Ace: aceofspadeshq at gee mail.com
Buck: buck.throckmorton at protonmail.com
CBD: cbd at cutjibnewsletter.com
Doof: doof2112 at proton.me
joe mannix: mannix2024 at proton.me
MisHum: petmorons at gee mail.com
J.J. Sefton: sefton at cutjibnewsletter.com
A site for members of the Horde to post their stories seeking beta readers, editing help, brainstorming, and story ideas. Also to share links to potential publishing outlets, writing help sites, and videos posting tips to get published.
Contact OrangeEnt for info: maildrop62 at proton dot me
THE MORNING RANT: Tesla Pulls the Plug on its Failed Cybertruck Because There’s No Mass Market for EV Pickups
—Buck Throckmorton
Tesla’s electric pickup truck, the Cybertruck, was announced in 2019 with great fanfare. It was touted as the electric “F150-slayer.” Hundreds of thousands of pre-orders were registered. The anti-carbon media swooned (this was before Elon Musk aligned with Republicans and Donald Trump) and legacy auto manufacturers panicked and started developing their own electric pickup trucks.
The Cybertruck finally went on sale in late 2023. It was a flop of legendary proportions. A few days ago, Elon Musk finally announced that he is pulling the plug on Tesla’s electric pickup truck.
Elon Musk had predicted sales of 250,000 Cybertrucks per year, and that it would take on the Ford F150 as the dominant domestic pickup truck. Since the Cybertruck went on sale a little over three years ago, only 73,000 have been sold cumulatively. Sales peaked in 2024 at just 39k units, dropping to 20K in 2025, and tracking even lower in 2026.
In October 2026, Tesla sold less than 2,000 Cybertrucks while Ford sold more than 73,000 F150s, none of which were electric. (Ford sold exactly zero units of its recently-discontinued electric F150 ConflagrationLightning pickup in October.)
Musk and Tesla have been wildly successful selling electric vehicles as a daily commuter car to upscale professionals, especially those who own a house in which they can install a home charger. As a percentage of the light vehicle marketplace, it’s not a huge niche, but it still represents a lot of car buyers, and Tesla dominates it. A great many of the people whose station in life once steered them toward BMW, Mercedes, and Volvo are now driving Teslas. But they also tend to have at least one gas-powered vehicle in their garage.
Pickup trucks have a much different driver demographic. The upscale person who wants a pickup might already have a Tesla as his daily driver, so he chooses a gasoline-powered King Ranch F150 (or similar competitor offering) that can serve any pickup purpose, while still conveying affluence. For a person whose only vehicle is a pickup truck, however, the Cybertruck was not an option at all.
Despite the emphatic market rejection of electric pickups over the past few years, including the cancellation of the much-hyped flagships from Tesla and Ford, several more electric pickups have been announced. These include the Scout (owned by Volkswagen,) and the Slate from an investment group involving Jeff Bezos. Ford has also decided to lose several billion dollars more with yet another soon-to-fail electric pickup, the Fathom .
The new electric pickup companies are already hyping their pre-orders, with Scout and Slate both announcing they’ve taken deposits for more than 150k “reservations.” Unfortunately, pre-orders and reservations have a poor track record of converting into actual sales.
In Nov 2019, it was announced that 250,000 people had already put down deposits to pre-order a Cybertruck. As noted above, not even 75,000 Cybertrucks were actually delivered over three years before Tesla pulled the plug.
In 2021, Ford took deposits on almost 200,000 reservations for its F150 Lightning before closing new reservations due to “excessive demand.” Based on media buzz and all those pre-orders, Ford projected annual sales in excess of 150k electric pickup trucks per year. It barely sold 100k in total over the next five years, despite massive discounting to make the glut of unsellable Lightnings go away. The pre-orders had evaporated.
There has not been a commercially successful electric pickup truck because there is neither a market for one, nor a practical need. But like conquistadors in pursuit of the gold of Cibola, mismanaged auto manufacturers keep chasing the imaginary riches from a mass-market electric pickup. They are doomed to failure. If Elon Musk and Tesla couldn’t succeed in this market, it’s because the market doesn’t exist.
Good morning kids. Hope you all had a pleasant, peaceful, relaxing weekend and a chance to forget for at least a short while the nightmare we woke up to last Wednesday. Sorry to say that coming here and of course elsewhere across the conservative blogosphere, that nightmarish reality still dominates as you can see from the vast majority of links. I did not have a chance to go back to inspect previous entries to compare with the immediate aftermath of the past few elections but I suspect they were equally chock full o'links with post election analysis for several days if not entire news cycles. Of course this go round we have the Democrat/Left Propaganda Complex doing the moral equivalent of passing out candy and ululating in orgasmic glee at the site of the smoldering ruins of the Twin Towers on 9/11/01.
Among the essays are a couple in which the authors are stating that perhaps the horrendous defeat we suffered might be just the tonic we need to revitalize the movement and actually take back the nation going forward. While it certainly is true that the disaster that was the Carter presidency did indeed lead to the two terms of Ronald Reagan but the fecklessness and failure of George H.W. Bush did bring about two terms of Bill Clinton and then the Dubya years which then brought about Obama. And of course that nightmare, which at the time was certainly as horrifying as what we witnessed last week brought about the miracle victories of Donald Trump.
Yes the Bushes, McCains and Romneys along with the entirety of the GOP-e are indeed a complete turnoff to the majority of sane, normal Americans, which we have lamented and rightly so for years now, it still makes absolutely no sense given what the Democrats have historically been and this go round their open embrace of the most anti-American radicalism and Islam makes their survival and indeed the victories of the Clintons, Obama and Biden that much more a puzzler to me. Yes the GOP to put it mildly sucks. But if you're served a heaping plate of braised pus will you demand the waiter take it back and give you a cup of rat poison to make up for it?
Robespierres With Guillotines: Lust for Revenge Could Fuel the Next America First Resurgence: The insanity of the Democrats and their lunatic NeverTrump fringe transformed Trump from a pariah into a victim. . .
In closing, in case you think the Left is not really unhinged, consider the performance of Scott Galloway, an anti-Trump entrepreneur and professor at NYU. In front of a live audience recently, Galloway called Elon Musk “a traitor to the West.” What do we do with traitors? Galloway didn’t flinch. He noted that the Rosenbergs, Julius and Ethel, were “lined up against a wall,” i.e., executed. Musk, he said, deserved no less. The audience, I note, applauded. Amazing. Yes, such aspiring Robespierres might do some damage. They really are insane, power-hungry totalitarians in waiting. But their insanity will eventually call forth a salubrious counterrevolution. “Eventually.” I note that Senate terms are six years. That is a sobering thought. But it is also precisely the reason that everyone with the good of the country at heart must rally round and push back. I believe they will.
