Hot and humid, no relief in sight, and I’m unloading trucks in the sun. Oh well, it beats loading my truck in the rain… and the venue is air conditioned.
Spent the day working and selling. Didn’t get to walk around and see if there was anything for me to buy. Probably just as well. We’ve got people from all over, mostly in the region, but Chicago, Cali, NY, and other distant places too. It’s always interesting to talk with them and see what they have to say about the state of things.
I’ll be talking with some more people today. Early start, as some people will be arriving this morning, then a day of selling, and some interesting presentations. IDK if I’ll be able to watch any of the educational stuff, but I will try. I’m training D2 as a sales person and she does a great job. Gives me a few minutes to walk the floor or use the restroom.
So far I’ve more than paid for the tables and most of my time (discounted because I have fun.) If I can sell some more stuff today and tomorrow it’s all in the plus column.
I’m gonna call this weekend “meatspace baby” and taking the tenor of the clans. With a side of clearing out some inventory, and making a little money to fund my hobbies.
Then it’s back to stackin’…
nick
“Work from home” is part of the pricing equation, but the market expected a new $15k first time homebuyer tax credit to put a $500k floor under any house which could pass inspection, as Corn Pop promised in 2020 but couldn’t deliver even with both houses of Congress held by the Dems.
The Dems also evaded the question of restoring the SALT (State And Local Tax) deduction, but, with a $70 billion price tag annually even by conservative estimates, I never figured they would deliver that.
Up and moving, D2 roused. Coffee started. Gotta scrape my corpus clean, then we’re off…
n
Denninger was one of my daily reads, but I stopped some time ago- shortly after he started talking about finding a buyer for his homebrew SmartHome software.
He was very convincing in his field, but strayed far, and got less so. And more strident.
It’s a lesson I try to remember, but then I don’t hold myself out as an expert.
n
Florida taxpayers are once again the beneficiaries of the UT coaching hot seat. Tom Herman’s contract ran through the 2023 season when he was fired.
https://www.miamiherald.com/sports/college/conference-usa/florida-atlantic-university/article278095822.html
UT alumi also gave generously to Mississippi taxpayers this year, with Ole Miss picking up Chris Beard, the fired basketball coach who was just a year into his contract.
I suppose there’s no chance of it happening, but I wish they would separate sports from universities. The athletes generally (yes, there are exceptions) don’t care about the fake degrees they are handed. Just create some sort of new school, where athletes can concentrate on their sports, and don’t pretend they are getting an education. Then universities can stop spending stupid amounts of money on stuff having zilch to do with education.
I still remember, with great resentment, standing in line to pay my undergrad tuition. I was writing the university a check, while the athlete ahead of me got not only a free ride, but also received a check from the college to cover his living expenses. Pissed me off no end…
College athletics are out of control all across the country, but this is Texas, where $80 million football stadiums are on the wish list of every high school and the property tax ‘reform’ recently negotiated between the Governor and Legislature dedicates the current state surplus towards building the stadiums along with other nonsense spending by the school boards without the politicians paying any price at the ballot box next year or the primary season in 2026.
The college athletes in the US are now allowed to do endorsements and collect money directly.
On the hacker front:
Late last year, our condo in Vegas upgraded it’s entry fob system. I was curious how secure it was. Some systems have backends that require sophisticated RFID encrypted fobs. I used my Flipper Zero to copy and emulate the new fob. Yeah, it is just a two frequency common RFID. The Fipper accessed the gate and elevator no problemo. Now I can copy and sell fobs for a couple of bucks rather than people having to buy them at the office for $50.
The vehicle gate is different you stick a long RFID on your left front headlight and there is a reader at the gate. There is also a booth where the attendant will let you in once identified.
Oil change on the Camry at the dealership. Today is probably the last time I go there.
I got really intense pressure to change the brake fluid from two separate service advisors talking to me in the waiting room. No thanks.
Alignment suggestion was a given, but I nixed that without a second thought.
Passive is the future.
BTW, if anyone has the idea to stick RFID tags on something which is portable between vehicles, avoid using plexiglass since the material is opaque to RF.
RF opaque-ness is a spectrum. It depends on frequencies, but this discussion is limited to RFID tags.
Various materials and thicknesses will attenuate the signal by different amounts. The linked article even mentions embedding RFID tags inside plastics.
