08:47 – It was 57.2F (14C) when I took Colin out around 0630 this morning, once again blindingly sunny.
Barbara called yesterday afternoon to ask me if the drop-ceiling installers were here. They weren’t, and didn’t show up yesterday. Elaine at our contractor had told me last week that they had a major project in progress that had an absolute deadline of 31 May, and had severe penalties for not meeting that deadline, so I’m not surprised they didn’t make it out here. Barbara and I agreed that it’d be fine with us if they didn’t show up here until next week, after she returns. Two more days until she gets back.
I’ve written off another prepping site that I formerly recommended. Lisa Bedford (Survival Mom) has a pretty good book out for beginning preppers, and her site has featured more than a few decent articles. Like nearly all of the women prepper authors, she has woo-woo tendencies–herbal medicine, “natural” foods, short expiration dates, and so on, but she largely kept that in check and made sane suggestions.
Then I read this article on her site yesterday. It’s not just bad. Everything about it is wrong. She pushes two types of food in this article: MRE’s and freeze-dried. Both of those are horrible choices for preppers, if only because they have the highest cost per calorie of any LTS food available. But Lisa stocks both of them in large quantities.
And by large, I mean 96 cases of MRE’s (1152 MRE’s total) and 400 #10 cans of freeze-dried foods for her family of four. She thinks of the #10 cans of FD food as cheap (!) alternatives to MRE’s, which cost $20 to $30 per person PER DAY. FD is cheaper than MRE’s, barely, but only in the sense that gold is a cheap alternative to platinum. And her family cycles through those MRE’s every three years, eating 288 MRE’s per year among them. Geez.
She’s also somehow concluded that people can overdose on MRE’s. Yes, the military recommends that MRE’s not be eaten exclusively for more than 21 days at a time, but Lisa takes that to mean only 21 days’ worth of MRE’s can be eaten per year. So, I guess she plans to pig out on MRE’s for three weeks and then eat FD foods for the rest of the year.
FD is also outrageously expensive. We don’t stock any of it. To compare, a pound of canned Keystone ground beef (or chicken or pork or turkey) from Walmart costs about $3.60. That same pound reconstituted from FD costs three to four times that much. But I’m sure Lisa chose FD meat because she thinks canned meat has a short shelf life. It doesn’t. The USDA says that properly canned meats–either commercially-canned or home-canned–are safe and nutritious indefinitely. I’ve posted before about tests done on meats and other foods that had been canned more than a hundred years before they were opened for testing. They tested fine. No biological contamination, so they were safe. Minor loss of vitamins, particularly A and C, but they remained nutritious. They even looked indistinguishable from freshly canned products.
I read an article on Rawles’ blog a few days ago that summed things up pretty well. The author says pretty much what I’ve been saying for decades: dates on canned foods are imaginary. They have no basis in reality. Properly-canned foods remain safe to eat and nutritious essentially forever, assuming the container has not been compromised.
Lisa also believes that FD foods in general have much longer shelf lives than dehydrated foods, let alone canned foods. That’s wrong. All of those shelf-life numbers are entirely bogus. Her can of FD peas with a rated shelf life of 30 years will in fact be unchanged after 300 years, but then if she had a can of ordinary Green Giant wet-packed peas, they’d also be fine 100 or more years from now.
As to FD versus commercially-dehydrated food, the only difference is the amount of remaining free moisture. The actual numbers vary slightly, but typical FD food has had 98% to 99% of the free water removed, while typical commercial-dehydrated food has had 93% to 96% removed. Yes, the FD food is SLIGHTLY drier, but not enough to make any difference in real-world shelf-life. Either type of food will last essentially forever.
So, every $30 Lisa spends on MRE’s feeds one person for maybe a day. That same $30 could feed that person for a month on dry bulk LTS food, albeit with a pretty boring menu. Or she could spend that $30 on bulk + canned and feed that person a tasty normal diet for a week, with lots of meat.
Some might point out that MRE’s and FD are easy-prep, and that’s a valid consideration. But it’s just as easy to make meals from dry and canned foods with little or no prep. If you can boil water, cook some macaroni or rice and dump a can of Dinty Moore beef stew or Chef Boyardee ravioli over it. Or just eat the stuff cold, straight from the can.
“dump a can of Dinty Moore beef stew or Chef Boyardee ravioli ”
Both of those taste vile to me. The canned spaghetti products all taste like stomach acid vomited up, and the dinty moore has that ‘taste’ of canned brown meat. Back when dinty moore beef stew was the only common canned meat, you could make excuses but there is no reason other than if you actually LIKE the taste to stock it now. Like ramen noodles, I’ve eaten enough of those to last me the rest of my life and will stock stuff that actually tastes good.
WRT canned, you know I’ve eaten stuff way past the expiry on the can, and it may be nutritious, but the texture and color certainly change over time. Canned peas are particularly nasty as they continue to get softer and softer. Dried changes too, esp fruits, but FD doesn’t, or if it does, I haven’t owned any long enough to notice.
I’ve never eaten an MRE, although I have a couple in the truck. They are a complete meal in a bag and have their place, which for me is as a ‘grab and go’ meal supply. Put a couple in the vehicle (not gonna put bulk rice in your trunk) and put a tub on the shelf. If you have to evacuate you can grab that tub knowing you have full meals. I’m reliably informed that a diet heavy on MREs will mess up your guts and cause some unpleasant but temporary side effects.
I’ve organized my FD meals (mountain house) as boxes of x days for x people. I don’t have many, but I have enough for the evac if we’re driving, and to distribute among the bags if we are walking. You can’t beat the [lack of] weight if you are mobile and carrying them.
Since I made my first bulk purchase of FD in cans recently, I can’t speak directly to that, but it never made sense to me as every day food. What I bought finally was eggs- which I needed in LTS. FD was the only way eggs make sense in LTS.
And, wrt FD, I cracked open this heavy cream to try today.
Hoosier Hill Farm Heavy Cream Powder Jar, 1 Pound
Sold by: Amazon.com LLC
It is acceptable added directly to coffee as a creamer. Excellent ‘mouth feel’. It does have a ‘taste’ to it that is also present in canned cream. Not unpleasant, but there. Sort of a very light caramel? Anyway, the powder is at least as good as canned, and probably way easier to store. The canned ages out, and turns into a hockey puck in the can…
nick
I can see keeping some FD and MRE stuff handy in vehicles or stashed for a quick emergency hike away from danger, but that’s about it.
Our own storage here will be comprised of dry bulk + canned goods, and we’re at maybe a two-month supply for two large adults. I’m also gonna pull the trigger and get a manual pump for the well, until we can afford a generator, and then we’ll have all three methods of drawing wotta from it.
Meanwhile we’re getting creative with our back yard garden stuff; so far we have artichokes, tomatoes and peas coming up. And a boatload of flowers; wife is trying to get her studio area looking nice so she can hold classes there and do regular craft weekends and haul in some more revenue as part of her exit strategy over the next several years. I can’t fault her a bit for this and will do what I can to help out. She’s also on board with me working a couple of other angles and I have an interview pending with a VA guy on the 9th to discuss whether they’ll pay for it. We’ve both decided: “Fuck IT.” Just not worth the hassle pulling 40-60-hour weeks slaving for PHB manglers and mostly in Winblows help desk scenarios. Hell, even the solid IT security people are spending way too much time having to hassle with that chit every day at their jobs. I’m done with it, except for what I have to do here at Firebase OFD.
Sunny w/blue skies and 66; off to the dump run and vets group; later, sportsfans!
P.S. Looks we’re bailing from the Paris climate agreement disaster, thanks be to God. Now to GTFO of the UN, World Bank and IMF. And NATO.
Evaporated/condensed milk products and UHT-pasteurized shelf-stable stuff ARE carmelized to a greater or lesser extent as a part of processing them at high temperatures.
As to the beef stew or ravioli, pick out something else you prefer. I just used those as inexpensive examples. You could instead do some macaroni or rice, a can of Keystone meat, and a jar of Bertolli mushroom alfredo sauce.
As to canned vegetables (or fruit or whatever) changing, that’s not been my experience. I’ve opened cans of peas, corn, mixed fruit, etc. that were 10 or even 20 years past their supposed best-by dates and couldn’t tell any difference in terms of appearance, texture, flavor, etc. between them and new cans. As I’ve mentioned, I did a quantitative test for vitamin C on a new can and stuck a second can from the same batch aside for later testing. Ten years (or whatever) later, I opened that old can and repeated the testing. The vitamin C level was the same, within experimental error, and the stuff looked and tasted the same as a new can of the same stuff.
Hmm. maybe the peas were just nasty to start.
The modern alternatives to actual metal cans absolutely don’t last as long though. You probably don’t stock many, but I’ve got lots of ‘fruit cup’ type stuff in small translucent plastic cups (since those go in the kids lunches). They very definitely age poorly. The best I can recommend is using them to make fruit cobbler when they are noticeably changed in color or texture. (no swelling so no danger, but the aesthetics are changed.)
The peaches I’ve done this with tasted just fine in the cobbler.
n
Here’s one for defensive carry and situational awareness.
http://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2017/06/ramadan-paris-knife-wielding-man-djeballa-attacks-customer-leaving-supermarket-beer/
In order to increase my personal situational awareness, I’m consciously looking THRU doors before entering. They’re glass after all, there is no reason for your attention to stop at the surface of the door, yet I find that I always treated the door as if it was solid. It takes a mindful act to look THRU it and to see what sort of thing I might be walking into.
