09:05 – The Greek situation is coming to a head, and we’re starting to hear rumbles from Portugal. Greece is flat out of money. The only way they were able to make a small loan repayment to the IMF last week was by borrowing the money from the IMF to repay the IMF. But their SDR balance is now exhausted and they have nowhere to turn for additional funds to repay the loans that are coming due this month and next. And every month thereafter. That’s what happens when you borrow hundreds of billions of dollars with no prospect of being able to repay it. The next couple of months are going to be very interesting times, in the Chinese proverb sense. If Greeks think they’ve suffered under so-called “austerity” so far, they ain’t seen nothing yet.
Meanwhile, some reports are saying that that shootout between motorcycle gangs in Waco was actually a police shooting. If the reports are true, the 9 dead and 18 wounded were all struck by police bullets rather than by bullets fired by gang members. It’ll be interesting to see how this turns out.
I fired up the dehumidifier in the basement yesterday, and immediately noticed that I’d forgotten to clean the reservoir at the end of last season. The entire interior was covered with a black coating, presumably fungus. So I added a pint of chlorine bleach, which killed the fungus on contact, and let the dehumidifier run until the reservoir was full. Most of the black scum was gone, but not all, so I just rinsed out the reservoir with Lysol liquid and then stuck it in the dishwasher with the dirty dishes and ran it on pots-and-pans cycle with high temperature wash and “sani-rinse” with heated dry. That ought to kill anything that remains alive.
More kit stuff today. We’re down to three chemistry kits, so I’ll get another couple dozen built today.
“That’s what happens when you borrow hundreds of billions of dollars with no prospect of being able to repay it.”
How about when you borrow trillions with zero prospect of repaying it?
Depends. Do you have lots of aircraft carriers?
well, If history teaches something, today is Caracalla day, AFAIK today she said naturalize all
welcome!
PS Maybe lots of carriers, but, in 10 years you are not alone so?
Long Established Truth: If you loan money to people who can’t pay it back, they won’t.
When, exactly, did the mass psychosis take hold that caused governments to pretend this wasn’t so? Or to pretend that if they backed up the banks, the Truth could be ignored?
fewer available carriers than before…
and fewer warriors…
but a LOT more people trained in urban warfare and behaving as an occupying force.
Isn’t it a truism that as geopolitical units age, the eventually turn inward? And don’t they spend an ever increasing amount of their economy on non-productive structure? And isn’t that followed by the plundering of said unit by outsiders?
Hmmmmmmm. We are pretty far along that timeline…..
nick
I was kidding about the carriers. The difference between the US and Greece is that the US can create as much money as it wants to; Greece can’t.
The obvious goal of the progressives, other than wielding power, is to level the general population, so that no one has more than anyone else. Obama and the rest of the progs are out to eliminate the middle class by making us poor. That way, the only thing left will be the 99% poor and the 1% rich progressives. That’s why I suggested we have a National Kill-A-Progressive Day. Eradicating even a few score million of them would stop this insanity in its tracks.
“Obama and the rest of the progs are out to eliminate the middle class by making us poor. That way, the only thing left will be the 99% poor and the 1% rich progressives.”
They’re useful idiots and minions and they’re told what to do. It is in the interests of the global elites to have mass die-offs and class warfare is one way of reaching that goal, along with several others they are using or could use. And in the end, yes, 99% poor, living in the North Murkan and Euro equivalent of favelas, and serving, like many do now, as grunt labor and cannon fodder. Class warfare, ethno-racial warfare, more violent repression and State control, maybe unloose a plague of some sort on us, and let all infrastructure fail aside from what is needed for the elites and their protecting thug forces. That latter will more and more be composed of illegals, criminal elements, and rogue soldiers and cops. We’re seeing this, and other stuff being employed even now, and it appears they’re running test scenarios and various “exercises” around the country to plan for the future.
We can’t do squat as individuals, and for the present, we don’t have the organized numbers, but that is changing, very slowly. And even that won’t work without at least 25% support of the general pop. We are looking at a ten- to thirty-year struggle ahead and it won’t be pretty or comfortable. The masses are likely to fall by the wayside. Natural selection at work.
We got paid by our two customers in Greece last week. We jumped through all their hoops and the IRS’s hoops (the IRS was actually worse).
