Chilly and damp, 40F and then warming. It was 40F last night at the BOL. Supposed to be clear for a couple of days.
Got a late start to things yesterday but eventually got the truck loaded and headed to the BOL. Stopped on the way to pick up an item that hadn’t been shipped, even though it’s been a month or more. It will let me do a repair on something I’d written off as too expensive to fix.
Won a few things for Christmas presents, and a couple of things for the BOL. I’ll pick them up this week.
Today I need to unload the truck, put stuff away, and winterize the hose bibs and outdoor shower water heater. I’ll do some Christmas things if I have time. We’ll be back up after Christmas and I’d like to walk into a decorated house. I’d like to put up some lights here too. I’ve got the lights, but don’t know if I have a good way to hang them…
I’ll take some colored lights home to put up there too.
————
I spent some time thinking about truly bad things happening while I was sitting by the fire last night. I think I have a nice post coming up, if I can organize my thoughts.
In the mean time — stack.
nick
So, “H-Town” didn’t receive any benefit from the Governor and Legislature recently giving away the state’s $17 billion surplus to the local governments and ISDs under the guise of property tax “reform”?
In four years, “H-Town”, along with the rest of Texas, will be counting down to the arrival of income tax at the state level. The counties and cities will also get their “piece of the action”.
After reading this piece, I think I’ve been unfair to The Daily Mail about their lazy reporting and fear mongering to sell papers before holiday special telly season begins in earnest in the UK.
Antibiotics don’t do anything against a virus. Strange but true.
https://www.dailystar.co.uk/news/world-news/doctors-meltdown-mystery-china-virus-31690431
The Drudge Report was fear mongering with the link this morning.
We are going to die!
The irony of this is that Tony took an already really bad district in Del Valle and made it worse bleeding the ISD’s tax base dry with concessions in return for building the Austin Gigafactory in a working quarry, which provided a lot of commercial tax revenue to support the schools where Tesla does not.
https://www.cnn.com/2023/12/14/tech/elon-musk-funding-new-austin-school/index.html
I have not heard of “University of Austin”. In addition to UT, Austin has a branch of Concordia, located on the old HQ of Schluberger, and St. Edwards, a Fancy Lad school where a lot of management at the tolling company “studied”.
Concordia is in a former Schlumberger R&D site, not HQ.
Contrary to conventional wisdom, Austin’s tech talent pool is not all that deep, and a lot of corporate outposts for big tech companies located here are about writeoffs for partying on 6th Street if they are not associated with Samsung’s manufacturing lines.
The Saturday Night Joke (lifted from AoSHQ)
A man was telling his buddy over coffee, “You won’t believe what happened last night. My daughter walked into the living room and said, “Dad, do not pay off my college tuition loan, cancel my allowance, throw away all my clothes and take my iPhone and laptop. In addition, please take all of my jewelry to the Salvation Army. Then, sell my car, take my front door key away from me and lock me out of your house. Then, disown me and never talk to me again. And don’t forget to write me out of your will and leave my share to anyone you choose.”
“Holy Smokes”, replied the friend, “She actually said that?”
The father replied, “Well, she didn’t actually put it quite like that. I’m paraphrasing a little.
“What she actually said was, Dad, meet my new boyfriend, Mohammed. We’re going to work together on Biden’s 2024 re-election campaign.”
Only, it’s not really a joke:
https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2023/12/generation-hamas.php
Martial law and re-education camps.
Driving home from dinner last night, I noticed several of Visa’s Austin buildings all lit up inside revealing that they were mostly gutted and empty. Construction on the nearby Soy Boy apartments continues at a feverish pace, however.
Where will the Soy Boy’s work?
Achtung! Ze camps are reserved for ze Skippy who refuses ze mask und jab, ja.
Seriously, though, nothing changes. The girls believe stupid things until they have to work for a living and the guys just want to get laid. Daddy Cash has allowed an extended adolescence for many kids since I graduated high school almost 40 years ago.
Social media does give attractive college age girls the option of not working, but there are huge downsides and, anymore, lots of girls looking to do the same thing.
If you have a daughter who aspires to be an “influencer”, meet the competition:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uhCwRFyX8Cc
45F sunny and clear today at the BOL. Don’t know about Houston…
Was going to go to sleep early, but picked up “Ready Player One”. I thought I’d read it before, but I had not. I went to bed at 2am.
Book is a love letter to my junior and high school years with a bit of college added on. That plus the author’s very easy to read “voice” kept me up through the first major milestone in the book. I’m enjoying it and looking forward to reading the rest.
