Friday, November 30, 2018

An old song well sung

The way Gladys picks up BB's last solo note kind of makes the hair on the back of my neck stand up.

Sure, I have posted this before,

But it is a warm weekend in late November! Enjoy!


In Alaska during earthquake and post-earthquake scenes

It seemed to last for over a minute...
More from WaPo

Activist women claim Trump's election is destroying their marriages

"How so?" You might ask. Why aren't their marriages up 150 points? Hillarys all over the place unable to accept the problem in their marriage is them. Their husbands fail to hate Trump sufficiently so the marriage must go. We know that without even reading but just for fun let's see what they say.

NY Magazine. The article is by a woman for women readers about women's thoughts, so, it's unnecessarily detailed and long.

Kimberlee Kaye at Legal Insurrection lifts out the essence.

Kristen in Missouri:
I told him I really wanted to work on making the world a better place, and I didn’t feel I could do that within the confines of our marriage. 
…I’d found a passion and wanted to spend all of my free time doing it. And that’s exactly what has happened. 
It’s kind of sad, that in this horrible time I found myself, but I’m also grateful, both for what I had with Geoffrey and for where it allowed me to end up. Finally, I’m the feminist I should have always been.
Sarah somewhere in the Southwest
It breaks my heart whenever he says he’s lonely. But again, I’m like, You don’t have to be lonely if you want to put up street signs with me. 
…Part of it is that he has the perspective that this too shall pass. In my opinion, that comes from the privilege he has as a white male Protestant. 
…I’d describe my husband as a feminist, but he doesn’t want to be the only dude in the room. Which bleeds into why I’ve never thought, Maybe I should just stop all this and save my marriage. That would teach our kids something I don’t want to teach them. It almost feels like the 2018 version of the woman who gives up her career to stay home.
Samantha, NYC
We’ve been married 25 years, and we’re both lefties, and he thinks Trump is as much of a blight on the world as I do. But throughout the hiring of the Steve Mnuchins of world, the white privileged men, and with every single Cabinet member and Jared Kushner and Ivanka, he had much less rage than I did. Eventually he was like, “We can’t go to bed talking about them and wake up in the morning with you still spewing about them.” 
With Brett Kavanaugh, the first thing he said about him, before any of the allegations, was that they were once on a panel at some alumni thing and that he seemed like a nice guy, which of course started a fight. I said, “A nice guy based on what?” Everyone is a nice guy. And then at first, when Dr. Ford came forward, his reaction had an element of “Boys will be boys” and, you know, “It was 30-something years ago.” Even after Debbie Ramirez came forward, he was like, “Do you still think he could change after college?” I was like, “No.” At each stage, he’s had to reassess his feelings. And at each stage we have yet another argument.

Peddling isn't fast enough

/div>

The video was introduced "I like the way he thinks pushing with his feet will make him go faster."

A commenter responded:

He looked like he was in a fairly high gear so pushing with his feet would have the same effect as shifting to a lower gear. Also, at the point he realized the train was there his pedals were pretty much TDC/BDC so it would have been impossible to get any significant acceleration until the crank had turned quite a bit, by which time it would probably have been too late.

Ew, these kids with their internet abbreviations.

TDC/BDC referring to piston engines top dead center / bottom dead center.

Thursday, November 29, 2018

Juicing vs Blending

I want fruit and berries mixed with leafy greens. The juicer I have picked out is a top of the various lines and best for leafy greens and not all that great for soft fruit. The compromise is juice the leaves and vegetables and blend the fruit then mix them but then I'd be making a mess of two kitchen implements and that violates my urgency for the least cleaning up. People like pulp and they like fiber. Do I really want juice and not a smoothie? These two videos show why juicing is better. With a few unanticipated surprises.  



If you're like me with tendency to imitate cartoonish accents with exaggerated emphasis at each point of language abuse then you cede a good half of the information to satire. And that's a real loss because the information is solid.

I can't help it.

John Kohler says the same thing in fully enunciated undeformed English. But it takes him three times as long. He says much more than we ask for and all of it is helpful. Elements of his usual spiel, his salesmanship for a juicing lifestyle that answers related questions that he gets all the time from people across the globe new to this odd practice of juicing. Kohler has some four hundred videos on YouTube. This is his life. Best of all, his personality is attractive. He is a pleasant salesman. I found this video particularly funny. And it's very good training for how to be a good salesman. He owns every kind of juicer there is plus he has a good collection of shirts. 

Michael Cohen pleads guilty to lying to SSCI

Washington Post. 

This guilty plea is understood as power move by Mueller and Rosenstein to protect Senate Select Committee from President Trump along the same lines as the plea agreement of James Wolfe timed for maximum political damage as Trump leaves for G20 meeting. Whitaker cannot stop it.

Previously SSCI Senators Vice-Chair Mark Warner, Dianne Feinstein and senior staff member Dan Jones among others were coordinating with Fusion GPS and Clinton campaign allies and were participants in "Spygate" and their insurance policy the special counsel. It's fairly certain SSCI senators instructed James Wolfe to leak information that included the Carter Page FISA application and that is why Rosenstein and Mueller let James Wolfe plea to a lesser one-count crime of lying.

Back then in a senior moment Feinstein released the transcript of Fusion GPS founder Glenn Simpson's testimony so that all participants could coordinate their stories.

Feinstein gave up her Senate Intelligence Vice-Chair position following the 2016 presidential election due to the political risk for any intelligence oversight democrat in relation to the FBI's Trump operation, Spygate. Then Dan Jones, Feinstein's staffer, paid Fusion-GPS $50 million to continue efforts.

The Cohen pleas is swamp-leverage through Mueller and Rosenstein timed to undermine President Trump at the beginning of G20 because Trump's policies run counter to the benefactors inside Washington D.C.

This Cohen plea is the so-called Deep State blunting the weapon of document declassification that Trump holds against them.

The Last Refuge.

Don't listen to the haters, Melania's decorations are perfect.

