Fri. July 5, 2019 – another week gone by

By on July 5th, 2019 in Random Stuff

77F and 99%RH this morning. That’s like freezing in the middle of winter. I expect we’ll be over 80 in an hour though. Forecast says over 96F by 10am… beautiful cool and breezy last night after dark. It got pretty stifling at dusk with no breeze, but then quickly got very nice (for TX in summer.)

Well, we’re almost half way through the year…

I have a couple of cherry sized Roma tomatoes on the bush, but that’s it for tomatoes. Grape vines are leafing out again so I think they will survive the caterpillars. The bed with the bleached out zukes has one dead plant and the other is getting lighter every day. Something wrong with the soil that I’m going to need professional help to solve there. Pepper plants from last year continue to provide more than I can eat. Nothing from THIS year’s plants though. Citrus is the same as last week, apples too. Nary a peach although the tree finally looks healthy and full. Cukes are spreading out and still alive, so we might see some veg from them later. Once again, we’d starve if we were counting on the garden. The curve is steep, start climbing.

Lots of seismic activity around the world lately. Who knows, a super volcano or massive quake might be much more likely than I personally planned. Make no mistake, a huge quake in Cali would have far reaching effects on all of us.

Commander Zero had a plumbing problem over at his place, and he reminds us all that FAR MORE personal SHTF problems are solved with greenbacks than bullets. Having your finances in order, and a cash reserve built up, will help you through your most likely disasters. You can usually sell some preps or other property, but you can save a step, time, and getting lower value out than in by having cash.

Speaking of finances and cash… I’m really worried. I think I might be seeing a sea change in the secondary economy, brought about by changes in the larger economy. Not GOOD changes either. My ebay selling has not recovered. I am making a tenth what I was 7 months ago. On the sourcing side, with a few exceptions, pricing is collapsing. With auctions that means few buyers, and little demand for the listed item. With one of my sellers I’m also seeing a shift from surplus sales to bankruptcy sales. Taken together these things could mean the collapse/depression/whatever its name is already begun. I even saw a reference in an article to the overabundance of people reselling (thrifting/yardsale/etc) as a job.

WRT stacking, despite global reasons for price inflation, pork has been on sale here. Stock up if you like it. If you like beef, the failure of the corn crop due to flooding in the Midwest may cause a sell off ahead of higher feed costs for producers. That will be followed by higher prices… and if you can eat out of your freezer, you should be immune to most of the ups and downs.

So, what have you guys done to prep? And if you’ve USED your preps this week, what worked? WHAT DIDN’T????

n

65 Comments and discussion on "Fri. July 5, 2019 – another week gone by"

  1. Greg Norton says:

    First of the Epstein house cleaning?

    Nah. More like Tiger Woods’ Las Vegas connections helping him out. The kind of connections OJ had and should have called 25 years ago when he felt dissed by his ex- and her new boy toy. Would have saved a lot of grief, but the “People vs. OJ Simpson” miniseries was a hoot.

    About 15 years ago, I worked with a golf-obsessed guy who worshiped Tiger Woods like a god, and he always expressed a disturbing amount of irrational anger towards the ex-wife and the press, blaming both for the problems with Woods’ game.

    (Like a *god*. To the point that the guy had all of Earl and Tiger’s “Mike Douglas Show” appearances in the 70s on his laptop.)

    Poor life choices, like sex with cocktail waitresses (!) had nothing to do with Tiger’s career slump, of course.

    Cline doesn’t strike me as the unproductive leech on society type who hung with Epstein … like BJ Klinton (cough). BJ never had a real job in his life except two years teaching law in Arkansas when the voters kicked his a** out in 1980 as part of the Reagan wave.

  2. MrAtoz says:

    Poor life choices, like sex with cocktail waitresses (!)

    Was Crazy Eyes in there somewhere? Maybe too young.

  3. JimB says:

    Yesterday, there was nention of watching fireworks. Our little town has had a modest half hour display at our county fairgrounds, visible throughout the valley without need to go to the usually crowded venue. We usually watched from the comfort of our yard.

    It was supported by donations, and put on by our local Lions Club. Last year there were not enough donations, so there was no show, the first time in decades. This year, by determined fundraising efforts, we had our usual show, but to save cost and because of a scheduling conflict, it was last Saturday.

    It might have been suspended by yesterday’s earthquake.
    Hmm.

  4. Greg Norton says:

    Was Crazy Eyes in there somewhere? Maybe too young.