I wouldn’t try to make a Farraday cage out of plexiglass. I think you’d be disappointed in its effectiveness.
No, but the techs at the tolling company who had the bright idea of mounting the RFID tags on plexiglass had a long afternoon at the test facility on the first day out.
To be fair, however, it wasn’t as long an afternoon as the one enjoyed by the driver lead who thought he could save the company money renting UHaul vs. the more conventional trades trailer type and couldn’t figure out why the RF loops only counted two axles when the SUV/trailer passed over the sensor.
Ha, ha!
Newly minted country music star Oliver Anthony says BOTH sides suck
Great song, btw.
The thing I don’t like about hybrids, is the complexity. You have all the fluids and moving parts of a gasoline engine, plus all the bits and pieces of an EV. Higher maintenance costs are inevitable. If someone wants to use gas, get an efficient gas-powered car.
If someone went so far as to get a plug-in hybrid, they they really should have just gotten an EV, and been done with it.
The real complexity of the hybrids is the electrical system. My 2019 F-150 4×4 is a mild hybrid (start-stop system). But the battery has to be in tip top shape for it to work properly. I do get one to two activations of the start-stop system per day but then the battery will not allow anymore than that when it is more than a year old.
All hybrids are known for electrical problems. Their wiring harnesses are extremely complex and any damage can cause failure or unknown behavior (UB). Of the two, UBs are bad, very bad. The damage can be caused by traumatic injury or from just plain old wear and tear. I have a friend that took a Prius to 200,000 miles with a dead battery from 150,000 miles on. His mileage dropped from 50 mpg to 30 mpg but everything else worked fine.
That said, all future internal combustion vehicles will be trending from mild hybrids to medium hybrids to full hybrids in the next few years. All internal combustion motors will be downsized and the electric motors will be upsized from 10 to 15 hp to 50 to 100 hp. Many manufacturers such as Ford and Toyota already have full hybrids for several of their vehicles such as the Prius and the F-150 Hybrid. Batteries will be upsized from 1 kwh to 16 kwh and more. Like I said, you can already buy these vehicles.
Like it or not, the internal combustion motor is under attack and will be relegated more and more to a secondary power source. But, for peak energy usage and long journey traveling, they will still be needed. Otherwise, we will have to modify our behavior. No long journeys, no air conditioning, no heating, no heavy labor devices (excavators, bulldozers, trains, etc), etc.
No lies told there.
“Work from home” is part of the pricing equation, but the market expected a new $15k first time homebuyer tax credit to put a $500k floor under any house which could pass inspection, as Corn Pop promised in 2020 but couldn’t deliver even with both houses of Congress held by the Dems.
The Dems also evaded the question of restoring the SALT (State And Local Tax) deduction, but, with a $70 billion price tag annually even by conservative estimates, I never figured they would deliver that.
The USA government is broke. Dead broke. Too many people living off the feddies and the number is growing rapidly due to people rapidly aging into Social Security and Medicare.
Social Security is in bad shape. But with its current income, it can support the current checks at 72 percent. I do see us transitioning to a need based system in the near future. That is the only solution that I have. The expenses are growing at 8 to 9 percent a year.
Medicare is an utter disaster. The current income is ¼ of the current expense (I got that number from a Denninger 2017 article). I do not have any reasonable fix for it other than putting the entire population on Medicare with extreme price controls. Or, drop Medicare and let the older population swim naked. Maybe somebody smarter than me has better options.
https://market-ticker.org/akcs-www?post=234584
“By 2040, Medicare, which funds health care for people 65 and older, will cover 88 million enrollees and the cost per enrollee by then is estimated to more than triple. Medicare’s hospital insurance program, known as Part A, can only pay full benefits through 2024, according to the program’s trustees.”
Hybrids: I saw an article in Popular Mechanics in the late 80s/early 90s about a homebuilt “hybrid” car in Florida. A sort-of conventional electric car, with a built-in APU salvaged from a bizjet to quickly recharge the battery AND drive the electric powertrain. It was as noisy as you’d have expected, but while you were on the freeway, nobody would notice the jet engine. When the driver exited the freeway, he’d shut down the APU and continue silently on the battery.