Benny Johnson writing on Daily Caller then tells you the things not to listen to.  They're actually rather creative in a negative Middle School way; creepy, Christmas from Hell, spooky, a scene from The Shining, Christmas trees of death.

He left out the trees look like costumes for the Handmaiden's Tale.

Nevermind. Johnson is bragging about spending the night at the White House.

Much more at the link. Nice photographs. Most tableaus are very well done. I especially like the nativity scene arranged stacked on a tall antique broken architectural section on top of a cabinet with angels above on the wall and suspended in air.


If you would like more of what the haters say then check out any of the YouTube videos about this and drop down to comments. And that makes me wonder, if you hate somebody so much why bother watching any videos about them? To be further aggravated? No. To be further aggravating. They do it specifically for the opportunity to further express their hate. It's what they live for. And their comments say more about them than they do about the subject of the videos. 

Trump's power of chaos

Don Surber discovered Thomas Wictor and uses Wictor's explanation of Trump nominating General John Abizaid for Saudi ambassador. If there were proof that Mohammed bin Salman ordered Khashoggi murder then Abizaid would not have taken the job. Also Trump appointed Zalmay Khalilzad Special Representative to Afghanistan two months ago. Abizaid is Arab and Khalilzad is Afghan. They both know the cultures and can avoid the pitfalls. Along with the success of Ambassador Richard Grenell in Germany make for three great stories that nobody who reads the papers would know about and that is part of the plan.

After referencing Limbaugh's characterization of media as cats and Trump with a laser having our antithetic media chasing their tails (I wish he had written bashing into the walls) and citing Melania firing Mira Ricardel who then takes up elsewhere in the administration, and after discussing General Michael Flynn, Surber cites Sun Tzu and The Art of War.
Simulated disorder postulates perfect discipline, simulated fear postulates courage; simulated weakness postulates strength. 
Hiding order beneath the cloak of disorder is simply a question of subdivision; concealing courage under a show of timidity presupposes a fund of latent energy; masking strength with weakness is to be effected by tactical dispositions.
[Notice Educator in comments over there setting Anonymous straight]

Don Surber.

Thomas Wictor (with others) at Quod Verum.



University in Detroit distributes hockey pucks to protect against active shooters

University Police Chief Mark Gordon suggested using a hockey puck to distract a shooter. A professor spearheaded an effort to purchase 2,500 hockey pucks. 800 have been distributed to faculty members the rest to be distributed among students.

More at NY Post.

Pure Hockey official ice hockey puck 6 oz,  $1.50

Amazon 6.oz hockey puck 25 for $35.00 ($1.40 ea)

(Old fashion Coke bottles weighed  14.5 oz filled with 6.5 oz Coca-Cola)

Payless opened a fake luxury store with $600 shoes

Payless took over a former Armani store in Santa Monica and stocked it with Payless merchandise then invited fashion people  to attend an opening party.
The goal was to remind customers that the retailer is a place to shop for affordable fashion.
That and to get footage that will be used for future advertisement.

Fortune. 

Twenty dollar shoes tossed together with glue in a Chinese slave factory are all well and good until they start falling apart on the fourth or fifth wearing.

End of story.

This story has immediate interest because I just now bought a pair of new boots. Wanna see em? They belong in a boot-museum. Literally. They're an old fashion type. Made with old fashion materials, the old fashion way. From Thursday Boot Co. Not like Payless who brag about tricking people. I have one pair already and I like them a lot. My first pair are a bit conservative and I kept thinking about the ones I didn't choose for their more extreme style and color. The purchase marked a change in my attitude. Up to this point I would not have purchased such things. Except for the previous pair like these that aren't Thursday's. And I think they look great with jeans or slacks. Not that it matters but the first pair are the only shoes I've ever worn that cause people to complement them. And boy, do they ever. And I think that's because 99% of all other men are wearing sneakers. And people do judge by your shoes.


¿Son caliente o que?

Wednesday, November 28, 2018

Trump discusses his decision not to declassify Spygate documents

Trump is a counterpuncher, we notice. It's about timing. His sense of timing is better than ours. Had he declassified the documents already then they would already be yesterday's news and he'd have spent his best counterpunch. He's waiting. To use them when needed. He says so.

He spoke with the New York Post.
“If they go down the presidential harassment track, if they want go and harass the president and the administration, I think that would be the best thing that would happen to me. I’m a counter-puncher and I will hit them so hard they’d never been hit like that.” 
… 
“It’s much more powerful if I do it then,” Trump said, “because if we had done it already, it would already be yesterday’s news.” 
The president also pushed back on the notion that all the Justice Department documents should eventually be released for the sake of transparency. 
“Some things maybe the public shouldn’t see because they are so bad,” Trump said, making clear it wasn’t damaging to him, but to others. “Maybe it’s better that the public not see what’s been going on with this country.” 
Twitter. Media. Trump sure does have a lot of ways to send messages to his political enemies.

Mucho mas al New York Post.

Trump retweets image of top Democrats behind bars

He does this on purpose. This is what Twitter is good for, letting your freak flag fly. Trump uses the no-class dump for all the things he knows better than put on the official White House site. As for that dryer stodgier place, it's where you'll see the texts for things like blocking the property in the US held by by people contributing to anti-democratic practices in Nicaragua. Yesterday.

While Twitter gets this kind of presidential trolling today. Just something Trump saw and liked most likely out of his own Twitter feed. Responses to all of Trump's tweets are pure madhouse. This tweet will get more. Then more counter trolling trolls like this one. It's endless. If you click through then you'll see the bar fight for yourself.



surprise present



Click on the bird. The whole thread is nice. Another person in the thread did the same thing and showed it, but this one is nicer. The buttons curve so it's not so rigid, this one is framed naturally, more as art. It's a very nice presentation.

NY man in his underwear gives his opinion about Trump

Riding the rails

Eliezer Shkedi, the former Air Force commander tells a personal story

His task of his command was to keep track of enemy countries that do not border Israel. He talks about this father escaping from the trains that took his family to their destruction. About his father being alone and moving to Israel, having a son, and the vast heartbreaking emotional/psychic terrain between then and now that fairly characterizes the Israeli people. Late in life his father made the commander understand that the commander didn't know the full breadth of what was happening the night he accepted an invitation to an official social gathering.