    Crazy Eyes has a Sugar Daddy, a story just sitting out there waiting for the right young journalist to come along, but that person isn’t Tiger Woods. Tiger, at least, knows better even if his taste runs trashy.

    I’m thinking an X-er or Boomer tech exec who knew her from Westchester. If I was an eager young reporter, I’d draw a mile radius circle around the house where Ocasio-Cortez grew up and start pounding pavement and public records. Plus I’d spend some time in the bar in NYC where she worked, get to be familiar with the regular faces in/out of that place.

    The Indian guy from Dallas who is her chief of staff is the real thinking/power behind the cocktail waitress, but he’s not the Sugar Daddy.

    In Florida, following the public records trail would be easy.

  5. SteveF says:

    Maybe too young.

    Depends on to whom you’re referring. Twelve years ago TidePod Evita would have too young for Tiger Woods but not for Bubba.

    So, what have you guys done to prep? And if you’ve USED your preps this week, what worked?

    Didn’t do anything to prep. I don’t have a safe space* to put anything more except maybe squeeze a few cans into a few places.

    I used preps, after a fashion, in repairing several appliances and other things around the house. Interestingly, I was able to do almost everything with the tools I normally carry in my backpack, with the sole exception being a bigger pair of slip-joint pliers to put the spring clamp back on the “out” hose from the washing machine pump. Decades of learning to make and fix things saved us a decent chunk of money but the main benefit was not needing to wait for someone to fit an on-site visit into his schedule. (I did try to fix the dead microwave, but the failure was in the cheapo touchpad, which was in a sealed module. Replacement modules were almost as expensive as a new microwave and I didn’t think I could get the module apart and back together without damaging the exterior casing, which would of course have been a catastrophe in the eyes of the adults in the house who aren’t me.

    Education of The Brat, just turned 12, continues. Her school has a robotics club which will have several meetings over the summer before starting for real during the school year, and I’ve been “volundrafted” to help. The kids will (in theory) do all of the design, construction, and programming themselves, but having an electrical engineer and programmer to advise, one who has built and programmed industrial robots, may be of some use.

    We got the Home Chemistry Labs kit (via the link at the top of this page) and did the first, “baby steps”, lab. In fact, we did that lab repeatedly. And we failed every single time, culminating in melting the flask in the microwave when we attempted to boil the water out of the sugar water mix. Now sure, fine, I’ve never worked with nylon test tubes and flasks before, only glass, but it seems to me that my appalling ineptitude combined with my daughter’s clumsiness is an insuperable problem. Fortunately my elder son, the chemical engineer, will be coming for a visit in a couple weeks. I’ll order more glassware, both nylon and glass, have The Brat do the lab in front of him, and pick his brains.

    And finally, The Brat is being forced to finish writing and illustrating her children’s story. The biggest problem is the common stumbling block for writers, endlessly revisiting already-written sections rather than banging out new words to complete the first draft. I’ve been advising her and having her look at word counts and “scene complete” numbers and such and then setting her own daily goals and letting her learn from her failure to progress, but she doesn’t seem to be learning. I guess I’ll try a stint of being the taskmaster who sets her to working on specific scenes and see how that works. Anyway, once the first draft is done I’ll edit it with her and explain my suggestions, let her work on the second draft, and then set her on the illustrations. The goal was to have it published on Amazon before school starts in the Fall, but I don’t think she’ll make it.

    * “Secure storage” would have been a more appropriate term, but I was hoping to trigger someone by misusing “safe space”.

  6. Greg Norton says:

    Commander Zero had a plumbing problem over at his place, and he reminds us all that FAR MORE personal SHTF problems are solved with greenbacks than bullets. Having your finances in order, and a cash reserve built up, will help you through your most likely disasters. You can usually sell some preps or other property, but you can save a step, time, and getting lower value out than in by having cash.

    Things would have to be pretty bad for, say, an ounce silver coin to speak louder than an equivalent dollar amount in the form of a Ben Franklin … even if that’s what it takes to buy a loaf of bread.

    Cash is among the minimal preps we do have in place. Before FL enacted their asinine “anti-gouging” laws, I once paid $6/gallon for gas to get to work after a hurricane. Cash. And the operative word is *once*. Gave the guy the $100 … and waited for the change.

    He actually used that goofy marker and acted out the Kabuki to make sure my $100 was genuine. Actual full societal breakdown was a long way off even on that day with half the city dark.

