Hot and humid. Hit 114F in part sun. Hit 106F in the shade. More of the same today, I think. It was so hot, I sat in the shade and in the house talking with my fisherman buddy.
At some point he saw a squirrel in the yard and pointed it out. There is a guy up here that hates squirrels and shoots them, which my buddy hates. As he put it, that is food for when things get really tough. That led me to bring up season 9 of “Alone” which I’ve mentioned here recently. They were shooting and snaring squirrels, pretty successfully, and still starving slowly. At 250 calories per squirrel, there isn’t much food on them. I pointed that out, and that everyone up here would be hunting the same squirrel, deer, and piggies if it drops in the pot. He was convinced he’d be getting plenty of game, so I played along. Who’s watching the wife and grandkids while he’s hunting? More extended family.
Oh, so now you’re feeding 20 people on squirrel and other game, same as everyone else up here. Yeah, but we aren’t JUST eating that… OK, what else are you eating? We’ll be eating from the garden. Which garden? We’ll plant one, we’ve got seeds stored up. OK, what do you eat for the months you are waiting for the harvest? Got six months of food stored? Hmmm. No. Ok, got six weeks? Hmmm. No.
So how do you feed the guards? What about all the other folks who show up looking for food? We’ll tell them “no”. What if they insist? They can try, we’ll shoot them. And what about the next ones? Shoot them too. And if they are hungry kids? Hmmm. OK, now you are the bad guy, and everyone decides you don’t deserve to have your food and stuff so they burn you out and take it.
Hmm.
There has been a lot of what Bruce Schneier calls “movie plot” thinking going on up here. One response, but no thought for second or third order effects.
I still think this is a lot better place to ride out any trouble, but some people haven’t given it enough thought, or considered the reactions and actions of other people. Hopefully he’ll do just that now that I’ve planted a seed.
Today if I get a chance I’ll ask him for a rough census of the deer and piggy population. That should get him thinking about how viable living off the land might actually be. He does know the area intimately, and the people that he knows he knows well. He didn’t know there was an outlaw biker clubhouse only 12 miles away though. And there are lots of places out in the country to do bad things without anyone noticing. I’m betting that at least some of the “abandoned” buildings have occupants, or users that you wouldn’t want to meet, or know what they are up to.
If I can get him to think beyond “I’ll hunt and so I’ll have food” to the idea EVERYONE will be hunting for that same food, maybe we can make some better plans.
The problem is bigger than here and what to do here. The wuflu panic had people in cities buying any piece of land in the country they could get, especially if it was near an amenity like a lake. Everyone that knows anyone in the country will be looking to head there if they can. Everyone who has been to a boy scout or girl scout, or church retreat camp will think it might be a better place to be than a burning city. But the countryside, by and large, doesn’t have the resources for a massive influx of people.
And the folks already here won’t be super happy to share. Which brings me neatly around to the idea that IF you think you might end up wanting to ‘head for the hills’ you better do it NOW and start getting yourself established. At least get your foot in the door, so you aren’t part of a wave of refugees. You’ll still be the new guy, but if you work for it, when they circle the wagons, you might be inside the circle, instead of outside.
I’m trying hard to be in the circle, and I think it’s paying off. Get busy working a plan. And stack, so you don’t show up empty handed.
nick
What happens with SpaceX at Kennedy supporting Falcon, Dragon, and Starlink launches is separate from Boca Chica.
Even if Tony pours the concrete and builds something higher spec than LC 39B, where the Apollo missions started, the logistics just aren’t available to build a facility on the scale of Atlanta to handle passengers and cargo heading to space or the other side of the world.
Right now, just the two lane road out to the site is nearly impassable.
WHQL mostly solved the driver quality issue, but absent a walled garden and app store approach similar to Apple on iOS devices, there is very little Microsoft can do about application level code quality.
And even Apple may not be able to keep their walled garden. Too many powerful interests want to do nasty low level things on the iPhone, everything legal as long as the clueless user clicks “Ok” on the EULA.
Even if they are sewn into a human centipede. “Why won’t it read?!?”
Farming supports 100X the population per square mile as hunting-gathering. More than that now, with mechanization and petroleum and Haber-Bosch fertilizers. Even in a sparsely-settled county, assume that 90% will (need to) die in order for the rest to subsist on what they can hunt. And the 90% will need to die early, so that all the game (and roots and berries) aren’t eaten and there’s nothing left for next year.
