Hot and humid. Natch. Being Houston TX and all… still, unseasonably reasonable would be nice once in a while. Probably get to over 100F here in the swamp.
I’ll be doing things to get ready for not being here for a few days. In a few days. And I’ll be doing the pickups I delayed due to the koof.
And yes, I will be looking at some upgrades to surveillance here… and a gate latch for the driveway.
This local crime spree (see yesterday’s comments, late) was one kid. I’m sure we’ll see more going forward though. Time to review your physical security and cams to prosecute. Or to know better what happened so you can work on it not happening again.
The easiest thing, and free to boot, is LOCK YOUR LOCKS. If it has a lock on it, use it. If it has a place for a lock, put a lock on it. Your zip code won’t protect you. It will determine likelihood, but not possibility.
Even if you can’t do the physical hardening now, buy the stuff to do it. There are several discussions here about hardening your home, the search tool should find them, with specific products listed. Your local PD might even offer free review of you security situation, or your insurance might offer the same service. If you don’t have a good idea what to look for, take advantage of the help.
I’ll note that this kid, and every other one I’ve looked at committing crimes on video, was not at all concerned about lighting. The motion activated light just helped him search for something to steal. The lights do make for better recordings, and help YOU to see the perp… but don’t expect them to keep away bad guys or make them flee.
People are going to get desperate. They are going to be emboldened. Harden your home, and harden your heart.
n
and stack some stuff
Once again, the police make it safe to conduct criminal activity. Cars and garages were unlocked because the owners felt safe because of their zip code, demographics, and police protection. The kid was unafraid because he knew that if he was caught, he’d be taken by the police, not roughed up, turned over to his parents, and yelled at. At worst he’d spend a little time locked up in a not-too-uncomfortable juvie facility.
If, instead, he had a reasonable concern about being shot and killed, he’d likely have been a bit more cautious about entering a dwelling. If he’d had a reasonable concern about being caught and beaten and having his fingers cut off with bolt cutters, he’d likely have given it a miss. If the owners didn’t rely on police to keep them and their possessions safe, they’d at least have locked doors.
Back then, the concern was having a counter to IG Farben in the US, but Monsanto was recently allowed to become part of … IG Farben.
Nowadays, the scholarship list for petrochemical specialization will be very short, particularly if the students are not from “disadvantaged” groups.
Another big problem is that the jobs don’t exist in the US anymore. When we first moved here, I was approached by management at a company in town that had developed a novel lithography process for chip making who needed help deciphering their legacy control systems, written in Tcl, since the owners had sold out to Canon and everything was getting moved to Japan.
I doubt that was an isolated story.
Just finding someone to understand Tcl was a tall order. I speak from experience when I say that knowing the language well has never been a Hot Skillz. The management still wanted to lowball and play PC games, even as they counted their options cashout millions, the reason I’m not working there today.
The US needs to take a long look in the mirror and decide whether we want to avoid becoming a third world nation. Everyone is going to need to accepting getting a haircut, both in a literal sense and a figurative financial sense.
Ack. “need to accept getting a haircut …”
It is early and I’m fasting for blood work.
False alarm on the $3.25 soda. The charge hit my bank account as $1.15 – still not cheap but acceptable for the tradeoff of convenience.
The $3.25 may be for Powerade or some Minute Maid product. I’ll have to look when I’m in the office again.
The buildings are spooky empty, but someone is working on building new offices all around ours, on pieces of the campus the company sold off.
On the plus side, if you’re the only one there then you don’t have to worry about proper business casual attire. Or any attire, hint-hint.
Coding in a Speedo Minimus is a thing?
Nice photo at APOD today, of 8 of the 9 planets. I haven’t seen Mercury or Neptune this year myself. Never seen Pluto.
https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap220629.html
“The next time that all eight planets will be simultaneously visible in a morning sky will be in 2122. “
Mark your calendars!
Ah the sun, bringer of light and heat. Especially heat.
84F and 74%RH at the moment.
Time to make breakfast.
Surly proto-teen stayed up watching movies, crashed on the couch. She’s still there. Well, hope the banging of pots doesn’t disturb her unearned slumber too much. I’m up because her dog wanted to go out…
n
I am easily amused.
https://www.avclub.com/just-3-full-minutes-of-cats-and-dominoes-1842411948
And we get a miniscule fraction of the amount of energy produced. Yet climate people think they can control the sun. They can’t even control their own farts.
