's military"
  • "Authorities want chaos and unrest"
  • "Series of events that would soon unfold... are unknowable"

Just gives me the warm and fuzzies. The people at the top are idiots. They react, they do not plan. They are not capable of thinking several levels deep. They are not willing to bear the responsibility of their decisions.

I was in Costco a few days ago and saw this display:

I can see Christmas stuff coming out in October  but early July?  That just ain't right...

Nothing much happening out there...

Working.

The first tranche can be found here:  First Images from the James Webb Space Telescope

Here's one - the Carina Nebula

Fullsize image with additional information and data here

No news is good news - so good news today.

Quiet out there - waiting for the "next thing" to happen.  The next pseudo-event to be manufactured for our outrage.

Usual stuff down here today.

Classic Cloward-Piven - crash the system and in the ensuing chaos, institute tyranny.
The New York Post:

Mexican cartel smugglers nabbed with $1.2M worth of meth in NYC — then released thanks to lax bail laws
A pair of suspected Mexican drug-cartel smugglers was busted with a $1.2 million stash of crystal meth — but had to be freed thanks to New York’s lax bail laws, authorities said Monday.

The two California men, Luis Estrada and Carlos Santos, were allegedly caught red-handed by the US Drug Enforcement Administration as part of a multi-agency investigation. Yet frustrated agents had to stand by and watch as the suspects were cut loose on just supervised release, the federal agency said.

Probably Hunter's bagmen.

Gorgeous - from NASA:

NASA’s Webb Delivers Deepest Infrared Image of Universe Yet
NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope has produced the deepest and sharpest infrared image of the distant universe to date. Known as Webb’s First Deep Field, this image of galaxy cluster SMACS 0723 is overflowing with detail.

Thousands of galaxies – including the faintest objects ever observed in the infrared – have appeared in Webb’s view for the first time. This slice of the vast universe covers a patch of sky approximately the size of a grain of sand held at arm’s length by someone on the ground.

More to be released tomorrow: NASA Updates Coverage for Webb Telescope’s First Images Reveal

Great work - this is what NASA should be doing.  Rockets need to be commercialized. Be made a commodity.
Deep science is NASA's core competency.

Back from the farm.  Ran into these two on the web:

WA State just outlawed "high-capacity" magazines. Ammo is expensive (and hard to find) everywhere.

AKA the Possum Lady:

From her website:

Wonderful stuff...  Love the little G&S reference - very model of a modern...

He invented a few things that you might be familiar with.  Radio. The Fluorescent Light.  The system of power generation and distribution (the power grid) that we use in the world today. Quite a few more too.

Nice biography at the Tesla Science Center built on the grounds of one of his labs.

Tesla’s Life of Discovery
By the time Nikola Tesla was six years old, he had already started experimenting and inventing. His keen interest in nature and the way things work, combined with intelligence and curiosity, led to childhood inventions such as a motor powered by June bugs, air piston gun, and frog catching device. In elementary school he built water turbines and dreamed of using Niagara Falls to generate power, a dream that he saw come to life in 1896. As a young man, Tesla excelled in his studies of math, physics, engineering, and science. At one of his first jobs at the Budapest Telephone Exchange, Tesla improved the equipment and developed an amplifier; soon after, while working at another job installing lights in Paris, Tesla made improvements to Edison’s dynamos and created an automatic regulator.

Upon reaching America in 1884 at the age of 28, Tesla continued developing his concepts and applied for his first patent in 1888. He continued inventing and by the time of his death in 1943, Nikola Tesla held almost 300 patents. Tesla’s lifelong dedication to harnessing the forces of nature for the benefit of humanity is a legacy that continues to benefit the world today.

One of my major personal heroes.

About their reaction.  Want to rub it in their smirking faces — only been four years.

So true:

So many politicians,
so few voodooo dolls...