If that sounds like a Bad End, stack more food.
My SHTF plans already included shooting up a couple of bad neighborhoods very early. Ideally, get a gang war started and let them kill each other off. At the least, keep them too busy to come to my neighborhood for a little while.
Long before survival books, websites, and YT’s there were traditional American folk songs:
Possum sittin’ on a hickory limb,
Hie away, hie away home.
Shotgun make short work of him,
Hie away, hie away home.
Put him on a spit and roast him sweet,
It’s hard to beat that possum meat.
Eat him all except the feet,
Hie away, hie away home.
In other news this morning, vegan social influencer with huge following starved herself to death on strict fruit diet, refused to get help until it was too late. Darwin in action.
https://hotair.com/david-strom/2023/08/01/vegan-raw-foods-influencer-starved-to-death-n568268
When driving The Child to school ten years ago, I was singing Wild Hog in the Woods because I’d heard it recently on Mountain Stage and it was stuck in my head. After a few verses, The Child chimed in on the refrain. Tell ya, it’s disconcerting to hear a six-year-old girl singing “Hunt him down, cut him down, kill him if you can.”
Turns out the FBI was using software that the FBI banned. Shocked, I tell you, shocked.
https://9to5mac.com/2023/08/01/fbi-used-nso-spyware/
“The FBI now says that it used the tool unwittingly and that Riva Networks misled the bureau.”
What a lot of crap. The FBI knew full well that it was supporting the use of the banned software tool and is now just covering their tracks, protecting their butts and jobs.
“The White House said that it was unaware of this”
The clown in the White House is not aware of much. I seriously think that someone has to help him get dressed in the morning. My aunt was in better shape than Spongey and we had to put her in an assisted living facility,
“I seriously think that someone has to help him get dressed in the morning.”
what was your first clue?
shirt not backwards?
pants on and zipped?
Depends tucked in?
I posted earlier in the year that when I upgraded my gaming PC to W11, all the VR gear stopped working. I have paid Dell support and they couldn’t get it working. I worked on it for a day or two and finally got all working except for one Alienware piece of software (thanks to the googles). I have never heard back on the last problem, it is still an open ticket.
Dell support has gone to shit. The first Dell gaming PC I bought, way back when, had excellent support. Techs came to my house three times to fix the motherboard in it. I’m considering NOT renewing the support package.
We used to hunt squirrels, rabbits, and partridge all the time as a youngun’. Mom would make a meat pie out of them. Fished all the time. After the Barackalypse, cue the long pork.
A palate cleanser for Mr. Ray:
Can you believe these pictures were taken on a SMARTPHONE? The incredible winners of the 2023 iPhone Photography Awards, which forbids the use of Photoshop…
Amazing what a cell phone can do these days. Pournelle’s “pocket computer.”
85.. no, 86F this sunny morning. Already climbing.
@greg, RLTS may see the impassable 2 lane road as a feature, not a bug.
@stevef, cunning, and proactive…
@MrAtoz, absolutely, not saying “don’t hunt them” just saying they don’t have much meat, and everyone else will be too.
@SteveF, there was an interview on PBS, on Roy Underhill’s show, with a chair maker who has traveled the back roads and poked into the hollars… learning trad crafts from the remaining practitioners. He was relating the time his host, training him in some craft, got too caught up in the job and burned the possum that was for dinner. He said it was the absolute worst smell he’d ever smelled. My “Joy of Cooking” says you should feed them on bread and milk for a while before cooking, but I think that if you have bread and milk you should eat that and skip the possum….
If y’all remember my report on Plymoth Rock and the museum there, the young lady role playing the indian said that raccoon was delicious and tasted like strawberry flavored beef. (IIRC) That sounds a whole lot better than possum.
I think most of us probably believe that we are original thinkers and that our ideas are good ones. I know I do. But it’s pretty clear that none of us are having novel thoughts about this stuff. I remember being a bit surprised how many people there were at Costco on my “last run” before the covid lockdown, and surprised by how many were ready with masks. There are FAR more people out there quietly having the same thoughts about what they’ll do.
