Cool and damp this morning in Houston. Dew is heavy on the ground. I’m hoping for sunlight and warm soon.
To the readers who are believers and who follow this calendar, I wish you a glorious Feast of the Resurrection. If you have to wait a bit, please remind me when the day comes so I can offer you good wishes as well.
If you are a believer of an older tradition… and celebrate Passover, I wish you well.
And if a believer of a still older tradition, Happy Feast of Hestia/Esther.
Whatever your faith or lack of faith, or even if you reject the idea of faith, I think we can all celebrate being alive, which is not guaranteed nor mandated, especially in these unsettled times.
If you are so inclined, don’t forget to prep you spirit, as well as mind and body.
nick
Sure, if the USA would hand them $50 trillion, they would happily take it. This is more of the philosophy of W.C. Fields: “It’s morally wrong to allow a sucker to keep his money.”.
What most people forget, or perhaps never realized: fusion power is not trying to duplicate the Sun. In the Sun, fusion is actually quite rare: by volume, the sun generates about the same amount of power as a good compost heap. It is just a very large compost heap.
Commercial fusion is trying to go far, far beyond that. Personally, I’m not convinced that commercial fusion is possible.
Popcorn. I don’t know what Musk is up to with Twitter, but it’s not about buying the company. Maybe he just enjoys watching the progs all squirm? Eventually, he will sell his stake at a profit, and move on to something else…
You may have read that the Austrian Chancellor visited Russia. Apparently, he has (or had) a solid professional relationship with Putin, and thought he could make some headway.
He came away with the impression that: Putin believes Russia is winning the war in the Ukraine. In other words, the guy is surrounded by people telling him what he wants to hear, and is completely cut off from reality. Oh, and also, it’s not a war at all, but just a military operation.
Meanwhile, the Russian foreign minister recently issued a statement that Ukraine needs to stop attacking Russia, or else Russia might have to declare a real war.
This does not bode well…
The “Fantastic Beasts” series struck me as Warner and JK Rowling attempting to rip off Matt Smith era “Doctor Who”, arguably the modern peak of that franchise. The first flick was fun enough to be forgiven, but then the studio and author started having to apologize to the Twitter mob for various offenses … like casting Johnny Depp … period … and Rowling’s continued “foot in mouth” problems with transgender women.
For now, when you are in charge of a multi-billion dollar franchise with books, movies, plays, and, soon, three theme park lands totally dedicated to your world building, at a certain point, stop digging. From what I saw last year at this time, it hadn’t hurt LGBTQXYZ attendance at the Hagrid motorcycle ride in Orlando, including two women I assume were on that spectrum chewing out a Universal ride attendant over the queuing system preventing them from just showing up and riding on a whim.
I had mixed feelings about “Everything Everywhere All At Once”. We saw it at Alamo Drafthouse, and the theater chain ran its usual excellent preshow, including clips from previous Michelle Yeoh movies which were much more fun, particularly “Police Story 3” where she matched Jackie Chan stunt for stunt, including the one which nearly got her killed:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hTv7HXqqqXA
Michelle Yeoh did not have a stunt double at the time. She may now, at 60, but I would be surprised.
@Ray – I bought this gadget for our USB-C devices when travelling. It really does charge the low end Apple Silicon laptops in a lot smaller form factor than the adapter Apple provides with the M1 Air and 13″ MacBook Pro.
I’ll be able to speak to durability after the 4th.
https://us.anker.com/collections/for-laptops/products/a2667
At church in a little while, our preacher will be saying “He has risen” to us. We will respond “He has risen indeed !”. He has been saying this to us for 33 years on Easter Sunday.
Then we will go to Golden Corral for Sunday Breakfast.
In Tarpon Springs, FL the traditional response to “He has risen”being spoken at the Greek Orthodox church is at least one pipe bomb exploding in the vicinity.
“Greek Easter”. I’m sure the news will have the obligatory story about a kid injuring himself while trying to make a bomb over the next week.
And, of course, next Saturday, lambs will be staked in the yards at the old family houses, waiting for the inevitable. Clueless beyond knowing something isn’t right with the way his handlers look at him.
