No idea what the weather is like, probably 74F and 99%RH if trends continue [77F and 90%RH at 6am- not as cool as hoped]. With all the weather in the atlantic and stuff brewing in the Gulf, we could get anything.
So the Iranians used drones to attack the Saudis. Huh. Leaving aside for a minute WHY they would do that, did ANYONE here who pays attention see any hostile and aggressive moves coming? Or is it that it’s Iran through the Yemenis, who the Saudis have been using as punching bags and a way to blood their troops for the last year or so?
I certainly wasn’t thinking in terms of an attack directly on the Saudis. Where de flock did this come from?
The biggest take away from this for me, is that once someone proves you can do something (4 minute mile, school shooting, weaponized drones) then others jump in and do it again.
I can’t help thinking about the literal tons of fentanyl the chinese have been shipping into North America as their version of the Opium wars. Let’s just assume for a minute that no DRUG dealer or cartel needs multiple hundreds of pounds of a substance that has an effective dose the size of a couple of grains of salt. There aren’t enough junkies on the planet for the amount of that stuff the cops are interdicting, let alone what must be getting through. So why handle it? It’s like a nuclear bomb in that quantity. It’s dangerous to handle. Where’s it going to end up?
Welcome to the drone wars. Stay away from crowds.
n
Just as a point of reference on the site. I am using a laptop for one of the teachers laptop, 1920×1080, and the font used is really terrible. Vertical lines are bold such as the upstroke on the “d” and “f” while the other parts of the letters are slim.
Can’t please everyone and this is just merely as an FYI.
@ray, I’ve had that happen in various places, although not here. Try running the control that lets you ‘tune’ your display (cleartype).
Or the lappy might have a weird resolution, or the fonts may not scale propperly.
n
Just as a point of reference on the site. I am using a laptop for one of the teachers laptop, 1920×1080, and the font used is really terrible. Vertical lines are bold such as the upstroke on the “d” and “f” while the other parts of the letters are slim.
Can’t please everyone and this is just merely as an FYI.
Try playing around with the font scaling percentages (125%, 133%, etc.) until you find something comfortable. I’ll also second the ClearType tuning, but I’m not sure how much difference it will make on a school system bulk purchase laptop.
If it is a 14″ laptop, 1920×1080 is an odd size to get the fonts comfortable in my experience.
My personal 14″ ThinkPad is 1366×768, deliberately ordered that way.
My 14″ work laptop is double that in each dimension, and I set the scale at 200%.
The manufacturers have been pushing 14″ 1080p and 15″ 1366×768 displays on the least expensive models over the last year.
I assume exaggeration or outright lies when it comes to reports of seized drugs. They’ll round up, include packaging material, include cut material, include the weight of stuff which was grabbed even though it had nothing to do with drugs. And the cops will just make things up if they need to justify a raid or a questionable warrant. Nor do I have much faith in the ability of the “news” media to accurately relate what they’re told: aside from typos in the numbers, they’ll change grams to ounces or even pounds. In the case of the news, I’ll assume it’s carelessness rather than agenda; in the case of the police it has to be assumed to be self-promotion and butt covering.
Iran attacks Saudia Arabia? Possible, sure. But other people also sympathize with Yemen.
Or we can go full conspiracy-theory: the military-industrial complex has been trying to find an excuse to attack Iran for year now. Why, I don’t understand – surely they’ve made enough of a mess in the Middle East, but there it is. It would be so easy to lose a couple of Predators, handing them over to someone in Iraq (where the launch apparently originated), with instructions exactly what to do with them.
This might even be done by some element of The Swamp, without bothering to inform any higher-ups – so the ignorance and accusations are actually genuine. Want to bet that Blackwater can get drones if they really want to? And it’s just another item in a black budget assigned to some 0ther project.
Of course, my absolute and sincere trust in the US government precludes any such suspicions…
WRT the drone attacks, why aren’t Feinstein and Pelosi yappity-yapping about the effects of CO2 generation and global warming?
