Category: General

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Like tears in the rain.

I don’t know if that phrase is from an older work, or if it originated in the script of Blade Runner.

Nonetheless, it’s a great visualization.

Afghanistan has fallen. Apparently President Biden was shocked, according to some reports. This, less than a month after he told America and the world that the Afghanistan Military could handle the country’s defense.

Uh huh.

There are tons of articles all over the net with various takes on this situation.

The most poignant was one I read on Apple News. It’s actually an article that appears in The Guardian here .

We’ve spent 20 years in Afghanistan. In that time we’ve lost troops, had others maimed, still others remain profoundly affected by what they saw and endured in that country. Those men and women did an outstanding job and their duty, of that there is no question.

I’m less certain that we should have remained in Afghanistan after we’d broken the Taliban. But that wasn’t really an option now was it?

The beliefs that allow the Taliban can’t be changed overnight, and apparently they can’t be changed in 20 years. I suspect that even 100 years wouldn’t change the underlying belief structure that creates monstrous ruling bodies like the Taliban.

You’d have to systematically destroy every mosque, kill every Imam, burn every copy of the Quran, wipe all memory of Islam from the internet, and destroy all of that religion’s adherents everywhere.

US soldiers take up their positions as they secure the airport in Kabul on August 16, 2021, after a stunningly swift end to Afghanistan’s 20-year war, as thousands of people mobbed the city’s airport trying to flee the group’s feared hardline brand of Islamist rule. (Photo by SHAKIB RAHMANI / AFP)

First of all we don’t have the stomach for that kind of bloodshed. Second of all, it would be wrong for us to try. Third of all, it would be doomed to fail right from the start.

We have historical examples of failure to eliminate beliefs. Rome tried it with the Christians. Hitler wasn’t successful with Jews. Even the Ottoman Empire couldn’t eradicate the Jews in Spain, nor could the Inquisition. The kind of oppression required to attempt something like eliminating a religion would simply drive it underground.

You have to kill not only the practitioners of a religion, you have to kill all memory of it entirely. Which is something that the Taliban understands all too clearly. That is why no world heritage site, or non-islamic archeological dig is safe in Taliban territory. They understand how to destroy “false beliefs”. Their brutality in this is unmatched.

Which brings me to the point I want to make.

We as a nation must enact a non-interference policy. It is not our job to free anyone from their dogma, or give them a democracy by force. Our military is ours. It exists to defend us and our interests from invaders, or conquerors. That’s it. Our allies are by definition in our best interests and they too deserve our protections just as they offer their armies under treaty to our protection.

Taliban fighters sit on a vehicle along the street in Jalalabad province on August 15, 2021. (Photo by – / AFP)

That being said, when we’ve done the job, we should leave. To do anything else leads to decades of misery and unintended consequences.

Think of the misery the young woman in The Guardian article has to endure now. Had the Taliban remained in force for the past 20 years, she’d still have lived the misery to be sure. But now she knows there’s another way, she knows what she’s lost, she’ll feast on that bitterness for the rest of her life.

Were I in her position…

I’d develop a pretty healthy hatred of the US and all Americans for abandoning her to her fate after showing her how things could be different. I’d be teaching all my children to hate Americans, America is a lie, America cannot be trusted, America deserves to be destroyed.

That’s how the cycle of violence continues.

We MAKE our enemies, and frankly, we do it very well. How many more generations will spring from this one woman and all the others like her, enlightened and abandoned by our actions?

We shouldn’t have long term student visas for any country outside our allies. Short term upper division students perhaps, but not long term college educations.

Long term students simply become contaminated, then return to their countries with knowledge of a very different life. How can one of those folks ever be content returning to cooking over a fire pit or defecating in a hole in the ground, when they’ve lived the convenience and ease that Western civilization enjoys?

I know what I’m saying sounds cruel. But I think it far more cruel to “give” someone 21st century knowledge and then send them back to the 6th century.

President Biden’s legacy will be his Baghdad Bob moment a month ago. But the legacy of hatred and terrorist activities to come, belongs to our government from Bush through Biden, perhaps even further back than that.

