Cool to start, but mid to high 80s later. That will be warm. It got uncomfortably warm yesterday as I was working in the attic and garage, even though it didn’t seem that warm outside. I guess I’m starting to adjust to the cooler temps.
I got a few things done yesterday but didn’t get much decor up. I had to clear a path to it, and that was probably the cause of my reluctance to get started- the 10 things that needed to be done first. I’m still not completely ready to even start getting the stuff out of the garage attic. I did get a few things out of the house attic, some flags and bones for the yard, and some decor for inside the house.
I got sidetracked for a bit working on getting the laser engraver set up. It was on the kitchen table, needed to be moved (stored for a while), and in order to do that, I wanted to see it make some smoke…which it eventually did. I did some cuts in paper, some burning on cloth and paper, and some surface removal on a multi layered piece of a food box. I probably won’t do much more until I have a place for it to live, and an enclosure to make it safer. I tried burning a pattern onto a piece of ham, but didn’t do much more than get a blurry soft outline of grey-er cooked ham in the middle of the pink piece. I have no doubt that it would burn me though…
Cleaning up that, getting stuff into and out of the attic, and some other general cleaning pretty much filled my day.
Today will get some more decor, some auction stuff, and some drop offs if everything goes right… and maybe that trip to Costco.
Until the deflationary spiral sets in, this inflation is starting to really have an impact on people. I looked at the take out menu from our local chinese place, and prices have gone up 2-3$ on 6-9$ items, in a very short time. Unfortunately the menu isn’t dated, but it was in the cabinet with the other menus and it can’t be that old. The weekly ad flyers from our local grocery stores have been getting smaller and smaller. The Randalls ad was only a half width single sheet. The Kroger ad was missing, and the three hispanic markets were either a full width single sheet, or a half (newspaper sheets.) That’s down from multi pages and full size sheets. The Aldi ad was at least 75% not food items and was half what it used to be. I think the companies don’t have enough sale items to fill the old ad sizes, and they don’t want to spend the money on extra pages. Both bad indicators.
Stack what you can while you can. War gets worse, someone starts sinking shipping, or interdicting it, and prices will got nuts. Ditto if the middle east oil stops flowing and shipping becomes more expensive. Too high and the trucks stop moving. We were really close once already. I know I’ve been banging this drum for a while now, but look around and tell me I’m wrong…
So stack. Prep like your life depends on it. It might.
nick
VHS tape was wrapped by machine, and the plastic had a distinct “cellophane” feel back in the day. Faking that without access to the original machinery would be impossible.
Software was much lower volume, and the packaging was mostly done by hand at centers for the developmentally disabled contracted by Microsoft, Sierra, etc. with the assistance of government grants.
The legend is at the Egghead Ponzi is that Victor bought us the same shrinkwrapping gear and supplies that Gates purchased for the centers which handled Microsoft’s products pre-Windows 95.
Someone should have written a book about the meltdown of the Ponzi and the back history of the company when it was all fresh and the key people still alive, but, since the place fell apart around the zenith of BillGs bad behavior at Microsoft with Wagg Ed at the height of their powers as well, anyone attempting such a thing probably would have been given an offer they couldn’t refuse.
Too many skeletons are buried out in Issaquah, under the building which used to house the Ponzi but hosted Philips Healtcare when I lived around the corner. Who knows what it is now.
The article also touches on Nintendo cartridge collecting. That was also a machine process done in Japan, probably with US plastic feedstock, but, again, that feel won’t be duplicated without the same exact machines.
Besides, student loan payments resuming are going to kill discretionary spending like people picking up pieces of their childhood with the extra $400/month on average in addition to Trump/Biden Bucks the government issued three years ago. Everyone became a collector.
There is an awful lot of retconning going on, or some people might call it gaslighting…
–really NYT? Find me a contemporary source saying that.
n
I have noticed that around here. We go to lunch on Sunday after services. What used to cost $15.00 is now north of $20.00. Our favorite Mexican restaurant used to cost about $13.00 with tip, now that is north of $17.00.
We have been enjoying a reprieve from sales tax on food at the grocery stores. That 9.75% (10% for easy math) reduction was quite noticeable. It has been a two-month reprieve and will end at the end of this month. An almost 10% increase in the grocery store bill, which averages about $500.00 a month. Which means another $50.00 a month out of my pocket.
