Cold and wet, warming to cool and wet, while remaining overcast. Whew. Think that’s the most complex guess I’ve made to date. Feels like it anyway, and it describes Monday. The forecast says “partly cloudy” with no mention of rain, so I could be wrong.
Did my pickup yesterday. Got there, and the other customer was complaining about not winning my lot. So I sold it to him. Quick flip, only $20, but hey, money in pocket vs. money in the abstract, and for no more work than figuring out how to make zelle work. Now I know that too…
Picked up the kid, did some domestic bliss, did some auction sorting. Tested a couple of things.
Today if it’s not raining, I’ll probably drop some stuff off at the auction. I’ll also do some pickups and maybe even drop some stuff at my secondary location. If I’m super ambitious, I’ll do all that before the kid needs a ride home. And I can end with taking the Expy in for service. Didn’t yesterday because of the school board drama and my wife wanting to attend that in person. Liars that lie.
————–
There are daily stories about the breakdown in civil society. One punch killings. Mobs attacking singles. Kids killing each other and adults. Adults murdering their kids. Armed robberies and carjackings are dramatically up. Property theft is so common it doesn’t even merit a report in some places. Other crimes by people better placed to profit from them are exposed daily, to almost zero outrage. Politicians betray their trust. The law is twisted to punish the guilty.
Some of these things have been with us since the dawn of time, and only vary in degree, and by time and place. Some are relatively new to the public sphere. Some were common, but not widely known here in the US. It all is increasing, it all points to a coming inflection point.
Two things are likely. One is that it continues to get worse, the people just accommodating themselves to the ‘new normal’ like frogs as the water boils. (That’s been happening btw, for a while.) Eventually though the frog jumps or dies. The other is that people get angry and determine that they will change the direction the body politic is headed. This is historically very violent and relatively short. The people that built western civilization are (because they are civilized) slow to anger. But once aroused they will vent their anger and KEEP venting it, long after the subject has been subdued. The result is ruined cities, scattered people, and salted earth.
We’ve been in scenario one for decades. The frog is starting to feel hot though, and is about to jump out of the water, splashing hot water everywhere, knocking over the pan, and generally throwing a big fit. Whether the fit is soon enough for the frog to survive, or not, is a bit irrelevant to the frog. The frog who jumps wants to destroy the pot, the water, the one who lit the stove, the stove, the gas that powers the stove, and anyone who approved of the frog boiling policy, so that it doesn’t happen again. Frogs are typically very motivated by hearth and home, kith and kin.
This time the frogs don’t have as much kin, many without direct descendants to protect or provide for. There is a much weaker bond to hearth and home too. I am not comfortable making any predictions other than that things WILL change. They will either bring the water to a boil more quickly and the frog will have missed its chance, or the frog will have his day of reckoning. At the moment I’m leaning toward the violent spasm. Don’t know if it will end in an improvement or not.
When I get anxious, I clean. I prep. I surround myself with stuff. It’s stacked pretty high… but it’s not all neatly put away, yet.
Stack.
nick
Historically, improvements from revolutions are very rare. The usual outcomes are chaos, strongman rule, military dictatorships, and the like.
Most of the governments that we consider civilized, evolved slowly, over time.
Karen Bass is a Castro fangirl.
https://nypost.com/2020/08/02/karen-bass-renounces-her-praise-of-fidel-castro/
Even considering Bass for the ticket possibly cost the Dems the Dade County vote in 2020. From the Widow Jobs personal media outlet:
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2020/07/karen-bass-cuba-venceremos-brigade/614662/
Of course, the Widow Jobs probably wanted Kamala all along
How many Subcontinent colonists are present in your school district?
Number One Son households?
Those mommies are much tougher, have more frustrated type A ambitions, and tend to support the status quo administrations because they want to appear smart as defined by the media in this country.
Oh, and the entrance exams for the gifted programs? The Subcontinent community around here has copies and will even brag about it. It is only a surprise when the offspring don’t pass after all the coaching.
Just keep an eye on the ISD funding their police force. Round Rock ISD’s is now the personal Gestapo of the (alleged) mistress beating Superintendant following his temporary suspension in 2022.
60F and the sun is out in the blue sky. Hooray.
@greg, we don’t have may subcontinent or chinese in my community. We had a fairly large and growing Korean presence but I’m afraid the southern invaders are squeezing them out. Subcontinent prefers the Harmony schools in HISD, which is probably why the buildings are such crazy colors.