I find it amazing how few evil people there are running this - if we could take out 2,000 specific people, we could make the rest really really think hard about their life choices.  Make that 20,000 and we could nip the whole Marxist takeover in the bud.

It's in Kirghizstan - no further information.

Stopped watching it after about the 3rd year.  Started off really funny but really lots its way.
One of the best explanations why:

A bit of a history lesson for budding socialists everywhere - this sort of crap does not work.
Never has, never will.  End of story.

From the website of the World Economic Forum - August 29th, 2018:

Sri Lanka PM: This is how I will make my country rich by 2025
This is an important moment in Sri Lanka’s development, as the country continues to deliver on its plans for economic development and stands on the cusp of a transition to a knowledge-based economy.

Since the country and its people saw a vibrant transition in its political landscape in January 2015, further bolstered by the August 2015 general elections that formed a national unity government – a first ever political experience for the country since its nearly seven decades of independence – Sri Lanka has put in place many of the building blocks needed to reinvigorate its socio-economic and political architecture.

We have achieved many positive gains over the last three years through bold policy initiatives and pragmatic strategies, that enabled the country to win back recognition and friendly engagements with the rest of world. This has been a key foreign policy achievement of our government. Doors are open again for constructive and friendly engagements that have eased economic and political pressures. However, as per the expectations of all our people, there is more to achieve and the government plans with due diligence to make Sri Lanka regain its centrality in the Indian Ocean and become a knowledge-based, highly competitive hub with a dynamic social-market economy.

And will the elites pause to consider the harm they have done here?  Nope - it just wasn't done "hard enough" - they have to do it again and double-down harder this time...  A two-year-old burning their fingers on a stove will be careful around stoves for the rest of their lives.  These people?

Had a lot of fun at the highland games yesterday.

Heading up to the farm this afternoon.  Start on that project...

Some good news - from Reuters:

Sri Lanka president to step down, parliamentary speaker says, amid storm of protests
Sri Lanka's President Gotabaya Rajapaksa will step down next Wednesday, the country's parliamentary speaker said on Saturday, bowing to popular pressure after a day of violent protests in which demonstrators stormed the president's official residence and set fire to the prime minister's home in Colombo.

Rest of the story is behind a paywall so...  No word as to who will replace him - another Marxist tyrant wannabe or maybe a duly elected representative of the general population?

Hope springs eternal but not holding my breath...

True words:

Lots of pushback around the world.  The Citizens of Sri Lanka have had enough of their government:

A search engine but one that lets you filter your results.  From their website:

At Million Short, we are committed to designing innovative technology to redefine internet search. In creating a differentiated search, we aim to provide alternative methods for organizing, accessing, and discovering the vast web of information on the Internet.

Million Short started out as an experimental web search engine that allows you to filter and refine your search results set. The thinking was that web searches yield the same popular sites. Million Short makes it easy to discover sites that just don't make it to the top of the search engine results for whatever reason – whether it be poor SEO, new site, small marketing budget, or competitive keywords. The Million Short technology gives users access to the wealth of untapped information on the web.

The core is that you search for something and use Million Short to eliminate the top 100 sites from your results.  Or top 1000.  Or top 10K  The result is that you avoid those sites with a good "social credit" standing.  Those sites that have spent lots of money fine tuning their SEO  There is a lot of really interesting information to be found in the litter at the bottom of any search.

Try it yourself:  Million Short

Posted at the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission
Short and to the point:

Twitter, Inc.
1355 Market Street, Suite 900
San Francisco, CA 94103
Attn: Vijaya Gadde, Chief Legal Officer

Dear Ms. Gadde:

We refer to (i) the Agreement and Plan of Merger by and among X Holdings I, Inc., X Holdings II, Inc. and Twitter, Inc. dated as of April 25, 2022 (the “Merger Agreement”) and (ii) our letter to you dated as of June 6, 2022 (the “June 6 Letter”). As further described below, Mr. Musk is terminating the Merger Agreement because Twitter is in material breach of multiple provisions of that Agreement, appears to have made false and misleading representations upon which Mr. Musk relied when entering into the Merger Agreement, and is likely to suffer a Company Material Adverse Effect (as that term is defined in the Merger Agreement).