The always erudite and estimable Roger Kimball both gets it and misses the point. We are not dealing with Democrats who play by the same rules and adhere to the same belief system that we do. Far from it. They have a hate on for this nation as it was founded and its people. Always have and always will. There is nothing now to stop them from doing whatever they want or feel they need to do to finally grab the brass ring of absolute power and total dismantling of this nation as founded to maintain that power for all time.
It is true that the Democrats will prevent Trump from putting new judges on the bench or replacing anybody from his administration chased into retirement. I hope that his people possess nerves of steel and are prepared to endure the theatrical browbeating and endless investigations that will soon come from Congress.. . The midterm results are bad for us. However, I know this to be true: Victories can quickly become defeats, and defeats can often be turned into unexpected victories. Put your faith in God and have the courage to keep fighting. There is much to do.
And so here too Shurk states that "Defeats often turn into victories." This is what the Germans who voted against Hitler and the Nazis told themselves after his and their election to the Reichstag in 1933. Not even a year later, that building was in flames and every one of their political opponents were rounded up and shipped off to prisons and ultimately to Dachau, if they made it there alive.
North Carolina Democrat Shelly Headen, who posted a Facebook story with a caption that said Trump supporters belong in concentration camps while visiting Dachau, is on track to beat Republican incumbent Rep. John Blust by 233 votes pending the tabulation of provisional ballots that will likely add to her lead.
And this is not hyperbole. They mean it. They will not merely stop at Trump or Stephen Miller or anyone else in the cabinet, they're coming after all of us.
El-Sayed Declares Michigan ‘Capital Of Arab America’ In First Remarks As Senator-Elect — During his victory speech, El-Sayed repeated arabic phrases he's uttered along the campaign trail to rally supporters.
“The Democrats are going around threatening a lot of people, including the Attorney General of the United States, and others, with Impeachment and many other forms of punishment, even though they admit they have no reason to do so, and there have been no impeachable acts committed, or even thought of, by the victims of this illegal process. This is extortion at the highest level, and they should be held accountable for this,” he wrote in a post on Truth Social. Trump Orders DOJ Probe of Democrat Leaders’ Threats to Republicans: ‘Extortion at the Highest Level’
The new mayor-elect of Los Angeles, socialist Nithya Raman, is already defending violent and illegal behavior against federal immigration officers. A U.S. assistant attorney exposed her pathetic ignorance and disgusting lies in a sharp rebuke: “I can send you a copy of the U.S. Constitution if you’d like to study up.” Attorney Tells L.A. Mayor-Elect to Read the Constitution After She Defends Violent Riot
OFFICIAL DEMOCRAT PARTY/LEFTIST-ENDORSED ANTI-SEMITISM, ANTI-CHRISTIANITY, PLUS VARIOUS & SUNDRY GODLESS HEATHENS
Nearly a century ago in Germany, there existed an organization called the League of Nationalist German Jews. It was, as the name suggests, a Jewish organization. A Jewish organization that supported Hitler and the Nazis. The Jews who betrayed their own
The next cyberattack against an American company may not begin with a suspicious email, a stolen password, or a hacker manually probing a network. The Internet’s Hidden Weakness Detected by AI
To be clear, my focus here is not to debate the impact of inflation on Americans. It’s real and it’s bad. I know this. I’m living it and not liking it, too. But what I would like to know is how all of this was weaponized and leveraged to get Republican voters to betray their own interests to vote for the people who want to destroy their way of life. Gas Prices are Dropping Fast. I Have Questions.
David Harsanyi: During Trump I, the president was at plus-9 on the economy, even when his personal approval number was atrocious. Today, the president is at minus-35 on the economy. Blame that gap on the influence of Vice President JD Vance. JD Vance’s disastrous economic agenda spells GOP doom
Watch out: Democrats’ big ideas for “saving” Social Security — now set to go bust in 2032 — range from lunacy like boosting payouts to madness like job-killing tax hikes. Democrats’ disastrous ideas to ‘fix’ Social Security
RED-GREENS, CLIMATE CHANGE HOAX, DEMOCRAT-LEFT WAR ON FOSSIL FUELS, JUNK SCIENCE, LYSENKOISM
Two Washington state sheriff’s deputies who served together in the National Guard were shot dead side by side as they moved in to rescue a potential hostage — in a standoff where the gunman also killed his mother and sister. Spokane County Sheriff’s Deputies Mason Acheson, 35, and Parker Perry, 29, were both shot as they entered the home near Spangle, just south of Spokane, with the department’s SWAT team around 3:15 p.m. on Nov. 3, the department said. Two Washington deputies killed trying to rescue possible hostages after woman shot
Colleges are teaching generations of students to distrust America’s history and institutions without first understanding what made them worth defending. How Universities Teach Students to Hate the West
California’s GOP establishment has failed its grassroots conservatives for decades. A Colorado-style political overhaul may be the only way forward. Republican Political Failures In California
Republicans should have been hammering home every single day how their policies had actually made things more affordable, such as tax cuts for working and middle-class Americans. But they didn’t. We Were Wrong
Sunday on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” Senator-elect Adam Hamilton (D-KS) said Democrats should choose a Senate leader who can bring various factions of the party together instead of Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY), because he is a”decisive figure.” Adam Hamilton: Schumer a ‘Divisive Figure,’ Dems Need a Leader Who Can ‘Unite’
Ten years on and Europe is still asleep. What will it take to wake them to reality? Two Americans in Lisbon
When societies drift toward central planning and state-run economies, only nuances separate political clownery from its disastrous real-world consequences. France Bows to the Reality of Its Debt Crisis
FEMINAZISM, TRANSGENDER PSYCHOSIS, HOMOSEXUALIZATION, WAR ON MASCULINITY/NORMALCY
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The women’s rights movement moved from Constitutional ideas to an experiment in unintended consequences. The Feminization Of America
If you want to know why Millennials and Gen-Z have coined the phrase, “OK, boomer,” let’s consider the predicament that our kids and grandkids are in today. Welcome to the New American Feudalism
But the woke can’t contain themselves. On Sunday, New Jersey Democrats introduced legislation that adopts a definition of Islamophobia that includes factual criticism of the religion and its customs and includes civil and criminal penalties. The Houston mayor has already told his officers not to honor ICE detainers, despite a state law banning sanctuary cities. And even in Washington, D.C., they can’t keep hiding the ball. You Thought Woke Was Dead? It Was Hibernating.
ALSO: The Morning Report cross-posts at CutJibNewsletter.com usually within an hour or so of posting here, if you want to continue the conversation all day.
