Sat. June 9, 2018 – open thread

By on June 9th, 2018 in Random Stuff

75F and humid promises another hot sunny humid day. Our other choice is thunderstorms, so I guess I’ll have to take the heat.

I’ve got my non-prepping hobby club meeting this AM and possibly a sale or two, and then more work.

Something ate all my blueberries that were almost ripe. I got ONE berry. Went from 4 bushes getting ready to none over night. Grrr. To rub it in, several people are bringing their excess produce to the pool. I think I’m gonna have to start talking to people to see why none of my stuff grows as well.

Talking to people. IRL. Once started when will it end????!!!!??!

n

30 Comments and discussion on "Sat. June 9, 2018 – open thread"

  1. dkreck says:

    Sound like birds. Too late now but maybe nets next time. Some grape vinyards around here use a semi-transparent plastic sheeting late season but before harvest.

  2. DadCooks says:

    “Sound like birds.”

    If it is birds you should see blueberry poop bomb evidence. Other suggestions: racoon, deer, skunk, the neighbors’ dogs (many dogs love blueberries).

    @Nick, with your luck (not) with critters eating your stuff you need to get some garden bird netting around your crops. Home Depot, Lowes, and Amazon

  3. Minnesota Dave says:

    Chipmunks. Rat traps caught 17. Built a hoop house covered with bird netting but only saved about a quart of strawberries. Should get about 3 gallons this year. A new pest every year. One of our dogs likes blueberries and raspberries.

  4. Nick Flandrey says:

    I had just considered putting up the bird netting, having had a conversation with my dad about it, but didn’t.

    So the one blueberry I got was delicious. F ing birds.

    n

  5. SteveF says:

    Talking to people. IRL. Once started when will it end????!!!!??!

    Exactly. That’s why I never let it get started in the first place.

  6. Nick Flandrey says:

    I know! If I start, soon I’ll be listening calmly while complete strangers tell me how I should live my life!

    n

  7. paul says:

    while complete strangers tell me how I should live my life!

    They already do.

  8. paul says:

    And the mosquitoes are back. Big and black and not very quick. If “normal” happens they’ll be gone in three days.
    They are not coming from my tanks. Pool chlorine tablets. Plus the tanks are almost dry. They blow in on a South wind.

    Five eggs today from five chickens. They were all warm when collected. Just one egg yesterday but it’s hot. 92F and sunny, slight breeze and a great day to be at the lake. Just need a boat….

  9. mediumwave says:

    Talking to people. IRL. Once started when will it end????!!!!??!

    Currently reading Wittgenstein’s Mistress. From the blurb:

    Wittgenstein’s Mistress is a novel unlike anything David Markson or anyone else has ever written before. It is the story of a woman who is convinced and, astonishingly, will ultimately convince the reader as well that she is the only person left on earth.

    “Presumably she is mad. And yet so appealing is her character, and so witty and seductive her narrative voice, that we will follow her hypnotically as she unloads the intellectual baggage of a lifetime in a series of irreverent meditations on everything and everybody from Brahms to sex to Heidegger to Helen of Troy. …”

    It’d probably be more accurate to say that I’ve managed to slog through the first forty pages. So far, this seems like the sort of book only a literary critic or one of the author’s family members could love.

    So what’s the relevance to this blog?

    I’m having a hard time accepting the premise. (Yes, yes, it’s called fiction, mediumwave; willing suspension of disbelief, yada, yada.) The idea that, even with the world’s resources at her fingertips, a single human could survive a decade or more without succumbing to an accident or illness, much less the problems that come with getting older, is ludicrous. To me, sheer loneliness would drive a solitary human to suicide.

    Which ties in nicely with a comment made previously by both Nick and OFD: Meatspace! And, IIRC, a point also made in Niven and Pournelle’s Lucifer’s Hammer, in which individuals or families had a much lower chance of survival than larger groups.

  10. Nick Flandrey says:

    How many pages before there was a scene involving defecation, poop, feces, or piss? Or any OTHER variation?

    For some reason all the lit fic that masquerades as scifi seems to have such a scene pretty early. No idea why, but one year all but one of the Hugo noms did.

    n

  11. mediumwave says:

    How many pages before there was a scene involving defecation, poop, feces, or piss? Or any OTHER variation?