While Section 6.4 of the Merger Agreement requires Twitter to provide Mr. Musk and his advisors all data and information that Mr. Musk requests “for any reasonable business purpose related to the consummation of the transaction,” Twitter has not complied with its contractual obligations. For nearly two months, Mr. Musk has sought the data and information necessary to “make an independent assessment of the prevalence of fake or spam accounts on Twitter’s platform” (our letter to you dated May 25, 2022 (the “May 25 Letter”)). This information is fundamental to Twitter’s business and financial performance and is necessary to consummate the transactions contemplated by the Merger Agreement because it is needed to ensure Twitter’s satisfaction of the conditions to closing, to facilitate Mr. Musk’s financing and financial planning for the transaction, and to engage in transition planning for the business. Twitter has failed or refused to provide this information. Sometimes Twitter has ignored Mr. Musk’s requests, sometimes it has rejected them for reasons that appear to be unjustified, and sometimes it has claimed to comply while giving Mr. Musk incomplete or unusable information.

More at the site - the one line that stands out: "Twitter has not complied with its contractual obligations"

Wondering just how many of the twitter accounts are bots — Twitter was saying "about 5%"
50%?  80%?  This is going to kill their advertising revenue too. 
Not the kind of disclosure their shareholders will be interested in reading about...

UPDATE:  Twitter announced that it is going to sue.  Rotsa ruck - I bet Elon has some really good lawyers and would not have backed out of the deal if he was not able to nail their corpse to the wall. Discovery is going to be a bitch.

So true:

One of them was "blown up" the other day.  The remaining ones were demolished later that morning.
They were under video surveillance but the cameras did not show anyone coming up to plant explosives.
A curious mystery - from Peter at Bayou Renaissance Man:

The Georgia Guidestones "bombing" may not have been a bomb
By now I'm sure most readers know that the so-called Georgia Guidestones were damaged by an explosion on Wednesday morning.  The rest of the monument was demolished soon afterwards, allegedly due to "safety concerns".

I have grave doubts about the news coverage of the incident so far.  I haven't commented until now because I've been waiting for more details:  but it looks like a cover-up may be in progress, so details may be conspicuous by their absence.  That being the case, I'll put out a few ideas for consideration.

First, there's no evidence that a bomb (as such) was involved.  Looking at video of the explosion, it appears very likely that it came from some sort of missile.  The Intrepid Reporter has done a good job of explaining why he thinks that.  Based on my own experience (combat and otherwise) in Africa, I'd say he's pretty much on the mark in what he says.  When I saw the first images of the damage, that was my immediate reaction, too.  Go read his analysis for yourself.

I'll go further.  Based on initial video of the damage, I can't see any reason to demolish the remaining panels of the Guidestones.  They were just standing there, not hurting anybody.  If there was any risk of them falling, it could have been attenuated by simply cordoning them off, then attaching supports to keep them in place.  Neither appears to have been even attempted.  Instead, they were brought down with almost indecent haste.  That looks to me like an attempt to prevent anyone else analyzing the debris patterns, blast and fragmentation damage from the demolished panels, etc. - all of which would speak volumes to an investigator who knew what he/she was looking at/for.

Pretty clear on the video. RPGs are not exactly something you find laying around or fabricobble in your shed...

Assasinated - no real news yet.  Perp is in custody.

It will be interesting to see how the gun grabbers spin this as the shotgun was homemade.

He was one of the good guys...

Ran a few errands, moved a bunch of stuff.  Did some paperwork.

More later this evening maybe...  See if anything catches my eye

Boris Johnson is out as England's Prime Minister - too many scandals and corruption.
This sort of behavior is rarer with conservatives but not unique to liberals.
Everyone has their price...  Or their standards...