—-
I forgot to mention yesterday that I have always thought Tauton Press was being stupid with charging for online and digital content. I suppose it has been working for them, and maybe it keeps out the riff raff- it certainly kept me out. They’ve been adamant about it since the beginning of the web, and are still charging… so what do I know.
—–
WRT online magazines- yeah, not for me. I read magazines while on the throne. Not gonna take a tablet in there, or my phone, and never did like the format of print reproduced on a screen. I rip out pages with ads I want to revisit, or articles I want to address later- can’t do that with online… (only with trade mags, not FW, JLC, or QST.)
\
n
Harmony Public Schools are Muslim. You don’t notice it because, below a certain age, the girls do not have to wear the head scarves, etc.
The Hindu or Sikh parents are not going to send their kids to those places. They will work the ISD bureaucracy to get their kids into the best public schools in the district. If none of the schools in the ISD are acceptable, I believe they have ways around that problem by going to another ISD, but I don’t know how the scheme works.
My wife’s Sikh friend went to Catholic school. Anything but Muslim.
In WA State, the Boss Cousin, a Number One Son, got his kid into a Chinese immersion school in another district through a state mechanism and a carefully crafted appeal stating that the kid and the school would mutually benefit. Number One Grandson washed out within a year and returned to his private immersion school.
Round Rock High is seriously overloaded with the numbers growing even though all of the buildable land is gone in the areas zoned for the school.
Ah, like JerryP, I knew that at one time. Dunno where they are sending their kids then, not in any significant numbers at any particular school in my district.
n
NYC Fire Commissioner has his head up his fundament. It’s not the “food delivery companies” it’s the chinese battery makers, and the chinese charger makers, and the chinese manufacturers.
This fire started in the basement. Seems unlikely that some rando Doordash drone parked a scooter in these unfortunates’ basement.
It’s also a warning to those who would see. Big lithium packs have a whole bunch of energy in them. And they are built by slave labor in a country with no health and safety rules, to the lowest possible price.
n
Looks kinda haphazard to me, and of course, the whole “OPSEC” problem….
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-12745043/Doomsday-prepper-BUNKER-spends-75000-supplies.html
I’m kinda wondering what the dog ate for three months.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12744423/Hiker-Rich-Moore-dog-Coloardo.html
n
I have enjoyed back country 4WD trips in the Mojave Desert for 50 years using Chevrolet Blazer and Jeep Cherokees. In the near future a will not be going in a Jesus Truck to meet EdH and JimB at The Joint in Randsburg,
https://the-joint-randsburg-ca.business.site/
I have no idea. Look at the dog’s poop.
When Buddy the Beagle showed up in my yard a couple of weeks before the Big Freeze, he was pretty darn skinny. I forgot to weigh him but I’m guessing he was about 20 pounds.
I fed him regular dog food. Same as Penny. With a bit of people food mixed in for variety. For the first couple of weeks I had about five minutes after supper to get him leashed and outside. Otherwise he would poop on the dining room floor. Stinky and runny and full of chewed acorns and leaves. It took abut a month for all of the acorns and leaves to pass through him.
He’s cool now. We can wait almost two hours now. Maybe longer but by then Penny is ready to go out.
I’m kinda wondering what the dog ate for three months.
Chipmunks. Terriers are great scavengers, mine is half terrier half schnauzer and is always concerned about food when we are outside.
Site was “503’d” for a couple of hours today (Tues) from about 9:00am PST until approximately 130pm PST. All seems OK now. Monitoring, as usual.
Suspect hosting database issues, as the HTML site was OK.
“GQ GMC-320S Digital Nuclear Radiation Detector Monitor Meter Geiger Counter Radiation Dosimeter”
https://www.amazon.com/GQ-GMC-320S-Radiation-Detector-Dosimeter/dp/B0B53Z675M?tag=ttgnet-20/
The perfect Christmas gift for 2023 ?
Fine Chinesium.
If you don’t pick up a dose of radiation from the monitor, you’ll get lead exposure from touching the handle and other plastic parts.
Fine Chinesium.
Is there anything not made in China nowadays ?
Now I am wondering if my Brachs Candy Corn was made in China ?
Nope, at least not directly. Hecho El Mexico.
xkcd: Date Line
https://xkcd.com/2854/
I am fairly sure that Randall is messing with us on this one.
