Tuesday, January 21, 2025

Daily Life and That Man

Well, welcome to the Fourth Reich. There has been riding and biking and going to Lowe's and Home Depot.  We have sorted out the down spout issues through an application of gutter extensions.  I think they're actually down spout extensions, but who am I to argue with marketing.  Hopefully the extension will move the water into the dry stream instead of digging a hole in the bottom of the stream and depositing dirt there.  Prior to our arrival, there was not so much as a splash block there.  Hopefully it will rain someday and we'll be able to see if it's working as designed.


We rode Sunday, and holy cats that was a cold ride.  It's hard to dress for, it's warm going uphill and upwind, and then freezing into the wind down hill.  Poor us.  It was a good ride, both of us were feeling good and we did not suck.

Saturday was a restorative hike in the desert.  For the first time I wore a light weight long sleeved capilene shirt and it was a good choice.  Again, sun and wind makes it difficult to dress appropriately.  We went back up to the saddle of Golden Gate and Bren.

Here we have a giant broken rock sitting out in the desert.  One wonders how it got there.  Was it a lava bomb at some point?


As I have previously mentioned, these are not pleasant trails.  There is loose rock, two foot, or more, high steps, loose sand on the rocks, all things which make life difficult.  On foot, not so bad.  We saw two guys ride it.  I am just astonished at their strength, balance and courage to attempt such a thing.  The first guy we saw told us his girlfriend was doing a 10 hour mtb race, so he had come here, looking for a good ride.  Anyway, the rider is at the bottom of the blue arrow.

All scenery is scene coming down the hill.


I have no more pretty pictures, so I guess it will talk about 47.  That will be his new name, orange ectoplasm has too many letters.  He had himself a day.

As expected his speech was an Airing of Grievances.  Full of bluster, braggadocio, and out right lying.  What we've come to expect.  What was chilling and not good was the seating arrangement in the Rotunda.  The first row was the oligarchs, Bezos, Musk, and others.  The second row was the cabinet.  The cabinet was seated behind the tech bros.  I guess we know who this government will serve.

There are Executive Orders, this is not a comprehensive list.

  •     We're out of the Paris Climate Accords.  That aligns us with Iran, Yemen and Libya.
  •     We're out of the World Health Organization.
  •     A National Energy crisis was declared. 
  •     A National Border Crisis was declared.  This allows him mobilize active military and send them to the border.
  •     Sets up machinery to investigate past "weaponization" of govt.  So, imaginary weaponization of public power will be punished by real weaponization, including targeted investigations.
  •     He declared that there are only two genders.

He paused the TikTok ban, continuing to provide the Chinese Communist Party with free access to US data.  The military is banned from installing this app on their phones, it truly is spyware. 

1,600 Afghan refuges that had been previously approved for resettlement, including family members of active-duty U.S. military personnel, are having their flights canceled under President Donald Trump's order suspending U.S. refugee programs, a U.S. official and a leading refugee resettlement advocate said on Monday.  These people will be murdered by the Taliban.  Article is here.

At the festivities following the swearing in, that would be the ceremony where 47 would not put his left hand on the Bible, Musk took to the stage to say a few words.  And then he did this.  Yep, that's a Nazi salute. 


The Irish Star headline is bad enough, but wait, it's worse on this side of the pond.  One of these is New York Times, and the other is Washington Post.  This is why I no longer subscribe to either paper.


Ostensibly, you guys are reporters, report!  It was a Nazi salute.  I'm not sure where news will come from over the next four years.

Two days prior to the inauguration, 47 issued a meme coin, whose value increased to $56B.  This made 47 very wealthy.  Then Melania issued a meme coin, which tanked the value of 47's coin.  I can't understand bitcoin or any of that make believe crap, but what I can spot is money laundering.  Any foreign entity can dump money into this unregulated slush fund to curry favor.  Bad, this is bad.

