Warm and humid. No rain in the forecast but maybe some more overcast. Yesterday was mostly overcast, but we didn’t get any rain in the places I visited. I’ve got stuff in the back of my truck that I don’t really want to get wet before I can get it put away…
Did get pickups done. Last pickup for the one auctioneer, who is calling it quits. We may be at the same stage of returns and overstock reselling as house flipping was just before that collapsed. New players with no experience are paying too much to buy in, thinking it’s easy money, while more experienced players are finding it hard to stay in the game, or no longer profitable. A crash and consolidation seem to be headed this way for this nascent but quite large market activity.
It is actually a new version of an old business. There have been resellers, wholesalers, surplus outlets, auctions, and fire sales for a long time. Probably since the first failed product in the market. But the old business model of insiders and somewhat disguised markets (Ross Dress for Less did pretty well selling the stock other retailers couldn’t move, ditto for Marshalls and the “outlet store” fiction) expanded and shifted and combined with online auctions, cottage industry, and the idea of the side hustle to spawn a whole new crop of reseller businesses. There has been a huge increase in the size and scope of the market, as new sellers pop up and buyers become aware of what’s available.
Shakeout and consolidation is probably inevitable.
One consideration is that it has broken the traditional retail model, and opened people up to the idea that goods don’t have to come from a store (or a big company — I mean selling platform– like Amazon). As the general economy worsens, there will be an increase in bargain hunters, of necessity. That means more person to person selling, more non-traditional venues (like swapmeets, black and grey markets, permanent yard sales, etc.) If it happens it means I was right to advocate learning about this way to shop before it became a necessity 😛
Anyway, consider your own habits and routines for getting the stuff you need and use. What if those options are not available, or not available at a price you can afford? It’s always easier to learn a new skill while you still have the backup option of doing things the old way.
Get out there and start learning about the secondary economy, or the “informal” economy. Use the practice to increase your stacks, and kill two birds with one stone.
nick
Off to the surgery center this morning. Spousal unit is have carpal tunnel surgery. Local anesthesia, supposed to only take 10 minutes for the actual surgery. Prep time time and getting credit card information takes an hour. I will be doing most of housework for 10 days while her hand is wrapped in bandages.
@ray, wishing her a speedy recovery… and you patience with all the household work!
n
66F and saturated. Looks like a misty drizzle on the cams. Yuck.
n
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11785537/The-Biden-administrations-113-billion-aid-Ukraine-spent.html
That’s a lot of stuff.
n
Aholes at the surgery center. Treat people like cattle. I am not impressed.
Good news is that there are no longer any masks required. Of course that was not what was stated on the phone call my wife received. Arrived and no one is wearing masks. The only place that I have encountered that requires masks is the VA facilities because they are still under spongey’s federal mandate. King senile with visions of being a dictator.
And I am not in a good mood this morning.
The Pro Charger for the home will charge the vehicle without the app being set up properly, but the “connected” features won’t work. I assume that means statistics about the charge which get crunched with prevailing weather conditions in the ZIP code to build a better estimate of charge/range for Ford.
I’ve built software on iOS that reverse calculates ZIP code for Lat/Long from the freely published databases, but that app looks amateur hour – just complete the fields and send text information XML/Json – or, God help us, SOAP – to a back end built overseas in .Net where all of the heavy lifting gets done. One of the “cross platform” tools was probably involvd with minimal clean up done afterwards.
Depending on where the back end software gets developed, the “programmers” won’t know anything about CS concepts like Separating Axis to search coordinate map database tables for the vehicle location so they’ll hit a USPS database for address conversion to the ZIP code and need the mailing address as one of the inputs.
The Jesus Trucks were fetishized so the expectations from Show Ya types – and, geesh, is that guy the poster child – are way beyond what can acutally be delivered using not just the US tech product development infrastructure, but arguably the world’s, even where labor costs are less of an issue and the companies involved can throw lots of virtual bodies at a software project.
Trucks will be the EV Waterloo. Wait until the batteries start going south. I caught hints from the vegetation that Show Ya lives in a hot/humid state — figure he’s gonna be really unhappy in about five years.
Oh, and Ford builds with better fit/finish than Tesla? Well, sooprise!
I’m just impressed you made it through the video. I managed about 5 minutes and quit. Nothing better than a bro whining about his 90K truck.
South Carolina?
I skipped through parts to get a good look at the app. Did he state the price he paid?