Explained at:
https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/2854:_Date_Line
The International Date Line is not a physical string,[citation needed] and therefore could not be caught by a rocket.
oh
needz citashun
well…
ok then
However, if the earth was a perfect sphere, 24,000 miles in diameter, and a rope was wrapped once around the earth. How much longer would that 24,000 mile rope need to be to raise that rope 1 foot off the surface of the earth around the entire circumference?
Freaking power went out again. Only out for less than half an hour this time.
Gah.
n
(2*PI*(2/5280)) = 12.56 ft
The 12yo comes out with the word “bifle nom” or “biffle” in english at the dinner table tonight. Snickering like a naughty hyena…
Says it was a youtube or something…
n
Charging up the EV and cooking dinner.
I’ve heard horror stories about Houston utilities.
During scab training at the Death Star leading up to the 2009 strike year, one woman who worked in our Labs office decided to get certified as being afraid of heights in order to avoid pole climbing classes and butt splicing trunk lines overhead in a bucket truck during sleet season in CT (my original assignment).
That certification got her a ticket to Houston, to spend the strike crawling under houses where the phone lines ran in the old houses near Downtown before gentrification really started rolling.
The phone company didn’t do overhead in Houston because older parts of the city at the time still had bare copper power lines. Yeah, the old houses are gone, but I bet that power infrastructure is still in place.
Things will get sporty next Summer.
Weber Grills. When ol’ Bernie Marcus demanded the Weber name on a line of Fine Chinesium grills to sell at Home Depot in the 00s, Weber bought out Ducane and made that nameplate the sacrificed American brand name to avoid the fate of Hunter Fan and Schlage Lock among others.
Ducane used to be the prestige brand of gas grill. They had a product placement deal on “Dallas”, and one of their grills sits in the museum at the Southfork Ranch.
We had a Chinesium Ducane. Biggest grill purchase mistake we ever made.
The Googles routed us through East Paletine when we tried to go to Wisconsin without using the Illinois Tollway last weekend. We drove past Weber HQ among other landmarks on that trip.
We also passed Epic Systems HQ. My wife asked, “Do they offer tours?”
Yes, they do. Keep in mind that Judith Faulkner, the CEO, is bonkers before you click through.
https://www.epic.com/visiting/
Chances are that your medical records are in her hands. Pleasant dreams.
c= pi *d
cnew= 3.14159*24002
cnew=~75404
corig=3.14159*24000
c orig=~75398
Difference between original length and length required to raise it one foot, or increase the diameter by two feet is therefore 75404-75398 = 6 feet approximately.
Result agrees well with the check of multiplying pi delta d, or 3.14159*2 = ~6.283 or ~6 feet.
The error in the question, conflating the length of the diameter with the length of the circumferential rope is ignored.
n
The victims don’t LOOK random…
HORROR: Man Stabs 4 Women at Louisiana Tech Campus – University Claims “Random Act of Violence”
Third world.
Czech Television Crew Robbed at Gunpoint During APEC Summit in Crime-Ridden San Francisco
FOX News reported:
n
I suspect that you mean ‘circumference’, not ‘diameter’.
In that case, my AI says (using the actual approximation of circumference):
Here’s how to calculate the additional length:
But, math makes my head hurt. So I could be wrong.
Doh! Diameter vs. radius.
I have work strategy training running tonight. Suddenly, everyone being done with the online class became important to management this afternoon, three days before the deadline.
That Epic tour page is … well… epic. Totally fits with Madison.
One of the companies my wife works with is in Madison. I installed a system at the university there, so they could study combustion simulation. I also managed a live event car show there one summer, when it was so hot it was killing people. The prof I did the display system for claimed they had the highest number of restaurants per capita in the US. He ate lunch at Subway when he wanted to treat himself.
n
I don’t remember a time when the area around City Lights wasn’t creepy.
Don’t take a young child into that place. NAMBLA/Pedo central.
“Exit Strategy: The Murderbot Diaries (4)” by Martha Wells
https://www.amazon.com/Exit-Strategy-Murderbot-Martha-Wells/dp/1250191858?tag=ttgnet-20/
Book number four of a seven book series of science fiction novellas. I reread the well printed and well bound hardcover published by Tor in 2018 that I bought new from Amazon this year. The first novella in the series won the 2018 Hugo, Nebula, Alex, and Locus awards. The series won the 2021 Hugo for the best series also. I am rereading the next two books in the series and the seventh book in the series arrived today.