This is funny, 47 fails geography and general knowledge.  Very short read here

That's it, I've made this long enough.


Monday, January 20, 2025

MLK Day

The artist is Watson Mere.  I can’t think of anything more appropriate to the day.

 


Thursday, January 16, 2025

Furniture and Bad Politics

Greetings Earthlings.  How are we all doing, four days before the end of democracy?  I will miss the old days.  

We have reached the end of furniture acquisition.  I gave up on ever finding a cool TV table, realizing that in the mid-Century, televisions came in consoles.  Then they ended up on heavy tables.  So I bought fake wood and metal.  I like it, it's a good height (20 inches), doesn't have a back so the router went in easily.  I have been unable to take a decent picture of it, so here is one from the website.  We would still like something along the lines of a server/side board/buffet with drawers since we are so sadly lacking in storage.  Maybe next year, maybe not. 

I will say, that this flat pack had the best cushioning I have ever seen.  They used honey comb cardboard, and separated everything well.

Today's key learning is that there shall be no art behind glass.  Between the sky lights and all of the windows, it's difficult to not get a reflection.  Canvas art for the win!  I had a 16 x 20 print made at Snapfish.  I have to tell you, print quality is astoundingly good.  Here is a photo I took of the print.  You can see my arm reflected at the bottom.  In person, I can read the sign for El Charro on the right in the back ground.


Here it is on the wall.

Today we did manual labor.  I sat in the dirt and cut out pieces of a dead shrub to make it shorter, and we rearranged rocks in the dry stream that were dislodged when the irrigation leak was fixed.  Jim completed round two of picking up the fallen leaves from our two trees.  They have a lot of little tiny leaves.

As we all learned in civics, there are three branches of government in the US, the Legislative, Judiciary, and Executive.  They are separate and equal, at least that's how it's supposed to work.  Yesterday, the Speaker of the House (who lacks a spine) called Rep. Mike Turner into his office and fired him from being chairman of the House Intelligence Committee because the orange menace told him to. It's not supposed to work this way.  The president is not supposed to interfere with the workings of Congress.  Of course, the speaker, having no spine, did as he was told.  This is bullshit.  All it would take is for two Republicans to change their affiliation to Independent, caucus with the Democrats, and they could put an end to the reign of terror.  But they won't.

Additionally, the orange one is taking credit for the cease fire between Hamas and Israel.  President Biden had been working on this for 15 months.  The pub-tards are giving all the credit to the orange.  When the hostage swap fails, they'll blame Biden.

Then there is this.  RFK Jr. has been nominated to run Health and Human Services.  This is what he thinks.  Stupid, just stupid.


Here is a giant cactus in the neighborhood.  Look at the size of it.  The arm coming off near the ground is not usual.  That arm has put out another arm.


That's it, that's all I have to say about things.

Saturday, January 11, 2025

Sunset, Art, and a Seed Pod

It's been "cold" here.  Cold is a relative term.  Nights have been in the low 30's.  Wednesday the wind was up all day, skies were gray, and we got zero rain.  Other parts of the city got rain, but nothing for the Tucson Mountain Park area.  Very unfortunate for the cactus out in the desert.  

Thursday we had enough clouds for a sunset.  This is the first time since we got here in November.  December used to be the month of pink skies, but not this year. Clear and severe skies have been the rule.


We have new art.  I have two canvas arts from two different vendors.

This is from easycanvasprints dot com.  It's good.  What's really good is that they don't use thick wood for stapling the canvas.  The wood frame is 3/4 of an inch (roughly) thick.  The advantage to this is that more of the subject stays on the front of the art.  Definition is pretty good, they have redeemed themselves.

This one is from snapfish dot com.  It's a good print, but their wood is 1 1/4 inch thick.  The front protrudes out further, and more of the subject matter is on the side of the frame.  Definition is good, but when I was thinking about another canvas, I was taken aback by how much of the image is lost to the sides.  A print in portrait orientation would be better here, but most of my photos are landscape. 