I’ll bet the total was above $100k and that’s not counting the home renovation for the “pro” charger, running a 240 V line to the location where the truck parks.
Who is it plunking down a deposit for one of these trucks not expecting to be a lab rat for Tony and Tommy Boy?
I don’t know – just guessing. You probably aren’t wrong. I’m sure there was a significant ADM tacked on.
Something in Win11 keeps changing power management settings back to the default balanced instead of high performance. I’m deleting all other power profiles as a band aid to see if it resolves the problem.
powercfg /list
powercfg /delete (power plan ID code)
If that doesn’t resolve it, I’ll just create a group policy for power.
About an inch of snow overnight, here in the California high desert. Nice.
Just read on Dr. Eades newsletter, The Arrow, that the following 3 books are free for a couple days on Big River for Kindle:
The Real Anthony Fauci by Robert Kennedy, Jr.
Lies My Gov’t Told Me by Robert Malone, M.D.
Cause Unknown: The Epidemic of Sudden Deaths by Edward Dowd
I bought them, but haven’t read them yet.
He also wrote about the Broken Science Initiative, and about how Standard Of Care is protecting doctors from malpractice suits while killing patients. All of which I found interesting.
I expect this to get trapped in the spam filter, with all the linkage.
The truck was an order, and Ford has been very aggressive about quelling ADM on the Jesus Truck. Depending on where he lives, he may have been able to drive off the lot for MSRP.
The other takeaway from the parts of the video I watched which I found interesting is the complaint about the sketchy locations of the charging stations and how the other Show Yas would leave their cars all day instead of just for an hour. Duh.
Mist stopped before the kids’ bus got here. Still overcast though, temp is at 76F.
Not gonna be climbing around on my client’s roof installing a cell booster antenna today with the possibility of rain, or a wet roof.
So I will work on other things.
n
Snow time comin’ to California. This you tub cannel with 5 cams is one I keep up on monitor three most of the time.
Besides trains it shows weather from Bakersfield east to Mojave.
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC6RIkXobtXWJElbwEHIC-sg
Oddly enough, this is affecting my real estate closing in Illinois. One of my co-owners lives in the mountains in Julian, he’s 80 years old, and needs the services of a notary and fax service.
So we postponed.
Note: By “this” I mean mountain snow in Cali, not the Tehachapi area specifically
Marilyn Manson rape accuser admits she LIED about him raping her and cutting her with a swastika-emblazoned knife – and claims his ex Evan Rachel Wood put her up to it
n
Interesting….and geeky.
I just used ChatGPT to solve a Javascript programming problem I was having working with JSON data from an AJAX call.
I’d been working on this problem intermittantly for about a week. I have probably spent 12 hours doing various searches, posting questions on StackOverflow, and trying out various suggestions.
The solution I found using ChatGPT was figured out in about 5 questions and responses, each question building on the previous. The answer included proper Javascript code to perform the AJAX function.
Putting that code in my program and the process worked great! Interesting use of AI tech, I think. It provided better and faster correct results than using the search engines.
@RickH: I’ll have to try that. In the Fall, I have to teach a couple of lessons on some frameworks. I dislike feameworks generally, but in courses they are just way too complex for the time available. Figuring out some simple example might just be easier with ChatGPT…
1.5x is useful.
Just wait until they tweak the answers to optimize the profits:
Q: Name the planets in the Solar System.
A: Mercury, Venus, Planet Fitness, Earth, Planet Hollywood, Mars, Jupiter, Neptune.
Q: What about Uranus?
A: That’s private.
Q: What about Pluto?
A: Don’t get Mickey Mouse with me, you racist.
Off to the surgery center this morning. Spousal unit is have carpal tunnel surgery. Local anesthesia, supposed to only take 10 minutes for the actual surgery. Prep time time and getting credit card information takes an hour. I will be doing most of housework for 10 days while her hand is wrapped in bandages.
I hope she does well. Me, I am wearing my friend on my right wrist, “Sparthos Wrist Support Sleeves (Pair) – Medical Compression for Carpal Tunnel and Wrist Pain Relief – Wrist Brace for Men and Women – Made from Innovative Breathable Elastic Blend”
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07G4KVGQS?tag=ttgnet-20
My problem is the tendon that runs along the bottom of your wrist, it gets inflamed and I want to scream or cry, not sure which. Driving and mousing kills it so I have about 12 or 15 of my friends scattered around my house, office, and truck.