I think that TN should abolish the food tax. It is an unfair tax on the poor. My bill is $500.00 a month, for two people. $50.00 a month in tax. A family of four, with at least one teenage boy, may run $1,000.00 a month. $100.00 a month in tax. If my income is $60K, then that $100.00 a month is about 2% of my overall income. If another family’s income is $30K a year, that tax now becomes 4% of their income, more than double my tax rate. That is not fair.
Even those on food stamps pay tax to the state on the food that the state is paying for with the food stamps. The state is taxing themselves on the money the state provided.
There is no income tax in TN (except for the Hall Tax on dividends and earnings). That is offset by high sales tax for the state (7.75%) and another 2% to the county. Necessities should not be taxed, utilities, medical and food. I would rather the state increase their income tax to 8% and eliminate the tax on food.
TN does have the lottery, which the income was promised to the schools. The state did do that. But the state also reduced the state funding to the schools by the same amount. The schools saw no increase in funding and the state effectively got the lottery money by paying less to the schools. A bait and switch the voters neglected to comprehend in their meth infected pea brains.
The author(s) might be thinking about themselves and their friends. Almost everyone in NYC rents. Rent payments were deferred during the dempanic, removing a large portion of their monthly expenses. Add in the expanded unemployment benefits, “free money” from the federal government, and other welfare and transfer payments and it’s possible that they felt flush.
Most of the places I have lived that have had a sales tax exempt “raw” or “unprocessed” foods; things like produce, flour, meat, frozen veggies, eggs, etc. didn’t get taxed, but things like frozen breakfast sandwiches and canned soups did.
That seemed like a reasonable way to handle things, so that people who were careful with their purchases and prepared their own families’ meals could mostly avoid the 6% or 7% tax.
Of course, now it appears that it is the more upscale folks buying the produce and other raw ingredients, while the working poor get more calories per dollar from frozen or fast food. Things have gotten upside-down.
Rained overnight, and was 72F and wet this am. Sun has poked thru and is drying stuff up. I might even get to do some outside stuff today.
n
Check Kroger online for ads. Up here in Wisconsin the local Kroger owned Pick n Save went to online ads about 3 months ago. No print and mail costs, forget about the people that don’t use technology. Please pray ships don’t sink. That will make the plan-demic look cheerful.
FWIW, general practice in Western Europe is to have a much lower rate for food. Grocery store food, not restaurant food. That is meant to avoid regressive taxation, or perhaps just to make food cheaper for people on limited budgets.
Scummy politicians. Governments should not run lotteries. Of course, most governments do, and it is hugely regressive taxation: Lotteries are mostly played by those who can least afford it.
Privately run lotteries, and indeed any sort of gambling, should be heavily taxed and regulated. You don’t want to force it underground, but you do want to make it unattractive.
Buck Throckmorton writes over at AiSHQ:
“Yale has a $40 billion endowment, but it is somehow the role of taxpayers to give Yale money to study transgenders in Malaysia. But under the House’s current process, the only way for southern Republicans to get funding for something like lock repairs on the Tennessee River, is for those Republicans to vote for the omnibus funding that sends money to Yale to study transgenders in Malaysia.
In addition, I am really sick of the requirement that the conservative base must compromise and support swamp Republicans whose constituency is really the DC establishment, while that favor is never reciprocated. We held our nose and voted for McCain and Romney for President, then when Trump ran on populist conservative issues such as border security, the moderate Republicans defected and tried to get Hillary and Biden elected, so as to teach us a lesson.
The same applies to the election of the Speaker of the House. Real conservative representatives sucked it up and voted for Ryan, Boehner, and other swamp creatures who always worked to advance the Democrats’ spending agenda. But when an actual conservative, Jim Jordan, was recently put to the vote, a block of NeverConservative Republicans voted him down.”
I agree with regulating and taxing morality!
Tell ya what: you decide the tax rate which will be applied to all immoral activity and I will decide what constitutes immorality.
@SteveF: I’m much against outlawing private activities. Prostitution, for example, should be legal. So should (most? all?) drug use. However, one of the reasons we have governments is to guide society. As in:
We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare…
Part of that is encouraging good things and discouraging the bad. It doesn’t have to be a moral judgement – it suffices to decide whether it is something beneficial to society as a whole. Beneficial things include kids having two parent families, kids doing well in school, and workers saving for retirement. Detrimental things include prostitution, gambling and using drugs.