Since starting, I’m getting better at doing it every time and it’s becoming a habit.
n
Yes, when I say “canned” I mean traditional sealed steel cans. In terms of permeability to oxygen and water vapor, the only thing that comes close is foil-laminate Mylar bags (not just “aluminized”, which is a microscopically-thin layer of vapor-deposited aluminum, but actual aluminum foil). The 7-mil gallon bags sold by LDS on-line are perfect and (as always with LDS) at less than 40 cents each are cheaper than similar commercial products.
I don’t trust pull-tab cans like those small cans of fruit. They’re good for a few years, but I’m not convinced that the seal will maintain integrity long-term. I prefer not to buy even the soups and similar products in those pull-tab cans. I want a can that requires a can opener. Either that, or stuff I can myself.
No reloads needed here:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4562366/Video-shows-deadly-bounty-hunter-shoot-out.html
All dead right there….
n
They’re good for a few years, but I’m not convinced that the seal will maintain integrity long-term.
Same thing for items in jars. The plastic in the seal will deteriorate over time.
As for cans, I’d be wary of modern canned goods that are acidic attacking the can through the plastic liner.
Time for a Dad’s Sea Story/Experience:
Storage space on a submarine is at a premium and we had to be ready to be out for (redacted)-months. So we carried a lot of dehydrated food: peas/corn/beans, eggs, milk/cream, potatoes, beef(?), fish(?), and of course flour and cornmeal (the better submarine cooks also kept a sourdough starter that was guarded like gold and cared for like a baby).
I was always amazed by the dehydrated vegetable that were shaped like super-sized hockey pucks and fit in #10 tins. The cook would throw some in a big pot of water and they would explode into something that looked like fresh vegetable, but certainly didn’t taste like it. The peas must have been dyed with a fluorescent green dye as you almost needed sunglasses when eating them.
We also carried big bags and tins of Tang, something like Kool-Aid (we called it bug juice), and Taster’s Choice Instant Coffee (yuck). However on the SSN 688 (Los Angeles), we ran a coffee-mess in the engine room with real coffee, mostly 5-gallon cans of Kona coffee beans that our COB (Chief of the Boat) (he was a BIG native Hawaiian) “procured” via comshaw (barter). BTW, we actually got a ship-alt approved that allowed the coffee-mess, thanks again to the COBs comshaw capabilities.
I challenge you to buying a case of ‘civilian’ mre’s (which are basically the renamed production line overruns of military mre’s), and both of you ,eating just 1 meal a day for 6 days. And then talk about how you’d feel if you’d have to ext 3x 21 days of mre’s. 8*)
And Hillary thinks no one is counting:
http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/448183/hillarys-excuses-losing
And this is really the Reader’s Digest version.
Again from personal experience, Hillary has not changed a bit from her high school days in the 60s. She never has and never will accept responsibility for her actions. She was born generation too early, she is a perfect millennial/snowflake.
I’ve had Navy concentrated powdered lemonade, it’s actually pretty good. Probably twice the volume of an old fashioned Kool Aid package, but IIRC it was good for five gallons. My ‘only in case of famine’ foods are peas (I loathe them) and Hamburger Helper (ate too much of it as a kid). A fellow I used to play golf with told me how he got put off chicken while in the Navy. One of his cruises, just as they were leaving the eastern Med, Uncle got a huge amount of chicken from somewhere, very cheap. So they had chicken, and only chicken, four meals a day all the way back to Virginia. 🙁
“The Kathy Griffin Controversy”
http://blog.dilbert.com/post/161281215881/the-kathy-griffin-controversy
“I have been telling you since before the inauguration that the country was going to split into two movies on one screen. Some of us are watching a new president do his best to make America great. But half the country is watching a disaster movie in which we unknowingly elected a Hitler-monster to destroy civilization. The Kathy Griffin situation illustrates the two-movie idea perfectly. For Kathy and her associates at the photoshoot, this photo was intentionally provocative, but in a silly way. In their movie, beheading the Hitler-monster is a widely-approved fantasy. Perfectly acceptable. Nothing to see here.”
Yup, civil war coming.
Angelo Codevilla’s Cold Civil War heats up:
Si Vis Pacem, Para Bellum — Again
(See also Kurt Schlichter’s Liberals Are Shocked To Find We’re Starting To Hate Them Right Back, linked to by OGH a couple of days ago.)
We have some Omaha Steaks burgers that have been around for a while. They got buried in our freezer and I forgot about them. They’re frozen, in a hermetically sealed package, and have been irradiated. I’m wondering how long they last.
My wife, being female, dared me to eat two that I am thawing in the refrigerator. Actually I believe her exact words were, “if you eat those, you’re crazy.”
She pushes two types of food in this article: MRE’s and freeze-dried. Both of those are horrible choices for preppers, if only because they have the highest cost per calorie of any LTS food available.
I bought Green Giant sweet corn cans on sale last night at HEB for $1 each and Libby’s Peas and Carrots cans for stashing in an already used corner of the closet. The wife sighed when she saw them and looked at the full pantry.
And I have three cases of MREs in my closet. When I take a road trip, I throw a case in the back of my truck. I want to leave the MREs in it but it just gets too hot around here.
“Vatican would see U.S. Paris deal exit as slap in face – official”
https://www.yahoo.com/news/vatican-see-u-paris-deal-exit-slap-face-130440910.html
“The Vatican, which under Pope Francis’ insistence has strongly backed the Paris climate change deal, would see a U.S. exit as a slap in the face and a “disaster for everyone,” a senior official said on Thursday.”
“At their meeting last month, the pope gave U.S. President Donald Trump a signed copy of his 2015 encyclical letter that called for protecting the environment from the effects of climate change and backed scientific evidence that it is caused by human activity.”
I am ok with this. In fact, I applaud it.
And it seems that this Pope is tied a little too closely to this Earth when he should be concentrating on heavenly issues.
Hat tip to:
http://drudgereport.com/
My wife thinks the expiry dates are magical, but opened and started to eat a can that was puffed up! Something got missed in her education.
Anything high in fat will change flavor to yuck after the date. Chips, esp Fritos, do this almost to the day….. The Annie’s boxed pastas are good (as they ever were) for a couple of months past, but not a year. The pasta isn’t too bad, but the cheese sauce tastes real bad.
Stuff stored in cardboard (touching the box) will pick up a ‘stale’ or cardboard taste but is still edible. I’ve thought about putting the boxes into a Spacebag ™ but haven’t yet bothered.
n
@dave, those should be completely the same as if you had eaten them the day they were frozen. If the vac seal is still good, and no air got to them, and they were in a deep or chest freezer, they will outlast a brick.
n
I’ve never eaten an MRE, although I have a couple in the truck. They are a complete meal in a bag and have their place, which for me is as a ‘grab and go’ meal supply. Put a couple in the vehicle (not gonna put bulk rice in your trunk) and put a tub on the shelf. If you have to evacuate you can grab that tub knowing you have full meals. I’m reliably informed that a diet heavy on MREs will mess up your guts and cause some unpleasant but temporary side effects.
Over four years in Uncle Sam’s Misguided Children, my son says that half of his meals were MREs. Especially in Iraq where he was in a FOB (Forward Operating Base) during his first tour and ate them for six weeks initially. Then they got the company sized MREs for more variety. His platoon used to stop in the villages that they patrolled around and buy baked chickens, humus, bread, etc.
The problem with MREs is that there is almost zero fiber. My son says that they used to joke that a constipated Marine is a pissed off Marine.
He used to drive into LA from 29 Palms occasionally to hang at the beach. He would take a case of MREs for meals instead of eating out. He had girls coming up to him and asking him to take them out for a meal. They would walk to his truck with him and he would toss them a MRE. “Eat up !”.
”
“The Kathy Griffin Controversy””
The fact that anyone can see this as a ‘controversy’ instead of it being universally repugnant, shows the deep divide in the nation.
n
Mention the Med and Dad’s memory flashes.
When we were on are extended Med Run (and other unmentionable places where US submarines are not supposed to go) every chance we got to pull into a port our Storekeeper and Cook would go on shore and buy food; particularly fresh fruit, vegetable, and eggs. They always had a lot of volunteers to go along and help carry the goodies. When we were finally sent home we had just made a shore run a few days before. We ate as much of the “foreign” stuff as we could but barely put a dent in it. When we pulled into port the Customs folks boarded us to inspect. We had to turn over all the edibles we got overseas (it might just be that they missed the stash in the Engineering spaces where they were not allowed, but Dad’s memory is failing him 😉 ).
“My wife, being female, dared me to eat two that I am thawing in the refrigerator. Actually I believe her exact words were, “if you eat those, you’re crazy.””
Heh. I remember one time when I pulled out a very, very old can of something from a case of aged food. (This was years ago, before Barbara finally learned that best-by dates are imaginary.)
Barbara: “We’re not going to eat that! We’ll die.”
Me: “Okay. I’ll feed this can to Malcolm (or it may even have been Duncan, pre-Malcolm). He’ll love it and that’ll prove it’s safe.”
