#6641: It was a hoax. What a, uh, surprise.
The headline tells the tale: "Nigerian Brothers In Smollett Investigation Paid $7,000 To Stage "MAGA Country" Attack: Report".

I have been saying this shit was a hoax from the first time I heard the story. I based that on the fact that every other time there has been a big to-do about an alleged white-on-black hate crime, it has been a hoax.

EVERY TIME.

Welcome to the Sai-- no, I did that one already. (But this is a perfect example of the application of the phrase.)

* * *

In War Games there is a scene where Matthew Broadderick is sent to the principal's office yet again.

The principal greets him sarcastically: "Lightman! What a, uh, surprise. Won't you step into my office?"

* * *

Giving the communists a taste of their own medicine. While I generally deplore vandalism, I cannot think of a better place where its application is warranted.

The grave of Karl Marx ought to be shallow, unmarked, and shared with dozens of strangers. 100,000,000 people have graves like that because of him. If there is anyone that I could point to as the focus of evil in the modern world, it's Karl Marx.

* * *

Yesterday was one of those days where you look at the clock and think, "WTF, why isn't it later than this?" After being at work two hours, it felt like five, and it wasn't, and when I later looked at the clock and saw that it was seven PM I moaned, "Why isn't it nine?"

But the day did end, eventually, and I proceeded to be up until 4 AM fooling around with the PC and doing a little WoW. We slept in today; I had a shower as soon as I woke up but then mucked around with WoW for a while before running to the grocery store for some needed sundries. Came home, more WoW, then a 4-hour nap; and when I got up from that, Mrs. Fungus wanted Taco Bell.

The new Taco Bell here in the Fungal Vale does not suffer from whatever malady besets the next-nearest one, in Richton Park; when we get food from that one, we inevitably suffer "symptoms" the next day. But this one, the food tastes good and doesn't ruin our digestions, and as a bonus they're open after midnight. And we like Taco Bell; we just don't like having our dispositions upset by bad food.

There are half a dozen other fast food restaurants I would have preferred in its place, but as long as the Taco Bell continues to have non-gastric-destroying food, it'll do.

* * *

Watched a series of videos on YouTube by "Fuzzy Dice Projects" in which the guy rebuilt a 4T60e transmission in his garage.

I do not quite understand why, in this era of digital controls, modern automatic transmissions have to be as complex as they are.

Take a transmission like the good old Turbo-Hydramatic 350. Three forward speeds, one reverse...and it's a fiendishly complex beast. It's not hard to learn how it works--this band applies for that gear, etcetera--but at the heart of it is the valve body, which is a rat's warren of passages through which hydraulic fluid passes, under pressure.

The valve body of an automatic transmission is, essentially, an analog computer that uses hydraulic, rather than electrical, pressure. PSI instead of volts. The pressure on the various valves and regulators in the thing determine which gear is operational at any one time, and it's a function of load, vehicle speed, engine speed, and throttle position. It basically integrates those four variables and selects a gear based entirely on those inputs. (The driver can manually select gears but that's a different function.)

With computer control, though, it seems to me that things should be different. The digital computer running the rest of the drivetrain can see all those variables (and others besides) and should be able to run the automatic transmission without that complicated valve body. And I figure that machining the valve body has to be a fairly expensive process, so they'd get rid of it if they could; the fact that they don't indicates it's necessary. But I don't get why.

Anyway the 4l60e adds an overdrive gear, and somehow that makes it even more complicated than the Turbo-Hydramatic was. The guy completely disassembles it and puts it all back together over a series of eight videos, and I was bewildered by the array of parts in the damned thing. The valve body was the worst, with clips, plugs, valves, springs, accumulators, regulators, and check balls. Holy crap.

Guess that explains why transmission repair is so expensive.

On the plus side, the 4L60e does not require a great deal of specialized equipment for service. A good set of snap ring pliers, a specific type of spring compressor fixture, and a good set of bushing and seal drivers would do it. Then you just need to keep track of all the parts and make sure they all go back where they came from.

I figure that rebuilding the Jeep's transfer case is probably in my future. I don't know what I'd do if the transmission went, but I'd bet money it's not as easily rebuilt ("easily"! argh) as the 4L60e is. Probably try to find one in a boneyard.

I do--when the weather warms up--want to massage the old crate and fix a bunch of stuff that's been bothering me. Besides the little mechanical bits that need doing, I'm thinking that I'll take a stab at fixing the rocker panels, and patch the hole in the floor. WTF I have the welder; why not use it?

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#6640: Well, Illinois went and passed the illegal alien jobs bill.
Minimum wage in Illinois will rise to $15 over the next few years. $15 an hour by 2025.

I predict a bunch more ordering kiosks going up in McDonalds and other fast food restaurants across the land. But hey! Look at the positive side:

Riverton resident Sherry Morris, a member of Service Employees International Union, said getting $15 an hour would be a lifesaver for her and her son, who has special needs.

Morris makes $11.38 an hour as a home health aide at Help at Home in Springfield.

It can be hard for her to know which bills she will be able to pay.

"What bill do I pay this month? Which one do I let go?" she said, noting a raise to $15 would be an extra $4,000 to $5,000 a year for her.

Chicago resident Iashea Cross, a personal assistant with the Department of Rehabilitation Services, makes $13 an hour.

"Fifteen dollars an hour (would) give us all a leg up," she said at the Capitol. "Some of us won't have to work two or three jobs just to put food on the table."

Like Morris, Cross also has a hard time paying bills.

"Sometimes bills don't get paid," she said. "I'm behind on my student loans. I struggle every six months to make sure they don't go in default."

So let's look at Ms. Morris, first. She makes $11.38 an hour as a "home health aide". Is she one of those people who gets money for taking care of a family member, such as her son, who has "special needs"? $11.38 an hour is $23,670 per year; $15 an hour is actually an extra $7,530 per year. Is she a CNA? Does she have any skills?

Comcast is paying people $19 an hour to take billing calls. If she needs money that badly--if an extra $3.62 an hour would be a "lifesaver"--why doesn't she change jobs?

And look at Ms. Cross. Currently earning $13 an hour ($27,040 per year) she claims that "some of us" won't have to work "two or three jobs". At $15 an hour she's earning an additional $4k per year; what second job does she have that only pays $87 a week?

And she has to "struggle" every six months to make sure her loans don't go into default? You do that by filling out a frigging form and mailing it. When you're behind on your student loans, the Department of Education mails the form to you without your asking for it. All you need to do is fill in a few blanks, put it in the provided envelope, stick a stamp on it, and drop it in a mailbox. That's hardly a "struggle".

...so let's go back to Comcast. With the minimum wage at $15 an hour, do you think Comcast is going to continue to offer $19 an hour? Or will call centers across the state all drop to $15 an hour?

Of course, the true minimum wage is ZERO, and this bill will lead to higher unemployment for unskilled workers.

The big winners in this will be unions, of course, because the higher minimum wage means they'll have a basis for demanding higher wages for their members. And since their members pay dues out of their wages--well, you do the math.

The $15 minimum wage has done terrible things for the labor markets everywhere it's been tried. It will not do Illinois any good, either.

* * *

Well, what do you know? Police arrested two men in that second-rate actor assault thing. Nigerians. So, not white. In their apartment, police found a red hat and bleach.

Not exactly a smoking gun, you know? I mean, you'll find bleach in my house, and there's a red hat sitting on my desk. Oh, dick! I'm a person of interest!

(It's my dad's US Marine Corps ball cap. Not exactly MAGA, but close, I suppose.)

BUT! All of this is looking more and more like HOAX and not a real hate crime. As expected.

* * *

Hearing tell that President Trump has indeed declared a state of emergency with regards to our southern border. Now let's get that damned wall built!

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#6639: Here's hoping I get to sleep in tomorrow
Up early Wed, Thu, and Fri--I'd better get to sleep on Saturday or there will be a reckoning.

* * *

The last few bits regarding NYC's anti-Amazon stupidity, and then I believe I'll forget about it:

This is what I've been saying all along about this. NYC wasn't writing Amazon a check for (or several smaller checks that amounted to) $3 billion. Now that Amazon won't be coming to NYC, NYC does not suddenly have an extra $3 billion in its budget to spend.

But this is a case of leftists screwing over leftists and that's hard not to like. The problem I have here is that--as is typical whenever leftists do anything--the little people are getting screwed.

* * *

Let me say that again: Whenever leftists do anything the little people get screwed. The last four paragraphs tell the tale.

The socialized education system is nothing but a jobs program for incompetent leftists.

* * *

If you think cultural appropriation is so bad then of course you won't mind ceasing to appropriate the products of white culture. You know, little things. Computers, cell phones, antibiotics, cars, trains, airplanes, the flush toilet, indoor plumbing....

* * *

What else can you call it?

If anyone believes that Trump committed a high crime or misdemeanor, the proper constitutional remedy is impeachment. Thus, these officials were fomenting a coup.

Let's face the facts: these people were trying to find a veneer of legitimacy to cover for the fact that they wanted to undo the results of the Presidential election. The idea here was not to uphold the law or the Constitution, but indeed try to find a way to make an end-run around them, to use the extant laws to gin up a way of removing him from office.