I think it is time for us to exit the role of “good guys”, it’s time for us to stop trying to remake the world in our image. It’s time for Americans to be mythical beings in undeveloped parts of the world. Something whispered of, but never seen.

It is well past time for us to stop feeding our enemies, or pumping trillions of dollars, material, and American lives, into a hole that will never never be filled.

People make war on each other, and people die every day, disease and natural disasters happen all the time, these are facts of life. We need to get past our messiah complex and focus on our own problems.

There is no shame or guilt in recognizing that we can’t help everyone. The shame is in telling those people we will help, then breaking that promise.

Close our borders, allow visitors from allied countries only. That way we don’t contaminate and destroy primitive cultures.

We have historical examples of cultural contamination starting with the European conquest of North and South America. (Damage done. There’s no going back) We have examples of other indigenous people having their lives turned upside down in the South Pacific during World War II. (See Cargo Cults.) We even have contemporary examples of possible cultural contamination with all the hubbub surrounding UFOs and Alien contact.

Just the rumors of Aliens causes shockwaves and distractions in our “enlightened” culture. If they actually exist, it would make sense for them to be circumspect. Especially if they’re doing some kind of anthropology study.

We’re advanced compared to some of the folks on our planet, but we’re not superior.

We certainly don’t have enough positive outcomes to be dictating how any one else should be living.

It’s time for us to come to grips with our limitations and recognize that;

“Sometime you have to be cruel to be kind.”

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Well, here we are in August

The Summer is coming to a close, the children are supposed to be going back to school. (That rite of passage may again be disrupted due to COVID.)

I’ve got a couple of projects to get done before the Winter, those projects are on hold because of the living room and flooring mess.

There’s no reason to paint the stairs if there’re going to be workmen dragging all manner of tools and things up the stairs.

I can lay in supplies for the projects in the mean time. So at least that will be, in some small way, productive.

The flooring is the last piece of the puzzle regarding the living room, then we’ll have to have the fire suppression system inspected and re-pressurized. The jury is still out on the question of the furniture being replaced. At this point it’s likely that the couch and chair will be, but the rest of the wood furniture may have survived.

As we head back into another heat wave, I’m glad that the ceiling is at least back so that the air conditioning won’t be running quite as hard. My “Martian” special worked but was inefficient as far as insulation went. We’re now fully two months into having this disruption in our lives. Although, there are others who’ve been waiting 4 to 6 months.

Between supply shortages and construction repair crews busy schedules there are a lot of people waiting in line for remodels and repairs.

At the moment, I have a pile of trashed building materials on my front lawn and can’t really even do much in the way of yard work. There’s supposed to be a crew member coming up to pick up the trash and the ladders, I expect he’ll be by when the work is complete. It makes more sense to make only one trip instead of several so I’m not really all that worried about it.

This Summer has been a season of things breaking. My faithful 12 year old monitor gave up the ghost a week ago. While I didn’t want to spend money I’m glad I bought a new monitor. Amazon on the other hand said this monitor had more ports than it actually does. Their description was mostly correct except for this one small detail. Nonetheless, the thunderbolt port was there as indicated, and provided me with a method to connect to the computer.

Amazon’s description said there was a Thunderbolt, DV, and HDMI, port. There was only Thunderbolt and HDMI. I think the copy writer on the Amazon site may have grabbed the wrong specifications. Frankly, it’s probably too much of a pain in the ass to return the monitor and call them on their mistake. Going to the Samsung site told me I had the correct model number and that this unit did not contain the DV port. So word to the wise, cross check Amazon’s description and specifications against the actual manufacturer’s before you click that convenient “BUY” button.

In this case it’s not a big deal, but If I’d specifically needed the DV port it would have been.

The panel itself is very nice and crisp. It’s even convenient to watch movies or TV on.

The new router is working like a champ although there have been some situations where firmware updates on it have caused glitches throughout the WiFi devices connected to it. Nothing particularly difficult to resolve, but as is always the case with computer equipment these glitches show up at the most inconvenient times. I’m enjoying the speeds the router provides. I don’t much notice the difference between WiFi and hardline connections. With the previous router, there was a noticeable difference and if I had to do anything intense, like downloading an OS or watching movies I always connected to the hardline. Now I’ve actually moved devices over to WiFi and been able to decommission some of the network switches.

