Maybe a bit above freezing this morning? That’s the forecast. We’ll see. At least it does get warmer throughout the day. Melted most of the snow, and caused the snowmen to slump and lose their heads…
I did a big loop and picked up most of what I need to pick up. Small items, mostly for my non-prepping hobby, but also some household stuff. I also spent some time talking with a neighbor, and poking at some stuff I should have sold a long time ago. I tend to focus more on buying and less on selling. I’m working on that…
Today my fervent desire is to get some of the stuff here at the house sorted out. I’ve got stacks to square away, stuff to stack, and stuff to move to storage and elsewhere. If I can get a good flow going, I can knock off a bunch of todo items. It’s overcoming the inertia and getting started that is difficult.
I am almost certain to be derailed or re-tasked by one of the powers that be…
But I will adapt and overcome. And stack.
nick
Bad Botox tech?
I thought that those injections had to be done in a doctor’s office, but the rules may be different in California.
Or maybe Corn Pop worked him over during a recent trip to Rehoboth Beach.
Or Iger.
“You were supposed to *win*! Now we have Trump and the possibility of DeSantis in four years.”
“Part of a team. Teamwork… “
Fixed it for you.
Politicians make themselves something they are not, place themselves on pedestal and stroke their own ego? Surely you jest.
More than likely he was patting himself on the back and in the process got confused and disorientated about which direction was which.
Cocaine Mitch. Senator Daddy Issues from Alaska, and Collins of Maine.
https://www.seattletimes.com/nation-world/nation/senate-is-preparing-to-confirm-hegseth-as-defense-secretary-in-late-evening-vote/
Portland, ME was one of our stops on our recent trip.
Important tip – if you go out to Peaks Island, ME during off season, check the hours of the library before boarding the ferry. The library has the only accessible public restrooms on the island during that time of the year, and while the Unruly Girls Cafe will sell you as much coffee as you can drink, the cafe’s restroom facilities are not open to the customers for liability reasons.
My wife lucked out that someone forgot to lock the city’s portapotty in the public parking lot at the ferry dock.
Looks like he did just that. I really don’t get the resistance to Hegseth. Granted, I watched none of the hearings. But the guy is actual, real military, and will presumably put a stop to all the woke crap. Maybe that’s the problem?
Lessee: No more transgenders or other mentally ill service members. No women in roles they cannot perform. No more calling out of deployments, because you just “accidentally” got pregnant – or, rather, immediate discharge. No more contracting quotas for “woman and minority owned businesses”. I could keep going…
Hegseth didn’t originate in the contractor cabal like Lloyd Austin and Mark Esper before him.
Austin also had a tour through one of the freak show commands at MacDill in Tampa, which may just be a personal thing with me, but I believe that place needs an enema, as I’ve detailed here before.
At a minimum, service in the MacDill freak shows, especially as a flag officer, should be an automatic disqualification for consideration as Defense Secretary IMHO.
The cabal does not want to see drastic budget cuts after the last four years. They dropped a dime on Cocaine Mitch.
I’m nebulous on exactly what happened, but one of the people advising my wife’s nephew on his gaming the military system is a family friend who was discharged with full VA benefits after a rape or attempted rape by a superior. Apparently, the payola to the enlisted women to remain silent is not uncommon.
The DoD in general needs an enema.
If Hegseth had been rejected, Trump would have most likely put DeSantis’ name into consideration, and the RINOs definitely didn’t want that possibility.
DeSantis don’t surf.
>>Thanksgiving night, the Hummer commercial came on during the football game, and you could see it on the faces of my wife’s nephews and ex-brother-in-law that they were calculating how to get one of those crabwalking trucks … using Grandma’s money.
Of what benefit is crabwalking, besides the TV commercials?
https://youtu.be/Cv6tuzHUuuk?si=4Frz3KJrq7O9P1R3
@brad
What McConnell Did After the Hegseth Vote Is Infuriating
https://townhall.com/tipsheet/mattvespa/2025/01/25/mitch-mcconnell-explains-why-he-betrayed-the-gop-on-hegseth-vote-n2651134
McConnell’s statement is worth reading, at least in part.
I am not a fan, but have followed him enough to know that he has 3-4 levels below the superficial.
That said, the part of his statement quoted is interesting, including:
“And America’s military capabilities and defense industrial capacity are increasingly insufficient to deter or prevail in major conflict”
And Mitch has been in the Senate, and more importantly, in a leadership position for how long as this has gone on? And the DIE debacle as well? Lloyd Austin confirmed and Mark Milley elevated?
Look in the mirror, Mitch.