An AMD 5600X3D, a Gigabyte B550M motherboard, and 16GB of DDR4 RAM. Not bad for the price in these benighted days, though it still needs a graphics card.
Howdy Hordelings! Welcome to the Sunday ONT. Appreciate you stopping by. Open thread, as always. Fashion and music, as always. What's on YOUR mind tonight?
[Top photo - recent sunset in SW Idaho, sent in by Jimmy Doolittle]
Nicolas Cage says he is unwilling to allow artificial intelligence to be used in his performances, revealing that he declined to sign an AI waiver while working on the Prime Video series Spider-Noir.
Speaking at New York Comic Con on Saturday, the 62-year-old actor criticized Amazon’s investment in AI and questioned how performers can maintain their place in an industry undergoing rapid technological change.
“I am not an AI-friendly actor, so it’s like, connect those dots! I’m not a member of their club. I didn’t sign the waiver to let him use AI on Spider-Noir. I’m probably not going to be working with that studio again, but that’s okay.”
Cage says he is still trying to understand how actors could adapt to an entertainment industry increasingly shaped by new technology.
“I’m trying to find a way of surviving with film performance in a very different world that is growing exponentially with so much information, so quickly,” the actor says.
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The use of AI remains a contentious issue in Hollywood, with performers and writers raising concerns about its potential effects on their work. Industry unions, including SAG-AFTRA and the Writers Guild of America, have negotiated contractual protections addressing the technology. The emergence of AI-generated performers like Tilly Norwood has added to questions about how the industry will manage its use.
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“If you go into deepfake land, it has none of your points of view. That’s scary. It’s going to be interesting to see how humans deal with these technologies.”
Actors like Ian Holm and Val Kilmer have been controversially resurrected from the dead with AI technology.
I'm generally a fan of Nic Cage. Don't have any reason to dislike him. But if he or other over-paid actors and actresses get culled from the industry because of AI, maybe they can "learn to code".
A group that owns the rights to Elvis Presley’s musical catalog filed a new lawsuit on Friday against SUNO, an AI music generator.
“Suno is the embodiment of why the ELVIS Act [Ensuring Likeness, Voice, and Image Security] was so essentially required. All of the humanity, history, despair, and triumph that constitutes Elvis’ identity was stolen and is stored on servers and harnessed by Suno to make massive amounts of money, despite Suno being there for none of what it took to create, maintain, or attempt to live up to this image, and without license, permission, or payment,” the lawsuit stated.
This comes after the group sued artificial intelligence company Anthropic for alleged copyright violations last month in a federal court in Northern California.
The group also claims Anthropic used some of Elvis’s most famous musical works, including “All Shook Up,” “Can’t Help Falling in Love,” and “Don’t Be Cruel,” to train its AI agent Claude without the owners’ permission.
Article is paywalled but maybe one of you can use AI to find a workaround?
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'Ette Couture (Courtesy of Piper)
It's that time of the week - when we turn the ONT over to our good friend Piper for a bit. Here's this week's fashion pr0n.
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$$$$$ or $?
The Same Holiday Look for $1,327… or $143
A rich burgundy shaggy faux fur jacket layered over a sleek black midi slip dress, finished with strappy black heels and a delicate silver drop pendant? It’s festive, soft, polished, and perfectly on-trend for holiday parties, dinners, and nights out.
The same exact aesthetic can run you $1,327 or just $143 at Target. That’s a difference of more than $1,180. Here’s the side-by-side breakdown.
The Luxe Version: $1,327
• Burgundy shaggy faux fur jacket by Yumi — $355
• Black midi slip dress by Vince — $398
• Black strappy heels by Tory Burch — $295
• Silver drop pendant necklace by Roseate — $275
The Target Version: $143
• Burgundy shaggy faux fur jacket by Wild Fable — $55
• Black midi slip dress by A New Day — $35
• Black strappy heels by Berness — $36
• Silver drop pendant necklace by A New Day — $17
Now, Piper, you may be thinking… what if I want an everyday look that’s put together and timeless?
I got you, fam. A Fairisle sweater, corduroy jeans, and ankle boots.
This combination is the definition of elevated casual: the classic Fairisle pattern adds just the right amount of visual interest, corduroy brings texture and a bit of structure, and ankle boots ground the whole thing.
Luxe Version (~$1,991)
• Favorite Daughter sweater — $298
• Corduroy jeans by Frame (Le Slim Palazzo Patch Pocket Pants) — $348
• Louboutin Vibella Booties (in honor of Melania) — $1,345
Target Version (~$70)
• A New Day Fairisle sweater — $18
• Universal Thread Corduroy Jeans — $28
• Microsuede ankle boots by A New Day — $24
The price gap is enormous again, yet the overall silhouette and vibe stay remarkably close. You won’t get the exact fabric hand-feel, the designer hardware, or the longevity of those Louboutins, but you’ll still look polished and put-together for a fraction of the cost.
Let’s be honest, y’all, the pieces are not identical. The higher-end versions usually have better materials, construction, and staying power. But budget doesn’t have to be the reason you skip a beautiful outfit. You can shop the high-end version for elevated quality and longevity, or assemble the affordable version in one trip to Target and still walk out the door feeling stylish.
Sony has brought back the MDR-3-series headphones that debuted in 1979 alongside the Walkman TPS-L2 cassette player.
Originally called the “MDR-3L2,” the first Walkman headphones were known for their sleek, adjustable gray plastic headband, which extended via metal sliders and ended in signature orange, circular ear cushions. The lightweight, on-ear headphones are a contrast to the bulky headsets that are popular these days, which use wide, cushioned headbands for long-term comfort and large earcups that can support big drivers and are often heavily padded for noise isolation.
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New headphones are often wireless these days, but the MDR-3R continues the wired tradition of the MDR-3, with an essential twist: a USB-C connector.
Howdy, Y'all! Welcome to the wondrously fabulous Gun Thread! As always, I want to thank all of our regulars for being here week in and week out, and also offer a bigly Gun Thread welcome to any newcomers who may be joining us tonight. Howdy and thank you for stopping by! I hope you find our wacky conversation on the subject of guns 'n shooting both enjoyable and informative. You are always welcome to lurk in the shadows of shame, but I'd like to invite you to jump into the conversation, say howdy, and tell us what kind of shooting you like to do!
Holy Shitballs! How in the ever-loving Hell did it get to be the Second November Edition? Just look at the calendar!
Breaking: Looks like we are striking Iran tonight. Feel free to discuss in the comments, just please don't go bananas and get into a fracas with your fellow commenters. Thanks.
With that, step into the dojo and let's get to the gun stuff below, shall we?