  7. Greg Norton says:

    I’m on PTO today, and driving back from taking my wife to work and picking up my calculator and a reference book from the office, I noticed a crack addict-looking ‘yout’ walking into my subdivision down the new road cut to our neighborhood directly from the Austin city limits and the cr*p on 183.

    He had the requisite Adidas outfit, but he wasn’t a jogger. Not with those emaciated ankles — first thing I noticed.

    APD is out on 183 with binoculars looking to issue $500 tickets to people touching cell phones.

    We’re headed to Houston today. The official reason is to look at the Misson Control restoration at the space center tomorrow, but I need to be away from the work laptop and cell phone at least until Sunday. And the kids have seen enough anime already this summer.

  8. Nick Flandrey says:

    “people touching cell phones.”

    how does that work with Google maps?

    I use my cell in hands free with a mount for mapping all around austin….

    n

  9. Nick Flandrey says:

    “Things would have to be pretty bad for, say, an ounce silver coin to speak louder than an equivalent dollar amount in the form of a Ben Franklin … even if that’s what it takes to buy a loaf of bread.”

    –mainly I was thinking about the prepper who has to sell or pawn a pistol to fix his car. Selling off “tangibles” to have the cash to participate in normal commerce.

    n

  10. Greg Norton says:

    how does that work with Google maps?

    I use my cell in hands free with a mount for mapping all around austin….

    Don’t even think of touching the phone while the vehicle is in motion within the city limits of Austin. State law only prohibits texting; Austin ordinances go much further.

    Yet again, Governor Abbott and the legislature could have established a state-wide standard for phone usage,and even called a special session to do so, but the Governor is not interested in spending political capital to squish the cities Prog agendas when he may need the votes to do something else so the special session failed.

    The cell phone usage standard wasn’t even mentioned in the last regular session. Gotta pass that abortion bill.

    This documentary ruffled a lot of feathers in law enforcement, especially in Texas, in 2010. When the record fell again in 2013 with the help of an online mapping company to certify and coordinate the run, Austin got busy.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uY_7ofmgdh8

    Yes, it is Wil Wright. He held the record in the 80s.

  11. Greg Norton says:

    –mainly I was thinking about the prepper who has to sell or pawn a pistol to fix his car. Selling off “tangibles” to have the cash to participate in normal commerce.

    In the past, I’ve seen normal commerce resume pretty quickly in FL in the wake of hurricanes, but the anti-gouging laws in Texas and Florida now create situations like the “gas shortage” in Central Texas on Labor Day weekend two years ago.

    The upside of the anti-gouging laws is that you’ll know how effective your preps can be even in a temporary grid-down situation.

  12. lynn says:

    BC: brontosaurus cannonball
    https://www.gocomics.com/bc/2019/07/05

    I don’t remember hearing of a frog extinction event ?

  13. Nick Flandrey says:

    Avoid groups. Avoid criminals and the areas they congregate. Just don’t be there…

    Terrifying stampede at Chicago’s Navy Pier leaves 16 injured after three people are stabbed following the July 4 fireworks

    ‘A man punctured his leg after running into a table, three were stabbed following an altercation on the pier and 16 people are hospitalized after being trampled during the exit.’

    FOX32 quoted Chicago officials as saying the stabbing victims are not cooperating with investigators.

    Authorities said all visitors entering Navy Pier were put through a security screening process before the fireworks show, and claim the incident occurred outside of the secured area.

  14. lynn says:

    “Blue Bell licker traced to Lufkin store, identified as juvenile girl from San Antonio”
    https://www.chron.com/news/houston-texas/texas/article/Blue-Bell-licker-could-face-20-years-prison-Texas-14073311.php

    Bad behavior gets her sent to juvy. Hopefully her boyfriend taking the video gets a few days and nights too.

  15. Greg Norton says:

    Bad behavior gets her sent to juvy. Hopefully her boyfriend taking the video gets a few days and nights too.

    Ariana Grande started this meme, licking a donut in a shop and posting the antic on Youtube. She should be in prison too.

    Doesn’t Blue Bell have a plastic layer inside the lid like the other brands?

    I still remember the non-stop Letterman jokes about Blue Bell, right up until Dave’s last show after being fired.

