Cool and windy, but clear? That’s probably as good a guess as any. National forecast shows us in the clear for a few days as a front moves through. Yesterday started at 64F but ended at 51F and the wind got pretty unpleasant late in the day. Still, no rain so that was a plus.
I did my pickups, went to Costco, filled the Expy with gas. That was unpleasant, since gas has risen even more this week. Truck takes a full 30 gallons, and while it’s cheaper than peak FJB, it is still way more than peak Orange Man and headed back up.
I noted some pricing and availability in yesterday’s comments. Most prices are up, there are a few things on sale again, and TP on sale was almost back to pre-chinaflu pricing (~$20 vs ~$18 for the mega bale, but there might be shrinkflation in there too.) There were several things I couldn’t find, but nothing I can’t live without. Australian lamb and Canadian maple syrup have been mostly unchanged for the last half dozen years, if I’m remembering correctly. Everything else has been up and down.
Today I need to pick up my freezers, and a really nice, like new pellet rifle I got for $13… It’ll be worth it to drive out to Katy (the opposite of my freezer pickup) to get it. Pellet air guns can be used for hunting small game, doing pest control, learning marksmanship and gun handling, and they are a lot of fun to shoot without costing a bunch or needing much in the way of a range. I think everyone should have a basic air rifle that is better than a toy, and probably some that are toys and at least one that is a serious tool. The toys are cheap and fun and could be just BB guns, but the serious rifles are as much as a .22 rifle, maybe more. They even make .22 cal air rifles, and they are generally not considered to be firearms, which may be important to you.
So I’ve got a full day. ‘natch. I hope I don’t get hexed up by the date.
Stack up some BB guns, and an air rifle or two. They are fun and useful.
nick
The pandemic boondoggle was a huge opportunity for Moderna and Pfizer to shortcut about a decade off of the testing for the mRNA tech depolyed under the cover of the EUA while still making a profit from the “free” vaccines. That’s the craven and sinister part.
If they are confident that absolultely nothing is wrong with the tech, Comirnaty, or Spikevax, why can’t I go down to my GP’s office today, write a check, and have his MA jab me with one of the shots from the commercial vials?
If I’m wrong about distribution of the commercial versions, please feel free to correct with a credible source.
I can’t speak to that specific example, however: There was once an effort to use radioactive decay as a source of random numbers. Turned out that, in a computer science sense, the numbers were not as random as a good algorithmic generator. I don’t recall the details at all, but perhaps it has to do with a rather artificial definition of randomness? Or perhaps simply that nature isn’t actually as random as we think…
The standards definitely changed about what was acceptable risk with the jabs.
I had adult onset Chicken Pox at 26 because I could not get the Varicella vaccine once I got to the point where getting the disease was far riskier than the jab. IIRC the trials in Japan had one death and a handful of seriously ill with that shot, which held up approval in this country for years.
44F and 63%RH is chilly willy this am.
Looks clear though.
n
Yeah, taking the same tech that seems to cause heart issues in vax recipients and developing a shot to address heart issues seems just a little bit suss…
just that much suss…
Like TSA making screening so miserable, then selling you a way to bypass the miserable parts… with added life or death stakes.
n
Lost in the shuffle of Capaldi-era “Doctor Who” is a pretty good script proving a universe is a simulation by looking at the quality of random numbers in nature.
The decay certainly could be used as a seed for a good PRNG, but “good” is relative. A lot of three letter agencies in the US have mucked about in academic circles and standards bodies to the point thatmany of the routines in common use are suspect, starting with the one included in the FIPS standard.
John Walker used to have a radioactive randomizer on his website, but it has been retired..
https://www.fourmilab.ch/hotbits/
Mark Levin had a spiel yesterday on the constitutionality of the President’s power to declassify. BLUF he will not be convicted of anything since it will end up at SCOTUS who will rule a President can do it verbally.
It’s a trilogy. I have them on my reader. The movie is not bad, either, but covers just the first book. Aliens never help.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11631051/Savage-tornado-rips-Alabama-Georgia-killing-seven.html
Yeah, this is really annoying. One might think that the purpose of government is, ultimately, to support the society that it governs, not sabotage it. As it is, one really cannot fully trust anything that the government has touched. That’s not how it’s supposed to work.
And, of course, when someone like Snowdon points out systemic abuses in public, well…I hope he’s doing ok in Russia, because he sure can never leave.
My goto snack is Blu Diamond chocolate roasted almonds. The 25oz bag at Walmart is 10.89, which is actually down from 11 something a year ago. Last week Amazon had the same 25oz bag for $9.33. The subscribe and save price was $8.86. I could only subscribe for one bag at a time, delivered every two weeks. It will be interesting to see if the subscribed price increases after the first shipment.
