Current Events

I just put stuff in my "things to blog about" file, and noticed that it's quite large.  This may be a very long post.  If you don't make it through all of it, I will certainly understand.

Here is a cactus in the parking lot of our Primary Physician, aka Family Practitioner, aka General Practice.  She is an excellent doctor.  I'm hoping we die before she retires. There are more arms on the other side of him.  He's been busy.

Other than that, it's bike, hike, row, lift weights.  That's pretty much it.  Also, going to the grocery store too often.

So, we all know that the women's and men's hockey teams took gold at the Winter Olympics, by beating Canada.  I was really disappointed in that outcome, I wanted Canada to win.  Kash Patel, director of the FBI, was with the men players in their locker room.  He was drinking.  So if he was drinking, he wasn't working.  Agents can not drink on the job.  However, he took an official FBI plane to Italy.  It's a conundrum.  Then they got the president of the US on the phone who invited them to the White House.  In the process he made a joke about he would have to invite the women or face impeachment.  Everybody laughed.  

From twitter:
So let me get this straight, 8 of the 12 US’s gold medals were won by women. The US women’s hockey teams score across the games was 31 goals made and only 2 made on them While the men’s team scored 24 goals across the games and let in 8… And now a room full of those hockey men are on the phone with a pedophile, laughing at the idea of including their female peers who out performed them in every aspect of the game in the celebration? Remind me again, how these people care about protecting women’s sports and women?
Aria Frey   

The men’s hockey team will be forever remembered for aligning with Kash Patel, while laughing at the demeaning remarks Trump made about the women’s team.  Karma stepped in, however.  Here is the men's team having a delicious dinner of McDonald's burgers and fries at the White House.  On the right we have the women's team having a gourmet lunch in Italy with Stanley Tucci.  Score one for the women.  After their dinner, the men than had to sit for close to three hours listening to 47 bloviate through the State of the Union address.

The men's team is being dragged on social media for being dicks.  The women are on their way to Las Vegas, hosted by FlavorFlav for shows, dining and spa treatments.  

A submariner on the SS Delaware, a Virginia class attack boat, had some sort of dire medical emergency at sea.  They took the sub into Greenland's territorial waters, with permission, and a Danish helicopter picked him up and took him to hospital.  When told of this, 47 confabulated this into Greenland needs our help immediately, we'll send a hospital ship.  Hah!!!  Hah Hah Hah.   

We have two hospital ships, Mercy and Comfort.  They're 50 years old, and are repurposed oil tankers.  They are interesting boats, because they used to haul oil, they now have to have huge amounts of ballast to stay at the proper height in the water.  They're soft sided single hulled boats, and can not be taken into ice, which sort of rules out Greenland.  Mercy just finished up time in dry dock in the Alabama Shipyard, and is now on the way to Portland, OR to the Vigor yard for a midlife maintenance. She is currently southeast of Cuba headed for the Panama Canal. There is a contract that stipulates that she arrive by March 20, other wise there will be significant fines.  So, no, Mercy will not go to Greenland.  Comfort just currently moored in Alabama prior to entering dry dock for extensive maintenance.  So, Comfort is not going to Greenland, either.  Someone needs to put a muzzle on 47, and not let him post stuff that's completely wrong.

Anthropic is a leading developer of an AI, named Claude.  Claude was used in the planning for the kidnapping of President of Venezuela.  It's a good LLM.  

This is receiving virtually no coverage in main stream media.  It should be.  The thought of an uncontrolled AIs killing people should chill your soul.  Palantir, a Thiel company, pretty much has data on all US citizens, combined with facial recognition, the future looks a lot like a gulag in all of those repurposed warehouses.  This is bad.

Update to post:  Anthropic has replied to Hegseth and said no to autonomous killing and surveillance.  You can read their statement here. 

47 has sent two carrier groups to Iran.  Originally he said help was on the way for the thousands of protesters killed by the Iranian regime.  Now, this has morphed into a demand that Iran give its enriched uranium stockpiles to the US.  The Iranians are saying no.  Iran is being threatened with the mighty US Navy.  There's a hitch in the plan, however.  Senior officials have reportedly warned that current US weapon stockpiles could only sustain strikes for 7 to 10 days before running dry, the consequence of years of supplying both Ukraine and Israel.  Think about it, this information is out there.  Everybody on the planet with an interest in attacking the US knows that our cupboard is bare.  Now would be a great time for China to invade Taiwan.  The US can't do a thing about it.  However, our stalwart negotiating team of Kushner and Witkoff are on it, and I'm certain all will be well.  They've done such a great job of negotiating peace between Ukraine and Russia. 