...and if they had done that, then there would have been no stopping them; and, in rapid succession, the dominoes would fall until a Democrat sat in the White House. But the US would no longer have a legitimate government and there'd be an immense uprising.

All in response, by the way, to an action taken by the President which he was perfectly entitled to take: firing the sitting director of the FBI, who serves at the pleasure of the President like most (if not all) of the officials in the Justice Department.

On the plus side: with that, they very nicely self-identified as enemies of democracy and we can treat them with the appropriate caution.

* * *

You poor dumb bastard. Can you think of anything more boring than a bedtime story about an obscure civil rights leader? I suppose it puts the kids right to sleep, though.

* * *

Stall speed is a quick trot. The Wright brothers did something similar in the leadup to their powered airplane; they built quite a few gliders which had similar takeoff speeds. Not quite as sophisticated, though.

* * *

Is it a "reboot" or is it just a remake? Gonna be yet another film version of Dune. Saw the 1984 movie first, then read the book, then saw the SyFy mini-series in 2000. The mini-series was a reasonable translation. The 1984 movie was...bad.

Herbert's writing has always left me cold, though, and Dune was no exception. For all that it was a seminal book in SF, I only thought of it as an "okay" read. That might have been different had my first exposure to Herbert not been his awful, awful Jesus Incident, but I guess that's how it is.

Not gonna get excited about this one, sad to say.

* * *

Seeing news to the effect that the second-rate actor in the third-rate TV show staged the attack as some kind of publicity stunt. Wow, you mean it was a hoax? Holy shit, who coulda seen that coming?

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#6638: I can't pare the list down any further.
Too many interesting links today! Let's get started.

* * *

Amazon has decided that it will not, after all, build a headquarters in NYC.

Stupid is as stupid does.

Little Miss Stalin is very happy about this. People are saying that NYC can spend that $3 billion on fixing things like the subway rather than give it to "rich corporations".

The thing is, the tax revenue that NYC would have realized from having Amazon there would have been greater than the $3 billion in tax credits NYC was to give them. But that's not the real idiocy here.

Let me spell it out to those of you who don't understand this: NYC was not writing Amazon a check for $3 billion. That's not how tax credits work. What NYC was doing was to tell Amazon that if they located their HQ there, NYC was willing to forego $3 billion worth of taxes that Amazon would otherwise pay.

Tax credits are offered this way because the government that extends them expects that--even with the tax credits--there will still be a net increase in tax revenues, solely because the corporation is in the state, employing people and spending money on goods and services. 40,000 new jobs, even in a city like NYC, generates a nontrivial amount of income, which therefore generates a nontrivial amount of income taxes; and those people need to eat and drink and get to and from work. The corporation needs to have a building which is supplied with electricity and other utilities, and there will be supplies that the corporation uses, which they will buy.

Any time you earn or spend money, the government gets its cut. What NYC has done, sticking its thumb in Amazon's eye like this, is to forego all that tax revenue. They've cut off their nose to spite their face.

And they're calling it a "victory".

* * *

Read numbers two and three! Francis Porretto is up in arms today, and it is great. #2 because he tells off a leftist asshat, starting with, "You pitiful animal,..." and getting better from there.

#3 because it talks about the whiny New York bitches, specifically Governor "Abortions 'R' Us" Cuomo, and his complaints about President Trump's policies; and Trump told him to go pound sand. WINNING!

* * *

Well, how very interesting. What's the Virginia law say about a lieutenant governor who's being tried for sexual assault in another state?

* * *

I do not have words for how fucking stupid this is. But I'm going to try.

One of the prime faults of "renewable" energy--secondary only to how diffuse it is--comes from the fact that you can only collect the energy as long as the source persists. That means "only when the sun is shining and there are no clouds" for solar, and "only when the wind is blowing" for windmills. And so the big push for "renewable" energy is to find efficient ways to store it. Generate as much as you can when the sun shines and the wind blows, and store the surplus, somehow. This is woefully inefficient since you are converting the energy a total of four times (source > electricity > storage > electricity) but it does cover for the fact that your solar panel is useless at night and your windmill is just a weird statue when the wind's not blowing.

All of this equipment and nonsense means that "renewable" energy is lots more expensive than conventional energy like coal, oil, natural gas, or nuclear--but it's worth it to reduce carbon emissions, right? Right??

Well, get a gander:

Compressed air energy storage (CAES) is a sort of physical battery (as opposed to a chemical battery) that uses excess electricity to compress air. The compressed air is stored in a tank, in a balloon, or in an underground cavern. When more electricity is needed, the compressed air is heated, which drives a turbine as it expands.

***

Traditional CAES usually can't be carbon-neutral because it uses natural gas to heat up that compressed air.

This horseshit goes on to say that it doesn't add as much carbon emissions as a natural-gas-fired plant does, but what it doesn't do is to give any comparison as to how much carbon is emitted per megawatt-hour, which would be useful for helping one decide whether this scheme is a good idea, or merely an epicycle meant to cover the deficiencies of solar and wind power.

I am betting that the comparison is disfavorable. "This emits less carbon!" is more convincing than "This 10 MW storage facility emits less carbon than a 50MW source does!" FFS a 10 MW source emits less carbon than a 50 MW source does; that doesn't make it better.

This particular scheme attempts to make up for some of the inefficiencies inherent in its design by adding even more complexity to the thing by adding heat storage and transfer machinery to it. How? The system "...is able to retain the heat that's removed from the ambient air as it's being compressed." So in other words they're REFRIGERATING the compressed air and storing the heat--and then warming the air with the stored heat as they let it out to run the turbine.

Gahhh!!! THE STUPID BURNS LIKE FIRE

* * *

Speaking of stupid, we have this:

Unfortunately, Ocasio-Cortez is, to put it politely, woefully misinformed. Her manifest ignorance is so egregious that it's easy to believe her policy positions like the Green New Deal are parodies of progressivism, and AOL herself is a Republican Manchurian Candidate whose aim is to discredit the Democrats with contemptuous laughter. Her "Green New Deal" has already been exposed, its violation of the laws not just of economics but of physics, laid bare. It's a preposterous wish-list redolent of commie Woody Guthrie's "Big Rock Candy Mountain," where "handouts grow on bushes," just like the Green New Deal's promise to "pay people unwilling to work." And it's equally ignorant of the real-world limits that keep the utopian "pie" forever in the "sky."

No, I think the GND is exactly what the Democrats want.

* * *

Kim du Toit came from South Africa, so he understands the situation. Under the leftist ANC government, the country has already squandered the considerable and modern infrastructure that had been built under the Apartheid regime. A country that once was an exporter of electricity now cannot make enough to satisfy its own needs.

So--that big deposit of gas and condensates they found? Not gonna get exploited; or if it does, it'll be done so badly that the wealth such a deposit yields will be concentrated in the hands of those in power, and the people themselves will receive no benefit from it--not even reduced energy prices.

But I'm not expecting there to be so much as one well drilled into that deposit. It just won't happen; the government there is hard left, and their current program of nationalizing agricultural lands will not encourage private enterprise to invest in South African gas.

* * *

Typical college asshats. I guess the idiots infesting the campus of University of Moscow Chicago would rather have had armed criminals roving around the place.

My maternal grandfather called that place "The University of Moscow". He died before I was born. You do the math.

* * *

Not economically viable. The Airbus A380 was a solution in search of a problem, and once the development troubles hit and delayed shipments, and people who needed big cargo aircraft bought the Boeing 777 instead, that was pretty well it for the A380.

Particularly in today's environment there is a practical upper limit on how big a jumbo jet can be before it stops making sense. I think the A380 was outside that envelope from the get-go.

* * *

Public schools are shit. You do not send your kids to them if you want them to learn anything.

...one particularly disruptive and dangerous boy was stabbed one afternoon right outside school. It appears he came to a violent death a few years later. What a tragic waste of human potential.

That might be so, but the waste did not happen when he died; that happened many years prior to his death. Some people are pre-wasted. The writer says so when describing the kid as "disruptive and dangerous"

* * *

A drug which lowers your susceptibility to contracting HIV/AIDS is not a license to have unprotected sex with the world. Unless you are a total fucking moron.

This drug is being marketed to people who want to have lots of unprotected casual sex with random strangers--ie, the homosexual community.

* * *

Busy today. Argh.

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#6637: Welcome to the Saint James Club!
That's the title of a jazz fusion album by some so-and-so from the early 1990s, and the name stuck with me such that I tended to use it instead of saying something like, "Well, look who caught up with the rest of us!" When someone would finally admit something that was glaringly obvious to everyone but him, or would give up trying to do the impossible, "Welcome to the Saint James Club!"

No it doesn't make any damned sense. I didn't claim it did, not then and definitely not now. This is one of those cases where the only way anyone else could understand why I found this amusing would be if the human race were suddenly given massively parallel telepathy. That would have the effect of removing all individuality and turning our species into one organism, and it would ruin things like baseball games and "Trivial Pursuit", so it's just as well.

But!

Today I have about a thousand links to natter on about, and some of them are about things which I considered and dispensed with months ago, so it seems as if everyone else is late to the party.

Welcome to the Saint James Club.