As Ronald Reagan put it: “If you want less of something, tax it. If you want more, subsidize it.”
Tennessee is also another state using lottery money to subsidize the upper middle class in the form of “scholarships” to the state university system.
Florida’s program is up to 40% of lottery proceeds the last time I saw numbers.
“Journalists” working for Pinch’s brood like those toiling for Bezos at the Post and Mark Benioff (Time Magazine — wholly owned) most likely also went to “good” schools, and anyone without family money borrowed the funds for tuition, room, board, and backpack trips to Europe.
While the student loan payments and interest accruals remained on hold during the pandemic community, $80 billion additional “walkin’ ’round” money annually remained in the economy instead of going to the Feds. Lets call the total “expenditure” (the Feds’ term for any money you get to keep) for March 2020 through the first of September an even $200 billion for grins.
In 2018, pre-pandemic, the student loan paper was the Federal Government’s most lucrative income generating asset. I doubt that has changed, but Corn Pop’s Department of Education hasn’t updated the numbers.
OK, I can work with that.
Glad you agree. No-fault divorce needs to be eliminated, possibly retroactively.
Women’s franchise needs to be revoked.
Smoking, drinking alcohol, and overeating need to be heavily regulated and taxed. Regular physical exercise needs to be mandated.
“Studies” courses in colleges need to be taxed into oblivion.
Nah; just don’t make such “courses” eligible for student loans. The ONLY classes and programs that should be eligible for “student loans” should be classes that lead to a productive JOB; STEM and medical programs. Nothing artsy; if a kid wants it, he pays for it, in cash. Which isn’t to say that arts aren’t valuable; they just don’t lead to a job.
they just don’t lead to a job.
– both me and my wife, and thousands of others who make our living with arts degrees would probably object to that statement.
My professor told us, 98% of people who want to work in technical theatre do and are making a living. 98% of people who want to ACT are not. If you love the theater, work in tech. Dunno if it changed anyone’s life or direction, but my experience in the industry has borne out the numbers.
And I think the giant money machines of Vegas and Hollywood might also disagree.
n
Heck, before it was contaminated by the chicoms, hollywood and media were our biggest and most important export.
n
Conservatives and the right ceded the field to the left in some sort of backlash/guilt over Macarthyism and look what happened. Should never have left the 50% or more of the country with nothing good to watch.
I have been known to buy lottery tickets*. The odds of winning are astronomical. But I ciphered (thanks to Jethro) that the odds of winning are even worse if one does not have a ticket.
*I have purchased exactly 45 sets of lottery numbers over the years. I have won $4.00.
Personally, I see no harm in prostitution. It satisfies two needs, those who sell their body for money, those who want to pay money for sex. What consenting adults do with their time, money, and body is really none of my business. Or the governments for the most part. Some regulation in terms of health, maybe tax the business, protect the women from exploitation by low life scum. Beyond that, top, bottom, sideways, who cares.
Off-duty Alaska Airlines pilot, 44, is charged with EIGHTY-THREE counts of attempted murder after ‘trying to kill jet’s engines mid-FLIGHT’ – while riding in cockpit jump seat
— he didn’t succeed so maybe not too early for the old joke? “Today’s not my day to die. Yeah? What if it’s the PILOT’s day?”
n
On a personal basis I agree. On a societal basis I conclude that tolerance of prostitution, drug use, and so on do do harm.
I have an essay in progress on this topic. I’ll post in the usual places once I get it to gel in a coherent form.
I’ve seen STEM degrees p*ssed away, in one case with the parents left holding the bag for $200k in PLUS loans to pay for [the most expensive engineering school in the country], which has been recommended here before as a place to consider attending.
We’ve given each of our kids 120 credit hours of Florida university credits as a fallback and will cashflow a reasonable program in whatever they choose to study at other institutions, but our position is that, when finished, they will be grown-a** people who will have to deal with their life choices, even if that means student loan debt which they will never pay off.
Stop by the house for a hot meal once in a while, but you aren’t moving back in.
And no Parent PLUS loans.
My policy on college assistance was that I’d help pay for a program which would reasonably lead to well-paying employment: STEM, pre-med, accounting, etc. You want to study Dance Therapy? You’re on your own, kid. Both sons went into engineering school and the daughter plans on the same.