This video was dropped into comments on another site with no relevance to anything around it and nobody responded to it.

Knickers the giant Australian cow

Steer, actually. He's so big the other cows consider him God.


At some 1,400kg (220st) and 194cm (6ft 4in), the seven-year-old is believed to be the biggest steer in a country home to millions of cattle.

Ha ha ha, they kill me with their fer'ner numbers. kilograms to stone in case kilograms are meaningless to you. Even their numeric translations are fer'in;  To get pounds you must multiply kilograms by 2.2 or multiply stone by 14 for 3,080 lbs.

That's useless without knowing a regular cow weighs on average 1,500 lbs.

The article at BBC News says the steer was too big to butcher, so he was brought back home to grow even bigger.

GOP holds onto Mississippi Senate seat

The headline at Washington Examiner says "easily" and continues, "after Trump rallies, extending Senate majority."

Cindy Hyde-Smith defeated Mike Espy in a runoff election.

More at the link about Trump's rallies, the winner's history, the race, the ups and down, the back and forth, the love and the loathing in Mississippi.

Juicers

A video I watched on a site about a man tearing apart a Juicero appliance had me sucked into the vortex of the world of juicers, reading untold number of web pages, watching hour-long videos, comparing juicer types, and reading reviews on Amazon.

There are hundreds of models. Most made in China by the same manufacturer, I'm assuming.

The video is long but worth it for people who like to tear things apart. The YouTube member does this sort of thing so he's being silly by opening the box with an axe where simply cutting the tape will do. He's very good at describing his appreciation for what he finds once he open up the machine and marvels at the art-like craftwork that he finds inside. He tests the electronics and describes it. He shows how it is hacked.


That caused me to read about what went wrong with Juicero. Quite a lot is written about this company, the hubris, the bubble, the company economic model, the wealth, the detachment that caused it to fail.

Juicero was a Silicon Valley startup that looked great on paper but was so divorced from the needs of everyday users it was doomed to fail in practice. Then Bloomberg produced a video showing its vaunted powerful smasher was matched by simply squeezing the bag by hand. The video went viral.

The company folded within weeks.

The company sold an expensive machine priced at top of the line juicers while the machine was actually worth much more than that. Very good plastic molding, great materials throughout, careful machining of metal elements, gears and their housing, the machine is a piece of art in materials and in care.

The company would make money by subscriptions for their fresh fruit and vegetable packages that their machine squeezed. The packages were very good quality of well selected and well handled goods, scrapped to produce shredded material that behaved as a mop to hold the juices. The machine smashed the bag so the juice runs out. The packages are outrageously expensive.

To ensure product safety and freshness each packet is coded. The machine is connected to the internet by the user's cellphone and each packet checked before squeezing. Totally over-engineered. And the user is limited to the company's line of packages. It just didn't work for most people. The two people I watched tearing apart the packages were interested in examining the materials used for the pouches, touching the food material and tasting it.

That caused me look for what makes a good juicer.

A friend in Boston showed me his juicer twenty-five years ago, a centrifugal type that spun at high speed but I never had the slightest interest. Lately I've been taking tablets about the size of two quarters stacked made from compressed dehydrated greens. I dissolve them in 4X the amount of water and sip them for a few hours. I'm drinking one now. And now I'm thinking an actual juicer would be even better.

I watched a long video by a pleasant man comparing the Juicero with another type of juicer that he uses himself. He duplicated the Bloomberg demonstration and discussed the company's business model and why it failed. The man talks his face off for nearly an hour describing every detail of the two juicers, what they are doing, how they do it, weight, footprint, complexity of use, the range of their abilities, maintenance, cleaning, pros and cons of each, and the like. His discussion of juicers is exhausting.

Turns out the man works for Discount Juicers and he has some dozen or so videos explaining models, and comparing, giving demonstrations, making recommendations and such.

This video below is a comprehensive 47 minute video that compares two of the best models. The model with the vertical auger is the slowest model available and it comes with fifteen year warranty. This is the type the man uses at home. He says in another video that he has some dozen or so juicers at home but this is the one he uses everyday. In yet another video he gives a demonstration of how he does things for himself. This time he uses four gigantic Swiss chard stalks that he grew himself, plus celery and six or so cucumbers and produces about 2 quarts of juice. That's his food for the day. It's worth watching if you have an interest in juicers.

Tuesday, November 27, 2018

Evening sky

(Click to enlarge)

I spent the day breaking down large slabs of white oak and black walnut that I had stacked in my shop 7 years ago when I moved here. It is time, I am not getting any younger. One large slab of white oak was so heavy I had to ask my neighbor's son to come help me with it - he's 75 and a tough old bird and between the two of us we got it out onto the saw horses and I was able to saw it into manageable sized pieces. I cut the slabs lengthwise to remove the sap wood and the pith, plus any checking that had occurred in the middle of the pieces, then cut them to 18-24" lengths so that I could resaw them and then plane them. Ended up with a nice selection of pieces which I can now use for smaller projects - there doesn't seem to be a lot of demand for furniture made out of giant pieces of lumber.

I cleaned up the shop and the yard and ended up with a big ol' pile of chips and scrap - soon I will have a nice fire to keep me warm out there. It's getting cold. I know, it's all relative, but it didn't get out of the 40s today, so I was happy to be doing heavy physical labor to keep warm.

Right at the end of the day my Border Collie mix took off running after something - usually it is some animal wandering around in the neighbors' yard but in this case a hawk had flown in and roosted on a branch of my catalpa tree. This particular dog has always been more attentive to avian life than any other dog I have ever had - she always pays attention to buzzards and hawks, crows, not so much. So when a hawk landed within 25 feet of her she took off after it. The hawk wanted no part of that and took off too, only in the hawk's case, it actually took off and flew away. Fascinating stuff...

Bobby Manuel, my cousin's coworker.

Edit:


 Let the chips fall where they may.