Barbara: “NFW. We’re not using Malcolm as a guinea pig. YOU eat it, and if you’re still breathing tomorrow, we’ll know it was safe.”
Me: “Okay,” as I opened the can and started eating it. Barbara was bug-eyed. She simply couldn’t believe I’d eat a deadly can of food that was something like 15 years past its best-by date. But at least Malcolm was safe, which tells you where I stand in the hierarchy.
I gradually got her used to the fact that everything she’d been told about “expiration dates” was wrong. I started by convincing her to taste-test a can of something that was a few months past its best-by. Eventually, I got her up to being willing to eat stuff that was years past its best-by. Even then, though, she was convinced (like Nick) it tasted “old”. I didn’t believe that, but she does have much more sensitive senses of taste and smell, so I decided to do a single-blind taste test. That was maybe two years ago. I opened one can of something that was ten years (or whatever) past its best-by and a second can of the same stuff that we’d just bought, shoveled some of each into two little bowls, and had her compare them side-by-side. She went back and forth several times and, being intellectually honest, finally admitted that she couldn’t tell any difference at all. We did that two or three times more with different products. So the upshot is that Barbara no longer looks at best-by dates at all. If she goes down to the main LTS pantry for a case of soup or whatever, she simply pulls out whatever is easiest to get to and doesn’t worry about it.
Barbara: “NFW. We’re not using Malcolm as a guinea pig. YOU eat it, and if you’re still breathing tomorrow, we’ll know it was safe.”
And more proof that you married up. Dogs are precious !
I anxiously await President tRump’s withdrawal from the Paris Accord. The Libturdian Prog/SJW/BLM/LBGTXYZ melt down will be epic! I believe it will push them over the top into full violent rioting (well, mostly from their walled gated mansions). Lock and load one 30-round magazine! Duck shoot coming up.
Please, please Mr. President, not only withdraw from the PA, but call the remaining countries in it: LOSERS, SAD.
“Vatican would see U.S. Paris deal exit as slap in face – official”
Because the US is to pay for this?
Nah, clean up your own pollution. It’s your bed and not our fault you soiled it.
At the gate. TSA was relatively painless. They were friendly, swabbed my camera case and that was it. Baggage was on the plane before we got to the gate. Full flight to Paris. Did not get fondled and will have to eat the chocolates myself.
Some Europeans saying we can’t leave the Paris Accord for 4 years, because it is a treaty. If it is a treaty, we never joined. If it is not a treaty, we can leave whenever we want!
They want it both ways. Um, NOT!
Totally agree canned products have a minimum shelf life of 10 or more years
Some Europeans saying we can’t leave the Paris Accord for 4 years, because it is a treaty. If it is a treaty, we never joined. If it is not a treaty, we can leave whenever we want!
They want it both ways. Um, NOT!
It is an Accord. Accords are not mentioned in the Constitution and are therefore unconstitutional. The President cannot obligate the USA by himself. Instead, he must take an agreement to the Senate for ratification.
Mr. Ray, watch your back in Paris. Now that President tRump has dumped the Paris Accord, you’ll be an enemy of the state there.
As predicted, liberal heads are exploding all over the World. The best take so far is the ACLU. They say it is all tRump’s racist attack against Black/Brown people. Another popular take is tRump is racistly trying to erase The First Black President’s legacy. lol! I thought BJ Klinton’s legacy was already in the shitter.
“Some Europeans saying we can’t leave the Paris Accord for 4 years, because it is a treaty.
Junker, the president of European Commision said something like that, that leaving the Agreement takes a few years. I don’t understand why is that, as the Agreement seems to be voluntary based: no bindings, no penalties, no forced targets and so on.
Me likey some more Trump, “Bloomberg: ’55 percent chance’ Trump will win reelection”
http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/335844-bloomberg-55-percent-chance-trump-will-win-reelection
“Former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg thinks there’s a “55 percent chance” President Trump will be reelected in 2020.”
“Bloomberg, who politically identifies as independent, told New York Times columnist Frank Bruni that he thought Democrats didn’t have an effective message to win the 2016 election and could repeat that mistake in 2020.”
No doubt about it, Trump is a leader and Trump is for the USA. Period.
Hillary would be putting through a new carbon tax right now. And then bemoaning about under capitalized businesses going bankrupt and not being able to pay for all of her new initiatives.
“Some Europeans saying we can’t leave the Paris Accord for 4 years, because it is a treaty.
Junker, the president of European Commision said something like that, that leaving the Agreement takes a few years. I don’t understand why is that, as the Agreement seems to be voluntary based: no bindings, no penalties, no forced targets and so on.
“3 ways Trump can rip up the Paris climate deal”
https://news.vice.com/story/the-3-ways-trump-can-withdraw-from-the-paris-climate-deal
” Trump could simply announce that he’s pulling the U.S. out of the deal, which would trigger a 3-year withdrawal process, during which time Trump would be allowed to change his mind.
Or Trump could declare the Paris deal a treaty, which would then require two-thirds of the Senate to vote in support of it, and Senate Republicans would not let that happen.
The third and most radical option would be a withdrawal from the deal that underpins the Paris deal, the 1992 United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, the treaty that sets the parameters on how other agreements, from the Kyoto Protocol to the Paris agreement, are to be negotiated.”
I vote for all three options.
Hat tip to:
http://www.climatedepot.com/
It is an Accord. Accords are not mentioned in the Constitution and are therefore unconstitutional. The President cannot obligate the USA by himself. Instead, he must take an agreement to the Senate for ratification.
According to every Prog/Lib/SJW/BLM/LBGTXYZ everywhere, President tRump has committed a “war crime” against the Planet and Black/Brown people and should be impeached and then hung, shot, burned at the stake, lethally injected, electrocuted, etc.
They say we, the FUSA, are no longer the leader of the Free World. I say yay! Al Goricle just lost billions of $$ and is mad. I say yay! They say China will now lead the Climate Ejaculation farce of saving the Planet. I say yay!
To all Libturdians everywhere, I say, I – Don’t – Care. Thank you, Mr. SteveF.
Trump is consistent with the “America First” motto. The rest of the world is starting to realize that, and so they will act accordingly and US might find themselves alone in the journey. But this is what you want after all, don’t you?
But this is what you want after all, don’t you?
Absolutely. Do you want the US interfering in Romanian affairs? Do you want the US to be The World Police? The Paris Accord is as useless as the Kyoto Treaty. Now, 146 remaining countries will spend billions and belch out countless tons of CO2 on useless meetings. Mark my words, the big polluters like China, will do very little. 146 countries. Why do they need the US?
“Do you want the US interfering in Romanian affairs?”
Yes. Everyone needs to learn from someone better.
“Do you want the US to be The World Police?”
Yes. Someone has to lead. Better US than Russia.
“Do you want the US to be The World Police?”
Yes. Someone has to lead. Better US than Russia.
Pay us. The tribute ship will show up soon. Send out your gold on pallets.
Got any sons ? We will collecting them also and using for our mercenary armies.
Got any daughters ? Our mercenaries need comfort women.
… follow up with withdrawing from the UN. Let the world’s dictators figure out some other way to fund their secret bank accounts. Let someone else pay the salaries of the rapists in blue helmets.
My genius of thought and words is too much for any one city or nation. I belong to the world.
(I wrote that without gagging. Damn but I’m good.)
Hot babes are an acceptable alternative. And top-level researchers in hard sciences and math.
(Top-level researchers who are hot babes count double.)
EDIT: Hey! That low-down polecat Lynn edited his comment and beat me to demanding babes. This is unacceptable!
“Pay us.”
We are doing that already in many different ways. But I guess you’ll find out that when the payments will start to reduce in the next years, as the US want to be out.
EDIT: Hey! That low-down polecat Lynn edited his comment and beat me to demanding babes. This is unacceptable!
Heh.
Countries wanting world police must give us their gold, their sons, their daughters, and their scientists. And to make SteveF happy, they must give us all their hot babe scientists.
I’ve been watching “Genius”. The ladies playing the lady scientists, Madame Curie, Einstein’s scientist wife, etc, are not very hot.
http://channel.nationalgeographic.com/genius/
“Pay us.”
We are already do that in many different ways. But I guess you’ll find out that when the payments will start to reduce in the next years, as US want to be out.
It does not matter what we do, that particular source of gold is running out as the world is figuring it out. Of course, if you stop using the SWIFT system, bad things may happen to you. See Libya, Russia, etc. China is up next.
EDIT: Channeling OFD, here is a song for our new policy:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s3KeiPjbgcE
I belong to the world.
lol! Just like Global Warming.
We are already do that in many different ways.
lol! Could you name a few, please?
Reeeaaaallllly. Do educate us.
EDIT: Carnsarndablangit! Now MrAtoz is beating me to the snark! I might as well just give up on the commentary, borrow Mr Ray’s cameras, and go take “artistic” photos of Miles_Teg and his four-footed harem.
When a quiche eatin’ aviator beats you to the snark, you know its over.
WRT CO2 and Global Warming: I was playing tennis this AM and breathing heavily and exhaling CO2. How criminally culpable am I? Should I be subjected to capital punishment? AlGore? Cankles? Obamanation?
