Kindles

 Here is a first world problem for all of you Kindle owners.

Amazon is discontinuing support for Kindle devices released in 2012 or earlier, effectively "soft-bricking" them by blocking access to the Kindle store and new content downloads after May 20, 2026. While existing locally stored books will remain, devices cannot download new content, rendering14-18 year-old, working units into, in effect, paperweights.

For more information, google "Amazon bricking Kindles."  I can not tell you how much this pisses me off.  

Cactus from yesterday.

Things are still terrible in the Middle East, with no signs of improvement.

47 is dismantling the Forest Service.  Decades of knowledge and research will be dumpstered, fire seasons will be worse, post fire landslides will be worse.   They're planning to sell off vast swaths of land for logging.  Good bye little woodland creatures.

That's it!  Gotta start packing in earnest.

Nuclear War Put on Two Week Delay

Welcome to Tuesday.  Today would have been my brother's birthday, but he died young.  Really early onset Alzheimer's took him.  

This is how today started.  This level of destruction would probably require nuclear weapons.  This would be bad.  However, he TACOed.  He's given the Iranians a two week extension on extermination, IF they open the strait.  No word on how that's going.  Current negotiations are being held by Pakistan and Iran, and then China entered the conversation.  China and Pakistan really need the strait to be open.

As always, it is astonishing to me that Congress is not impeaching or applying the 25th Amendment to get this guy out of office.  He should not have the nuclear codes any more.

Last night, Iran attacked Jubail Industrial City,  Saudi Arabia's largest petrochemical complex: the zone that produces 60,000,000 tons of petrochemicals a year which is 6 to 8 percent of EVERYTHING the world makes.  This was unfortunate, pretty much everything is petroleum based.  Read all about it here.  

We rode this morning, it was very pleasant, not too hot.  We both had a good bike day.  A good bike day is when you feel strong on the hills, and not like you're dying.  We've both had a recent spate of feeling like death on the bikes.  I'm hoping it's over for awhile.  Figures we'd get better now, we're leaving next Tuesday.  

Examine the spines on this cactus.  They're extraordinarily long.  The plant is barrel shaped.  The flowers are what first caught my eye, very pretty. Google identifies it as an Astrophytum ornatum cactus.

That's it.  I did want to document the two week extension of nuclear winter.  47 is diluting his ability to be threatening because he keeps backing down.

Day After Easter

This is from yesterday.  The first is the President of the US publicly threatening to commit war crimes.  Why is he still in office?  I can not believe he or his office put this out. "Iran" is calling him out for it.

Snippets from twitter.

If the sitting president repeatedly threatening to use our military to commit war crimes doesn’t meet the threshold for removal from office, then nothing does.
JoJoFromJerz

Russia spent a decade and billions keeping Assad in power to hold its naval and air bases in Syria. Today the new Syrian president welcomes Zelensky in Damascus. Ukrainian flags flying. Embassies reopening. Strategic collapse in real time.
Nazel Nhaze

“If the spread of reading represented the greatest transfer of knowledge to ordinary men and women in history, the smartphone revolution represents the greatest theft of knowledge from ordinary people in history.” I compress James Marriot's new book into one tweet.
Tom Holland

47 went missing again for 4 or 5 days.  He came back spitting bile and hatred today.  How much longer until congress takes this guy out of office?  I'd like this to happen prior to the use of nuclear weapons.

Happy Easter

It suddenly occurred to me that it's Easter.  I knew that this morning, but then we rode, and then I caramelized  onions in a cast iron skillet and sort of forgot the whole thing.  If you celebrate, I hope you had an excellent day of it.

Good Friday

Greetings Earthlings!  How are you doing in these troubled times?  I think the deaths in the wars in the Middle East, the dreadful economy and the certain knowledge that things will never go back to the way they were is wearing on me.

Yesterday we went for a hike.  First time since February 28, which was a terrible day for Jim.  As you no doubt recall, he was having significant pain in his legs.  Things are better now.  The GP put him on prednisone, which he has now tapered down to 4 mg per day.  The pain management doctor put him on gabapentin.  The gabapentin has made a difference.  There is much less pain than there was.  The theory is that there is a slightly bulging disk at L3, and the steroids and the gabapentin are helping with it.  Generally the only permanent fix for a bad disk is surgery.  Jim has done that twice now, and things will have to get SO MUCH WORSE before he does it again.  Laminectomies and spinal fusions are quite painful and require three months of recovery.  So, we're hoping that this will hold the pain at bay for awhile.  