The Fire Stick is the Bomb!

So we got a new Firestick from Amazon and it is amazing. It is a cheat device that lets you get all of the latest movies and tv shows for free. That's right. Bootleg copies of the latest films are available at no charge to you. HBO, Showtime any of the premium channels and all of their programing. All you need is a code that everyone seems to have. You program it and you can see first run movies.

Last weekend we went out to see the Freddy Mercury movie. It was pretty good. Of course the tickets were $15 a piece when now I can see it for free. In any event I recommend the movie if you are a music fan. It is pretty good.


Get the Firestick if you can. You can cut the cord with cable and get everything you want to see without paying for cable. I don't know why Amazon sells it. It cuts their own throat since you won't pay to buy videos from them. I think they want to get everyone addicted to it and then they will do something so you have to pay them. Still for now it is a real bargain.

Pandora Problems


Lately I have sort of become addicted to Pandora. I might have posted about this before. In fact I know I posted that video about Three Dog Night before. Anyhoo I use Pandora all the time. I put it on while I am cooking or writing or just sitting around. It soothes me and lets me relax as I multitask. I had always had music on in the background to smooth off the rough edges.

I wanted to put Three Dog Night on because I had been nostalgic as usual. Listening to them makes me think of the old days of the 1960's when I used to  listen to top 40 on WABC AM radio. That was long before the free form hippie dippy FM radio like WNEW and WPLJ became the "cool" radio to listen too later in the decade. WABC played the same twenty songs over and over. Three Dog Night. Grand Funk Railroad. Cher. The Monkees. And these guys:


They had all the old DJ's spinning the hits. Dan Ingram. Dan Daniel. Of course Cousin Brucie. He was so famous he had a guy who sold beer at Yankee Stadium who copied him and called himself Cousin Brewski. They were the soundtrack of your life.

What is funny is when I programed a station with Three Dog Night I didn't get any of those bands. Instead I got Led Zeppelin and the Jefferson Airplane. If I wanted that I would have programed that. Instead I guess they lump everything together in the genre of "classic rock." I wanted easy listening frothy bubble gum rock and I got that stuff. What a pain in the ass. I didn't want to think about getting a Stairway to Heaven. I just wanted to be a Day Dream Believer.


Harrowing hang glider flight.

Beginner took off with instructor without having his harness hooked up.

Morning

This lasted for four whole minutes.


Grim scene at Chico

They had until last Sunday. I wonder where all these people went.

Problems in the kitchen.

Imgur member OldSchoolCoder uploaded some 40 or so images of kitchen disasters. People burned things to black char, dropped their lasagna, blew up their pressure pot destroying their stove and their ceiling, caught their spaghetti on fire, caught the kitchen on fire, failed miserably at copying designer cakes, overloaded their pot with rice, busted their clay pots on the stove into the burner, melted their knife handles, their cutting boards, cups, water jugs, bowls around casseroles.

One poor cook gets no respect from commenters. They opened all their spice jars then couldn't match the lids to the spices. But you know, everyone has to start somewhere. I recall buying and using spices just to see what they did.

While other readers respect the improvisation of using a wire coat hanger to roast shish-kabob in the oven.

My Nana used spices, clove poked into ham. I hated those clove spikes. They wrecked the whole area they were poked in. Mum knew about cinnamon. but that's about it. Our home spice collection was pathetic. One time she drank wine and dumped 10X too much sage into her holiday dressing. She could not hold her alcohol. One drink and she was a compete mess. Feeling light headed and goofy, she goes, "Screw it" and mixed it all in. Then my dad ate the dressing and goes, "Hey, this is the best dressing yet." She was seventy when she discovered the joy of garlic powder.

At twenty-two years of age a friend of mine grew a spice garden and I thought, "How arcane. That's wizard knowledge right there."

I can see a young person not being able to identify spices by smell.

This meatloaf in the shape of a baby with bacon diaper cracked me up. The frozen pizza baked directly on the oven rack that melted through to look like a nuclear explosion is actually rather interesting.

A few years ago I didn't know chestnuts had to be punctured before being roasted. I loaded up the oven with a whole bag of chestnuts and they exploded inside the oven. Alarmingly the explosions sounded like gunfire. Shutting it down didn't help. They kept exploding after the oven was turned off. For a long time. This was late at night, early morning. That really was a problem in an apartment. The whole inside of the oven was covered with chestnut guts and I still don't know what chestnuts taste like. I still have no idea what they're like as properly roasted nuts. My housekeeper helped me clean up the mess. She told her son what I did. Then her son was all, "Come on, Ma, let's buy some chestnuts and explode 'em in the oven."

Check out the rest of the photos, they're hilarious. Some readers are having trouble seeing what went wrong.





The improvisation from non-comprehension is what makes things hilarious. Shish-kabob skewers are used to move things over coals without a rack. The skewers are improvisation to begin with. When you have a stove, and roaster, and stovetop burners and pans then you don't need skewers. 

The cracker fish sushi is hilarious because they're going for fish shape where that is irrelevant and  protein is everything. It could be tinned tuna while it needed even be fish,  Cooked chicken, pork, beef, lamb and such all work nicely, but crackers do not. Even when they're shaped like fish. It makes a good joke. You sense that you're being put on.

Ptahhotep Maxim 32: Offense from a friend

Oh man, I thought this was done but there was no evidence of it. I picked it out of the trash and saw I hadn't double checked everything they're telling us to discern how they get to Z from A. And I hadn't done a little intro anim. And those two things are most of the work.

Didn't you notice I skipped from 31 to 33? Gawl!

Here's what the priest says to you if you were born in a ruling household and you were a teenage male and one of your friends offended you.

If you investigate the character of a friend,
one who has been cursing about you, approach him,
make a case with him alone,
until you are no longer troubled by his condition.
Discuss with him after a time,
test his mind with the case of dispute.
When what he has seen comes out of him,
he will make a case that you can get angry about,
or he is friendly,
Don't grimace in explaining the dispute to him;
don't respond with a case of denigration;
don't sever yourself from him; don't trample him.
His case has not once failed to come up;
no one can escape from the one who has fated him.