>> The easiest thing, and free to boot, is LOCK YOUR LOCKS.
Plenty of posts on Nextdoor from people complaining about things stolen from their unlocked cars, including gubs left unsecured in the glove box or console. Little sympathy for them.
On the plus side, if you’re the only one there then you don’t have to worry about proper business casual attire. Or any attire, hint-hint.
“The Office Is a Beautiful Place When Everyone Else Works from Home (Volume 49) (Dilbert)”
https://www.amazon.com/Office-Beautiful-Place-Everyone-Dilbert/dp/1524868965?tag=ttgnet-20/
In mid-March 2020, everyone else at my former employer was working from home for a day or two because of fears of corooooooonavirus, but before lockdowns and shutdowns and full-blown panic. I went to the office because it was only a few miles away and I had dismantled my home office to make room for storage. In one morning I got done probably three days’ worth of work under normal office conditions, with lazy imbeciles talking about whatever sports game was on TV last night and all the rest of their idle stupidity. But then I got a message from the boss that they were closing the office completely and I had to get out. Because, you know, being in a few hundred square feet of office by myself, with a separate HVAC system, is much more dangerous than being at home with various family members who’d been going to work or school the day before.
“True Stories From A Former Car Dealer #9: Firestone”
https://www.carprousa.com/true-stories/true-stories-from-a-former-car-dealer-9-firestone
“When the smoke cleared, 271 people died and another 823 were injured in Ford Explorers with Firestone tires on them, and that was just in the United States. Ultimately, the government closed its investigation, coming to the same conclusion Ford did, that it was a tire issue. ”
“Confidentially, I asked a Ford executive friend years later why Ford did the recall instead of Firestone, spending the 3 billion dollars. The man, whom I will never identify, simply said: “sometime, look up who is in Bill Ford’s family. The answer will come to you.””
Ford replaced the junky Firestones on my 1999 Ford Expedition at the time with junky Continentals. I run Michelins from Sams Club now.
Surly proto-teen stayed up watching movies, crashed on the couch. She’s still there. Well, hope the banging of pots doesn’t disturb her unearned slumber too much. I’m up because her dog wanted to go out…
The surliness will probably stop by the time she turns 20. If not, surely by the time she hits 30.
“PG&E, Tesla launch program to use customers’ Powerwall batteries to tackle California reliability concerns”
https://www.utilitydive.com/news/pge-tesla-launch-program-to-use-customers-powerwall-batteries-to-tackle/626297/
“Tesla and Pacific Gas & Electric have launched a program to aggregate the storage in ratepayers’ Tesla Powerwalls to provide emergency power to California’s grid when intense heat drives up demand on the system this summer and the summer of 2023. Participating residential and other distributed battery owners will be paid $2 per kWh for exporting power to the system when supplies are crimped from 4 p.m.–9 p.m. between May 1 and October 31.”
You ain’t stealing my power !
If it was never collected, it couldn’t have been released.
https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2022/06/california-attorney-general-leaks-names-addresses-states-legal-gun-owners/
n
One of the biggest decisions that SCOTUS has yet to release will probably be released tomorrow. SCOTUS is going to decide if the EPA can regulate Carbon Dioxide emissions without Congresses explicit approval. If SCOTUS decides yes, then all of the federal regulatory agencies will have free rein to regulate anything they want. If SCOTUS decides no, then all of the federal regulatory agencies must have explicit direction from Congress before regulating anything.
https://www.cnbc.com/2022/02/28/supreme-court-takes-up-epas-power-to-limit-greenhouse-gas-emissions.html
You know which side I am supporting. I am for smaller, way smaller federal government.
“SpaceX Urges Starlink Users to Petition FCC in Spectrum Battle With Dish”
https://www.pcmag.com/news/spacex-urges-starlink-users-to-petition-fcc-in-spectrum-battle-with-dish
“SpaceX says Dish’s 5G plan risks making Starlink ‘unusable,’ and is asking its customers to petition the FCC and lawmakers to stop Dish from using 12GHz spectrum for its cellular network.”