Depends. Do you have lots of aircraft carriers?
You left out the word “functional”. About half of our carriers are docked right now due to the very high cost of maintenance of these ships. And the high cost of personnel.
We can’t do squat as individuals, and for the present, we don’t have the organized numbers, but that is changing, very slowly. And even that won’t work without at least 25% support of the general pop. We are looking at a ten- to thirty-year struggle ahead and it won’t be pretty or comfortable.
I maintain that we have just reached the tipping point since the USA national debt has just bypassed the GDP. The true pain won’t come until the national debt hits 2X the GDP.
And, almost half of the national debt is self owed. Three trillion to the Fed Reserve and Five trillion to Social Security / Medicare lockbox. Repudiation of both of these would instantly make the system healthy again. The bad news is that both sides of the war party (D and R) are in a spending mode that makes drunk sailors look like teetotalers. And the number of federal recipients is climbing drastically over the next ten years.
In other news, we have a three foot gator in each of the office ponds. Viewed them yesterday as I have been gone for a week fishing in bitterly cold Craig, Montana. Snowing while floating the Missouri river is just not as much fun as imagined.
Here is the true crisis in The Great State of Texas: “Ex-Houston resident sues Blue Bell over listeria-related illness”
http://www.chron.com/news/article/Ex-Texan-who-got-sick-sues-Blue-Bell-alleges-6275656.php
I’m not sure that Blue Bell is going to survive this. I eat very little ice cream since I am allergic to milk now but the thousands of jobs lost is not good. People around here are putting “I support Blue Bell” signs in their yards.
Ex-Houston resident sues Blue Bell … left him permanently brain damaged and unable to work
That is just a ploy to get on disability. He probably didn’t want to work before he ate the ice cream. Same as people that injure their backs at work lifting a ream of paper. People see this Blue Bell issue (which makes some of the finest ice cream available) as a lottery win, especially for the lawyers.
Well, the guy did have a temperature of 107. That’d kill most adults. I’m not surprised that it resulted in brain injury.
“… I have been gone for a week fishing in bitterly cold Craig, Montana. Snowing while floating the Missouri river is just not as much fun as imagined.”
Aha, goofing off again. By “bitterly cold” do you mean temps below 70? Horrifying. And snow, too? Egads!
“In other news, we have a three foot gator in each of the office ponds.”
Feed them progs. No, not frogs, I said PROGS! Let them grow to fifteen feet or so on all that nice protein.
Blue Bell, eh? I’ll now have to see if they sell it any of the local stores so I can buy gallons of it. Of course this is not likely because we are a Ben & Jerry’s state. You know, the two commie hippies that parlayed an ice cream stand thirty years ago into a gigantic empire? While always pushing prog causes. Meanwhile their union-busting and environmental report card ain’t looked real good over the years, so maybe their romance with the Left is fading by now.
Staging Riots
“Yesterday, Katie Pavlich, Debra Heine, and Ed Driscoll drew our attention to a demonstration, unmentioned in the mainstream media, that took place in St. Louis and eventuated in the occupation of the offices of an outfit called MORE – Missourians for Organizing Reform and Empowerment. MORE is an offshoot of ACORN, and it is funded in part by George Soros’ omnipresent Open Society Institute (which has spent something like $5 billion supporting such outfits in recent years).
“What makes this particular demonstration newsworthy is the fact that the demonstrators were demanding that they be paid, as promised, for the work they did in organizing demonstrations in Ferguson last summer. Here is part of what Debra Heine reports: …”
Sent to me by my 70 year old aunt:
A store that sells new husbands has opened in Melbourne, where a woman may go to choose a husband. Among the instructions at the entrance is a description of how the store operates:
You may visit this store ONLY ONCE! There are six floors and the value of the products increase as the shopper ascends the flights. The shopper may choose any item from a particular floor, or may choose to go up to the next floor, but you cannot go back down except to exit the building!
So, a woman goes to the Husband Store to find a husband. On the first floor the sign on the door reads:
Floor 1 – These men Have Jobs
She is intrigued, but continues to the second floor, where the sign reads:
Floor 2 – These men Have Jobs and Love Kids.
‘That’s nice,’ she thinks, ‘but I want more.’