The gif has been optimized to 125%.


See? It's looking in the hypostyle temple hall.



Monday, November 26, 2018

Trump rally Tupelo, Mississippi

Trump is in Mississippi stumping for Cindy Hyde-Smith. Last night I saw links to articles reporting hundreds of protestors are organized to confront him. Skipping to comments indicate readers expected tens of thousands to go even more near to cheer him.

Skip to the part in the video where AF2 arrives.

OMG, Trump is wound up. I've never seen anything like the energy this man has. Like he's been chomping at the bit to frame his perspective of his immediate political landscape since the midterm elections. He gets right to mocking and provoking japing and jabbing with tremendous gleeful force. He paints by slapping on colors thickly, contrasting, jarring, indulgently ferociously composing a gigantic and complex picture that is opposite the insane quaintly malevolent dainty little pictures presented by reporters hourly and everywhere. He is a show unto himself. Picasso-Barnum on speed with the power of United States government.

And so far I only watched the first 3 minutes of his speech.



Mars probe Insight lands successfully

Most of the videos are an hour or longer.  Some explain the whole deal, some are the engineers in panel discussing the event. Some are visualizations of the landing. Oddly, some are by fer'ners talking funny. I picked two short videos.


Ptahhotep Maxim 33: Generosity

So far this is the happiest most pleasant maxim. No pontificating. Just observation that satisfaction comes from generosity. It uses an axiom that refers to an unlikely animal, either a woodpecker, a porcupine or a hedgehog + his face. Up until now I've seen a determinative sign for each animal mentioned but these three animals defy that pattern. I didn't even know these three animals are known to Egyptians. You'd expect to see crafts of porcupine quills and at least drawing and paintings of hedgehogs, but I don't recall anything like that. So the axiom has me confused.

The maxim says:

Let your face be bright in the time of your existing;
if something goes out of the storehouse, it does not reenter.
The bread of sharing is what is coveted;
the one empty in his belly is an accuser.
Opposition becomes sorrow-causing:
don't make it something near you.
Kindness is a man's memorial
for the years after the staff of authority.

That's what the experts say that it says. When I look up each word and phrase I get something different, but hey, they're the experts, not me. As you see they say nothing about woodpeckers, porcupines or hedgehogs. Those animals from the dictionary appear in the third line.

This is an animated gif file, not a video.




Steak

This photo was uploaded to Flickr Aug. 5, 2013. I didn't realize I've had that cast-iron grill pan that long. I was just now notified that somebody favorited the photo. The photograph has been viewed 6,559 times. Is that awesome or what? I ate one steak and thousands of people looked at it. Five people favorited it. I'm not bragging, I'm sharing my awe about Flickr.


Do you know what I concluded recently about steaks?

They sure are expensive.

And you don't get anymore the type steaks that I bought from the grocery when I first started cooking them on my own way back forty-three years ago. You don't get what my parents bought. 

Consumers brought about this change by demanding lean beef. Now you don't even hear USDA Prime or USDA Choice or Select. 

What a bunch of ultra mooo-roons. 

What a bunch of nincom-cowpies.

What a bunch of im-bull-ciles. 

What a bunch of dumbulls.

Because fat makes the steak. Fat makes the flavor, fat makes meat tender. Without ultra-marbled fatted up super streaky steak you wound't have Wagyu beef that veritably melts in your mouth and leaves it coated with supreme beef flavor.

Fat-ass consumers on continuous diets, and failing, demanded USDA prime become excluded from grocery options and that's why you never see it anymore. And that's a major bummer!

You never see it at common places but you do see it elsewhere. You have to go out and get it separately. And since it's already expensive you might as well pay the incremental difference and get the real thing. Get the thing that steak is about in the first place, and don't be controlled by the masses who almost aways choose poorly.

Their values are f'k'd up. 

The Thanksgiving care package given to me this year proves that again. I'm not criticizing the gift. I'm blown away by the generosity. Truly blown away. And grateful. My jaws hurt when I think about it. It's emotionally extreme. But it does show what people choose for themselves and for others. 

You have to go to a butchers, bite the bullet, and pay the extra for really good beef. Prime and aged. The real deal. Or don't even bother. There is a world of difference that resides in that increment in cost and effort. 

I think this is a photo of a grocery store steak. I'm not sure. I wasn't in the habit of seeking out USDA Prime back in 2013. I did on occasion but not as practice. It doesn't look very marbled.

Chocolate angel pie

I saw this on Cook's Country (America's Test Kitchen) available on Amazon Prime video, Season 7 episode 5, but I do not see the video on You Tube.

It has a pre-baked meringue pie crust. What a great idea. Filled with deep rich chocolate mousse. With whipped cream topping, so it's all puff fluff and foam.

Chocolate filling: It's like a dense mousse except different. Whipped cream instead of beaten egg whites.

* 9 oz milk chocolate
* 5 oz bittersweet chocolate

Yikes! Nearly a pound of real chocolate. That right there is what this pie is about.

Melt in microwave and let it cool (chocolate melts a few degrees above body temperature) No need for bain-marie, just be careful not to scorch.

*  3 egg yolks, whites set aside for meringue.
*  1+1/2 tablespoon sugar
*  1/2 teaspoon salt

Separately

*  1/2 cup Half-&-Half heated to simmering whisked in

Mix all that stuff and pour the heated H&H into it. Return it all to saucepan (that simmered the H&H), so a bit of back and forth there,  reheat a minute until it begins to thicken. Pour from saucepan to bowl of melted chocolate and whisk.

Lick whisk.

Push into a glob on the bottom of the bowl, clean up the sides, push it all down with a spatula. It has lightly cooked egg yolks in it so it begins setting up as it cools like mayonnaise does.

Let it cool to await blending of whipped cream for nice light texture. We're going for a mousse-like thing here with whipped cream.

