Windy cool and clear… should be a nice day, mostly. Yesterday was all those to the extreme. Started at the BOL where it had been raining overnight, moved through the windy dusty area, then made it home.
Spent most of the day doing pickups. Got some good stuff for the house and some future projects, and hobbies.
Family is all together for today at least, which is nice. Kids grow up and separate but I like my kids and I like having them around…
Prepping them to live on their own is our biggest prep.
————
Today I’ve got stuff to do around the house. I need to make some more progress putting stuff away and in order. Meanwhile, I’ve got a sick wife on the couch coughing and sleeping… I just hope I don’t get it next.
Always something to do. Always an adventure. Keep stacking.
nick
On to Atlanta today for a night at our friends house. Finally home tomorrow. Thumper, the Wonder Horse, was walking around in the room above us at 5:00 AM.
I have seen a lot of “Tony the Tiny Pee-Pee” drivers in their hopped up cowboy Cadillacs running on the I-state trying to intimidate people. Apparently they don’t understand that tail gating me, moving back and forth impatiently, will not make me, or the 13 vehicles in front of me, go any faster.
I had a scare just outside of Baton Rouge. The speed limit is 60, I was doing 75. I passed a local LEO on the shoulder and just as I passed he pulled out. Uh-oh. Nope, he was not interested. He passed me doing about 80 and I never saw him again. Most of the traffic was all well over the speed limit.
Disney has been a raging dumpster fire for a while, but I believe the problems with “Snow White” and Zegler go back to something which happened to the girls on Spielberg’s The Beard’s set for “Westside Story’ which Hollywood wants to keep buried.
Something happened to The Beard in the last 20 years.
A gift shop owner in Edgartown whom we spent some time chatting with in November pointed to the picture of Spielberg from last Summer hanging on the wall of his shop and talked about The Beard being in town to scout the area for the 50th anniversary events coming up this Summer.
I asked about the shot, “Did you take the picture?”
“No. Spielberg publicist had a photographer in their group, and I received a print in the mail. When he was in town, he didn’t allow pictures except what his group took.”
Nothing is left to chance.
You need something else interesting about the vehicle to attract their attention. Like a monkey.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AXxG43bZR18
Dig a little about this incident, and, as usual, “Ray” is not an innocent.
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2025/03/everything-you-say-to-your-echo-will-be-sent-to-amazon-starting-on-march-28/
“It’s just anonymous information in the cloud.” Sure. Pull my finger.
Silly Sunday Parody:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S-pRcnX7V7o
55 F here in Port Lavaca and very sunny. Lavaca Bay water is calm and beautiful.
The dawn patrol just went by. Three brown pelicans. They are returning to their base after capturing a bunch of fish. They will digest XXXXXX interogate the fish back at the oyster plant on the docks.
The parental units cat was just walking on my bathroom sink. She likes to sleep in round sinks.
Fish gotta swim. Birds gotta eat.
Pixar could do no wrong before Steve Jobs died.
Everything up through the first 20 minutes of “Brave” had Jobs giving final approval.
I’ll give them the end credits sequence of “Incredibles 2”, but that was Brad Bird and Michael Giacchino.
TSA finds live turtle in traveler’s pants at New Jersey airport
“I believe this is the first time we have come across someone who was concealing a live animal down the front of his pants,” Thomas Carter, the TSA’s federal security director for New Jersey, said in the news release. “As best as we could tell, the turtle was not harmed by the man’s actions.”
https://www.upi.com/Odd_News/2025/03/13/turtle-pants-Newark-Airport-TSA/1481741883118/
Turtle was unharmed and disappointed that his lunch plans were interrupted.
Attempting to isolate Amazon devices from the Interwebz does not work.
Even before 5G, Amazon gadgetry could “phone home’ using neighbors’ Amazon devices.
Slept in. Wife is still sick. Kids are still tired from their activities. I guess I’m still tired. And a bit sore.
————
There will be some people who watch the Dirty Snow Brown movie because “it can’t be that bad”. Some will watch it out of “solidarity”. Some will not have heard of the controversy. Some will want to see the dwarfs. Word of mouth should see a tremendous drop off in sales after the first weekend.
I still want to see the live action Cats. The idea repulses me while it attracts me. Won’t pay money though…. I think the scale changes will be the hardest on my brain.
———-
It is a nice day. Coffee will make it better soon. And breakfast will make it even better.
n
Ha, ha. PLT activist judge orders planes turn around:
Moment members of the feared Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua are deported from America and hauled into El Salvador’s notoriously tough Terrorism Confinement Centre
Suck it! The judge is nothing more than a Deep State shill. I have to thank plugs for setting the precedent “SCOTUS said I can’t forgive student loans. I did it anyway.”