School issued laptop for the teacher. Locked down fairly tight by the clueless IT staff so not much can be changed. I guess locking stuff down keeps the system from getting compromised. Although some of the decisions made on resources I have to really question the decision process. Also not running in the native resolution for the display which may be the root cause of the problem. Loathe to change because it is the teacher’s school issued laptop.
Or we can go full conspiracy-theory: the military-industrial complex has been trying to find an excuse to attack Iran for year now. Why, I don’t understand – surely they’ve made enough of a mess in the Middle East, but there it is. It would be so easy to lose a couple of Predators, handing them over to someone in Iraq (where the launch apparently originated), with instructions exactly what to do with them.
Multiple reasons immediately spring to mind:
– The Deep State is still embarrassed that their puppet government from 40 years ago was overthrown in Iran.
– The defense companies are in trouble without a war, especially Boeing — the 737Max won’t go away … but SLS might.
– Investor patience is running out on the shale “miracle”, and $100/barrel oil would revive the oil industry in the US.
If we’re lucky, Putin will be the adult in the room … again. As Dr. Pournelle would probably add if he were available to comment at this moment, Persians are Caucasians, long lost Russian cousins, and Putin would probably prefer to keep the Iranians where the are in the neighborhood of his southern border. Russia needs more Russians around … or at least as close as they can get in the population.
I am LOVING the new Previous and Next hyper links at the top of the Web page when I am mobile ! ! !
Trivia I forgot last night:
Rick Ocasek produced the “Blue” Weezer album which includes “Buddy Holly”.
Every Windows 95 CD shipped to consumers included the Spike Jonze “Buddy Holly” video. As long as one of those CDs sits is a corporate file room somewhere (effectively, until the end of time), Ocasek’s production work lives on.
RIP
Whites need not apply: Campus sci-tech symposium to only feature scholars of color
My first thought after reading the headline was “Great! Here’s a chance for the people of color to showcase their STEM chops unimpeded by their melanin-deprived oppressors!” But then I saw the article’s subhead: Event at Williams College to explore sci-tech’s ‘relationship to society’
IOW, the usual touchy-feely twaddle from the Sosh dept.
Sigh.
Some good ideas in this article, I think a weeping water spout would be just as effective, as would sprinklers on a random cycle…
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-7461899/Online-thread-sees-people-calling-cities-installed-anti-homeless-architecture.html
n
Meet the Quds 1
From a picture in the article: “What kind of society do we live in where homelessness is solved with spikes.”
If memory serves, spikes were quite popular in the Middle Ages, when heads on spikes adorned city gates. 🙂
(Like “undocumented immigrant, “homeless” and “homelessness” are horribly inaccurate terms for the persons and situations they describe. Anyone have a suggestion for better ones? Keep it clean, now! 😀 )
Event at Williams College to explore sci-tech’s ‘relationship to society’
Cheap!
https://www.williams.edu/studentaccounts/tuition-fees/
That’s a lot of money to learn the kind of self hate that will keep psychologists busy for the rest of your life….
n
Jeez, $56k, that’s quite the tuition bill. May I just point out that NMSU – an unknown but actually very decent school – has a resident tuition rate of $3k, and a non-resident rate of $11k, for a full credit load.
It’s hard to imagine what Williams offers that could possibly be worth 5 to 18 times as much money.
It’s hard to imagine what Williams offers that could possibly be worth 5 to 18 times as much money.
I don’t think it will be long before Williams is yet another defunct MA private college.
When Newbury College, with a similar tuition pricetag, closed at the end of the last academic year, the school didn’t have a single full-pay student. Everyone was on some kind of scholarship.
The small, 50 year-old Christian college near where I grew up in FL closed a few years ago with a still-healthy endowment and a choice piece of real estate on Old Tampa Bay. I don’t know the story about other schools, but that one was definitely suspicious.
There is an upper limit on the staff to student ratio, in the real world. There is an upper limit on the number of students that can be convinced to go to your school. There is an upper limit to the longevity of your endowment fund in a NIRP or ZIRP investing environment. Even with .gov guarantees there is an upper limit on the number of parents and students willing to keep adding debt to their already big pile.