I am debating if the rain will hold off while I work in my storage unit. Would like to get some more stuff dug out of there but don’t want to get wet.
It was supposed to be clear.
n
Gotta wonder how much HBO knew when then not only pulled the plug on a final season of “Westworld” but completely removed the program from HBO Max.
Of course, then the question becomes when did HBO know?
And did Weird Al know? Evan Rachel Wood portrays Madonna in the semi autobiographical “Weird: The Al Yankovic Story” — Al’s second in that category if you count “UHF”, but this time starring Daniel Radcliffe
A lot of copyright questions are unsettled with regard to use of the OpenAI tech to index the knowledge of code repositories like GitHub. Make sure to supply proper attribution, even if it is in a comment no one sees.
I’ve always properly attributed Stack Overflow in comments when I use something from the site.
I’m on my third job in a row where libcurl makes an important contribution to whatever I’m doing.
The PyCurl implementation is light years better than the “requests” library module.
I usually put the URL of the Stack Overflow code as a comment in the code. For attribution, but mostly so I can go back to the original question (and answer) to remember why I used it – since I usually modify the code for my own needs. SO is a helpful place, and I try to give back my limited knowledge – my current ‘reputation’ is 6619.
In the case of the “AI-help”, I’d been searching on SO and other places over at least a week, and didn’t find the proper solution. I had posted a question about the issue yesterday, and it was answered with similar code today – but I had already gotten code that worked from ChatGPT. (I noted that in my acceptance of the answer, as SO doesn’t like ChatGPT-only answers.)
As usual, I modified the provided code for my own purposes – changing variable names, for instance – so my use was just using the code as a ‘code pattern’ (‘framework’?).
I gotta learn how to type.
Yeah. Typos while writing programs are also a pain. Wrong style of quote characters, missing semicolons, etc….
(Although there is that little message just below the message box here…. 🙂
Wait. “Please carefully review your comment before submitting.” Can I yell “that’s raycess!!!”
/sarc and grin
I can type. But I’m getting odd letters once in a while. I don’t know if I’m getting “old man retarded” or if my keyboard is fritzing or if the keyboard/mouse dongle into a USB this is wonky.
I’m going with the dongle being not quite right.
Did fine. She wasn’t supposed to be knocked out. But the medicine they gave through the IV apparently was enough. I was also surprised that for the wrist and hand surgery they had her disrobe to nothing but socks and underwear. Maybe in case a defibrillator was needed. Probably required by some insurance lawyer.
They did two cuts on her hands, one for carpal tunnel, another for something to do with a tendon or cartilage hanging up. I have not seen it yet as the surgery site is bandaged. Orange fingers from the antibiotic disinfectant stuff they use.
No restrictions on the use of the fingers or hand, which was surprising. No showers for two days. Stitches come out in 11 days.
The procedure only took 15 minutes. Took 1.5 hours in preparation, another hour in recovery. No one in the surgery center moves at a fast pace. I had to wait outside the door with the vehicle for 20 minutes, after they told me to go there to pick her up.
My wife said that very same thing last night. I said it was just age.
Yeah. The kickstand ain’t working.
Falling asleep is not good. That is my constant battle driving. Eating jerky helps (no sugar) and listening to audiobooks is better than just music.
A long haul trucker told me his secret was eating sunflower seeds (in the shell.) The work involved in getting them out of the shell kept him occupied, and “you don’t fall asleep with food in your mouth…” Too many carbs for me, puts me to sleep instead, but that’s why I switched to nibbling jerky.
I have been eating Prasek’s Pepper Jerkey at the office lately at night when I am starving:
https://www.heb.com/product-detail/prasek-s-peppered-nbsp-smoked-dried-beef-3-oz/4384531
The pepper will just about take your head off.
Yep. I liberated the menu bar on my site from C|net. Had to figure out the CSS because bright school bus yellow ain’t my thing. And then SSI, that was pretty cool.
Fun stuff.
Dilbert: Usually Works At Home
https://dilbert.com/strip/2023-02-20
Yup, working from “home”. I saw an article where one guy was phoning in from the Caribbean.
The amount of delusion in this quote is astounding.
‘This is NOT this child’s fault. He is NOT a threat’: Mental health advocate launches defense of 6’6″ thug, 17, who had to be dragged off unconscious female teaching aide who he knocked out for confiscating his Nintendo Switch
He IS IN ACTUAL FACT A THREAT. He made threats and tried to carry them out. The aide with the TBI will be dealing with the fallout for months if not years.