Any relatively new cigar smoker and certainly any newbies is understandably amazed at the enormous numbers of brands and selections available today. Industry veterans can confirm that it's a golden age in this respect. Well one of the many brands I've never tried - wasn't even on my radar - is Esteban Carreras. My favorite local shop had an event with the Carreras rep, so I snapped up a few of their wares.
Among the brand's main lines is the Chupacabra, which is available in a habano, natural, and MSA (Mexican San Andres) version, the last one being the kind I tried. Nice looking dark brown, light in the hand, neatly box-pressed, in this case the toro (6.5 X 54). Mine had a normal finished cap, not the pigtail mentioned in online descriptions, but the foot was indeed a shaggy closed foot as those sources mention. The burn was fairly well behaved, requiring occasional touch-ups. The smoke production was impressive, and the smoke was rich and thick. Draw was perfect. This stick reminded me of a few of my favorite broadleaf or MSA cigars. A distinct sweetness, and notes of chocolate, coffee, earth. Smooth throughout, and with the luxuriant smoke made for an indulgent relaxing experience. Very enjoyable, a good first impression for a new-to-me brand. The Chupacabra Hellcat is available online for $7.25 and up.
Excellent as always, rhomboid! Thank you!
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Here are some different online cigar vendors. You will find they not only carry different brands and different lines from those brands, but also varying selections of vitolas (sizes/shapes) of given lines. It's good to have options, especially if you're looking for a specific cigar.
A note about sources. The brick & mortar/online divide exists with cigars, as with guns, and most consumer products, with respect to price. As with guns - since both are "persecuted industries", basically - I make a conscious effort to source at least some of my cigars from my local store(s). It's a small thing, but the brick & mortar segment for both guns and tobacco are precious, and worth supporting where you can. And if you're lucky enough to have a good cigar store/lounge available, they're often a good social event with many dangerous people of the sort who own scary gunz, or read smart military blogs like this one. -rhomboid
Anyone have others to include? Perhaps a small local roller who makes a cigar you like? Send me your recommendation and a link to the site!
Please note the new and improved protonmail account gunthread at protonmail dot com. An informal Gun Thread archive can be found HERE. Future expansion plans are in the works for the site Weasel Gun Thread. If you have a question you would like to ask Gun Thread Staff offline, just send us a note and we'll do our best to answer. If you care to share the story of your favorite firearm, send a picture with your nic and tell us what you sadly lost in the tragic canoe accident. If you would like to remain completely anonymous, just say so. Lurkers are always welcome!
That's it for this week - have you been to the range?
Pork Milanese is one of my easy weekday recipes that I can make with no planning other than buying the chops. Bone-in of course, because A) they taste better and 2. they are fun to eat!
But a foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds*, and while my mantra is that as long as the food is good, I don't care what I eat; a little variety can't hurt.
But chicken thighs are damned good, so off to the market I went for boneless, skinless thighs. Usually I would bone them myself, but I was lazy, and in a bit of a rush. And was I happy with the boning job the butcher did? No, I was not. Serves me right!
Anyway, they turned out great! And the variegation of the meat grabbed onto the breadcrumb/cheese mixture very well, so they had a great texture... nice and crusty and crunchy!
Last week, commenter Dash my lace wigs! mentioned that she made a pork shoulder that was tasty but dry. She roasted it at 250 degrees on a rack for a whopping eight hours! I don't know how big it was, but that does seem like a lot of time. Hopefully she will give us the details this week, but in the meantime...challenge accepted!
I made a 10 pound bone-in pork shoulder yesterday, and I cooked it for a bit more than seven hours to 190 degrees. But...I cooked it in a roasting pan, which keeps it in its juices and protects it from some of the drying heat. I think that is the difference, because I cooked mine at between 275 and 300 degrees. I also left the fat cap on the top, and only trimmed the thickest fat.
What? How was it? Delicious! I made a sauce out of the copious drippings, and then mixed about half of it back into the pork after I pulled it. Well, one of the kitchen gnomes did most of the pulling, but I will of course take full credit.
It was moist and flavorful and very well received at dinner. Even the mini humans at the table enjoyed it! Of course the cole slaw was a hit too, and that was courtesy of commenter Bluebell, who sent me her go-to recipe. Good stuff!
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One snag I hit yesterday was that I had bought the pork butt at a local Wild Fork Foods, and it was frozen (all their stuff is). ANd damn! It was frozen hard. Like -20 hard! It took a long while to defrost, and even when I put it in the oven it was still below freezing in the middle.
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This looks tasty and easy and fun. But the insanity of cutting the sausage to ¼ inch makes me deeply suspicious of the recipe.
Eh...it still sounds damned good, so I will make it anyway.
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The POSSLQ was given some UK candy by some colleagues, and I of course ate it before she had a chance to taste them. One was excellent! Chewy and caramely and absolutely worth the loosened fillings!
But this one? Yuck! Dry and dusty and bland and not chocolaty at all.
The Brits are just weird when it comes to candy.
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And speaking of Brits...here is my favorite British cooking channel! And this time it is a classic...Braised Short Ribs.
The recipe is about as straightforward as it gets. The reason why it is so good is the attention to detail. Nothing tough, but there are several steps that most people skip.
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Lunch today! A smoked bratwurst from my excellent local butcher and smokehouse.
The difference between good sausages and hotdogs, and the mass-market kind is huge, and well worth the price differential.
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The great garlic experiment of 2025-2026 was a resounding...meh. Send all of your excellent home-grown garlic to: cbd dot aoshq at gmail dot com.
About the Bourbon Bubble...I think it has burst, but the category is also suffering from the inflation that affected everything else (Thanks Biden!). I think the sweet spot is still $40-$60 for excellent and interesting bottles, and bumping that to $100 gets you an incremental improvement in quality, but nothing mind-blowing. More than that and I think you are paying for hype and rarity, which may look good in your liquor cabinet, but doesn't translate to more quality in the bottle.
The problem...or the solution...is to buy lots of bourbon, take tasting notes, and eventually arrive at your favorites! It should take forty or fifty years, but it is worth it!
Those are the control wires for an irrigation system. The unit still worked...barely, but I grew tired of having to predict the weather two weeks in advance, so I decided to swap it out for a WiFi unit that I can control remotely.
Great! Except the new one is far smaller than the original, and the paint around it was a mess anyway.
One problem. What f*cking color are the garage walls? I have no idea, it isn't labeled on any of the cans in the basement, and every attempt I made to get close seemed to make it worse.
Obviously I will have to repaint the entire house.
Mushy-Brained Moderates Got Us Into This Mess...They Won't Get Us Out
—CBD
George Santayana famously wrote: "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." The corollary, which applies perfectly to this mid-wit columnist is: "Those who don't know history are condemned to repeat it...first!"