* * *

The whole "Russiagate" thing is a gigantic nothingburger, made of nil, topped with void, served with side orders of limbo and total vacuum. I said this over a year ago. It was obvious from the get-go that it was nothing, that it was just an attempt by the Democrat-media complex to knobble the Trump administration; as time went on and little scraps of nothingness were breathlessly reported as big news, it only further convinced me that I was right.

The story a day or two ago was that the Senate intelligence committee (holy shit what an oxymoron!) had determined that there was nothing to it, that it was an oil tanker's worth of oyster stew made from zero oysters.

* * *

The return of brownouts is now assured. California is bound and determined to turn itself into a third world shithole.

They're already well on the way, of course.

Almost everyone that goes out to visit one of our major cities on the west coast has a similar reaction. Those that must live among the escalating decay are often numb to it, but most of those that are just in town for a visit are absolutely shocked by all of the trash, human defecation, crime and public drug use that they encounter. Once upon a time, our beautiful western cities were the envy of the rest of the world, but now they serve as shining examples of America’s accelerating decline. The worst parts of our major western cities literally look like post-apocalyptic wastelands, and the hordes of zombified homeless people that live in those areas are too drugged-out to care.

Vox Day says, "It's just a matter of time before the next Black Plague sweeps the cities of the West. And a good thing it will be too."

I disagree.

I'm not saying that the Black Plague won't hit; it will. That kind of rat infestation, you can't avoid it. The typhus outbreak they're having, that's the warning of what's to come. Yersina pestis is nothing to fool around with and those west coast cities are playing with fire.

I disagree, however, that it'll be a "good thing".

Vox Day is not really a humanitarian, and I can respect his position because I know that he arrived at it with careful thought. I know what he means when he says that such a plague would be "good"; I just happen not to agree with him.

If the plague were to confine itself strictly to those cities whose policies resulted in the outbreak, then I could agree with him: hey, those bozos voted for the conditions that led to this outcome, so they deserve what they get. But Black Plague is contagious before the patient is symptomatic, and once you're showing symptoms of infection, that's it: nothing can be done for you. You need to be treated with antibiotics upon exposure to it, and the antibiotics have to be high-zoot maximum effect types. Amoxicillin won't do it.

The problem is, the plague will spread far beyond those cities. Air travel makes it possible for someone to be infected in LA, and then travel anywhere in the world before he starts showing symptoms...and everyone who he comes in contact with, everyone on every plane he flies in, is at risk of contracting the disease.

So, no, a plague on the west coast would not be a good thing. Not if it's the Black Plague, which is most likely given that yersina pestis likes to live in the fleas that infest rats, and LA has a rat problem.

Here's hoping that it'll be something less nasty.

But the simple fact is that we used to have ways of preventing this kind of pestilence. Vagrancy used to be a crime. We used to do something about vermin like rats. We used to have laws that were meant to prevent the kind of squalor that now pervades these cities, and we had those laws specifically because we knew that--in their absence--our cities would become breeding grounds for disease.

Because that's what always happens in those conditions.

We knew it, and a bunch of lame-brain lefty touchy-feely types got rid of the laws against vagrancy: "Oh, they can't help it and we need to be compassionate!" A million regulations on how rat control can be done made it impossible to control the rat population. Laws against crapping on the sidewalk aren't enforced because "Poor homeless people, what else can they do?"

And then you get typhus and you get cholera and you get a whole bunch of other things, diseases which have been around for millennia and which have plagued Man whenever he lets his guard down, whenever he gets too lax.

* * *

The world wrought by feminism.

My thesis is this: when men ran the world and women ran society we had a chance to conduct our lives in some semblance of balance, but women have abdicated their running of society and thus, it has collapsed dramatically. Women forced their way into the running-the-world deal and now we have a world gone mad. And the beautiful society which we Western women built is in tatters. Moms decided they were the same as men so they deserted the home and babies to grab their briefcases and rush out to run the world.

***

It was here that the community developed ground rules on how to manage children and husbands. Any mother was free to chastise anyone else's child should they misbehave. It was pretty unheard of for someone to say, "How dare you correct my child!" They would agree amongst themselves what was desired behavior. Good manners were required and trained. Neighbors backed each other up. It was expected.

The essential rules that Moms formed in their infants and homes radiated outwardly into streets, schools, offices, boardrooms, departments, factories and agencies to form the framework of Western ethics. The communities, churches and schools all echoed the same values because most people went to Church or Temple and so, the foundation of our mores being Judeo/Christian, Mom's rules were designed by the Ten Commandments. Many towns didn't lock their doors, even at night.

That's a pretty good thesis.

* * *

Global warming socks Hawaii and shuts down Haleakala Observatory. They got a foot of snow there. The snow line dipped to 6200 feet, which is the lowest it's gone since 1952. But yeah, man-made global warming is to blame, of course.

* * *

Apple I can understand, but Googe? Of course Googe ejected "Do no evil" from their corporate ethics quite some time ago, so I suppose this makes sense.

* * *

Once again, Steve Martin look-alike Bill Nye opens his mouth and removes all doubt. He's saying that life doesn't begin at conception. So, when does it begin, then? At what point does the zygote transition from "lifeless matter" into something that's alive, Bill?

But we shouldn't be surprised by this fatuous crap. It's a logical extension of the pro-abortion movement's prior position. Used to be that the debate was over when the zygote became a human; there was no doubt that "the clump of cells" was alive, though. Apparently that's passe now, though, and they expect us to believe that a living ovum and a living sperm cell combine to make...inanimate, lifeless stuff, which somehow grows into a living baby, eventually.

Eventually, after an undefined period of time, because that time period grows longer all the time. It used to be that the first few weeks of gestation were "pre-human" but now--at least in New York and Virgina--the entire term of gestation isn't long enough for it to become human. Now, it's only a human being if the mother decides it is after she's finished delivery!

...and if it's not human, she's not a mother, and WTF, biology?

All of this is a perfect example of how leftism takes the simple and convolutes it beyond recognition.

* * *

Like this. Mitch McConnell, majority leader in the Senate, has said the Senate will vote on the New Green Dildo, and the left's response?

Don't let Mitch McConnell fool you: this is nothing but an attempt to sabotage the movement we are building. He wants to silence your voice so Republicans don't have to explain why they are climate change deniers.

Yes, because that's exactly how people go about silencing voices and sabotaging movements: by bringing them up for a vote.

But you see, the leftist's comment belies the truth: they know this is a cockamamie scheme. They know that the New Green Dialator is chock-full of horseshit which is 100% bad for America and its citizens. The last thing they want is a straight up-or-down vote on it.

Publishing the thing was an epic-level error, but I'd expect that kind of thing from someone as feckless, vapid, and self-absorbed as Ocasional-Cortex. Taking it to a vote dumps the entirety of the thing right into the official minutes of the Senate, and if there is anything the Democrats do not want it is for their Senators to have either to A) vote for the thing, or B) vote against it. Precisely because it's such lunacy that they can't pass the thing, and they all know it.

But their constituencies want all the things in the New Green Devastator-of-sphincters. The Democrats can't vote against it--but they also can't vote for it.

Hence the nonsense from the left about how McConnell is a nasty meany-mean-head for bringing the thing to a vote. Whenever Republicans capitalize on a Democrat fuckup, what else could they be?

* * *

And while we're talking about the New Green Demolisher, take a look at that map of the domestic flights from just two airlines and explain to me how you'll replace all that with "high speed rail" in a mere 10 years. Especially in light of the fact that California tried to link two cities, spent several billion over ten years, and GOT NOTHING DONE. A few miles of track laid; that's it.

* * *

Latest extrusion from Disney in the Star Wars universe pretty much craps all over the original movie and piles on the anti-white-male bandwagon. At this point --actually, prior to it--I have lost all interest in the series.

Unlike Dr. Doomcock I will still enjoy the original movies in their un-fucked-with versions, but have no interest in any further interaction with any iteration of Star Wars. The Last Jedi was the first SW movie that I did not see in the theater, and I have not seen any of the spin-off movies anywhere but on pay-per-view. That's over, too. I won't bother watching "Episode IX" until it's free to watch.

* * *

I have no words. But government doesn't care about the little people as long as they keep paying their taxes. If a few female proles get raped, oh, well!

* * *

NYC shoots itself in the foot.

A band of imbeciles, led by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez have stepped into the void. They do not understand the questions or the issues. As noted in prior posts, AOC has relieved Republicans of being the party of stupid. When it comes to stupidity, she's in a class of her own.

Emphasis mine. Complete, feckless ignorance does not stop them from thinking they know exactly how to proceed, though. It's kind of fun to watch.

* * *

A baby boomer pining for baby boomer horseshit. Anyone who is nostalgic for the Black Panthers is an idiot. They were communists, they were criminals, they were thugs.

* * *

15 years later, out of juice. Opportunity endured a good long time on Mars.

* * *

Today is Wednesday. Tomorrow is Valentine's Day. Whee!

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#6636: Let me understand this.


"Cooperate"? You mean, if people would just:

--love their neighbors the same way they love themselves?

--consider others to be their family?

--not steal, or kill, or lie, or covet, or cheat?

--were tolerant of ideas they didn't invent themselves? Were willing to accept that not everyone thinks the same things they do, and to not excoriate and pillory them for not being politically correct? To not threaten to kill or punch people they don't agree with?