Georgia guidestones have been destroyed.  Good.  Bunch of "utopian" claptrap.

Time to get on with my day...

November elections are not that far away...
From Landlocked Aviation:

Classic:

Got a good point there:

From America's Newspaper of Record:

Whistleblower Releases Zuckerberg’s 1,400-Page Manual On How To Appear Human
A whistleblower inside Facebook publicly released a 1,400-page internal document trying to explain to Mark Zuckerberg how to appear human.

"Remember to blink every 5-10 seconds," reads the section On Talking To People. "Vary your intonation, but strictly avoid singing. Move your hands periodically in a somewhat rhythmic fashion to show that the rest of your body is connected to your verbal output."

Despite the clear source markings, Facebook is thus far disputing the authenticity of the manual. "It is simply ludicrous to think I would need instructions on things like how to react when someone tells a joke," said Mr. Zuckerberg, blinking precisely every 7.5 seconds. "I would never mistake a simple joke for being dangerous misinformation! What a silly thought. Listen to me laugh about it, ha-ha-ho!"

According to sources, the White House has re-purposed portions of the manual to help President Biden also appear like a functioning human adult. "It really was very helpful," said a White House aide on condition of anonymity. "We just went through and added the word 'YOU', then printed them out on postcards. The part on how to act in a human restroom has really saved us a lot of international incidents."

At publishing time, the perpetually awake Mr. Zuckerberg was dutifully laying still in his bed for exactly eight hours, as humans are supposed to do.

I am still waiting for Facebook to explain this away:

I am reminded of the great Frank Rizzo quote:

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

From the New York Post:

Eric Adams aide mugged at gunpoint told crooks: ‘You don’t want to do this. I work for the mayor’
If this isn’t a sign of the times, nothing is.

Amid rising crime in the Big Apple, one of Mayor Eric Adams’ aides was mugged in broad daylight Tuesday while scouting a location in Brooklyn for a planned visit by Hizzoner, law-enforcement sources told The Post.

The brazen caper took place even though the victim, a civilian member of Adam’s advance team, cautioned that he was a well-connected City Hall employee, a high-ranking police source said.

“You don’t want to do this. I work for the mayor,” he told the two crooks.

But in a show of utter contempt, they ignored the warning, with one man lifting his shirt to display the butt of a pistol tucked into his pants, the source said.

I had hopes for Adams when he was elected but he turned out to be another soft-on-crime liberal. Maybe this might open his eyes to the reality of things...

Who?  From Don Surber:

Griner pulled a Kaepernick and now wants our help
Basketball player Brittney Griner was one of 4 athletes profiled by Glory on February 15 for insulting our national anthem.

The Glory story said, "In many ways, Brittney Griner’s (and many other players in the WNBA) protest was built off of what Kaepernick started. On the opening night of the WNBA season in July 2020, the Phoenix Mercury and Los Angeles Sparks walked off the court before the playing of the national anthem.

And the setup:

Two days after the story appeared, she got caught in a drug bust in Russia.

The dirty little secret is the WNBA is a summer league because the gals can make more money overseas playing in Europe in the winter. The WNBA did not make her a millionaire. Russia did. She didn't follow their rules. Now she is learning that the Russian police are not as nice as those American police officers she maligned.

She wants to come back to the land of the free-ee-ee and the home of the brave.

And the comment:

You know what the funny part is? Trump would have had her out and back in country within a week.

So true - so absolutely true but none of the woke crowd will admit this.
Enjoy your mental illness. Your little bubble.

Need to take care of a few things there - running up for a few hours after coffee...

Looks like a nice day so far - gorgeous sunrise.

In a upper-middle class neighborhood.  Nice and quiet.
After the shooting?  All sorts of government agencies in full tactical gear.
On site.  Almost like they were there waiting in the wings.

And, of course, he was "known" to law enforcement...

And, of course, his social media accounts have been scrubbed.