I was a subscriber to The Mother Earth News back in the 70’s, and I even wrote letters to some of the writers there.
The homemade hybrid car based on an Opel GT had me drooling. Snowmobile engine driving a generator, aircraft start motor as a drive motor. Regen braking was mentioned in the article but not implemented in the prototype. All driving was from the battery bank, and the genny just ran to keep it charged.
Eventually, I found out that most of the technology articles were unrepeatable, or at least prohibitively labor intensive. I even knew an electrician who bought the plans, and a donor Opel, and never completed the car.
My biggest disappointment was when I wrote to one of the authors after reading his book. I had some follow-up questions about a wind generator plan, and discovered that in 10 years after publication, no one at all had ever copied it. At least, no one wrote to tell him so.
@brad
It’s worse than you ever knew.
Did you spend any time living in the university dorms? Let’s just observe that the cafeterias are typically not haute cuisine nor highest quality.
Did you ever consider that the university probably doesn’t want to try to maintain athletes on the same carp? Imagine a 350-lb lineman getting two runny eggs, cold toast, a bit of sausage, milk and juice to start the day.
Welcome to the training table. Specially reinforced for the large men who sit there and the platters that serve them. Especially the platters of beef, featuring all the steaks and primo cuts that you never saw in the dorm. And to go with it, tonight’s announcement that it was donated by Mr. Rich Alumni, who purchased the blue-ribbon-prize-winner at the state fair for the tenth year in a row and donated it to the team.
It is 110 F outside according to Wunderground. Unreal.
ERCOT just hit $5,000 / MWH. The average price is $30 / MWH.
https://www.ercot.com/gridmktinfo/dashboards
@Lynn
Social Security took my money from the first dollar I earned at a job where the goobemint could track it. They put in in my “account”, which is simply a raw list of my contributions and does not include the “employer contribution”, which everyone knows comes out of our pockets, too. Not only do they not pya any interest on those account, they spend the intervening decades inflating the currency and debasing the worth of the dollar–we don’t get any time value for the contributions, and the dollars we get back have 1/10 the purchasing power that they had 50 years ago.
I don’t have a complete solution, but I have a partial one: Take all the land owned by the U.S. Government and put it in the trust fund.
As far as Medicare, that one is easy in pieces. First, there have been studies showing that much end-of-life care uses money at an obscene rate and extends life by days. Makes no sense to spend the equivalent of 50-100 times their monthly retirement check to inflict high-tech torture in the last months of life to buy a couple of weeks.
Second, drugs. Strike the FDA approval of drugs that do not have appreciable better results than existing drugs. (This would benefit everyone). Do a cost-benefit analysis on “appreciable”, and cap the costs that drug makers can charge. Also make it a requirement that drugs that do get approved have additional stages of testing and monitoring to define their real world performance, particularly including their use in combination with other drugs likely to be used at the same time. Older people tend to be taking a lot of different drugs and there is virtually no data on how they interact, even though a drug approved to treat Disease Beta is highly likely to be used by someone who is already using drugs A, B. C, D, and G.
Third, doctor and hospital charges. First principle there should be a posted price that represents the absolute minimum charge, and that price should be available to all. If I pay cash at the window or present some other form of payment the day of the service, the insurance company should not be able to extort a lower rate for a later payment.
Fourth, remove the requirement that the hospital emergency room treats non-emergencies, and put an exit door on and a sidewalk to the non-urgent care clinic next door.
Those four to start will knock the costs down significantly and reduce the inflation rate.
What? Most Mother Earth readers are poseurs and dreamers who never actually do anything? Say it isn’t so!
I never saw the point of MEN, in the few issues I saw in the 1970s. Scientific American and Popular Mechanics were more my speed. (Parents got me subscriptions to each for Christmas starting when I was 9, IIRC.) (No, I didn’t understand hardly anything in SA but I read every word and tried to learn more, and found that none of the adults in elementary school could/would even point me in the right direction to learn more, the tiny town library had nothing useful, and the local community college was just getting off the ground. Foiled, multiply foiled, before my age had hit double digits. Oh, the injustice!) My dad helped me make a few projects from PM, subject to availability of time and and cheap parts; we were on the poor side and couldn’t afford to sink money into something like that.
@lpdbw
re: Mother Earth News
I still have a bunch of back copies of Mother. Lots of good stuff in there.
