75F and 93%RH. Forecast for sunny and clear, high in low 90s, which would be really nice.
I’ve got a mixed bag of tasks moved to the top of the list today, and I’ve got the kids at home.
Headlines were relatively quiet this morning. I guess everyone wants to slide into the weekend.
Not much prepping got done.
The garden is still growing. I need to spray the grapevines again, as something is eating them. The same raised bed that had the beans last year, the one that all the plants slowly bleached out to white and died looks like it is killing the zukes planted there. They are slowly bleaching to white this year too. No idea what’s going on there.
The cukes in the side bed are growing. The Meyer Lemon is heavy with fruit, and I found the one fruit on the orange tree. I guess it didn’t get eaten after all. Peach is finally fully leafed in, no flowers or fruit this year. Apple trees had flowers, and seem to be leafed in. I think I should pinch off any fruit this year but I’ll have to check the book. Small child picks a dozen blueberries every other day and loves them.
I got one tomato, smaller than a tennis ball, and I think that’s it for that plant. There are a couple of tiny Roma’s ready on the other plant, but they are cherry sized. That will probably be the crop for that plant too. It gets too hot for tomatoes is what I’m told.
If I was counting on the garden for food, I’d be hungry. LONG steep learning curve if you aren’t blessed with great conditions. In other news, food is cheap, widely available, and packaged for storage- stock up now!
n
and by quiet headlines, I mean except for the ongoing drama with Iran in the Straights of Hormuz, the rioting in Hong Kong, and the emerging truth of the story in Memphis…
Flooding thru the upper Mississippi is starting to subside, but the lower Mississippi will see cresting along it and tributaries this week and next according to FEMA. Still a major slow motion disaster that is getting no coverage outside of doomers talking about all the crops not being planted.
Stay frosty my friends….
n
Sometimes the truth sneaks out…
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7139699/Body-child-believed-India-US-border.html
–All the way from INDIA, and those are just the ones caught and detained. 550 congolese. 100K taken into custody. I really don’t think the average person comprehends the vast scale of this problem.
n
It’s Flag Day.
Is your’s flying?
Mine is, along with the 1775/1776 Navy Jack that I received when I left the USS Los Angeles SSN 688 (motto First and Finest, unofficial First Bold Defender). I also have another one from when I left the USS Finback SSN670 (motto All Good Men, which is totally politically incorrect these days, but suck it libaturds).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Navy_Jack
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Los_Angeles_(SSN-688)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Finback_(SSN-670)
Sunny and 54º on the North Coast. It’s not raining right now, but it will. Looks like there will be a break tomorrow morning so we won’t get soaked timing the triathlon tomorrow. That’s a good thing. I don’t mind rain. I hate working in cold, wet rain.
I have one running buddy (only one, because I hate to talk while I run, but he’s a 73-year-old friend that wants to run) that decided that he wants to run with me on Thursdays. He talks a lot, and I don’t. (Did I mention I don’t like to talk?) Anyway, yesterday he was laying into Trump for a while.
I pointed out (correctly) that when the local paving contractor was selected to pave my road, I went to the township council meeting and talked to the rep in charge of roads. I got to point out their past (bad) practices and had good, positive results from that interaction. I NEVER get that kind of reaction above the state level, and rarely at the state level.
National politics are good for bar fights and facebook quarrels. Local politics are where things that affect ME and MY family are more important. I can affect those.
Then we got to talking about the city and its politics. He lives in the city, so it was a more interesting conversation. (Still pretty one-sided, though.)
Wish I had a paved road. Wish I had a good Internet provider.
But… I have sooo much, I shouldn’t complain.
There is something to what you say, JimL.
Counterpoint: the US federal government has arrogated so much power to itself that many state and local issues have nothing that can be decided locally because all the salient aspects are set at the federal level.
–All the way from INDIA, and those are just the ones caught and detained. 550 congolese. 100K taken into custody. I really don’t think the average person comprehends the vast scale of this problem.