Hegseth most important goal is to reforge the U.S. military into a deadly fighting force. Anyone in the command structure that is focused on anything else, AWOL, insubordinate, or incompetent is going to get scrapped, preferably with a lot of hurty feelings.
We won WWII with seven 4-star generals, fighting on two fronts, Now we have 44. The world is a more complex place, but much of that complexity does not belong in the military. A person wakes up and decides they want to wear a tutu and cleanse their colon before shopping for new vegetable-leather bondage wear for the weekend rave may be living their best life, but they don’t belong in the military.
Marketing garage queen trucks to Show Ya. Half ton pickups are sold as fetish items.
That reminds me – I noted that Ford has recently snuck pieces of video back into their commercials showing the F150 Lightning powering a house in response to GM’s crabwalking Hummer ads.
GM and Ford will be really screwed if Stellantis goes through with buying off the dealers with 30% incentives on existing floor plan to clear the 2022s and 2023s still rotting on franchise lots.
Stellantis recently cancelled their base model EV half ton sex toy -er- pickup and delayed the EV Charger in favor of rushing a hybrid version to market.
Since Inauguration Day, Stellantis also announced the reactivation of the Belvedere plant, but I’ll believe that when I see it.
57F today, and grey. I guess it didn’t freeze last night.
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Coffee is good.
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Didn’t watch the video, but in construction heavy equipment, crabwalking is used to move diagonally into a space you can’t approach normally, when the “opposite” crab is engaged, so that front wheels steer opposite the rear, you can turn in a greatly reduced radius. In an on road vehicle, normal crab would make parallel parking easier…
n
If I remember the commercial correctly, the Hummer EV family is shown crabwalking in parallel across a dry lake bed, similar to the salt flats where land speed records are set in California.
I believe GM wants people to buy them as garage queens, but an EV is a poor choice for that.
Putting an EV Hummer on blocks for 40 years similar to a GNX will not work, but that is another possible marketing route GM has no doubt explored.
I watched Star Trek: Section 31 last night on Paramount+.
Oof, what a disaster. Why they even made this “movie” is the question. It is another nail in the ST/Paramount coffin. What a waste of wonderful talent in Michelle Yeoh. She can’t be pleased with the shite reviews. Perhaps she was in a contractual obligation.
All the characters sucked arse (Yeoh is great, but lousy dialogue was written for her). You could watch this and know nothing about ST and think “what schlock, can I get my two hours back.” The “Star Fleet” character was the worst performance.
Ugh.
Michelle Yeoh received $12 Million for “Section 31″ if rumors are true.
All of the Bad Robot/Secret Hideout “Star Trek” has been flushed from canon with the exception of “Lower Decks” and, arguably, the “Those Old Scientists” episode of “Strange New Worlds”, itself an earlier reset of canon damage from “Discovery” before Skydance bought Paramount.
Sheesh. If true, no wonder Hollyweird is going down the tubes. Dropping $12 million on an actor and then hiring dreck writers for them, throw in some special effects, and slapping “Star Trek” on the title won’t work.
Rachel Garrett? Really?
Oh, sweet, memberberries. That makes “Section 31” arguably a prequel to the best “Next Generation” episode.
And, please, don’t give me that “Inner Light” nonsense. That was not the entire cast firing on all cylinders, including Whoopi.
I got caught by the lawyers pulling the last episode of “Lower Decks” so I’ve been behaving myself, at least until I settle kharma with a box set.
“Shards of Earth (The Final Architecture, 1)” by Adrian Tchaikovsky
https://www.amazon.com/Shards-Earth-Final-Architecture-1/dp/0316705845?tag=ttgnet-20/
Book number one of a three book space opera science fiction series. I read the well printed and well bound trade paperback published by Orbit in 2022 that I bought new on Amazon. I have ordered the second book in the series.
Earth was the first human planet attacked and destroyed by the Architects, a moon sized race of beings that travel through unspace. Billions of humans and aliens died on Earth, unable to get on one of the thousands of overcrowded space ships evacuating from Earth. Earth was turned into a spiral with the core ejected, typical of the Architect’s massive gravitational forces. Earth was warned by a survivor of another race destroyed by the Architects but they did not believe it until too late.
The universe of the story is incredibly rich. There are many alien races and many planets, many colonies of all races. The human race has splintered into several groups that are at total odds with each other. An alien race found the humans a hundred years before and kindly shared their unspace technology with them. Space Ships can navigate on known paths through unspace but going off the known paths requires an Intermediary Navigator (an Int), a rare human who has been surgically and chemically modified to be like the first human Int, St. Xavienne. Some of the best of the Ints like St. Xavienne can barely talk to the Architects.