So she continues upward. The third floor sign reads:
Floor 3 – These men Have Jobs, Love Kids, and are Extremely Good Looking.
‘Wow,’ she thinks, but feels compelled to keep going.
She goes to the fourth floor and the sign reads:
Floor 4 – These men Have Jobs, Love Kids, are Drop-dead Good Looking and Help With Housework.
‘Oh, mercy me!’ she exclaims, ‘I can hardly stand it!’
Still, she goes to the fifth floor and the sign reads:
Floor 5 – These men Have Jobs, Love Kids, are Drop-dead Gorgeous, Help with Housework, and Have a Strong Romantic Streak.
She is so tempted to stay, but she goes to the sixth floor, where the sign reads:
Floor 6 – You are visitor 31,456,012 to this floor. There are no men on this floor. This floor exists solely as proof that women are impossible to please. Thank you for shopping at the Husband Store.
PLEASE NOTE:
To avoid gender bias charges, the store’s owner opened a New Wives store just across the street.
The first floor has wives that love sex.
The second floor has wives that love sex, have money and like beer.
The third, fourth, fifth and sixth floors have never been visited.
“Microsoft Execs Expressed ‘Shock and Disbelief’ at Internet Address Shortage”
http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2015/05/14/microsoft-execs-expressed-shock-and-disbelief-at-internet-address-shortage/
Our LAN is behind a NAT box. Actually, a Peplink 30 router that merges our three WAN lines into a single outlet. Our WAN lines are AT&T 12 Mbps DSL, AT&T 12 Mbps DSL and Clear 6 Mbps Wimax (emergency backup). The Clear Wimax is going away soon (Sprint is transitioning to LTE) and will probably be replaced with a Verizon 20 Mbps LTE wireless.
http://www.amazon.com/Peplink-Balance-30-Multi-WAN-Router/dp/B0012L1QOA/
Having our PCs directly on the IPv6 net scares me. Even though we are now running Windows 7 x64 Pro on all PCs in our shop. I am fairly sure that if we were straight on the net that we would be owned quickly.
On the other hand, we just had to replace the motherboard and cpu in our new source code server. The old used motherboard had an issue and was locking up under extreme network activity. Never a dull moment here at WinSim!
“In other news, we have a three foot gator in each of the office ponds.”
Feed them progs. No, not frogs, I said PROGS! Let them grow to fifteen feet or so on all that nice protein.
We did have a 1.5 ft nutria in the front pond. I had him marked for the apocalypse. He seems to be missing now…
“We did have a 1.5 ft nutria in the front pond. I had him marked for the apocalypse. He seems to be missing now…”
Are there any pets or small children also missing from the ‘hood?
“… it is funded in part by George Soros’ omnipresent Open Society Institute (which has spent something like $5 billion supporting such outfits in recent years).”
A fossilized fugly old scumbucket who entertains himself by blowing billions on commie riots and fomenting more class and racial warfare. He will probably have an express ticket across the Styx to you-know-where and not a moment too soon.
On the IPv6 thang: I just read somewhere else today that the IPv4 addresses are selling like hotcakes and/or being transferred around all over the place; many giant organizations ain’t ready yet for IPv6 despite years of notice/warnings. I have zero sympathy.
Good one on the husbands/wives store; these jokes wouldn’t be funny if there was no element of truth in them. I hear about my two SILs periodically and man, can they spend and spend and spend, but don’t wanna hear jack about bills. Or priorities. And “let’s send the grrls to expensive colleges in Kalifornia!” With no thought as to how that will be paid for. Oh wait—hubby can work two jobs and cash in his retirement.
When any of you folks mention anything Navy related my ears perk up. As a Fast Attack Submarine Service Veteran of the Vietnam Era (EM1 SS waiting for Chief) I am appalled at the abysmal state of our current Navy. I was in during the Carter years and thought that I had seen the greatest disrespect for our Navy ever. I got so frustrated that I did not bite at any of the reenlistment incentives dangled in front of me in 1979, so I took my Honorable Discharge and entered the civilian/government nuke world. When Reagan came along and started restoring our Navy to its best state ever I almost reenlisted. Obummer has destroyed all of our Military Services, more so than anyone could have imagined.