Costco trip the other day. Plenty of Charmin Blue and they had an extra pallet sitting beside the wine section. No shortages of stuff I normally get. Late afternoon on a weekday is definitely the time to go.
I generally don’t even look at gas prices. I use less than half a tank of premium a week in the ATS, and I refill every week so it never goes below half. Another reason I never look is we have some of the cheapest prices in the area by my house. Thank you Walmart.
All of the Western governments have been odd about encryption in civilian hands since the end of WWII, but the NSA in the US took an active role, specifying the contents of the s-boxes in DES before the standard was finalized among other antics.
Life imitating art?
There is an Ol Doc Methuselah story about the bad guys causing an illness, then selling the cure.
Tone of the coverage is shifting again…
latest
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11632047/Vigilante-killed-robber-Houston-restaurant-breaks-silence.html
previous
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11619415/PICTURED-Robber-30-armed-fake-gun-killed-Houston-restaurant-vigilante-Criminal-bond-assault-grand-jury-decide-hero-customer-46-protected-shooting-face-charges.html
n
Textual analysis is problematic with DM because they often just re-write the opening few paragraphs and re-run a previous story, but the tone is def changing with this one. Note that there isn’t anything NEW in this article, but emphasis is changed and ‘editorial’ comments are changing.
FWIW, since the .gov three letters have seemingly stopped advocating for back doors and key escrow, I assume that all current schemes are compromised.
n
I see regular gaps in the shelves at the grocery store I usually go to. Not necessarily things I buy, just gaps as I walk past. Most items also are not stacked as deep, just a row or two of cans rather than five or six rows. I don’t know if the latter is because of ongoing shortages or because the manager realized that they can be profitable with less inventory on the shelves.
Our family has suffered very little from shortages over the past almost three years, mainly because of the stacks of food, toothpaste, and everything else which I maintain. (Maintained over my wife’s long-standing complaints, I’ll note.) If chunky-style chicken noodle soup hasn’t been available for the past month, no problem. I’ll pull some more out of the closet.
Restocking when things are available and especially when they’re on sale is feasible because I have money for that purpose, and room to store stuff. (Though my freezer is currently full, so I couldn’t properly take advantage of a couple of meat sales recently.)
Mentioning that because around Christmas I bought groceries for some people. For one family, rather than just drop off a crate of milk and eggs and soup and whatever, I took their teenage daughter to the grocery store to get what they normally buy. From various comments she dropped during that hour, they can’t take advantage of sales and specials because they can barely afford each week’s necessities. Yep, been there, and it’s not your fault and that’s why I’m helping you out now. (The dad died a year or so ago and things have been tight since. They’re keeping things together, but barely.) But I also found that the mother can’t cook beyond cans and boxes, which is almost always more expensive than buying ingredients and cooking those. I do fault the mom for that. She’s 40-ish, plenty old enough to have realized the deficiency and learned a bit to remedy it.
I don’t believe AES is compromised, but the Feds have the center out in Utah, which isn’t exactly secret, where intercepted Internet traffic gets stored for forensic analysis, indexed with IP addresses and time stamps for later cross-referencing with system storage device images gathered by various government agencies around the world.
The widely held theory is that the encrypted traffic is retained for the day when it will be possible to brute force crack AES, but that day is a long way off.
Also, I don’t believe that the Chinese (or anyone else) have a quantum computer capable of attacking RSA as has been widely rumored lately, but they may have done some analysis on the popular methods of generating those keys and spotted a pattern, particularly with the random number generators, which could be exploited with far less computing power. THAT would be bad.
There appears to be a shortage of 15-year old The Glenlivet in SA.
Depending on the conspiracy theories you want to believe, life may have imitated art in a very serious way with the pandemic boondoggle.
I know we are living the “Patterns of Force” episode of “Star Trek” right now.
mRNA is an amazing technology. That said, the complications that some people have had show that the technology is not yet mature. There is no obvious reason for the Covid vaccinations to cause heart inflammation, so there is something they have not yet understood. Or perhaps the inflammation is caused by the spike proteins floating around, even though they “ought” to stay fairly local to the injection site. Covid also causes heart inflammation in some patients, so the latter explanation is not unlikely.
Regardless, nothing is without risk – even the safest vaccines have occasional side effects.
FWIW: After my booster in November, I had some mild symptoms of myocarditis. Not bad enough to send me to the doctor, and they seem to have gone away, but I will have to seriously think about taking another shot next year.
I figure that I have had enough heart problems in this life until the big one takes me out as Fred Sanford used to say. I will pass on any booster shots containing mRNA.
One of my friends is a beta tester for Moderna. The second booster just about killed him. It did not put him in the hospital but he wished he was dead as it flushed everything out of his body and ran a strong fever for two days.