CowboySlim, you calibrate your CO2 exhalation against the exhaust fumes of the jet Algor used in flying around to tell people about the horrors of global warming, or whatever the term of the day is.
Yes, you should be killed. The humans are a pestilence on Mama Giaiaiaiaaa.
Never mind that we evolved here, concurrent with the others creatures inhabiting the planet, and have as much right to existence as the goats that desertified the formerly fertile lands of parts of Africa and the middle east. Or the elephants that trample and change the areas they inhabit, or the countless species that show up somewhere new and devastate the locals….
I believe the hard core environmentals would prefer to see a big die off among humans. ‘Course they think THEY should survive, else they’d jump from somewhere high…
n
My former boss was the logistics officer on an attack sub. They once acquired a USSR boomer and spent way too long on its tail. He said they got back to port with 2 days worth of food. He also figured out how to turn vanilla ice cream mix and other stores into cinnamon rolls, which the captain expected every morning. He got a positive write up and the recipe was circulated to the fleet.
The humans are a pestilence on Mama Giaiaiaiaaa.
“Overpopulation Hoax” by the most excellent Dr. Walter Williams
http://jewishworldreview.com/cols/williams053117.php3
“In 1798, Thomas Malthus wrote “An Essay on the Principle of Population.” He predicted that mankind’s birthrate would outstrip our ability to grow food and would lead to mass starvation.”
“Malthus’ wrong predictions did not deter Stanford University professor Paul Ehrlich from making a similar prediction.”
Remember George Takei from Star Trek? Here’s a Twitter quote afte tRump cancelled the Paris farce:
We will take our outrage, our anger, our disgust, and channel it into a wave to sweep away those who support you. And we will drive you out.
No wonder Dumbocrats got their clocks cleaned. That right there is an out and out threat. From a Gay guy, no less. I wonder if he has a phasor or a real shooster gun. I guess he will sweep us deplorable away via the internet from his gated digs. This is a guy who brings up Japanese internment at the drop of a hat. When he thinks he’s right, though, OFF WITH THEIR HEADS!
This is a perfect example of The Climate Change Religion. I bet he couldn’t debate any body about “the settled science” of Climate Ejaculation. All he knows is what is shoveled into his arse by the progs.
“All dead right there….”
One thing I took from the vid and the account is that we can dress however and simply ACT like LE types of some kind and then go in wherever and do whatever. I’ll keep that in mind for future projects; I have an edge because I know firsthand how LE types act.
“The fact that anyone can see this as a ‘controversy’ instead of it being universally repugnant, shows the deep divide in the nation.”
+1,000,000
I bet most libtards and libturds think it’s hilarious. And many wouldn’t have a problem at all if it was real. So be it.
Late to the party here today; dump runs, vets group, etc. The latter has been making some large strides in the last several weeks; a full house or nearly so each time and 90 minutes hasn’t been enough to cover all the bases. The moderator/shrink guy, who is a really good guy, has been impressed to the point of being gobsmacked. I dunno how it came about but we’ll take it. Mucho importante stuff being worked on, and younger vets showing up and talking now.
Two things we agreed on: self-medicating with booze and dope doesn’t work. But neither does a smorgasbjord of VA-prescribed pill bottles, which create nasty side-effects to the point of actually killing patients eventually. Well, brah, what does work? Meeting like this regularly, trying out stuff like cognitive processing therapy, or hell, even any woo-woo stuff that might work for you. But mainly talking with other combat vets, because the “civilians” don’t and will never understand.
We also do not like that the VA has put us in various war silos; i.e., the older WWII and Korean War vets; us; the later desert wars troops; etc. Separated. Why would they do this? We didn’t get into it, ran outta time, but my tentative theory is that they don’t dig us comparing notes.
Not much discussion of Memorial Day; several guys actually participated in events; I did not, as I do not dig “events.” However I may show up for some Flag Day stuff down there in Burlap at a VFW post, where heavy hitters from the VA and political realm are supposed to be attending.
“Remember George Takei from Star Trek?”
Yeah. I also remember him from when I was still on FaceCrack a few years ago; he was very busy on there, all about being gay, mostly, but also waving the sort-of-bloody shirt of Japanese internment pretty regularly. I guess now he’s gone full-bore prog asshole.
“Remember George Takei from Star Trek?”
Yeah. I also remember him from when I was still on FaceCrack a few years ago; he was very busy on there, all about being gay, mostly, but also waving the sort-of-bloody shirt of Japanese internment pretty regularly. I guess now he’s gone full-bore prog asshole.
I’m old enough to remember when George Takei’s career was on the skids in the 70s and he was doing the Asian equivalent of Stepin Fetchit portraying a Japanese general on “Black Sheep Squadron”.
Hopefully, sooner or later, those performances will pop up on MeTV. His hideously non-PC voiceover work on at least one of the Godzilla movies aired recently on “Svengoolie”.
I’ve posted before about tests done on meats and other foods that had been canned more than a hundred years before they were opened for testing.
Have canning processes remained unchanged? Everybody seems to be taking shortcuts these days to save money.
cans are thinner, the bottoms are not rolled on but are one piece with the can (very deep drawn), lots of pop top cans that will leak early. It’s almost impossible to find US canned product without at least small dents.
I’ve had cans rust thru the rolled edges they’re so thin. HUMID down here, and I had avoided cans for that reason, but the pouches and seal a meals aren’t enough. I just plan for some losses.
n
Here’s something interesting from FEMA as we enter the 2017 hurricane season, and continue with Preparedness weeks….
https://community.fema.gov/until-help-arrives
30 minute video, with some interaction. (second choice,not the short “amusement park” animation)
FEMA wants to encourage people to ACT instead of just standing around in the event of an accident, attack, ‘gun violence’, etc. There are some interesting things in the background and that they ‘almost’ say in the video. Endorsement of tourniquets. Basic, but worth the watching. you may not have been exposed to some of the ideas before. Also watch one on “hands only” CPR. you’ll have to find that one.
n
Lynn wrote:
“He had girls coming up to him and asking him to take them out for a meal”
I don’t want to seem innocent and naive but…
Were they just poor? Starving? Hookers? Looking for as long term?
@ray, my pix from Stavenger Norway are in my screensaver rotation…. very pretty.
Get some good shots of manhole covers if you see any interesting ones………..
n
”
Were they just poor? Starving? Hookers? Looking for as long term?”
Beach trash?
Lots of what are basically bums living down by the beach. 10 to a house, no good job, CHOSE the lifestyle.
n
Lynn wrote:
“And to make SteveF happy, they must give us all their hot sheep.”
There, FTFY.
Doing my happy dance tonight.
My son closed the deal with the Seminole nation today and now our company is the preferred supplier of ATMs for their gas station / convenience stores. Now we have to buy a bunch more ATMs but this is the good problem to have. Gas stations are high volume locations. I’d love to have their casino contract but we don’t have the resources (yet) to manage those. We are working to partner with a California firm that specializes in casinos to put in a bid. Retirement is looking better and better.
RMR, recurring monthly revenue. That is the key to retirement.
n
@Dave Hardy: Did the self-medicating with alcohol, worked as a crutch, then spent lots of evenings drinking lousy coffee with other friends of Bill getting past that. After a crisis last year, I ended up on citalopram for about a year, then came off when I realized I had replaced my crutch. And the mental and neurological effects coming off were way worse than going on. All for the good though, as the year on meds gave me the time to process the triggering event as well as coming to terms with some of the background events that started all this. Oddly, one of the hardest things for me to accept is that I legitimately needed and was deserving of help; I had internally defined traumatic and chronic anxiety and PTSD as the ‘property’ of combat veterans, police, and select other really high risk groups. Odd what your own mind will do to you.
BTW, I’m never sure how to react when I mention alcoholism in my past and get the ‘it’s a crutch’ response, or with citalopram, or whatever. I mean, yeah, a crutch, I wouldn’t give someone with a broken leg a hard time for using one, and generally, the need is eventually resolved.
Excellent, Mr. H. Combs & Son; outstanding!
Recurring monthly rev for some of us vets is looking mighty shaky today in light of latest shenanigans by Congress and some proposed legislation. Boiled down, it looks to me like they’re angling to take away vets benefits from those of us who are at 60-100% disability and at SS retirement age and unable to work due to disability. Well, if we’re at retirement age, many of us can’t, in fact, work at a lot of jobs, or for that matter, find a fucking job that will take us. So it looks like they wanna take away our vets disability payments and let us just collect whatever SS pittance. The combat nurse in our group, forex, would lose more than half of her VA payment each month.
It’s not like we’re drawing massive luxurious payments each month and lighting our cigars with hundred-dollar bills; most of us are on fixed incomes and living pay check to pay check with nothing saved or if saved, looted by somebody or other in connection with government, and long gone, or about to be gone. So when budgets are to be cut, the hammer drops, per usual, on those least able to take the hit and least deserving of being hit.
I can at least still function to some extent but what about guys in wheelchairs, blind guys, guys with half their face missing, guys so out of it they’re in restraints in rubber rooms? (I’m using “guys” inclusive of the women troops that are now also being used as cannon fodder in shit-for-brains, deliberately unsuccessful wars that go on forever).
So your humble and wacky northern correspondent is working on that recurring monthly revenue thing exclusive of any help from Uncle.