A draft executive order which is said to be based on a conspiracy theory that China interfered with the 2020 election would allow Trump to unilaterally ban mail-in ballots and voting machines on the basis that they are susceptible to foreign interference. There is a good piece on the subject here.  States control elections, it's in the Constitution.

I don't like how much of my information is out there.  Today I ordered a pair of arm warmers from Primal, which is a stand alone company.  Somehow I was given over to an app called shop.  Shop had my shipping address, mailing address, and credit card number on file.  I do not recall ever using them, and I don't like the fact that they have my info like this.  I know I'm on the dark web from a credit reporting agency breach years ago.  All of this snooping is wearing on my last nerve.  A former health insurance company we were with had a breach, so now we have to go confirm our accounts are still frozen and sign up for more credit monitoring.   It's just one more thing.

If you made it this far, I commend your attention span.  

I Think This Covers It

 

Furnace Filters and SCOTUS

This is Jim, yesterday morning.  He's not fond of this photo, but I think he's adorable.  The point of my posting this is to serve as a reminder that it does get cold enough to require the heavy polar fleece camo pants, and so we must continue packing them.  Please make a note of this.

We also changed the furnace filters yesterday.  One of these days, I will get a video of the filter levitating into its position with some force.  It's so different than when installing one in the vertical.  Anyway, the point of this is to remind us that when we are using the rubber mallet to force the cold air return grill back where it belongs, apply force in the direction of the second bedroom, as well as straight up.  Please make a note of that, as well. 

We had interesting skies yesterday.  I was hoping for a good sunset, but, alas, it was not to be.

So, the Supreme Court over ruled 47's use of IEEPA to levy tariffs at will.  There are a lot of legal words, and closely reasoned arguments for and against, but essentially they said a tariff is a tax, and taxation belongs to Congress.  It says so in the constitution.  He has other paths to levy tariffs; what I don't know is if Congress has to approve the use of those laws.  Here is a 70 second clip of 47 going off the rails this morning.  Later in the speech, he was having trouble reading the words on the page because he was so angry, and apoplectic.  SCOTUS side stepped the issue of whether the tariffs have to be repaid to the companies and consumers who paid them.  So, he has lost his bludgeon that he was applying to other countries to make them bend to his will.  Previously negotiated trade deals are now in jeopardy.  

A person who tweets under the name Boston Smalls had this to say about it:  Corporations are already filing lawsuits and they're going to win them. This is going to be a disaster. Taxpayers will once again get screwed. We will be on the hook and pay billions for these lawsuits. Not to mention corporations are not going to lower prices because they never do. While at the same time, the damage is already done with trump's illegal trade war that he has waged for the last year and the world is passing us by now. They're moving on because maga has turned America into a dumpster fire. Canada, Europe and the trans-pacific (40 countries) are currently working out deals with each other. This 6x time bankrupt pedo has ruined us. Elections have consequences and your stupidity has driven us off a cliff. Thanks maga.

Justin Wolfers, an economist had this to say: Key issue to bear in mind as you watch today's political response to the Supreme Court tariff decision: The Court didn't say that the US can't issue tariffs, simply that the President has to convince (the Republican-controlled) Congress first. If tariffs are a great idea, that should be an easy argument to win. (Spoiler: They're not.)

So, that's it then. 

  

 

Cactus and the Administration

Hola!  How are you doing in this time of everything going off the rails, all at once, for no good reason, other than the cranky orange baby trying to distract us from the number of times he appears in the Epstein files?  My feeling of existential dread has returned with a vengeance.  It's feeling like 1965 all over again when Barry McGuire was singing this song.

First there are a few photos.  Jim took this last night.  It wasn't a great sunset, but it's what there was.  I think sunsets used to be better, must be global climate change.

Our Mexican fence post cactus is blooming and making fruit.  We did not see this last year.  I don't know if we just were not looking, or if it was a fallow year for it.  Notice the hummingbird.  That's the one sitting on the nest.  We spent a week making hummer juice and putting out a feeder, but she will not partake.  Our windows have a UV coating, which is very mirror like, and I guess her reflection scares her.  I tried putting on the electric meter, but she didn't like that, either.  So, no chow for her. The feeder is one of those small ones that you stick on a window.