How exactly is someone who can’t control themselves and is diagnosed with something called IMPULSIVE AGGRESSION BEHAVIOR not a threat to the people around them?
Even a puppy can learn the consequences of its actions.
No one sane would insist on putting a pit bull or other breed subject to IMPULSIVE AGGRESSION in locked rooms with kids. Why do we tolerate that with OUR kids?
n
“A new XXL brisket sandwich has Buc-ee’s fans heated at the price”
https://www.chron.com/food/article/bucees-xxl-sandwich-17803411.php
“How much are you willing to pay for this sandwich?”
Good night, 13 ounces of chopped beef for $13 plus tax. I stopped at Buccees twice this week but I did not look at the sandwiches.
Ha ha
– which, put another way, is saying that the shot and all its boosters only reduces your risk of INFECTION by 43%.
given that most people who were infected had to be tested to even KNOW they were infected, how can anyone make an argument that the risks associated with ANY medical procedure, let alone a fast tracked minimally tested one like the mRNA shots, is worth it at this point?
n
The price is not out of line for Texas BBQ, even considering the quality difference between Buc-ee’s and any of the gold standard brisket places in Luling a few miles away.
Um, gas station food is sketchy at best, even food from the attached restaurant.
I like how the article quotes “Clark Griswold” without even a wink… f’ing kids these days.
Have the people opining not been to a grocery store lately? Or even seen the “now hiring” signs on the wall at Buc-cees listing the starting pay? $15/hr cashiers and $Six figure store managers don’t get paid in monopoly money.
n
How exactly is someone who can’t control themselves and is diagnosed with something called IMPULSIVE AGGRESSION BEHAVIOR not a threat to the people around them?
Even a puppy can learn the consequences of its actions.
No one sane would insist on putting a pit bull or other breed subject to IMPULSIVE AGGRESSION in locked rooms with kids. Why do we tolerate that with OUR kids?
That is an animal that needs to be locked up with other animals.
Today’s strip is a little .. darker.
https://dilbert.com/strip/2023-02-24
n
“Chinese fighter jet confronts US Navy plane with CNN crew aboard as tensions simmer in South China Sea”
https://www.cnn.com/2023/02/24/asia/us-navy-south-china-sea-flyover-intl-hnk-ml/index.html
The shooting will start soon.
Hat tip to:
https://www.drudgereport.com/
Where’s the beef?
Is there really someone named Clark Griswold? What were his parents thinking? At least they could have named him “Sue Griswold”. You know, a boy named Sue.
I have probably been infected three or four times over the course of two years. The first time I thought I had Covid I was really sick, sicker than I have been in years. It lasted about a week. A few times during the two years, I felt the same symptoms, only much less severe. Was that due to the Covid shots and boosters? I am not thinking so much. I feel it was just my body adapting and building a response. I am certain the boosters helped, a little. But given the strong immune system that I have, I suspect my body did what it designed to accomplish.
Self delusion seems to be the new normal…
–yep, it’s the AUDIENCE’S FAULT.
Lost money, vs $1B for the previous film..
n
Welp. EBay punted yesterday by sending me another tracking number for a package going to Canada. I’m pretty sure Texas is not in Canada.
The seller sent a message today offering a 50% discount or a return shipping label. I suppose that reset some eBay timer.
So I called Discover. That was simple, I’ll get a credit on my bill. And yeah, I bought a couple of phone batteries and a battery charger in one eBay purchase but with two sellers. They could see all of that, that’s kind of trippy, even with working from home and an almost three toddler running around and making lots of noise.
Told the guy to give his girl a big hug, too. You could almost hear him smile.
What’s really trippy is that the phone system never asked for my account number. Just the last four of my SS.
Anyway. All done. USPS might deliver a couple of batteries someday and I’ll send the seller a check.
Where in the world and under the law does the NM judge get the authority to ban Baldwin from drinking alcohol?
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11790595/Rust-armorer-Hannah-Gutierrez-Reed-convinces-judge-let-gun-home.html
Alcohol is legal for adult use. You do not need special permission or a license to use alcohol. Alcohol had nothing to do with the accident. Baldwin isn’t a chronic abuser of alcohol with a history of bad actions while under its influence.
Making it even more suspect, the judge’s order DOESN’T ban the use of other drugs.