Rikki Schlott is a 26-year-old columnist for the NY Post who seems never to have taken a history class that taught anything about the inexorable slide from soft socialism to wholesale murder. Or the uncomfortable fact that "One man, one vote, one time" has been the default in socialist countries for a very long time.
It doesn't matter that Abdul El-Sayed underperformed. It doesn't matter that the obviously retarded Nithya Raman barely won in Los Angeles. It doesn't matter that Twelver Mamdani only got 22% of registered voters.
They won. They are in power, and they will do what socialists always do...consolidate power, manipulate the electoral system, use the power of the purse to support their policies, and marginalize their opposition in every way possible.
Democrats just had a resounding midterm victory across the nation. But they’d be remiss to believe that the election results are an endorsement of the party’s creep to the far-left.
Analysis of Tuesday’s results shows that progressive and DSA-adjacent Democrats actually underperformed relative to their more moderate peers. That’s true across the country, with no major exceptions.
Voters who came out for Democrats in the midterms are sending a very specific message: they want moderation, not radical DSA craziness. Hopefully Mamdani and AOC won’t take the “blue tsunami” as permission to pursue their most extreme political dreams.
This flaccid-thinking child has no historical perspective, and no understanding of the true face of socialism. And it isn't her fault...yet. She went to a liberal prep school, leftist universities, and was hired for reasons beyond my understanding as a columnist at an age where she should be learning how to do research into the topics she pretends to have mastered.
The stupidity and ignorance inherent in her perspective is unfortunately quite common among the chattering classes that pretend to understand our political system. And yes, some of these fools are in the Senate and House. It is long past the time in American politics that we shed the leftist-supported nonsense that collaboration and "reaching across the aisle" is anything other than a recipe for capitulation and loss.
Our political system is now a "zero-sum game," and the sooner the craven cowards in the corporate wing of the Republican Party realize it, the better. But they won't, and they will continue to obstruct any movement toward a coherent political philosophy, instead of their acquisitive, amoral games.
Sunday Morning Book Thread 11-08-2026 [Sabrina Chase]
—Open Blogger
Welcome to the Book Thread, Guest Poster edition! I will be your host as we explore all sorts of book-related topics. All usual Book Thread rules are incorporated by reference (pets, beverage, clothing covering the lower limbs, etc.) with the special Sabrina Chase exemption for those stylish persons preferring kilts. Now let us proceed to today's topic, which is ...
The Book Thread exists for the love of books, and what better place to revel in the rich possibilities of the written word than a library? A proper library, that is, not a soulless industrial concrete outrage with not a single comfy chair or reading nook! A perfect library has these, and a rich collection, and a librarian.
A librarian is like a trail guide for all the wonders, especially for the young, easily overwhelmed by all the possibilities a library contains. Sometimes you just need a few books on mummies, for ... reasons.
I always made a point of befriending librarians -- an easy thing for a bookworm to do, and it can have unexpected benefits even beyond being allowed to check out books in the grown-up section! I was once granted the signal honor of being permitted to take and read a new book that *hadn't even gotten its little stamp card sleeve glued in yet!* (It was a book on the Black Death and I was going through a phase of yersina pestis fascination, and the school librarian knew and indulged me.)
Of course, with great power comes great responsibility. The Books Must Return!
The shame, the agony of Overdue Fees! In the dark ages, they would not let you check out more books if you didn't pay! You may have noticed the general societal collapse when that stern but loving rule was removed... (Strangely enough, the Bloom County Barbarian Librarian bears a strong resemblance to Mrs. Friedman, that school librarian. Maybe that's why she encouraged me to get my Black Death fix ... A sweet lady, all of 5' nothing and I would never, ever cross her. Not in the library, anyway.)
And then later in life, even when I was all grown up and doing software testing for a living, I was quite pleased when I had a job working on library software--a complex system. (I can tell you more than you want to know about how Chinese and Japanese libraries sort things.) I was helping librarians! It felt good.
Compared with a 12-core Zen 5 Ryzen 370, the unnamed 10-core sample is 32% faster on single-threaded tasks - a huge jump for a single generation - and 21% faster multi-threaded despite having two fewer cores.
If the leaks that Zen 6 will have 50% more cores are true and its per-core performance is 30% faster, that will put desktop parts at nearly twice the performance of Zen 5.
We don't know how many graphics cores will ship in the laptop parts, but benchmarks of the same engineering sample's four-core integrated GPU placed it a little ahead of the current 860M's eight cores thanks to an update to the newer RDNA4 architecture used in AMD's 9000-series graphics cards.
All in all a solid advance arriving at a time when nobody can afford the hardware to go with it. Good for people running on older AMD hardware - or even those sitting on Intel systems with DDR5 memory.
Speaking of Intel, the company's new Nova Lake desktop chips will start arriving early next year, though the high-end 52-core parts might be nearly a year away. And then in 2028, it will be followed by Razor Lake. (WCCFTech)
For which we have no details at all except that it will fit on the same motherboards.
I plugged in my old laptop with its 8GB of RAM and powered it up, and it... Worked just fine actually, but was using 75% of its RAM by the time it reached the Windows desktop. We'll see if the improvements make it useful or if it's time to put Linux on it.
Only 1% of the repositories checked are affected, but there are a lot of such repositories.
Are the impressive coding test scores on some AI models are result of "teaching to test" - developers training the model to answer known test questions rather than the much harder task of improving the model generally? It will surprise few to learn that the answer is often yes. (MaxxBench)
Tests that changed the questions did not much faze Claude and ChatGPT, but Chinese models like DeepSeek and Qwen fell off a cliff.
Figured out what those 8" iron staples were used for, and also why I didn't work it out earlier. The ones I found last year in the first stage of the garden project were twisted and mangled as if they had been pulled out of something and discarded.
The one I discovered yesterday buried straight down in hard clay was still fulfilling its duty - pinning down a tree root that was close to the surface.
So I'll need to work around them (and the roots) rather than dig them out.
Saturday Night Club ONT - November 7, 2026 [Disco & Dino]
—Open Blogger
Welcome to Club ONT - a whelming collaboration of The Disco and The Dino.
Open thread - bar is open, too. Come in in, grab a drink or 2. Or 3. Keep it light and friendly. The Moose is outside enjoying the crisp fall weather but always ready for action.
Two ladies were walking home from the bar, they had to pee and cut through the cemetery to save time, but couldn’t hold it. One used her panties to wipe, the other grabbed a ribbon of a nearby wreath.
The next morning their husbands were talking in the yard.
One says “I think my wife is having an affair. She came home last night and her panties were missing.”
The other man says “That’s nothing. My wife had a ribbon taped to her ass that read from the men at fire house 9, we’ll never forget you!”