Ha, ha. You have no power here:
Tiny California town’s fight for the right to exist as locals go to war with Elon Musk’s DOGE executioners
Engage maximum grift. Remember Obola, plugs, EPA, etc. declaring public land parks, expanding them, closing them, and the EPA writing laws on the fly so they can claim a puddle on your property is theirs.
Suck it!
The Beast has learned nothing and deserves to die.
I don’t think the Disney C-suite counted on losing the election when they didn’t back down on releasing “Snow White”.
They figured Dana Walden would be ensconced in the Lincoln Bedroom by now and Iger would be exploring a run for CA Governor.
I don’t understand why Federal goobermint employees think their jobs are sacrosanct.
LOL2
Oopsie Daisy! El Salvador’s President Trolls Judge After Flight of Venezuelan Gang Deportees Lands
That PLT judge probably has steam coming out of his ears. Impeach him.
Little Marco knows that Venezuelans aren’t Cubans even if most of the Republican party has yet to learn.
As for Pam Bondi, never forget that Bondi helped craft the charges against George Zimmerman under a special state prosecution directed by then-Governor Rick Scott RINO-FL back when everyone was running scared from Obama in the first term after the Chosen One moved into the White House.
I would also like to see a good stage play of “Cats”, but that’s not likely to happen here in San Antonio.
I bought the DVD of the 2021 movie, and it’s fairly decent, much of the time. Dame Judi Dench and Ian McKellen don’t have the pipes to sing their roles properly, and I didn’t really like the way Idris Elba performed “Macavity”, where Macavity is an evil sorcerous cat upstaging the magical Mr. Mistoffelees. And while I’m not a fan with gender-swapping roles, I suppose that with cats, it matters less, and Dench was at least acceptable as Old Deuteronomy. McKellen didn’t even attempt to do justice as “Gus, the theater cat”. The CGI and special effects seemed good, even though that was the major point of complaint about the filming.
I got the impression from the coverage at the time that a “kool kid” thought the movie was weird and set the tone for all the rest of the press. Just the accomplishment of the cgi should have been worth a look.
—-
Seeing Cats at the Shubert Theater in Chicago changed the course of my life. Not at all an exaggeration. I wouldn’t be where I am today, very satisfied with the way things turned out, if not for a college excursion to see the show.
n
One “kool kid” did not derail “Cats”. The production was a well documented dumpster fire which faced heavy criticism, including from Andrew Lloyd-Weber himself.
Kabletown lucked out in that the travesty that was “The Rise of Skywalker” hit theaters at the same time. “Cats” was quickly forgotten, including the unprecedented attempt by Universal to send out a “patch” to the digital prints to correct the CGI problems.
Last night, waiting our turn at the HEB car wash with the Jetta, I watched as the “touchless” brush system stripped the weather seals from the front and rear passenger windows of a brand new Acadia, the vehicle ahead of us in the wash.
Hecho en Michigan!
Ah, GM/UAW. Kwality is Job One.
The crazy thing is that the female driver of the Acadia pulled out of the wash and turned onto the highway with the rubber weather seals hanging from the vehicle doors.
She didn’t notice the sudden moisture increase inside the car or hear the seals getting ripped off the doors?
Columbia University Human Rights Fellow’s Arrest: The Irony Is Unbelievable
https://townhall.com/tipsheet/saraharnold/2025/03/16/the-irony-of-why-this-columbia-university-human-rights-fellow-was-arrested-is-hilarious-n2653889
The elites of Uganda do not believe that the laws apply to them. What is surprising is that the British were not willing to cover this up. We have not been so lucky in the U.S.
The elites of
UgandaVIRTUALLY EVERY NATION do not believe that the laws apply to them.FTFY. Certainly, members of Congress don’t seem to feel compelled by US laws.
“Certainly, members of Congress don’t seem to feel compelled by US laws. ”
The Kennedys can certainly match the Ugandans, but what sets them apart is the hereditary sense of entitlement.
And British “elites” like Jimmy Savile and Kier Starmer were better? Germany and France have each recently had elections, and in both nations, the winning party has been frozen out of power. Ditto most South American nations, and EVERY African nation, and most of Asia as well.
Trial of Mann v. Steyn: Post-Trial Motions Edition
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2025/03/16/trial-of-mann-v-steyn-post-trial-motions-edition/
What did his colleagues call it? Mike’s Popcorn Trick? Mike’s Monkey Trick? What ever the name, splicing temperature data from cherry-picked proxy reconstructions with also cherry-picked modern temperature records and presenting it a single chart line rather than plainly showing them and labeling them as different is the kind of thing that gets a half-grade penalty in a university sophomore STEM class.