Anyway, then we went to Costco, which was abnormally not busy.  So we got Covid boosters.  Generally Covids don't bother me, this one did.  I woke up in the middle of the night and my arm was just killing me.   Between that and the birds waking me up at 5:30 this morning, I've been pretty much of a basket case all day.  So, there was no riding and there will be no rowing today.  It'll be better tomorrow.

The cactus are starting the bloom.  The first two are from 2018, but I really like the images.  This is a Buckhorn Cholla.  

Here is a bee in the pollen.  That is a prickly pear blossom.

The ocotillo in the side yard is blooming, but has no leaves yet.

Another prickly pear in the desert.

Jim took this the other night from our back patio when the moon was coming up.  It's not bad for a cell phone camera.

Hegseth fired  U.S. Army Chief of Staff Randy George Thursday.  He also asked that General George retire immediately.  No reason has been given for this action.  Hegseth has also removed four well respected, well qualified officers from the promotion list for general.  Two are Black men, two are female.  Bastard.  Apparently there is much dissension within the ranks of senior officers at the Pentagon about these decisions.

Today the US asked Iran for a 48 hour cease fire.  Iran said nope, we'd rather keep shooting at you and your allies.

Here are a few bon mots from twitter.

Russia has supplied more weapons and support to Iran - to help kill Americans - than the Trump administration has provided to Ukraine to help it defend itself.  Russia is literally proving to be a better ally to Iran than America has been to Ukraine lately. Let that sink in.
Richard Woodruff

Kristi Noem rigging the property appraiser’s exam while governor so her daughter could get her license, killing a puppy, & giving her boyfriend a powerful job in govt while cheating on her cross-dressing spouse is not that unusual on the spectrum of Republican politician behavior.
Ron Filipkowski 

Saying you're no longer a Trump supporter is like saying you're no longer a cannibal. People might believe you, but no one is ever going to ask you to babysit their kids—or eat at your house again.
Lucifer

Other than this, I have not too much to talk about. OK, there is this.

 

New Refrigerator and the Present Administration

It's still hot, but at least it's out of the triple digits.  Riding still has to occur earlier than I would like, but there you go.

Our new refrigerator arrived this morning.  I think the old one was original to the house, twenty some odd years ago.  The water dispenser died right after we moved in.  It occurred to us that without a water dispenser, changing the water filter in the frig was going to be an issue.  Much water must be run for a new filter.  So, we bought a new side by side, and they brought out this morning.  All of our food is still in styrofoam coolers, I'm hoping the frozen stuff will survive.  

It's blooming here.  I have photographic evidence. This is a Palo Verde up the street from us.  This variety has the pretty blossoms.  All Palo Verdes are a complete mess when they drop their petals on the ground.

A prickly pear in the desert.  This is my favorite color.

Look at the height of the flower spike on the yucca.  It's growing inches by the day.  These don't die after blooming like the agaves do.

Oleanders in the back.  They're pitiful bloomers.

Fairy Dusters.  This one is growing as nature intended it to, it hasn't been shaped in to a ball.

The war drags on, no one knows what's going on in Dear Leader's head.  He claimed that talks were going very well with Iran.  Iran responded with we're not talking to Kushner or Witkoff anymore, and there have been no talks.  Liar liar, pants on fire.  Today he was advocating for former President Biden and former VP Kamala Harris to be required to take IQ tests.  He thinks he's smarter.  Right then.

The Treasury Department has announced that the US is insolvent.  What could go wrong?

Notable quotes from twitter:

Janice Hough
As much as I hate Trump's idea of sending ICE to fill in for TSA, as someone in the travel industry can't think of another move he can make that would so turn Americans against GOP before the 2026 elections....

Sen Chris Murphy on Meet the Press: "We're giving Iran $14B to fund its war with the US? We're giving Russia billions to fund their war with Ukraine? We're literally giving money to the very nations we're fighting right now! We've never seen this level of incompetence in war-making in our history, and quite frankly we've had a LOT of incompetence in war-making!"

The Strait of Hormuz remains closed to the US and Israel.  Hopefully, helium and nitrogen will be on the other boats and available for the US to purchase, no doubt at inflated prices.

So that's what I have to say about things. Also there is this that I swiped from Facebook.