Cool but nice. Clear. Mid 70s to low 80s. Nice. But then again, I’m not in Houston. It was certainly nice up here yesterday. 74F and clear, a bit humid, but not drippy like Houston was when I left.
Once I finally made it up here, I spent a couple hours cutting grass. Then I got ready for my relaxing evening.
Fisherman neighbor dropped by while I was having my fire and we talked for a couple hours. Local. Meatspace.
Got to bed late, so late start today. Late start on plumbing. I’ve got to figure out if the tub valves I bought will work, and if not, what I’m going to do about it. I did get a replacement for the whole assembly, but don’t want to go that far if I can avoid it.
I’ve got some hose bibs to connect and some walls to close too. No leaks from the last visit’s work… so I can finish closing that.
Other ‘targets of opportunity’ are on the list.
Just gotta keep moving.
And stacking.
nick
First post. Nothing to say other than 1st post.
The advisories and closures for Boca Chica look serious this week.
https://www.cameroncountytx.gov/spacex/
The campground at the south end of South Padre Island is about as close as I would want to be to that site during a launch.
The advisories and closures for Boca Chica look serious this week.
https://www.cameroncountytx.gov/spacex/
The campground at the south end of South Padre Island is about as close as I would want to be to that site during a launch.
Fort Bend County looks real good this week. That booster rocket has about 2,000 tons of LNG in if I remember correctly. You don’t want to be a part of that disaster.
Plus another 2,000 tons of LOX. Big boom, real big boom.
59 F here on the West side of the Brazos River. Suppose to be 76 F and sunny all day. Suppose to be 49 F in the morning. I am hoping that we do not get a piece of that 25 inch rain action that Florida got last week.
I’m not an environmentalist whacko, but that ecosystem seems a lot more fragile than Kennedy Space Center.
We make a point of visiting Sea Turtle Inc. anytime we are down there, and the new addition on our last trip was a screen showing a video loop of the monumental rescue effort for the turtles stranded along the jetties of the Boca Chica Colony during the 2021 freeze.
The idea that the area will be a major transportation center on the level of Atlanta in the near future strikes me as just another piece of Musk PR designed to distract from the problems at TSLA.
Unfortunately for The Real Life Tony Stark (TM), Marvel seems to have sold out to Nissan.
Story on CNN about a black grandmother whose daughter died in child birth. The grandmother must now raise the 12 children of her deceased 35 year old daughter. Twelve kids before the age of 35! The father is not around because he incarcerated. Seems typical for Detroit. Why is this even reportable?
Of course CNN painted a sob story about how the system is not fair, biased against blacks, yada, yada. Uh, no. How about a daughter who cannot keep her legs closed and a (or one of the) father(s) who is in prison because he is a thug. That is not the fault of the system, it is the fault of the individuals involved. They chose their life, deal with it.
Remove the kids and put them in foster care and up for adoption. None of the family members are fit to be parents.
Mandatory non-reversible sterilization if on welfare and two or more kids. No exceptions. Both parents. If a third kid comes along reduce the welfare rather than increase.
Leaches on society.
Based on the bystanders, I’m guessing an Amish thug gathering:
At least four dead and more than 20 injured in a shooting at a Sweet 16 party inside Alabama dance studio
I can’t wait to see how the LSM covers this horrible event.
Brie Larson’s waist is all over the Interwebs this weekend in the latest “controversy” generated by Disney.
Big win for Nissan!
https://www.rollingstone.com/tv-movies/tv-movie-news/brie-larson-the-marvels-mcu-fanboys-misogyny-freak-out-youtube-trailer-trolled-1234714518/
Beautiful cool morning. Sunny and clear. Really hope it stays like this!
Remember that Real Life Tony Stark may need distractions from Tesla issues, but. He controls probably 80% of mankind’s access to space (because he’s actually launching and not blowing up) and HE’S ACTUALLY LAUNCHING. Not just makework shuttle missions either, but 50+ a year. Space launches were not money makers because of the high risk of going ‘splodey’ and infrequent launches. At this point, Tesla may be the distraction from RLTS ™ filling the sky with 25-50K satellites for the .mil….