What is hidden today is not just that most of our surface craft are sitting tied to the dock without adequate manning, equipment, or spares but the key to our aircraft carrier groups are the fast attack submarines that protect them. Meanwhile the hostile countries are buying as many diesel boats as they can. Our surface ASW (anti-submarine warfare) ships have always been poor detectors of any sub. The boats I was on were never detected in any war game or, more important, when we shadowed Russian ships. The only thing that can really detect a submarine is another submarine. Today we do not have enough submarines to even protect our coasts let alone our fleet.
We used to have a tremendous “reserve fleet” with mothballed ships and boats of all types, from tugs to battleships to submarines (diesel and nuke). All could be made battle ready in a matter of months. Those reserve fleets are all gone now, all cut up and sold as scrap. Our shipyards are a shadow of what they were before WWII. There is no way we could rapidly build the fleet we need.
My mind is racing so I am about to start to rambling so I had better just let my statements stand as they are.
How about when you borrow trillions with zero prospect of repaying it?
Depends. Do you have lots of aircraft carriers?
Been thinking about this in the back of my mind. In reality, there are two scenarios, 1) protecting assets at home and 2) protecting assets in other countries.
1. No present worries. We have these two big moats. Some people call them the Atlantic and Pacific. Getting across them with an appreciable amount of troops is extremely non-trivial. And when they arrive, we have lots of carriers, cruisers, destroyers, and interceptors. You gonna need to send 10 guys for every guy that you drop due to the rapid attrition rate. I do not even want to mention the number of high powered privately owned guns by the citizenry. A shortcut to this process might be to EMP the USA.
2. Lots of worries. Carriers are used to project force and we are down to ten carrier groups. We could easily lose Samoa and many of the other protectorates against an international force. I doubt that we could lose Hawaii.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_aircraft_carriers_of_the_United_States_Navy#Active
Bad news though. China is actively working building capability for #1. I would expect an EMP softening then 100 troop ships at the landing ports in the Western seaports. They are at least 20 years away. Maybe 50 years.
I’ll now have to see if they sell it any of the local stores so I can buy gallons of it.
Blue Bell shut down production at all 3 plants. They have laid off about 1/4 of the staff, put 1/2 on furlough, and cut pay for some. They are probably going to take it in the shorts as it appears that there were warning signs of the listeria contamination. They have said that when they get back in production, all batches will be held at the plants until they have been tested for contamination. It’s going to be a few months until they are back in production. Their ice cream is damn fine. For one thing, it’s denser than most mass market brands – less air whipped into it. Also, they still sell full half gallons. And they have some excellent flavors. I like the Mexican Praline and Homemade in the Shade quite a bit, and the wife likes Homemade Vanilla and Moo-lenium Crunch. They were the first major creamery to put Cookies & Cream into production. They supposedly use Oreos that they crush themselves.
Hey Dr. Bob, I assume that you saw this XKCD, “Astronomy”:
http://www.xkcd.com/1522/
“…1. No present worries. We have these two big moats. Some people call them the Atlantic and Pacific. Getting across them with an appreciable amount of troops is extremely non-trivial. And when they arrive, we have lots of carriers, cruisers, destroyers, and interceptors.”
Mr. Lynn, take a look at Mr. DadCooks’s just-prior post on the state of our Navy, and let’s not assume the other branches are in any better shape.
“There is no way we could rapidly build the fleet we need.”
A result of malice aforethought, in my opinion. We have open borders and open coasts now, and I’m none too certain about our air space. Those big moats may be pretty good most of the time but all it takes is one major attack by somebody.
“Their ice cream is damn fine.”
I’ll look for it in the stores up here but it sounds like a regional brand. Tx for the update; a shame.
Sorta related is the recent ATF inspection and “assault” on the Stag Arms production line; a bunch of unserialized lower receivers were discovered, which is a big no-no, and Stag’s PR and/or manglers had a very lame story to try to cover their asses.
http://bearingarms.com/stag-arms-raided-atf-stupidity-criminal-enterprise/
In case anyone missed it … Jerry Pournelle had posted this NYT book review back on Monday on his site here …
http://www.jerrypournelle.com/chaosmanor/can-robots-have-souls-human-flesh-in-the-marketplacewhat-happens-if-you-give-cocaine-to-eels-thoughts-on-peer-review-and-other-issues/
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/17/books/review/rise-of-the-robots-and-shadow-work.html
RISE OF THE ROBOTS – Technology and the Threat of a Jobless Future
By Martin Ford
334 pp. Basic Books. $28.99.
