One year ago today: January 3, 2024, the 4-hour haircut.
Five years ago today: January 3, 2020, Publix weigh scales.
Nine years ago today: January 3, 2016, this two-bit town.
Random years ago today: January 3, 2001, the real enemy.
Too chilly again, I opted to sort some old disks in the silo. I found a number of old videos that were made just at the time that digital material was working into this blog. It was not a time when advice was available. The billions of Internet geniuses had not shown up yet. Many of the recordings have sound, but a lot of it is background. This was around 2005 so I did not have a lot of matching photos to the text. And even less when it was video. So I discovered that by making gifs at a speed of 1.35x, I could create an effect I call “Super 8”. I never had an 8mm but I’ve seen the newsreel like quality of that era and it’s a fairly good match.
Finally, a plan for the Qattara Depression that makes sense. Keeping a eye on that plan for the past forty years has seen nothing practical and costs stated as between $9 billion and $90 billion. The most interesting was the plant detonate 23 nuclear bombs to did the trench. The hitch with lakes is if they have no drainage, sooner or later the place fills up with salt, and you may be worse off than when you began. You’ll be wanting fresh water which is not going to happen if you dig a tunnel to the Mediterranean.
Two things puzzled me. One is salt water. If you keep sea water flowing into a depression, sooner or later it fills up with salt. You want fresh water, but desalination isn’t free. What’s happened is somebody finally figured out how to balance the inflow with the evaporation rate. I like it because it makes sense. You match the inflow though turbines controlled by gates which keep the lake level correct for producing the electricity needed to run the desalination boilers with enough left over to light up Cairo. I would like to see the figures, but I like the it.
The news is crazy again, more killings and shootings but with a change. The public no longer trusts the official version of things. Thanks to Trump, less than a third of Americans get their news from the big companies any more. Few people care any more if these bombers and shooters die. Many feel they are pawns as the Deep State panics. What’s evident is they did not think and outsider like Trump would ever get this far and they have nothing to combat it with. All their tactics would have sewered an insider by now but Trump just shrugs them off. The deadline for them approaches and their operations become wilder and more violent. At the same time, there are signs they could do much worse but for unknown reasons have not. Yet.
Little short of a civil war will stop the momentum of Trump. Mind you, he has made some exceedingly unpopular moves, such as appointing people of questionably loyalties and dual citizenship. Most Americans do not like that, and no, it is not about the best man for the job. They don’t like it, period.
Slab stone wall.
Remember to use BACK ARROW to return to blog.
I’m nearing the end of “Computronicon”, the book. Don’t read it. Any one of the sub-plots might have made a good tale where together they are a complicated mess. Several times when I lost my place (by falling asleep while reading), I go back over the last few pages I know I’ve read and find the same every other chapter has the same chain of events. The two sub-plots of any interest are the missing gold and the code-breaking. Sadly, the code portion does not give any real examples and gets into the improbable. There are clever parts, like the way to examine text files without opening them, and a way to get some light on the keyboard to flash the text in Morse if you don’t want the Japanese spy in the room to bayonet you.
Earlier this week I did not use the warm spell to wire up the 220V heater. Now it is too cold to do it. I need to run one wire in the attic but instead I’m half-shivering in the 40°F mornings. One more tube sale, it went out y’day. January will also be a lean month. Chloe, the eldest cat, ran up a $471 vet bill. I dropped off another monthly bag of doggie food at the Sheriff’s pound, I’ve begun referring to that as “JeePee’s”. My base utility bill here, that is, a month when I am away and the power is completely off except for the refrigerator, is now $112. My communication bill now totals $104 monthly and taxes are now $90. While technically I could bike over to use the library computer, this means the cost of standing still and doing nothing is now, for me, over $300 per month. To counter-balance that, I have most tools I need, a good workshed, and it was a smart move buying this place as the looming rent scrunch is now well underway.
Scrunch? Yes, the next evolutionary phase of the real estate market is here already. This is where ownership is only for rich people, forcing most others to become renters. This places them at the mercy of landlords, which is a repeat of 1860 to 1940 in this country. Nothing new except this time it is contrived. I didn’t think it would happen in my lifetime but now most indications say the process is well underway, spearheaded by Blackrock and bank policy.
It’s cold again right after sunset, so let’s peek at the news, if we dare. You know it’s going to be mostly politics, so let’s keep a sense of humor. Moments later, it is all the same old politics. Drop back tomorrow.
ADDENDUM
So I go out to the silo to get that roll of plastic strapping ribbon for something I want to ship. I wondered why somebody gave me a whole roll for free a while back. Now I know. It would not work on my crimper. It works with some special plastic heater thingee. So I looked it up in my Uline catalog. $3,460. Say, do you need a roll of strapping tape?
This, my newest computer, has something wrong. Not uncommon with MicroSoft gear, it randomly dros my Internet connection, wiping out all current connections. And the word processor likes to seize up, though I’ve never trust that program and automatically command a save every few sentences.