Also, he IS selling Teslas. I see more on the road every day, despite the overpromising and other issues. He’s distracted and bankrupted at least 3 other EV companies, diverting their effort and talent in the process. He actually is delivering product people want, in quantity.
Finally, something that just occurred to me and needs more consideration… remember when gooogle was offering free 411 service? They specifically did so to train their AI and improve their speech recognition. And now it is pretty freaking good. They bought Piccassa and offered it free to train their AI in facial recognition, and it got so scary good it freaked people out and Picassa was shut down as a service.
RLTS ™ has some thoughts about AI, and buys Twitter. Then kills the company, making it even more opaque to outsiders. Twitter is a free service that uses texts by people trying to be witty, trying to be relevant, trying to influence people and capture their attention with short little info dense nuggets, and it can see in real time if it’s working. How can it NOT be an attempt to train an AI to the very same things that people do with it? An AI that gets real time feedback, can see the network effect in action, and adjust or target the message for maximum effect…
Or it could just be the plaything of a bored billionaire, with no business sense… right? Nothing at all sinister about a REALLY BAD business deal that suddenly went thru after DOJ whispered in some ears…
Ponder this if you will. Guy who controls access to space, who sees an ever increasing amount of civilian and .mil internet traffic, from all over the world, has seemingly unlimited permission to FILL THE SKY with junk, who smacked the world’s astronomers into next month when they complained, that guy now owns the platform of choice for the former President of the US to communicate with supporters, a platform that allowed people to collaborate and organize protests and revolutions (although it may not be the people the world thinks did the organizing), a platform that was such a powerful tool for influencing the masses that it HAD to be controlled, censored, shaped and manipulated. That guy is RLTS ™. There is something very important brewing.
nick
The housekeepers already have the landline phone bills in their names in wealthy neighborhoods in CA. Now they’re going to get the power bills as well.
That’s going to work out real well for the power companies.
https://ktla.com/news/local-news/california-power-companies-roll-out-fixed-rate-bill-proposal/
Around my neighborhood, Teslas have supplanted the German Grocery Getters to the point that I almost didn’t recognize a new BMW X5 when I saw one a few weeks ago, but, in general, I see more new RAV4s than anything else lately. $50,000 for a vehicle isn’t even remotely affordable with current interest rates, but that number was always a stretch for household incomes below ~ $200k.
I’m still surprised that I have not seen a RAV4 Prime.
Now that I think about it, I haven’t seen a broken down X5 in a couple of years. One stretch of road, from my house to Sam’s, seemed to be where engines in those would go ‘splody.
A few weeks ago, on that road, I thought I had encountered my first broken down Tesla, vehicle stopped with hazards on, but when I circled back around to get a picture for my wife without being obvious, the car was gone.
Can a Discriminatory View of Legal Standing Stand?
https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2023/04/can_a_discriminatory_view_of_legal_standing_stand.html
This is an update based on on Francis Menton’s
Oral Argument In CHECC v. EPA: The Issue Of Standing
at The Manhattan Contrarian.
and covers the nonsense of the ideological asymmetry of the issue of “standing” in our courts.
It’s a sideshow that can derail this suit as it has many others such as election fraud.
The included link
https://www.manhattancontrarian.com/blog/2022-10-25-checc-brief-challenging-co2-endangerment-finding-now-publicly-available
Includes the factual basis tor the suit:
One of the prime reasons that the first first day in office of a true agent of change conservative would include locking down all offices of the EPA (particularly including locking the passwords of all computer systems), meeting each employee at the door and confiscating all government computers and phones and any personal phones shown to be used to conduct government business, likewise executing search warrants at any residences or outside companies shown to be recipients of restricted government information, sequestering certain personnel incommunicado, handing out convictions based on secret star chamber deliberations, interrogating those convicted using the classical techniques of the Spanish Inquisition, and giving anyone claiming innocence the opportunity to prove it by auto-da-fe (not limited to Sunday’s so as not to stress particulate emission levels).
During arguments about the student loan reimbursement program, Amy Comey-Barrett raised the issue of standing, possibly telegraphing what her vote would be later that day after the lawyers wrapped and the Justices took the initial vote.