In grad school, I saw first hand the desperation of the subcontinent’s upper-middle and upper class. Cheating came as easily as breathing to most of the Indian students in classes with me. Of course, it didn’t help that the university ran an OPT diploma mill in the CS Masters program, including a remedial C class which started with “Hello world.”
Gotta pay the department chair’s $225k annual salary somehow. Even tenured profs were $150k+ when I left.
xkcd: Chernobyl
https://www.xkcd.com/2163/
It is said that the truly great minds can explain how the world works to the rest of us and that we will understand them. Randall has achieved this level of greatness.
Explained at:
https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/2163:_Chernobyl
Oooh, clever word use! SteveF wins today’s prize.
Wizard of Id: the fly
https://www.gocomics.com/wizardofid/2019/06/14
No !
Alley Oop: time machine design
https://www.gocomics.com/alley-oop/2019/06/14
Heh ! Gotta get those details just right.
If I was counting on the garden for food, I’d be hungry. LONG steep learning curve if you aren’t blessed with great conditions. In other news, food is cheap, widely available, and packaged for storage- stock up now!
I still highly recommend “Secondhand Lions” as an adventure on how to raise boys. And how to grow a garden (maybe !). And how to stock said garden with a very large feline. And how to treat traveling salesmen.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ebkrm7u44UI
and
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0327137/
and
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secondhand_Lions
and
https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/secondhand-lions-2003
And the movie was shot in 2002 and set about a mile away from @paul’s house in central Texas about 1960 or so. That is the Texas and Oklahoma that I grew up in.
Swan Eaters: Winnie has not shown up yet !
https://www.gocomics.com/swan-eaters/2019/06/14
Oh no ! And I doubt that Wendigos can read also.
And she left her knife in the tree.
It’s Flag Day.
Is your’s flying?
No but it should be. I noted that several of my neighbors have a flag flying today in their front yards. Way more so than normal.
“Secondhand Lions”, one of my favorite movies, and one of a very, very few I would watch more than once.
… and the emerging truth of the story in Memphis…
‘A lot of confusion’: Memphis in unrest after fatal police-involved shooting fueled by unconfirmed accounts
Excerpt:
A bad actor plus unfounded rumors–the shooting sounds pretty righteous to me.
Man, there is a lot of nice people out there ! I filled up my truck with gas at lunchtime. This older couple (my age !) could not get their truck started next to me so I got out my battery jumper and found that it was undercharged. Next I got out my jumper cables and gave them to the guy to set up. I then started my truck to move it in place to jump his truck. And another guy in a truck pulls up, attaches the jumper cables to his truck, and jumps the guy with the dead 2013 battery. He got his truck going and hands me back my jumper cables. Like I said, a bunch of nice people out there on a hot humid Texas day.
“I Got Shot in a Haptic Vest, and I Walked Away Happy”
https://www.pcmag.com/news/368990/i-got-shot-in-a-haptic-vest-and-i-walked-away-happy
“While the experience of VR seen in movies like ‘Ready Player One’ is still stuck in the realm of fantasy, haptic-feedback suits are now a thing. I got to try two of the best at E3.”
I loved the “Ready Player One” book and movie. And not just because of the dystopian setting.
Y’know, most days I agree with Fred Reed. Not today.
Excerpt:
And they sure as heck know nothing about the massacre in Tiananmen Square.
Methinks ol’ Fred needs to inform his readers as to the causes of the USA’s seeming dysfunctionality. Hint: Think domestic policy, not foreign.
And they sure as heck know nothing about the massacre in Tiananmen Square.
They *kn0w*. The question is whether the current leadership arrangement is providing sufficiently comfortable living standards for the segments of the population who are likely to cause trouble if things get sporty. Obviously, the answer is ‘yes’.
That may change one day. It may not.
