Save a frog's life

Come on, be a hero.

Teen band at Greenville KAG rally sing "CNN Sucks"

This hurts in the only place CNN feels anything; its inflated ego.

I looked for this video on YouTube [cnn sucks] and the results page filled with MAGA rallies. I didn't realize it was that much of a thing until I saw all the previous reporting.

Kids. Whatchagonnado? They pick up everything. That's why you have to watch your swears when you're around them.

I have arrived at the Trump rally in #Greenville, NC and the first thing I see is a MAGA teen band playing a song called “CNN sucks” pic.twitter.com/EHBeRhuWig

— Christopher Mathias (@letsgomathias) July 17, 2019

President Trump rally in Greenville, North Carolina

He's on fire.

Earlier in the day the House voted on a resolution to impeach President Trump. The effort failed 332-95. Trump mentions this first in his speech, and throughout he says naughty words forbidden in presidential speeches previous to Trump. The crowd loves it.

There's a lot of turning over the lectern to local politicians and I'm all skip, skip, skip, and there's a lot of stuff before Trump enters so you can skip about 3/4 of the beginning. RSBN discusses their woes, and one of the women there is incredibly shrill. So you can skip all of that without missing anything.

The thing that is a bit different this time is Trump is vindicated by the Mueller report and the House decided it's not in their interest to pursue impeachment. Trump appears to feel unleashed, his language is more free and his supporters are most certainly feeling the same thing. They're wild.

Back to Black, Amy Winehouse

We miss her.

But that's missing a real mess.

We loved her mess.

You're going to hate this. I can tell. But I'd like you to give it a go.

This Rio concert is hard to watch because it seems very much like we're watching a person completely cranked out of shape under drugs. Like she used some kind of drug to face the crowd, then once out there she's positively crawling with the creeps, grabbing the hem of her dress, screwing up the lyrics, improvising the lyrics throughout, barely, just barely keeping it together. While her dancers are trying their best to make a good thing out of a bad thing.

The audience knows the lyrics forward and backward. They've sung this song themselves a million times, so each person watching know the lyrics as well as Winehouse does so they each know how far she's deviated from the studio version.

She is dying right in front of us and no-one can do anything.

Your bad opinion of this performance is irrelevant. The audience who loves her is deeply troubled by it. They know what happens to her. This performance brings them to tears. They've watch this performance over and over and over and cry their hearts out. For them, this is the most profound thing. They think this performance encapsulates the pain that she's living. At first they hate it, then they embrace as the best performance of all. This performance makes them understand her. This performance causes them to pray for her. 

Flappy mechanical bird

This is a video that I took from YouTube and edited severely in i-Movie.

The original shows the length the Japanese person went to make his bird. But that is not relevant to my interest.

Garlic peel trick

This can change your life.

As someone who makes a lot of Korean food, this is the best method for getting garlic peeled!
👌 pic.twitter.com/14GGJDQhRj

— 𝖛𝖆𝖑𝖊𝖓𝖙𝖎𝖓𝖆 ✣ 𝖑𝖔𝖗𝖉 🌑 (@VPestilenZ) June 17, 2019

There's something this video doesn't show you.

You must first cut around the root to loosen them.

The next guy takes 4 minutes to tell you what he could say in fifteen seconds.

But he's nice enough.

And at the first instance of the word "out" you know precisely he's from Canada.

And then his hat proves it.

See, we show you these odd garlic and detective type things here at Lem's.

How does stainless steel remove the odor of garlic from your hands?

Ew, ew, ew, lemme guess, lemme guess. *waves hand frantically.*

Well, it's gotta be chemistry.

The garlic odor is from sulfur molecules. An element in stainless steel attracts the molecules or the ions.

At home I use the chef's knife that smashed the garlic. Or I use the faucet. And they both work. The sink is steel and that also works.

So there I am sniffing my fingers going, "f'k'n-A this steel thing really does work."

Huffington Post for the win.

Huffington Post is like Denver. They're perfectly lovely places until they talk about politics. Then they're drop dead bat-poop crazy. And there is no repair for them.

Booza

Emmy makes booza for the first time.

It's Middle Eastern ice cream that stretches like taffy.

The two key ingredients are sahlab, an orchid root, and mastic, a plant resin.

I was told repeatedly that out of thousands of orchids vanilla is the only orchid used for food. And now here's sahlab also salep.

Lies! All lies.

She's experimenting. Here's an expert.

President Trump hosts 3rd annual Made in America Product showcase

Trump's staff invited manufacturers from each state in the union. It appears.

President Trump used this occasion to sign an executive order raising made in America standard from 50% to 75%. With 95% for iron and steel.

Some whore with the press kept shrieking unrelated questions in her effort to frame a narrative 100% at odds with the subject at hand, always so eager to tell their own ridiculous stories while ignoring the facts right in front of them, continuously interrupting his answers. Everyone who is not a media nitwit wants her ejected.