““In reality, if Dish gets their way, Starlink customers will experience harmful interference more than 77% of the time and total outage of service 74% of the time, rendering Starlink unusable for most Americans,” the company wrote in Tuesday’s message to Starlink customers.”
This sounds serious.
The Edison-Ford-Firestone connection isn’t a secret to anyone who visited the Edison-Ford estate in Fort Myers over the last 75 years.
The three friends funded Edison’s lab on the estate grounds with a goal of finding a plant-based rubber for tires and other products using source materials which would grow in Florida or the islands around the Caribbean.
The research came up empty after a decade of work and annual camping trips in the Everglades.
Don’t all the other 5G networks interfere, too? Maybe Musk should petition plugs “look how I helped out Ukraine.”
Pelosi gets communion in the Vatican. How much CO2 did that flight put in the atmosphere?
The higher the frequency the shorter the distance, all other things being equal. 5G is very short range, hence the antennas on pretty much every block. Also very line of sight, so cellular signals shooting horizontally have very little impact on the”pizza box” antenna pointed at the sky.
Iff dish signals come from space, pointed at starlink antennas, in similar frequencies, they could interfere. Part of the FCC rules say a device “ cannot cause harmful interference to other devices.” And that is true whether they are in licensed or unlicensed freqs.
Can’t imagine that starlink signals wouldn’t interfere with proposed dish signals, so why would dish try to use the same freqs? gotta be expensive to launch a new service, can’t see any investor ok with a system that could beinterferede with from the beginning.
N
“Target Rich Environment, Volume I” by Larry Correia
https://www.amazon.com/Target-Rich-Environment-Larry-Correia/dp/1481484281?tag=ttgnet-20/
Book number one of a two book dark fantasy short story series. This book series is part of the Monster Universe books which are around twenty in number so far. I read the well printed and well bound MMPB published by Baen in 2019. I have yet to decide if I am going to purchase and read the second book in the series since I am just not a big fan of short stories.
The first story in the book is “Tanya, Princess of the Elves”. According to a previous documentary, Tolkien got the orcs correctly documented. But, he did not get the elves correctly documented. Some of the elves left the old country in the 17th or 18th century and moved to Alabama in the new World. Now the queen of the elves is 150 years old, four foot tall, weighs 300 pounds, lives in a ninety foot long double wide in the Enchanted Forest in Alabama, and likes to sprinkle ranch dressing on her Ho-Hos while watching Jeopardy and Wheel of Fortune. The USA government made a deal with her that she and her elves would get disability checks for the rest of their lives as long as they never ventured past the Walmart in Tupolo. Tanya is her only daughter who wants to be a monster hunter. Tanya sneaks into a monster hunter expedition and meets Edward, an orc who has watched every single Kung Fu movie and is a master of the medium length sword. Together they destroy a colony of blargs.
The author has a very busy website at:
http://monsterhunternation.com/
My rating: 4 out of 5 stars
Amazon rating: 4.7 out of 5 stars (401 ratings)
The higher the frequency the shorter the distance, all other things being equal. 5G is very short range, hence the antennas on pretty much every block. Also very line of sight, so cellular signals shooting horizontally have very little impact on the”pizza box” antenna pointed at the sky.
Iff dish signals come from space, pointed at starlink antennas, in similar frequencies, they could interfere. Part of the FCC rules say a device “ cannot cause harmful interference to other devices.” And that is true whether they are in licensed or unlicensed freqs.
Can’t imagine that starlink signals wouldn’t interfere with proposed dish signals, so why would dish try to use the same freqs? gotta be expensive to launch a new service, can’t see any investor ok with a system that could beinterferede with from the beginning.
N
Dish and DirecTV are being killed by the streaming services. Both are desperately looking for new ways to stay in business. The old rule “if you ain’t growing you is dying” applies here. Especially for public companies that do not have billions to invest in leased spectrum.
Plus, how many frickin’ times does she have to go there?
Every Sunday for the wafer bite and sip of wine.
Fixed it for you.
Yuuup, and last week, or one before, Plugs. Mrs. Plugs and Camela all three took individual flight from WDC to LA and then back. When is AOC gonna start screamin’ about that environmental harm?
Well, Ray, it was her husband that was arrested and charged with DUI, but she refuses to answer reporter’s questions about that. But she will yap about tRump endlessly.