Lynn wrote:
“He had girls coming up to him and asking him to take them out for a meal”
I don’t want to seem innocent and naive but…
Were they just poor? Starving? Hookers? Looking for as long term?
I’m guessing beach trash. Just girls looking for a free meal with no commitment.
Doing my happy dance tonight.
My son closed the deal with the Seminole nation today and now our company is the preferred supplier of ATMs for their gas station / convenience stores.
Congrats ! And I love recurring income, that is why we push SAS (software as a service).
“I mean, yeah, a crutch, I wouldn’t give someone with a broken leg a hard time for using one, and generally, the need is eventually resolved.”
One would hope and pray so. But that’s an important point: people can be wounded or injured where the wounds and the injuries are not visible, yet equally deserving of compassion and treatment.
It sounds like you’re doing (much) better? We talked about this stuff today; the VA has been guilty quite often of immediately and always going to the pills for us and bidding us good luck. And we’ve actually lost more guys because of that, who get dependent and then the side effects and long-term use catch up with them and they’re gone. And another point brought out today is that when vets get the news about their pensions or disability payments being reduced or eliminated, we’re gonna see another fucking spike in suicides. These guys are already damaged, as a result of enlisting and doing their service for Uncle for whatever motivations originally, and we’re now gonna kick ’em in the teeth as they’re struggling?
And a lot of us who don’t commit suicide are still seething with anger and resentment and still trained, experienced and armed. That does not bode well for any escalation of hostilities between the obvious two sides in this country nowadays. Guess which side we’re on?
Got my order from walmart.com today. The delivery person brought everything to the front door in the pouring rain. While we were not home.
One box had my two floor lamps. And my four cans of keystone beef. And my #10 can of Augason potato sticks. And my can of Dak ham. And my two cans of La Choy Chicken Chow Mein With Vegetables And Sauce Bi-Pack Dinner, 42 oz. Around 100 lbs of box ! Which, since it was wet, split in the bottom when I picked it up to bring inside and several of the cans fell out. Three of my Keystone beef cans were dented, one severely. There was just some of those inflated plastic bumpers thrown in the top of the box.
https://www.walmart.com/ip/Keystone-All-Natural-Beef-28-oz/22309254
https://www.walmart.com/ip/Augason-Farms-Emergency-Food-Potato-Gems-Complete-Mashed-Potatoes-48-oz/21777155
Plus, walmart.com is just not as well done as amazon.com. Amazon.com has hyperlinks EVERYWHERE. Walmart.com, not so much. Sigh.
My son closed the deal with the Seminole nation today and now our company is the preferred supplier of ATMs for their gas station / convenience stores. Now we have to buy a bunch more ATMs but this is the good problem to have.
So, can one buy gasoline at the Seminole stations and not pay the state or federal taxes ? And if I remember, the Florida state gasoline tax is quite high. But, Florida has quite nice roads also.
Someone agrees with Mr. Lynn:
http://takimag.com/article/this_is_war_gavin_mcinnes?utm_source=Taki%27s+Magazine+List&utm_campaign=398c223b23-RSS_EMAIL_CAMPAIGN&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_f7706afea2-398c223b23-379417973
Made it to Paris. Never flying Air France again. Too many French people. Rude, annoying and body odor. One lady apparently bought a 32oz bottle of Chanel No 3.5, thought it was real and doused herself twice on the plane. Odor was horrible. Flight was on time, service was OK, but too many French. Now on to Oslo.
“Too many French people. Rude, annoying and body odor.”
Yes, always a problem.
I blame Henry V for not finishing the bloody job.
Pax vobiscum, fratres…
People unaware of their own cologne/perfume – what a pain. I used to work with a guy like that; thankfully, he had his own office, but walking through the door, you pretty much had to hold your breath. These are people who do not understand: If you can smell your own cologne or perfume, you’re wearing too much of it.
French people: Living next to the country, I do visit from time to time. Things have gotten better over the last years. The country itself is much cleaner (amazingly so!) than it used to be, and it seems to me that the people are also friendlier, especially to those of us who do not speak French very well.
That said, there are some difficult cultural differences. The “conversation distance” is still different: the French stand closer. You step back to keep your comfort zone, they step forward to get into theirs, rinse-and-repeat. Either you feel like you’re being pursued around the room, or you stop and wonder if you could sideline as their dentist while you’re talking. They probably think it’s weird that everyone keeps running away from them…
Walmart testing employee delivery
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/business/wp/2017/06/01/walmart-is-asking-employees-to-deliver-packages-on-their-way-home-from-work/?utm_term=.3418cdbb5474
Yeah, I think Deplorable Walmart is eventually going to kick Prog Amazon’s ass, or at least I hope they do. This latest initiative is a stroke of genius.
For years, I’ve been comparing prices on items I order from Amazon or Walmart. Amazon is getting less and less competitive on price, and not always a small difference. On a lot of items I’ve ordered in the last year or so, Amazon’s price has been literally two or three times Walmart’s.
I was just thinking again yesterday about dropping Prime. When I mentioned this a couple months ago, Barbara wanted to keep Prime, mostly for the Prime Video feature. But I can Bittorrent stuff that Netflix doesn’t offer.
Speaking of torrenting, anyone checked out or tried Streamza?
I haven’t tried streamza. You have to pay for it? I don’t know how they can say “your ip is safe…” as any better than using a good vpn. Always use a vpn torrenting.
My current goto torrent site is YIFY:
yts.ag
Top quality and a ton of movies you can torrent to backup your purchased movies. John Wick 2 in 1080 is up. I use IPVanish with Transmission (0 upload) on a Mac Mini. I have a sort of automatic system for TV shows that sticks them into iTunes as they come out.
John Wick 2 in 1080 is up.
That is sad. The end of the movie has a panel that states that 15,000 people worked on that movie for two years. Having it up for free on a Torrent site means that those people do not get paid.
What makes you think they didn’t get paid? The movie is over $150 million world wide. Did they work for free, get a cut of the gross.
Movies, like all intellectual properties, have financial tails. Many of the people who worked on the movie got base pay and then get a piece of the net profit or the gross income. I have no idea if that number was ten people or 10,000 people.
I am just saying that I would not torrent movies. I don’t care if the movie is one week old or five decades old.
I don’t torrent new stuff if I can buy it, which isn’t always the case, but old stuff is fair game. Tom Jefferson didn’t want copyrights or patents at all, but finally agreed as long as they were for a “limited” time. By that, he meant six months or a year. So anything older than a year is out of copyright. And videos/recorded music/software, etc. were never eligible for copyrights, only authors and their writings.
Besides which, why would you support Hollywood? They’re out to destroy you.
I have no idea if that number was ten people or 10,000 people.
I’d guess closer to 10. And those would be actors. 10,000 is ridiculous.
Maybe Mr. Nick or others could weigh in on who gets what.
OFD has read the recent post by Mr. RBT and:
I APPROVE!”
I don’t much care for any of the new stuff, and what new stuff I’ve kinda liked has been on Netflix anyway and we’re paying monthly for that. Torrenting for me means older stuff, often MUCH older, plus I also download boatloads of stuff off the Tube. In any case, I’ve found in the past that torrenting new or current movies usually results in getting crummy quality video and sound, often not even coordinated properly or blurred. Maybe that’s changed since then, I dunno, and don’t much care. Since 98% of my interests are old, old, old.
Besides which, why would you support Hollywood? They’re out to destroy you.
I support the ownership and licensing of Intellectual Property. This is how me and my employees feed, cloth, and house our families so this is very near and dear to my heart. I see unlicensed usage of my software EVERY DAY as it phones home. I have participated in putting people in jail by the FBI over this issue and I have successfully sued several companies over this very issue here in the USA. I have actually had people say “who does it hurt ?” to me while using an unlicensed version of my software.
Hollywood is out to make a buck just like everyone else. They may blow hard and liberal all day long but when it comes to making money, they are very conservative in this matter.
I am just saying if you are going to torrent a movie then you should purchase the DVD also. It does not matter to me if the movie came out this year or fifty years ago. If you cannot purchase the DVD, book, software, etc. anymore, orphaned IP, then that is another matter altogether.
I’d guess closer to 10. And those would be actors. 10,000 is ridiculous.
A college friend of my wife is a special effects director for Disney ??? (was Marvel ??? Fox ???). He gets a shaved point. I read an article about movie point pools several years ago that stated many of the people got into the point pools.
Everyone but the studio has already been paid. NO ONE WORKS FOR FREE. Even the interns are working for the exposure and connections, if they get little or no money. Sure there are stars and Executive Producers that get some of the ongoing revenue, but the accounting is set up to fuck them out of that money. Almost no one, outside of the owning corporation, gets any money other than the paycheck. Even actors who get ‘residuals’ or payment whenever their performance is used, generally get fucked out of any real money. I once got someone’s residual check be mistake, and it was ………. 89c.
Yup, less than a dollar.
Neil Stephenson gets it right in Cryptonomicon when he describes Hollywood as essentially and only a very specialized bank.
Like the record companies, the contracts and accounting are all set up to keep all the money in the hands of the corp. NEVER give up a paycheck for a “piece of the gross”.
n
(there is a very good book that covers how the money works, I’ll look and see if I can find it.)