I paid for my son’s education. He was on a scholarship which he pissed away because of poor grades the first three semesters. I said I would pay for the remaining semesters for a four year degree. Whether he got the degree or not was his problem as by then the piggy bank would run dry. He managed to succeed but it still cost me an additional $18K. I was really ticked off for his little stunt. At least he got a degree in computer science with a business background.
Had he gone for a liberal arts degree I would have cut him off immediately. Now he is making good money, well into six figures a year working for some company that aggregates hotel and motel metrics. Office is three miles from his house and he works from home two days a week. Lives in Hendersonville TN across Veterans Highway from all the stores, shops, eateries, etc.
You have heard my rants before about Middle Tennessee State and the corrupt money farm masquerading as a school. The school actually steals money from the students under a sanctioned policy.
What is it with the PLTs:
plugs says there is no room for hate in ‘Merca.
Except for:
Jooooos!
Man, the haters are coming out of the woodwork.
Began basic winter preps today. Recycled the generator gas stored since last year (about 7 gallons) into a half-full tank on the Highlander. Gas had been treated with marine Stabil, so it will work just fine mixed with the ‘fresh’ gas already in the tank.
Then to the local gas station to fill up the two 5 gallon plastic gas cans, adding marine Stabil to both – slightly more than recommended; figured a higher concentration can’t hurt that much.
Generator is full, 10 gallons in reserve, so ready for the usual winter outages. The outages usually last under 8 hours, although there was a 3-day failure last year due to a transformer failure at the local power distribution place. They had a spare there, so the outage could have been worse.
As mentioned before, the 3500/4500 watt gas generator gets hooked up to the bypass switch I put in about 8 years ago. It only takes about 5 minutes to get things going during an outage. The bypass switch handles the garage (and freezer), den (for the TV), and bedroom (CPAP, oxygen machine for wife), the internet router (the Astound internet via cable usually lasts for 24 hours before it fails; then we switch to the hot spot on my cell phone), and some of the house lights (all house lights are LED). We are able to watch DirecTV during any outage.
Although I did screw up one of the circuits on the bypass switch. The refrigerator isn’t on a generator-supplied circuit. One of these days I’ll fix that, but a heavy-duty extension cord fixes that.
I can see a plus and a minus here.
The plus is that you have something to grump about that needs to be fixed.
The minus is the pain in the y’know to pull the fridge out from the wall, with the risk of the waterline to the ice-maker getting messed up. And there you are in the dark with a water leak….
Either way, it gives you something to do. 🙂
“Israel uses ‘Iron Sting’ for first time to destroy Hamas rocket launchers and carries out raids on terrorist squads preparing ambushes… as Palestine PM says Gazans are being ‘exposed to the Israeli murder machine’”
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12661261/Battle-eliminate-Hamas-three-months-IDF-warns-hits-320-Gaza-targets-deadly-overnight-airstrikes-Israeli-soldier-killed-failed-bid-rescue-hostages.html
There will not be a building standing in Gaza when the Israelis are finished. I am not sure if there will be any live Palestinians in Gaza though.
Bad times are coming. The Israelis will not back off without extreme measures.
Why has Biden moved two USA carrier groups into Israelis waters in the Med ?
“The Best Modern Military Science Fiction Books” by Dan Livingston
https://best-sci-fi-books.com/the-best-modern-military-science-fiction-books/
“The best military science fiction isn’t just a bunch of space battles and cigar-chomping armed combat (although those are fun). The most interesting books also examine what life in the military actually involves, and what combat can do to a person’s mind.”
“These novels were all published in the 21st century.”
Out of the 23 books, I have read:
#17 “Trading in Danger” by Elizabeth Moon
#10 “Terms of Enlistment” by Marko Kloos
#9 “Rogue” by Michael Z. Williamson
#8 “Old Man’s War” by John Scalzi
#3 “A Hymn Before Battle” by John Ringo
#1 “All Systems Red” by Martha Wells
The list is missing an Honor Harrington book and a Safehold book, both by David Weber.
Pretty feeble, even by Livingston’s standard of “only one or two books allowed from the entire 20th century”.
No Pournelle for example.
The Risen Series was OK, but not a barn burner.
Pretty feeble, even by Livingston’s standard of “only one or two books allowed from the entire 20th century”.
No Pournelle for example.
The Risen Series was OK, but not a barn burner.
The books on the list had to be published in the 21st century.