Chinese culture is highly amenable to authoritarian rule unlikely to change thanks to Confucian Filial Piety. With my in-laws, everything centers around parents and the Number One Sons, and if you don’t care who is in charge, the family rackets will provide you with a subsistence level of living. Of course, you must never forget who is in charge, challenge that authority, or question the legality of the rackets (and I mean that in the full legal sense of the word) lest you end up outcast from the family unit and left to fend for yourself. Everyone *knows* the truth, complaining about and/or ridiculing the authority behind closed doors, but no one dares speak it in public, especially not in front of the oldsters, who protect their soup bowl by enforcing order (mostly by yelling and screaming until you just want them to shut the f–k up) and especially not in front of the Number One Sons.
Scale that arrangement up to a billion people, and you have Mainland China. And the leadership has nuclear weapons to enforce order as well as … yelling and screaming.
Fred occasionally has a nice idea or a pat turn of phrase, but he’s been out of circulation for a long time.
And the movie was shot in 2002 and set about a mile away from @paul’s house in central Texas about 1960 or so.
I didn’t know that. But it looks like home to me.
I really like the movie and I wouldn’t mind having a lion. Just to freak out the UPS guy. If it eats raccoons and feral hogs, big win!
The DVD is here, somewhere.
And another guy in a truck pulls up, attaches the jumper cables to his truck, and jumps the guy with the dead 2013 battery.
What brand. In Houston heat/humidity? Six years is awesome.
Car batteries always died on me on the coldest, or hottest, day of the year.
I don’t carry jumper cables anymore.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07F1QJNB9/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o04_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1&tag=ttgnet-20
Just finished the Fred piece. What a pile of innuendo and unsupported crap.
I’d line by line it, but it wouldn’t affect Fred, and nobody else cares.
I like the bit about mass shootings. Or the lack of violence in Israel or switzerland… guess what else there is a stunning lack of in those places? And violence in israel? They don’t have gangbangers shooting each other, but they do have palestinian terrorists shooting bombing or knifing people in the streets, and a constant low level of rocket bombardment. Guess that’s not violence, since guns aren’t used.
Outside of a few democrat run shitholes dominated by blacks and grievance politics there is almost NO murder in the US. If you take black crime out of the stats we rise up into the 10 or 20 least violent nations.
Yes, the condition of our cities is a disgrace. I’ve complained about it myself vis the Canadian side of the Falls and the US side. Not much money left over after the gimmiethats get theirs. And the people who live in those places are getting what they pay for.
Chinese engineering? Puleeze. I was there. The place is a shithole with a thin (literally thin) veneer over it. Buildings are one step up from rubble with 1/4″ marble glued on top. Our chinese manufacturers couldn’t hold tolerance or spec. No matter how much help we gave them.
“Anyone with a smartphone can see this.” — maybe when they stop risking life and limb to get here I’ll believe it. Until then, a smartphone is as far from most of the world’s reach as the moon.
Show me the slums in the US where all the kids are wearing cast off T shirts from Africa, instead of the other way around. For half the world or more, our GARBAGE is better than what they have or could make.
US wars? Sure, I’d like a few less. Drain the swamp. Bring them home. Let Germany spend 8% of their GDP on defence or find Russia snipping off bits and pieces. Did Fred forget about The Ukraine? Or Iraq looting Qutar?
“the militarism of the United States, its absurd military expenditures, its huge number of nuclear weapons, its desire to upgrade them, to develop small tactical nuclear weapons, its preparation for nuclear war with specialized flying bunkers–seems nutty. No other country does this. None wants to. “—- and none CAN. Not one of them. Not all of them together. And because of that, they don’t have to worry too much about Japanese militarism, or a host of other things. And who do they come running to when they need money or help?
Speaking of gringos, what would mexico look like without the $$Billions of USD in remittances? Or the maquiladoras? Or for that matter the insatiable desire for illicit drugs?
“the U.S. killed over a million people in Iraq”– really? got any evidence? all those ubiquitous cellphone cameras? wheres the video? The mass graves? Burying 100K a year for the last 10 years?? Over 300 a DAY, day in and day out? And NO ONE has video?