I'm blogging this so I remember where they came from.

Yesterday we worked on the back yard.  A lot of dead stuff was pulled off the plants back there.  Jim was cutting down the seed pod spikes off some very messy plants. They send up a spike, it flowers, and makes pods. 

This is the plant (in the foreground) that's growing wild in the yard.

Anyway, the pods are nice looking.  There are five small black seeds in there.


Angus
put up a link to a nice story this morning.  It these times of hate, vitriol, and misinformation, this is a lovely article about hedgehog highways and citizens' attempts to keep them alive.  Article is here.

That's it, I have nothing more to say, especially about the orange menace.

Thursday, January 9, 2025

Furniture and Meta

I googled the name plate in the drawer of the new to us night stands.  They're made by Uttermost.  I pretty much hate their web site, it's one of those that's always moving.  Bad user interface, bad!

Last night I was looking at my phone and I found the Uttermost Hanford night stand on the web. I found more on them on the laptop.  Here is a screen shot.  Make sure you notice the price for one.

The screenshot is from this page.  They have a magnifying glass if you want to zoom on the "weathering."  We don't have that, and I'm pretty happy about it.  All we got was someone spilling a solvent on the finish which is easier to hide.  We don't have the aged iron pull because it broke.  We have a new round pull, which works fine.

This is the name tag in the drawer.


So, not bad for our first foray into second hand shopping.  

As you may or may not know, Meta has removed fact checking and replaced it with community notes.  From The New Republic we learn the following:

Users on Meta’s platforms, including Facebook, Instagram, and Threads, will also be allowed to refer to women as “household objects or property or objects in general,” Black people as “farm equipment,” and transgender individuals as “it,” according to an updated version of Meta’s hateful conduct policy that crossed out the prohibitions.

It's a good article, worth reading.  Zuckerberg's policy change has led to this being posted all over Bluesky.


Ok.  I'm done now.

Wednesday, January 8, 2025

Furniture and Weather

Monday we went out east to The Girls retail store.  They run estate sales, and also have a second hand store.  They have a lot of stuff, some better than others.  We finally have night stands!  I've been all over the internet since we got here, and I am shocked to see what passes as "furniture" these days.  Night stands are particularly bad price performers, they have drawers, drawers are expensive.  Anyway we got night stands, at last  They're wood.  Something bad happened to the finish, it looks like they were sprayed with something.  A strategically placed place mat solves the problem.  I have no idea how old these are, clearly not modern styling.  Don't care, we like them.


A place mat from Target covers the spots.


We also got an art.  It's a huge, heavy piece.  There is a large piece of glass, and a wood frame.  It's doing an excellent job of covering up two really unattractive wall anchors.  It's a little high on the wall, but the wall anchors have been covered.


It's a big print.  Getting it up on the wall was nerve wracking.


The night stands were $88 for the pair, and the giant art was $16.50.  Second hand for the win!

Yesterday we rode, good thing.  The weather today was abysmal, very windy and cold.  Yesterday was windy, but not as bad, and the sun was out.  It was a gorgeous day.



That is the back of Jim's helmet.


A few clouds really moderate the light, makes things pretty.

You know what else comes in flat packs?  Lamps.  Refer back to the photo of the art over the bed with night stands.  Those lamps came flat packed.  The shades come collapsed and you use your thumbs to push the frame up and shape the shade.  Today a new floor lamp arrived.


Here it is, bringing light to the living room.  For what ever reason that I am sure I don't understand, the builder did not install a ceiling fan with lights.  There is zero light in the ceiling.  Eventually we'll get a fan with the lights, but thus far I don't know what to buy, and I need someone to install it.  We've never done that and I don't want to.  This photo is from the website, my phone does badly with lamps that are turned on.  It has dispelled the gloom in the corner.

So, that's it.  The orange menace continued on his path to world stupidity today.  Nothing to see there.