* 1+1/4 cup heavy cream. Just to it forms peaks

Mix 1/3 of whipped cream into the chocolate sludge to lighten it. Then fold in the rest of the whipped cream to preserve the loft of the whipped cream. Put into smaller bowl, cover with cling film and chill for 3 hours so it firms. This is the basis of the pie. You got your meringue shell to hold it and whipped cream to top it.

Lick the large bowl.

Now, make a meringue pie shell.

Grease a pie pan and sprinkle with cornstarch (which will be in the meringue also). Dump the cornstarch in and shake it around, knocking and turning so it sticks to the grease, then dump out the extra. Make sure to cover the rim because that's where the meringue really sticks.

And meringue sticking to the pie pan rim is a bummer!

* 3 egg whites
* pinch of cream of tartar
* 1/2 cup sugar
* 1 tablespoon cornstarch

Add dry ingredients to egg whites at the soft stage, clean sides of bowl with rubber spatula so it all mixes. Turn to high for stiff lofty peaks.

* 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract

Dump meringue into prepared pie pan. Push to the sides. No air bubbles allowed. Push up sides of rim. Run thumb around outside edge of rim to push the meringue upward and inward so the baked shell holds maxim amount and the rim is cleared off

Lick thumb.

Put in oven to dry it out and bake. 1.5 hours at 275℉ then 1 hour at 200℉, so then, a total of 2.5 hours at low temperature.

It comes out brown and weird looking and you're all, "What? Wait. What? This is a pie crust? No way." Yes way.

Topping

* 1+1/3 cup heavy cream
* 2 tablespoons confectioner's sugar (fine regular sugar + corn starch) for stability.

Build pie.

Add chocolate mixture. Do no mix or whip, just pile it up and press it in to the sides.

Clean spatula, put whipped cream on top. Allow the chocolate edge to show for dramatic presentation. No seriously, it shows the layers so it's not just a pile of whipped cream in a weird misshapen Dr. Seuss pie shell.

Refrigerate for 1 hour.

Dust with cocoa to make it look pretty. (It's a girl thing.)

This is my new favorite thing and I haven't even had any yet.

This guy in the video below makes a total dummkopf version. Notice the key frame does not match what makes. The video opening frame shows 3 distinct layers like they make on Cook's Country video.  He takes a shortcut instead and makes a ganache that he mixes into his whipped cream for a filling. And it's like ... GAWL!

Come on! I can't believe he doesn't do what is shown. The thing shown below ↓ in the opening frame is what Cook's Country did, but the video shows a shortcut version. OMG, I can't even believe that. Remember the 14 ounces of chocolate? This version doesn't have nearly that much. 1/2 cup chocolate chips is 4oz approximately. What a ripoff. I wan't Cook's Country pie, not this one.


Media begin full propaganda pust to create victim narrative around migrants

Conservative Treehouse.

Tell us something we don't already know. Challenge: Let's look for something we don't already know. I'll go through point by point.

* Reality of migrants attempt to overwhelm border by force, and weeks of denying hoard were a threat, media narrative engineers need to respond quickly with manufactured victim optics.

* 95% military-aged males, media photojournalists desperately seek out pictures of the few woen and children to accompany their propaganda [See Reuters.]

* Open border leftists use identical methods used for false image of Palestinians known as Pallywood".

* Trump tweet: Migrants at the border will not be allowed into the US

* Trump tweet: Will close the border if no other option.

* Trump tweet: Fake news is not my enemy, it is the enemy of American people

* Trump tweet: Fake news blames Republicans and conservatives but it is their dishonest reporting that causes problems far greater than they understand.

* Trump tweet: There is great anger caused by inaccurate and fraudulent reporting. Fake news must stop.

* Trump tweet: We can bring sides together but fake news must end.

See anything new? Yes. This déjà vu thing that's happening is a fresh repeat of the last déjà vu. And now I can get those accent marks right without checking by knowing them as a little hat. An umbrella. And that's new. It's only taken fifty f'k'n years.

NASA Mars lander to touch down today

Daily Wire.
InSight, the name of the lander, stands for "Interior Exploration using Seismic Investigations, Geodesy and Heat Transport." “The landing will kick off a two-year mission in which InSight will become the first spacecraft to study Mars' deep interior,” NASA said on its website. “Its data also will help scientists understand the formation of all rocky worlds, including our own.”
Much more at the link including drama and suspense! Plus simulation video, and comments loaded with snappy partisan snark. Example:
Sheila Jackson Lee wants to know whether the lander will be near the American flag
planted, in 1969, by Neil Armstrong.🤣
Ha ha ha ha. Stop it already, yer kill'n me. No really, stop it.

Mexico to deport group that stormed US border

BBC News. The story is in the title basically.
Mexico's interior ministry said in a statement that a group of "nearly 500 migrants" had "tried to cross the border in a violent way". 
Those identified as having taken part in these "violent events" would be deported immediately, it said. 
The ministry added that, "far from helping their objectives", the migrants' actions had violated the legal migration framework and could have led to a "serious incident".
More at the link but not much.
"We aren't criminals! We are hard workers," they chanted.
What an incredible disconnect. We've heard this a thousand time. Of course they mean they're not criminals by nature, they don't murder, rob houses, jack cars, but they say this, and their supporters repeat this even as they break laws to enter a nation illegally. Illegally. That means breaking the law. That's criminal.

Well, not that law.

Just the laws that they agree with and see as legitimate.

BBC has a story for its readers about a day in Tijuana when mothers and children were tear gassed.

And a map!

Israel International News tells the same story in a different accent.
Mexico will deport about 500 migrants who on Sunday tried to “violently” and “illegally” cross the US border, the Mexican Interior Ministry in a statement quoted by Reuters. 
Mexican authorities had contained the protest at the crossing between Tijuana and San Diego. 
Despite heightened tensions there, Mexico would not send military forces to control 7,417 migrants from a caravan currently amassed at the US-Mexico border.
The link has video

Daily Express, Mexico to deport 'hundreds' of migrants who 'violently' tried to cross US border.
Tear gas has been fired by US border guards as the migrants attempt to storm the US border.
...
The migrants - including many children - arrived in Tijuana after travelling more than 4,000km (2,500miles) from Central America. 
Photos and videos already seen.