The ban on possession of a firearm is even more suspect than the alcohol ban as it’s a specifically enumerated right. He’s innocent of any wrongdoing under the law until found guilty by a court, so where does the judge’s authority to deny him of a Constitutional right come from?
And remember, this is an industrial accident. It wasn’t his gun. He has no history of committing crimes with guns or using guns inappropriately.
This stuff is important because the laws WILL be used against us. I don’t think I’ll willingly go to NM ever again, which is a shame because it’s got some real beauty and my wife is very fond of some of the places there.
n
THIS is what super model beauty looks like these days?
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-11779933/Julia-Fox-takes-son-Valentino-Diesel-Milan-Fashion-Week.html
n
The audience would have accepted Patrick Warburton, who effectively co-owns the role with Tim Allen, but the big problem with “Lightyear” was the stale concept.
Warburton delivered the best Buzz Lightyear line of all time with “Nose rings are for punks little mister.”
Is Warburton still the star of the queue video at “Soarin'”?
Regardless, The Mouse is in serious trouble.
Looks like a dude.
I have been eating Prasek’s Pepper Jerkey at the office lately at night when I am starving:
– I stopped in their store on I-10 and tried to buy more of their sugar free (smoke flavor only) jerky last month. They didn’t have any, and the counter guy had never heard of it.
I’m not imagining it, because I still have one last hoarded packet. They used to sell it at HEB, then HEB added their own brand, “Mikes” but even that isn’t there anymore and I’m reduced to buying the only sugar free option, Tillamook. It isn’t bad, but the ‘normal’ flavor has hot mixed in with smoke, and you don’t know what piece you’ll get when you reach in the bag. It’s also kinda spendy.
n
‘This is NOT this child’s fault. . . . ‘
A 17-YO is not a child.
He was last summer.
Lynn says:
The Chinese have become a lot more aggressive over the past 30 years or so. The Paracel islands are clearly legally China’s, and they are actually islands. And remember, in the spring of 2001, a Chinese pilot named, seriously, “Wong Wei”, midaired an EP-3 surveillance aircraft pretty close to the same spot as this incident. The American pilot landed on Hainan, and gave the entire aircraft and all the electronics to China. He should have flown to the Philippines, or ditched the airplane in deep water.
The Spratly “Islands”, on the other side of the South China Sea, were illegally dredged from sensitive coral reefs in 1987-1989, and are an act of war, having been constructed as military defenses within the Economic Exclusion Zone of the Philippines. I watched it happen; I was stationed at Cubi Point Air Station in the Philippines. The Navy could have prevented it, if they’d been ordered to, but Shrub Sr. apparently didn’t care.
The EP-3 crew trashed the electronics and destroyed as much paper as they could on the way to the airfield in Hunan.
Priority of the commander was to keep all of his kids alive.
As Brad Pitt points out in this clip, Americans don’t get shot. They get chewed out.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IGHj_l11vPI
@Lynn
In 2003 I got caught on the last day of a small conference with no snacks. It was at a resort and there was a couple hour drive ahead, so eating lunch seemed like a good idea. Cheapest thing on the menu was the $25 cheeseburger with fries. It was okay, but not anywhere near $25.
Two weeks ago I stopped at the food court of a local mall for lunch. The jerk chicken sandwich and pineapple coleslaw (not included with the sandwich) set me back $23. The sandwich was very good, but again, not worth the tab.
I had an auction pickup this morning. Filled my Yeti with coffee, stopped at the bakery department of the local grocery intending to limit myself to two apple fritters, and lucked into the last four-pack of yesterday’s pistachio muffins at half price–my kind of deal. True to my personal commitment to myself, I only ate two during the 100-mile trip. It helped that my Thursday evening meal was sirloin tip toast, red garlic potatoes, carrots, and green beans, so I had late lunch locked when I got back.
>> Falling asleep is not good. That is my constant battle driving. Eating jerky helps (no sugar) and listening to audiobooks is better than just music.
@nick, maybe something like this? Some mixed reviews, but then again, I only did a quick search.
I used to have the issue but don’t do a lot of nighttime driving anymore. And people may dislike them, but the built-in LDW systems do seem to work. Of course, with anything vehicle-related, it truly is YMMV.
re: Prasek’s jerky
I was not familiar with the brand so I hit their website. I doubt if I would get out of their store alive. They need a serious sampler for their jerky and sticks.