Murderbot is a SecUnit, similar to a T-800 Terminator with a cloned and severely modified human head. There is a human brain in there but it is controlled by the AIs embedded in its genderless torso. There are lungs, there is a blood mixture with a synthetic, there is human skin over the entire body, there is a face, there is hair on the head and eyebrows. Everything else is machine. Somehow, the blood is enriched with electricity as there is no stomach or intestines. But, there are arteries and veins to keep the skin and brain alive. All of the major arteries and veins have clamps to stop bleeding in case of damage. There is a MedSystem computer with an AI, a HubUnit computer with an AI, and a governor module that can force the SecUnit to follow orders using pain sensors in the brain. It has a energy gun in each arm and several cameras, all directly wired to the brain. The SecUnit can sustain severe damage to everything but the head and still survive.
Murderbot is a self named SecUnit due to an unfortunate circumstance with 57 miners on a remote moon. It has hacked its governor and no longer allows the governor to give it orders or inflict pain. It prefers to internally watch its 35,000 hours of downloaded media such as episodes of “The Rise and Fall of Sanctuary Moon” and “WorldHoppers”. Even though it has a face, it does not like to interface with humans, yes, very introverted. It will follow human orders if it sees fit to do so.
Murderbot has been called a rogue SecUnit by the news feeds. It has been hitching rides with AI Bot Cargo and Transport spaceships by sharing it’s 35,000 hours of downloaded media. It has researched its responsibility in the deaths of 57 miners on a remote moon and decided that somebody else caused the deaths and then blamed it. It has researched GrayCris Corporation’s behavior in banned alien artifacts and the murders of several research scientists. And now GrayCis has kidnapped Murderbot’s best friend, Dr. Mensah, and is holding her for ransom.
Murderbot is an incredibly interesting character. It handles horrible situations easily and personal interactions difficultly. Like I said, interesting. All Murderbot really wants to do in life is watch soap operas like “Sanctuary Moon” and “Worldhoppers (aka Stargate)”, just like us.
Popular quotes from the book:
1. “Disinformation, which is the same as lying but for some reason has a different name, is the top tactic in corporate negotiation/warfare.”
2. “It would have been hilarious if I wasn’t about to die. It was still a little hilarious.”
Warning: There is violence and death in the books. Books one through four are a series of novellas, not regular length books. Book five is a regular length novel, book six is back to the novella, and book seven is a full length novel due out in November 2023. You can buy a collection of the first four hardbacks at a nice discount.
https://www.amazon.com/Murderbot-Diaries-Artificial-Condition-Protocol/dp/1250784271?tag=ttgnet-20/
The author has a website at:
https://www.marthawells.com/
There is a wiki for Murderbot including various episodes of “The Rise and Fall of Sanctuary Moon”:
https://murderbot.fandom.com/wiki/Murderbot_Wiki
and
https://murderbot.fandom.com/wiki/The_Rise_and_Fall_of_Sanctuary_Moon
There is a much better review by James Nicoll at:
https://jamesdavisnicoll.com/review/dancing-on-a-high-wire
My rating: 6 out of 5 stars
Amazon rating: 4.6 out of 5 stars (19,465 reviews)
We ate lunch on Tuesday on campus at the Babcock Dairy Program deli. At the next table over, the UWisc Madison ESI compliance officer was holding court with a couple of undergrads, spewing exactly the kind of stupid that you would expect from the diversity hire holding that title.
The woman popped my academia radar initially because she walked in wearing Athleta, head to toe, and one of the rules of thumb I developed across three university experiences in the last 15 years, both as a student and Teaching Assistant, is that a SOTA (student over the traditional age) walking into your classroom looking like the cover of the Athleta catalog will not only cheat in your class but will be the leader of an organized cheating ring established in whatever undergrad program he/she is pursuing.
Men can wear Athleta depending on the item. “Tall” is Big Mike tall on their size chart, and I’m not going to judge.
Just for information, Dometic, the 12v and off grid refrigerator people, are having a sale on their stuff. It’s pretty universally well regarded, although I don’t have any personal experience with them.
https://www.dometic.com/en-us/outdoor/lp/black-friday
n
Milwaukee is the bigger freak show IMHO.
You expect Madison to be weird, but a party of Milwaukee Wine Moms we saw at dinner one night were sporting neck tattoos.
And that was just the tip of the iceberg of strange we observed over a couple of days.
Go out to Spring Green sometime and tour the House on the Rock. Be sure to do the complete experience and not just the original tourist attraction.
Take a hint from the concession selling coffee and ice cream before the final third of the tour.