One sausage biscuit on board, another in the microwave, and a coffee cup slowly emptying down the hatch, and I think I”m ready to start my day.
—————–
Greg’s got a better observation post, but I agree that Austin is paper thin, there is no “there” there. It’s like a college town during a break in the school year most of the time.
——————-
Mr Williams brings up an interesting point. With access to all media, why buy new music or video? I have more on my server than I could listen to (a problem for the protagonist in Ready Player One, and he’s only looking at the 80s) or watch if I made it my job. As I find stuff I missed as I was living it, or re-discover stuff I knew about, and add that to the pile, the pile just gets bigger.
Will we get to a point where every musical phrase, every combination of words, has been done, and is copyrighted? (Like in the noir Kevin Jeter story-where violations are punished by death?) What then? Do we wallow in nostalgia or ignore what came before and try for something new anyway? What happens as a culture when you look backwards instead of forwards?
——————–
Despite the AGW doomsaying in the book Ready Player One, he does identify one of my favorite ideas, that we didn’t get off this rock when we needed to, and now the easy to get resources are gone. That could be a real issue if the current crop of parasites brings it all crashing down.
Or maybe nano tech and fusion will finally become viable.
Food for thought on a chilly Sunday.
n
I desire to be an influencer but Mr. Ray got here first.
I’m not having a go at Greg, but I spotted in his post a point of English usage: when did “anymore” without some preceding negation become the preferred synonym for “nowadays” or “these days”?
A bit like “co-worker” instead of “colleague”, it sets my inner copy-editor’s teeth on edge… or maybe I just need my dinner.
Lots of people move here who don’t have any “there”.
I would include the colonists up on the western edge of Georgetown in that category
Perhaps only in Greg’s idiolect?
I don’t believe that the easy resources are gone, but no one wants to work the jobs moving and processing them in a way that actually increases wealth.
Since the pandemic started, everyone wants a work-from-home job. Some of those build meaningful wealth, but not many.
“co-worker” vs. “colleague”
Guilty. But in my defense, back when I would have used “colleague”, I would have reserved it for those I considered peers, functionally or intellectually.
For the last 15 years, few would have been called colleague.
and few should be called co-workers as few usually do the work.
I’ve been seeing that usage for at least five years, probably more than ten. I think that I’ve seen it used mostly by middle-aged men, but that’s a plurality of who I talk to so that doesn’t mean much. However, I don’t think that I’ve heard kids or teens, the second-largest group that I talk to, use it that way.
co”work”ers
A few are co’workers, “cow workers”, brainless cattle to feed the layoff monster when it awakens every few years feeling peckish.
In four years, “H-Town”, along with the rest of Texas, will be counting down to the arrival of income tax at the state level. The counties and cities will also get their “piece of the action”.
No freaking way.
That doesn’t match my experience. In general, it’s the squeaky wheels rather than the flat tires who get sacked. This may be a result of the places where I’ve mostly contracted: government agencies, large investment banks, and a few other large corporations. Being useless is acceptable so long as you don’t cause any problems that make the manager look bad. Slipped schedules or flaws in the product can always be explained away. What can’t be tolerated is pointing out that a decision is going to lead to problems when the product is released (and, worse, being proved right) or asking why a process has these three extraneous steps. Productivity takes a far back seat to not making waves.
“250 Years”
https://areaocho.com/250-years/
“It was 250 years ago tonight that colonists had the Boston Tea Party. It took another ten years for the war that followed to reach its conclusion.”
Wow.
Ha! Ha! You got what you wanted dumbass DOD:
US Army faces ‘TikTok mutiny’ as Gen Z recruits whine about low pay, ‘sh***y’ food and FITNESS TESTS while on bases in uniform
Time for a house cleaning even if you don’t meet your goals.
45F sunny and clear today at the BOL. Don’t know about Houston…
It was 38 F at 7 am this morning and quite a bit of fog rising off the fields. The early sun burned off all the fog by the time I left for church at 830 am.
Wait until the 2026 trim notices get mailed out and the surplus no longer pays for the rate compression to cover the property tax increases voters passed with the “reform” package last month.
The tax decrease you will see in your 2024 trim notice is not permanent, and $17 billion can only go so far.
Was going to go to sleep early, but picked up “Ready Player One”. I thought I’d read it before, but I had not. I went to bed at 2am.
Excellent book. Picks up the 70s and 80s very well. The excellent Spielberg movie is very faithful to the book.