“Organized mayhem on American streets”
https://bayourenaissanceman.blogspot.com/2023/10/organized-mayhem-on-american-streets.html
“Matthew Braken posted a link to this video on X (previously Twitter). At 1m. 41sec. in the video, you can see a minivan try to get away from a horde of Antifa “demonstrators”, only to be intercepted by highly organized and well-equipped rioters. He notes:”
This event reputedly occurred in Minneapolis very recently.
I would not react well to the situation.
“When The Music Stops, Matt Bracken”
https://greyenigma.wordpress.com/your-on-your-own/when-the-music-stops/
“In response to recent articles in mainstream military journals discussing the use of the U.S. Army to quell insurrections on American soil, I offer an alternate vision of the future. Instead of a small town in the South as the flash point, picture instead a score of U.S. cities in the thrall of riots greater than those experienced in Los Angeles in 1965 (Watts), multiple cities in 1968 (MLK assassination), and Los Angeles again in 1992 (Rodney King). New Yorkers can imagine the 1977 blackout looting or the 1991 Crown Heights disturbance. In fact, the proximate spark of the next round of major riots in America could be any from a long list cribbed from our history.”
It is getting easier and easier to believe that this can happen in the USA.
We don’t have the Iowa class Battleships to sit offshore and make a statement like they did in the 80s and 90s.
Instead, the orbiting E-2 emissions make the statement that the Navy is out there … somewhere.
Come and take it.
I don’t care what the kids do with the Florida tuition, but the living expenses are not my problem if I’m not thrilled with the plan.
If they turn 26 without using the tuition, I get the cash back – a 0% 25 year loan to the State of Florida for capital improvements to the university system if my student does not enroll.
An Arts degree not earned in the Florida public universities is not off the table, but it has to be sold to me to obtain financial assistance.
When I was finishing high school I wanted a real career. I chose to apply for engineering and finished with a BS degree in Chemical Engineering. How unique, just before graduation I got an offer from Douglas Aircraft and then spent 45 years in aerospace engineering.
I‘ve put my son’s college deal here before. He maintains a 3.0 and I pay for school. STEM or business. That just happens to be the minimum to maintain his merit scholarship (steps up from a grand/semester to full tuition, which he got). He also got an engineering dept scholarship which ends up covering almost all of his books and other fees (I was out $200 this semester for that).
Biggest expense is housing. Apartment rent is $900/month, plus utilities and general life expenses (still have to feed him!) Still, I’m happy to do it, and look forward to getting him a used Mustang ecoboost this summer as a reward for his work.
Ammunition distributor noticing a lot of “missing” packages from UPS
https://bearingarms.com/john-petrolino/2022/07/28/ammunition-distributor-noticing-a-lot-of-missing-packages-from-ups-n60908
A nation of laws. Yeah, right. What’s the definition of The Golden Rule? “He who has the gold writes the rules.”
There must be a list of Second Amendment hostile businesses. Anyone?
We have a sink in the garage at home. It has been there for at least 35 years. On Friday night it fell. It has been a little loose for a while. The sink was hooked on a sloping metal bracket with sloping end pointed to fit under a lip on the back of the sink. Not an uncommon configuration. The bracket finally rusted through. No pipes broke so we just left until Saturday.
Removed the old sink completely and removed the water hoses. The drain pipe was brittle and just crumbled in my hand. The wife and I decided to just redo the entire sink area. She primed and painted the area that was hidden by the sink. We let that settle.
Today was installation day. I found the bracket I needed at Lowe’s so I did an online order for pickup. Also order four new toggle bolts. Three hours it took Lowe’s to get the items ready. Off to pick up the items along with new water supply hoses and drain fittings.
Things did not go as planned (does it ever). The mounting holes for the new bracket are different. I fastened one end of the bracket using the toggle bolt so I could drill one new hole. Nope. The new hole would be in the middle support of the cinder block. I backed off the toggle bolt and of course, the way toggle bolts work, lost the toggle part. One down, three to go.
Moved the bracket to the other existing hole. Inserted the toggle bolt and the impact driver was turning the wrong direction. Lost the toggle part. Two down, two to go. See where this is heading?
Next, I had to loosen the bracket to drill the new hole. Backed out the bolt too far, toggle fell in the hold. Three down, one to go. We need two to mount the bracket.