The fence post cactus is about 15 feet tall.  It amuses me that the blossoms are so small and non-descript.

The cactus is in the process of loosing two more arms, which is bad.

47 and Netanyahu have decided that something must be done about Iran.  The US will have two carrier groups in the area.  February is when Iran, Russia and China hold their yearly joint military operations in the Strait of Hormuz.  One fifth of the global oil supply goes through the strait.  See that pointy land mass almost in the middle of the map?  That's the Strait.  There's not a lot of room to maneuver in there.  

After the recent Iranian crackdowns on the protests, when thousands of people were killed, 47 told the citizens that help is on the way.  I guess help consists of the US bombing Tehran.  The Abraham Lincoln carrier battle group is currently in the Arabian sea, the Ford carrier battle group is on the way.  So, stand by to be amazed.  We'll have Iran, Russia and China and the US within spitting distance of each other.

This is from Axios via Meidas Touch on Facebook.  It gives you a pretty good idea of how much equipment and time may be involved.

Here is badness from the home front.  "A few weeks ago, the Heritage Foundation—the powerhouse organization behind Project 2025—released a 250-year roadmap to “save America.” Written by authors with close ties to the Trump administration, the document is a how-to guide for subjugating girls and young women: a detailed plan to push them out of college, funnel them into early marriage and motherhood, and then trap them there."  They want us out of the work place and back in the kitchen, with no ability to determine our destiny.  There's a good substack on the subject here.

ICE is buying up giant warehouses.  They plan to convert them into detention centers.  If the goal here is to deport people here without documents, why do they need detention centers this large.  I scraped this off twitter.  Why do they need this many square feet?  Where is all this money coming from?  The tax payers, of course.  I would like to see some detail on these buildings.  The only good thing happening, is the locals don't want these built in their neighborhoods, and so some of the sales have been cancelled.  

Last week Vinay Prasad, who is head of vaccines in the FDA, unilaterally chose to not review Moderna's new flu vaccine study.  He did not like the control arm that was used in the trials.  Never mind that the vaccine in the control arm is one currently in use, and was previously approved for the drug trial.  Moderna's response was: “Moderna’s CEO announced the company will no longer invest in new Phase 3 vaccine trials for infectious diseases: ‘You cannot make a return on investment if you don’t have access to the U.S. market.’ Vaccines for Epstein-Barr virus, herpes, and shingles have been shelved.”  So, way to go Vinay.  However, today someone higher up in the food chain at HHS as announced that the new vaccine trials will be reviewed.  Perhaps all is not lost.

There is a list of Notable People, and the locations of their graves, at Arlington Cemetery.  The Secretary of Defense, Petey Hegseth, has removed Colin Powell's name, as well as every person of color and women from the list.  Only white men remain.

 

Clouds and Spying

The climate today was just delightful.  We were up and out on the bikes, now that the hideous garage painting project is done.  The clouds were glorious.

By now, most people know that Savannah Guthrie's Mom has been kidnapped.  The Pima County Sheriff did their usual inept job by allowing people back into her house, before FBI forensics had been there, and the entire crime scene was compromised.  Anyway, footage from a door bell camera has been recovered.  What is interesting is that there was no subscription for the camera.  However, it recorded anyway.  When you subscribe, you're being allowed to look at that footage, the FBI can get it anyway.  Additionally, we have learned that the FBI can can retrieve footage from any camera at your house at any time even if they were not set to record and even if you do not have a subscription.  So, don't think those cameras in the house aren't recording, even if you let the subscription lapse, they are.  

Ring, a major purveyor of door bell cameras ran a commercial during the Super Bowl.  In this commercial, they told us they are building a surveillance network.  This is an excerpt from a paywalled article.

At Sunday’s Super Bowl, Ring advertised “Search Party,” a cute, horrifyingly dystopian feature nominally designed to turn all of the Ring cameras in a neighborhood into a dragnet that uses AI to look for a lost dog: “One post of a dog’s photo in the Ring app starts outdoor cameras looking for a match,” Ring founder Jamie Siminoff said in the Super Bowl commercial. “Search Party from Ring uses AI to help families find lost dogs.” Onscreen, an AI-powered box forms around a missing dog: “Milo Match,” it says. “Since launch, more than a dog a day has been reunited with their family. Be a hero in your neighborhood with Search Party. Available to everyone for free right now.”