By BARBARA EHRENREICH — May 11, 2015
In the late 20th century, while the blue-collar working class gave way to the forces of globalization and automation, the educated elite looked on with benign condescension. Too bad for those people whose jobs were mindless enough to be taken over by third world teenagers or, more humiliatingly, machines. The solution, pretty much agreed upon across the political spectrum, was education. Americans had to become intellectually nimble enough to keep ahead of the job-destroying trends unleashed by technology, both robotization and the telecommunication systems that make outsourcing possible. Anyone who wanted a spot in the middle class would have to possess a college degree — as well as flexibility, creativity and a continually upgraded skill set.
But, as Martin Ford documents in “Rise of the Robots,” the job-eating maw of technology now threatens even the nimblest and most expensively educated. Lawyers, radiologists and software designers, among others, have seen their work evaporate to India or China. Tasks that would seem to require a distinctively human capacity for nuance are increasingly assigned to algorithms, like the ones currently being introduced to grade essays on college exams. Particularly terrifying to me, computer programs can now write clear, publishable articles, and, as Ford reports, Wired magazine quotes an expert’s prediction that within about a decade 90 percent of news articles will be computer-generated. …
@Lynn
I’m allergic to dairy products also, so I’ve switched to these various products for my frozen desserts without any dairy …
Luna & Larry’s Coconut Bliss – Eugene, Oregon …
http://coconutbliss.com/coconut-bliss-products
So Delicious Dairy Free – Eugene, Oregon …
http://sodeliciousdairyfree.com/product_groups/dairy-free-desserts
Nada Moo! Coconut Milk Dairy-Free Frozen Desserts – Austin, Texas …
http://nadamoo.com/#flavors
Imagine Foods – Rice Dream, Soy Dream, Almond Dream
Dairy-Free Frozen Desserts – Boulder, Colorado
http://www.tastethedream.com/products/index.php
All FOUR of these brands are available to me locally, and I switch among them regularly.
There are probably other brands out there, and you can always make it yourself from scratch. It’s just frozen coconut milk with various flavors added. Most of these companies also sell dairy-free beverages and various other products.
For those who still don’t know about dairy allergies, please watch this YouTube.com video …
The NOTMILK Path to Good Health – presented by Robert Cohen
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gwBKnEZAtZs
It’s about 60 minutes long.
Published on Jun 27, 2012
Robert Cohen is the author of “Milk – The Deadly Poison” and “Milk A-Z”, as well as the creator of the NOTMILK.COM website. He’s also posted about 4,400 of his free daily columns over the past 12 years, creating one of the biggest Yahoo! Groups on the Internet. Many of his columns, covering subjects representing every letter of the alphabet from A to Z including the dairy connection, have made headline news in newspapers throughout America. In 1994, he began a crusade against the genetically engineered bovine growth hormone, and he has worked tirelessly over the years to influence government policies restricting its manufacture and use. He is currently in training to race in the July 22 Ironman Triathlon in Lake Placid, New York.
If you watch this one-hour video you will probably learn more about milk that you never knew before, than you’ve ever learned about milk in your whole life !!
@Lynn: I hear you about IPv6. While I theoretically understand the protocoll, I’ve started looking at a couple of online courses in security. We’re all used to the idea that NAT gives us security, because everything *must* be processed at the firewall (because it needs a local IPv4 address). What I think we forget is that, with IPv6, everything is *still* going through the firewall. We can still prohibit externally initiated connections. Security isn’t necessarily harder; it’s just different.
However, with every machine having multiple IPv6 addresses, things are a lot more complicated. Which is why I think I want to go through a couple of online courses meant for technicians actually setting up networks. Haven’t found a good one yet, though – the one I just finished was way too simplistic.
One of the things that I like about NAT in IPv4 is that it is so dadgum simple to put in place. Just place a NAT box between you and the WAN and voila, you have security.
Sounds like IPv6 requires a full firewall box that must be configured. I have proven my ability over the years to screw these configurations up beyond belief.