I am reading “Worm” on the intertubes (1.8 million words)
https://parahumans.wordpress.com/
and “Illium” by Dan Simmons (752 pages of intense wordage) about a future Solar System in the distant future where the Earth human population is down to 300,000 and post-humans are reenacting the Trojan wars on a terraformed Mars with uneducated humans as spear fodder. I have almost bounced off twice.
https://www.amazon.com/Ilium-Dan-Simmons/dp/0380817926?tag=ttgnet-20/
Wait until the 2026 trim notices get mailed out and the surplus no longer pays for the rate compression to cover the property tax increases voters passed with the “reform” package last month.
The tax decrease you will see in your 2024 trim notice is not permanent, and $17 billion can only go so far.
Nah, they will raise the sales tax first.
Got the truck unloaded. Got the hose bibs sorted, and the water heater put away.
Put up lights along the roofline on the street side. Putting out some plastic figures… And I’ll find somewhere to put a few more lights.
Nice day, I’m sweating in the sun. 72F atm.
@lynn, I read to the section break, Level 2 after breakfast. I was close anyway so I kept going. That’s the sign of an enjoyable read.
“Alex Jones offers $55m to Sandy Hook families to satisfy $1.5bn judgment”
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/dec/16/alex-jones-55m-sandy-hook-families-billion-dollar-judgment
“Families of the slain schoolchildren had earlier proposed an $85m settlement for the Infowars host’s lies about the 2012 massacre”
Alex Jones has a lot more cash than I thought he did.
Spielberg stiffed Infocom on its contribution to computing and culture in the 80s, spotlighted in the book as the first puzzle, the white house with the rear window slightly ajar, substituting the ballroom scene from “The Shining”.
Hopefully, Microsoft does something with the Infocom IP digesting Activision Blizzard.
“Starcraft” first, however.
A BILLION dollars from a individual for exercising his right to free speech. It doesn’t come without consequences, but a BILLION DOLLARS isn’t even symbolic, it’s ridiculous and laughable.
And what he said might have been offensive, but show me a BILLION DOLLARS worth of harm vs an attempt to “make an example” of him.
It’s a clear attempt to stifle speech.
n
This was explored in Spider Robinson’s short story, Melancholy Elephants.
“Houthis launch more attacks in Red Sea as US warships head to region”
https://www.politico.com/news/2023/12/16/houthi-attacks-red-sea-u-s-warships-00132146
The increased deployments of ships and Houthi attacks come as Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin is slated to travel to the Middle East next week.”
Biden needs to send the B-52s to Yemen.
Hat tip to:
https://drudgereport.com/
“Russia loads new intercontinental ballistic missile into silo south of Moscow”
https://news.yahoo.com/russia-loads-intercontinental-ballistic-missile-114335053.html?guccounter=1
Somebody remind me, isn’t Russia in a war at the moment ?
BTW, my big takeaway from the Napoleon movie was that Napoleon took a 600,000 man army to Moscow. He was harried by the Cossacks all the way there using small mortars and rifles. He got to Moscow and the entire 300,000 person city had relocated to St. Petersburg. As Napoleon’s army camped in Moscow that night, hidden people burned Moscow down around them. Now that is dedication.
What is Russia willing to do today to ensure their safety ?
This was explored in Spider Robinson’s short story, Melancholy Elephants.
Thank you for reminding me of that excellent read.
Despite the AGW doomsaying in the book Ready Player One, he does identify one of my favorite ideas, that we didn’t get off this rock when we needed to, and now the easy to get resources are gone. That could be a real issue if the current crop of parasites brings it all crashing down.
Or maybe nano tech and fusion will finally become viable.
We are spending incredible amounts of capital (money) on new energy sources across the world. You should see some of the stuff my customers and I are working on. It is crazy to the max.
Maybe something will come of it. Then we will have to worry about the heat death of Earth which is a real problem in 3 or 4 centuries.
I missed this at the time:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phyllis_Coates
Free speech allows you to say what you want without interference.
It doesn’t protect you from the consequences of what you say. Nor should it.
Coates and Neill both also portrayed Lois Lane’s mother, in “The Adventures of Lois and Clark” and “Superman: The Movie”, respectively.
Neill’s appearance sometimes didn’t make the TV cuts of “Superman: The Movie”, but I saw her in the restored print put into theaters for the anniversary in 2018.
Phyllis Coates also had a leading role in the ‘B’ grade horror classic “I Was A Teenage Frankenstein”, but that film and its AIP sibling Michael Landon’s “I Was a Teenage Werewolf” are both still under copyright and not in circulation.
Priority #1: No German missiles in Kiev … Kyiv … however they spell it officially now.
The cabal running Corn Pop don”t seem to get it.
I do not agree, in a nuanced way.