Assume your good idea will have 10-20-40 other people doing it too, and at the same time. You aren’t the only one that remembers a certain deer lease has a spring, or that the Boy Scout camp is well set up…
And that is a real problem if things get really real.
nick
Squirrel: I’ve snared and eaten squirrel. I learned how at the Navy’s Cold Weather Survival School at Rangely Lakes, ME. However, two squirrels divided 12 ways (the number of people in a P-3 aircrew) in a stew with a handful of rice don’t go very far.
I just returned from a short stint in Bidenland. Sunday’s front page, I shirt you not, was 2/3rds covered with an article praising all the money that Hunter brought to the state of Delaware. No mention of the illegal medical lab or anything else of importance shared the space. I told folks that I wanted to save it after others had read it, just to show friends that would not believe it back home, but it was “accidentally” recycled.
And, yes, I have spent a lot of time in that part of the country, and that is where any bad behavior was always explained away because of the accident. My USAF friends there were the ones who linked the accident to the good son’s brain cancer. I had no reason to doubt them.
I suspect the newspaper folk already knew what news would be breaking this week.
Re: TX property tax
I about choked when a sibling told me that the taxes on the new family home in a tony community north of SA are over $50K/year. They can afford it, but that seems outrageous.
Re: squirrels
It depends on where you live. The only squirrels that live to maturity here are the fast, small, wiry ones. The rest succumb to animals higher on the food chain. They would definitely not be Good Eats. OTOH, my experience with suburban squirrels in the midwest proved them to be fat, slow, and plentiful. I guess they would be wiped out pretty quickly in bad times.
Re: Boca Chica
If it does not already exist, I imagine the new launch pad will require a nice long heavy-duty access road that is arrow-straight for at least 3000 feet.
San Antonio. $50k? On what square footage/purchase price?
That’s a big house. Griddy customer for sure if they still existed. 🙂
The link between head injuries and brain cancer remains at a level barely above junk science.
And, using the Duck, I haven’t seen anything about Beau Biden sustaining a head injury of concern, just a broken leg.
The “good” son’s death was a tragedy, but he was still part of the crime family, running the Delaware Attorney General’s office from a Green Zone office in Iraq, which is ethically questionable even if legal.
And, again, the “good” son was not as academically accomplished as Hunter.
At least the Commie China secret bio-lab is the lede on Daily Mail right now.
There better be some heads rolling very soon. Or, maybe, WE funded the lab for the next “panic-demic” before tRump 2.0.
What happens with SpaceX at Kennedy supporting Falcon, Dragon, and Starlink launches is separate from Boca Chica.
Even if Tony pours the concrete and builds something higher spec than LC 39B, where the Apollo missions started, the logistics just aren’t available to build a facility on the scale of Atlanta to handle passengers and cargo heading to space or the other side of the world.
Right now, just the two lane road out to the site is nearly impassable.
Boca Chica is just the test flight site where SpaceX does not have to deal with NASA.
Eventually, SpaceX is planning on 30 minute flights from New York City and Houston to Tokyo and Beijing. With free barf bags for that 10 minutes of weightlessness. And a terrifying ten minutes of reentry before a powered landing in the harbors on platforms. It will be the ride of the millennium, nothing like it in the world.
SpaceX has got to fix the takeoff with all of those rocket motors though. That is just like the surface of the Sun with over ten million hp. I don’t think that the water deluge system is going to cut it.
We used to hunt squirrels, rabbits, and partridge all the time as a youngun’. Mom would make a meat pie out of them. Fished all the time. After the Barackalypse, cue the long pork.
My grandfather had six brothers and sisters on a farm here in Texas before the Depression. He was deadly with a single shot .22 LR. They ate squirrel just about every night.
“Tesla wants to build a semi truck-charging route from Texas to California”
https://www.chron.com/business/article/tesla-wants-to-build-a-semi-truck-charging-route-18272792.php
“Tesla is seeking nearly $100 million from the U.S. to build nine electric semi-truck charging stations.”
Wow. Tesla is telling the feddies to put up or shut up.
I wonder if the truck charging stations will include a gas turbine ?
@Lynn
LR or shorts?
xkcd: Moon
https://xkcd.com/2809/
Yeah, that thing hanging in the sky looks pretty amazing to me.
Explained at:
https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/2809:_Moon
@Lynn
LR or shorts?
I am fairly sure that it was a .22 LR single shot bolt action. Kinda like this.
https://www.cabelas.com/shop/en/savage-rascal-single-shot-bolt-action-rimfire-compact-rifle
I think my cousin ended up with the .22 LR gun. I don’t know who got the shotgun.