When I reassemble the living room, I’ll be considering connecting everything WiFi and getting rid of cables that aren’t strictly necessary.

Lately, I’ve noticed that I’m not actually watching what little of the news I used to catch. I’ve even stopped reading the news online. It’s all gotten too crazy for me.

Masks, not masks. Vaccine, not vaccine. Mandated Vaccinations No Mandates. Members of Congress saying that they want to create a two class America over vaccination status.

It’s one thing if the media says stuff like that, you pretty much ignored it because they’re the media, BUT when members of Congress start saying stuff like this, it’s head snapping!

When our government starts asking for vaccination proof, we will be uncomfortably close to NAZI or Communist forms of government. Are we at the point that our Republic is already dead? Are we just scrabbling around in the carcass of what was once a great country? Where does that leave what used to be “Average Americans”?

It’s stuff like those questions that makes reading or watching the News an increasingly unpleasant experience. I’m down to looking at the insanity about once a week unless something really catches my attention. At least I’m not completely uninformed but I can’t be any more informed than once a week.

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Congratulations to Richard Branson!

Very well done Sir!

I was astounded, that in the wake of Branson’s achievement instead of congratulations, there were pundits, politicians, and wags, saying things like, “This is why we need a billionaire wealth tax.”

SAY WHAT???

Branson, used his own money, legally earned, requisite taxes paid, and he built a space craft. Then he further put his money where his mouth was and climbed aboard for a flight.

The thing could have malfunctioned, and freeze dried Branson and his crew, it could have exploded, it could have crashed. Thankfully it didn’t, but there was a rather high element of risk in the adventure.

All you have to do to recognize that is look at our planetary history of space travel. That particular history is littered with brave pioneers who died due to various accidents. Remember the Challenger? How about Columbia? Both of those were tried and true pieces of technology which had flown many times before. So much so, that the shuttle launches had become almost ho-hum.

Were I a Branson, Bezos, or Musk. I too would be working to get my own ships into space. The moment my technology worked well enough that I could build a space station, I wouldn’t come back to Earth.

Why bother? The petty politics of this planet and stupidity of our leaders make space look pretty darn attractive.

Space is like international waters. I could keep what I salvaged, and there’s not a damn thing the politicians or practically anyone else could for to stop me.

My next move would be to make the long assed journey to the asteroid belt and start claiming mineral rights on various asteroids. I’d catalog the minerals, and then start the bidding.

“Oh China, you need 220 million tons of nickel? What’s your opening bid?”

“Russia, you need iron? How much? What’s your bid?”

“Germany, you need copper? I’ve got a nice little asteroid just full of the stuff, What’s your bid?”

The whole while I’d be telling politicians, “TAX THIS”

I wouldn’t be asking for money, I’d be asking for Oxygen, Food, Water, and only materials that I couldn’t mine, make, or make use of from the asteroids themselves. I’d be looking for Ice (Water, Methane, Co2) you name it, because I suspect in short order I could make my asking price machines that would be able to refine those materials in my space station too.

Earth would always be my point of origin, a pretty blue speck in the solar system. But a shithole of politics and petty disagreeable people. I’d market employment to folks that could and would work for a living.

I’d give folks another choice, if we decided to take Mars for ourselves, colonize it, and build a better world there’d be no-one who could stop us.

You wouldn’t want to be “fired” from my enterprise because that would mean being sent back to Earth, the shithole, the place where you’d be detained, questioned by moronic politicians looking for some “Crime”, and then taxed on your presumed profits.

Space wouldn’t be an easy, or a safe life, but it would be your life. A life where you were directly in control of your destiny.

For all of you reading this that are thinking., “That will never happen. These billionaires are just playing around because they have the money to waste,” Think again.

Musk has already set his sights on Mars. Branson is talking about space tourism. God only knows what Bezo’s goal is. But each of these guys became a billionaire by seeing opportunity and exploiting it.

If you think they’re doing all of this just to see who’s dick is bigger think again!

One ex NASA engineer was quoted as saying something like, these guys are making advances, spending in a year, what NASA spent in a month. Think about that. How fast do you think innovation is going to happen now that private companies know it’s possible to make their own ships?

