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Yesteryear

Thursday, June 16, 2022

June 16, 2022

Yesteryear
One year ago today: June 16, 2021, Putin questions Biden.
Five years ago today: June 16, 2017, parking in Miami.
Nine years ago today: June 16, 2013, WIP – needs reposting.
Random years ago today: June 16,2018, my hot dog cart.

           Good luck trying to find a documentary of the Yom Kippur war that doesn’t make the Arabs look like stooges. I did find one bit of trivia. The Egyptians used the Sagger anti-tank missle against Israeli armor in the Sinai. It’s a good thing the Soviets produced them at 25,000 per year, as it required six rounds fired to train each crew in the Red Army to hit a tank. In the Egyptian army that rose to 102 rounds. The IDF lost an estimated 150 tanks, meaning the total Saggers needed for that operation was around 1,500.
           June is half over and I’m moving at half-speed. It is hornet season and they seem to like my back door. Three nests underway in two days. As an experienced home owner, I’ll get out the spray with a range of twelve feet. Another 96F° and I had no choice, I worked right through it, five and a half hours. I may get a second big fan for the workshop, it works much better than the rest. In fact, I took one and hung it on the wall of the white shed.

           Then we moved the air compressor to the outside of the workshed. Less convenient for filling tires, but handier for everything else. This involved repeatedly ducking into the shed or the back office to cool down while doing other tasks. Such activity had me watching videos on the latest from Boston Dynamics.
           Formed in 1992, they built that robot pack mule. And they have moved on rapidly, the latest versions are slick. None of the hesitation or jerky movements, they all move as fast as humans and it is freaky to watch them completely outperform athletes at anything and at twice the speed.
           Boston goes to lengths to stress the friendliness of these machines but that fools nobody. Whoever possesses these first will have the capability of dominating everything. The photo above is not a movie scene, but a demo of how the robot can react with lightning speed to no matter what moves the man on the left makes. Boston has not weaponized these yet, but other companies have. Nor would it take special weapons. If you watch the robot hands in the factory mode, it would move several times faster than Bruce Lee in karate mode.

           The next generation of these things will exceed human capabilities by several orders. That’s maybe five years at most. With a shotgun, the five-foot soldier robot can take out drones with precision. Anybody with a fifty of these will be able to conquer any minor foreign country in a few hours. The robots already move fast enough to give current tracking systems a jolt, and the firing range scenes tell you 200 shots means 200 kills. In about thirty seconds, every one a head shot.
           Like the industrial revolution, initially only the rich will be able to afford these machines. The first with a thousand of these machines could re-establish the feudal system. No bank, no military base, no fortress, nothing would be safe any longer. The attacking quadrupeds lose an arm or leg and keep on going. There is absolutely no doubt you will be seeing these things in your life shortly. I’m too late to write my movie script on the robot-drone billion-dollar heist.

           Have you heard of Privacy Badger? If not, try it and use it. It blocks the secret trackers you can’t see. I learned of when Firefox tried to get people to report it as abuse, that it was violating Firefox’s “add-on policy”, meaning it works. You install it and have two choices. Blindly and foolishly accept the default settings, or go through a list of a thousand plus tracking sites and find all the yellow sliders. Push them to red. Now, when you go to a site that tracks, all is blocked and you can’t see the site—until you manually allow the “allow once” feature.
           Careful, it means per site, so if you allow on youTube in a session, it allows them all until you close youTube and come back later. So don’t walk away and leave youTube active. You may want to check regularly because it appears some operators, such as Bing and Amazon, have paid a fee to have their cookies open or possibly the ability to turn themselves back on. Hint, if it says Google, consent, or has a ca (Canada) suffix, block it hard and fast. Read the list for an eye-opener who is desperate to track you, such as that Captcha verification service. These sneaks are ludicrous asking if you are some kind of robot.

Picture of the day.
Northwest Russia.
Remember to use BACK ARROW to return to blog.

           By 1:00PM, the shade had worked over to the neighbor’s yard. I was over there with my chain saw, then two electric drills. The lumber was too heavy so I took the pieces apart, gaining some 230 heavy duty outdoor screws in the process. Whoever built that playhouse was taking no chances of some kid working a plank loose. My guess is I gained around $450 in useable lumber today, if I had to buy it. I missed five minutes of antics in the birdbath because I left the camcorder in the van. Mrs. Red anyway, has associated me going inside with sound of the dripping, which I believe she can hear from 600 feet away.
           This was heavy work, possibly the most of it since my recovery. I had to push more than usual and got the job done. Well, the part of getting the lumber over the back fence and out of the neighbor’s yard. That solves my base platform situation for the fridge, the water heater, and the air compressor, all of which need to be a foot off the ground. I also ran some air hoses in so most of the shop area is reachable. Funny how compressed air made it before a vacuum system. As for the front area, I have two L-grade (thick walled) copper pipes that will reach to the front of the red shed, after that it is flex hose.


           [Author's note: the following are youTube and Amazon links. Use at your own risk. Many of these do not link to the specific videos I intended, rather to advertising pages. Some will disable the return button. Because millennial coders are mostly scum and everybody knows it including themselves.]

           I moved the big thermometer out of the shed, where I know the temp with the fan stays around 80F°. It’s on the side of the house and today read 97F°. Without that 54% humidity I was afraid I’d catch on fire. Face it, the day of throwing out any usable lumber is past. These pallets have been my best source, but just you watch the supply dry up. It’s ironic that now I have the hard part done, I’m about to invest in a specialist tool for breaking down pallets. Called the wrecking claw, it was designed to remove decking. This is in anticipation of covering the sheds with pallet “shingles”.
           The technology so far is this. Two choices, simply cut the pallet boards off beside the nails and lose that end piece each time. Or, use a crowbar and hammer, which all too often breaks or splinters the wood. The best nail puller made, the Crescent 19” is still the best. It damages the wood and can’t be used in some corners. At $39 these days, I looked at a pneumatic model, right, I’ll have air soon. Called the AP700 nail puller, it really punches the nail out from the other side. At $59, it has a reputation for jamming, but I noticed in each case they tried to use it on small nails. Anyway, check back for news on these.
           One other tool I explored is called Kwickgripper. It has the force to pull a nail through the board with the head attached. I notice in each case, it needed part of the nail to be exposed. If you want to go pro, there is even a tool that extracts the punched nails. I also took notes on how to read the stamps on pallets. Yes, they are important. I found out the ones that are painted belong to shipping companies and are meant to be returned. To late. And anything stamped MB is toxic. End of lesson.

ADDENDUM
           Revlon, the cosmetic company, has filed for bankruptcy. Increased costs is the primary reason. They also missed how much the millennials and their fat ugly women would shift away from cosmetics and start using Hollywood monster paste. They also priced themselves out of the market. Guess what the nig-nogs grab first off the shelves?
           Biden claims 39% approval in Pennsylvania, which nobody believes. When I was in Venezuela in the 90s, I saw a man who got arrested. He turned around and used the publicity to become the President. And this last week, I saw another man get arrested under similar circumstances. I’ve seen that look before and this guy means business.
           His name is Rosseau(?) and he is leader of the protesters who were arrested in Idaho, ID’d, and then let go on $500 bail, as the story goes. This was to prevent them from protesting a queer parade. This arrest was intended to intimidate others but as Trump said in different words, this is going to backfire. It does not matter there was something fishy about the whole situation with the U-haul van, the message is clear. Exercising your rights can land you in the slammer, a message that does not resonate with most Americans.

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