“Extreme cold grips Siberia, as temperatures fall to lowest levels since 2002”
https://www.accuweather.com/en/weather-news/extreme-cold-grips-siberia-as-temperatures-fall-to-lowest-levels-since-2002/1467396
“The coldest air on Earth plunged into Siberia this week, dropping temperatures to as low as 80 degrees Fahrenheit below zero. An expansion of that cold is expected across eastern Asia into early next week and eventually North America, according to AccuWeather forecasters.”
Please, please, please no Siberian Express here in the lower States. We don’t need the winter of December 1989 all over again. 6 F here in Sugar Land with a 30 mph wind out of the North for three days. -4 F in Dallas. My father in law’s diesel froze and left him on the side of the road in Dallas on the way to work. He did not listen when I told him to put a gallon of unleaded gasoline in it to cut the diesel and drop the cloud point (where the paraffins turn into solids) to -10 F.
Hat tip to:
https://drudgereport.com/
“Tesla has slashed the prices of its Model 3 sedan and Model Y SUV between 6% and 20% in the US, as it reverses strategy after demand tapers”
https://autos.yahoo.com/tesla-slashed-prices-model-3-093540627.html
Have we hit peak electric car ? Are people starting to realize how much of a pain these vehicles are ?
“Where Will Europe Get Its Diesel From in 23 Days’ Time?”
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/where-europe-diesel-23-days-050000291.html
“The EU imported about 220 million barrels of diesel-type product from Russia last year, according to Vortexa Ltd. data compiled by Bloomberg. The fuel is vital to the bloc’s economy, powering cars, trucks, ships, construction and manufacturing equipment and more.”
“From Feb. 5, almost all those imports will be banned in an attempt to punish Moscow for the war in Ukraine. Replacing that much Russian fuel — imagine about 14,000 Olympic-sized swimming pools all brimming with diesel — is a mighty challenge.”
Hey Rocky, watch me while I cut off my nose to spite my face !
No. Tony is cutting prices on the Model Y to qualify for the new tax credit. The limit is … $55k? … for $7500 back.
He’ll make up the profit on the Model X, which is the Tonymobile of choice around here.
A couple of weeks ago, I pulled up to Home Depot in my Solara and parked a few empty spaces away from a brand new Model X … with the owner standing next to the passenger door inspecting an owie (dent) from someone being careless with a door.
Welcome to Austin!
The wife, inside the car, saw me getting out of my Solara and I swear I actually caught her wrinkling her nose.
Subcontinent. On the phone, probably to insurance.
That kind of owie was a $3500 job qoted on the Exploder five years ago. I had paintless repair handle it for $200.
God only knows what Tesla body work goes for.
If the climatista’s had beenRunning the U.S. in WWII we would be speaking German in the east and Japanese in the west as we worked the farms.
No concept of scarcity, material or energy balances, power distribution, or anything beyond wishful thinking. Doubtful they could change diapers without adding to infant mortality.
I don’t think we’ve hit peak EV. Wait until the Tesla Cybertruck shipments start, when Tony Wan will suddenly feel a great disturbance in The Force -er- stock price.
“… as if millions of voices suddenly cried out in terror, and were suddenly silenced. I fear something terrible has happened.”
I wonder what the distraction will be then. Buying Facecrack and dumping all of the secrets Zuck and Lean In cut with the Feds?
Maybe Lean In can start a prison aerobics program.
The other day, walking a misdelivered package down the street, I got a good look at what the Show Ya type had to install on the outside of his garage just to charge his “GT” EV Mustang sitting in the driveway. Some pretty big holes got punched in the brick work.
It doesn’t get a lot of press outside of the owner’s manuals, but the AC charger for the EV Lightning and Mustang must be plugged directly into an outlet/house wiring, no extension cords allowed, even for the 120 V option, or else the charging cycle will not start.
WRT taking classified documents from approved office to home:
Does the president have the authority to do such?
Does the vice president have the authority to do such on their own?
Did Obama say yes, no, or neither to plug’s removal to his garage?
CowboyStu says:
Depends on the classification. Technically no and no, but the White House would certainly be considered “secure enough”, assuming that the Prez followed procedures.
FORMER Prez and VPs have NO authority to retain classified information. Presidents DO have authority to declassify things, especially when Trump ANNOUNCES that all documents pertaining to a particular issue are declassified.
There have also been rumors of agencies asking Google etc for expired certs so as to be able to decrypt older traffic stored in their vast database. That way, Google can claim to be keeping your data secret, at least for now.
If documents are declassified, I would expect them to be retyped with all classification markings removed and then the classified items to be shredded.
I did my pickups, went to Costco, filled the Expy with gas. That was unpleasant, since gas has risen even more this week. Truck takes a full 30 gallons, and while it’s cheaper than peak FJB, it is still way more than peak Orange Man and headed back up.