I think it was Art Buchwald when he was suing Paramount over ‘Coming to America’ said you could find an accountant in Hollywood that could prove ‘The Godfather’ didn’t make any money.
They’re crooks – fuck ’em!
They’re crooks just like most of the upper government leadership echelons at the national and international levels. There are also lots of crooks at the top ranks of corporations, including armies of crooked lawyers.
I’m not too worried about Hollyweird coming up short; and just like everyplace else, the little people always get screwed; what else is new?
And the young and pretty get screwed hardest, but that’s been known as part of the Hollywood culture for a century, so presumably they accept that as the price of getting a foot in the door.
So if you don’t like somebody’s politics and/or ethics, it is ok to steal from them ?
BTW, James Garner’s autobiography that goes into detail on how how he sued Universal for his producer points on “The Rockford Files”. He could not say how much that he settled for on the courthouse steps, but he went home and painted a huge ! on the front door of his house. He left it there for a month.
http://articles.latimes.com/1990-08-01/entertainment/ca-1683_1_rockford-files
and
http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/thr-esq/james-garner-a-lawyer-reflects-720549
Lynn, if I break into your office and make off with a disc with your software, I’ve stolen from you, but only the production cost of that one disc. If I make an electronic copy of your software, I’ve stolen nothing. If I steal something from you, you no longer have it. If I make a copy, I’ve deprived you of nothing.
Lynn, if I break into your office and make off with a disc with your software, I’ve stolen from you, but only the production cost of that one disc. If I make an electronic copy of your software, I’ve stolen nothing. If I steal something from you, you no longer have it. If I make a copy, I’ve deprived you of nothing.
Luckily, the FBI does not agree with you, “Twenty-Seven Arrested on Charges Relating to Trafficking in Counterfeit Software (April 19, 2002)”:
https://www.justice.gov/archive/criminal/cybercrime/press-releases/2002/cyberstormArrest.htm
The Cyberstorm guys were selling a cracked version of my software on a web server in San Francisco (along with 4,000 other software packages). I got the privilege of testifying in a deposition over the phone with a DOJ lawyer since we were the most expensive software being sold. If I remember correctly, the head of Cyberstorm pleaded guilty and went to a federal prison for 8 years.
That is the commercial side of IP theft. I do not have a clue if the personal side of IP theft has ever been prosecuted or is even prosecutable.
Just because something is illegal doesn’t make it wrong, and vice versa. Since when did any of us care about the FBI’s opinions or actions?
I think that in the past most of the ‘piracy’ involved a certain kind of person who ‘collected’ cracked and unlicensed copies. Some of it involved people who wouldn’t have bought a legit version at all, but had a crack installed for one or two uses and then left it alone.
I don’t have a problem with either of those as they don’t actually deprive me of anything.
IF however, someone is using the software on an ongoing basis, and WOULD have bought a version or bought a competitor, then the creator and the competitor are harmed on an ongoing basis, and it’s particularly obnoxious if the cracker is using the crack to earn money.
In the case of the PIRATE being prosecuted, he profited by selling the crack and that steals the sale from the original creator. That is theft. Software is certainly ‘authored’.
Or in Mr Lynn’s case, what the pirate stole was the ongoing revenue for the subscription to the software that Mr Lynn will not receive. he is indeed harmed as he won’t get that revenue despite the ongoing use of his creation.
n
I didn’t say he hadn’t been harmed. I said nothing had been stolen. The problem is the business model. Licensing software simply can’t work without horrendous abominations like the DMCA. If Lynn wants to charge people for using his software, he should make it a service rather than a product, run it on his own secure servers, and charge by the transaction, month, gigaFLOP, or whatever.
I was reading an EMP book lately and the two protagonists on foot were attacked by a couple of men on small 4x4s. The protagonists had to defend themselves and ended up killing the attackers. I had no problem with that whatsoever and in fact applaud the removal of human scum.
But, then the two protagonists rode off on the 4x4s from the attackers. They also grabbed their guns and provisions. I had to sit there and think about that for a while. And even the author stated “to the victor belong the spoils”. I eventually decided that I am good with that.
https://www.amazon.com/Once-Upon-Apocalypse-Journey-Revised/dp/1946321001/
I know, I am weird.
If you take something that I created, taking it without my permission, then that is theft of my property. Doesn’t matter if it is computer software, or science kits. If you took it without my permission, then your taking of it (or using it) is plain theft.
So if our daughter comes in when I’m not home and takes the keys to my car and drives off in it, that is theft.
And my take-away from weird Mr. Lynn is that he would be OK with it if we first killed him and then took his software DVDs or code or whatever. Is that right? Am I reading that right? Or is it me that’s weird…hey don’t answer that!
So-called intellectual property is not property at all. It’s an entirely artificial construct. Property is physical. It has mass. A bunch of electrons don’t mass enough to qualify, let alone an idea.
It’s an invention of the lawyers, who’ve made out like fat rats in a cheese factory ever since. And language itself is an intellectual “property,” is it not?
A bunch of electrons don’t mass enough to qualify, let alone an idea.
A bunch of TORTURED electrons don’t mass enough to qualify, let alone an idea.
Fixed that for ya.
BTW, software has Copyright. Very clear concept in the law.
But, I totally think that Software Patents are totally bogus. For example, Amazon’s One Click Button patent is very bogus.
https://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/07/07/european_patent_office_says_amazon_oneclick_payment_too_obvious_to_patent/
If we had known that software was patentable back in the 1970s, we would have patented everything that we created. Instead, we got copied since we were the pioneers in the chemical engineering software field and now have 12 competitors.
And my take-away from weird Mr. Lynn is that he would be OK with it if we first killed him and then took his software DVDs or code or whatever. Is that right? Am I reading that right? Or is it me that’s weird…hey don’t answer that!
If you attacked me, killed me, and then stole my stuff then the police might have a problem with that. I know that my wife would. I wouldn’t because, I would dead. But if there are no police …
Of course, that is how and why my best friend was murdered in 1982 for the $65 cash that he had in his pocket. He refused to give the cash to the two guys who ran him off Fondren road so they shot him with a .357 in his stomach. But the police found the two guys …
I was ribbing you about your conflation of the stolen ATV incident with intellectual property theft, not trying to fire up memory electrons concerning a murder from 35 years ago. Personally, no offense, I would have given those guys the $65 and then maybe either let it slide or if I thought they were gonna kill me anyway, gone out fighting. Nowadays they’d probably just kill me anyway, no witnesses, and all that. Over $65.
I was ribbing you about your conflation of the stolen ATV incident with intellectual property theft, not trying to fire up memory electrons concerning a murder from 35 years ago.
To me, theft is theft. IP or hard goods, it does not matter.
My best friend, Rick, was working as the pizza maker and cook in a Pizza Hut at Fondren and Orem ??? in Houston. The $65 was his weekly paycheck that he had just cashed in the register. The two guys watched him put the cash in his pocket and followed him outside. He liked to argue about everything so knowing him, he probably argued with them rather than just handing over the cash.
Its been 35 years in April and for some reason, I’ve been thinking about him a lot lately. He introduced me to his sister on Memorial Day weekend in 1981 at a party at his house. I married her in January 1982 and he was murdered in April 1982. Life is very weird and I still don’t understand it.
Personally, no offense, I would have given those guys the $65 and then maybe either let it slide or if I thought they were gonna kill me anyway, gone out fighting.
I hope that I would have the sense to throw my wallet over. I have a CHL and carry in my truck but not on me. Several of my family and friends carry but I just don’t like the weight. And if I did carry on me, I would carry one of those S&W Bodyguard .38 revolvers. If it was good enough for Johnny Carson, it would be good enough for me. Although, I am not a big fan of the laser.
https://www.smith-wesson.com/firearms/mp-bodyguard-38-crimson-trace
“Life is very weird and I still don’t understand it.”
+1,000
Might have been the two anniversaries that brought him to mind. Anniversaries have been tough for Mrs. OFD but she seemed OK with them this past year for the most part; her first husband was killed in a car wreck, and she’s lost friends to cancer and lately she’s extremely nervous about losing her 89-year-old mom; she is an only child who lost her dad as a baby and her mother never remarried.
“I hope that I would have the sense to throw my wallet over. I have a CHL and carry in my truck but not on me. Several of my family and friends carry but I just don’t like the weight. And if I did carry on me, I would carry one of those S&W Bodyguard .38 revolvers.”
Same here. Toss ’em the wallet and maybe ask ’em to just take the cash and leave me my friggin’ license and all that chit, as it’s a pain to get them back again. That said, being outside the truck and leaving the firearm in the truck won’t be much help if we are accosted by robbers. I’d look into what kind of firearm you would be comfortable carrying on you ASAP. Like for your nightly two-mile walks past copperheads, coyotes and narcotrafficantes.
Mine is on me all the time, even in supposed “gun-free” areas. At night stuff is within arm’s reach on both sides. And down the hall. Chances are pretty good no one is gonna hassle me anyway but I sure don’t wanna be standing there with my pants down and no gun if somebody does. That would really suck.
What @Lynn said:
I’m at bingo and the Twins texted me. Our big 70″ Vizio just went blank. I accuse somebody of stealing my electrons! Can you own electrons? I like stirring the pot. 🙂
And in sad news, half of Americans die broke.