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A woman was convinced her husband was having an affair with the maid, so she decided to set a trap.
One evening, she suddenly sent the maid home for the weekend without telling her husband.
That night, after they went to bed, her husband gave his usual excuse.
“Excuse me, dear. My stomach is bothering me,” he said before heading to the bathroom.
The wife immediately got out of bed and slipped into the maid’s bed. She turned off the lights and waited.
When her husband returned, he quietly climbed into bed and wasted no time. He had his way with her without saying a word.
When he finished and was still catching his breath, the wife said, “You didn’t expect to find me in this bed, did you?”
She then switched on the light.
“No, ma’am,” replied the gardener.
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Drink of the Night
Tonight we drew the 8 of Hearts from our deck of playing card cocktails
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Club ONT Department of Coming Attractions
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Club ONT Department of Geography
Fun facts:
1) Cleveland, Ohio is only two miles further west than Jacksonville, Florida.
2) Most of South America (especially Brazil and the eastern half of the continent) is east of the entire US East Coast. The extreme western edge of South America (Peru) aligns with Jacksonville, Florida.
3) All of Florida is south of California. Florida's northernmost point is roughly 100 miles south of California's southern border.
4) The long western stretch of the Canada-U.S. border follows the 49th parallel. The Paris Charles de Gaulle Airport actually lies almost exactly on the 49th parallel. In other words, every part of Europe north of Paris is further north than any part of the US mainland.
5) Calgary is only 32 miles south of London. All of Ireland is north of Calgary.
6) Both Los Angeles and San Diego, California are further east than Reno, Nevada.
7) Rome, Italy is the same latitude as Chicago, Illinois.
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Club ONT Department of Customer Service
Club ONT is considering installing advertising screens at each sink to enhance the Club's financial position. It is possible that you may not otherwise receive advertising while you wash your hands, so new advertising screens will fill that space. Heaven forbid that you have a moment to yourself without commercial stimulus. The good news is that you can purchase advertising time to ensure your message gets to the (clean handed) Moron Horde. Please contact the Club ONT management for a rate card. Special introductory rates may be available.
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Club ONT Jukebox
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Top 10ish Comments of the Week
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Club ONT is brought to you by Each state's unofficial state animal
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So THAT'S why the Moose out Front drives a vehicle with Maine license plates. We've been wondering about that!
Saturday Evening Movie Post [moviegique]: You Can See Everything
—Open Blogger
I had no real knowledge of Elizabeth Holmes or Theranos going into this movie. Just a vague sense that she had scammed people with a ridiculous medical device that purported to do all kinds of things and didn't.
I do think this an exceptional documentary that earns its 175 minute runtime and is a fascinating look at some complex characters. In some ways, it's a documentary about Nathan Fielder. What I think is especially commendable is that, for all its staged elements—which are overtly staged, with an Amanda Seyfried filling in for Elizabeth Holmes—I think it is actually a documentary, as opposed to a narrative that Fielder and co-director Lance Oppenheim want us to believe.
It's not that there's not a point-of-view, it's that the point-of-view is very clear and guileless. Or "guileless appearing" as it's kind of hard to come out of this movie without wondering if everything is manipulation and performative.
I mean, not just in the movie, but everywhere.
I have my own take, of course, but let's start with the basics: Fielder is selected by Holmes and her husband Billy Evans to do the documentary because Fielder thinks "outside the box". Holmes is not really aware of Fielder's work, nor of Abbot and Costello and their "Who's on First?" routine, a sketch she doesn't understand when they watch it. She laughs, but because of the confusion, not because she understands the grammatical roots of the humor.
Holmes, you see, is weird.
As it turns out, "weird" is a pretty big club.
We don't know all the ways that she is weird, but one way is an affect where she smiles and makes a lot of direct eye contact with whomever she's talking to. She's a distaff hide-the-pain-Harold, essentially, and this affect makes her very easy to make snap judgements about.
And what I had heard about this documentary was that it was akin to In Cold Blood, where we learned (decades later) that Truman Capote had a thing for one of his cold-blooded killers and so altered the facts to protect his love interest. The suggestion has been made that Fielder fell under Holmes' spell like so many others and therefore is hiding something damaging about her. In fact, Seyfried herself makes this suggestion toward the end of the movie.
But this is remarkably shallow, and shallowness is a kind of through-line of the documentary.
Holmes invites Fielder to actually live with them for the last few weeks before she starts her eleven year sentence, and after a while he takes her up on that, and we do, in fact, see a whole lot. Too much, at times. Probably the number one thing you hear about the movie, besides the clip of Holmes where she says "Why would I deceive you?" with her affect in full flower, is that there is nudity in the film, and it's Evans and his whangdoodle.
This was his idea, apparently. But it's not particularly revealing. (Is that irony?) He's an odd character, for sure, but he's also in the oddest of situations. The couple and their two kids (Holmes has had a baby a month prior) are trying to max family time before she goes away, which creates some friction for Fielder & Co., especially with Evans, who comes across as overbearing at times, and brittle.
But then he's staring down a decade of being a single dad, essentially, to two young children. The peril of the same sort of shallow snap judgement applies here.
Most "documentaries" are fine with this. They give you villains, heroes, etc., etc., etc., to tell the story they want to tell. Here we see bits and pieces of things that allow multiple narratives to be built, and it feels more honest for that. We don't see "the mask drop," which is what you'd expect if Holmes were a sociopath. Evans and Holmes are devoted to each other, but they lack unctuous presentation of, e.g., the stereotypical Christian evangelist who presents himself as devoted and turns out to be a bully who's banging hookers on the side.
Holmes is devoted to her children, and the smiling affect she has goes away when she's experiencing grief or worry or regret—and less so when she's afraid. The affect—the thing she's most called out for, that people call a red flag—works against her, I think. Her natural charm, such as it is, overcomes that affect rather than being a feature of it, or helped in any way by it.
In fact, to me, it looks like PTSD. (And looking it up now, apparently that was part of her unsuccessful legal defense.) To me, also, she looked increasingly like a woman who abdicated responsibility to the man in her life, and in ways that are only unusual in their extremity.
I was unable to find a picture of Seyfried in this film, so enjoy this picture of her in her low-budget Oscar-bid musical flop, "The Testament of Ann Lee".
They watch "The Dropout," a Hulu series where Amanda Seyfried plays "a character based on Holmes", which is the actress' dodge for the slander that results in abuse for Holmes once she's in prison. Fielder brings Seyfried in to re-enact scenes that happened before the cameras, and the jail scenes, and begins by showing her how devastated Holmes is by the series.