Bleating. Biden style.
Baaaaa … Baaaaa … Baaaaa …
BIG thank you to everyone who advised me and gave encouragement yesterday about my move to a smart phone. I feel much less nervous about it, and more prepared for the decisions I need to make.
Really appreciate ya’ll sharing your expertise and experience.
Thanks for the Easter wishes, Nick. I hope you and your family and everyone here has a glorious Easter!
I had planned lamb for dinner, but Paul wanted lamb chops for our anniversary a couple of weeks ago, so we are having a rib roast instead. Deviled eggs, of course. Asparagus, and creamed pearl onions. Hollandaise sauce for the asparagus, which Paul also likes on his roast, so that will be our only gravy.
I discovered some years back that the packaged hollandaise sauce mix with a little fresh lemon squeezed in is almost as good as homemade. It never breaks, and it holds well, so I can make it early, and just reheat at serving time.
We had Eggs Goldenrod yesterday for brunch. Paul surprised me, apparently he’d never had creamed eggs before. Anyway, he really really liked it, and said he hopes he doesn’t have to wait for Easter to have it again.
Egg hunt has been completed. Spoils are being divided.
Eggs were decorated late yesterday after our return home.
D2, literally vibrating. I love that she still loves this stuff. Every year is the last year for something, and this might be it for an egg hunt. Although, sneering and mocking on the part of D1 ended the instant the door opened and the hunt was on.
WRT the decorating, the kits are getting sophisticated. I picked one up that does two colors of ink in a plastic bag, then when dry you add rub on stars. The purple and dark blue made awesome swirly colors and the white stars looked really good. I F’d up the rest by not confirming we had the dye tablets in stock. I was sure we did. We didn’t. Wife got out paints, but D2, who is driving this bus, wanted trad dye. I improvised by making onion skin color, while heading to the store. I got the LAST trad kit. Plenty of alternative coloring kits left.
Kid was not impressed by the onion skin result. I should have stopped when it was golden orange, but let it go to brown… oh well. Obscure knowledge for the attempt if not the win.
Our traditional breakfast of eggs benedict (with blender hollandaise sauce) is on the table, so I’m headed that way.
Happy Easter!
n
Lower than Windows XP? Possible, but, sooner or later, Hollywood will pull the plug on streaming using Windows 10 or earlier, IMHO the reason Redmond released Windows 11 in what is essentially a beta.
https://www.pcmag.com/news/windows-11-adoption-is-lower-than-windows-xp-survey-claims
Don’t count on keeping Windows 11 with full functionality on unsupported hardware once the streaming services lower the boom.
That’s mighty mean-spirited of you. Bishops have a right to a living. Just like tapeworms and pubic lice do.
Preteens and early teens are nothing but an unending joy, right?
There’s a reason that traditional age of adulthood is right around that age, in many cultures all around the world. The point at which the kids can be married off or kicked out. Something to bring up in casual conversation…
Yeah, streaming… mostly direct to dvd craptastic garbage done by Australian soap opera actors (added- because they are cheap) . From what I’ve seen.
If large chunks of the population can’t watch streaming Original Netflix Content ™ they will just release it theatrically, or on bluray, or cable. People signed up for completely new services just for baby yoda, so what’s to stop the cable companies from adopting something similar? Absent gov controls, the market will find a way.
People stream in the living room on dedicated boxes. Or on their phones to pass the time or while other things are happening around them. Other than youtube, who’s streaming on a pc anyway? Will anyone even care about the few remaining pc users?
Facing a forced upgrade to hardware and software, just to watch streaming crap, I’ll pass on the upgrade, and I’m sure millions like me will too.
n
A hole in the security of the video stack in Windows 10 and earlier enables piracy of the streaming services. Whether or not anyone watches on Windows is not as important to Hollywood as shutting down the illegal downloads of Baby Yoda.
Of course, to Microsoft, the studios cutting off streaming to their “insecure” platforms would be a big deal.