With the ability to make ships comes competition about who makes the best ships, the fastest ships, the best engines, the best navigation, Branson’s Unity will probably look like the Wright Brothers plane in 70 years or so. Earth will probably become a quaint little backwater where people are still bitching about politics, religion, poverty, skin color, equity versus equality, and who to tax next.

The real power brokers of humanity will be stretching across our solar system, and beyond.

Space, work ethic, and capitalism, will be the great equalizers. You fuck up in space, and no one will ever hear you whine or scream about the unfairness of it all. If you’re beyond the orbit of Mars and fuck up, you’ll likely be dead and frozen for an hour before anyone gets your first call for help.

Space makes no judgement about you, it will kill you given a chance. All meat is dead meat to the harshness of vacuum.

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From the WTF file?

BLM has moved from being an organization that may have had legitimacy at one point, into the realm of jackass clowns looking for attention.

Perhaps it’s more about the Benjamins at this point, maybe it aways was. I’m not sure.

Who knows how much BLM donation money Patrisse Cullors actually funneled into her own pocket.

Now BLMLA has filed another lawsuit in California. This time, against Santa Monica. The first one was against the city of LA. Basically BLM contends that the police weren’t doing their job.

by JOEL B. POLLAK

You’ve got to be kidding me!

This is the legal equivalent of beating someone to a pulp yanking their pants down and ass raping them, then kicking their unconscious body before you lift their wallet and run away.

In other words, normal behavior for BLM. (If you’re thinking, “He really doesn’t like BLM,” BINGO! You win the cupie doll!)

At this point I think all of BLM should be in a nasty prison, somewhere in the middle of the Sahara Desert. Their ANTIFA buddies should be staked out in the sun outside the prison.

The eternal whining of self hating lilly white BLM followers about climate change & the lack of air-conditioning in a Sahara prison would be an appropriate warm up to eternity in hell for the leaders of the organization including Patrisse Cullors.

When will people wake up to the fact that BLM has done no good for the people they claimed to be standing up for? Donations didn’t go into the community or to the families who lost loved ones. BLM didn’t even help with funeral expenses. But they sure did capitalize on dead people and their families. BLM was nothing but a SCAM. BLM didn’t start out as a SCAM, but it degenerated into one pretty damn fast.

I’d like to see a class action counter suit against BLM Inc, consisting of all the people who lost homes, businesses, neighborhoods, and peace of mind.

Because I like irony, perhaps BLM should pay reparations???

Whatever legitimacy BLM may have had in the beginning is long gone.

Now in a lot of folks minds, BLM has become conflated with ANTIFA, violence, murder, rioting, looting, defunding the police, and utter lawlessness. They’re responsible for more gun sales than any organization in history short of maybe World Wars, The RED scare, or the KKK.

I’ll remind you that the KKK did drive gun sales… Among African Americans!

African Americans knew the police or other authorities weren’t going to help them. It was incumbent upon them to protect themselves, their families, their homes, and communities.

This is where the antics of BLM and ANTIFA with their year-long rioting have led all Americans. They’ve destroyed police moral (if not entire police forces), the law, and severely damaged society. So all Americans are re-learning the same lesson African Americans learned long ago.

If you cannot depend on the laws of the land, you must depend on the oldest law on the planet.

The strongest survive. The weak, diseased, and parasites don’t.

So thanks BLM… I’m really looking forward to living in “Mad Max” world.

Now, I’m off to weld spikes & add nitrous to the BMW. Later I’m planning to take a fuel truck from hijackers who’ve got it now!

Good Job!

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Not Sure if this is better… or worse.

I’ve been noticing over the last few months more and more “Cookie Notifications”.

Hell, even I post a cookie notification on this site.

I don’t collect or indeed look at the metrics provided by these cookies but the blog application collects them. I don’t monetize the readership of this blog, I’ve thought about it, but decided against it .

While I could use the money, ultimately it’s more important to be able to speak my mind without worrying about someone having leverage to force me to take down or apologize for a post.

I posted the cookie notification because you, the reader, have the right to know that information is being collected about you.

That being said, I’ve noticed while reviewing the various cookie policies of sites that I visit, a shocking amount of information is being collected.