OK, enough from me for now. Don’t want NaN coming down on me.
This is how dumb CelbriTurds are:
Halle Berry shares a list of ‘abortions’ that if you don’t get, you die
So good lookin’, so dumb. The sheeple will believe her, though.
The Amish are such a lovely people:
Ohio teen beaten to death at high school founded by LeBron James suffered a broken neck and had a shoe ‘imprint in his chest wall’ when he died, autopsy reveals
Geez. I wonder if King
JamesNumbnuts will dole out any loot to the family.Just got back from HEB. Some empty shelves. Some limited stock. Meat selection looking very poor.
They are slicing one steak thin, into two, and packaging that… And smaller cuts packed singly so that the price is lower.
Hamburger seems to have come down a bit though.
Normally I save about 10-15% by smart shopping. Saved 1% today. NO coupons at all.
n
https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2022/06/chevron-selling-california-property-moving-company-jobs-texas/
Huh, p!ssing down rain, already almost a ¼ inch. Still 90F
n
Dish and an experimental TV service won the spectrum in question at auction some time back. The TV service has active towers in places, but Dish could easily be a decade away from deploying 5G in that bandwidth due to lack of hardware support on both ends of the connection.
Tony needs bandwidth, and that is a scarce, valuable resource. He doesn’t want to negotiate a deal with Dish and is using the Pizza Box Dream to motivate the public to petition the FCC on his behalf.
If Tony gets his way here, sooner or later he will make a play for what’s left of the TV and radio broadcasting bandwidth, nice clean sub 1GHz frequencies which can penetrate building walls and trees.
Disclaimer: Yes, the boss at my current employer has a financial interest in developing communication services involving that portion of the spectrum, but that’s one of hs personal projects, not the company’s.
They might could get customers if they offered to remove all the useless leftover dishes on people’s houses, and promised not to leave the new one if/when the customer discontinues service. That is one reason I have balked at ever looking at them again for internet service. Tired of “oh the dish belongs to you so we install it but we don’t remove it.”
Dish has to attempt to build a viable replacement fourth cell phone network as part of the T-Mobile/Sprint merger deal with the Feds. I’m not sure about the metrics or time tables, but the company has been toying with the idea for at least a decade and made plays at various spectrum auctions with that goal in mind.
Somebody started to tell me that suicides were up to 130 per day in the United States, and I interrupted them:
“That’s really too bad unless Liz Cheney is one of them.”
>> Surly proto-teen stayed up watching movies, crashed on the couch. She’s still there. Well, hope the banging of pots doesn’t disturb her unearned slumber too much. I’m up because her dog wanted to go out…
So…you wake up to let her dog out…or you wake her up to do it…or the dog pees in the house…I see you went with the more prudent choice.
Have you considered a doggie door?
I was staying at my grandmother’s house overnight as a teenager, and I slept in too long.
She got me up by pouring some cold water in my ear.
>> Can’t imagine that starlink signals wouldn’t interfere with proposed dish signals, so why would dish try to use the same freqs? gotta be expensive to launch a new service, can’t see any investor ok with a system that could beinterferede with from the beginning.
Ask for forgiveness, not permission??
>> When is AOC gonna start screamin’ about that environmental harm?
When she moves out of her ‘glass house?’
RickH.
I am not going to go through hell and back trying to paste text into this box. Either I’m missing something or your incessant tweaking is making it somehow impossible to do a perfectly a simple task. I compose a reply offline I want to patse it in the box. Am I missing something? If I am, walk me through which bloody little icon I have to press first.
@~jim – I have no idea why you are having a problem.
To paste into the box (after copying the text elsewhere), I just use Ctrl+V. Shift-Ctrl-V (as specified in the box above the comment area) also works. This is on my Win-11 laptop. Works every time. I’ve tested it in Firefox (version 101.0.1) and Chrome. And on a HP Chromebook.
On a phone, a tap-hold and then selecting ‘paste’ ought to work, I believe.
There is no ‘incessant tweaking’ here – that Ctrl+V function has always been here. Only the interface of the comment box has been changed (several months ago) to allow for “Rich Text” buttons.
The comment box has always had a delayed ‘submit’ button. One of the ways used to prevent bots from posting comments here.