I always stock up at the locker in April when the fat cattle go in. 6Am evolution and on the road by 7 to get there by 8. Always one that won’t get out of the stock trailer, and by the time they’re unloaded I’m ready for breakfast from their retail store: Jalapeno Cheddar Beef Sticks. A couple extra packages and a 3-4 of two kinds of jerky goes home then , and I usually stock up serious when I pick up my beef two weeks later.
About forty years ago I was gifted with a pound of smoked beef from a place in a small town in SE Nebraska. I placed a standing order with my buddy who was from the area, and I even did a detour and visited on a trip out west. Building a hundred years old, smoked meats hanging from the ceiling, smokehouse out back. Long gone but the memories. When the implement dealer goes out of business in one of those small towns, it’s only a matter of time. Might be a Dollar General, two restaurants, a bar and a filling station left.
>> No such thing as an illegal handgun in NYS and NYFC since SCOTUS forced their hand.
Except this cr@p which eventually will also be found unconstitutional…
NY law banning guns in ‘sensitive areas’ can continue: Supreme Court
Scott Adams Says White People Should ‘Get the Hell Away From Black People’
https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/lincolnbrown/2023/02/24/scott-adams-says-white-people-should-get-the-hell-away-from-black-people-n1673469
Imagine the headlines if 26% of whites said it was not okay to be black.
The Rasmussen Poll will probably get no discussion outside the context of Scot Adams comments.
Click on the embedded link for the Rasmussen tweet gets you to Twitter and an YouTube video from Mark Mitchell of Rasmussen that is worth watching.
Greg Norton writes:
I know, I’m just a grumpy old man, but I’m also a grumpy old retired Naval Flight Officer with 5000 hours in P-3 Orions, and I assure you, there was precious little that the crew could have done to trash the electronics or destroy paper short of opening the cabin door and throwing “black boxes” into deep water. Smashing the circuits with the single onboard fire ax won’t have done all that much damage.
And a P-3 is a remarkably sturdy aircraft. Did you know that a P-3 once midaired a C-130 doing Search and Rescue off of Guam? The P-3 pilot saw the C-130 at the last second, tried to turn away, and slashed the belly of the C-130 with the wingtip of the P-3. Both aircraft survived.
And I wasn’t there – but I still think they could have made it to the Philippines and not given an intelligence jackpot to the PLA.
A Dollar General requires a tax base to provide the subsidies which keep the lights on and pay the manager’s salary.
When the WalMart trucks roll out with whatever was left at the abandoned store and Dollar General moves in, the town is in decline but not yet terminal.
It’s Friday, so prepare The Hammers.
Show me an actual court document with the details,
– not just a troll, but a lazy one too, since the link I included had that exact thing…
And the transparent straw man too…
continue ignoring 20-year-old Greta Thunberg and 22-year-old David Hogg “because they’re just ignorant children”
no one here is ignoring stompy foot or 15seconds of fame, we are RIDICULING them. Getting your high school shot up doesn’t make you a subject matter expert on gun banning, and being groomed by attention seeking parents with Munchausen by proxy doesn’t make one an expert on the earth’s climate and infamy doesn’t make either worthy of reasoned consideration.
n
THIS is what super model beauty looks like these days?
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-11779933/Julia-Fox-takes-son-Valentino-Diesel-Milan-Fashion-Week.html
I thought that was an old picture of David Bowie at first. Looks just like him in his androgynous phase when he was pretending to be Ziggy Stardust.
The spray paint makeup is just bizarre.
n
I know, I’m just a grumpy old man, but I’m also a grumpy old retired Naval Flight Officer with 5000 hours in P-3 Orions, and I assure you, there was precious little that the crew could have done to trash the electronics or destroy paper short of opening the cabin door and throwing “black boxes” into deep water. Smashing the circuits with the single onboard fire ax won’t have done all that much damage.
I thought all those aircraft had a couple of thermite grenades in them.
They couldn’t do much to antennas, or the composition of the stealth paint…
n
17 is more than old enough to be tried as an adult, if the offence is serious. Given his alleged threats to kill the woman before he attacked her, attempted murder seems serious enough…
And from a law of self defence- this is a classic disparity of force case. She would be justified in using lethal force to stop him.
n
The Mythbusters are professionals. Don’t try these things at home.
Seriously, I saw a thermite reaction in person once in a carefully controlled demonstration run by a chemistry professor. The molten iron by product just kept going until it hit the bucket of water lined with sand on the bottom which the lab techs set up under the reaction stand. Even then, a fair bit of the sand had melted to glass when the iron “lump” had cooled sufficiently to be plucked from the bucket with tongs.