    (Watch the recent Letterman interview with Jerry Seinfeld on Netflix. Pretty interesting stuff. Among other things, Dave drops the line again about being fired but quickly evades the subject when Seinfeld presses for details. A gag order must be part of the deal, and Letterman goes along, I’m guessing, to protect the mistress more than his wife or child.)

  16. Nick Flandrey says:

    According to the previous article BB loads the containers, then puts them upside down in a cooler to temper. That process seals the ice cream to the lid. “It should be easy to tell the force required to remove the sealed lid.” to paraphrase the article.

    n

  17. mediumwave says:

    Bad behavior gets her sent to juvy. Hopefully her boyfriend taking the video gets a few days and nights too.

    “Because she is a juvenile offender, her identity is protected under section 58.104 of the Texas Family Code.”

    If the pic at the top of the article is her and her BF, her name, address, etc., etc. are already all over the ‘net.

    A very rare pic of the perp in the wild.

  18. Nick Flandrey says:

    We did goofy sh!t as kids, but we didn’t spit on peoples’ food. And putting the deed up on the internet is a special kind of stupid.

    that said, I’m increasingly wary of using the power of the state against kids. Cops taking kids out of school in handcuffs. Arrests for fighting on the school yard. This is a prank, dumb, gross, potentially injuring someone- but those are the definitions of a prank.

    This is another example of using the state instead of the parents, and I don’t like where that ends up.

    n

  19. lynn says:

    Doesn’t Blue Bell have a plastic layer inside the lid like the other brands?

    Not to my knowledge. Neither does HEB ice cream as I have verified this many times.

    And the daughter has lectured me several times about double dipping in the ice cream at the house.

  20. lynn says:

    that said, I’m increasingly wary of using the power of the state against kids. Cops taking kids out of school in handcuffs. Arrests for fighting on the school yard. This is a prank, dumb, gross, potentially injuring someone- but those are the definitions of a prank.

    The stocks used to be very handy for misbehavior like this. I’m not sure about public whippings.

  21. SteveF says:

    This is another example of using the state instead of the parents, and I don’t like where that ends up.

    What’s the alternative? I’d be all in favor of making her or her parents pay for all of the ice cream in the store’s freezer, but what are the odds of that happening? I’d be in favor of beating the bejesus out of her and telling her she’ll get worse if she ever does it again, but what are the odds of that happening? Do you think the parents will inflict any meaningful punishment at all, let alone restitution to the store and possibly to the customers?

  22. Nick Flandrey says:

    Nope and that is a problem with non-homogeneous and non-local human groups.

    The bigger problem is that that kind of behavior leads to a loss of trust. It’s one more step toward a low trust society. She must be punished, and as a minor her parents have financial responsibility and should be made to pay too. It has to be public to restore the trust she took away.

    n

  23. Nick Flandrey says:

    Huh, who knew?

    Being lazy and eating too much ARE the main causes of obesity even if your genes can make you gain more weight

    Obesity rates have soared in people with and without the ‘fat gene’, study finds
    Researchers said this suggests lifestyle factors play the largest role
    Experts said genetic makeup has a minor influence on our weight outcomes”

    you know, besides EVERYONE.

    n

  24. Nick Flandrey says:

    Who would do such a thing?

    “Moment mob of shoplifters overrun Wisconsin outlet store and steal $30,000 of clothes in brazen 30-second heist

    Ten men walked into North Face at Pleasant Prairie Premium Outlets Monday
    The mob quickly grabbed armfuls of jackets and other clothes and rushed out
    Store employees were too scared to confront the ‘overwhelming’ band of thieves
    The brazen heist happened at around 7.45pm, about an hour before closing
    Investigators believe it’s an organized group who pre-planned the ‘flash mob’
    Police are examining surveillance video from the store to identify thieves”

    Oh, yeah. Them.

    n

  25. Nick Flandrey says:

    Something is seriously wrong with the culture at Rikers, this is not the first article about the guards there, esp. the female ones.

    “Shocking moment off-duty correction officers from notorious Rikers Island have a vicious catfight outside NYC nightclub after one colleague gave oral sex to a co-worker on the dancefloor”

    n

  26. lynn says:

    “Attention-Starved AOC Pulls Stunt at Border”
    https://www.rushlimbaugh.com/daily/2019/07/02/attention-starved-aoc-pulls-stunt-at-border/

    “RUSH ARCHIVE: I think this woman gets off on attention. I think this woman gets off tweaking people on our side. I don’t think she means this for a minute. I think she’s just having fun watching people blow up. If she does believe it, then she’s so stupid that there’s nothing to do about it. … I think there is a part of her that just can’t go a day without getting noticed, and, like anybody, if you get used to that and then people get used to you — and so you “getting noticed” kind of starts to decline — then you have to rev it up. It’s kind of like having a line or a boundary. It’s there for a while and you don’t have to cross it to get noticed. But then after a while, people are so accustomed to your either stupidity, or your shock value, or whatever that no longer shocks anybody. So you gotta go over the line.”