The 4th of July parade shooter - liberal, a rapper and serious mental issues.

It was bad enough that their supreme leader declared that all farms now use organic growing methods, prohibited the importation of fertilizer and crashed their food supply.  Looks like their socialist policies are bearing bitter fruit everywhere.  From Al Jazeera:

With no fuel and no cash, Sri Lanka grinds to a halt
Sri Lanka has less than a day’s worth of fuel left, the energy minister says, with public transport grinding to a halt as the country’s economic crisis deepens.

Power and energy minister Kanchana Wijesekera on Sunday said petrol reserves were about 4,000 tonnes, just below one day’s worth of consumption, as queues snaked through the main city of Colombo for kilometres.

And this sounds about right:

In Colombo, protesters have been occupying the entrance to the president’s office for more than two months to demand President Gotabaya Rajapaksa’s resignation.

They accuse him and his powerful family, including several siblings who hold top government positions, of plunging the country into the crisis through corruption and misrule.

They used to export fuel.  Used to be a really nice nation - writer Arthur C. Clarke loved living there (although there is a very dark side to this).

Socialists - they never learn.  There is no exit strategy to top-down management. Capitalism may be "messy" to an academic but it works and the more hands-off, the better it runs.  Reminds me of Vox Day's old aphorism:

In academia there is no difference between academia and the real world; in the real world there is.

So true...

Look to pay even more for basic staples - from Reuters:

'Off the charts' chemical shortages hit U.S. farms
U.S. farmers have cut back on using common weedkillers, hunted for substitutes to popular fungicides and changed planting plans over persistent shortages of agricultural chemicals that threaten to trim harvests.

Spraying smaller volumes of herbicides and turning to less-effective fungicides increase the risk for weeds and diseases to dent crop production at a time when global grain supplies are already tight because the Ukraine war is reducing the country's exports.

Ukraine is the narrative but this problem was happening long long before there was ever a rumble from over there.
Their lack of exports has nothing to do on the continuous supply-chain problems we have been having here for the last two years.

Interviews with more than a dozen chemical dealers, manufacturers, farmers and weed specialists showed shortages disrupted U.S. growers' production strategies and raised their costs.

Shawn Inman, owner of distributor Spinner Ag Incorporated in Zionsville, Indiana, said supplies are the tightest in his 24-year career.

"This is off the charts," Inman said. "Everything was delayed, delayed, delayed."

Supply chains.  Ukrainian exports are just a band-aid.  Not the reason.  A convenient excuse that fits the narrative.
And it is not just us - London Daily Mail:

UN chief warns of 'catastrophe' from global food shortage
The head of the United Nations warned Friday that the world faces "catastrophe" because of the growing shortage of food around the globe.

U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said the war in Ukraine has added to the disruptions caused by climate change, the coronavirus pandemic and inequality to produce an "unprecedented global hunger crisis" already affecting hundreds of millions of people.

"There is a real risk that multiple famines will be declared in 2022," he said in a video message to officials from dozens of rich and developing countries gathered in Berlin. "And 2023 could be even worse."

Guterres noted that harvests across Asia, Africa and the Americas will take a hit as farmers around the world struggle to cope with rising fertilizer and energy prices.

"This year´s food access issues could become next year´s global food shortage," he said. "No country will be immune to the social and economic repercussions of such a catastrophe."

More narrative - hitting all the talking points: Ukraine, climate change, global pandemic and inequality.  The high energy prices are a simple cause - you shut down your reliable baseload sources and blew your budget on pie-in-the-sky unicorn farts: AKA renewable alternative energy.  Should have been retrofitting your existing power plants for cleaner emissions and building nuclear.  Instead? They spent it all on feel-good garbage.

All of the other talking points are just social justice activism - a few loud voices with no basis in reality.
And We The People (and the rest of the world) get to reap the benefits of your wisdom.
Rope.  Tree.  Some assembly required...

