From Pine View Farm

2022 archive

QOTD 0

Leon Bertoletti:

I prefer news without interviews to interviews without news.

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Recommended Listening 0

The Saint radio show, with Vincent Price as Simon Templar.

I have been a fan of The Saint since I was a young ‘un.

I have read almost all of Leslie Charteris’s novels and short stories and watched all of that most excellent Roger Moore television series, some episodes multiple times.

Of course, neither the television series nor the radio shows were entirely true to Charteris’s Saint. Their Saints were much more law-abiding than the original; the original valued justice over law and was quite willing to break the law to achieve justice. The broadcast series feared to go quite so far.

But the Vincent Price series is a great listen.

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A Tune for the Times 0

Mangy comments at the Youtube page:

Donald Trump was supported by some of the most unhinged, racist, conspiracy-believing, anti-government, fascist-wannabe whackos of all time. The ‘religious’ leaders that supported him were much the same, although generally they tended to be mostly amoral grifters whose holy schtick was an easy way to pay for their luxury lifestyle and pool boys without doing any heavy lifting.

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The Crypto Con, One More Time 0

Writing in the Portland Press-Herald, Adam Lee unveils a new cryptocurrency based on a renewable resource.

The currency is going to be based on how many poops our dogs take in our yard per day.

Follow the link for details.

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Vaccine Nation 0

And here we go again . . . .

We are a society of stupid.

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“An Armed Society Is a Polite Society” 0

Yet another random act of politeness.

We are broken.

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The Crypto Con, Reprise 0

Snake Oil Salesman to woman buying snake oil:  We don't take crypto.  Cash or credit only.

Click to view the original image.

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The Crypto Con 0

Rebecca Watson digs into NFTs. She is less than impressed with what she finds.

Of, if you’d rather read, there’s a transcript.

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The New Gilded Age 0

It gets more gilded every day. From a report at SFGate:

An executive at Salesforce appears to be enamored with Elon Musk’s desire to work 80-hour weeks and subject his workers to those conditions.

As I have mentioned, I worked for the railroad (I loved the railroad!), which is a heavily unionized environment (though these days, the unions don’t seem to be as strong as they should used to be). By happenstance, I knew a high-ranking union official, the chief lobbyist for one of the major railroad unions, a kind and honest and thoughtful man, indeed, one of the finest men I have ever known.

He was fond of pointing out that “unions are the creation of management.”

To put it another way, if management treats employees fairly, employees have no incentive to form unions.

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QOTD 0

Derek Walcott:

I never thought I would see the day when America (which is based on the idea of liberty, from which the world Liberal comes) would become so self-centered and hypocritical. I mean if democracy considers liberal to be a term of abuse, then we should be terrified. A liberal is someone who believes in liberty. And if it is wrong to be liberal, then the other side has to be fascist.

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The Plutocrat’s Plaything 0

Frame One, captioned

Click for the original image.

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Facebook Frolics 0

The bully’s pulpit.

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One Thing Is Not Like the Other Thing 0

The writer of a letter to the editor of The Roanoke Times calls him out some whataboutism.

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Bait and Switch 0

The Editorial Board of the Charlotte Observer details the con.

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Twits Own Twitter 0

Sam suggests that what Elon Musk is doing with Twitter is a case study of why billionaires can be corrosive to our society. Watch the video for his reasoning.

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“An Armed Society Is a Polite Society” 0

The hunt for politeness continues.

One more time: “Responsible gun owner” is an oxymoron.

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DIs Coarse Discourse 0

At Psychology Today Blogs, Guy Harrison interviews Timothy Redmond about what’s gone wrong with our politics and what we need to do to fix them.

Just go read it.

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QOTD 0

Edmund Crispin:

Moral indignation was an emotion that Fen distrusted; he made an effort and suppressed it.

Crispin, Edmund, Love Lies Bleeding (New York: Penguin, 1982), p. 145

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The Crypto Con 0

Frame One:  Elvie says,

Click for the original image.

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Tech Wreck Bros 0

Noz has an epiphany.

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