Although Ring says they don't use human biometrics, they do give police access to Ring data.  It's only a matter of time before we're all surveilled all the time.  China  already does this.  Having a cell phone is bad enough in terms of being spied on, but this is a next level.  We don't have Ring, or Alexa, or any of those spy devices.  Here is a free article.

There is more, so much more, but I'm just not up to talking about that man.

Random Stuff

Hola!  Are you aware of how many magats do not know that Puerto Rico is a US territory, and as such, all people born there are US citizens?  It's just amazing to me how strong the stupid is with these people.  They are all having a cow because Bad Bunny is performing at Super Bowl half time, and most of his set will be in Spanish.  Kid Rock is counter programmed opposite him, to bring good wholesome Christian entertainment for the impressionable children.  Look up some of his song lyrics, the guy is a pedophile.

Jim took these photos a couple of days ago.  It was pretty impressive.

We put up the hummingbird feeder, but she hasn't found it yet.  We're hoping she'll accept free chow, now that she's sitting on the nest.

Here is a very interesting substack.  The writer lives in France with her six children, she's a US citizen by birth.  She has previously written about the importance of responsible ejaculation.  Do the math, a man can impregnate a woman (different women) every single day.  Pregnancy takes 9 months.  So who is making all the unplanned babies?  Her new essay is on why men are the secondary sex.  It's an interesting read, and made me think some.   Here is an excerpt.

Let’s start with the timeline. The system of patriarchy didn’t exist for 97% of the history of human beings. Our species, Homo Sapiens, has been around for at least 260,000 years. Once patriarchy makes its appearance, we follow a very quick path to pervasive violence and destruction via climate change, nuclear bombs, oppressive religion, forced starvation, preventable disease, etc.. And we’re not just destroying humankind, we’re destroying thousands of other species too. Picture it: we managed to go along for ~250,000 years, then we introduce patriarchy and we can’t even make it ~10,000 years without bringing our species to the brink of total annihilation. Patriarchy is very bad for humankind, and for the Earth as a whole.

What is it about patriarchy that makes it so harmful? I’ll tell you. Patriarchy is built on hierarchy, competition, and domination, which is how we get horrors like white supremacy and racism, class systems, war, unregulated capitalism, pervasive violence, and rape culture. Patriarchy is also harmful because it puts males in charge of everything. But males are the secondary sex and aren’t supposed to be in charge of anything.

In nature, males are interchangeable and somewhat disposable laborers, while females are primary, and essential for a community to thrive and grow. Females are so essential that human DNA perpetually preserves the maternal line—females pass down an unbroken genetic chain that is traceable by lineage, while “interchangeable” males do not. Mitochondrial DNA is passed from mother to child without recombination. Autosomal (or nuclear) DNA is contributed by both parents, but every generation it gets recombined, so it doesn’t preserve a single unbroken ancestral line. 

Those of you who have read me for some time, are no doubt aware of how much I do not enjoy painting.  Today we started on the garage.  The baseboard in there seems to go on forever.  Today we did all the cutting in of cabinets. the water heater, the baseboards, and the inside corners.  My feet are tired.  Here is Jim, painting around the garage door track, standing backwards on a ladder. I did the other one.

We got an excellent paint match, so I think we're not cutting in the ceilings.  It's a garage!

This is from twitter:  I don’t understand why it’s not being reported … the reason why perpetrators names are redacted and the reason why the entire case is not being pursued is because of non-prosecution agreements. If you go back and read Epstein‘s original NP agreement (that Pam Bondi signed off on) it includes Epstein and “all associates and co-conspirators known or unknown.”  This is just pathetic.  On news of the good, the Europeans are all over this, the resignations have begun over there. 

Here is the picture 47 posted in the wee hours of the morning this week.  He did this. Then he blamed it on some un-named staffer, but we know he did it.  He won't apologize, either.  I'm fairly certain that Mr. Obama is living rent free in 47's head.
 

And finally, here is a nice photo of ravens that I screen shotted.  They are majestic birds.

That's it, that's all I've got. 

Nope, I just saw this Guardian article about Epstein world.  Worth a read.