The problems with one person’s technology solution are usually that:
@SteveF
SA was library. Grew up with PM, PS, and MI in the house. Tom McCahill, Smokey Yunik, Rosario Capotosto and a bunch of others live on in my shop.
Built a lot of projects from those mags. Still bitter that the low-speed motor for the rock tumbler was way too pricey for a 6th-grader, but in retrospect I’m thankful that the adult at the electrical supply counter was patient and explained.
One outstanding project generated jumping sparks of static electricity from water. Three metal coffee cans, two wire hangers, two glass pipets, some rubber tubing, two 1-in pieces of copper tubing and a bit of solder. I should re-write the plans as a step-by-step project for child and parent, starting with child proposing the project, independently gathering mostly recycled materials, and then scheduling the final assembly (soldering) with the adult.
I’m getting tired of the heat. Not that I want it to get cold. But this 107f to 110f on the bathroom temperature sensor while the heatpump shows the outside temp at 103f to 106f is getting old.
76f in the morning to walk the dogs is nice.
The spread between sensors is normal. If I put the bathroom temp sensor next to the heatpump’s they read the same. Who knew that a couple of feet down from the porch roof, on the shady north side of the house, would vary so much if you go 20 feet to the right and down to almost a foot above the ground?
The sensor in the kitchen window says 105.0f. The front porch says it want new batteries. 🙂
Penny wants to go out. She likes to lay on the porch and survey her domain. For the last few weeks she goes out the kitchen door, looks around and u-turns right back into the house.
“HERE WE GO: Biden Regime Seeks Additional Funding for New COVID-19 Vaccine “That Works” – Warns Everyone Will Get It “No Matter Whether They’ve Gotten It Before or Not” (VIDEO)”
https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2023/08/here-we-go-biden-regime-seeks-additional-funding/
What the heck is going on ???
I would be shocked if half of the country would take a new vaccine for the Koof at this time.
Well over half of the country would buckle to at least one of those.
When “can’t go to the grocery store unless you got the clot shot” was floated a couple years ago – I think that was just in NYS but it may have been a federal trial balloon – some people made plans for either hijacking trucks supplying grocery stores or ambushing and raiding at the store. “Made plans” as in assigning roles and mapping out routes and drop-off points. Other people noodled around with calling in threats to grocery stores or even shooting at them. “If I can’t shop, no one can shop.” I don’t know if those plans got past noodling and BSing.
No vaccine mandate will be floated before the election. Now if Tump wins…..
“Hellfire (Theirs Not to Reason Why #3)” by Jean Johnson
https://www.amazon.com/Hellfire-Theirs-Not-Reason-Why/dp/0425256502?tag=ttgnet-20/
Book number three of a five book military science fiction paranormal series. I reread the well printed and well bound MMPB published by Ace in 2013 that I just rebought new from Amazon. This is my second or third reading of the book and series. I am reading book four now and have book five also.
Ia is a heavyworlder, born in the year 2472 and raised on the independent colony world Sanctuary, a 3.2 gravity newly colonized planet. At 15 years of age in 2487, Ia experienced the awakening of her precognitive and telekinetic abilities. Being one of the strongest precognitives ever known, she watched the future invasion of the Milky Way galaxy by an overwhelming force of wasp like creatures in a crowded Dyson sphere who proceeded to kill everyone and everything in the galaxy 300 years from then.
Ia traveled the 700 light years to old Earth and joined the Terran United Space Force Marine Corps on her 18th birthday. At one hour per light year, the trip took over four weeks and allowed her to finish making her 300 year plan to restructure the two billion person strong military forces of the Terran United Space Force to fight off the future invaders.
Ia is now a ship’s captain in the TUPSF Navy. She declared and proved herself to the Terran council as the prophet of a thousand years, the strongest precognitive ever known. IA has been made captain of the Hellfire, a unique small cruiser built around a 10 meter diameter laser cannon with a 10 second pulse. And the Saliks are getting ready to start another galaxy wide war, the first Salik – Human was was 200 years ago.
This is a strong military series. There are short term threats and long term threats. The non-human races are well thought out and interesting. And then there are the Greys, the non-human race who have tortured the human race for millennia. At least the Greys don’t eat the humans like the Saliks do.