Pictures must have been added after you posted the link, but, yeah, a name like Mahogany Masterpiece in a small town in the boonies of Alabama is almost certain to be Amish oriented.
Is that the base rate? Or the total paid each month? My electric bill is never lower than $80.00 a month, $250.00 a month in July and August. If that is all these people are going to pay, the A/C will be cranked down to 68f in most of the homes. I would hope that some consumption cost would be applied. Otherwise the utilities will go broke.
That would make the rates the cheapest in the country. Being California there is no way that state would be the cheapest. Unless, CA adds another tax to offset the low rates. Something is very wrong.
I hope Clarence Thomas hasn’t stepped in it. The LSM is digging deep trying to find shite.
They’ve been looking for a way to take Thomas down for a long time, without looking bad.
Still haven’t started my plumbing work. Been looking at trees and foliage. Freeze killed more than I realized. Thinking of getting my slash pile fire going. It’s beautiful, and the wind is calm.
But first, lunch.
n
Probably a fixed base charge like my gas bill.
Still, no one is going to willingly pay the highest charge if they can avoid it.
>”That would make the rates the cheapest in the country.”
Those are not the rates, nor the base rate. They are a surcharge.
New meaning for “Let’s Go Brandon!”:
https://legalinsurrection.com/2023/04/chicago-two-teens-shot-during-violent-chaotic-wilding-episode/
“Elon Musk Says Germany Is Making a Dangerous Mistake”
https://www.thestreet.com/technology/elon-musk-says-germany-is-making-a-dangerous-mistake?puc=yahoo&cm_ven=YAHOO
“Germany said goodbye to its last three nuclear reactors on April 15, the culmination of a controversial, long-standing promise.”
Unreal. What stupidity.
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2023/04/14/bureau-releases-limited-parallel-data-from-brisbane-airport/
Author Jennifer Marohasy has been doggedly following the misdeeds of government climate officials in Austalia for years. More great work.
The article contains an editorial from the Weekend Australian (paywalled, but the entire editorial seems to be reproduced) that details the Australian government lies and footdragging efforts to prevent data release until ordered by the court. And–surprise, surprise, surprise–there is something to see there after all.
JEP used to point out that there is no accepted standard method to measure the temperature of the earth, much less reliably report changes of a fraction of a degree and make policy on that basis.
When precise temperature measurements are taken in the lab, it is standard practice to record a unique identification of the equipment used. It is prudent when running expensive experiments to use NIST (formerly NBS) certified thermometers and if multiple thermometers are not used in every case to make calibration runs to establish the measurement relationships, else instrument failure necessitate repeating a lot of work. Uniquely identified instruments of other types are also part of standard procedure–bomb calorimeters, for example
I’ve run metallurgical tube furnaces a few feet long that employed three sets of three thermocouples (one of each set being an over-temperature safety control) to measure temperature and included experimental controls in each run. Thermocouple failure and replacement led to a lot of calculation.
Weather stations are cited at airports to measure weather, not climate. Pilots need to know temperature specifically to be able to calculate lift and fuel requirements. See Chuck Yeager’s biogrphy for his account of a near failure on a desert takeoff.
Anthony Watts weather station project proved that the majority of government stations did not meet the established criteria to be top-rated. Visit his website and look up the most embarrassing photos, including the one at the University of Arizona with the measurements being taken in an asphalt parking lot with nearby a/c units.
Climate models divide the earth into large swaths for computational use. These “grid cells” are typically on the order of 500km square. There are no ground stations on oceans, and vast areas of the earth have none. So ground measurements are stitched up with other measurements–from satellites and ARGO ocean buoys, for example–using proprietary algorithms. We are supposed to trust the scientists who have never held a job not beholden to to the yearly $30 billion or so of tax monies spent to prove what they already know: DOOM!
One of the simple, common sense proposals I’ve been making for years is that publicly funded data must be published and universally accessible. That includes all the information, including computer code, that it takes to interpret it and draw conclusions. That includes papers that are published–they should not be behind a paywall.