I don't think that's what those guys meant, but it's the truth: if we would just follow the teachings of Jesus Christ, just think of what we could accomplish!

(Comment on this)

#6635: High Speed FAIL
The plug has been pulled. And good riddance.

Repeat after me: if high-speed intercity rail were economically necessary, it would already exist.

* * *

Actor, TV show, hate crime hoax, blah blah blah, etcetera. He finally turns over his cell phone records to the police but a whole bunch of information is cut out, rendering the information "useless", in so many words.

You know what? He wasn't the victim of any hate crime. He went out at 2 AM and was doing something he shouldn't, and in the process he got his ass kicked.

* * *

The laws are applied differently to illegal aliens. Look here, Bob Menendez you pustulent extrusion on Lucifer's backside, those people are already criminals simply by having entered the country illegally. Not putting them in jail for drunk driving will not change that.

They are criminals. Get used to it, you festering piece of distended rectum.

Or, what--you're worried they won't be available to vote for you, illegally, if they're in jail?

* * *

These galactic shape science deniers need to be put in jail and maybe hanged for their heresy. After all, the shape of the Milky Way Galaxy is SETTLED SCIENCE and we need dark matter to explain how it can be that shape when there is too little observable matter for it to retain the shape we all agree is the correct one!

...that's what it looks like when you cast a real scientific finding in the kind of light climate "scientists" use for any dissent from their orthodoxy.

* * *

Look at all the green energy subsidies gone to waste. 19 out of 33 went bankrupt.

* * *

The rot in Hollywood runs to the core. It was ever thus, though.

* * *

Neglected infrastructure. Chicago has "helicopter money" it can dole out to the tune of $1,000 per month to thousands of people, but it doesn't have the budget to hire bridge inspectors and maintenance crews so that a major frickin' highway doesn't have to be closed.

* * *

I agree with Karl Denninger. When the light turns green, you should first look to make sure there's no hazard approaching before moving. You don't have to spend an hour analyzing everything; just a second or two to make sure that guy who's supposed to stop 1) is trying to stop, and 2) can stop.

If you fail to do that, any collision that occurs is partly your fault.

* * *

In the Democrat party, the Jews have always been at odds with the blacks. One of my friends from high school started out slightly to the right of moderate (when he was in high school) and ended up on the left side of Vladimir Lenin (after getting his masters' degree). Early in that transition it was he that pointed out to me the essential hostility that Jews and blacks had to each other under the big friendly Democrat tent, because only one of them could be the bigger victim.

The Democrat party has obviously chosen its side. Because the Democrats are now all about preventing "islamophobia", we can see that they prefer the muslims and blacks to the Jews.

Naturally they are trying to do this without losing the leftist jew vote, which is why they are trying to put a lid on the antisemitism of their newly-elected muslim savage congresscritters. But muslims are, by definition, virulent antisemites.

The Democrat party is itself tacitly antisemite. A broad swath of their constituency certainly is; just look at any lefist/socialist/communist protest march and you'll see scads of pro-Palestine propaganda (which is, again by definition, anti-Israel and antisemite). But there are, as I said, still a hell of a lot of Jews who vote reliably Democrat, and the DNC does not want to lose those votes.

So this muslim bigot won't be moved off any committees, nor will she face any proscription for her antisemitic remarks. The DNC is hypocritical three times before breakfast.

* * *

Heh. I get too much entertainment from that meme. Oh well.

* * *

So: freezing rain last night. The inch or so of snow we got Sunday almost melted, but not quite. I need to get some salt to spread on the driveway. And now it's snowing again.

To make things even more entertaining? This morning I was awakened by the sound of what I thought was a chain saw. Turned out to be a pavement saw because--yeah!!--yet another frigging water main break.

I watched them cut pavement and start digging up a section they had previously replaced. Judging by the footprints in the snow, it looks as if they sent people out to read the water meters first. How they figured out where the leak was, though, is beyond me.

Anyway, having seen what was happening, I warned the still-somnolent Mrs. Fungus (who was playing Snooze Tag) and she got into the shower right away--and good thing, because a scant two minutes after she was out, they'd shut the water off to the entire street.

I have heard water running through the storm drain for a couple of weeks, and just thought it was due to all the precipitation we've been getting. The fact that the water main had broken yet again, only with no obvious external sign of it, makes me worry about sinkholes. If the water main was broken and the water was getting into the storm drain without going up to the street, how was it getting there?

I don't know what the damned water main under my street is made from, but "paper mache" seems high on the list of probabilities.

(Comment on this)

#6634: Oh, that'll help. Right?
Huge deposits of natural gas and "condensates" found off the coast of South Africa. "Could be a game-changer," they say.

Why?

Venezuela has some of the largest oil deposits in the world, but under socialism the place can't even pump and refine enough of the stuff to supply its own needs.

SA has embraced socialism and is currently working on driving out all the white farmers. Any bets on what percentage of the remaining population is skilled in petrogeology?

* * *

NJ, WTF? They are taxing people based on rain falling on their property. No, really, NJ wants to tax people for rain.

Wow. Just wow. So any non-permeable surface on your property gets taxed, because when it rains, stuff runs off those surfaces and into storm drains. Driveway, patio, roof, sidewalk, deck, whatever.

Bet there are laws requiring you to have a driveway of X or Y material, too, and if you don't, you get fined. So you can either pay the rain tax or the fine for parking on grass.

Fantastic.

* * *

The problem is, you can't discontinue their other welfare at the same time. So you're giving $1,000 per month to people who already get a crapton of benefits from the government.

I recall reading somewhere--several somewheres--that a single woman with a couple of kids can rake in somewhere north of $50,000 per year in welfare benefits if she plays her cards right. That's already about $4,000 a month.

I don't know what Chicago thinks will happen when they start giving their "poorest" citizens more money, but it sure as hell isn't going to encourage them to go find jobs.

* * *

This law is working exactly as was intended. An Illinois law that places more regulations on gun shops is forcing their closure, because complying with the regulations is simply too expensive.

Having failed at citizen disarmament by simply banning firearm ownership, Illinois now attempts to stem the supply of legal firearms by making sure no one can afford to sell them. Make it prohibitively expensive to be in the business of selling guns; that way no one can make money on selling them.

That also keeps people from buying guns out of state, by the way, because guns crossing a state border must be shipped to someone with a federal firearms dealer permit. Accept such transfers for money and presto, you're a dealer! Fork over the bucks for your Illinois firearms dealer licenses and make sure you put in $10,000 worth of security cameras and-and-and.

For all his faults, Rauner would have vetoed this horseshit. Just saying....

* * *

Also, could we please dispense with this notion that Pritzker's "progressive" tax scheme is a tax on the rich? It's not. It really isn't. This tax scheme is designed to increase taxes on the middle class who will see the greatest increase as a percentage of their income.

The claim is that by moving to a progressive tax scheme, the state can give "relief" on property taxes and lower them. The state will collect more money from "the rich" and property taxes will be reduced.

And if you believe that, I've got some prime oceanfront property to sell you.

What will happen in fact is that the average middle-class taxpayer will see his income tax rise by about $4,000 per year. Meanwhile, the decrease in property tax won't be any $4,000. Even if I'm generous and stipulate that the average person will see his property taxes go down at all, and the average homeowner sees a reduction of something like $1,000 per year, that means he still ends up paying $3,000 more in taxes because his income tax went up.

There's no way in hell Illinois is going to give middle-class taxpayers a tax break--anywhere--equivalent to the rise in their income taxes. The state is broke; Pritzker is giving lip service to property tax relief because he knows it's a selling point, but I don't believe that there will be any significant property tax relief. Illinois will not voluntarily reduce any revenue stream for any reason, not when the official motto of the Illinois Democrat Party is, "Well, the taxpayers will just have to pay it."

And not to put too fine a point on it, but "the rich" have a lot more mobility than even the middle class do. They can move out of Illinois and stop paying Illinois taxes a lot more easily than the rest of us.

But even if there were significant property tax reform--such that say, the bunker's property taxes were cut in half--there's absolutely no guarantee they'll stay that way. A few years down the line, it'll be a little increase here, and a little increase there, and pretty soon we're right back where we are now, only the income taxes are high, too.

To make things even more entertaing, Illinois is working on raising the state minimum wage to $15. Lovely.

* * *

Oh, and guess what? It's looking like that second-rate actor from a third-rate TV show perpetrated a hoax and there was no "hate crime" after all. According to Second City Cop there is still a huge nothing to the case: no evidence, no suspects, no video.

A detective said that it's basically a "Grindr date gone bad". There weren't any white supremecists--wearing MAGA hats or not--and this guy either fell on the ice or got beaten up during a hookup. Either way, this joins the 99.997% of all other "hate crimes" that got national attention over the past decade which turned out to be 100% false. Nothing but a hoax.

They won't charge him with anything, though, don't you worry about that.

* * *

Half of all murders in America are committed by four percent of the population. Get rid of that exceptionally violent four percent and we could cut homicides in half.

Pity there isn't some mechanism or procedure we could employ to rid ourselves of these uncivilizable savages.

* * *

Democrat proposes something that is economically impossible, and the media tries to help her backpedal. Did you know, she actually tried to claim that Republicans edited her "Green New Deal" manifesto and added the stupid parts?