The French
In the 90s we lived in the UK and summered in a cottage in the South of France, in the countryside near Cahors. We loved the rural French. Unlike Parisians, they were friendly and found our fumbling French and horrid pronuciation, cute. When our little girl would announce “Je suis American” the shop keepers would give her candy. We learned boules from the old men in the square outside the nunnery and found they despised Parisians. They would point out “Paris doors” – cars with dents and dings from driving in the capital. Don’t paint all French with a broad brush. It’s like someone saying all Americans are rude because they visited NYC.
Did they check the plug? Maybe the chihuahua yanked it out.
And how is that sad nooz, anyway? I saw that on Drudge and thought “So what?” I fully intend to die broke. Why leave money for the State to steal? Kids are on their own. Grandkids likewise.
“Don’t paint all French with a broad brush.”
Excuse moi et pardon, monsieur! You are absolutely right. Just as here in North Murka, country folks are different from city folks and often despise the latter, and for damn good reasons, too.
You were in or near the Langue’doc, I take it, where much history took place, like the Cathar heresy and the Albigensian Crusade. I wouldn’t mind taking a month of travel through there but am given to understand that after that guy who wrote several books on the region, it got flooded with touristas.
One of my literary mentors traveled extensively through there and studied the Provencal language and poetry of the troubadours and trouveres.
Any Robert DeNiro fans here?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5y8shvbYnyY
And from the Rapefugees Department:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AfG1myglfhY
I rebooted the Genie tonight since it was acting weird. Took two power off reboots to get it back up. Probably the first reboot in 2 or 3 years with the 30 minute power conditioning ups for it. Of course, it takes 5 or 6 minutes to reboot so I don’t like doing it very often, the satellite link up is the slowest part.
You know, when all of my relatives passed on, I do not remember a single one complaining about not having enough money. And my uncle Tom Henry thought he was a wealthy man when he replaced the two outhouses out back with an indoors bathroom back in 1980 ???. He passed away last year at the age of 99.
Made it to Norway. 2.5 hour bus ride to Trysil to meet former exchange student the 1 hour to her parents house where we are staying for two nights. Norway is beautiful country indeed. Today the family is taking us somewhere in the mountains. Tomorrow we take the train to Sandejford, 3 hours with a couple of changes.
Jet lag sucks. Stayed up until 10:30PM Norway time. At that point I had been up 34 hours. Crashed immediately. Usually wake up with daylight. But her at 11:00PM it is still light and sun appears again at 01:00AM. Weird.
“So-called intellectual property is not property at all. It’s an entirely artificial construct. Property is physical. It has mass. A bunch of electrons don’t mass enough to qualify, let alone an idea.”
@RBT: So if I get your books from torrents and read them and pay you nothing you’ll be OK with that? (don’t know if they are available there). Or a time period should pass since the book came out? Or maybe you’ll consider it to be “legal” but immoral? You mentioned before you live(d) by writing books.
Ha. Eugen, while in general your point is good, here it misses the mark. RBT releases his books to the Create Commons. You’re free to grab copies.
Sounds like you had to think it over to come to the obviously correct conclusion. Weirdo.
“@RBT: So if I get your books from torrents and read them and pay you nothing you’ll be OK with that? (don’t know if they are available there). Or a time period should pass since the book came out? Or maybe you’ll consider it to be “legal” but immoral? You mentioned before you live(d) by writing books.”
Yes, I’ll be okay with that. I’m a lot of things, but a hypocrite isn’t one of them. Every one of my books has been made available on BitTorrent, usually within a couple days after publication. I’ve never tried to prevent that, never issued a DMCA take-down notice, etc.
My publisher, O’Reilly/MAKE, is extremely FOSS-friendly. Early on, they used to contact me when someone posted an electronic copy of one of my books, but I kept telling them not to worry about it. The e-book versions of my books are published without DRM and “device usage unlimited”.
As SteveF said, everything I write (including this blog) is licensed under Creative Commons as freely shareable with attribution.
The next book I write will be self-published with no DRM and device-usage unlimited.
Oh, yeah, and I pay for what I use.
For example, I Bittorrent episodes of my favorite TV series, Heartland, as they’re broadcast and save them until I have all 18 episodes of the current season, usually sometime in May. I then create and burn DVDs of them, and Barbara and I binge-watch them over the course of a few days. I do that, because it’s my only option. I can’t buy or rent those episodes yet. Around about Sept/Oct, the DVD set of that season is released. I purchase that set to help support the show. I currently have the first nine seasons on purchased DVDs, some of which we haven’t even opened. When season 10 is available this coming autumn, I’ll buy the DVD set and stick it on the shelf.
Same deal with FOSS and other “IP”. Until I got tired of its increasing prog politization, I used to send Wikipedia $50 every year. I send money to Linux Mint, etc.
“As SteveF said, everything I write (including this blog) is licensed under Creative Commons as freely shareable with attribution.”
Ok, I didn’t knew that. Fom the books, I’ve only read Astronomy Hacks on O’Reilly’s safaribooksonline.com .
Did they check the plug? Maybe the chihuahua yanked it out.
And how is that sad nooz, anyway? I saw that on Drudge and thought “So what?” I fully intend to die broke. Why leave money for the State to steal? Kids are on their own. Grandkids likewise.
The weiner dog did chew up a solar panel cable, but, rebooting the TeeVee (unplug for 15 secs) did the trick.
Dying broke goes along with a previous article that most peeps in the FUSA can’t come up with $500 if needed. But ciggies, booze and pixels are no problemo.
Movies, like all intellectual properties, have financial tails. Many of the people who worked on the movie got base pay and then get a piece of the net profit or the gross income. I have no idea if that number was ten people or 10,000 people.
The breakdown, according family members and what I have read, goes roughly like this:
– The director, writers, and actors get some or all of their pay as soon as the contract is signed. The writers get additional pay when the shooting starts. Only the main actors get residuals. These are the “above the line” costs – fixed costs paid even if the film is never made, and independent of the length of shooting.
– All of them get residuals based on sales to DVD, cable, broadcast TV, streaming, etc. It comes out of the gross amount paid, not net profits.
– The crew get paid a daily rate and get (some) meals. The rate for my brother includes a salary as well as a payment to medical insurance, life insurance, and retirement at the union. He also is usually paid a fee for renting some of his equipment, rental on his car if they use it, or they rent a van/truck for the production.
– Some of the unionized crew don’t get individual residuals. Instead, the studio pays a residual to the union for the health insurance fund.
– Producers have special deals, getting money up front and later that I don’t understand.
TV has similar deals for the people that work on it. Residuals are important sources of income for some people. I heard recently of a writer that got a quarterly residual check for $150 for two episodes of Cheers he wrote back in the 80s. Not a huge amount of money, but that can add up over time. Residuals for TV decline over time, IIRC. So he would have been getting bigger checks in the past.
All the talk of points (1 %), etc. are individually negotiated. Smart people get points of the gross, since film productions are generally done by a corporation created to do the film and thus will never turn a profit. The studio keeps the profits. Gross points are hard to get, and can make huge amounts of money if it is a hit. Johnny Depp supposedly gets quite a few points for the Pirates movies. Sean Connery is said to have turned down the role of Gandalf in The Lord of the Rings trilogy, where he was offered cash plus 10% of the gross. That’s about $300+ million in points.
The Australian TV series Rush is not available on VCR or DVD because the actors were only paid for TV broadcast rights. Yes, I’m mad about that…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rush_(1970s_TV_series)
Ray, keep in mind that the trains in Norway aren’t that reliable. My elder nephew and his new (Norwegian) wife were waiting at the train station for the train to Oslo so they could get their honeymoon flight to Scotland. The train was canceled, without them being advised, so they had to drive to Oslo. They just made it.
Well, I might have skipped some of the details, but when you see the anti piracy video in front of your movie, and the prop guy, electrician, painter, etc are calling you a thief, they are being disingenuous at best. They’ve all been paid when they did the work and won’t see another dime if the movie never opens or if it’s a blockbuster.
I’ve actually worked on at least a couple dozen commercials, including ground breaking ones, for major car companies, beer companies (bud bowl), Coca Cola, GE, and similar. I am credited on a movie of the week, on a one off TV special shot on location in Vegas, and 2 seasons of MTV’s Spring Break. I lived and worked in Hollywood exclusively for 2 years, and continued to go back to Hollywood occasionally for another 4-5 years. I dated an actress with mostly regional credits but at least one national laundry ad and a small part in one of the Conan movies. My wife is still a card carrying IATSE member.
Anyone other than the corp, someone with producer credit, the occasional major actor, [and I guess the writers, never knew any writers] that implies you are stealing from their ongoing revenue is at best disingenuous, at worst, lying.
n
(actors excepted- but the ordinary run of the mill actor gets VERY little in residual payments)
Lynn wrote:
“BTW, software has Copyright. Very clear concept in the law.”
In the late Seventies Fujitsu knocked off IBM’s mainframe operating system MVS and produced their own operating system (OSIV/F4) for their line of 370 compatible mainframes. Still had the IBM copyright notices in it. They got sued, agreed to cross-licence, and sent IBM a very large cheque.
If people want to put their IP in the public domain that’s up to them, but I’m sympathetic to the idea of limited period copyright. I don’t see how Lynn’s software would get written otherwise.