Scary. I’m not sure I would want to see that reaction in an aircraft I’m depending on to land in one piece.
“The establishment’s erasure of JK Rowling and other pulp fiction rebels is just the start”
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/restoring-america/faith-freedom-self-reliance/the-establishments-erasure-of-jk-rowling-and-other-pulp-fiction-rebels-is-just-the-start
“Last year, Esquire magazine published a list of “The 50 Best Fantasy Books if All Time.” Harry Potter wasn’t on the list. Instead, sitting at the top was The Fifth Season by N.K. Jemisin, a work of fantasy with analogs to the real-life history of slavery on Earth that won the 2016 Hugo Award for Best Novel.”
https://www.esquire.com/entertainment/books/g39385874/best-fantasy-books/
I have not read a single book on this list. The list is invalid.
“Death in Paradise” wrapped its season tonight so The Daily Mail is squeezing one last week or so of schadenfreude out of the US news before the weather starts to warm up in the UK.
50s next week.
Erasure? Work on the new Universal Wizarding World themed attractions continues at full speed in Orlando.
https://orlandoparkstop.com/news/theme-park-news/epic-universe-update-coaster-top-hat-installed-attraction-rumors-and-nintendo-world-portal/
Oh, and before I forget, Mr. Worf returned on “Picard” this week.
And if you feared the worst from the “woke” Klingon bit in the season trailer, rest assured that it must be some schtick because Worf was full on bada** last night with a brand new shiny pointy thing to play with and the “Klingon” score from “Star Trek: The Motion Picture” playing in the background.
Lynn wrote:
I WISH we could have had them, but I never saw (or heard of) one. At least, the EP-3 didn’t USE one. The best I ever saw was water-soluble paper. SUPER-soluble; if you dribbled coffee on the page, it would turn to mush, and all the pages below it.
Greg Norton:
Something like that would be a “trigger it on the way out of the airplane” device.
The Mythbusters are professionals. Don’t try these things at home.
Seriously, I saw a thermite reaction in person once in a carefully controlled demonstration run by a chemistry professor. The molten iron by product just kept going until it hit the bucket of water lined with sand on the bottom which the lab techs set up under the reaction stand. Even then, a fair bit of the sand had melted to glass when the iron “lump” had cooled sufficiently to be plucked from the bucket with tongs.
Scary. I’m not sure I would want to see that reaction in an aircraft I’m depending on to land in one piece.
My son was qualified to carry thermite grenades and did so. He carried a couple of pounds of C4 and a couple of thermite grenades when they visited people in Iraq at 2am. Not much else will go through a two foot thick wall and roof.
Something like that would be a “trigger it on the way out of the airplane” device.
Yup. Once ignited, nothing is going to stop it.
“Mama Bear “speaking Scottish” has issues with her cubs”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FBlo6su5wRY
Four cubs ! Oh my !
Lynn said:
This “list” is certainly invalid, but a few items there would be worth your time.
All 14 of the “Oz” books. This list picks the 2nd one.
All …five?… of the “Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe” series by C.S. Lewis. This list picks #3.
The Lord of the Rings. This list mentions the first of 3 books.
I read the first of the Game of Thrones books, but I hated it. Blood and gore, without much of a story.
I’d never heard of most of them, nor of their authors.
https://capitol.texas.gov/BillLookup/History.aspx?LegSess=88R&Bill=HCR54
@Lynn
A better list:
https://time.com/collection/100-best-fantasy-books/
includes:
Harry Potter
Alice
Mary Poppins
A Wrinkle in Time
The Princess Bride
Another list in chronological order:
https://reedsy.com/discovery/blog/best-fantasy-books
includes:
The Color of Magic
but where are:
The Witches of Karres
Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser
Conan
Tarzan
Oscar
Dracula
to name a few?
Looks like more “all time best” lists made up by idiots that learned to read this century and think the sun shines out the backside of Millenials. Ho-hum. Forget coding, you can’t handle coding. Learn to speak Chinese.
https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2023/02/why_the_2020_election_was_unverifiable.html
Remember the Afghan women proudly showing their inked fingers after they got to vote?
We have the freaking Taliban in charge of elections in the U.S.