...right, it was all stupid. But I mean things like giving free money to those who are "unable or unwilling to work", and so forth.

The response to that was to show the document's metadata, which clearly shows that it came directly from one of her staffers.

What's-her-face's staff meant to publish this horseshit, and the only reason they're saying otherwise now comes from the fact that the reaction to it was so very strongly negative. The Democrat leadership knows they can't have this document laying out there for everyone to see, even though they want everything in it, because it makes their desires and goals so plainly visible.

* * *

Yep, that's racism, all right.

* * *

Harrison Ford should STFU about global warming until and unless he starts living like Ed Begley Jr. That means giving up the private planes and helicopters, by the way.

* * *

Trust me, it's not just the Navy. The people who run our government have been using the military as a laboratory for social experimentation. All the things they've done in the name of "diversity" and other political correctness goals are all things which detract from its basic mission.

* * *

That doesn't insult me. That's only insulting if you have any insecurities about your equipment.

...but it's now been classified as "hate speech" by the British police, so no one gets to use it, anyway. Huzzah.

* * *

This past weekend I went to work on the water filter edifice that Og put together. First step for me after it was done was to pressure-test it, so Saturday I hooked it up to a hose and turned the water on.

Water began pouring out of the filter housing and soaked half the laundry room.

...turned out there was an o-ring that went between housing and the filter bucket. Put that in, one less leak, but the place that the hose screwed into the apparatus was leaking like a seive. Only other leak was at the inlet to the thing, near the ceiling. Just that one place! Good!

Sunday I re-crimped the copper-to-PEX fitting, and repressurized. Where the hose connected to the manifold, though, was leaking like a seive, so I shut the water off and went to work on finding another way to connect it that didn't involve YET ANOTHER trip to the hardware store.

I ended up taking some short lengths of PEX, a 90° bend, an end plug, and the hose inlet fitting from a Prestone Flush-n-Fill kit, and bodging together a new hose connection for it. This leaked a hell of a lot less than the actual fitting that I'd bought, and with a little tweaking stopped leaking at all.

The re-crimped joint up top still leaked, meaning it was the solder joint and not the PEX. About one drip every three seconds. There was a slight leak from where I'd crimped PEX onto the "out to [accessory]" valve, but closing that valve stopped it from leaking and that was fine.

Og said, "Okay, so reflow that joint and test it again."

Problem: no solder. He'd said he was going to leave the solder, and he left everything else, but the solder was not in evidence. *sigh*

So I've stalled there. Can't use solder I have on hand; it's all lead. Needs to be tin or "silver-bearing" solder. I had some tin solder somewhere but of course now I can't find it. I sure as hell don't want to go out and pay $15-$20 for a huge wad of solder when I need about a 1" chunk of the stuff.

Left the pressure on for fifteen minutes and nothing else leaked...except for the bypass valve on the filter itself. That's a warranty item, though, so I'll need to take that back to Menards (or follow the warranty info in the box).

What a pisser.

One future job--probably one I'll handle when we're working on fixing up the basement--is to replace all the valves etc on the laundry tub. They're 54 years old and encrusted with rust and mineral deposits.

...but the point is, once the leaking joint is fixed, I need to pressure-test it again, and repeat as necessary until it can be pessurized for an hour with absolutely no leaks from any joints. That's going to be fun!

*sigh*

(Comment on this)

#6633: Well, at least that's one less thing to worry about.
I started that thing in November of 2005, and it languished for more than a decade; but tonight I finished it.

The story is named "Rôshar" and it's set in a D&D campaign setting. It's kind of a "mary sue" story, in that the main character is someone who has read the dungeon master's guide for the setting, and plays D&D a lot, and knows he's in a D&D setting. But his knowledge is strangely limited and he doesn't know everything, and he can't change anything, so he has to fight to live just like anyone else. He even gets killed a couple of times.

It's not publishable because of all the D&D stuff; I originally wrote it for my own entertainment. But it's a pretty decent story. And at least now it's not hanging out there, unfinished.

(Comment on this)

#6632: Ow. No.


I know! That first colonoscopy is always a doozy.

(Comment on this)

#6631: Lots more than the gross WORLD product.
In a post aptly titled "We're Going to Need a Bigger Envelope", Pixy Misa estimates that Alexandria Often-Wrong's "Green New Deal" will cost on the order of $375 trillion dollars per year over the course of its ten-year plan.

Problem: the gross world product--the economic output of all the nations of the world, everywhere--is about 25% of that, about $94 trillion.

Okay? Let me put it in simpler terms: THERE IS LITERALLY NOT ENOUGH MONEY IN THE WORLD TO DO THIS.

And that's a correct use of the word "literally", too. I don't incorrectly use that word as an intensifier anyway, but whenever I find myself applying it to a statement of that magnitude I feel like I have to point that out. I mean, most of the time, when someone says "there isn't enough in the world" they are engaging in hyperbole, but I am speaking a literal truth. It is impossible to pay for the Green New Deal.

Not difficult. IMPOSSIBLE.

$375 trillion per year for ten years is $3.75 quadrillion, which is to say, 3.75 times ten to the fifteenth dollars. In order to make GND happen, we would need to consume the entire world's annual output for forty years. And not to put too fine a point on that, but if we were to do that, it would mean nothing else could be done. So you'd be waiting forty years to buy a new car, a new computer, or anything that wasn't GND related. A new iPhone? Ha. Apple wouldn't be making them; they'd be making control modules for electrical infrastructure or something.

In this scenario you don't even have food being made. The production of food counts as economic output.

That's why I say that it is impossible to pay for the GND, because there is literally not enough money in the world. Even if the United States somehow gained control of the entire world economy (which, by itself, would be a neat trick) it still would have to devote some of that output to feeding people, because it takes a lot less time than forty years for people to starve to death--and your economic output is directly dependent on how many hands you have to get the work done.

This scheme literally requires enslaving everyone in the world, making them work for food, and paying them nothing else.

Hey, that sounds like socialism, all right!

* * *

John C. Wright suggests that the plan doesn't go far enough, that there are more rights that it should convey. That "abolish disease" thing sounds like a good one to me.

* * *

Gloating over the clusterfuck in Virginia. I agree 100%.

* * *

No, there need to be charges filed. Gross incompetence coupled with gross negligence led to a patient dying, because instead of getting 2 mg of the anti-anxiety medication that was prescribed, from a 10 mg vial the nurse administered an unknown amount of a paralytic which--surprise!--killed the patient.

The nurse didn't just make a mistake; she blew right past a whole slew of safety protocols designed to prevent this kind of thing.

Okay? When a medical person makes a single error which kills a person, there's some wiggle room--but when you deliberately ignore warning after warning, policy after policy, and someone ends up dead? There needs to be more of a penalty for that than just "well, no more nurse career for you."

* * *

Last night I watched Tenchi Muyo! through ep 7; and then I started writing.

I found myself working on something I haven't touched in seven years, a fantasy story for which I'd come up with an inchoate ending years ago, but never added. There's not a lot left to tell now; I'm not sure how many pages I added but it was almost 5 AM when I realized I needed to go to bed.

Then, awake this morning when my wife got up for work--and I'm only up now because my stomach was empty, and I sat at the computer and read stuff while eating. *sigh*

Back to bed for a few more winks, I think.

(Comment on this)

#6630: The surest way to wreck the economy
Green New Deal. (GND). Let's just pare it down to the headings:

Ban affordable energy.
Eliminate nuclear energy.
Eliminate 99 percent of cars.
Gut and rebuild every building in America.
Eliminate air travel.
A government-guaranteed job.
Free education for life.
A salubrious diet.
A house.
Free money.
Bonus insanity: Ban meat.

The article explains in detail what each of those headings means in the context of the GND scheme. The thing is, they might manage to get our economy to be "carbon neutral" if they allowed nuclear power, but of course leftists hate nuclear power more than they hate carbon emissions because nuclear power is both carbon-free and plentiful and--in bulk--cheap. It's not subject to any whims of nature, we can turn it on and off when we need it, and it's the densest form of power we have, beating even coal in the ergs-per-kilo department.

If your goal is to reduce the entire population to poverty, you have to get rid of nuclear power. Power is wealth; the more energy you have to work with, the more wealth you can generate. They don't want the masses to be wealthy; they want the masses to be dirt poor, because if everyone but the elites live in grinding poverty, the elites will have total control over the masses.

Pixy Misa is even more pithy:

* Zero emissions by 2030. Yes, zero emissions.

* No nuclear power.

* No planes. Catch the train everywhere.

* Cow corks.

* Newly fabricated human rights include guaranteed employment, guaranteed paid time off, free education, free health care, subsidised housing, free money for those unwilling to work.

* Upgrading or replacing every building in the United States.

* It will all be paid for by printing money.

* Shut up about hyperinflation already.

Emphasis his.

Gomorgons dissects the GND scheme with the scorn it deserves.

* * *

So--from one Democrat fiasco to another:

Virgina.

Looking at the possibility of losing the Virginia governorship to the Republicans, a few liberals are calling for adjustments to the PC penal code. The New York Daily News, normally unforgiving in its commitment to upholding the strictures of political correctness, ran an editorial entitled: "Facing facts: Blackface is awful, but is it always and immediately disqualifying from public office?" The paper seemed to argue that the growing volume of cases argues against a zero tolerance policy.