Throughout the doc, Seyfried goes through a series of interesting reactions. At first, she comes off like she's an inch deep, blowing off the idea that anything she did might have a real effect on Holmes, and besides she deserves it. Then she acts out a series of deeper examinations—only to come back around to it's just television and besides, Holmes deserves it.
There's a scene early on where Evans takes eggs away that Holmes is scrambling to scramble them properly. (Seriously, I was watching this and thinking "That's no way to scramble eggs!") Holmes doesn't seem to mind, but Seyfried latches on to this to decide that Evans is controlling and destructive. Then the actress meets with Evans and the two are particularly antagonistic.
Seyfried opens with attacks on his sexual prowess. The situation itself seems more than a little contrived. The two walk into Evans place, and Evans says he hasn't had sex for 899 days. (He's counting!) Fielder asks him if he's good at it, and Evans response with something like "I'm great at it." This is a weird conversation, just for starters.
But then Seyfried seeks to humiliate him by claiming she lied to every man she ever slept with. This dovetails nicely with the whole premise of whether one knows when someone is lying to you, but is meant to highlight Evans supposed narcissism.
On the other hand, it reminded me of the idea that you can tell someone is stupid when you say something like "Men are generally taller than women" and they respond with "My sister is taller than my brother," as if that were a rebuttal. This is almost the inverse: "I'm good at sex" gets rebutted with "I've never had good sex."
Also, holy cow. How dysfunctional is that? A Wall Street Journal article's headline claims that Seyfried is the only trustworthy character in the film, which is a bold claim since she's apparently lied to every man she's ever been intimate with. (I won't dignify the article by reading it, which leaves me free to speculate that this either goes unaddressed or is brushed aside with "Everyone lies about sex." Remember that chestnut?)
For his part, Evans antagonizes Seyfried over her unkind comments in the wake of the Charlie Kirk assassination.
At this point, Evans has been raising his kids for two years on his own. He's also been using his Power of Attorney to do things like post to Holmes' Twitter account. Seyfried finds it appalling that he should have the Power of Attorney, but given that Holmes is in jail, it seems reasonable to me. Both Fielder and Seyfried are alarmed at how Evans claims that he and Holmes are essentially of one mind, and he doesn't even have to talk to her to know what she would want.
Sounds sinister, right? Then at the end of the movie, Holmes says the same thing: That she knows Evans' mind and doesn't even need to talk to him to know what he thinks about things. She has whole conversations with him alone in her cell.
Seyfried says she would break the two up if she could. This is the inch-deep thing re-surfacing. She says this even as we're all aware that Evans has relocated his house to Texas to be near her, so he can take the kids every weekend, and does daily calls to whatever the limit is.
Seyfried also acted very impressed by this seaside rental, which I didn't quite understand.
Speaking of inch-deep: Holmes understanding of the device she is credited with being in charge of is less than mine, and I'm only going on what she said during the movie. That is, she describes the device not like a software engineer, not like a chemical engineer, but like a pamphlet trying to sell the device to someone who is not very smart. I got the principle—how such a thing could theoretically work, and what it would take to make it work, and what kind of device it would have to be—and I wouldn't need to say a word about "the cloud".
Some people say this is all part of the ruse to which I say, it's a very convincing ruse. And of course, "the ruse" often becomes "the thing" after a while. Politics is composed almost entirely of people playing dumb, to the extent that they eventually are no longer playing.
In a way, everyone in the movie is doing what Holmes did: Using the abilities they have to get attention, acclaim, money, allies—while brushing aside responsibilities they don't want to deal with. In Holmes case, this may well be the financial stuff that got her into trouble, and the engineering stuff that got her into trouble, and the marketing stuff that got her into trouble.
For Seyfried, it's "It's just fucking television" and witch hunting.
I think Fielder came in wanting to expose Holmes, but he didn't find much to expose. I think he toyed with the "controlled by men" thing, but he doesn't dig into Holmes' older lover who guided her through the Theranos project (and is serving even more time). And while it's clear he finds aspects of Holmes relationship with Evans weird, he also says he sees genuine love and a real family unit.
The result, I think, is something more honest than the usual documentary. It doesn't tell you what to think because I don't think Fielder himself is sold on any of the easy narratives.
Meanwhile, quite a few things charged my tinfoil hat. The media machine is in full swing in every aspect of this case, like it's a gremlin on the wing of the airplane and I'm William Shatner. The media creates this character, the media hypes the company, and it's not even a question of whether or not they'll turn on a dime and destroy the character. It's all grist for the media mill. If Theranos was on to something, and the pharmaceutical companies decided it needed to die so they could steal all the patents, would the media then fall into line and destroy what they created?
That's a rhetorical question, of course, independent of whether Theranos was on to anything.
I'm reminded, for some reason of Wilhelm Reich, a mid-century quack who developed a theory of life-force called "orgones" which I presume is complete nonsense, and which the FDA—inspired by libel printed in The New Republic—responded by cracking down on him with utter savagery, including destroying much of his written work—well out of scope of their already unconstitutional charter.
I also thought of Martha Stewart, thrown into jail not because of insider trading, which is the smear that attaches to her, but because somebody wanted her in jail.
There is an object lesson in this film, I think, but I'm not sure anyone involved in making it knew what it was.
She had children! This is totally a manipulation tactic and not a woman in love looking at what's probably her last chance!
Welcome hobbyists! Pull up a chair and sit a spell with the Horde in this little corner of the interweb. This is the mighty, mighty officially sanctioned Ace of Spades Hobby Thread. For this week, the Wheel of Hobbies (TM) is feeling round and decided on a marble theme for this Hobby Thread.
Your host is a dinosaur with a small brain and short arms. That means it is difficult to get low to the ground and reach to shoot marbles. But I understand that others are into marbles. Some still shoot marbles or play other games. It seems like many others are enamored of collecting marbles because of the visual interest and variations inherent in the glass making process.
Marbles are also useful for other crafting and hobbying pursuits.
Other than losing them, what hobbying experience do you have with marbles?
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Give the content a chance before you judge and bail out. There's gotta be something that resonates with you. More importantly, what are you hobbying? Jump in with your hobbying, interests, stories and questions.
Anything (legal) you are hobbying is welcome. If not, offer something else relating to hobbying or just check in and say hello.
As per usual Hobby Thread etiquette, keep this thread limited to hobbying. Leave politics and religion to threads elsewhere (unless your hobby is building or restoring churches). Pants? Nope. As always, puns are welcome and encouraged.
Play nice and do not be rude. Do not be a troll and do not feed the trolls.
The earliest marbles were made of flint and stone and baked clay. Examples have been found in archaeological sites around the world and some of these, from Rome and ancient Egypt, can be found at the British Museum.