You know whats worse than expensive gasoline ? No gasoline. I lived through the gasoline shortages of 1973 and 1979. Sitting in line to buy our ten gallons that those old gas guzzlers would go through in a hundred miles.
Slow Joe and his brethren want us to totally stop using gasoline so expect to see false flag operations on gasoline and diesel availability in the future as they seek to discredit fossil fuels. The first attack was on natural gas stoves.
If documents are declassified, I would expect them to be retyped with all classification markings removed and then the classified items to be shredded.
Sorry, but I don’t expect that. The President has the power to do what he wants to and cannot be bound by Congress. That is very clear in the Constitution.
Has anyone come across any real-world implementation of the idea of using cosmic ray detection as a random number generator?
https://www.nature.com/articles/nphoton.2017.92
https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9159728
I think I first read about the idea in a Tom Clancy novel a few decades ago.
John Walker used to have a radioactive randomizer on his website, but it has been retired..
https://www.fourmilab.ch/hotbits/
I trust John Walker for about anything. Even if he was the first multi-millionaire to move from the USA to Switzerland back in the 1990s.
In the US Army 30-odd years ago, IIRC the preferred practice was to go through every page of the document and deface (eg, with a thick magic marker) the classification marking, possibly replace with a different marking (eg, SECRET replaced by FOUO), stamp the page with “Declassified under the authority of XX on DATE”, and initial the stamp. In practice, often only the cover or first page was marked up like that.
It’s possible that Top Secret and especially keyword documents were retyped and shredded; there were all sorts of special rules for different levels, none of which I had to deal with myself.
Expired certs wouldn’t be that useful, but knowing Google, they probably retain the negotiated symmetric keys for the SSL sessions for searches and their other services, Gmail probably being the most interesting to the Feds.
Tone of the coverage is shifting again…
latest
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11632047/Vigilante-killed-robber-Houston-restaurant-breaks-silence.html
previous
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11619415/PICTURED-Robber-30-armed-fake-gun-killed-Houston-restaurant-vigilante-Criminal-bond-assault-grand-jury-decide-hero-customer-46-protected-shooting-face-charges.html
n
Textual analysis is problematic with DM because they often just re-write the opening few paragraphs and re-run a previous story, but the tone is def changing with this one. Note that there isn’t anything NEW in this article, but emphasis is changed and ‘editorial’ comments are changing.
I note that they put “fake gun” all throughout the article. But they did note that the shooter and everyone thought it was a real gun. Obviously the thief removed the orange band from the barrel.
They also put in there that the thief killed somebody in an armed robbery ten years ago. That will disappear in the next article.
“REVIEW: 2023 Ford Maverick Tremor XLT” Written by Jerry Reynolds
https://www.carpro.com/vehicle-reviews/review-2023-ford-maverick-tremor-xlt
If you cannot afford an F-150 4×4, here is an AWD alternative for MSRP of $33,905 rated at gas mileage of 22/29 mpg. Has a full size spare. Does not have a 4×4 HI / LO gearbox for rock crawling. Only rated to tow 2,000 lbs, probably because of cooling issues on the 250 hp Ecoboost 2.0 four cylinder.
Good luck in finding one at a dealer.
I bought an LG V20 on eBay. I had fun updating the OS. I like it. Battery life seemed lacking so I bought another battery. All is well.
Someone’s Blackberry needed to be replaced. Blackberry Hub or whatever the website was called was going away. So, since I “get” to “do support” someone got an LG V20. From eBay of course. It arrived completely updated. Other than a couple of months of complaining how Android does things different and is missing the Hub, it’s all good now.
The phone has been acting wonky for a couple of months. Battery draining like Location is on but it can’t find a location. Heck, under a metal roof you expect to get GPS? A few weeks ago it started randomly turning off and it has to be plugged it to turn on. The battery will say 45% or so charged.
The phone shut down the other night while on charge. A new trick.
It shut down yesterday and while there was plenty of loud complaining happening I swapped batteries. My phone has had no problems. The battery I put in my phone, that showed 48% charged on the other phone a few minutes previous, showed 23% in my phone.
I put my phone on charge. It was on. It was powered off this morning while plugged it. It’s never done that. I turned it on and it showed 100% charge.
I think I’ve narrowed the problem. It’s not either phone. It’s a bad battery.
I ordered a couple of batteries on eBay. No tracking beyond “sent USPS Retail Ground” on January 3. From Brooklyn, New York. Any day, any day. I ordered an external battery charger at the same time, it came from Hong Kong and it was in my mail box yesterday. Go figure.
I ordered another phone, too. I’ve wanted a spare. I think I’ll name it Harry. Brand new. It’s coming from Hong Kong. Aftership.com says it’s in the US at an airport. More of the any day routine. Ebay’s tracking is nuts and now says it will arrive Tue, Feb 21. From an airport in the US.