They are only making that argument because it is Democrats who are being disqualified. I can guarantee that even if they save the Democrats currently under fire with this move, the next time any Republican even implies racism they'll be on him like you-know-what on you-know-what.

The answer they desire to "Is it always and immediately disqualifying?" is, "Not when it's a Democrat!"

And of course it's not just racism, but sexism that the Democrats have to deal with. Virginia's lieutenant governor is credibly accused of rather severe sexual misconduct. Democrats claim to be the party that supports women and minorities, so it's understandable how finding that two of their elected officials are less than stellar in that regard should cause the party to oust them posthaste--but Democrats don't do that, not when power is on the line.

The party that gave us Jim Crow and the KKK makes absolutely no apology for it whatsoever, and does not disavow any of its elected officials who have racist pasts, which is why Robert "Sheets" Byrd remained in the Senate for 51 years.

The party that gave us Ted Kennedy and Bill Clinton makes absolutely no apology whatsoever for their excesses, either, and does not disavow any of its elected officials no matter what nastiness they get into.

So right now their big aim here is to get out from under this scandal without a Republican being seated as governor of Virginia. That's all that matters to them; and if they have to be hypocritical about racism and sexism--well, Democrats are hypocritical three times before breakfast.

And here we have a discussion about what was done and not done around that time. No one did blackface for Halloween in the 1980s. That was not because we were hypersensitive about giving offense (we were not) but because it wasn't considered funny or even mildly entertaining. There was no value to doing it--people would look at you dressed up in blackface and ask, "What the heck is that about?"

That sort of disinterest is exactly the correct response to it, IMHO.

Yet this turkey, now the sitting governor of Virginia, thought it was hilarious and appropriate--in 1984--to put on blackface and pose with a guy in a KKK outfit. That kind of nonsense can only happen in an environment where the person has little or no contact with minorities.

* * *

I can imagine what the response will be. Gordon Ramsay does not lightly suffer fools. Him saying "Piss off, you donkeys!" is the polite version of how I expect him to react to this SJW/NPS nonsense.

And of course the quotes of the press releases from Gordon Ramsay's company included his favorite non-perjoratives: "vibrant" and "stunning". Heh.

* * *

Sign language for "abortion" is pretty explicit. First, you mime cradling a baby; then you wad the baby up and throw it on the ground.

That's about right.

* * *

So, last night I found the DVD case I've been looking for. I was, predictably enough, looking for something else when I found it; and with that found I resumed my search for the BluRay player. That was not where I thought it was, either; it was in the computer room closet.

But! With those things found, and with the BluRay player re-integrated into our entertainment system, I sat down and proceeded to watch the first three Tenchi Muyo! OVAs.

I loved every minute.

TM! is one of my all-time top five favorite anime series. For quite a while I virtually knew it by heart. Time and a lack thereof has kept me from seeing it for more than a decade, but these characters are like old friends to me and I still laugh at the laugh lines even though I've heard them dozens of times.

The OVA series came first and was the best iteration. The first TV series was not as good but still really entertaining; the second TV series lost my interest and by the time GXP came out I no longer cared. The problem is one of continuity; the OVA series is the best of them but suffers from too little screen time. The TV series is enough screen time to tell the tale, but it's an entirely new continuity. Tenchi in Tokyo was a third continuity that departs even further from the OVA one. GXP is a fourth continuity, about which I have zero curiosity. And fifth there was the series called War on Geminar in the US. And besides all that, they had Magical Girl Pretty Sammy, (MGPS) an OVA series with the same characters but an entirely different story, and then a TV series with a second MGPS continuity, and Magical Girls Club which was a third! So there are as many Tenchi universes as there are series, and that's both annoying and impractical. I count eight.

You can see why I gave up.

But in the OVAs--the original and best iteration--the artwork and animation are fantastic. Entirely acetate, ink, and paint (no digital) and flawlessly executed. The English dub set the standard for dub quality.

Ep 3 is one of my favorite episodes, too, because it's where the story really settled down and a whole lot of important information was given to the viewer. We really begin to understand what is going on, and it's explained why a "demon" was contained in a back-country shrine somewhere in Japan's Okayama prefecture.

The story continues from there, of course, and eventually leads to a confrontation with a big bad guy in eps 5 and 6. Ep 7 is a "filler" ep but it's another old favorite of mine. Eps 8-10 are also filler eps and probably the weakest of the series, but they add background. Then we get to 11 and 12, which are the "Dr. Clay" eps, and they're epic.

Ep 13, "I fought the fop", pretty mundane.

...there are actually two more series of OVAs, taking the whole thing to ep 24, which I've never seen. These were animated years after ep 13 came out in 1995--ep 14 has a release date in 2003--and as far as I know the creative staff was almost entirely different. I suppose I ought to watch them but I'm not optimistic about how well I'd enjoy them.

* * *

I have the first TV series on laserdisk. It'll be while before I watch that again, because the infrastructure at the bunker must be reconfigured for that, but I do want to.

Infrastructure: I know where the LD player is, and I know where the LDs are. The LD player is not connected to anything and the LDs are buried under a bunch of other stuff that got moved into the spare room while the house is being redone. Eventually that stuff will be accessible and our basement will have a TV in it to which the LD player can be connected. And then I can watch the entirety of the TV series again.

* * *

Well, there's a second person accusing Virginia's lt-gov of sexual assault. Remember the standard for evidence during the Kavanaugh hearings?

No, neither do the Democrats.

* * *

Four hours and twelve minutes of work separate me from my weekend. *sigh*

(Comment on this)

#6629: A feature, not a bug.
Unwanted Blog digests the Brave New World outlined in the socialist pipe-dream called "the Green New Deal" by its avowed socialist progenitor, Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez.

The bill wants to commit the US to being 100% fossil-fuel-free in a decade, among other things. Which is flatly impossible.

We could start with the impossibility of ripping out millions of gas-fueled furnaces and replacing them with electric heat. Imagine how well that would go over, especially in places where it routinely gets very cold. Electric heat is fucking expensive even compared to heating with gas or fuel oil. It's expensive because while electricity converts to heat pretty efficiently, it takes a lot of electricity to heat up an area because transferring the heat from the heating element to the air is not very efficient.

We could continue with the impossibility to converting all transportation to electricity. The conversion of all home heating systems to electrical will, by itself, overwhelm the existing electrical infrastructure. Adding transportation to it? Forget it.

We could also point out that upgrading the electrical infrastructure to support all this will be prohibitively expensive and require an incredible amount of mining, smelting, machining, and so forth--a lot of very dirty industry will be required to make this happen. To say nothing of actually building all the electric heaters, cars, trucks, buses, trains, etcetera.

And of course there's the fact that there isn't enough solar energy and wind power available in the US--nor could it be built in ten years--to supply the demand such a shift will require. And not to put too fine a point on it but the cost of switching over to all-electric would make the national debt look like pocket change.

Of course the price of electricity--given such demand and no concomitant increase in supply--would make electricity prohibitively expensive for nearly everyone.

All of those would be excellent points, perfect arguments against the implementation of this idiotic scheme. But those points will only matter to people who are not leftists.

Cant afford the government mandates? Well, have they got an answer for you: sell your home at cut-rate prices either to the government or to favored developers, and move into public housing. Make do with public transport. Give up all that nonsense about living out away from the authorities. "Individualism" is a thing of the past. "Freedom" to go where you will, when you will, is not a part of the five year plan. Learn to make do with less, to aim lower, to keep your horizons good and close.

This is what is the point behind "the green new deal".

Making Americans knuckle under and do what the government says, that is what this bill is meant to do. It's not about saving the environment; none of the econazi horseshit is about that. It's all about making sure that government can tell you where you may live, how you may live--and when you may live.

(Comment on this)

#6628: The important thing to remember
Virginia sent Robert "Sheets" Byrd to the Senate for decades, and that guy had once been elected "Exalted Cyclops" of his local Klan chapter, which is probably why no one thought anything about politicians who, in the past, dressed up as Klansmen or went around in blackface.

Autoplay warning: someone else knew about the sexual assault allegations against their lieutenant governor. This just keeps getting better and better.

* * *

If you think the politicians in Illinois care what Moody's has to say, guess again. It really doesn't matter; as long as they get their tax increases, the Machine will be happy. Even though that will, as predicted, cause the rich to flee the state.

* * *

New hole found in glacier. Oh noes we're all doomed because of global warming.

Climate "scientists" are more confident that cooling events are caused by "man-made climate change" than warming events, yet a hole in a glacier is proof of global warming etc. Of course.

So a hole in a glacier that comprises 0.01% of its total surface area is reason to panic because of global warming, even though the hole has occurred in a place which is prone to vulcanism.

Uh, no.

* * *

The one saving grace for the metric system is how easy it is to convert between units. That's it; that's what makes it superior to "English" or "Imperial" or however you identify it.

So you know that 1cc is 1ml and therfore a cube 10cm on a side (1,000 cc) is 1 liter. Wheee!