    Good catch! Somewhere between pages ten and twenty; I’m not motivated enough to go back and look. 🙁

    <fruity literary critic voice>But reahlly, Nick, you must remembah that this is litrecha, not science fiction!</fruity literary critic voice>

  12. Nick Flandrey says:

    I knew it! There must be a style guide somewhere….

    n

  13. lynn says:

    How many pages before there was a scene involving defecation, poop, feces, or piss? Or any OTHER variation?

    Yuck, that is not in the SF/F that I read.

    But, my cousin’s latest book that I am reading has a gender fluid person in it. She keeps on referring to it as they or their. It is really messing with me.
    https://www.amazon.com/Feedback-Newsflesh-Mira-Grant/dp/031637931X/

  14. SteveF says:

    But, my cousin’s latest book that I am reading has a gender fluid person in it. She keeps on referring to it as they or their. It is really messing with me.

    My preferred pronoun is I. This leads to statements like “I talked to Steve about the database optimization. I said that I need to mirror the production data before I can do anything, but that I should have it done a couple hours later and then I can review it before I take care of production over the weekend.”

  15. SteveF says:

    For some reason all the lit fic that masquerades as scifi seems to have such a scene pretty early.

    I wouldn’t know. I have practically a sixth sense for detecting crap literature (which, to a first approximation, means all “literature”). And my world is not noticeably a worse place for it.

  16. Nick Flandrey says:

    I quit reading any scifi for a while. It wasn’t till later that I figured out that it was because it had become lefty lit fic cr@p.

    The discovery of Jonathon Mabrey, Larry Correia, Jim Butcher, and a bunch of Baen authors changed that. I went on a binge, and kept going.

    TONS of good books out there that aren’t left twattle. (see what I did there?)

    n

  17. Nick Flandrey says:

    And speaking of Portland…

    “Real Life Feminist Bookstore From “Portlandia” Closing, Blames Cis White People”

    https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2018/06/real-life-feminist-bookstore-from-portlandia-closing-blames-cis-white-people/

    “The current volunteers and board members stepped into and took over a space that was founded on white, cis feminism (read: white supremacy). It’s really difficult, actually, impossible, for us to disentangle from that foundational ideology,” the statement continued. “Patriarchy, White Supremacy, Capitalism cannot be reformed and ever serve the people. Abolition is the goal.”

    She said the vision is to prioritize accessibility, keeping the space free or low cost and open to all-ages, with an eye to anti-capitalist, anti-racist, intersectional work.

    What a bunch of sour, angry, confused people. Hmm, take a business, stop selling stuff, give away the space to people guaranteed to scare away paying customers, and wonder why the business fails. Get woke, go broke.

    n

  18. Nick Flandrey says:

    And Africa is still Africa– http://allafrica.com/stories/201806080504.html

    Talking to people on the city’s streets, it is evident that many take the dangers posed by the outbreak extremely seriously. But others disregard the risks, while some are in denial about the outbreak or say they believe news of it has been planted as some kind of Western plot.

    Many still flock to traditional healers or witch doctors like Papa Nganga, believing Ebola to be a product of witchcraft.

    “What I need right now is for the NGOs and the health ministry to stop spending money and bring me all the Ebola patients,” Nganga told IRIN. “My ancestors, who still live in this statue, are empowering me to heal anyone in two days.”

    The traditional practice of touching and handling the bodies of the dead was a major factor in the fast spread of Ebola in the 2013-16 West Africa outbreak.

    One of the pillars of containing Ebola now is what the WHO calls “safe and dignified burials”, whereby professionals handle the corpses and follow a 12-stage guide, observing, as much as possible, local custom.

    But not everyone is happy with the way this is going down in Equateur.

    “I was in Bikoro and I was angry the way people were holding Ebola funerals,” said Elizabeth Mokia, a woman in her 70s.

    “We are used to cuddling each other when somebody passes away, and embrace the dead to tell them how badly we are going to miss them and how much they meant to us. But now we don’t even hold a funeral, or we hold it far away from the corpse and don’t approach even the dead. The worst part of it is we don’t even shake the hand of our own best friend.”

    …the culture of hand-washing is also being fostered in many areas and in households.”

    ….

    Francine Kibala, 49, claimed to have developed her own powerful “vaccine” from plants in the giant Mai-Ndombe forest that are famed in Congo for their supposedly magical powers.

    “This solution, which was mixed with the mysterious water of Lake Mai-Ndombe, is better and stronger than the vaccine brought here by the white people,” she said, brandishing a darkish liquid she referred to as her “trophy”.