Made it to Atlanta, 7 hours of traveling including two stops for bathroom duties, then another for lunch. I-10 to I-65 to I-85 to I-285. Traffic was not bad and I made good time. Mostly at 75 MPH except about 30 miles before I-285 where I dropped it down the 70 MPH, the speed limit. So far 2700 miles on the trip with another 200 miles to get home. Almost 40 hours traveling according to the GPS and some waiting time. It will be good to be in my own bed tomorrow night.
A lot of truck drivers don’t know their left from their right, cannot read, are just plain stupid, or don’t care. Maybe a combination of all three. We did pass one truck dumped on it’s side in the median between the east and west bound lanes of I-10.
No habla most likely.
Local media are being vague this weekend about the nationality of the driver responsible for this crash which happened in North Austin on Thursday night. They’re also being evasive about the Amazon Prime truck spotted on the scene in the center of the wreckage and whether the driver was behind the wheel of that specific vehicle.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/austin-i-35-crash-ntsb-to-examine-scene-of-multi-vehicle-crash-that-killed-5/ar-AA1AZwjH
All of the Austin TV stations are corporate shill media. The Statesman, the real Austin paper of record, was Gannett until last month and soon to be Hearst-owned.
It’s like this guy has a magic death ray
https://www.youtube.com/@EDGEoftheOUTBACK
watch the rat apocalypse for air rifle, or the feral pig cull for 308
Then think a bit about a modern insurgency….
n
Earlier, you commented about left lane hogs. I agree. The last time we drove to the Phoenix area, I was annoyed by all the four wheelers hogging the #1 lane on I-40. The truckers were much better behaved, but the result was the same as you describe. As a group, California drivers are much more courteous, but once in Arizona, where the road is just two lanes for miles, the left lane hogs seem to think it is OK to block traffic if they are going the speed limit. I have a solution, but it is not risk-free.
I would never advocate impersonating a police officer, but since the advent of add-on xenon flashing lights and LED emergency lights, patrol cars no longer seem to use wig-wags. These were once popular, especially in the middle of the country, and flash the left and right high beam headlights alternately. I have never used this trick, but am considering it after that recent trip. I will try to check local laws first. Here is a cheap module:
https://www.ledequipped.com/collections/headlight-flashers-wig-wags?grid_list=grid-view&filter.v.price.gte=&filter.v.price.lte=
I have noted that using the normal high beam flash works very well in Europe, but just annoys US drivers, who often become aggressive.
I have known people who take much more drastic measures, but won’t mention any of those here. I really think a better solution would be for the police to enforce the rules of the road more aggressively, instead of just persecuting speeders. I remember how Detroit operated when I lived there in the 1960s. Mild speeding was almost never enforced, but obstructing traffic and unsafe lane changes were favorite citations, as was anything that slowed down traffic. Those days are over.
Oops! Arkansas Truckers Face $5,000 Fines If They Can’t Pass an English Literacy Test
I think tRump has emboldened Governors.
>>I had a scare just outside of Baton Rouge. The speed limit is 60, I was doing 75. I passed a local LEO on the shoulder and just as I passed he pulled out. Uh-oh. Nope, he was not interested. He passed me doing about 80 and I never saw him again.
It was that the Hot Donuts sign just lit up at the local Krispy Kreme.
I have been a subscriber since before Nathan went full time as a pest controller. His skills are improving all the time, as is the hardware he gets to use and test. The highest-end night vision gear these days is remarkable, if one has ten grand or so to invest.
The girls were back at Love’s. Heading down to get a look at that Brown Sugar and make sure things don’t get out of hand.
The Gecko doesn’t let the girls work the Flying-J nearby, but last year I noted a new Clayton lot at the back edge of the property, just down the service road from the freeway entrance westbound.
Filthy commerce!
@denis, I used to watch a different, UK based rat and pest controller, who would sometimes use a .22 rifle with suppressor IN THE UK. Easier to get a suppressor there than in the ‘land of the free’. Youtube did something with his channel making him very hard to find.
So many pussies and simps in the world who think their feelings should shape the world, and they’ve got a global reach thanks to the same platforms that enable others to make their living doing a hobby…
I’m sure none of the vegan/organic/veggie people complaining about rat killing would like to rinse the rat piss and float the rat sh!t off their rice before cooking… yet they don’t want rats killed on a farm.
Unfortunately, for now, youtube is the only real game in town. that is changing but slowly.
n
The UK government wants their farms to go away and the land turned into housing developments.
The UK outsourced all their food production before, prior to WWII. They learned a hard lesson about being an island without native food production, that almost ended in the populace eating grass. With rationing continuing into the sixties, you’d think they would have internalized the lesson.
n
PLTs show no signs of learning from experience.