But when it comes to "feel", you need to be raised exclusively in a measuring system in order to understand it. I can only understand metric in terms of Imperial, so to me "1 cm" doesn't mean anything but "2.54 cm equals one inch" does. I've memorized a few equivalents so I can convert to units I understand: 15cm is about 6 inches. 30 cm is about a foot. 3.8 liters is a gallon. And so forth.

The writer is correct when he says that the originators of metric picked arbitrary constants which could just as easily have been something else.

* * *

So, all those women wearing white to the SoTU speech: The League of National Socialist Women wore white to public events, too.

So, maybe those photoshops of those women in Klan robes wasn't too far off the mark after all.

* * *

I have heard that lefty organizations tend to be incredibly shitty places to work. I'm really not surprised by that; if you consider what shitholes socialist and communist countries are, it actually makes perfect sense that a lefty organization would be totalitarian. It's what they do.

* * *

Remember that story I linked to, about the out-of-control teenage girl who got tased because she was fighting the police, kicking and punching and biting? Well, all charges against her have been dropped.

I believe this is the best way to proceed. Just get the cops out of schools entirely and let the Chicago public school district handle their own damned security--and if they can't, too bad. There's no upside for the police, here.

*rolleyes*

* * *

Typhus epidemic in Los Angeles because they're not doing anything about homelessness or rats, and that's a fantastic way to get yourself a typhus epidemic.

A third-world city in a state which is rapidly becoming a third-world country.

* * *

So, nice and warm around noon, crashing to single digits early tomorrow morning. Whee!

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#6627: Save it for your next job interview
Don't expect peoples' attitudes to change about this, Rob. But I understand what you mean since I cared for my mother as her health declined.

Only those who have done it understand, I think. Meanwhile, expect everyone else to react with something like the post title.

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#6626: An observation
So: last summer, people on the left were talking about how Ruth Bader Ginsburg was such a badass because she exercised X much and "Oh man that workout would kill me!" and even after she broke three ribs she was blah blah blah blah blah.

Now? She hasn't been seen in public in 47 days--except for an alleged appearance at some performance, of which there are no pictures or anything else--and the same people who claimed she was in such strapping health are now saying, "Well, she's 84, and you don't get over surgery that fast you know so she's perfectly fine."

Hmm.

* * *

The last picture in this post is priceless. The Democrat state Senator just covering her eyes with a hand. Schadenfreude: it's what's for dinner.

Take 'em down for their perfidy. I love to see Democrats being held to their own standards.

* * *

Oh well.

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#6525: Today, not working
Took a day off to help Mrs. Fungus with doctor's appointments and stuff. Back to the grind tomorrow.

* * *

That's easy. Arse Technica, the global warming resource, asks, "Climate change or 'just the weather?' Here's how to answer that".</a>

Does the weather event "prove" that man-made global warming is taking place? Then it's climate change.

Does the weather event contradict man-made global warming? Then it's just weather!

Even better, there's a graph there which shows that "climate scientists" are more confident that extreme cold is the result of global warming than they are about extreme warm events. (Sorry, "anthropogenic climate change", because wouldn't it be silly to make that kind of assertion so explicitly about global warming? Even though "anthropogenic climate change" only takes place because of human carbon emissions, which cause warming.)

As usual, 100% ascientific horseshit.

* * *

That about wraps it up for Elizabeth Warren, I think. Apparently she left quite the paper trail of claims that she's some percentage of indian., stretching back decades, when the percentage of indian DNA in her genome is vanishingly small.

She really did. Well, that's one less Democrat running for President in 2020, I guess.

* * *

Meanwhile, the whole Virginia governor thing is a mess.

Item: sitting governor, a Democrat, dressed in blackface when he was in medical school in 1984. He is being pilloried for it by everyone and they're trying to get him to resign. There's one problem with that.

Item: sitting lieutenant governor--also a Democrat--has been accused of sexual misconduct which might even rise to the level of "rape". ANd to make things even worse the lieutenant governor has made some intemperate remarks about the situtation. So it's not looking as if he'd survive very long in that job. But there's one problem with that.

Item: sitting Attorney General, a Democrat, has a little blackface problem his own damn self, which makes his tenure as governor rather problematic, too.

What happens in Virgina if all three of the Democrat skunks are ousted because of their skunkery? Well, the speaker of the Virginia house, Kirk Cox, who is a Republican, is next in the order of succession.

...which is probably why the Democrats and the media but I repeat myself have been downplaying the AG's blackfaced bigotry.

But this sure is entertaining to watch.

* * *

Tried cranking the Jeep about a week ago, when it was bitter cold, and it wouldn't crank, and the hood was frozen shut so I couldn't get at the battery to charge it. Tried starting it Saturday but the battery was 100% dead, so I put it on the charger, and left it trickle-charging from then until this morning, when I started it.

Thankfully, there was no cold-related damage to anything. But the brakes are kind of "gronchy", because of rust. Really need to drive the thing at least 2-3 times a week to keep that from happening....

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#6524: LEARN TO CODE!
Holy crap are those reporters pussies. Laid-off journalist crying because people are telling him to learn to code.

A lot of people are telling journalists to learn to code because when coal miners were being laid off in droves, the press uncritically parroted Obama's statement that the coal miners should go back to school and learn computer science.

...because of course people living in dirt-poor Appalachian country have so many options for going back to school. Why, there's a world-class junior college on every other block there, and tuition is ridiculously cheap! /sarcasm

Even if my sarcastic statement were true? Not everyone can do it. Some people are smarter than others, and some of those guys aren't coal miners solely because they couldn't get into Harvard or Yale. What should they do?

The callous, cavalier attitude of the press toward the travails of the blue collar workforce is bearing its bitter fruit. They don't like the taste much, do they? But the attitude summed up in "LEARN TO CODE" is exactly the attitude they've shown to others, for many decades.

And the whiny fuckin' bitches can dish it out, but can't take it.

On the other hand, though? In a story I wrote, once, I made comment about useless university degrees. Main character, a college student, had a guy with a doctorate in East African History as his faculty advisor, a Dr. Merkes. He asked his friend why there were so many useless degrees.

"I know for a fact that Dr. Merkes can't do algebra. That kind of engineer we can do without," was the reply.

Most of these chuckleheads probably couldn't solve 2x+3=9 for X let alone program a computer to display the result.

* * *

I guess if you're white, you're not allowed to get your face dirty.

Mary Poppins is RACISS. Because of the "chimney sweep" scene where she gets her face covered in soot.

Kim du Toit discusses the matter.

You people who are seeing blackface/minstrel acts in every soot-smudged white face really need to get lives. Shit.

* * *

"We should spend that money fixing the subway!" NYC giving Amazon $3 billion in tax breaks, and some say "spending" the $3 billion on that is unwise.

Generally speaking--not always--when a government gives a business a tax break for locating within its jurisdiction, it does not give a 100% discount. Amazon will still pay taxes for operating in NYC.

Even if Amazon were to pay no taxes itself--if NYC is foregoing tax income from Amazon's operations there--it is not a net loss for NYC. Amazon will still employ people and buy materials and products, and the income and sales taxes on those things will benefit NYC.

By giving Amazon a tax break, NYC is not "spending" a single dime. It is merely foregoing revenue it would otherwise collect if Amazon were to locate there without tax breaks. If there is not $3 billion in NYC's budget for fixing the subway right now, whether or not Amazon gets a tax break is irrelevant.

I really don't give a rat's ass whether or not Amazon sets up shop in NYC, but what I do care about is the usual short-sighted horseshit spewed by people who can't do arithmetic. "We need to fix X before we can do Y!" You aren't even trying to fix X now, so STFU.

* * *

Oregon takes steps to limit the supply of housing, state-wide. Because price controls always, always, always lead to short supply and rationing.

Remember the gas lines of the 1970s? Those happened because of government controls on the price of gasoline. As soon as those controls were lifted, suddenly there was plenty of fuel available. Gas cost more, but you didn't have to wait in line for an hour to buy the five gallons the station would sell you; you could drive right up to the pump and fill your tank.

Which would you prefer? As much gas as you need at market price, or a few gallons of cheaper gas?

It works the same way with rent control. Because the price of the commodity is artificially limited below market value, there is no incentive to produce more of the commodity.

This is what happens every time price controls are enacted.

* * *

San Francisco is now a third-world shithole. And it will be as long as they refuse to do anything about the bums and the illegals.

* * *

Kim du Toit points out to Louis Farrakhan that there are plenty of black-only countries which are mostly, or entirely, islamic. Take your pick, Calypso Louie.

* * *

An antifa goon pulls a gun on police. The guy sounds like a real winner.

* * *

So, to put it in perspective, the wildfires in California emitted as much CO2 as all the power generation in the state.

* * *

This is all pretty much correct. Once I was playing D&D with my niece. Her character had been given a sap, and was tasked with using it on a guard outside a building.

...except no one had explained to her how to use a sap, so she threw it at him.

To hit: 20. Follow-up roll: 20. That guard was out of action, all right, and wouldn't wake up for hours.

Plus side: completely obviated having to make any stealth checks.

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#6523: GYAA HA HA HA HA
I had not intended to link or comment about this until I saw the following comments from someone who believes no one has ever landed anything on the Moon:



"Where's there stars. Why didn't they take a photo while facing earth? Some pictures, there's no sun and the moon looks like shit."