    One man who bought Kibala’s “drinkable vaccine” strongly defended his decision: “Why shouldn’t I believe in her medicine? Congo’s forests are full of magical plants that can do wonders and cure many diseases. I bought it, drank some, and gave some to my family to protect us against Ebola.”

    Keep in mind that this is a place where WHO said it would be easier to contain the disease due to their prior experience with outbreaks…

    n

  19. lynn says:

    I quit reading any scifi for a while. It wasn’t till later that I figured out that it was because it had become lefty lit fic cr@p.

    The discovery of Jonathon Mabrey, Larry Correia, Jim Butcher, and a bunch of Baen authors changed that. I went on a binge, and kept going.

    TONS of good books out there that aren’t left twattle. (see what I did there?)

    I never left SF/F (science fiction and fantasy). There has always been a lot of good stuff out there for me. Plus, I like dystopian and apocalyptic stories and the indie authors have been coming out from every direction for me. I also go back and reread my old goodies such as Heinlein juveniles (COTG (Citizen of the Galaxy) and TSB (The Star Beast) are two of my favorites). Plus David Weber’s Dahak series (my favorite all time space opera), Alan Dean Foster’s Pip and Flynx series, David Gerrold’s Chtorr series, John Varley’s Thunder series, etc, etc, etc.

    But I also read straight old adventure fiction such as Lee Child’s Jack Reacher series, Clive Cussler’s Dirk Pitt series, etc, etc, etc.

  20. Nick Flandrey says:

    http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-5824853/Fifteen-Syracuse-University-fraternity-brothers-SUSPENDED-video-filled-racist-slurs.html

    ” I think the question is whether they’re going to be able to get into another school when they have on their transcript the scarlet letter of being suspended for harassment,’ Syracuse University law professor Gregory Germain, an adviser for several students during the disciplinary process, said.”

    “SU Chancellor Kent Syverud told the Daily Orange….
    ‘I am deeply concerned about how the continuing exposure to hateful videos is causing further hurt and distress to members of our campus community,’ he said.”

    “In April, Onondaga County District Attorney William Fitzpatrick told Syracuse.com that he reviewed the video but determined that no crime had been committed.”

    witch hunt. virtual lynching by the mob.

    n

  21. lynn says:

    “‘He’s willing to destroy the world’: Billionaire investor and liberal donor George Soros blasts Trump’s presidency saying ‘everything that could go wrong has gone wrong'”
    http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-5825399/Billionaire-investor-liberal-donor-George-Soros-blasts-Trumps-presidency.html

    @SteveF, can I say it ? Hillary is not President !

    Hat tip to:
    http://drudgereport.com/

  22. Rick Hellewell says:

    Regarding the hack on this site: some success in figuring things out, and preventing a future attack via that vector.

    Too long to detail here; but I did post it on my SecurityDawg site, for those that are interested.

    This place (and all of the sites I manage) have been protected from a future attack via that vector. The information might be useful to other WP admins.

  23. lynn says:

    Regarding the hack on this site: some success in figuring things out, and preventing a future attack via that vector.

    Congratulations and Thanks !

  24. Nick Flandrey says:

    Thanks Rick, don’t know if I could do it if I had to do it all…

    You rock.

    n

  25. Nick Flandrey says:

    Love the way T set up the g7. So you don’t like tariffs eh? Ok. NO TARIFFS AT ALL. How about that? [much hemming and hawwing ensues]

    He put his adversaries in the position of defending the very thing they were attacking him for.

    Not the first time he’s done this, either. (see also DACA)

    He forces them into showing their hypocrisy and asks the questions that no one asks out loud forcing a discussion of the real issue, or forcing the opponent to move back and downplay.

    Works for me.

    n

  26. SteveF says:

    But… but… Trump is a moron! All the best people say so!

  27. MrAtoz says:

    Cofefe 2020!

  28. DadCooks says:

    Yes, I really like Trump’s move on tariffs and I also like how he took that Canadian Prime Minister down a few notches. Trump is giving a new name to diplomacy. Now he needs the Congress and the American People to back him. Trump knows how to draw a real line in the sand.

    I predict that we will see some real interesting things happen in Singapore and the MSM will do its best to misrepresent and torpedo everything Trumps says. The all need to read his book, it obvious they never have.

    @RickH, thanks for looking after us and the ttgnet sites.

  29. Nick Flandrey says:

    anything that upsets Soros is a good thing in my book…

    n

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