I was in Sam’s Club today and looked at frozen chicken. There’s not on thing in that section that is less than $10, and more than one over $20. Really? Chicken?
A new poll shows:
https://redstate.com/sister-toldjah/2022/06/29/adam-schiff-hardest-hit-as-bad-news-for-capitol-riot-obsessed-dems-gets-even-worse-n586373
And out of 10 areas, the single one that is underwater is “Jan 6”.
So what did the Dims do this week, presumably after this poll was taken?
Their unlawful Jan 6 committee hustled out a new star witness to make outlandish claims about Trump based on hearsay. Claims that fell apart within hours. Claims that were so egregious that the Secret Service has issued a statement saying their people who were actually there are willing to testify that the claims are not true. People who were already interviewed by the committee.
And today a photo emerges of Liz Cheney hugging the witness that she prepared. Said preparation reportedly not including any attempt at confirming any of it with the Secret Service.
To top it off, the witness also claims that she wrote a note that day, a note whose authroship has already been claimed by a previous witness months ago.
If the OED had an entry for clusterfark, they’d have a new example of stunning quality.
Meanwhile, the fuse is lit for some stunning crop news just before the election:
Chemical Shortages Affecting U.S. Farms Described as ‘Off the Charts”
https://legalinsurrection.com/2022/06/chemical-shortages-affecting-u-s-farms-described-as-off-the-charts/
High energy prices putting fertilizer at record highs, supply chain issues reducing herbicide availability, and this gem:
All on top of a late planting season caused by a cold spring, and now low rainfall and high June temps leading to developing drought conditions in the mid-US breadbasket.
It’s not that Biden and his motley crew of box-checking ideologues are merely incompetent. They are going to go down in history as the group that saddled and shoed the chargers for the Four Horsemen.
Meanwhile, the fuse is lit for some stunning crop news just before the election:
– guys, and gals, I don’t cut and paste from or link to every article I’ve been reading, or every very widely separated source, because it is a lot of work, some of them are print articles when I see them, and y’all are some of the smartest readers out there.
I’M NOT KIDDING. As far as I can tell, people will be starving, and probably right here. Certainly in most of the world. I don’t know the timing, maybe there are more stocks in the reserves than I’ve been hearing about. But if not this fall, then certainly by next.
The whole thing is falling apart, there are glitches that look like deliberate enemy action throughout the whole interconnected system, and people from every aspect and every direction are all looking toward the middle and seeing the same thing. Widespread food shortages. VERY expensive food. Unrest and migration like we haven’t seen in a lifetime.
I’ve been banging the drum so long I’m tired of hearing me, so I KNOW you guys are too. I can’t emphasize enough, the cost if I’m wrong is low. The cost of NOT considering that I’m right is VERY HIGH.
Don’t be caught short like some regular readers were when the lockdowns started.
Put some food in storage. As much as you think is prudent, but THINK about it. And then ACT.
n
@Lynn
In your review of Larry Correia’s book of short stories, you mentioned that the short story format was not your favorite. My preference is also generally with novel-length works, but I grew up reading everything I could lay my hands on, and that included multi-author short story compilations by Healy and McComas, Moskowitz, Conklin, and others.
But my preference in short stories was single-author compilations. I was introduced to the Heinlein Future History stories by The Green Hills of Earth and the companion volumes, and purchased them anew when they were reprinted with the unique cover art of Gene Zafran
https://www.reddit.com/r/RetroFuturism/comments/hzoiew/heinlein_paperbacks_with_cover_art_by_gene/
Most sf novelists were also short story writers. Isaac Asimov compilations were not merely ubiquitous, they seemed to be monthly or bi-monthly. Cliff Simak and Lloyd Biggle Jr, were also notable. Yeah, Harlan, although in his case the novels are few and forgettable.
In the 1970’s the Del Rey’s were editors at Ballantine. That period is probably best known for McCaffrey and the Ballantine Adult Fantasy series guided by Lin Carter. Many of the latter are single and multi-author short story compilations.
Perhaps equally worthy of note were the 22 volumes in the “Classic” series, single-author collections of the masters of the pulp short story:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ballantine%27s_Classic_Library_of_Science_Fiction
Many of these authors started writing when the premiere market for sf was for short stories in the pulps, and the bulk of their work was short stories. Two in particular stand out–Cordwainer Smith and Henry Kuttner–and both are notable for stories that are solid precursors of the “New” Wave.