Redmond pulled off deprecation of Windows 7 with the help of AMD and Intel forcing the issue. They will repeat the tactic when it suits them with Windows 10.
These are people who upload torrents for me. Even cutting out the commercials. Thank you.
Of course, to Microsoft, the studios cutting off streaming to their “insecure” platforms would be a big deal.
– my point is just “who uses ms platforms to stream content anyway?” and is anyone who still does worth money to anyone? (to keep them as an audience)
The studios may want to cut down piracy, but MS won’t slit their own throat for the studios’ benefit. MS has never cared about piracy except for their own product, and they’ve alternated between encouraging it, and destroying businesses because of it.
If the selling point of win11 is “spend your money to upgrade your machine and OS to protect the studios, while reducing the stuff you can do with your pc”, I can’t see it flying off the shelves, and it isn’t.
And I don’t see MS cutting off support for everything below 11, ever. And if they do, will anyone notice or care? I’ve got a dozen pc’s in the house and only one runs win10. All the dedicated boxen run some version of linux or QNX, the kids’ school stuff is all chrome, my several laptops and desktops are all running win8 or lower.
Protecting studio profits is just not a compelling reason.
n
Buy a new motherboard and try to install Windows 7. Redmond will eventually do the same thing with Windows 8 and 10. Big customers will get a pass, and that’s probably where the unofficial patches originate to allow Windows 7 on recent CPUs.
Linux is moving in the direction of tightening for streaming. Fedora will go UEFI only in a few releases, and Linux Mint has a password scheme for installing certain driver categories when UEFI/SecureBoot are active.
Streaming on demand is proof that too much bandwidth is available.
It’s simply completing the transition from “over the air broadcasting” to “over the wires narrowcasting”.
How is it that a bottle of bourbon is considered a luxury good and taxed as such, but gigabytes of streaming are not? Just wait until they think you have no alternatives.
When the time comes my stockpile of hard copy media is going to become a lending library.
re: septic systems and low flush toilets
I am not a Civil Engineer. (In fact, I’m not a civil engineer, either, but that’s another matter.)
However, it occurred to me that when a septic system is designed, there are certain parameters used. How big a house, how many people, how many fixtures and appliances (sinks, tubs, showers, toilets, clothes washers, dishwashers) and so on.
Altering the expected usage pattern can impact the efficacy of the complete system. Is it possible that too little flow can introduce problems in different ways than too much flow does? Is the ratio of solid waste to greywater a factor? Do low flush toilets alter that profile in significant ways?
Another factor is the weekend home/BOL/Vacation profile. Periods of disuse followed by periods of relatively intense use.
These and other things I ponder while trying to sleep. And it’s not even my problem…
A lot of broadband is available to the right neighborhoods. Things are dicier in poorer parts of town or on cell networks.
The irony given the climate change hysteria is that streaming is actually the least “green” home entertainment delivery option of those commonly available when you dig into the details.
Streaming is not a substitute for terrestrial broadcasting. It is bad enough that 5G dips into the unlicensed spectrum, despite being a *paid* service, but turning AM/FM/TV over to the wireless carriers, including StarLink, to enable Baby Yoda on the go for what can only be a very small segment of the population compared to an event on one of the major national network or even a station in a large metro is something we will regret later.
They are stealing spectrum in the microwave bands (3.9ghz) from hams for commercial use too. All that spectrum should be multiple use as it is almost all point to point and doesn’t really interfere. To get any usable distances you need narrow antennas. To take away and not even allow secondary usage (ie, “non-interfering” usage is short sighted too.
Hams have a great track record of taking spectrum no one wanted and finding uses for it, and inventing new tech to do so.
n
What most people forget, or perhaps never realized: fusion power is not trying to duplicate the Sun. In the Sun, fusion is actually quite rare: by volume, the sun generates about the same amount of power as a good compost heap. It is just a very large compost heap.
I would like to see the calculations on this please.
Commercial fusion is trying to go far, far beyond that. Personally, I’m not convinced that commercial fusion is possible.