Off to Home Depot to get a new toggle bolt. I found one but the bolt was too long. Fortunately, the three excess bolts from the lost toggles fit just fine.
Drilled the new hold with the biggest masonry bit I had. Not quite big enough. I drilled a couple of small holes around the larger hole, chiseled out the stuff between the holes and now the toggle bolt will fit. Successfully mounted the bracket and checked for level. All is good.
Placed the sink on the bracket. The sink will not sit properly. There was a reason I wanted to use the other hole as now the bracket is too far left and is hanging up under the sink. Crawled under the sink and found the hang up. It was a corner of the bracket, a small corner. I removed the sink and using large pliers bent the corner so it would no longer interfere with the sink. It worked. The sink is now solid.
Attached the new hoses. I should mention that the new faucet (the old one was crap) was installed along with the drain, and the hoses while the sink was on the bench. That was actually the easiest part.
Hooked up the new drain pieces, no cutting required. Turned on the water. The drain leaks. Disassembled the drain pieces and found a gasket backwards, duh. Installed the gasket properly and the drain does not leak. Except for the drain part coming out of the sink. That was an easy fix and I just tightened the shirt(-r) the bottom ring that compresses the gasket by hand.
The sink is installed. Three trips to the hardware store. One to pick up the new faucet and the supply hoses. Second trip to Lowe’s to get the bracket and the drain pieces. Both of those trips were known. The third trip was to resolve the toggle bolt fiasco. So I consider the adventure a success.
The sink is now solid, has a closing drain, the faucet ($60.00) is better with a goose neck for more clearance, new braided hoses ($12.00) , and new drain lines ($11.00), new bracket ($5.00), and 5 toggle bolts ($12.00). We thought about replacing the sink but the cheapest was $100.00.
Liz Cheney…
wait,,,
I thought she was rendered
meaningless by the last electionand turned into ten gross of emergency candles that were recalled for emitting toxic fumes when burned and were buried in a hazardous waste landfill with Dick’s ashes and Vader costume.
“The Best Modern Military Science Fiction Books” by Dan Livingston
Military SF is seldom a one-off novel, making Livingston’s effort even more idiotic than usual.
The obvious approach would be to list ongoing series, with a companion list of completed series.
And if Murderbot is military SF, then S.M. Anderson’s Eden Chronicles should be on the list.
@Lynn
You haven’t read Jack Campbell?
Two article titles from Legal Insurrection:
Multiple Hamas Terrorists: We Became Like ISIS, Admit To Beheadings, Stomping Heads, Sex With Dead Women,
Associated Press Reporters Can Only Describe Hamas Terrorists as Militants, ‘Fighters, Attackers, or Combatants’
The MSM has about as much public benefit as a drug resistant STD.
You haven’t read Jack Campbell?
Nope. Never went down that road. Got enough military SF from David Weber, Vernor Vinge, Heinlein, Joe Haldeman, Jean Johnson, John Varley, and David Drake.
Patricia McCarthy on RINO’s and more:
“A nation can survive its fools, and even the ambitious. But it cannot survive treason from within. An enemy at the gates is less formidable, for he is known and carries his banner openly. But the traitor moves amongst those within the gate freely, his sly whispers rustling through all the alleys, heard in the very halls of government itself.” –Marcus Tullius Cicero
https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2023/10/after_the_jim_jordan_fiasco_in_congress_the_traitors_among_us_out_themselves.html
@Lynn
I’ve recommended it before, but don’t recall citing any reasons.
I’d say that if you tried the first book and weren’t hooked by the Black Jack Geary character, there’s probably no reason to go on.
If you did, some of the best parts come later:
Hemry (writing as Campbell) do a fine job with first contact with alien species that have radically different outlooks. Most of that happens in the second series: Beyond the Frontier
The third series, Lost Stars, tells the story from the standpoint of one set of Black Jack’s antagonists.
I have not read the current series, Outland. Three books so far. I will wait until it is finished, then gobble the whole series at once.
Cut down and packed up some more pork loin. Turned some into chops which I made for dinner. Used the recipe in Joy of Cooking for baked chops with fruit (I used pineapple rings) and they were really good. Very well received too. After a couple of weeks of nothing special and take out dinners, I sometimes need to remind them who is alpha in the kitchen 😛 Whipped mash potatoes with cream, butter, sauteed onions and bacon crumbles, and a pineapple chutney rounded out the plates. King’s Hawaiian dinner rolls spent 20 minutes foil wrapped in the oven for delicious puffy soft rolls too.