I think that’s what Judy Faulkner is going for with the campus.
Taliesin, also in Spring Green, is out there, but it barely moves the needle of weird by comparison.
Plus, the deal for the Guggenheim was negotiated in one room of the main house while another table in what was Wright’s studio was where the greatest masterpiece of 20th century procrastination engineering, Fallingwater, was drawn in about three hours after the client called from Milwaukee to ask if he could drive out to see progress on the commission.
Fallingwater is also on my list of things to see.
>> Is there anything not made in China nowadays ?
The ‘Zon just delivered a ’Hecho en Estados Unidos’ KleinTools number zero phillips screwdriver to toss into my range bag tool kit. Well made tool.
And speaking of the range, stopped by my local store to pick up more of my preferred 22’s and the price had gone up from $10.99 to $13.99 per hundred rounds. Online is still $8.50 and even with the shipping, as much as I prefer to spend locally, in this case I ordered online. Keep those stacks full.
https://twitter.com/KateHydeNY/status/1724522243525382533
Estimates of more than 200,000 people at the National Mall
https://hotair.com/tree-hugging-sister/2023/11/14/im-kinda-diggin-a-beautiful-gathering-on-the-national-mall-right-now-n592472
>> Just for information, Dometic, the 12v and off grid refrigerator people, are having a sale on their stuff. It’s pretty universally well regarded, although I don’t have any personal experience with them.
https://www.dometic.com/en-us/outdoor/lp/black-friday
Is it just me or have the number of “early” Black Friday sales gotten out of hand?
Grab a dollar before they’re gone.
smokin’ fast
https://twitter.com/EP_AnimalLovers/status/1724384160113119509
Is it just me or have the number of “early” Black Friday sales gotten out of hand?
– not just that but one of the malls was putting out Christmas lights and decor before Halloween. I’ve driven past several houses with lit Christmas lights already up…
I know people want something good and shiny in their lives at the moment, but it’s WAY darn early.
n
@rickh, ah, you corrected it the other way, which admittedly is a better fit with reality if the circumference is indeed ~=24000…
That last requirement, the DIFFERENCE between, is exactly the sort of thing they do to the 7th grade kids on tests. Reading comprehension is more important than the math.
Speaking of school, we got the smarmiest, most tone deaf communication evah! from our District Superintendent, blaming the parents for stopping the Board from doing their hard work in these difficult times. She hates to see parents defying authority in front of their kids, setting such a bad example. The Board will now continue to do what they were going to do at the next meeting. NB- there is no mention of any intention to address the issue of MASSIVE turnout for the meeting, or if the 128 people signed up to speak will be allowed to do so. She also pretty much admits that the new budget is a fait accompli, and it’s a secret so too bad peons. Iron law. Time for them to go.
Also note that in all the hand wringing over cutting G&T and choice schools, (which primarily affects upper class whites and was designed to panic the herd into political activism), there wasn’t a single mention or even HINT about cutting athletics. They will “pause” construction on 4 schools (that are already underway, and funded by bonds separate from the budget) but no mention of the outsized stadiums that benefit only a few… nor was there any mention of cutting extraneous demands on teacher time and school resources like SEL, the licensing and training for a new reading method, and a new math method…
I want the chance to ask someone under oath if they are running an educational institute, or a farm team for the colleges.
n
Is it just me or have the number of “early” Black Friday sales gotten out of hand?
– not just that but one of the malls was putting out Christmas lights and decor before Halloween. I’ve driven past several houses with lit Christmas lights already up…
I know people want something good and shiny in their lives at the moment, but it’s WAY darn early.
Several of my neighbors put their Christmas Lights up last weekend. Shoot, some of them never took them down from last year. Some of my 8,000 ft2 home neighbors regard Christmas Lights as a competition …
“House Passes Two-Step Continuing Resolution To Avert Gov’t Shutdown”
https://dailycaller.com/2023/11/14/mike-johnson-house-passes-two-step-continuing-resolution-avert-government-shutdown/
Gets us to the new year when people are not quite so crazy. But, the middle east might be totally on fire.
Hat tip to:
https://thelibertydaily.com/
Wow, did we get a lot of rain yesterday. Maybe not a lot for Houstonites, but for here: About 2-½ inches, which is as much as we normally receive in the entire month of November. Never a hard rain, just steady, for about 30 hours straight.
Sunshine today (Wednesday) and maybe tomorrow, then more rain on the weekend. It’s soggy here…
I did.