The most egregious site thus far, is a site of an adult nature that I’ve enjoyed for many years. This adult site posted their cookie policy sometime in the past few weeks, (Hey, I enjoy the site, but don’t live on it.)

Reviewing their policy presented me with over 100 “Affiliate” companies all of whom set tracking cookies, share information about my interests, have access to my location as listed on site, and pretty much anything and everything I’ve provided about me. Given the nature of the site, the immense sharing of information is troubling.

On the one hand, they’ve probably always been sharing this information, such is the nature of monetization. On the other hand knowing what they’re sharing, and the breathtaking length of companies they’re sharing information with, gives me considerable pause.

Any reasonable adult knows (or should know) that sites of an “Adult” nature are risky by nature, these sites are “The Wild West” and often beyond the reach, or notice of law enforcement. These sites come & go without warning. If you’re a “Free” user they’re going to sell some of your information. After all, they’re in it to make money.

As a reasonable adult, we each must make a value choice. Do we really want to see what’s on the site versus how much we’re willing to “pay” to see it.

That thought leads me to question if these sites will make the next logical move. A move where paid membership affords you privacy from tracking and monetization. If the site is making money from memberships do they need to also share the member’s data?

I’d actually pay a membership fee, if I knew that I’d be excluded from having my peculiarities broadcast to hundreds of unknown advertising agencies attempting to target me with their wares.

Essentially, if you’re using a paid VPN service that’s what you’re doing when you’re surfing the web but not logged into Bing, Google, Yahoo, or whatever. Most of the people I know, use a “Burner” email address for questionable sites.

I wonder about all the information that’s already out there on us all as individuals. The genie is pretty much out of the bottle. Will I forever be followed by an ad showing ‘Fat bottomed Blow Up Slut doll’ because once in 2000 while operating my computer intoxicated, I thought it was interesting to click on that particular genre of ad?

This line of thought has also led me to wonder about my overall membership, free or otherwise on the small number of sites that I frequent.

Much as I’ve enjoyed the site I visited last night, do I really need to visit it, or any sites? I really appreciate their upfront attitude and transparency. For me that is a definite check in the “Plus” column. But as someone who tries to keep a low internet profile, (this blog not withstanding,) how much do I want to share?

Brietbart is an interesting case study in persistence. Almost every time I go to their site I’m being asked to accept tracking and cookies. Every single time I tell them they’re not allowed to sell my information and confirm that choice. But they keep asking, I suspect they’re hoping that one day I’ll just cave in and say “Accept All”. That is somewhat ironic because they’re always ‘banging on’ about freedom and privacy. Them constantly asking the way they do is also degrading the user experience and I find myself less inclined to visit their site at all.

Generally, the same is true, for me, of all websites. I’ve noticed that when I’m confronted with yet another “Cookie / Privacy notice” I’m more prone to not click beyond the notice, instead I’ll close the page.

Maybe that’s a good thing.

If people get tired of answering questions about cookies and tracking, perhaps they’ll stop relying on the internet for all their information… I doubt it.

I can say that since I’ve put the cookie notice up on this site, the traffic through the site has decreased. That data is gleaned not from cookies, but from a count of incoming ip addresses the site maintains over a 24 hour period.

From my perspective, the usability of the internet is degraded. It’s like getting gas at some gas stations or making a purchase with my debit card. I don’t think it’s reasonable to be asked if I want a car wash, to donate to this or that cause, do I want a receipt, or be shouted at with advertisements from a blaring screen, or whatever… I just want to get on with my day.

The internet is becoming another case of answer 50 questions get the simplest things done.

In that regard… I’m leaning more to closing accounts I don’t absolutely need and moving back to good old fashioned printed books and reference manuals.

I’ve been using cash for purchases a lot more lately. It’s really nice, transactions the way they’re supposed to be.

Some would say that’s a sign of paranoia.

For me, it’s about not wanting to be bothered.

When I was much younger, I worked at Radio Shack. We didn’t use a cash register, we wrote out orders on a receipt book and had only a cash drawer. We were supposed to ask each and every customer for their name and mailing address. Many customers, young and old refused to provide this information. It’s amazing to me how much has changed and in such a short time.