“The “little things” in emergency preparedness – and the value of time and energy”
https://bayourenaissanceman.blogspot.com/2023/08/the-little-things-in-emergency.html
“Too many people today have never tried to live outside their homes. They’ve never been camping, and when they have, it’s often been with tents (even travel trailers), lots of food in coolers and in cans, plenty of clean clothes, access to showers and toilets (or, at least, areas where it’s safe to bathe in streams and “do your business” without being disturbed by natural hazards), and so on. They have no idea at all what it means to get “up close and personal” with Mother Nature without such aids to comfort . . . let alone with other human beings who are also struggling to survive, many of whom are going to be more than ready to take whatever they need from you, whether you like it or not.”
“(Don’t forget lots of toilet paper! Corncobs and pinecones are not all they’re cracked up to be . . .)”
Where is my air conditioning ?
I spent the morning supervising the plumbers fixing my house water line, two foot away from the house. The house was lifted 1.5 inches in April and the ground just dropped due to the drought. This time they put in a two foot section of Upinor one inch Pex. He thinks that will work for a long time. We will see. It was three feet down so they had to dig out my front bed, it was a total mess.
“Grand jury accuses Trump of conspiring to defraud the United States”
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/donald-trump/trump-indicted-jan-6-grand-jury-2020-election-rcna95199
“WASHINGTON — Former President Donald Trump was indicted Tuesday on charges he conspired to defraud the country he used to lead and attempted to prevent the peaceful transfer of presidential power to Joe Biden.”
Unreal. We are a third world banana country.
Hat tip to:
https://www.drudgereport.com/
I see what you did with that.
As usual, Democrats are too stupid to foresee the consequences of their policies and actions.
“Apes and Angels (Star Quest Trilogy, 2)” by Ben Bova
https://www.amazon.com/Apes-Angels-Star-Quest-Trilogy/dp/0765379538?tag=ttgnet-20/
Book number two of a three book science fiction series. I read the well printed and well bound MMPB that I bought new on Amazon that was published by Tor in 2017. This series is also a rough continuance of Bova’s 20+ book Grand Tour of the Solar System series. I have purchased a used copy of the third book in the series and am reading that now.
We humans on Earth were told about the deadly Gamma wave coming from the center of the Milky Way Galaxy every 28,000 years by the Predecessors, ancient intelligent machines that have seen many intelligent races destroyed by the gamma wave. They have enlisted our help in erecting force fields around the surrounding intelligent races around Sol to prevent them from getting destroyed by the gamma wave that is coming in 2,000 years to the edge of the Milky Way.
The author has a website at:
http://benbova.com/
My rating: 4 out of 5 stars
Amazon rating: 4.4 out of 5 stars (161 reviews)
As usual, Democrats are too stupid to foresee the consequences of their policies and actions.
Usually what happens at this point is a civil war.
Not only is there an opportunity to sight the Intl Space Station tonight but also the NG-19 supply ship
https://spotthestation.nasa.gov/sightings/view.cfm?country=United_States®ion=California&city=Bakersfield
other places and times will of course vary. We have a very open view to the west.
RIP the incandescent light. Welcome to California living, we had them banned for years now. Not to worry there are some still around. It’s worth it to save us all from ourselves.
https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/lincolnbrown/2023/08/01/the-incandescent-light-bulb-ban-starts-today-n1715224
“Elizabeth Warren figured it out: America needs more regulation!”
https://www.sovereignman.com/trends/elizabeth-warren-figured-it-out-america-needs-more-regulation-147965/
“Elizabeth Warren, the Senator from Massachusetts, is full of great ideas.
Her image of the perfect world is one of nonstop government regulation. All business must be controlled… by her, of course.
Only an ex-professor knows best how the 330+ million person American economy should function!
Warren’s first brainchild was the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB). President Obama signed the agency into law in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis, with the mission to “protect” consumers from unfair, deceptive, and abusive practices by big business.”
Any chance we could get one to protect citizens from unfair, deceptive, and abusive practices by big government.
Any chance we could get one to protect citizens from unfair, deceptive, and abusive practices by big government.
No such beastie !
She’s full of something all right.
Fauxcahontas. Crockajawea. Take your pick.
My wife being half Chinese has a much higher percentage of DNA in common with Native Americans than Warren.