“The country with the largest prison population? The answer is left to the reader as an exercise.”– well, 38% of them are illegal aliens, and for much of the rest, see above with the issues that 4% of the population here causes…
I could go on, but I’ve got dinner to cook.
n
I don’t carry jumper cables anymore.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07F1QJNB9/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o04_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1&tag=ttgnet-20
I carry both a jump battery and jumper cables.
I am going to charge my jump battery tonight.
ADD: I am getting paranoid in my old age. Everything breaks around me.
And another guy in a truck pulls up, attaches the jumper cables to his truck, and jumps the guy with the dead 2013 battery.
What brand. In Houston heat/humidity? Six years is awesome.
Walmart battery. In a Chevy 2500 HD truck. That is double hard duty.
You cannot get that Walmart battery anymore since the battery plant in Denton, Texas closed since that ground water for almost the entire county had measurable amounts of lead in it.
“The country with the largest prison population? The answer is left to the reader as an exercise.”– well, 38% of them are illegal aliens, and for much of the rest, see above with the issues that 4% of the population here causes…
OK, I’ll bite. Who is the 4% of the population ?
MS seems to have resolved the issue with Media Player disc lookups. Glad I waited instead of entering all the track info by hand.
n
Movie night at the pool not sure if I’m going or not.
n
“Who is the 4% of the population ? ”
12% / 2 = 6%
2/3 of 6% = 4%
= percentage of black males between 12 and 60 (approximately, with rounding error)
Who according to the FBI are responsible for 40% of the violent crime in the US.
n
Hey Slim,
Have always admired your acumen, so you undoubtedly know that these lithium jumpers have a shorter life than a typical automotive battery. However, they have lots of other uses, so having one around can be useful in many ways.
And, yuup, YMMV!
” Mexican officials release 90-second recording that they believe is the only known audio of iconic artist Frida Kahlo’s voice
Iconic 20th-century artist Frida Kahlo has one of the best-known faces on the planet, but the world at large has never heard the Mexican painter’s voice – until, possibly, now.”
–Um, NO. total retcon. Never even heard of her until my kid came home from school talking about her.
Mona Lisa, figure from “Scream”, Maddona and Child, DaVinci’s David, those are recognizable faces.
Costco has their lithium jump box on sale, for $59 iirc. My wife used it while camping to charge her phone and tablet.
Never tried to jump a car though.
n
C.F. Evel Knievel
Heh.
UNFAIR!!111!!11!
How dare you cite some of the world’s greatest artists. Annnd, they are WHITE!!
Rayciiist!
I’m SORRY. Hope I am not banned from here.
Oh, wait…
My daughter painted her portrait (from a picture) and it is SUPER creepy… first I’d ever heard of her. And I took Art History 3 times in order to pass it, and worked in the arts for years, so what would I know? I’m just an old white male…..
n
“Young Veteran Believes There Will Be an American Awakening”
https://www.rushlimbaugh.com/daily/2019/06/11/young-veteran-believes-there-will-be-an-american-awakening/
Interesting.
This made me chuckle…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=199&v=l-ieIQFNjWg
spec ops guys decide to rap. It’s rap so there’s obscenity, and profanity.
And made me laugh.
n
h/t borepatch
There’s your problem. At least you are man/woman/shim/sher/rock or whatever you want to identify, to admit your problem. Me, I personally identify as a dick head.
I also only carry a jump battery. I’ve used it several times. Including on my own car. Fortunately, I’ve got a covered space at the condo, so the heat is not so intense. Battery is two years old now and still going strong.
I also only carry a jump battery. I’ve used it several times. Including on my own car. Fortunately, I’ve got a covered space at the condo, so the heat is not so intense. Battery is two years old now and still going strong.
I think that I did not use the jump battery correctly yesterday. It also has a builtin compressor and the controls are modal. Oh well, we got the job done. And now I know more about operating the jump battery.