The definition of consequences and damages is where it goes all sideways.
Burn a flag? I agree, free speech. Trucker or biiker knocks your teeth out for doing that inflammatory act? Also free speech.
Libel/Slander/malicious defamation? Definitely should have consequences, even legal. Must have actual harm or clearly intended harm as a basis. For instance, when the CEO of Houston Methodist told the press that those of us who refused the jab “failed to put the patients first”. Unproven, unsubstantiated, and intended to denigrate our character.
I disagree that calling Sandy Hook fictional, or 9/11 an inside job, or saying fire doesn’t melt steel should have legal consequences. If Jones called specific people liars, without proof, I’d say damages were in order. Commensurate with the actual damage done. As much as I think of myself, no damage to my ego or reputation would be worth a billion dollars.
But of course, I haven’t followed the controversy or trial, so I don’t know the specific facts. I cannot imagine a billion dollar slander, though. Even the Westboro Baptist Church crazies don’t go that far.
Priority #1: No German missiles in Kiev … Kyiv … however they spell it officially now.
The cabal running Corn Pop don”t seem to get it.
My point exactly.
And the cabal running Berlin and the EU don’t seem to get it either.
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/world/european-union-agrees-to-open-membership-negotiations-with-ukraine
H. G. Wells predicted that atomic weapons would be used in all European capitols in his book “The Time Machine”. That prediction has not been tested yet.
We’ve had several recent multi-billion dollar violations of the First Amendment:
The Russia Hoax.
The January 6 “insurrection”
The mRNA emergency authorization
The Hunter Biden laptop is Russian disinformation.
Every one of which was our own government
In other words, the law by definition does not allow the government to do these things, and doing them is a violation.
Just for the rotation of the Earth, Russia may not be real hot about nuking a few places in Europe because they are downwind. Although, starting with Brussels and killing the EU brass might be worth the fall out.
I absolutely loved the Ilium and Olympos books (and most things Dan Simmons). Yeah, I’m OK with too many words to set up a scene with robots discussing Shakespeare. Or Keats. Or Proust. And main characters being eaten by dinosaurs.
In other news, I found out that my compact, pocket-size cordless hole puncher is an LCP Max, so it is 10+1 or 12+1 .380 depending on the mag.
Westboro doesn’t have the deep pockets like Alex Jones.
Plus, Austin/Travis County jury pool.
The Dallas jury pool is bad – I speak from firsthand experience with my father-in-law’s estate case — but not Austin bad.
I absolutely loved the Ilium and Olympos books (and most things Dan Simmons). Yeah, I’m OK with too many words to set up a scene with robots discussing Shakespeare. Or Keats. Or Proust. And main characters being eaten by dinosaurs.
Ok, I laughed when Daemon ? got eaten by an Allosaurus when he ventured off in the jungle to pee. Very much a reminder of Jurassic Park.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allosaurus
There is 30 ? 35 ? foot Saurophaganax in the Oklahoma Museum of Natural History in Norman, OK that is over 90% complete. Looks scary as all get out. Big sucker and huge mouth with lots and lots of teeth. Bigger than a Allosaurus supposedly.
https://samnoblemuseum.ou.edu/permanent-exhibits/hall-of-ancient-life/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saurophaganax
Just for the rotation of the Earth, Russia may not be real hot about nuking a few places in Europe because they are downwind. Although, starting with Brussels and killing the EU brass might be worth the fall out.
Wouldn’t be the first time that they evacuated Moscow.
According to Wikipedia, they’re all still alive. Kind of old and decrepit to be doing a show, though that hasn’t stopped the Rolling Stones. And they’re not as old and decrepit as Biden, so I guess it’s OK. So what’s the plan? Disgust the Houthi into submission by having 66- and 73-year-old women sing about the Love Shack?
That’s a fatuous claim. The trial judge not allowing the defendant to present evidence is a de facto suppression by the government. The court accepting a billion dollar verdict against anything but the largest of corporations goes beyond allowing a jury to assess compensatory and punitive damages. It is a gesture intended to intimidate others, a de facto suppression of speech.
Meh, it’ll take more than that to intimidate me. I live in NYS, the same state which sent Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez to Washington.
“I live in NYS, the same state which sent Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez to Washington.”
I’ve been to Newark.
“Impressive ‘optional pack’ for Tesla Cybertruck could boost it in EV race: ‘Might allow some potential buyers to make the purchase’”
https://news.yahoo.com/impressive-optional-pack-tesla-cybertruck-220000471.html
“Every day, we’re learning more and more about the Tesla Cybertruck, including a previously unmentioned range extender that could help the vehicle go for nearly 500 miles without charging.”