Here is my 2013 review: “Book three of a three book series so far. Another book, _Damnation_, is promised sometime in August of 2014. OK, you want your milsf? I’ve got your milsf with a female half human, half meddler protagonist right here. This is the real stuff and is just excellent. We’ve got a real space war with thousands of space ships and a light cruiser with a 10 second, 10 meter laser cannon. The attention to technical detail is there and so is the suspense and drama.”
The author has a website at:
https://jeanjohnson.net/
My rating: 5 out of 5 stars (I may add this to my six star list)
Amazon rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars (704 reviews)
“American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy Says Heavy Industry Should get Intermittent”
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2023/08/26/american-council-for-an-energy-efficient-economy-says-heavy-industry-should-get-intermittent/
Intermittent power does not work in chemical processes. The making of iron, steel, copper, aluminum, ethylene, vinyl chloride, etc need constant temperatures for their processes to work properly and safely. Some of those processes like ethylene are subject to runaways and must be carefully run with very little change for safety.
When Medicare For All passes with a blanket student loan forgiveness not far behind, we’re going to find out real fast just how many providers view medicine as a calling.
“Your veterinary tech will see you now.”
Tell me that you have a degree in economics but have never been in the same county as a process plant without saying that you’ve never been in the same county as a process plant.
Half of the country has an axe to grind with the other half and would gladly turn in the neighbors for being unvaccinated, whether it was true or not.
The VA started giving the heads up that a new jab was coming next month, but they haven’t made it mandatory for staff.
All military retired personnel at moved forced onto Medicare at age 65. We were promised health care for life if we stayed in the military until retirement. If Medicare is restricted in some way where do I go for healthcare.
I see the requirement to “needs” test Social Security. The suggestions to reduce healthcare costs seem reasonable to me. Healthcare for the last two weeks or maybe the last month should be limited to pain management.
I would like to limit healthcare for those who were/are users of illegal drugs.
Healthcare for the last two weeks or maybe the last month should be limited to pain management.
I agree. How do you tell when the last month of life is ? It is pretty obvious when someone is circling the drain, at least to me. But some people have a great ability to cling to life like my father-in-law who stretched the last month out to years.
Well, I’m home, dinner will be ready soon. Good day. Sold a bunch of stuff that I’ve been dragging around for a while. Gross was good but as I said yesterday, the net is harder to figure. D2 let a couple things go for too little, but did well overall. The other people there were pretty impressed and enamored with her. She’s really good at selling.
I even ran out of one of the staple PPEs that I thought I had more than enough of. Went to try to find more on the way home, but couldn’t find a box I am pretty sure I have. It’s probably very deep in the storage unit, and I wasn’t selling them for enough money to dig it out tonight. I did grab a case in different packaging, so they will either like that, or I’ll send them what they wanted when I find it.
n
“Biden Regime Declares War on Ceiling Fans to Fight “Climate Change” – Settles on Costly New Scheme that Could Put Small Manufacturers Out of Business”
https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2023/08/biden-regime-declares-war-ceiling-fans-fight-climate/
And now they are coming after our ceiling fans. I have about six of them in the house.
American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy
Stupid ash-holes should get devolatilized.
“Those four to start will knock the costs down significantly and reduce the inflation rate.”
Amend to:
Those five to start will knock the costs down significantly and reduce the inflation rate.
5. Insurance companies cannot make medical decisions unless they employ doctors to make them.
Doctors with a minimum of ten years of daily patient-interaction experience, and no flunkies are allowed to feed them decisions to rubber-stamp.
Half of the country has an axe to grind with the other half and would gladly turn
in the neighbors for being unvaccinated, whether it was true or not.the neighbors into food and fuel.FIFY
One guess which half knows how to use the axe.
“I would like to limit healthcare for those who were/are users of illegal drugs.”
100,000+ deaths per year from drugs imported into this country.
I’d vote for the next guy who proposes we declare this an act of war and shut the border with Mexico, stop trade with China, and make the penalty for dealing an enema with their entire stock. Make the penalty for illegal drug possession the same as it is for climbing a pole and kissing a high KVA line.
Third, doctor and hospital charges. First principle there should be a posted price that represents the absolute minimum charge, and that price should be available to all. If I pay cash at the window or present some other form of payment the day of the service, the insurance company should not be able to extort a lower rate for a later payment.