Working - more stuff to move.  Home stretch

Coffee first - got my priorities...

Every day - not just one day out of the year.  

1776 was an object lesson for us - just as much as "We The People" is to groups today like the World Economic Forum and whatever other hydra heads the globalists hide behind.

Shall Not Be Infringed.  They represent us, not the other way around.  Remember that...

From The Western Journal:

Ilhan Omar Gets Brutal Reception from Her Own Community, Somalis Instantly Demand She Leave the Stage
Fans at a concert featuring Somali singer Suldaan Seeraar weren’t too happy to see far-left squad member Rep. Ilhan Omar take the stage at the Target Center in Minneapolis on Saturday night.

“How’s everybody doing in Minneapolis?” shouted the congresswoman. Audience members at the sold-out venue responded with boos and calls for Omar to “get the f**k out of here” and to “go home.”

The calls began anew every time Omar tried to speak. I guess they’re not as proud of her as she is of herself.

More including video at the site.  She is living in a bubble. Went on for ten minutes.

Suldaan Seeraar is a fun performer - this is from the show in question.  Lots of enthusiasm.

UPDATE BELOW

Guy gets shot dead by the police - hit 60 times.

Missing from the news reports is that he failed to pull over for a trafic stop, he initiated a high-speed chase, he fired his gun at the police officers in pursuit.  When stopped, he ran wearing a ski-mask.  Officers tried to stop him.  Tried to detain him with tasers.  He turned towards the officers. The officers opened fire. 

He could have simply pulled over when initially stopped.  He could have exited the vehicle and laid face down on the street after the chase.  His own damned fault if you ask me but the police are going to be blamed for overreacting even though they were fired on.

More here: The Post Millenial

We have not gotten into his social media or prior arrest or a tox screen on his body.  A tragic death but it was his fault.  His actions were not those of a choirboy.

UPDATE:

Read elsewhere that his wife had died in a car accident one month prior.  There was a wedding ring in the car.
A conscious choice - suicide by cop?

No attribution given but a great photo. I want to learn beekeeping when we move to NC
This would be fun to try - thinking a video might be spectacular - 2nd camera in the hive of course...

So true - no personal responsibility at all.  If something does not work, it was just not done "hard" enough:

The life of a progressive is just one long string of “I made a bad decision and need that to be someone else’s fault.”

Been following his work on YouTube a lot.  He hob-nobs with celebrities so it is tempting to dismiss him as a pop-Guru but his wisdom is authentic.  Here, he offers a look at the reality of farming - what matters.  From AsiaNET News:

Sadhguru Exclusive: 'Organic farming is urban nonsense'
"There is no such thing as organic farming. They are just making up these words. This is all urban nonsense," said spiritual leader Sadhguru in an exclusive conversation with Asianet News. The Isha Foundation founder recently completed his 100-day Save Soil journey at Cauvery Basin that saw him travel to 27 nations in Europe, Central Asia and the Middle East and connect with 3.9 billion people, including scientists, policymakers, heads of governments, elected representatives and celebrities. 

Interacting with Asianet News Chief Reporter Anoop Balachandran, Sadhguru said that the urban population knows nothing about farming. Sadhguru said: "This is all being propagated by the urban population who know nothing about farming. You don't tell the farmer how he should do farming. Today, organic farming means no fertiliser and no pesticide. If you do that today, food production in the world will come down to 25 per cent -- that is death." 

"If the organic content in the soil increases, the usage of fertilisers will start sliding down by itself. That is the way it has to happen. If you say you don't like fertilisers, stop it. You and I are alive because of fertilisers. Because otherwise, we would have famines. Urban people should stop giving prescriptions for farming. Let the farmer decide how to farm because there is a lot of difference between this plot of land to that plot of land. People may not understand. But if you want the soil to be alive, give the farmer incentives to raise it above three per cent you will get this much incentive. Farmers will take it, " he added. 