Wow, I had 9.6 GB of downloads from our website yesterday. That kind of quantity of web traffic still amazes me when I think of the old 2400 baud and 9600 baud modems.
The dealers have them, but not in the sub $30k price range. My local dealer currently has one at $26k.
Mazda has the same game running with the CX-30, which would be a phenomenal deal if you could get one for the base $23k MSRP … only, you can’t.
To be fair to Mazda, however, Ford has been playing upgrade games with orders for lower cost models across the truck line, citing “chip shortage” problems for a couple of years. Even Jerry’s screener slips and occasionally has a caller make it on the air complaining about the game.
Work has been so crazy that I only just got around to unboxing my Christmas toy, a new Plugable dual-screen docking station with 100W power delivery capability on the Thunderbolt/USB-C connection.
I really liked my existing dock, but the 85W power delivery always left me scrambling to find a spare adapter when I plugged my work laptop into the station. Management ordered my laptop before I started so, of course, it wasn’t one of the sleeker, power conserving MacBook Pro wannabes the company sells and some employees have, but, instead, is one of our standard corporate drone models which are fast but very power hungry, with the included adapter rated for 120W.
No complaints from the laptop about “only” getting 100W when I plugged it into the new dock. I guess the toy is a keeper.
Part of the appeal of the truck is people imagining that it is like the old Frontier or Tacoma, but the bed is very tiny, essentially a truck body placed on the Mondeo (Fusion) platform, not even close to the capacity of the old Ranger which the truck tries to be.
My 93 Ford Probe had more length/width with the back seats folded down, and that was a Mazda 6 platform, smaller than the Fusion.
If you are on the market, before ordering one, go out to Carmax and look at it close up without sales pressure.
“Texas PUC nears market redesign decision amid criticism performance credit will not spur new generation”
https://www.utilitydive.com/news/texas-puc-market-redesign-ercot-performance-credit-mechanism/640360/
It is about time that the power generators during the tough times get rewarded for their ability and preparedness to make electric power when it is most needed.
“California PUC launches rulemaking to consider extension of Diablo Canyon nuclear plant”
https://www.utilitydive.com/news/california-puc-diablo-canyon-nuclear-extension/640351/
I am very amazed that California would even consider letting these two power behemoths go offline.
I am also amazed the California does not get the San Onofre nuclear power plant fixed. Units 2 and 3 can be put back online with brand new steam generators for less than a half billion dollars. Cheap !
Make, model, please, Greg? I am looking for one that, optimally, would do KVM switching too. I wonder if such a beast exists…?
Working the phones starting with the neighbor’s shade tree mechanic, I got a shop referral and they quoted the timing belt/water pump on my Solara along with retiming the engine for $900.
I’ll roll the dice. If it doesn’t work out, the car has zero rust and never received a significant hit to any part of the body except the rear bumper. Salvage would probably cover at least a third if not more.
As I learned last week, I don’t want to spend any more money on a vehicle for the kid since he did not heed my warning about the water pump and tried to take it on a freeway trip of close to an hour.
One of my friends gave his kid a nice used 2018 RAV4 which lasted two years before it was totaled last August. $24k from the insurance company. The replacement, a trashed 2014 CRV, was still $16k off of a dealer’s second hand lot. Used cars are pricey.
Plugable TBT3-UDZ. I just unboxed it so the jury will be out for a while. The predecessor, a Plugable UD-CAM is a great choice provided your devices draw less than 85W on the USB-C connection.
I don’t know of one that will do KVM switching.
How valuable is the real estate?
Florida is going to let Crystal River’s reactors go, but the toll road scheme passed by the Legislature last year effectively turns that part of the state into a Tampa exurb with The Villages fast assimilating everything on the other side of I75 into their oldster collective.
Anyone who remembers Three Mile Island is weird about living near a nuke, regardless of politics.
The Villages is the new seat of Republican power in Florida. To win statewide, you must play well there.
https://hotair.com/headlines/2023/01/13/say-did-anyone-vette-this-guy-n523564
When they check the garage for DNA trace should they skip the back seat of the ‘Vette?
Just askin’ Big Guy.
What Jill doesn’t know…
And even water is toxic in sufficient quantities.
The questions are:
How dangerous?
What are the quantified risks?
What are the quantified benefits?
Is there a pattern to side effects? Cofactors, like age, sex, race, etc.
Are there long term side effects (read: dangers) that have been studied in animal trials and limited human trials of sufficient length?
Please remember we’re talking about a virus so deadly, that only 99% of the people who get it, survive it. With symptoms so severe that most people can’t tell if they’ve got it without being tested first.
Why are there no studies on miscarriages, reduced fertility, and all the other side effects?
Why did Pfizer lie about the testing data and side effects? And why did they get away with it?