Used the cast iron to sear, and to bake.
Yummy.
n
I just received a nastygram from the HOA over the sign the roofers placed in the yard to help discourage the door-to-door operators.
If I had to guess, the pictures sent to the HOA at 3:30 (!) this afternoon probably came from one of the door-to-door guys.
“Tested: Windows 11 Pro’s On-By-Default Encryption Slows SSDs Up to 45%” By Jarred Walton
https://www.tomshardware.com/news/windows-software-bitlocker-slows-performance
“BitLocker software encryption slows performance. Here’s how to fix it.”
On by default in Windows 11 Pro, really ?
And if I remember correctly, Bitlocker has a backdoor for authorities.
“Will Israel Use Nuclear Weapons Against Iran and Hezbollah?”
https://discernreport.com/will-israel-use-nuclear-weapons-against-iran-and-hezbollah/
“Is it possible that the war in the Middle East could eventually go nuclear? If the fighting could have been limited to just Israel and Hamas, I think that there would have been a zero percent chance of Israel using nuclear weapons. But now it appears that Hezbollah, Syria, Iran and potentially other parties are likely to get involved too, and that means that Israel will literally be fighting a war of national survival. If it gets to a point where the Israelis think that they could potentially be overrun by their enemies, they aren’t going to leave their most powerful weapons on the shelf.”
“Fighting Hezbollah would truly be a nightmare scenario for the Israeli government. Hezbollah possesses at least 130,000 missiles, and they are far more powerful and far more sophisticated than the missiles that Hamas has been using. Can you imagine the horrors that we would witness if thousands of those missiles started raining down on Tel Aviv and Jerusalem? This is not something that Israel wants. But the Israeli government knows that Hezbollah will almost certainly enter the war once the IDF goes into Gaza, and so there had been talk of conducting a pre-emptive strike to take out those missiles before they could be launched…”
Yes. Desperate people do desperate things.
Hat tip to:
https://thelibertydaily.com/
Microsoft’s glass data storage system saves terabytes for 10,000 years
https://newatlas.com/computers/microsoft-project-silica-glass-data-storage-10000-years
Now make it out of Gorilla Glass X.
We may get the Qom crater 44 years late.
We may get the Qom crater 44 years late.
I am trying to envision 130,000 rockets into Tel Aviv. That would be devastating. A preemptive strike would be better.
>> Tell ya what: you decide the tax rate which will be applied to all immoral activity and I will decide what constitutes immorality.
‘You’ll know it when you see it,’ right?
>> “Matthew Braken posted a link to this video on X (previously Twitter)
IIRC the FTC limits how long they can put “New & Improved” on the detergent bottle label.
So can we stop already adding “previously Twitter?”
>> On a personal basis I agree. On a societal basis I conclude that tolerance of prostitution, drug use, and so on do do harm.
I have an essay in progress on this topic. I’ll post in the usual places once I get it to gel in a coherent form.
Will be interested to read your essay and see where the societal harm is and what, if any, assumptions you make.
For example, I see no harm in prostitution, except where a pimp is involved, the provider is underage and or a victim of sex trafficing.
I believe that. Back in school days, I used to handle the theater lighting. I could see doing that as a job. However, the people who wanted to be *in* the lights had zero interest in sitting in a dark booth where the audience would never see them. That’s a different mentality. Most of them wind up putting the “starving” in “starving artist”.
Sure, but you did it for fun. People in financial distress play the lottery in hopes of solving all their problems. Blowing that money puts them even deeper in the hole, making them more desperate, so they buy more tickets.
That’s how we see it as well. The way things worked out, it was actually kind of brutal: we sold the family home, so the kids had no choice about moving out. Obviously, we helped them find a place and settle in. Still, it was a hard and sudden transition.
Actually, we would have been happy to stay in the house, but we couldn’t afford it. The house was huge (we had also used it as business premises), built in the 1930s, and lots of things were end-of-life. All of the interior plumbing, for example. The people who bought it easily spent a $million on renovations before they even moved in, and they’ve done more since. We don’t have that kind of money…
Color me skeptical. If it was a significant amount of money, that’s an open-and-shut court case. If the *government* takes your money, it’s difficult to get back, but a bank? Shouldn’t be a problem.