Redline Steel, LLC – Alabama
Alaska Rug Company – Alaska
Arizona Chile Roasters – Arizona
Rich-N-Tone Calls, Inc. – Arkansas
HOSTYLE Racing Products, LLC – California
Eagle Claw Fishing Tackle, Co. – Colorado
Luke’s Toy Factory – Connecticut
Backyard Jams & Jellies, Inc. – Delaware
Kino Sandals, Inc. – Florida
2 Day Designs – Georgia
Ocean Organic Vodka – Hawaii
Buck Knives, Inc. – Idaho
Stern Pinball, Inc. – Illinois
Janus Motorcycles – Indiana
Bannor Toys – Iowa
Cobalt Bolts – Kansas
QuaLex Manufacturing – Kentucky
McIlhenny Company – Louisiana
Jack Traps, Inc. – Maine
THAAD, Lockheed Martin Corporation – Maryland
KettlePizza, LLC – Massachusetts
Michigan Mittens – Michigan
3M – Minnesota
Mississippi Cheese Straw Factory – Mississippi
Snake Bite Co. – Missouri
Schnee’s – Montana
T-L Irrigation Co. – Nebraska
Fisher Space Pen So. – Nevada
BaileyWorks, Inc. – New Hampshire
Benjamin Moore & Co. – New Jersey
Weaver Guitar Straps – New Mexico
Tough Traveler Ltd. – New York
Council Tool Company – North Carolina
Dakota Micro, Inc. – North Dakota
Airstream, Inc. – Ohio
Gameday Ironworks, LLC – Oklahoma
Willamette Valley Vineyards – Oregon
Zippo Manufacturing Company – Pennsylvania
WaterRower, Inc. – Rhode Island
Freeman Boatworks – South Carolina
Dakota Grills, LLC – South Dakota
Litespeed Bicycles – Tennessee
Nokona – Texas
ENVE Composites – Utah
Johnson Woolen Mills – Vermont
The Little Burros – Virginia
CMI Orchards, LLC – Washington
Marble King, Inc. – West Virginia
Carmex – Wisconsin
Jackson Hole Hat Co. – Wyoming

Other videos that show very clearly how badly American media is insane and worse than worthless.

YouTube [made in america] filter [today]

Hugo Alfvén: Swedish Rhapsody Nr.1, "Midsommarvaka"

Ricpic suggested in the previous post. This video was chosen for its slide show. All the others are static.

Do diddly do-do dum dum dum de dum dum dum de dum dum dum. Oh great. Now I got that ear-worm stuck in my head.

Unrelated ↓.

Trump's rope a dope

I've never seen anything like this. It's blowing my mind.

Trump made a series of imprecise tweets. He criticized Democrats harshly without citing names while everyone knew who he meant; the new Dem mean girls who garner so much media attention.

Nobody controls media attention like President Donald Trump.

Trump told them basically to go back where they came from and fix their countries of origin then come back and tell us how that is done.

But only one actually comes from another country.

Driscoll on Instapundit links twice to John Hinderaker at PowerLine. Hinderaker thinks Trump's tweets are a huge mistake. Because Dems are self-immolating presently, we should just watch them burn, but instead Trump roils the pot and takes the attention off of them and onto himself.

Hinderaker and Driscoll simply cannot comprehend how Trump operates.

They cannot accept Trump is more adept than they are.

They're timid. They're too studied in good manners. They come to a gunfight slapping people with white gloves and expecting that to work in today's cutthroat political climate.

Trump makes me laugh my butt off. Hinderaker and Driscoll find nothing amusing about him.

You know what? Henry Kissinger is that same way. His two books, The White House Years and Years of Upheaval are thick heavy tomes with several hundred pages loaded with $10.00 words. I kept index cards as book markers and always a pencil at hand and I learned a million new words. Possibly a hundred. And thereafter I wondered how I ever managed without them. The books are extremely technical, about the SALT treaties and about shuttle diplomacy. He knew every head of state in the world. His circle was quite amazing and throughout both books his extremely dry intellectual wit rings like a bell. The man is funny! His descriptions of people especially are hilarious.

In case you haven't seen this:

Hinderaker at PowerLine. His commenters comprehend Trump much better than he does.

Driscoll 1 at Instapundit. His commenters are so far ahead of him that it's not even funny. Glenn Reynolds updates contrarily. 1,000+ comments smarter than Driscoll.

Driscoll 2 Apparently Driscoll thinks Instapundit readers could use a second dose. Nearly 500 comments, pow, right in the kisser.

Apparently the media freaked the f out. I wouldn't know without being told. I've shut them out completely. They're useless to me. Worse than useless. They're damaging. I'm told they freaked out. They're probably analyzing the imprecision of Trump's tweets. They're undoubtedly framing the controversy in terms of race. But Trump didn't name them. Rather, he described what they did in general terms.

And Trump isn't finished.

Later in the day Trump picks up where he left off.

Now Tump says, "So sad to see Democrats stick up for people who speak so badly of our country and who also hate Israel with unbridled passion. Whenever confronted they call their adversaries racist. The terrible things that they say must not be allowed to go unchallenged. If the Democrat Party wants to do this then we look forward to seeing them at the ballot box in 2020."

See for yourself, Seeforyourselfers.