The author has a website at:
https://adriantchaikovsky.com/
My rating: 5 out of 5 stars
Amazon rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars (12,639 reviews)
Lynn
“Workers are coffee badging to get around return-to-office mandates. What is it?”
https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/2025/01/21/coffee-badging-employees-avoid-office-mandates/77731723007/
“Many are “coffee badging,” or swiping their ID badges at the office to record their arrival, staying 30 minutes or so ‒ long enough to greet colleagues and grab a cup of coffee – and then heading back home.”
“For workers who don’t have to swipe a badge, simply establishing their presence or saying “hi” to some colleagues, dropping by a co-worker’s cubicle, or talking loudly in the hallway before “quietly disappearing” serves a similar purpose, said Christopher Nickson, vice president of Segal Group, a human resources consulting firm.”
Bold.
The Panopticon enabled by Redmond knows all.
The actress who played her. They gave her weird disguises to wear and crappy lines. Why the weird wigs and makeup and leave Emperor Philippa as is? Nobody would recognize the character in a space station far, far, from the Federation. There was also too much of an attempt at comedic relief. May this movie fade away fast and not become a series.
“Harvard settles for being a little less antisemitic”
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/magazine-your-land/3297438/harvard-settlement-antisemitism/
“It may have taken the might of federal lawsuits, but the supposed gem of American universities has finally decided that antisemitism might just be a bad thing to allow on campus.”
“In a settlement of two federal lawsuits, Harvard University agreed to change its policies to better prevent antisemitic harassment on campus. That includes a bunch of mandated diversity training for staff, an academic symposium, and “additional resources to study antisemitism.” However, it also includes useful things that can make a meaningful difference in how the university operates.”
I have been surprised that Harvard has been so tolerant of the antisemitism in all this. I must not be seeing the entire picture.
WTAF:
CIA now says Covid DID come from Chinese lab in stunning reversal after years of denial under Biden
There is no way the CIA didn’t know this from the start. After the JFK reveal by tRump, heads must roll at the CIA and other intel/LEO 3LA’s. These lying agencies enabled plugs to force face diapers on us for a year.
Homan unloads on the Communist Pope:
https://pjmedia.com/catherinesalgado/2025/01/25/homan-calls-popes-bluff-highlights-vatican-walls-n4936346
https://hotair.com/headlines/2025/01/25/bet-they-all-do-it-subaru-security-flaws-exposed-its-system-for-tracking-millions-of-cars-n3799165
I have no doubt that Mr. Curry is top-notch, but I doubt that there are not others that are as good, and I would bet that these exploits are already known and sold by bad actors.
Extend the wiretapping laws to include any storage of private information: location, communication content, activity, etc, and require all users to be able to opt out of any fine print permissions with a simple and easy to find switch that can be turned off and stays off.
And then pass the constitutional right to privacy that our forefathers would have put in there if they had any idea of the pernicious, invasive activities that technology would make possible.
While in Boston, we made the pilgrimage out to Car Talk Plaza (aka Harvard Square), and, following lunch, we took a quick look around the Harvard campus. Most of the people lining up to take pictures in front of the statue of John Harvard were Subcontinent or East Asian.
When I installed an Android head unit in my ‘18 Forester I found literally a “black box” from “Continental Telematics” mounted under the OEM head unit. There were 3 unfamiliar, strange connectors to wires running elsewhere. Didn’t reconnect the GPS wire. Not sure if Starlink, Subaru’s OnStar still works… Don’t care.
Bambu Lab’s Own Goal: Security Update and Feature Removal
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gFotkmlPAT4
In a nutshell, Bambu Labs is requiring operation of it’s printers to go through Bambu Labs website and software.
Too many people printing gun parts?
n
Lots of speculation.
Bambu might want to consider if they want to be the next TikTok.
Borking functionality after the sale is a good way to get the attention of the FTC, regardless of what your fine print says.
Taliban Rejects Trump’s Demand to Return $7 Billion in U.S. Military Gear
https://townhall.com/tipsheet/saraharnold/2025/01/25/taliban-refuses-trumps-demand-to-return-the-7-billion-in-us-military-gear-left-behind-n2651141
Take the $7 billion out of the frozen reserves and zero out the foreign aid, which has not return comparable to the cost.
Billions of dollars of this kind of State Department shiite with jack in return.
A warning to the Taliban to start returning the equipment or we’ll destroy it. A cruise missle that takes the stuff we don’t want should get some intersting results.