“Perry Rhodan # 61- Death Waits in Semispace” by Kurt Mahr
https://www.amazon.com/Perry-Rhodan-Death-Waits-Semispace/dp/B0014LC9YO?tag=azlinkplugin-20/
Book number sixty-one of a series of one hundred and thirty-six space opera books in English. The original German books, actually pamphlets, number in the thousands. The English books started with two translated German stories per book translated by Wendayne Ackerman and transitioned to one story per book with the sixth book. And then they transition back to two stories in book #109/110. The Ace publisher dropped out at #118, so Forrest and Wendayne Ackerman published books #119 to #136 in pamphlets before stopping in 1978. The German books were written from 1961 to present time, having sold two billion copies and even recently been rebooted again. I read the well printed and well bound book published by Ace in 1975 that I had to be very careful with due to age. I bought an almost complete box of Perry Rhodans a decade or two ago on ebay that I am finally getting to since I lost my original Perry Rhodans in The Great Flood of 1989. In fact, I now own book #1 to book #106, plus the Atlan books.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perry_Rhodan
BTW, this is actually book number 69 of the German pamphlets written in 1962. There is a very good explanation of the plot in German on the Perrypedia German website of all of the PR books. There is automatic Google translation available for English, Spanish, Dutch, Japanese, French, and Portuguese.
https://www.perrypedia.de/wiki/Im_Halbraum_lauert_der_Tod
In this alternate universe, USSF Major Perry Rhodan and his three fellow astronauts blasted off in a three stage rocket to the Moon in 1971. The first stage of the rocket was chemical, the second and third stages were nuclear. After crashing on the Moon due to a strange radio interference, they discover a massive crashed alien spaceship with an aged male scientist (Khrest), a female commander (Thora), and a crew of 500. It has been over sixty-nine years since then and the Solar Empire has flourished with tens of millions of people and many spaceships headquartered in the Gobi desert, the city of Terrania. Perry Rhodan has been elected by the people of Earth to be the World Administrator.
It has been almost 62 years since Perry Rhodan and Reginald Bull found the Immortal living on his wandering planet who gave them the immortal cell treatment. It is time for them to renew the cell treatment but, the wandering planet is not where they computed it to be ! The wandering planet has been stolen by the Druufs, the time thieves who are stealing the populations of entire star systems. Perry, Reg, and Atlan find the wandering planet in a time plane between our time plane and the Druuf time plane. But, getting there is quite tricky.
Two observations:
1. Forrest Ackerman should have put two or three of the translated stories in each book. Having two stories in the first five books worked out well. Just having one story in the book is too short and would never allow the translated books to catch up to the German originals.
2. Anyone liking Perry Rhodan and wanting a more up to date story should read the totally awesome “Mutineer’s Moon” Dahak series of three books by David Weber.
https://www.amazon.com/Mutineers-Moon-Dahak-David-Weber/dp/0671720856?tag=ttgnet-20/
My rating: 4.0 out of 5 stars
Amazon rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars (1 reviews)
“The Eternity Symbiote” by Cedar Sanderson
https://www.amazon.com/Eternity-Symbiote-Cedar-Sanderson/dp/0615998682?tag=ttgnet-20/
A standalone science fiction first contact book, no prequel or sequel that I know of. I read the well printed and well bound POD (print on demand) trade paperback published by Stonycroft Publishing in 2014. I would like to read a sequel or two for the book but I cannot find any.
Gabrielle McGregor flies a couple of men out to a remote location in Alaska to meet a third man. They pick up the third man, who turns out to be her estranged husband, who found a piece of a crashed alien spacecraft. They then take off to return to the small airport that she left earlier. But on the way there, the alien artifact explodes and their plane goes down into the Alaskan wilderness.
The book is fairly rough but the story is interesting. And there is kind of a cliffhanger.
The author has a website at:
http://www.cedarwrites.com/
My rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars
Amazon rating: 3.4 out of 5 stars (14 reviews)
Yes it is. I would believe even some of the most outrageous stories of its adventures. The only other aircraft with with even close adventures is the C-47.
That book list was put together by a hipster for Esquire, which explains some of why it sucks so bad. Look at his other achievements (‘founder of’) and see that he marinates in estrogen…
And modern lit is full of estrogen and exotic spices… and not much substance or impact.
Any best of list that includes books from the last 10 years, or even the most recent 20 is going to have some real clinkers in it and saying that it is unduly influenced by fashion and bias is probably the most gentle way to put it. How else to explain the outsized representation of women and african names?
Best of lists or top 10 lists are a great way to generate clicks if that’s what you want… and the disclaimer at the top of his page says it all…
n