How valuable is the real estate?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Onofre_Nuclear_Generating_Station
Billions of dollars of prime beachfront property. It has become a permanent nuclear waste storage facility since there is no federal nuclear waster storage facility.
“Dish Network, Environmental Group Sue to Stop SpaceX’s Second-Gen Starlink”
https://www.pcmag.com/news/dish-network-environmental-group-sue-to-stop-spacexs-second-gen-starlink
“Dish is concerned about interference with its own satellite TV business, while the International Dark-Sky Association says the satellites will generate too much light in the night sky.”
Dish and DirecTV are both circling the drain. Starlink needs those 30,000 satellites in order to be useful to more than a couple of million users.
>> I spent a semester in college just reading SF Book club all day. Only went to a few afternoon classes. Almost got thrown out but help from a friend got me a chance to test out of the classes I missed and do whatever written work they required me to make up. He saved my @ss and my college career, and I can’t remember every thanking him for it. I was pretty selfish.
@nick, reach out and thank him? Never too late (sorta).
>> I had adult onset Chicken Pox at 26 because I could not get the Varicella vaccine once I got to the point where getting the disease was far riskier than the jab.
@Greg, did you mean getting the jab was far risker than the disease?
CowboyStu says:
Nope. Typically, the classification is lined out, with the authority scribbled in, and a new lower classification stamped near it. Or an “UNCLASS FOUO” stamp. “FOUO” is “For Official Use Only”. And remember, classification stamps go on EVERY PAGE of the document, so DE-classification must ALSO be marked on every page.
@Lynn
Half an engine for a truck.
Full engine for
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ford_Pinto_engine
The innate Constitutional ability to do so is for SCOTUS to rule on. There is no precedent other than the Constitution when it comes to the President. As long as they have a clearance, a secure location and a need, they of course can keep classified documents. Just like contractors do. Any number of retired flag officers and three letter agency pukes do it as long they meet those requirements. I used to carry TS(SBI) stuff all the time. My secure location was in bed with me. I did this plenty of times traveling overseas. I also mailed (USPS) the same stuff many times. Clearance, secure location, need.
Also, when military retire out of a “sooper secret” job, they are HEAVILY recruited by contractors. Keeping that clearance is a cake-walk compared to getting one for a civilian.
Also, AFAIK, all ex Presidents still have their clearances.
Ruh, Roh:
CDC says it’s investigating possible link between Pfizer’s Covid booster and strokes among seniors over age of 65
Shite, I’m in the “kill zone.”
A number of interesting points including:
https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2023/01/troubling_aspects_related_to_biden_mishandling_of_classified_documents_that_must_be_probed.html
If Biden’s uncleared aides were schooled on rules and regulations, this sounds like an intentional felony.
Goes for Biden’s attorney, too.
And whoever directed them to do so, including the Big Guy himself.
Ruh, Roh:
CDC says it’s investigating possible link between Pfizer’s Covid booster and strokes among seniors over age of 65
Shite, I’m in the “kill zone.”
My parents quit taking the Koof boosters after the first booster. Too many of their friends and my father got the covid after the first booster anyway.
My father has been reading Alex Berenson about the Koof vaccines. If half of the stuff that Berenson publishes is true then we have been screwed royally.
https://substack.com/profile/12729762-alex-berenson
No, contracting Chicken Pox as an adult can be a bad situation. Fortunately, my case was mild, but as soon as the diagnosis was confirmed, the doctors had me on a very expensive antiviral for which they scrounged samples from supply closets to completely cover the course of medication so I wouldn’t skimp and decide to ride it out sans pills.
And, no, special treatment was not involved. I actually went to a walk-in clinic near my apartment on the thought that it was a weird acne. Up until my 30s, breakouts were a constant problem.
Mr. Berenson has stated that he is considering lawsuits regarding the government/sweaty billionaire conspiracy to violate his First Amendment rights by banning him from Twitter. Where do I send my check?
>> “Tesla has slashed the prices of its Model 3 sedan and Model Y SUV between 6% and 20% in the US, as it reverses strategy after demand tapers”
https://autos.yahoo.com/tesla-slashed-prices-model-3-093540627.html
Have we hit peak electric car ? Are people starting to realize how much of a pain these vehicles are ?
President B.P. says you will adapt…and today’s Kool-Aid flavor is fruit punch…and you are getting thirsty…very thirsty…
I think that Plugs was VP under obama whe he took those classified documents home. If so, did obama give him OK? Or did he do something illegal?
Remember, there was a big shot under Clinton that got caught doing that and was fired because Clinton did not tell him OK.
This is starting to sound like an intentional screw job of the boss on the part of the aides.
I’m not a fan of The Big Guy, but, as he would put it, “C’mon, man!”