Sunday, November 25, 2018

GM closing operations in Oshawa, Ontario

Conservative MP Erin O'Toole representing Durham wrote on Twitter that from his calls tonight it appears the reports about an end to vehicle assembly in Oshawa are true.
This is devastating news to families in Oshawa, the Durham region and all of Ontario. Growing up, my father worked at GM much like the parents of many of my friends. I think of these families tonight and pledge to get to the bottom of why this is happening and whether the decision can be reversed.
The union has something to say.
Based on commitments made during 2016 contract negotiations, Unifor does not accept this announcement and is immediately calling on GM to live up to the spirit of that agreement.
More details for whatever they're worth at CT News along with video of a news reader.

Economic analysis and Trump comprehension the like you will not see anywhere else available at the Last Refuge.

Behave yourself


This evening's sunset:


Three minutes and 55 seconds of sublime music:

Parmigiano-Reggiano



"But oh, it'sa too expensivo. I'ma but a poor person. No posso affordo."

"It'sa strong flavor. You use only itty-bitty teeny-tiny little bit every time. Worth every centivo. Very good bargain, so shutupa you face. Stopada bogo suppozitiono."

Ecco lo Chef Giovanni. He givea you da quatrro-uno-uno del costo.

Migrant mob rushes San Ysidro Port of Entry in San Diego

The coordinated effort between caravan organizers and media and mob was repelled with pepper spray, tear gas and smoke and shotbangs.







More similar videos

Breaking Live Twitter.  This place is loaded with videos

Patriot 24/7 at Flip it Red Twitter. Several relevant videos and photos.

Big Clive buys dangerous coffee cup electrode boiler through eBay

Electricity scares the h-e-double copper electrodes outta me. I still feel guilty about watching my younger brother stick a bobby pin into an electrical socket. From another room, I could have yelled at him to stop, and he would have, but I was curious to see what would happen myself. It electrocuted him, knocked him back, sparked and popped loudly and shorted the socket leaving a black mark flaring out from the holes up the wall. Burned him. And I've felt like an irresponsible idiot ever since.

Psychiatrist: "So you've been carrying this guilt around as a burden ever since?

"Yes."

Psychiatrist: And how has your brother fared?

"He forgot the whole thing. He became an electrician by trade. He makes twice as much as you and I combined and works at least one third or one fourth as much."



Comments where I saw this video are almost interesting, but not about electricity. They're horrified. They get into ridiculing Brexiters, such is their mindset that E.U. would protect them from such hazards. They want layers of government smothering them like a soft comfy blanket. Layers and layers of puffy government blankets, the more layers, the more remote, the more widespread, the thicker the better. They crave protection. And they ridicule everyone who doesn't want that.

Comments on YouTube are better. 

Examples: 
* We used to make these when I was in the army in South Africa back in the '70s. It consisted of two razor blades (the old style double sided type), some cotton thread or fishing line, 9 match sticks and some lamp flex. You space the blades apart with the match sticks and line and connect the lamp flex. It would boil an average cup of water in a minute. The tea or coffee did however have a slight metallic taste, even though the blades were allegedly stainless steel. We knew what we were doing and it worked great for a couple of weeks, until the platoon thickhead came along with his metal fire bucket (military term for tin mug), plonked it down on the metal table and dropped our heater into it. When he switched it on there was a big flash bang and all the lights in B company went out. Torch light showed water all over the walls, ceiling and table, added to that the bucket was spot welded to the table. Unfortunately the problem was traced back to us, we had our immersion boiler confiscated and stood guard duty for two weeks straight. 
* this is really dangerous. So I bought two! 
* Oh my, found one of these on eBay with "Bathtub Baby Swimming Pool Water Quick Heater" in the description. Baby! 
* Does it give off enough hydrogen & oxygen to ignite? Try putting a match to that foam? (if not, please do!) 
* Try warming a can a soup, which has a crazy amount of salt in it it. 
* Try putting it in your mouth, that'll give us loads of fun. 
* WARNING! It might be very dangerous to drink the boiled water because the metal of the electrodes might spread in the water because of the electrolytical effect. Who knows what kind of metal the electrodes are made of? If the water comes in contact with the cupper cables connected to the electrode plates it wil be poisonous.
And so on. On and on to 1,700+ comments.

Roseanne Barr

Commenter 1: News reports out on the internet that Roseanne Barr had a heart attack tonight.

Commenter 2: Fake News.

Humpback whale in Sea of Cortez

The whale is dying caught up and disabled in net. The rescuers are unequipped. At length the whale is freed with great difficulty. Stick with it for a satisfying ending.

If for any reason it becomes necessary, we will close our southern border.

He means it too. I can cite a few examples where Trump backtracked, but not many. When you research [Trump backtrack] You get a load of smelly liberal crap. He did say he would release the FBI/DOJ documents then decided he preferred having leverage.
He doesn't bluff and world leaders who aren't American Democrats know this. If Trump closes the southern border that means a lot more disruption to Mexico's economy than it does for us. And it doesn't matter the criticism that befalls him, he's already borne it all. More criticism, more flipping out is just more of the same. And he's criticized no matter what.
They said he wouldn’t pull out of the Paris Climate Treaty, he did. 
They said he wouldn’t withdraw from the Trans-Pacific Partnership, he did. 
They said he wouldn’t implement global Steel/Aluminum tariffs, he did.   
They said he wouldn’t dare withdraw from the G7 agreement in Canada, he did.   
They said he couldn’t get Canada to agree to a new NAFTA agreement, he did. 
They said his economic plans wouldn’t deliver 3% GDP growth, they are. 
They said he couldn’t pull-off a unity accord between North and South Korea, he did.



That's why Washington Times is reporting Mexico will asylum seekers as they wait U.S. court dates.
Andrés Manuel López Obrador, Mexico’s president-elect, plans to implement a policy known as “Remain in Mexico” after taking office next month, his top domestic policy official told The Washington Post. 
Called a “short-term solution” by Ms. Sánchez Cordero, the pending policy change is expected to earn praise north of the border from President Trump, who has vowed to reform federal immigration policies since launching his 2016 campaign.
More words at the link. 