In order:

"Where's there stars." The stars aren't visible because the scene is daylit. If you set the camera so that it could photograph the stars, the entire image would be washed out by glare from the Moon's surface and you'd STILL get nothing.

"Why didn't they take a photo while facing earth?" Because the thing landed on the far side of the Moon, from where the Earth is not visible, ever.

"Some pictures, there's no sun and the moon looks like shit." What do you expect it to look like? Rockefeller Plaza? And every last picture there is lit by the sun. Does he mean "shadow"? Who knows?

* * *

37-year-old illegal alien rapes 11-year-old girl. Reporter tries to hide the fact that the pervert in question is an illegal alien by leaving this one fact until the very last line of the article: "The Associated Press reported that he also faces a federal immigration detainer." You do not face a federal immigration detainer unless your immigration status is in doubt.

* * *

The Rams don't have to worry about going to the White House now, do they? Heh.

* * *

So, here we go: Virginia governor "Blackface" Northam has a liuetenant governor, of course, only he turns out to be a sexual predator, at least by the standards the Democrats and the media wanted to apply to Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh prior to his confirmation.

There's no question that "Coonman" Northam has to go, either. Democrats have never hesitated to hound out of office any Republican for whatever scandal got traction; it's long past time for the GOP to start doing the same.

Kurt Schlicter said it best:



* * *

Maybe if the news media actually had any integrity, people would be interested but what people don't want is to have to pay for the privilege of being force-fed leftist propaganda. Most people.

Certainly they're not going to make it a vacation destination.

* * *

That old piano in your living room may be worth hundreds NOTHING! Not surprised at all. Anyone who's actually tried to sell furniture wouldn't be surprised by this, either.

* * *

You have only yourself to blame for this. If you want to ride on one wheel, buy a unicycle.

* * *

James Woods brings up a good point. How long has it been since we last saw Ruth Bader Ginsburg? Is she still alive?

* * *

Look at all the big names on this list. Evidence preservation letters were sent to those people. If they delete anything (such as tweets calling the kids racist) they can be in serious trouble for doing so.

Hit them fast, hit them hard, and don't let up.

* * *

Had a hankering to watch the old Tenchi Muyo! OVAs last night. I have like three versions of the series--VHS, LaserDisk, and DVD. Problem: of the three, the latter is the most easily accessible, but I can't find them.

I could put my hands on the laserdisks in a matter of seconds, but then I'd have to find patch cords and dig out the LD player and-and-and. The videotapes are buried in a closet but I know right where they are and could get at them with a little digging, but that set only goes through ep 6 as I recall. I also can't remember if I ever bought eps 1-6 on LD.

The DVD set is comprehensive...but it's in a zippered DVD case which has been misplaced. It is in a box, somewhere in the spare bedroom, but which box? That DVD case also contains the DVD copies of things like Kimi ni Todoke and Haruhi and others. It was in the family room until I cleared everything out so I could paint, and come to think of it that may have been the last time I saw the thing.

I know only that it did not get thrown away. Otherwise, God alone knows where it is. *sigh*

So, instead of doing that, I dug into a couple boxes in the basement, and found a short stack of anime magazines (Shounen Jump and Animerica Extra, all from 2003) that I don't care to keep. There's room in that box now for things I do want to keep, so that's a plus.

Well, could be worse, I suppose.

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#6522: Viewer warning
Watched an ep of Gordon Ramsay's 24 Hours to Hell and Back the other day, and it was prefaced with a warning. He read the title card: "Warning: this program contains images which may make you puke," in this voice that dripped with disdain and disgust. That's because that episode contained a restaurant kitchen which was the answer to the question, "What happens if you never clean a heavily-used restaurant kitchen for at least five years?"

That show makes me ask, "Where in the everlasting fuck is the health department?" We pay a lot of taxes for this shit, including health departments that have oversight over various jurisdictions. So, where are the health inspectors, coming in to evaluate the place for safe food preparation and storage? Why do these places actually have rotting food stored in their freezers? Why is there such a thick layer of sludge on things? Roaches? Dead rodents?

* * *

The science is settled, say the people who can't do basic arithmetic.



Maybe not lead off with a 3-year difference when you're talking about a "10-year" challenge.

And not to put too fine a point on it, but Lake Oroville is an artificial lake. They dammed a river and created that lake. Prior to human intervention there was no lake there. Using changes in an artificial lake as "proof" of man-made global warming is pretty fucking stupid.

Picture #2 shows more trees with a long blurb explaining why it's so good that trees can grow.

Pic #3 compares a picture with one from a century ago, and says, "This is the truth about the #TenYearChallenge". No, that's the one century challenge you're doing, you idiot. "I fucking love science but I don't know the difference between ten and a hundred!"

For #3 and #4, the two pictures being compared do not have any common elements visible in them. That could be any forest and any bare ground anywhere; ditto for the coral reef. In fact, the closer I look at those two pairs of pictures, the more convinced I become each pair are images of two entirely different locations.

#5 shows the now-famous picture of a starving polar bear. We must be reminded that the population of polar bears has decreased from 8,000 to 30,000 in the last ten years.

Fact: wild animals die of starvation all the time. I find it unlikely this polar bear could not find food at a time when there are more polar bears than ever unless it was sick or unable to eat for other reasons.

#6 is a pair of computer generated images showing the extent of arctic ice, and they are presented with absolutely no context whatsoever other than "2006" and "2016". So, for example, the former image could be January 2006 and the latter could be August of 2016, and probably are. We don't know, but I do know that NASA likes to play those games with the ozone "hole" over Antarctica, by comparing the low number for, say 2015 to the high number for, say 1960. Because if they compared the low and high numbers for the same year, they would show that there ozone hole is a temporary, seasonal phemomenon.

Much like, y'know, melting arctic ice is.

#7 cites "rainforest" deforestation from 2006 to 2018, which is a period of twelve years. Let's see 2006 to 2016, or 2008 to 2018, guys; if the problem is really that bad, the difference should be obvious even with two years lopped off.

#8 is actually an apples-to-apples comparison. And there are some glaciers in the world which are melting. So, bravo for having a decent grasp of arithmetic and making a case for the fact that the climate is changing.

...except that the climate always changes. There is no proof that human activity caused that glacier to melt, and this pair of pictures isn't proof either.

#9 Is Lake Oroville again. Jeeze.

#10 Brings up Lake Chad. The first picture is from 1972 and the second is from 2012. That's forty frigging years, not ten. And what is happening to Lake Chad? Is it drought, overuse, or what? Should the people of Chad and Niger starve because they can't irrigate their crops?

#11 shows a picture of a plastic bottle on a beach, then shows a photoshop of the same bottle underwater ten years later. Totally fake!

#12 shows no evidence that the two pictures were taken in the same spot.

#13 doesn't even try: the first picture is an aerial photo and the second's from ground level.

#14 shows a snail; in the second image it has the word "extinct" plastered across it. I thought you people believed in Darwin?

#15 is two pictures of seals. In one picture, a seal has a plastic bag around its neck. Apparently in 2009 there were no plastic bags, but in 2019 there are.

#16 brings up the starving polar bear again.

#17 another melting glacier, 2006 and 2017 respectively. It's a ten-year challenge, not an eleven-year challenge. But see what I said above about glaciers.

#18 which lake, what years?

#19 where? How much time passed betweem them? I don't even think those are the same places.

#20 Another math fail. Again, what time of year do these two computer-generated images represent? 1979 was a very cold year. And not to put too fine a point on it, but 1979 and 2007 are 28 years apart.

The whole point behind this nonsense is, "look at how much man-made global warming has ruined in just ten years!" but the comparisons are so sloppy with both the alleged facts and the presentation of them it doesn't convince at all.

But this is the best evidence they have.

* * *

Cold weather is bad for electric cars. Batteries are chemical devices, and cold temperatures slow or stop chemical reactions. Your battery becomes a brick if its electrolyte freezes.

* * *

Covington student suing a whole bunch of assholes for libel. Good for them!

* * *

Yes, that's decidedly a fail, right there. Also f-ing hilarious.

* * *

Today I got to sleep in; and when I got up, Mrs. Fungus said she wanted to go see Glass.

We ended up making the 4:30 showing in a theater which was almost entirely deserted thanks to it being Super Bowl Sunday.

The movie was phenominal.

I enjoyed Unbreakable and Split was pretty good, but this one beat them both.

* * *

After the movie we stopped at Menards, and I picked up $60 worth of plumbing supplies, including a propane torch with a trigger, so I'll no longer have to use a sparker to light a propane torch. Just CLICK and off you go. That was $30; I also bought a bunch of PEX fittings and another bag of crimp rings and so forth. I should be good to go on pressure-testing the manifold for the water filter; and once that's done, start making with the PEX lines to and from the crawlspace..

Only problem is, Menards didn't have the tool I wanted for cutting the stuff. They had any number of expensive ones. I'll check another store for that. It can wait since I don't expect to do anything else with it until next weekend. Besides, I forgot to buy the Sharkbites we'll be using to divert the water from the main water line to the filter manifold.

Looking it all over again, I realized that if we do end up wanting to put in a water softener, and I really want to put it by the laundry tub, it won't actually take too much doing.

But, one thing at a time.

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