    As usual, Rush is right.

  27. lynn says:

    Being lazy and eating too much ARE the main causes of obesity even if your genes can make you gain more weight

    No, it is the fault of my parents and their parents and their parents and their parents !!!

    I do have one way to lose weight. Get Lyme disease. My daughter has lost 40+ lbs over the last 12 months since she is having so many gastro problems now. Add her new anemia symptom into that and she is just not doing very well. Her doc gave her an IV infusion of iron the other day and she turned up allergic to it. So we are getting ready to start giving her regular blood transfusions.

  28. lynn says:

    One of my aunts just posted about her new diet. “Day 12 without chocolate. Lost the hearing in my left eye.”

  29. JimB says:

    Wisconsin outlet store

    Well, there you go. If it had been Texas, all of them would have been shot.

  30. paul says:

    I do have one way to lose weight. Get Lyme disease.

    From your descriptions, losing a leg would be better than Lyme. And the way my leg feels some days, well. But with my luck I’d be on crutches full time plus get to “enjoy” the phantom pain.

    I think I’ll stick with cutting out the sugar. And carbs. And getting offa my butt.

    I really do hope Daughter gets better. The sooner the better.

  31. MrAtoz says:

    Unfortunately, at 64 years of age, if I look at a potato I’ll gain weight. Same with wheat, corn and rice.

  32. lynn says:

    “Mock Frederica Wilson and Go to Jail”
    https://pjmedia.com/trending/mock-frederica-wilson-and-go-to-jail/

    “Did you know that it’s illegal to mock a member of Congress? Even if you didn’t know that, it’s still no excuse. If you do it, you will be tracked down and thrown in jail. Frederica Wilson is done playing around with you people.”

    Hat tip to: ??? I forgot where I got this jewel from.

  33. Ray Thompson says:

    Unfortunately, at 64 years of age, if I look at a potato I’ll gain weight. Same with wheat, corn and rice.

    Ha, just reading that caused me to gain 3 pounds.

  34. lynn says:

    I really do hope Daughter gets better. The sooner the better.

    Thanks, me too. Reading about Lyme Anemia on the internet is not encouraging.

  35. lynn says:

    The bigger problem is that that kind of behavior leads to a loss of trust. It’s one more step toward a low trust society. She must be punished, and as a minor her parents have financial responsibility and should be made to pay too. It has to be public to restore the trust she took away.

    I’ll bet that Blue Bell and Walmart now know who she is and who her parent(s) are. I wonder how public that they can make the lawsuit since she is a “juvenile” ?

  36. Nick Flandrey says:

    Wonder how many followers she has? Europe says 30K and you’re a public figure….

    and no longer entitled to privacy protections.

    n

  37. Nick Flandrey says:

    Ok, pc question for the brain trust….

    I’m working on my surveillance NVR pc (costco dell running win10 and iSpy NVR software.) The ispy app has never run well on this machine. Network utilization maxes at 100mbs on a gigabit enet connection, it restarts at random, and one camera gets dropped all the freaking time. SO I started poking around.

    Dell installs some bandwidth managers doing gods only know what to shape traffic without my knowledge or consent, so I went to the interwebs and killed it.

    Smartbyte Network Service is one.
    River Dynamic Bandwidth Management is another.

    unfortunately when I killed smartbyte (following the directions on dell.com) I no longer could connect to ANY website, getting a sit and spin while waiting for TLS handshake, and then failing when something couldn’t be verified. Turn it back on and viola, I can get to web pages again.

    Anyone got any idea how to kill this without breaking my browsing?

    I don’t want or need packet inspection or shaping by some 3rd party app with a bad reputation for problems.

    I also killed the dell support assistant. NO I don’t want to be hectored to install drivers and hectored some more even after I did….

    n

  38. RickH says:

    @nick

    – check DNS settings for the network adapter, change to 8.8.4.4 and 8.8.8.8
    – IPCONFIG /FLUSHDNS
    – Put the local domain in the hosts file

    Maybe…

  39. SteveF says:

    If you put an entry or two into your hosts file to block attempts to contact one particular “phone home” site, will the PC still work?