Trump Twitter.

Ever notice how really smart people get stuck on the stupidest things?

It's 1972 All Over Again

These buttons are from my personal collection. Note the gear/cog theme -- no doubt an appeal to organized labor of the machinist sort. These buttons came from Wisconsin where there was a large contingency of unionized machinist labor at the time. The gear/cog seems so anachronistic these days. The sort of labor that the Democratic Party is appealing to nowadays is mostly non-union and mostly not even legal if recent statements by all of their candidates are to be believed. I can't think of any major partisan constituency that would connect with the cog-in-the-machine graphics. Can you? ;)

Virga

The cloud in the distance is dumping its contents and I can watch the cloud approaching.

Duckduckgo images [virga.]

Suddenly I'm in it and the whole thing is gray.

It's the darnedest thing. 

I've never lived anywhere that it's this clear. Often even more clear than this. There'll be a whole bank of clouds and off in the distance one of them is dumping itself straight down. 

It's pure art.

It never fails to captivate my imagination. 

Sometimes you can be under one and not even get wet. 

The air is so dry the clouds cannot hold their water. Sometimes you can be under a virga and not get wet because the droplets dry before hitting the ground. 

And you can see that in the distance too. 

If you are an artist you could paint this by drying a larger flat brush and set it on the bottom edge of a wet painted cloud then pull downward to partially cover the thing already painted. The result would look exactly like this. 

And then people viewing your painting would go, "That doesn't even look real." But it does. It happens here all the time. 

Other places I lived the entire sky turns the same gray from end to end and it rains everywhere the same all at once. 

But here we see it raining over there in the distance.

The sky was completely electric. 

I could have set up my tripod and attached the lightening capture device but I'd have to replace its battery. And I have to re-read the instructions each time because the device does other things. I could have got dozens of strikes. They were happening right in my frame; my little window created by the "U" shape of the building I'm in. I'm in the bottom of the "U." In the middle of a stack of "U's." The middle of the middle, and the lightning was going BLAM, BLAM, BLAM all over the place. It was fun. I missed a good opportunity.

Tea

For the garden, not to drink.

This is Boogie Brew.

It's like a teabag that's been steeping for twenty-four hours. 

With an aerator for the aquarium.

The brew comes in two parts for longer shelf-life. You use 1/2 cup of each part and soak for a day with air circulating. It imparts living organisms into the soil that work in the root-zone to bring available nutrients into the roots. 

Tea and coffee grounds work in compost, but this is not that.

One time at work an elderly woman recommended tea for indoor plants. She meant opening up used teabags into the soil. 

I tried that and saw no results. 

Then I was visiting a friend with farming background. He had a garden in his front yard right by the front door. You have to walk past the garden to go inside. That how intimate he was with his home garden. 

Early in the season his corn was higher than all other corn in all other gardens.

By a lot.

His were double the regular size. Much more filled out. Already forming ears. While everyone else's corn was pathetically struggling. 

"What are you doing that's different?"

"I added tea."

"Oh come on. That doesn't work. Quit bullshitting me. I tried that already and it failed. I drank tea, then tore open the used bags and dumped it into the soil and ... nothing." 

"Not that kind of tea. When farmers say 'tea" they mean cow shit soaked in water. Come here. I'll show you." 

He took me outside and showed me a 5-gallon bucket filled with water and with a cow patty soaking inside it. 

"That's tea."

     "OooOOOOOOOOOoooh. Now I get it. 'tea' is a farm-euphemism for cow shit." 

"Yes." 

The woman at work is stupid. She doesn't speak farmer." 

This Boogie Brew is the less disgusting version of that. It's doing the same thing but without any cows. 

Now I have a bag of one cup of wet used particles. It's a bit like wet worm castings. The instructions do not say what to do with them, from what I saw anyway. So they're going into the pots to supplement the soil. So each watering will draw out some more.

I'll do this a few times each season. Maybe a couple more times this year. I used hardly any that came in the two bags. 

You have to use de-chlorinated water. Chlorine kills the organisms that you're trying to cultivate.

I have a very good 10-part filter on the sink that does that, but to be certain I let the water sit overnight before starting, then steeped the bag for another full day with the aquarium aerator. 

You can de-chlorinate faster by using the aerator. That reduces the time to just a few hours. 

Salting cheap steak

The video is titled Poor Man's Filet Mignon. It's all about salting.

Skip the beginning where he's talking about his hat.

Skip the middle where he's talking about his sauce.

They do go on unnecessarily. (And that's from a go-oner.)

Why didn't he flip it and salt both sides?

Brining is a two part deal.

The salt draws moisture out of the meat and into the salt. The liquid equalizes salinity between inside and outside. Then it begins pulling salt into the meat and that damages the meat by widening the passageways. It will keep going until salinity equalizes inside and out.

This man is stopping that process.  

When you rinse the steak you have to totally rinse it inside and out. Not just quickly rinse off the outside surface salt. Better to soak it in water and it will do the same thing all over again until the quantity of water equals the salinity of the inside of the meat. By then the meat will good and damaged, the passageways wide open.