Me too. And the claim that Deuterium and tritium are easy to mine from sea water is a little too patent for me.
https://www.iaea.org/newscenter/news/nuclear-fusion-basics
“The main fuels used in nuclear fusion are deuterium and tritium, both heavy isotopes of hydrogen. Deuterium constitutes a tiny fraction of natural hydrogen, only 0,0153%, and can be extracted inexpensively from seawater. Tritium can be made from lithium, which is also abundant in nature.”
“The amount of deuterium present in one litre of water can in theory produce as much energy as the combustion of 300 litres of oil. This means that there is enough deuterium in the oceans to meet human energy needs for millions of years.”
I have an Anker device with six USB-A ports. Along with the necessary cables (USB-A to Lightning, USB-S to USB_C) I use the device for charging all my devices with the exception of the Surface Pro. Between two iPhones, to iPads, a watch and now the Macbook all six ports are needed. Works overseas with a socket adapter.
Time to get a life. Ponder other mysteries. Perhaps something less trivial so the brain can rest.
Wife and I are RV camping for the next 4 days and 3 nights. Dayton TN. A place we have never used before. Seems to be used by a lot of fisher people. Boat dock is on the water, several boats parked in the area. All fishing boats of course as those are very common in this area. Seems to be a nice place, full hookups including cable and WiFi.
Supposed to rain tonight. Glad we patched that spot on the roof where the roof vent was not properly sealed. Found that out on one of our camping trips when the bottom of the bed was wet. Warranty issue but the hassle to take the trailer in to the dealer, wait several days, then pull it all the way home was not worth the issue. We just purchased RV sealant and patched it ourselves. Just a matter of caulking around the vent opening.
Clearing out all of the tax paperwork this weekend, I was reminded of a factoid that many people haven’t thought about up until now – the last round of JoeBux at the end of last year were an advance on the child tax credit, not a stimulus gimmie.
For us, it was roughly what a PS5 bought at WalMart would cost if we played the arbitrage hustle, the number deducted right off the top of our refund.
>> Vanguard boosted their stake to over 10% this week, up from a little over 8% in December.
They kicked Musk out of the #1 shareholder seat.
If Tony is serious about buying Twitter, next comes the fight over if his “consortium” violates the new poison pill.
The sun as a compost pile? Here’s a link. Sorry, on mobile, so the formatting sucks: https://www.abc.net.au/science/articles/2012/04/17/3478276.htm
>> Vanguard boosted their stake to over 10% this week, up from a little over 8% in December.
They kicked Musk out of the #1 shareholder seat.
If Tony is serious about buying Twitter, next comes the fight over if his “consortium” violates the new poison pill.
I suspect Musk really does have a plan B. This ain’t his first rodeo. And, he has enough money to get the really good advisors interested. There are wolves on Wall Street and Musk is friends with many of them.
https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2022/04/police-arrest-suspect-connection-south-carolina-mall-shooting/
Don’t go where certain people go. Don’t be around certain people. 4% of the population is responsible for 40% of the violent crime, according to the FBI. Avoid them and you are a long way toward avoiding trouble.
n
The sun as a compost pile? Here’s a link. Sorry, on mobile, so the formatting sucks: https://www.abc.net.au/science/articles/2012/04/17/3478276.htm
Thank you, that was interesting and illuminating.
“This nuclear burning of hydrogen doesn’t happen everywhere in the Sun — no, about 99 per cent of it happens down in the central quarter of the Sun. This central core has a temperature around 16 million° C, and is about 10 times more dense than gold or lead. This core is roughly 25 times bigger than the Earth. Under these extreme conditions of temperature and density, a hydrogen atom collides with another hydrogen atom to make a single helium atom — and a release a huge amount of energy.”
And he made my point, we cannot get anywhere close to the temperature and pressure of the Sun. Yet. We will not get usable nuclear fusion until we can reliably meet these this temperature and pressure that we can keep going for months and years on end.
Vanguard since Jack Bogle died is a wild card. They play with money on a whole different scale than Musk, but, up until recently, the agenda was empowering the investor with extremely low fees and giving Wall Street the finger, particularly the active managers.