Saturday, November 24, 2018

light show

Angela Merkel: In this day and age states must be ready to give up sovereignty -- nationalist countries are not patriotic

Yeah, we heard that somewhere.

Language is fluid, we get that. It happens naturally by usage and annoying by insistence by "political correctness" instituted with punishment and it happens by bald-face resolute political demand. We notice leftist demanding new definitions all the time as it's one of their chief thought control mechanisms. Macron stands up and hammers at the language of patriotism, then Merkel gets up and hammers the same language and we all sigh, "Fuck, here we go again."

Changing the demography of European nations to something that's hostile to European history and culture through wonton uncontrolled immigration has worked so well for Angela Merkel it's time now to change Europe's democratic forms to something more malleable without all that pesky citizen interference. We won't even recognize how Europeans make it to high office as being democratic.

Strength is ignorance, slavery is freedom, peace is war. Reading 1984 backwards or forwards we get Angela Merkel's unified Europe. It fits the redefined patriotism but looks nothing at all like Europe.

Which is odd next to Russia itself democratic with Putin in power for twenty years.

More excruciating details at Gateway Pundit.

Hebtro trousers

They advertise on one of the British sites that I read. 


I think the models look great with the brogue shoes. I like this look a lot. Sub tile yet sub lime. 

Except the model's got no butt. And you can't have a no-butt havin' model displaying the back of your trousers, but there you go, they're doing it. 

The photo on their site the trousers are black so this photo below is adjusted mid-tones down. But check out how great the shoes look. 

They say British woven canvas, which is probably jean material, and cotton moleskin. And I don't know what moleskin is. 


£125.00 = $160

The shoes are £200  =  $256 and that's a lot less than I had imagined. I don't see any as nice on Zappos or on Amazon or Nordstrom or DSW or anywhere, they're all too narrow and pointed like torpedos. These are the right shape.

Their Moto boots are really cool too. 

I wonder if they sell to Americans over here in Merica.  I'll ask them. 




/div>

Black Friday

I know nothing about so-called Black Friday.

What a name to give to a day following Thanksgiving. I don't even know why they call it that. That forces me to guess. I bet you $10.00 right here that it refers to red meaning debt and black meaning profit. Come on, what else could it be?  This is where merchants come into their profit. I bet.

BLAM! Day id iz. Here's my bet.


My Thanksgiving was quiet, thanks for asking.

Quieter than quiet. Peaceful as possible, tranquil as a Zen Buddhist monastery when they're not having their self defense classes. You could hear a pin drop over here. A pin drop onto a door mouse's fur sitting on the carpet when you have your sound-cancelling headphones on. 

That phrase doesn't even make sense. You could hear a pin drop if a pin dropped in the soundless place, but if you did then that would be pin-noise and no longer quiet. It'd be like the giant in Jack and the Beanstalk going, "knock it off with all that pin-dropping racket!" 

So quiet and peaceful and tranquil and sleepy that I just couldn't be arsed.

To cook the turkey meant I had to do the dishes first. 

And that's an all-day challenge. 

There's less than one drying rack worth of dishes, not many at all, but it takes me all day in three stages. Ridiculous. I realize that. But that's what it takes. I had to put pants on and socks and shoes and everything. I had to take a shower first. And that meant drying off. See? The whole thing was backed up with predicate activities. So by the time it came to the turkey I was all pfffft f.u., Turkey.

So today, Black Friday, named for its profit, I rubbed the turkey with olive oil and set it upside down on a rack inside a baking tray and baked it halfway. Flipped it breast side up and finished it. It was gloriously browned, overcooked and dry beyond reason and that's what I get for not paying attention.  

Maybe I shouldn't have napped when that was going on.

I don't care.

I ate both wings. 

And, Man, were they ever good. I must now pray.

"Dear Lord, thank for this splendid turkey and thank you for all the people involved who intruded to give it to me. For me, Lord. For me. I don't even know these people, and they did it for me. I didn't even need a turkey, nor want one, but they gave me one anyway. Your people did. Thank you for them. They are the sweetest most easily generous people I've met. They're following your example, living in faith. Lord, you've got some great people working for you. Amen.

The wing bones are H - U - G - E.  I dismembered the bird, pulled off all the meat, sliced it up, filled my largest bowl with turkey slices and bits, broke the bones and loaded the broken carcass into the InstantPot with a gallon of water, divided the meat in the bowl into 5 Seal-a-Meal bags and now all that is in the freezer. That's my Black Friday.

And there is nothing that I'd care to buy. I'm so self-satisfied there is nothing that I feel to need. I cannot create a need. All of the ads that I've seen fail to push my button, nothing seems good. 

$300 knives for $70 demand to be purchased just for the principle of commerce and savings. 

But no. 

I have more knives than a man needs, and Boy, do those things ever cut. They'll cut you right up.

No. These Japanese knives are beveled on one side. I have one of those. Very sharp. But it turns to the left as it slices. Great for cutting the peel off oranges but that's it. 

Or the Hanes Men's zip up hooded fleece jacket for $11.20. I'd get the light blue one then draw something on it. Something big and outrageous like a kepher bug. With wings. Here, I'll draw one right now.



But then I'd have to go around wearing a stupid goddamn cheap ass jacket. And I'm thinking, no way would I go out in public like that. I just couldn't see myself wearing such a thing. I don't do such things as paint interiors or change the oil anymore. There is no need for such a garment. I wouldn't wear this as a teen so why start now at this late point?


It's not bad. Maybe I should buy one to sleep in. I think this is the least desirable color. Dudes like darker colors. 

That's the thing about dudes. We don't put that much thought into clothes. Usually we let our wife pick them out. We wear what they want us to wear, happy to have someone else decide and do the shopping for us. I knew a guy who told me he "found" his clothes (when I asked why he always looks like a hobo.)