    Try the TOR browser, which establishes connections to other nodes with little or no DNS needed.

  40. Nick Flandrey says:

    Ok, I turned the service (smartbyte) back on and I can get to websites. Turn it off, and I can’t. DNS was set to 8.8.8.8 and was working as I could ping microsoft.com and get the IP address.

    with the service off, I rebooted, and that didn’t fix it either.

    Turning the service on- the web works normally. Turn it off, the web doesn’t work. Nothing mentioned about the web not working in the instructions for turning it off. It has a component called “smartbytes telemetry” which I also turned off. I don’t like anything tattling away to someone. It stayed off, and doesn’t seem to affect browsing.

    The river bandwidth service stayed off thru the reboot too .

    I can leave it on, which is the short answer. It probably wasn’t the problem with the NVR software (which ran fine on my older win8.2 machine, no glitches, reboots, or dropping cams.) That’s why I suspected some dell issue and started looking there.

    n

    (fwiw, I’m going to d/l the 32 bit version of iSpy and try it on the same machine)

  41. Nick Flandrey says:

    argh. sloppy sloppy programmers.

    32 bit installs on top of existing 64 bit version with no conflict resolution or archiving. which results in a program start ‘boot loop’ behavior…

    So run the 64bit ‘repair’ option… and at least get cams and NVR back up. We’ll see if it’s any more stable…

    n

  42. Nick Flandrey says:

    Ex-Army IT specialist is the LAST phrase I’d use to describe this murdering a$$hole. But it couldn’t be an agenda, nah….

    “Cops find body of Utah student Mackenzie Lueck, 23: Grief-stricken police chief reveals her remains were discovered in a canyon a week after an ex-Army IT specialist was arrested for her murder”

    “One time illegal immigrant Nigerian with a history of violence against women and petty crimes” would be more accurate, and add ‘black’ and ‘white’ in the right places to make it inflammatory if you want yellow journalism…

  43. Nick Flandrey says:

    I’m sure this isn’t any cause for concern…

    “Record number of African migrants are trying to enter US through its southern border with Mexico as they flee conflict in Cameroon and Democratic Republic of the Congo

    Mexican government has recorded at least 1,900 migrants from Africa who plan to claim asylum at the southern United States border
    The figure has nearly tripled in the first four months of 2019 compared to the same period in 2018
    Most of the migrants are from Cameroon and the Democratic Republic of Congo
    Marilyne Tatang is eight month pregnant and said she has spent almost $5,000 to cross nine borders in two months to reach Mexico from Cameroon
    The number of undocumented African migrants found by authorities in Mexico quadrupled compared to five years ago, reaching nearly 3,000 people in 2018
    African migrants can obtain a visa that allows them free passage through Mexico for 20 days, after which they cross into the United States and ask for asylum”

    –8 months pregnant. Anchor baby. And WTF did she get the 5 large?

    n

  44. lynn says:

    –8 months pregnant. Anchor baby. And WTF did she get the 5 large?

    George Soros, et al, …
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_Society_Foundations

  45. lynn says:

    “Petroleum continues to dominate U.S. energy consumption”
    https://www.hydrocarbonprocessing.com/news/2019/07/petroleum-continues-to-dominate-us-energy-consumption

    “Petroleum, natural gas, and coal—have accounted for at least 80% of energy consumption in the United States for well over a century. Overall energy consumption in the United States reached a record high in 2018 at 101 quadrillion British thermal units (Btu), of which more than 81 quadrillion Btu were from fossil fuels. Despite the increase, the fossil fuel share of total U.S. energy consumption in 2018 increased only slightly from 2017 and was the second-lowest share since 1902.”

    “The increase in fossil fuel consumption in 2018 was driven by increases in petroleum and natural gas consumption. Coal consumption fell by 4.3% in 2018, the fifth consecutive annual decline. U.S. consumption of coal peaked in 2005 and has declined nearly 42% since then. U.S. coal consumption fell to 687 million short tons in 2018, the lowest level of coal consumption in the United States since the 1970s.”

    AOC and her ilk want to make dirt farmers using mules of all of us again.

  46. ITGuy1998 says:

    @Nick – try downloading the NIC driver from Dell’s support site. Once you have it, can you uninstall smartbyte? If not, then disable. Install the NIC driver you downloaded and see if it works.