I like all of Larry Correia’s books, some more than others. His Monster Hunter books are a lot of fun, from gangsta rapping thug gnomes to the trailer park elves, to the Old Ones trying to make a comeback… “ hold the pig steady” indeed.
n
@Nick
from the USDA:
https://ask.usda.gov/s/article/How-long-can-you-keep-canned-goods
When the discussion comes up about where to start, my formula is:
The point here is to give people something concise to start with. YMMV, and there are certainly other prescriptions for starting.
@Nick
The opening of Monster Hunter International is one of the best “fasten your seat belt” scenes ever.
The Edison-Ford-Firestone connection isn’t a secret to anyone who visited the Edison-Ford estate in Fort Myers over the last 75 years.
The three friends funded Edison’s lab on the estate grounds with a goal of finding a plant-based rubber for tires and other products using source materials which would grow in Florida or the islands around the Caribbean.
The research came up empty after a decade of work and annual camping trips in the Everglades.
Bill Ford’s mother is Martha Firestone. He is the great grandson of Henry Ford I and Harvey Firestone.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Clay_Ford_Jr.
But my preference in short stories was single-author compilations. I was introduced to the Heinlein Future History stories by The Green Hills of Earth and the companion volumes, and purchased them anew when they were reprinted with the unique cover art of Gene Zafran
https://www.reddit.com/r/RetroFuturism/comments/hzoiew/heinlein_paperbacks_with_cover_art_by_gene/
Contrary to many naysayers, I have never read a Heinlein that I did not like. And I have read them all, including his awesome collection of short stories, “The Past Through Tomorrow” that I managed to save from The Great Flood of 1989 using a hair dryer. I lost most of my other Heinleins, including the ones that I bought in England in 1973. I lost over a thousand books to our house flood in 1989.
https://www.amazon.com/Past-Through-Tomorrow-Robert-Heinlein/dp/0425027384?tag=ttgnet-20/
>> I was in Sam’s Club today and looked at frozen chicken. There’s not on thing in that section that is less than $10, and more than one over $20. Really? Chicken?
Costco’s $4.99 rotisserie chicken tastes better every day.
>> I was in Sam’s Club today and looked at frozen chicken. There’s not on thing in that section that is less than $10, and more than one over $20. Really? Chicken?
Costco’s $4.99 rotisserie chicken tastes better every day.
Sam’s Club sells their rotisserie chicken for $4.99 each also. I have seen people walk out with a half dozen of them. I suspect that Sam’s Club and Costco are losing $3.00 per rotisserie chicken but, it is something that they are both known for. That will be the last item that they increase in price.
@drwilliams
I was in Sam’s Club today and looked at frozen chicken. There’s not on thing in that section that is less than $10, and more than one over $20. Really? Chicken?
That hit Anchorage early in the lockdowns. Hence my rabbitry. I’m certainly not saving money, given the price of feed and cages. However, now that the rabbitry is established I can began broadening my feed options. That’ll bring costs down.
@Rick
Please accept my apology. This morning I can press and hold, and select paste on my Android 11 phone and it works just as expected. I suspect my trouble has something to do with the SwiftKey keyboard.
~jim (aka Mr Snippy)
*****
https://news.google.com/search?for=fcc+tiktok
I find this kind of interesting. Does TikTok pose a national security threat? And how do you get from the defense department to the FCC? That seems a stretch to me. Probably just another guy showboating. Or is it grandstanding?
Then again, the whole idea of privacy is absurd and a bureaucratic employment sinkhole, not unlike the ADA. You’ve got people on TikTok sharing their stories of varicose vein removal, but can’t see a doctor until you sign all kinds of HIPAA agreements…
*****
I thought Greg would beat me to it by now in regard to Hillary’s visit:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=pvhYqeGp_Do
*****
When is the contract not a contract?
When PayPal, or t-mobile, or Google, or Tom, Dick, or Harry’s TOA is subject to change without approval. I think this senator who wrote to the FCC to tackle this, instead. A contract is a contract and slippery lawyers remind me of the joke about why they wear neckties.