The 3% he is talking about is the organic content of the soil - decayed plant matter, compost, microbiome, etc...  The average is under 1% hence the dependency on fertilizers.  There is a farm on the island that started about nine years ago - it used to be a sandy horse pasture and now has some of the richest black soil that I have seen.  Their strategy?  They turn over their plants back to the soil after harvest.  Chop and Drop.  Once a plant has completed its growing and has been harvested, it is cut down and left to lie on the surface of the soil.  No tilling. No plowing. No cultivation.

Poor productivity for the first couple of years but after then? Amazing soil.
We are looking at doing the same in North Carolina.

A perfect example of how not to do this can be found with Sri Lanka - their government outlawed fertilizer imports and declared that all farms are now using Organic growing methods.  They now have to import their food.
Here, here and here for starters.

When Jen and I were starting our apple orchard, we looked into Organic certification.  Too invasive and too much paperwork.  Plus, they disallowed some pesticides that were 100% safe and they allowed rotenone because it was "plant based"  Rotenone is a very broad-spectrum poison that kills the beneficials as well as the pests.  It also kills birds and fish if not handled correctly.

A cold and wet day but it is forecast to blow over for tomorrow.

Not a warm and sunny 4th but at least not pouring rain.

Quick surf with some lunch and then to work...

Before the major holiday - not surprised.

Got a bunch done today - kitchen is almost all cleared out.  

Slept really "heavy" last night (8+ hours - usually 6-7) and feeling downright tired now.  Surf a little bit and then an early bedtime.  See if anything catches my eye...

Met with the new owners - looking at what is needed for the septic system.

Nothing much happening out there - checking out buying a box trailer for the move.

More later?

Water skiing - from The Smithsonian:

The Man Who Invented Water Skiing
One winter, while skiing down snowy hills with fellow neighborhood kids, Ralph Samuelson had an idea.

“If you could ski on snow,” he wondered, “why not on water?”

In the summer of 1922, Samuelson, then 18, began his attempts to stand up on skis on Lake Pepin, just a few blocks from his house in Lake City, Minnesota. After lots of trial and error, he eventually succeeded, and one of the world’s most beloved water sports was born.

This summer marks water skiing's 100th anniversary, and people living in Samuelson’s hometown want to make sure no one forgets his contribution to warm-weather fun.

On July 2, at 4:11 p.m.—the exact moment 100 years ago that Samuelson rose from the water on skis behind his brother’s boat—Lake City leaders will unveil a life-sized bronze statue of Samuelson.

World-wide.  Interesting history - something that you never really think about.

A wonderful lazy morning but time to get my a** in gear. 

Rain moving in tomorrow and lots to be done outside...

Go together like...
The latest example as reported by The Washington Free Beacon:

Ben & Jerry’s Foundation President Steered Funds to His Own Charity
The Ben & Jerry’s Foundation steered more than $100,000 to a charity run by its own president, in the second case of a sitting board member’s nonprofit group benefiting from the foundation’s grants.

Social Ventures Inc., a charity run by Ben & Jerry’s board member Jeff Furman, raked in around $118,000 from the Ben & Jerry’s Foundation between 2016 and 2020, according to financial disclosure records.

During this time, Furman served as president of the Ben & Jerry’s Foundation from 2018 to 2020 and as treasurer in 2016 and 2017. He was also a member of Ben & Jerry’s corporate board and in-house counsel for more than 30 years, according to the foundation’s website.

And, like a true liberal:

Ben & Jerry’s did not respond to a request for comment.

Shades of Black Lives Matter and the founders extensive real estate collection.
Must be nice to have several mansions.

Count me firmly in the camp - conspiracy theorist

A release from all the anticipation and stress.  Got 29 28 days to be outta here.  Planning to be out in about ten.  Going to rent a large truck to empty out the barn down here and take things up to the farm - 2-3 trips for that.

Time for a hot shower and get to work - got some rain in the forecast so getting the yard picked up today before it starts.