  47. SteveF says:

    AOC and her ilk want to make dirt farmers using mules of all of us again.

    We won’t all be dirt farmers. The leaders — the morally enlightened — will be above all that.

  48. lynn says:

    AOC and her ilk want to make dirt farmers using mules of all of us again.

    We won’t all be dirt farmers. The leaders — the morally enlightened — will be above all that.

    Well of course, that goes without saying. Some people are more equal than others.

    And I am not even sure that they are going to allow us to use mules for plowing.

  49. lynn says:

    The “Complete List of Post-Apocalyptic, Prepper, and Dystopian Fiction Books” have been updated.
    https://www.prepperpress.com/complete-list-of-post-apocalyptic-prepper-and-dystopian-fiction-books/

    Somebody just posted “Under a Graveyard Sky, To Sail a Darkling Sea, Islands of Rage and Hope, Strands of Sorrow – John Ringo”. I have no idea how I forgot these excellent books.

  50. Greg Norton says:

    Ten men walked into North Face at Pleasant Prairie Premium Outlets Monday

    Is North Face still a thing for urban ‘youts’? The Metropolis parka was the female status symbol of choice the Winter I worked in Downton Seattle, but I didn’t see much of the logo in Chicago in March, with Canada Goose being the big brand on all the Chinese tourists.

  51. Greg Norton says:

    Hat tip to: ??? I forgot where I got this jewel from.

    That story was on ZeroHedge a few days ago.

    Frederica Wilson is a loon. And Florida Democrats still can’t figure out why they don’t hold any state-wide offices except Agriculture Commissioner.

  52. Greg Norton says:

    Anyone got any idea how to kill this without breaking my browsing?

    If it isn’t a huge pain, reinstall Windows from an ISO downloaded from Microsoft’s web site.

    Nuke it from orbit. It is the only way to be sure.

    I got frustrated with the bloatware on my T470 ThinkPad, wiped the OS, and installed clean. Best thing I ever did.

    The “bandwidth manager” is spyware, probably some kind of transparent proxy sending the addresses to Dell.

    The biggest problem will be drivers.

  53. Greg Norton says:

    @Jenny – Dang. Central Florida weather. Except Central Florida gets about 20 minutes of rain most Summer afternoons, cooling things down and chasing the amateurs out of the theme parks

    https://www.accuweather.com/en/weather-news/sweltering-heat-wave-produces-all-time-record-high-in-anchorage-on-independence-day/70008741

  54. CowboySlim says:

    Hang on JimB, just had earthquake here in Huntington Beach. Much stronger than yesterday here.

  55. CowboySlim says:

    7.1 near Ridgecrest.

  56. Jenny says:

    @Greg
    It’s a dry heat.
    Long ago I registered alaskansforglobalwarming.com
    Then I didn’t do anything with it and eventually let the domain registration lapse. Kinda wish I’d hung into it.

    It certainly is warm out. There have been multiple small fires the last couple days.

    Re: bluebell ice cream shenanigans. Beat the bejeezesus out of her and her videographer and call it good. Jeez. This isn’t complicated. 20 years?

  57. JimB says:

    Yup, sitting outside. Comfortable. House seems OK, but will look closer when light.

    Cars outside. Power still on. Just had a brief BIG aftershock. Fortunately it is not winter.

    More later.

  58. Nick Flandrey says:

    Hang on tight fellas!

    n

    (might want to turn your gas off preemptively.)

  59. brad says:

    African migrants in Mexico – pretty astounding that they manage to cross the Atlantic. Anyhow, welcome to being Europe: these are the same kind of folk who cross the Mediterranean. Asylum? They are economic migrants, pure and simple.

    I remain convinced that the Australian solution is the only answer possible: strict border enforcement. Right now, investing their life savings into a risky journey is clearly worth it. Remove the incentive, and they will stop coming.

  60. MrAtoz says:

    “Record number of African migrants are trying to enter US through its southern border with Mexico as they flee conflict in Cameroon and Democratic Republic of the Congo

    I guess Mexico just lets them in. “Where ya heading?” “The FUSA” “OK, keep on moving.”

  61. Nick Flandrey says:

    The article says they get a 20 day visa to move thru MX….

    THRU being the operative word…

    n

  62. MrAtoz says:

    I’m sure they all have passports with the visa page open for a stamp. Definition of a shithole country.

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