Home and fed. Cleaned up and wrapped up, then drove home. Stopped in Conroe to pick up a couple of auction items. One for me, one for my sibling.
Got home and my cams and main pc were out. Started working on the cams, since that pc was still powered. From the files, we lost power Sat. night, and the software NVR didn’t come back up. Got everything restarted and was just clearing a path to look at why my main pc doesn’t turn on when the neighbor called.
Excitement in the street. Guy did a hit and run, fleeing into my neighborhood, and crashed in front of my house. Then he got out of the car and beat feet for the nearby apartment complex…
Got good images on two cameras, the first file recorded after I got them all back up. Copied to thumbdrive and handed to the deputy…
Had dinner and haven’t started in on why my main pc won’t start. Monitors are out too, so I think it’s a power issue not a PC issue. Gotta clean a path to the gear though…
n
@Nick
Since you’re home, presumably with good internet, check your email.
Whelp, that sucks. Main PC was not on the UPS but was on a surge protector strip. Strip is dead. PC is dead. New power strip, confirm power is at the end of the IEC cable to the PC, but no life. I heard the attached speakers click when I connected the power cord, so something may be live, but no blinkenlights.
Next step is to pull the pc out from under the desk and try the whole thing again, then swap the power supply, if possible (Dell), and proceed from there.
Currently can’t check my flandrey email…
n
Ok, pulling the strip, it wasn’t dead, just the indicator light was dead. But it’s not a surge protector after all, which means my psu might be smoked. pulling the box is going to be obnoxious.
Guess it’s gotta be done.
n
Ain’t technology fun ?!!
>> @greg, RLTS may see the impassable 2 lane road as a feature, not a bug.
@nick, RLTS?
Real Life Tony Stark, aka Elon Musk
n
Anyone know what’s going on here?
Ok, pulled the pc to check it out. Holding the soft power button causes two fans to spin in pulses, slowly. Letting go makes them stop.
The Dell psu has a recessed button on the back next to a green led. Pushing and holding that button starts all the fans to max, letting go they all spin down.
Pushing and holding the soft start button and then press and release the recessed button on the back of the psu, and the PC boots normally.
I shut it off using windows shutdown, but it would not restart from the soft power button, but needed the two step process to boot.
Seems like there is an issue, but I’ve got no idea if it’s a mother board issue or a psu issue.
When it’s running the green light on the back of the psu lights and stays lit.
n
Nick, I’d guess a power supply problem. Because if the PC boots “normally” when you’ve finally teased the power supply, I’d think that the motherboard is OK. Do a full backup, and then replace the power supply.
>> Oh, so now you’re feeding 20 people on squirrel and other game, same as everyone else up here. Yeah, but we aren’t JUST eating that… OK, what else are you eating?
I wonder from time to time if it all winds up as Mad Max crossed with the Walking Dead (x the zombies) where finding a rusty can of beans in a burned-out HEB means you live another day.
I’m hoping that it never gets that weird,but a civil war would do it locally. Food producing regions vs cities. Not gonna end well for anyone.
I put my main pc back together, and tricked it into booting. It’s on the UPS now, so I shouldn’t need to restart it while I figure out if the psu is a normal unit or dell specific. Even the dell one isn’t crazy expensive in “pre-owned.”
Lesson learned. I thought it was on the UPS. I meant to put it on the UPS. But I didn’t.
n
Listening to Nick’s woes: I love technology, but sometimes it’s more trouble than it’s worth.
Randomly related: I did some soldering on the weekend. Then yesterday I read an article about an open-source firmware (IronOS) for soldering irons. WTF? Modern soldering irons have/need firmware? Seriously?
@brad, it’s been solid and stable for years so an occasional bump is unfortunate but not too bad. I probably could have avoided any issues if I’d remembered to move that plug from the wall to the UPS when I put the new UPS under the desk. One of the reasons I don’t want to be forced to move to a new OS is that familiar reliability.
n
I’ve never had a problem moving from one version of Windows to another, because the keyboard commands I commonly use are mostly the same. I don’t use the Start menu, and don’t care how it changes. The popular applications have had remarkably stable default keyboard commands as well.
Two things DO bug me, though. Some key commands are disappearing, so I have to use the rodent. My wife has a laptop, and its keyboard layout is an abomination. I am tempted to plug in a better keyboard, but I only use it when I have to do updates. Besides, there is no room for a keyboard.