Some combination of these things will kill most of the smaller schools eventually.
n
Well, I got some of the tree trimming done before the rain started. Bad enough being up on the roof, not gonna do it with wet shingles. Every year I trim our live oak back 3-6 feet. I’m trying to move it away from the roof without killing the big limbs. If you cut all the leaves and small branches at the end off, the limb dies.
That’s one of the reasons I don’t “horsetail” my big oak. I want the suckers to develop into big bunches of branches and leaves so I have somewhere to cut back to. I also believe that lightening the ends of the long horizontal branches makes it more resilient in high wind.
In any case, I don’t want leaves or branches sweeping the roof or banging into my antennas.
n
“Jeez, $56k, that’s quite the tuition bill”
I’m pretty sure that college pricing is like healthcare. Very few people pay full rate, except the white middle class.
n
I’m pretty sure that college pricing is like healthcare. Very few people pay full rate, except the white middle class.
The student loan program was nationalized to support Obamacare, and the loan standards were loosened. Tuition costs have gone through the roof since then.
A big deal got made in the press earlier this year about a dentist in CA with $1 million in student loans, but Navient (formerly Sallie Mae) dropped the bomb that they have over 200 individuals with balances at least that large.
“Monday afternoon update: Significant rainfall likely coming to Texas”
https://spacecityweather.com/monday-afternoon-update-significant-rainfall-likely-coming-to-texas/
Here we go again, another frog choker after no rain for two months.
“LA backs record-breaking solar and battery plant”
https://www.theconstructionindex.co.uk/news/view/la-backs-record-breaking-solar-and-battery-plant
400 MW peak power over 2,650 acres. That math does not work large scale.
From @Greg yesterday:
If you still want an iguana recipe book, nature … as well as Amazon … abhors a vacuum:
https://www.amazon.com/KWIKC-west-Iguana-killers-club-ebook/dp/B078KSBTQQ/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=iguana+cookbook&qid=1568643975&sr=8-1&tag=ttgnet-20
Might be worth considering for your prep stash. If Houston, like Naples or Fort Myers, isn’t prone to freezing, don’t worry, the iguana supply is on its way.
Hopefully Houston’s biennial freeze event is enough to keep those guys out. I understand that they have a nasty bite too.
Hopefully Houston’s biennial freeze event is enough to keep those guys out. I understand that they have a nasty bite too.
If you have gators, iguanas will be there before too long.
If you have gators, iguanas will be there before too long.
Shoot, there was an alligator just caught in Chicago. That climate is not … temperate.
https://people.com/pets/alligator-caught-chicago-humboldt-park/
And yes, we have hundreds of thousands of alligators in the Houston area. You go swimming at your own risk around here. I had a five foot long alligator in the front pond a month ago but he / she only hung around a week.
So the Iranians used drones to attack the Saudis. Huh. Leaving aside for a minute WHY they would do that, did ANYONE here who pays attention see any hostile and aggressive moves coming? Or is it that it’s Iran through the Yemenis, who the Saudis have been using as punching bags and a way to blood their troops for the last year or so?
I certainly wasn’t thinking in terms of an attack directly on the Saudis. Where de flock did this come from?
Yemen has been in a civil war for about four or six years now, who knows. The Christians in South Yemen are fighting the muslims in North Yemen. I am not sure which side the Saudis have been on, maybe both.
One of the factions in Yemen (the muslim shia supported by Iran) have been firing missiles into Saudi Arabia for over a year now.
https://www.mei.edu/publications/iran-backed-yemeni-rebels-fire-another-missile-saudi-arabia
And yes, we have hundreds of thousands of alligators in the Houston area. You go swimming at your own risk around here. I had a five foot long alligator in the front pond a month ago but he / she only hung around a week.
Gators are shy if people don’t feed them. “Nuisance” gators were probably fed by clueless tourists or, worse, locals who should know better.
They also useful since they keep the duck populations under control. You don’t want too many ducks hanging around the pond since they carry salmonella.
All fraud. Check the many fold overrun on the bullet train.
https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2019-09-15/california-bullet-train-land-acquisition