Biden can’t remember what he had for lunch yesterday.
>> There appears to be a shortage of 15-year old The Glenlivet in SA.
Can you possibly choke down the 12 year-old swill instead? 🙂
Biden can’t remember what he had for lunch yesterday.
I can’t remember what I had for lunch yesterday.
Biden can’t remember what he had for lunch TODAY.
VA superintendent: School administrators tipped that 6-year-old was armed before teacher was shot
https://hotair.com/ed-morrissey/2023/01/13/va-superintendent-school-administrators-tipped-that-6-year-old-was-armed-before-teacher-was-shot-n523571
The extent of their reaction was to search the kids book bag. Not finding a weapon, they did nothing else.
If I were the injured party, I would interview the toughest pipe-hitting personal injury attorney I could find, and tell him that part of his charge would be the come-to-Jesus meeting with the local prosecutor, consisting of a expectation that if criminal charges were not filed and pursued with zeal against everyone involved, then every penny extracted from the civil suits would be used to make sure that said local prosecutor had no expectation of any future employment in government or private practice.
The Kewpie doll would scold you and claim that not knowing is part of the most transparent administration evah.
The Pinto was a mad dash of a development process which only spent … three … years in the pipeline, hence the engine imported from Europe. The end result was a weird mess.
My father’s Pinto engine ate three water pumps in 10 years of ownership.
The Maverick is essentially a Ford Mondeo (Fusion) with a truck body, possibly a hedged bet in case they have to take the current Fusion design, introduced in China last year, and return to making cars for the US market on the same assembly line. Hecho en Mexico, along with the Bronco “Sport” and current generation Escape.
Strange but true, Ford still sells cars in other parts of the world.
https://www.cnet.com/roadshow/news/ford-fusion-mondeo-china-us/
>> A couple of weeks ago, I pulled up to Home Depot in my Solara and parked a few empty spaces away from a brand new Model X … with the owner standing next to the passenger door inspecting an owie (dent) from someone being careless with a door.
They need to park at the far end of the lot and walk (I did that with my first new car but street parking in NYFC always eventually wins so I gave up)… or scam an illegit handicapped tag.
Since nobody here has mentioned it yet ….
….Friday the 13th fell on a Friday this month .
You’re welcome.
Since nobody here has mentioned it yet ….
….Friday the 13th fell on a Friday this month .
You’re welcome.
Please look at Nick’s posting for today, “Fri. Jan. 13, 2023 – Hey, Friday the 13th falls on a Friday this month…”.
>> If the climatista’s had beenRunning the U.S. in WWII we would be speaking German in the east and Japanese in the west as we worked the farms.
See The Man in the High Castle
I never look at the titles, so if I didn’t see it, it didn’t exist.
>> It doesn’t get a lot of press outside of the owner’s manuals, but the AC charger for the EV Lightning and Mustang must be plugged directly into an outlet/house wiring, no extension cords allowed, even for the 120 V option, or else the charging cycle will not start.
So the EVSE (the “charger” is in the vehicle) can determine that an extension cord is being used? How so?
So the EVSE (the “charger” is in the vehicle) can determine that an extension cord is being used? How so?
Voltage drop. Pulling 30 to 50 amps on that 230 volt line will have a good sized voltage drop if it is too long.
“President Biden just announced updates to student loan repayment—here’s what borrowers need to know”
https://www.cnbc.com/2023/01/12/updates-to-student-loan-repayment.html
“The Biden Administration released details this week on its plan to overhaul the current income-driven repayment plan known as Revised Pay As You Earn plan (REPAYE) for federal student loan borrowers.”
“Monthly payments reduced to 5% of discretionary income”
Here we go with the free money crap again that was not allocated by Congress.
I received a phone call recently from a recruiter for Raytheon. They were so desperate for C++ talent that they were willing to pay for the clearance.
I passed the initial steps in a clearance working for the Seattle place so it would just be about time to get through the rest.
>> WRT taking classified documents from approved office to home:
Does the president have the authority to do such?
Kinda hard to stop him when he’s surrounded by Uzi-toting SS Protective Detail agents.
>> I note that they put “fake gun” all throughout the article. But they did note that the shooter and everyone thought it was a real gun. Obviously the thief removed the orange band from the barrel.
Not that the thief was likely to shop here, but for something more sophisticated, hmm…
DirecTV’s work force is roughly half management anymore. The Death Star is not going to give that service up without firing a lot of those people first. Without satellite, the company has no TV offering to bundle in a lot of their legacy service areas since Uverse over DSL was a raging dumpster fire.
As for Dish, the terms of T-Mobile buying Sprint involve Dish attempting to establish a new fourth wireless carrier using their own spectrum leases and whatever discards T-Mobile handed over as part of the deal. The kabuki has to go on for a certain number of years with Dish as a viable corporate entity, and the satellites/spectrum are paid for.