Out of warranty notice
“The Center for Immigration Studies estimates there were 225,000 to 250,000 Births to Illegal Immigrants in 2023”
https://crimeresearch.org/2025/01/the-center-for-immigration-studies-estimates-there-were-225000-to-250000-births-to-illegal-immigrants-in-2023/
“The Center for Immigration Studies released a 2018 report finding that in 2014, one in five births (791,000) in the U.S. was to an immigrant mother (legal or illegal). They thought that legal immigrants accounted for 12.4% (494,000) of all births and illegal immigrants accounted for 7.5% (297,000). Using those rates, they guess that there were 225,000 to 250,000 births to illegal immigrants in 2023.”
“Since illegal aliens can use a baby as an “anchor baby,” they likely have an even greater incentive to have children than Americans.”
“Hamas Releases Four Female Israeli Soldiers Under Gaza Cease-Fire Deal”
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/hamas-releases-four-female-israeli-soldiers-under-gaza-cease-fire-deal/ar-AA1xQbTj
“ETAH TIKVA, Israel—Hamas on Saturday released four more Israeli hostages under the Gaza cease-fire deal, raising hopes for other captives as the fragile agreement approaches its second week.”
“The militant group set free Karina Ariev, Daniella Gilboa, Naama Levy and Liri Albag, all female soldiers either 19 or 20 years old, who were taken from a military base near Gaza on Oct. 7, 2023, when Hamas launched attacks that sparked the conflict in the Gaza Strip.”
“The hostages were handed over to the International Committee of the Red Cross in a square in Gaza City, before meeting Israeli forces who transported the women into Israel. At the square in Gaza, the hostages first walked onto a makeshift stage and, alongside Palestinian fighters, waved to journalists and hundreds of Palestinian civilians who had gathered for the Hamas-managed event.”
How many more hostages does Hamas have ?
Hamas will be back for more hostages soon.
BillG wants to be Feynman, but he uses phrases like “on the spectrum”.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/society-culture-and-history/history/bill-gates-i-coded-while-i-hiked-as-a-teenager-was-i-on-the-spectrum-probably/ar-AA1xP8Ph
The real gem from BillG in the excerpt:
“To be born in the rich U.S. is a big part of a winning birth-lottery ticket, as is being born white and male in a society that advantages white men.”
And it helps to have a mother who sits on a United Way board with the CEO of IBM and is really good at needling people.
No pun intended.
>>“Many are “coffee badging,” or swiping their ID badges at the office to record their arrival, staying 30 minutes or so ‒ long enough to greet colleagues and grab a cup of coffee – and then heading back home.”
Back when I was still working, several of our locations had required ‘swipe out’ turnstiles, with weekly reports going to the line managers. It wouldn’t surprise me to see this make a comeback, despite the “Big Brother” complaints.
>>During Trump’s speech on Sunday, he threatened to cut off financial assistance to Afghanistan if the nation does not return U.S. aircraft, air-to-ground munitions, vehicles, and communications equipment to America.
Hold on there fella, why have we been giving them anything in the way of foreign aid? “Elon, please pick up any courtesy telephone.”
With regard to the left behind equipment, did we also leave spare parts, maintenance manuals and the like? Not to mention trained mechanics?
And BTW, has JD been made “czar” of anything yet? Swearing in Cabinet members shouldn’t take up his whole day. Gotta keep his eye on the (2028) prize.
>>A warning to the Taliban to start returning the equipment or we’ll destroy it. A cruise missle that takes the stuff we don’t want should get some intersting results.
First we’d have to ask Zelenskyy for one of our missiles back…
I know it’s hard to realize, but inauguration was only 5 days ago.
Based on the 3 stupid RINO twats, JD will be needed in the Senate a lot, at least for a while.
I strongly suspect that Donald has a RIGOROUS VP training program lined up for JD, so he’s ready to step into the big seat on 1/20/29 – or anytime sooner, should the need arise. Meeting with foreign leaders and industry leaders here, getting them all into line with Trump’s master plans for America.
At least JD isn’t the anti- assassination insurance that some of the others have been.
Dan Quale, I’m looking at you…
n
True, in more ways than one. At the moment, I am in “work” mode – which is unfortunately necessary, having taking on too many commitments. Maybe as a result, personal and household tasks aren’t getting done. There are enough hours in the day, but motivation is lacking…
And they are all political animals. At least, in my time in service (gawd, more than 30 years ago already?), the generals I met were all political smooth-talkers. You could see the selection starting by who made it to full colonel.
Of course, some political awareness is necessary at that level, but it shouldn’t be the priority.
Why, exactly, is the US providing financial aid to that kind of regime, in the first place? It’s time to stop financing evil governments and evil cultures. Speaking of which…
The recent few hostages released have re-started international aid flowing into Gaza. Seems to me the aid shouldn’t flow until *all* hostages have been released and Hamas has turned over their weapons. Until then, nothing.
Yup.