Most of my non-401(k) mutual funds are at Vanguard. I’ve pretty much ignored them for 20 except at tax time, when I reconcile share numbers in Quicken and check returns.
The company would be dangerous with a political agenda.
au contraire mon ami….. we can and have. We call it “canned sunshine”. It’s just not useful for generating electricity.
n
😉
n
“Doctor Karl” is a medical doctor and science popularizer with an interest in but no more than an interested layman’s expertise in physics or other areas of science not needed to become an Australian medical doctor fifty years ago.
He used to have a regular show which aired on the BBC, which I normally listened to (as a podcast). I stopped listening around 2017 because he’d fully bought into the warmenism crisis of the week and was addled by TDS, but even in the years before then he made a lot of blunders, attempting to reason from first principles, which weren’t always done correctly and always missed some “yes, but” aspect which affected the results, often greatly. Worse, he’s not above cherry picking facts and numbers to make the desired point.
Case in point, he presents the power of the sun relative to its volume. It’s volume?! Who care’s about that? By far most of the sun’s volume is gaseous, about the same density as Earth’s atmosphere; in particular, fusion isn’t taking place in about 99% of the sun’s volume. If we’re going to use volume as the basis of comparison, at least be honest enough to use that of the sun’s core.
In Florida, avoid (Mississippi native) Jimmy Buffet music. Nothing good is happening there.
That would be the alcohol. They don’t burn and loot their neighborhoods or carjack folks passing through.
Is that you, John Derbyshire?
https://johnderbyshire.com/April2012/page.html
Which was one of many reasons why astronaut Harrison Schmitt wanted to go back to the Moon, to see if there really WERE massive quantities on Helium-3 (2 protons, one neutron) blasted out of the Sun and perhaps absorbed in the Lunar dust. He figured that fusion would be much easier starting with HE(3) rather than H(2) or H(3).
Ah, Derb’s “The Talk” column.
Sometimes expressed as “don’t do stupid things. Don’t stand next to people doing stupid things. Don’t go where stupid people go.”
My father used to put it more succinctly. “nothing good ever happens after midnight.”
n
And the reason I quoted the line I did, because it’s not a “gun” violence problem. It’s a “gang” violence problem. I haven’t bothered to read the original reporting but I can be pretty sure that SOMEONE is quoted in more than one article saying “gun violence”.
And historically, since the 50s anyway, certainly from the 60s on, gang violence in the US = black male violence.
BTW as the drug cartels increase their presence and organizations in the US, and illegal immigration continues, there will be a shift in those numbers. Certainly, death by machete is almost exclusively a HISPANIC gang violence problem.
n
“The Battle of the Trucks: H2 vs. Batteries”
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2022/04/16/the-battle-of-the-trucks-h2-vs-batteries/
“According to the U.S. Department of Transportation’s Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration there were “nearly 12.5 million commercial large trucks and buses were registered in 2016”. There are more now. “
“Governments around the world are considering or actually enacting laws, rules and regulations to phase out petroleum powered transportation (gasoline and diesel) and replace it with low- or no-emissions cars, trucks and buses.”
Even at $5/gallon, diesel is way better than these two choices.
Again, hydrogen wants to be free ! Do not park hydrogen, CNG, or LNG vehicles inside an enclosed area.
Well, dinner was a success. Mostly. My experimental pie was edible, and even pretty tasty, but wasn’t “lick the plate”.
Lamb roast, with garlic powder and rosemary as a rub. Collards from the “Kickin Collards” recipe on allrecipes.com, baked potatoes with butter and chives, take and bake shelf stable sourdough bread, and an apple pie for dessert.
Rosemary, collards, and chives from the garden. Apple pie from pre-made crust and a can of apple filling. Bread from the shelf, via Costco. Potatoes from the store, because my potato tower was a complete failure last year.
Pretty good feast on the day I read this…
https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2022-04-13/food
German retailer Aldi Nord to raise prices by 20-50% on Monday
Which jibes with this…
https://bayourenaissanceman.blogspot.com/2022/04/food-inflation-and-scarcity-another.html
n
Aldi Nord runs Trader Joes in the US. Aldi Sud runs US Aldi stores, but Sud and Nord share a lot of suppliers on this side of the Atlantic.