It’s understandable that scientists want to get the full benefit of their work, just as it’s understandable that the public expects to see what they paid for. So when a scientist gathers data he should have an exclusive period of time to do his analysis, say as much as two years. But until the data is released, he gets no more–zip, nada, zilch–from the public coffers. Right now we have ice cores drilled decades ago that cost large sums of tax money each year to maintain, yet are under the exclusive control of scientists that prevent other access while maintaining a slow publication schedule augmented by new grants each year.
I saw my first Tesla today. Dark color. Four door. Shaped like all the Jap cars. Not ugly but it was def not sexy either. What caught my eye was “no door handles”. It had handles but they were flush. I don’t care enough to google to find how they work.
I guess there are option packages? This car seemed to not have any turn signals.
Climate model’s predictions being wrong: no problem
Modeler refusing to acknowledge problems or concealing data: problem
Making policy decisions based on flawed models: big honkin’ problem which should result in expulsion and banning from any government position
I did my running around today. First was Wally World for a few things. Hey, they had four 30’s of Miller High Life and they are a couple of bucks less than HEB. I now have a full beer fridge. Then to HEB for some tomatoes and their Tortillas Aguilar. Flour tortillas and thin. Pretty good. Anything at any version of HEB with the UPC starting with 41220, that’s store brand.
Then Tractor Supply. The phone app is sucky. Tap to tell them “I’m here” and the app does nothing that I could see. Go into the store and find someone, get the cat and dog food loaded and /then/ the app says something. Oh, and it gave an icon like text messages do but can you swipe it away? No, but you can re-open the app. I rebooted the phone to clear that nonsense.
Buddy is very happy I’m back home. Penny is cool but she isn’t bothered if I leave for a while. I’m stocked up with critter food for a few months.
Added: I wandered through the aisle at Wally World where you can buy things like Triscuits. Ah, no. I sure like the rosemary/whatever flavor but not $4.98 enough. For what was $2.50 a year or so ago.
Well, there is (was?) the TAO-TRITON array in the Pacific, which fell victim, as far as I can tell, to bureaucratic infighting at times, i.e. they decommissioned the support ship for the buoy’s! I think there is an upgrade in progress.
OK, a link, though you kind of have to read between the lines…
https://www.climate.gov/news-features/climate-tech/landmark-buoys-across-tropical-pacific-ocean-get-makeover
“’They are sensitive and intelligent creatures’: PETA says it’s human being’s ‘disgusting behavior’ that has led to rat population explosion in NYC – and says a cull is unfair”
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11979125/PETA-says-human-beings-disgusting-behavior-led-rat-population-explosion-NYC.html
“Instead of killing the animals, Byrne says the city should first look toward what is drawing the rats: the trash wrought by millions of New Yorkers on a daily basis”
PETA is freaking insane.
Hat tip to:
https://drudgereport.com/
If PETArds think that humanity is a blight on the earth, there’s nothing keeping them all from killing themselves.
34,000 votes out of 8.1 million.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/crime/andrew-gillum-was-almost-elected-florida-governor-now-he-s-on-trial-in-federal-court/ar-AA19VaKm
Axil has the GS extreme ear buds with active protection on sale
https://goaxil.com/pages/gsextreme
I have a slightly older model and like them. I wish the lowest level of active was a tiny bit lower but that’s my only complaint. Haven’t tried shooting with them yet either.
~$130
n
Launch window for the first Starship test launch opens at 8:00 AM CDT tomorrow.
https://www.spacex.com/launches/mission/?missionId=starship-flight-test
>> We are supposed to trust the scientists who have never held a job not beholden to to the yearly $30 billion or so of tax monies spent to prove what they already know: DOOM!
“… tax monies… ” which means politicans, and their special interests, have their grimy hands in the money pit and hence not much incentive to change things. Easier said than done but term limits would be a good place to start.
re: “scientists”
Someone wise once said:
But leftists quit reading that speech in the paragraph just preceding it.
Got CHILLY tonight. Mist floating across the water chilly. Radio reception from Florida was poor but Cuba was loud and clear.
Saw the beaver after he swam under the dock.
Sky looked clear, and nice and dark, but has a light haze. Huddled by the fire, didn’t get the ‘scope out.
Changed the HVAC to heat, and now I’m off to bed.
n