Tony will have to get out the checkbook.
https://hotair.com/tree-hugging-sister/2023/01/13/yay-sweden-scores-a-rare-earth-find-hiss-gotta-dig-for-it-n523619
Prices for refined oxides vary widely:
https://www.statista.com/statistics/449838/forecast-average-rare-earth-oxide-prices-globally/
and without knowing a lot more about assay characteristics of the deposit, it is not worthwhile to do anything but SWAG a range:
Lower Range: $2,000/mton x 1,000,000 tons = $2 billion
Middle Range: $20,000/mton x 1,000,000 tons = $22 billion
Upper Range: $200,000/mton x 1,000,000 tons = $220 billion
note : the price table mixes prices per metric ton (1000 kilograms) and prices per kilogram
Even the upper range is not enough for Sweden to tell the EU to kiss off. That means that the ChiComs will be pumping millions of dollars into their green weinie apparatus and their paid-for EU government agents to prevent, slow, limit, and make as expensive as possible any development*.
Bottom line is that it’s not going to make as much difference as a cow fart on greenhouse gas levels, at least in this generation.
And it’s not enough to change the reality that there is simply not enough extractable metals of any kind to achieve the green weinie unicorn fart fantasies.
*ADDED: Not betting against new immigrant saboteurs, either.
>> “REVIEW: 2023 Ford Maverick Tremor XLT” Written by Jerry Reynolds
I see the F-150 also comes in the Tremor trim (passed one on the street today – copper colored).
I thought, really? Is it made for earthquake prone areas?
You’re assuming current population patterns. If, say, 90% of the human population were to die, a sustainable future becomes much more feasible.
So, y’all know how on my more misanthropic days I want to kill the vast majority of humans? (And on my really misanthropic days I want to put “extinction event” on my resume and then do my best to live up to it?) So, ah, I’ve been questioning that lately. There’s nothing like finding that a bunch of repulsive scumbags share your views to make you do some rethinking.
>> To be fair to Mazda, however, Ford has been playing upgrade games with orders for lower cost models across the truck line, citing “chip shortage” problems for a couple of years.
Seems Chevy is doing the same thing with the base models of their 2023 EVs, adding two option packages to all the ones I’ve seen.
You’re right, even with the private key, PFS stops you decoding the encrypted packets. The negotiated keys are what you need.
I remember reading something about how the containment domes couldn’t be destressed and restressed again to remove the broken steam generators and replace them. It was actually cheaper to shut down the plant than build new containment domes plus buy new (working) steam generators. And anyway CA hates nukes so much, it was a good excuse to close the plant.
@SteveF
We take turns picking?
hmmm…
Does it matter who starts?
scribble, scribble…
swag: need between 1000 and 10,000 John Wicks
maths is hard but can be tasty:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wBU9N35ZHIw
time to breach the first stout for the weekend
cheers!
@Mark W
IIRC Lynn mentioned previously that the steam generators had been replaced once.
That approach worked for me and the monsters under my bed when I was a kid. I closed my eyes, and they couldn’t see me. You know it worked, because I survived.
lpdbw says:
Douglas Adams based the Bugblatter Beast of Traal on your nightmares.
IIRC Lynn mentioned previously that the steam generators had been replaced once.
I did not know that there was a stress limit on the domes. That is not good.
Here is the real problem. Onofre 2 and 3 are twins with the biggest pair of steam generators in the world. They should have put in three steam generators on each like STP 1 and 2. Or, four steam generators like Comanche Peak 1 and 2.
We cannot reliably build the steam generators in San Onofre 2 and 3. They are probably getting killed by vibration. We can build them to last a minimum of three years, maybe as long as ten years. But if we cannot pull the top of the dome every 3 to 10 years, that kills that.
Ok, here is the real disaster. California needs the power. Desperately. At some point, cost is not an issue. California is about 6 to 12 months away from realizing this.
https://www.zerohedge.com/technology/vinyl-comeback-continues
So it’s not just me, or my daughter, buying vinyl. (knew that, since wal mart carries it now), but good to know I’m not alone.
There are a few USB and Blutooth record players in every auction now. They are like the old school stand alone record players, have a turntable, and speakers/amp all built in. you can pair your phone and use the speakers thru blutooth too. D1 does this all the time with hers. They aren’t audiophile equipment, but they don’t sound bad.
n
>> Biden can’t remember what he had for lunch yesterday.
I can’t remember what I had for lunch yesterday.
Biden can’t remember what he had for lunch TODAY.
That’s why I have the same thing for lunch every day – problem solved! Well, except for the days I eat lunch twice.
Currently 38F in the Houston metro… and there hasn’t been a week long freakout.
n
35 F out here in the sticks. That is cold for us !