The family has resolved a lot of differences recently, and the widely held belief is that both Aldi chains will once again operate as one corporate entity within the decade.
“HoloPortation” arrives on ISS.
https://www.cnet.com/science/space/nasa-holoported-a-doctor-onto-the-international-space-station/
And a slingshot for flinging things into space:
https://www.cnet.com/news/nasa-to-test-spinlaunch-a-giant-slingshot-for-launching-satellites-into-space/
“HoloPortation” arrives on ISS.
https://www.cnet.com/science/space/nasa-holoported-a-doctor-onto-the-international-space-station/
Please state the nature of the medical emergency !
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0AFy_82wiRI
That’s so 1995. They have an Emergency Command Hologram based on Captain/Admiral Janeway now.
On a related note, “Picard” may be about to reach back 23 years into a “Voyager” storyline.
Wow! So Retro-Seventies!
What’s next?
Holodeck malfunction?
I was going to comment but in the interest of OPSEC I’m gritting my teeth and keeping my big mouth shut!
Cut the grass today too, still love the battery operated Toro mower.
n
>> “The Battle of the Trucks: H2 vs. Batteries”
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2022/04/16/the-battle-of-the-trucks-h2-vs-batteries/
According to the US DoE as of today…
EV Charging (non-residential) locations: 47K with 117K total ports across all three charging levels
H2 Fueling locations: 48
Stats from here.
I charge my LEAF overnight once a week on Level 1 (120v / 13a AC) and my wife does hers twice a week. Have used public (pay) chargers just twice, once to see how it worked (Level 2 – 240v AC) and once on a longer trip where we were running low on electrons (Level 3 DC fast-charge)
<laughing>
Life with livestock
I’m medicating my buck. Junior buns in cage at my shoulder are running laps. Suddenly the white bun ups his running game, paws on the sides of the cage, and he lets loose with a stream of urine AS he is running. He makes three full laps with urine shooting forth
Guess who was in direct firing range?
Why yes. Me.
I got drenched with rabbit urine a couple minutes before setting down to our Easter dinner with extended family.
Changed my dress, washed my face, blotted my hair, and made the best of it.
My.
Now that folks are gone I’m in the tub scrubbing away eau de lapin
And he’s going in the freezer this week if I can manage it.
“Amazon’s Free Streaming Service IMDb TV is Rebranding to Amazon Freevee”
https://www.cordcuttersnews.com/amazons-free-streaming-service-imdb-tv-is-rebranding-to-amazon-freevee/
Oh well, as long as it is free.
Emotionally satisfying Good Friday service last night. As a human immersed in the analytical I find it very very difficult to balance and rationalize my Christianity with the bits and bytes of my analytical mind. Reading CS Lewis helps. Thursdays Maundy service and last nights Good Friday service, which pulled no punches on original sin, our wretched predicamen, and Grace, hit hard. I hope Easter never becomes subsumed as Christmas has by the commercial enterprises. I’m a lousy Christian. I feel vaguely embarrassed by most of it. But there’s an inarculable aspect that I need and under which I’m a better human. The services last couple of days, combined with the onslaught of depressing daily news, drives home our powerlessness.
One of these days I am going to read the rest of the C. S. Lewis books beyond the Narnia books. I have “Mere Christianity” and the “Screwtape Letters” in my SBR, I just need to make it happen.
I enjoy being a Christian, to me the world was designed and built by somebody. I enjoy communing and worshiping with the sinners XXXXXX saints on Sunday morning. I enjoy eating Sunday lunch with my Christian friends and criticizing the world while living in it. I also enjoy my 70s and 80s rocknroll and my tv programs that reflect the world, not Christianity. To me, God designed us to be autonomous self replicating beings who live our lives in his joy.
I watched a father whom I have known for 30+ years since he was a young man, baptize his middle son today between church services. Now that was joyful.