Lynn wrote:
“It does not matter to me if the movie came out this year or fifty years ago.”
I can support patents/copyright for five years. Ten years tops. After that it should expire. Fifty years? You’re kidding!
That pesky wack job OFD agrees with RBT on copyright stuff. It’s an invention of slick lawyer types way back when and it’s gotten worse. I say find another way to “protect” your “inventions” and “creations” and leave the Almighty State and lawyers out of it.
My wife is still a card carrying IATSE member.
So is my brother. And IATSE gets residual payments to the health fund for every movie or TV show he makes that is a union shoot. Commercials are under different contracts and I don’t know if IATSE gets residuals.
Direct residual checke go to the director, actors with enough lines in the production, and the writer(s).
In the late Seventies Fujitsu knocked off IBM’s mainframe operating system MVS and produced their own operating system (OSIV/F4) for their line of 370 compatible mainframes. Still had the IBM copyright notices in it. They got sued, agreed to cross-licence, and sent IBM a very large cheque.
Heh. We used to get the source code to the PRIMOS operating system along with the Prime mini computers that we bought back in the 1970s. Another guy and I would go through the O/S and make a few improvements. For instance, to move up to the parent directory, you had to type the entire directory string. I got so tired of doing that so I wrote a new O/S command named “up” and integrated it into the O/S. Arthur sent my source code to Prime and guess what showed up in the next version of the O/S ? Yup.
Software as it should be done.
Direct residual checke go to the director, actors with enough lines in the production, and the writer(s).
And the producers, the executive producers, the assistant directors, etc, etc, etc. Jame Garner’s autobiography was most illuminating on this. I did not know about the union healthcare funds but am not surprised. I remember you always saw older actors on “The Love Boat” which turned out that Aaron Spelling was giving his friends their three ??? year renewal on their union membership.
https://www.amazon.com/Garner-Files-Memoir-Jon-Winokur/dp/145164261X/
Big Bang Theory was a result of a writer needing to renew his Writer’s Guild insurance. He was a buddy of Chuck Lorre, who he knew had a development deal with CBS. Over lunch he asked Chuck if they could brainstorm a new series, write a pilot, and turn it in. They would both get paid, he’d get his insurance renewed. The rest is (lucrative) history.
Several shows have been places for actors to get their AFTRA cards renewed. Murder She Wrote kept all of Angela Landsbury’s friends from Broadway renewed. And of course, the Law and Order shows keep everyone that’s inbetween shows in NY employed. Almost all the actors that are in the Alley Theatre company here in Houston have L&O credits and most of those that come for one or two shows do also.
Did bro ever try to USE the Health and Welfare Fund?
All my dealings with the IA were that they were usually crooks, mainly interested in collecting money for the management of the Union (the organization, not the guys, lotta good guys are members). It’s been a while since I bothered to read their member magazine but they donated a truly astonishing amount of money to democratic politicians. Given the size of the membership, 10s of millions is mind boggling.
I’m not anti-union in some industries, like entertainment, where abusive practices are still the norm, after all I married one, and her gig bought her house… but no one but the union benefits from the H&W fund that I could see.
n
Pardon my French but it all looks like some kind of huge ongoing racket to me. Is that a fair assessment?
Production companies would work the crews literally to death, and every so often they do, so having a bigger, deep pockets organization you can call on is a good thing. Everyone working in the industry benefits from the contracts the IA has negotiated. But like all unions, it exists mainly to keep existing. It does that by extorting payment from the productions, and using member money for washington bribes.
n
And this is an example of why there was a schizm in SciFi fandom. From the blurb for a new SF novel–
”
It’s up to a young Zulu girl powerful enough to destroy her entire township, a queer teen plagued with the ability to control minds, a pop diva with serious daddy issues, and a politician with even more serious mommy issues to band together to ensure there’s a future left to worry about. ”
Think I’ll skip this one.
n
@nick: yep, that the kind of SJW trash being labeled SF by the SFWA and the mainstream publishers. No science anywhere in sight, heck, it barely qualifies as fantasy.
Anyway, the story will be predictable: young, non-white, non-cisgendered, non-male triumphs over all the old, white, heterosexual males and everything they stand for.
Baen books, Beam books, Castalia House, and other small publishers are definitely the way to go…
I gave up on sci-fi a very long time ago and haven’t missed it whatsoever. I will confess, however, that I dig some historical fiction and some of the UK and Ireland “detective-type” novels and novellas.
My go-to top-of-the-line historical fiction has been the late George Garrett’s Elizabethan trilogy and the very-much-alive William T. Vollman’s stuff, particularly his Seven Dreams series, concerning the vast history of the vast North Murkan continent.
Oh, yeah, and I pay for what I use.
Cool. I torrented a Buffy episode once that Fox refused to show after a shooting in the USA. I subsequently bought the season DVD when it came out. It was the episode where the gang were graduating from high school and the mayor turned into a dragon.
Baen books, Beam books, Castalia House, and other small publishers are definitely the way to go…
Half of what I read nowadays is self published on Big River. Reading this at the moment, “36 Hours: A Post-Apocalyptic EMP Survival Fiction Series (The Blackout Series) (Volume 1)”:
https://www.amazon.com/36-Hours-Post-Apocalyptic-Survival-Blackout/dp/1536964298/
Practically all the fiction I read lately is self-published one way or another. Assembled ebooks sold through Amazon or others, shorts or novels distributed solely on the web (usually a chapter at a time as they’re written). The stories available on the web are especially convenient because I can read a few chapters for free and discard them if they’re full of SJW tropes or otherwise poorly written. The good stuff I pay for through the authors’ tipjars, usually paying at least $5 for a novel’s worth to encourage them. Most could use the hand of a decent editor, but the same could be said of much of the fiction coming from major publishers.
If anyone’s interested I can put up a few links to sites I get stories from. (I’d do it now but the bookmarks are on a different browser and I’m about to conk out because I have to get up early because I have ten friggin hours of driving ahead of me tomorrow because my mom wants to go to one of my idiot niece’s weddings (er, the only wedding to date of one of my several idiot nieces) and can’t drive by herself that far.)
OFD wrote:
“I gave up on sci-fi a very long time ago…”
REPENT!
Frank Herbert’s Dune saga is great, as are Iain M. Banks’ SF novels set in The Culture, a post scarcity anarcho-libertarian society that’s about 10,000 years ahead of us technologically. I like The Player of Games best but Excession, Look to Windward, Inversions, Consider Phlebas and many others as well.
Lynn wrote:
“I got so tired of doing that so I wrote a new O/S command named “up” and integrated it into the O/S. Arthur sent my source code to Prime and guess what showed up in the next version of the O/S ?”
At first mainframe software came free with the hardware, but eventually CDC (and IBM) started charging. We had the source code for NOS/BE (may peace and blessings be upon it) and made corrections which we submitted to CDC and enhancements which we didn’t. I hacked a large chunk of PP Compass out of DSD and customised it and reused it in one of our OS utilities (30th aniversary of that this year.) We got an incredibly useful utility (ROCK and ROL) for free from an Israeli university. When CDC introduced its new virtual memory OS (NOS/VE) they offered us a system programming language called CYBIL for about $50k for just one mainframe. I nearly fell off my chair.
I like Iain Banks but Player of Games is my least favorite Culture story. I thought it was too unsubtle an allegory. Banks wrote them to see what a hyper-advanced communism would be like, btw. I’ll also put a plug in for Charles Stross. The Laundry series is excellent, and the Family Trade series is also.
I thought that was the commie Ian. There are 2 Ians who write SciFi, and I can’t keep them straight. One’s a commie socialist trade unionist, the other is ok.
I enjoyed a couple of the commie books, but eventually the rah rah union point of view grated just too much.
n
I don’t mind SF with societies built on different social structures, but the boosterism bugs me whether it’s the right’s obligatory homage to libertarianism, or the left’s heavy hand of socialism and planned society.
I enjoyed a couple of the commie books, but eventually the rah rah union point of view grated just too much.
I don’t see any of that in Banks’ sf work. Maybe Ian MacDonald? Or Banks’ non-sf? The Culture is a communist utopia – automated factories can make anything, there is no want, there is only a loose government. It is anarchist to some degree, but not really libertarian in philosophy.
I do get the Ians mixed up.
One is a commie sympathizer, union booster, the other, I don’t remember…
n
Eric Flint is another (actual card carrying) commie, who is also a big union booster, but I liked both the ideas and the execution of his novel 1632 . Lots to read in that series including other authors playing in his world.
n
I agree about Flint. I read probably half a dozen of the 1632 novels. I don’t like the guy’s politics, but he writes a good story.
I didn’t like Frank Sinatra but damn, the guy could sing.
I don’t like any human being, living, dead, or yet to be born, but some are hot babes.
OK, hot babes can be forgiven their political beliefs, I guess.
Incidentally, you won’t see any among the Dems or the Left, as a general rule of thumb.
Speaking of which, one of the neighboring wallyhog gumpers just waddled by; hair is now blue, with a pinkish-purple bun on the top front, and a skinny dark brown or black ponytail in the back. Smoking a butt and balancing an iPad on her arm. Guaranteed Cankles voter, if she even votes.