“One user on X, formerly Twitter, asked Elon Musk about the feature, to which Musk replied that it’s an “optional pack that fits in about 1/3 of the truck bed. Still room for plenty of cargo. It’s meant for very long trips or towing heavy things up mountains.””
Impressive.
“Stanislaus National Forest Looks to Partner With Tesla Motors”
https://www.fs.usda.gov/detail/stanislaus/news-events/?cid=FSEPRD1156234
“Kuiken was responding to a recent incident on the Stanislaus National Forest involving a Tesla Cybertruck that apparently lost traction and slid down an embankment on a well-known Off-Highway Vehicle (OHV) area on the Forest’s Calaveras Ranger District while harvesting a Christmas tree in an moment that has since gone viral on social media.”
Picture !
Apparently rescued by a 4WD Ford.
Hat tip to:
https://news.yahoo.com/tesla-cybertruck-gets-stuck-california-011035356.html
help the vehicle go for nearly 500 miles without charging
– but it will still take commensurately longer to charge after the pack is used.
———
Show me a billion dollars worth of damages. Show me where the plaintiffs argued anything other than “he said things that made me mad/I didn’t like”. And show me any other comparable damage award… Freaking Bhopal gas leak, with actual damage to people..
n
I guess bin stores are at peak.
One of my resellers sold his business, he did bins too. Someone in the online auctions business mentioned to me last week he thought bin stores were starting to shut down…
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/yourmoney/consumer/article-12869719/bargain-bin-stores-snap-amazon-walmart-returns-mystery-bags.html
Like house flipping when the noobs got involved… Let’s open a bins store!
For the customers, It’s great, if they are buying stuff they’d buy anyway, and I’ve been an advocate of finding new ways to get the stuff you need.
For the sellers, it’s easy to buy the inventory. It’s much harder to make money selling it.
n
– bbut I thought the economy was booming… /sarc
Sucks if it happens to you. My sibling had it happen and then went 3 years during Obammma’s term without adequate work.
n
One of the reasons there are questions I won’t answer at the Dr’s office is that I don’t want the answers in an online record…
– and I’d bet that three letter agencies have access to it all the time.
n
More to Bhopal than that…
UC’s Indian subsidiary built the plant out in the sticks. Local government allowed a shantytown to grow up nearby.
The plant had a history of poor maintenance and worker (including professional staff) injury due to chemical exposure.
The gas leak was methylene di-isocyanate (MDI), produced onsite and used as an intermediate in pesticide manufacture (note that MDI is commonly used as an intermediate to make polyurethane). A tank containing tons of the liquid material was down for maintenance when water was introduced causing an runaway reaction, increase in tank pressure, and leaking MDI gas. (MDI is liquid at room temp but boils at a bit over 100F).
Thousands of people died, and many more were exposed and injured.
UC sent people immediately but they were prevented from inspecting the plant by the Indian government.
Lots has been written about Bhopal, and some of it is worth reading.
Chemical reactions either require heat (endothermic) or produce heat (exothermic). An exothermic reaction becomes runaway if the heat produced heats the reacting materials and causes the rate to increase, similar to a positive feedback loop. Runaway reactions are desirable in dynamite and other explosive materials, but not in chemical plants, which are carefully designed to avoid them.
[Materials with pot lives such as epoxy coatings are chemically reacting with an exotherm. Spread the epoxy and the heat dissipates; leave it in the bucket and the exotherm can melt the bucket. ]
The prevention of runaway reactions is part of process design and industrial safety. The chemical placarding system used in storing and transporting chemicals in the U.S. is part of the safety aspect. In the case of MDI, one of the basic tenets is never expose it to water.
The Indian government blamed the disaster on UC; UC maintained that the only way to introduce water into that tank was a purposeful act of sabotage.
Before Bhopal I took a seminar on process design and runaway chemical reactions from a professor who had more than twenty years of industrial experience, most of it with Union Carbide. Absent any real explanation as to how large amounts of water got into a closed tank designed to keep it out, I have always had a hard time believing that some undiscovered sequence of human errors led to the problem.
It’s worth noting that the other large industrial accident of the time, the release of dioxin in Seveso, Italy, was also caused by a runaway reaction increasing tank pressure and a failure of the overpressure relief system.
Yep, and still not a BILLION dollar settlement.
n
Yep, and still not a BILLION dollar settlement.
If that award against Alex Jones is from a Texas court, I wonder how they around the Texas judgement limits of actual damages plus $250,000 pain and suffering.
I disagree. His right to swing his fist ends at anyone else’s face.