Fourth, remove the requirement that the hospital emergency room treats non-emergencies, and put an exit door on and a sidewalk to the non-urgent care clinic next door.
Those four to start will knock the costs down significantly and reduce the inflation rate.
These changes will require government price controls. I think that we are going to end up there regardless.
Second, drugs. Strike the FDA approval of drugs that do not have appreciable better results than existing drugs. (This would benefit everyone). Do a cost-benefit analysis on “appreciable”, and cap the costs that drug makers can charge. Also make it a requirement that drugs that do get approved have additional stages of testing and monitoring to define their real world performance, particularly including their use in combination with other drugs likely to be used at the same time. Older people tend to be taking a lot of different drugs and there is virtually no data on how they interact, even though a drug approved to treat Disease Beta is highly likely to be used by someone who is already using drugs A, B. C, D, and G.
As far as I can tell, a bunch of hedge funds have bought old drug companies with dependable, known products and increased their prices radically.
Nope. Insurance companies, with a significant conflict of interest in the cost, should be making no medical decisions.
Means testing for those currently on SS or those within 5 years of drawing SS should not be means tested. Too many have made retirement plans or are retired on SS. Veterans drawing disability should not have those funds included in any means testing. Only taxable income as VA benefits are non-taxable at any level currently. That should not change.
I see the requirement to “needs” test Social Security.
I don’t see the requirement to means test Social Security. I just think that it will be done in a time of great desperation.
There will be many crazy things done in the Greater Depression.
Some states tax Social Security, which is a back-door form of means test. That should be illegal under federal law. If there is a constitutional objection then write the law to reduce state aid from the federal government by twice the amount the state raises with the tax.
One of numerous problems with a means test is that the argument that means is not measured simply by income provides the excuse for government to give every taxpayer an enema to determine what their means are. Sounds like the ideal job for a new government department staffed by work-from-home PLT’s.
SoSec contributions were already taxed, so any taxation of funds before full recovery on contributions is double-taxation. Full recovery does not involve the b.s. number FedGov puts on the statement they send you, but a number computed by taking into account the value of a dollar in the year that it was contributed and further allowing for the time value of money.
The ones that are desperate will be the citizens trying to breathe with the foot of the WEG on their necks.
“It is unclear to investigators whether the shots were fired from outside or inside the ballpark.”
https://www.theblaze.com/news/two-women-shot-during-chicago-white-sox-game-the-team-says-it-did-not-involve-an-altercation
ProTip: When suffering from recto-cranial inversion, open mouth to improve vision.
https://www.economist.com/united-states/2021/12/04/are-gunshot-detecting-microphones-worth-the-money
The ones that are desperate will be the citizens trying to breathe with the foot of the WEG on their necks.
What is WEG ?
>> The college athletes in the US are now allowed to do endorsements and collect money directly.
Bronny James has a NIL contract signed with Nike worth $10M and he has yet to play a single minute in the NBA.
Btw, his cardiac arrest has been attributed to a congenital heart defect which is supposedly repairable.
The ultimate Hot Skillz…and having LBJ as his father.
As expected, Dave’s got the video posted…
https://youtu.be/I0b1In9RF7Y?si=KqUiY_YGzDmmKsrX
RIP B. B.
I am occasionally shocked by the number of people who don’t understand that most recreational drug use is illegal. As in, having it or using it is a crime of and by itself. I’ll date myself now: I remember when “Quincy” (the medical examiner drama based on a UK police procedural) created quite a buzz with an episode that advocated hospitalizing and treating people who overdosed or had bad trips rather than jailing them. Now we have towns being sued for not providing NarCan to first responders, on the assumption that somehow those ODing or getting bad junk are entitled to preferential treatment for their bad decisions.
In the article is says the changes would cost manufacturers about $86 million a year. Which will be passed on to the buyer.
So let’s see. The US population is more than the 330 million some folks claim while ignoring the illegal aliens. Let’s round up our 330 to something like 369 million.
New fan designs that will cost makers and extra 86 million a year and will raise the price of the fans to save me, tada!, a whole dollar a year on the electricity bill.
Yeah, I’m not replacing the Hunter Original in my living room to save a buck a year.
In the short term, invest in fan companies.