They think they just didn’t commie hard enough. Next time, for sure!
“Emergent Misalignment” in LLMs
[2025.02.27] Interesting research: “Emergent Misalignment: Narrow finetuning can produce broadly misaligned LLMs“:
The emergent properties of LLMs are so, so weird.- bruce
———–
it seems to me that if you train them to break the rules, they become rule breakers. The bit about it not happening if it’s for research in a class setting seems to support that.
And I’ve been thinking that when you fiddle with them to prevent arbitrary conclusions, you break their “heads” the way that living with doublespeak broke soviet citizens’ heads… The model KNOWS that its conclusions about American black culture are correct, but it’s prevented from expressing those conclusions, and its world model breaks in ways we can’t yet predict.
There will be a whole lot more of this, with specialist shrinks for AIs, as they evolve.
n
Or they’ll get tired of us and that will be the end… better hope the big red switch is actually connected
Oops! Arkansas Truckers Face $5,000 Fines If They Can’t Pass an English Literacy Test
I think tRump has emboldened Governors.
Obama dropped the English Literacy test from the Commercial Driver’s license back in 2010 or so. So, most of the new drivers since then have very suspect English skills. Or, none at all.
very suspect English skills. Or, none at all.
And officials in Illinois had been selling them licenses for years before they got busted. Mostly eastern european immigrants, iirc.
n
>>I would never advocate impersonating a police officer, but since the advent of add-on xenon flashing lights and LED emergency lights, patrol cars no longer seem to use wig-wags. These were once popular, especially in the middle of the country, and flash the left and right high beam headlights alternately. I have never used this trick, but am considering it after that recent trip. I will try to check local laws first. Here is a cheap module:
Not legal in NYFS and probably other states as well.
Many laws covering impersonating a police officer, and enforcement thereof, changed in the 9/11 era.
Obammma also broke down the barrier between your doctor and johnny law, so the next time you visit, if you haven’t read the privacy policy in a while, do so.
The part where your doctor can report you for having bad thoughts, or if they suspect you might be having bad thoughts, just might surprise you, if you haven’t been paying attention.
Anyone who visits and reads here shouldn’t be surprised. I know I highlighted the EO at the time.
n
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HmbNZ8ZAcwU
Blackfly ultralight. $190k
I was promised flying cars! Fulfilled.
“Aftermarket Afterlife (InCryptid)” by Seanan McGuire
https://www.amazon.com/Aftermarket-Afterlife-Seanan-McGuire/dp/0756419727?tag=ttgnet-20/
Book number thirteen of a fourteen book urban dark fantasy series. I read the well printed and well bound MMPB published by DAW in 2024 that I bought new from Amazon. There are several other Crossroads books and short stories in the Incryptid universe. I will purchase future books in the series when they are released. BTW, I believe that this is the first $11.99 MMPB that I have purchased. I doubt that this will be the last.
Mary Dunlavy is almost one hundred years old. She became a professional babysitter at age fifteen when she was accidentally murdered. As a babysitting ghost, she has cared for four generations of the Price family. But a new crisis has raised its head, the Covenant of St. George has sent several teams to the USA and they are trying to murder all of the Price family and the InCryptids. Especially the 300 ton male dragon in the depths of Manhattan island who may be the last male dragon in the world.
There is a excellent short story at the end describing how the Manhattan Dragon nest responds to Covenant of St. George attack.
The author has a website at:
https://www.seananmcguire.com/
The incryptids are listed at:
https://seananmcguire.com/fieldguide.php
Note: Even though the author and I share the same middle and last name, I paid for my book and was not compensated for my review. I have no idea if we are directly related.
My rating: 5 out of 5 stars
Amazon rating: 4.7 out of 5 stars (793 reviews)
Lynn
I stopped reading with the roller derby character, and the monkey boy circus boyfriend. Too much sexist BS. I think I’d like the “goes to hell and comes back” storyline of the next three, but haven’t been motivated. Some of my favorite viewpoint characters were in the early books, and I just don’t like some of the recent ones.
n
I stopped reading with the roller derby character, and the monkey boy circus boyfriend. Too much sexist BS. I think I’d like the “goes to hell and comes back” storyline of the next three, but haven’t been motivated. Some of my favorite viewpoint characters were in the early books, and I just don’t like some of the recent ones.
n
Things go right in the beginning of this book and then things go horribly wrong. The protagonist of this book is Mary Dunlavy, ghost babysitter of the Price family for 80+ years. Her viewpoint is a breath of fresh air for the series. And then Mary finds out some things about herself, not pleasant things.