From Pine View Farm

2023 archive

“An Armed Society Is a Polite Society” 0

And another responsible gun owner exercises politeness on the pavement . . . .

Police say the victim was attempting to turn onto Green River Road, when a dark-colored SUV ran a stop sign and cut off the victim’s vehicle. Authorities say the victim honked and yelled at the driver of the dark-colored SUV. The SUV’s driver reportedly parked in a nearby lot, and approached the victim’s window. Police say after exchanging words, the SUV’s driver pulled out a gun and fired several shots into the car.

We are a broken society.

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Twits on Twitter X Offenders 0

At the Bangor Daily News, Susan Young discusses Elon Musk’s sinister scapegoating. A snippet:

Musk, one of the world’s most powerful businessmen, has blamed the financial woes of X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter, on — wait for it — the Jews.

According to Musk, the company’s loss of ad revenue isn’t due to his mismanagement of the company. Or to the foolish renaming of one of the world’s best known companies or the firing of many of its competent employees. Or the platform’s alarming rise in hate speech.

No, it’s because Jews . . . .

I commend her entire article to your attention.

(Misplaced tag placed.)

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Paying No Attention to the Man behind the Curtain 0

Judge holding document labeled

Via Job’s Anger.

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The Disinformation Superhighway 0

If you edit it out of Wikipedia, why, natch, it must have never happened.

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Playing by the Bookie 0

At my local rag, sportswriter extraordinaire Bob Molinaro looks at the gamboling gamblers in the game (emphasis in the original):

Start to finish: The NFL season begins with 10 players suspended for sports gambling and ends with a Super Bowl in Las Vegas, the gambling capital of the world. A little bit of a mixed message, don’t you think?

A look back: Evidence of how times have changed is that it wasn’t that long ago when Las Vegas was barred from even running TV ads during the Super Bowl.

Also: As if gambling isn’t prevalent enough, the Commanders are opening a sports book inside their stadium. When did buying a ticket to watch a game stop being enough?

Aside:

I suspect I’m not the only person sick of sports stars shilling for shysters commercials for online sports betting.

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QOTD 0

Barbara Tuchman:

History is the unfolding of miscalculations.

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Geeking Out 0

One of my computers died of old age (stuff wears out), so I now have a new toy. It’s my third ThinkPenguin, and they fulfilled my order in a most timely fashion.

It is a very nice piece of hardware, thank you very much. As an aside, I am not a fan of touchpads, but it does have one of most functional touchpads I’ve yet encountered.

I ordered it specifying Ubuntu MATE as the installed distro (ThinkPenguin lets you pick your distro, within reason), but, as I’m not really a big fan of the MATE desktop environment (actually, that’s not quite correct–I really like Plasma, but I don’t like Kubuntu, primarily because I loathe their package manager, so I went with Ubuntu MATE because the guys at Going Linux recommend it and I’ve used it before and it works quite nicely), I’ve already installed the Plasma desktop and am in the process of tweaking it to my preferences.

Eventually, natch, I’ll put Fluxbox on it, because Fluxbox is the ultimate combination of light-weight, configurable, and eye-candiability.

Of course, after I’ve installed Fluxbos, I will still be able to use MATE or Plasma. With Linux, you can have multiple GUIs installed and switch among them as you wish, something you can’t do with Windows or iJunk.

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Still Rising Again after All These Years 0

Farron discusses some textbook cases of psychological projection. (Warning: Mild language.)

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Extra-Special Bonus QOTD 0

Bob Cesca decodes de code:

It started on Fox News . . . . This whole “Biden is too old” thing is “Oh my God, beware of the black woman President!”

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“An Armed Society Is a Polite Society” 0

Another child is sacrificed to the NRA’s leaden idol.

We are a broken society.

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The Crypto Con 2

It seems the crypto “industry” has found a way to diversify. Here’s a bit from the story at Chron.com:

Texas paid cryptocurrency mining company Riot more than $31 million to cut its energy use in August, as an extreme heat wave pushed the state’s energy grid to multiple peak demand records.

“August was a landmark month for Riot in showcasing the benefits of our unique power strategy,” Jason Les, CEO of Riot, said in a Wednesday release. Les said the company raked in $31.7 million in energy credits from the Energy Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT), the agency that runs the Texas power grid, by cutting its power use by more than 95 percent during periods of peak demand.

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Crossing the Jordan 0

Fulton County, Ga., prosecutor Fani Willis is fed up with Jim Jordan’s interference and has told him to keep his nose out of Georgia’s business.

The Hill reports on her letter to him. Here’s a bit; follow the link for the full story.

The nine-page letter at turns accuses Jordan of “offend[ing]” Constitutional principals with “your attempt to interfere with and obstruction this office’s prosecution,” suggests he buy a book on racketeering prosecution at the price offered for non-attorneys and casts her response as voluntary as “settled constitutional law clearly permits me to ignore your unjustified and illegal intrusion.”

“Your attempt to invoke congressional authority to intrude upon and interfere with an active criminal case in Georgia is flagrantly at odds with the Constitution,” Willis wrote in a letter first reported by the Atlanta Journal–Constitution and also obtained by The Hill.

At Above the Law, Liz Dye comments.

Read more »

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A Bitter Pill 0

Drawing of Rx bottle labeled

Click for the original image.

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Still Rising Again after All These Years 0

Field wonders why so may Trumpettes are willing to life in a fantasy world, believing that Donald Trump won the election and the Deep State is plotting against him, then decides, well, the answer is simple, really.

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QOTD 0

Marshall Thompson, in the voice of Arthur Poe:

Most people can resist anything except temptation.

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And Now for a Musical Interlude 0

Mark Doyle performs “Park Avenue Beat,” a tune that is well known in another context.

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Flotsam 0

It turns out that there was something in the water.

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Up the Creek without a Union 0

Or you can read the transcript.

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An Accidental Truth 0

Scene:  Pig is interviewing for a job.  Image:  Interviewer:  Thanks for applying for a job at our cable news station.  As you may know, our mission here is to keep our viewers . . . .  Pig interrupts:  Afraid.  Interviewer:  Informed.  Pig (now standing on a sidewalk):  I was so close.

Click to view the original image.

When news coverage went from being a loss-leader and a service to being a profit center, when news went from information to “infotainment,” well, that’s when this discourse became dis coarse.

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The Climates They Are a-Changing . . . 0

. . . and the outlook is getting darker.

In a recent comprehensive assessment by PLOS, the Public Library of Science, firefly experts estimate that at least 14% of North American firefly species are threatened; classified as critically endangered or endangered.

Scientists at PLOS say their numbers are dwindling due to climate change and the use of pesticides.

When I was a young ‘un growing up on the farm about forty miles north of where I type this, we saw fireflies flashing throughout the summer evenings.

I can’t remember the last time I saw a firefly.

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