There are frequent references to marbles in Roman literature and it is probably fair to assume that the Romans took this popular form of entertainment with them to all parts of their empire.
For centuries thereafter the marbles were made of common stone or in some cases, real marble. China and crockery marbles were introduced around the year 1800 and before that glass marbles had been made in Venice. However, it was only when a German glassblower invented a tool called the marble scissors in 1846 that production became quick enough to make the sale of glass marbles to the public an economic proposition.
These marbles became increasingly popular throughout Europe and America. An enormous variety of colours were used and intricate patterns were created within the glass.
Clay marbles began to be produced in bulk from about 1870 onwards on both sides of the Atlantic. In the 1890's the first machines for the manufacture of glass marbles were introduced. However, machine production remained low until the 1914-18 war in Europe cut off supplies of marbles to North America. This stimulated the machine production of glass marbles in the U.S.A. This production technique and the machines themselves are now found in many countries, east and west.
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Does anyone still shoot marbles? Do kids still learn?
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How it's made: marbles
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Some people are serious marble collectors based on the colors and patterns:
The world's largest Marble King (one specific marble maker) collection:
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Marble music:
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Anyone make cracked glass for crafting? Want to learn how?
Cracked glass marbles can go by several different names. I've seen them called fractured glass, fried marbles, or shattered marbles.
So these marbles are pretty and all, but what can you do with them?
The answer is pretty much anything you can do with regular marbles! Which means there are plenty of options.
You can turn them into jewelry, embellish an art project, add them to an outdoor decor project, or use them as a vase filler. The list goes on and on.
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Marbles come in different sizes:
PeeWees - approx. 12mm or 1/2" and smaller
Decor Marbles - approx. 14mm or 9/16"
Target Marbles - approx. 16mm or 5/8" (most standard size)
Shooters - approx. 18 - 19mm or just under 3/4"
Cobbles - approx. 22mm or 7/8"
Boulders - approx. 25mm or 1"
Jumbos - approx. 35mm or 1 3/8"
Super Jumbos - approx. 41mm or 1 5/8"
Toebreakers - approx. 48mm or 2"
How much do marbles cost? Like anything else, fancier gets more expensive. They are sold in bulk quantities. I fancy found target marbles for sale on line sold by the pound. There are approximately 80 to 90 in a 1 pound bag ($13) and approx. 250 in a 3 pound bag ($32.50).
Marble jargon is fun. Here are some marble words that came up during the research for this content - can anyone vouch for these? Any others come to mind?
Types of Marbles:
Aggie - Marble made of agate (or glass imitating agate)
Alley - Originally from alabaster or real marble. Sometimes alley taw for a high-quality shooter.
Bennington - Glazed clay or stoneware marble (named after pottery style, though not made in Bennington, VT).
Cat's eye - Clear glass marble with a colored, eye or vane-shaped insert inside.
Clearie / Peerie / Purie / Crystal - Transparent clear glass marble.
Commonie - Cheap, plain clay or common marble.
Onionskin - Glass marble with layered, swirling color bands that run the length of it.
Steelie - Steel ball-bearing marble (heavy and effective as a shooter).
Sulphide - Clear or semi-opaque glass marble with a small clay or porcelain figure (animal, person, etc.) inside.
Bumblebee - Yellow-and-black striped marble.
Joseph's Coat Specific pattern with many straight color bands.
Size-Related Names:
Peewee / Pewee / Mini - Small marble
Mib / Target / Tolley / Duck / Kimmie - Standard target/player marble
Shooter / Taw / Dobber - Larger marble used to knock others out
Boulder / Giant / Bumboozer / Bowler / Tom Bowler - Very large marble
Other size nicknames include bonker, masher, popper, thumper, and godfather.
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Making a marble track:
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Did you miss the Hobby Thread last week? We did a crystals and gem cutting theme. The comments may be closed, but you can re-live the content.
Notable comments from last week:
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Words of wisdom:
"Because despite all our troubles, when things are grim out in that wide round world of ours, that's when it's really important to have a good hobby." Posted by: tankascribe at June 22, 2024 07:41 PM (HWxAD).
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Reminder: if you put links in the comments, use a URL shortener and describe what you're linking to. Failing to do either or both makes you barrel-eligible. Don't make people click to find out what you're linking.
Boo! Send thoughts, suggestions and photos of your hobbying to moronhobbies at protonmail dot com. Or just email to say hello. Do mighty things.
Amazing. Some people need to be careful around those pups, I think.
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Extreme, but steps taking here may be applicable when other animals get their heads stuck.
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A pet from the yard?
Meet The PetMorons
Zach from Hilton Head has been on the page before. He's enjoying his new home on the golf course.
Rich
Zach looks wonderful on the golf course.
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I should have sent these orange and black cats last week ...
My two boy cats -- Rufus is my golden boy, a dog in a cat body, very sweet and protective, bossy and vocal. Julius is the black blob with lantern eyes, a terrific hunter, yet very cuddly, and my baby. They are five and four years old, respectively.
The tortie is Susannah, who is 14 and usually grouchy, but occasionally sweetens up. I sing "My Girl" to her and "Oh Susannah," and she knows they are about her.
I am skywch, and I usually lurk. Thanks!
Thanks for sending in the great photos of your wonderful, distinctive cats! Susannah can give a Halloween look, can't she?
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Commentary by Saijo:
I told Saijo I was going out to dinner tonight and his sister was babysitting the cats and him. I don’t think this is a happy face! https://t.co/w83lPrd1GD
All the rain that we didn't get this summer fell during the past three weeks, 8.5 inches worth. The clematis that had gone dormant during the hot, dry weather woke up and is blooming again.
And see the link above for photos and growing information on 'Darlow's Enigma' Rose, Symphyotrichum [Aster] oblongifolium, Salvia azurea, Thunbergia and a white form, plus Helianthus maximiliani (which had kept going since the last time we saw a photo of this magnificent sunflower.
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Edible Gardening/Putting Things By
Ever heard of this? Apparently, it contains Vitamin K. Wonder how many of us could grow it indoors in winter?
🏆 Discover the health benefits of #Katuk: a #Superfood for your mind and body
🌿 Katuk, or #TropicalAsparagus (#Sauropusandrogynus), is a delicious #leafyvegetable popular in South and Southeast Asia. Its young shoots, often referred to as tropical asparagus, are highly prized for their taste and high yields.
🌿 In Vietnam, Katuk is commonly cooked in soups with crab meat, minced pork, or dried shrimp, while in Malaysia, it’s stir-fried with egg and dried anchovies.
🌿 The #plant is unique for being one of the few plants that contains vitamin K. It’s also rich in folate, vitamin K, and lutein - nutrients linked to improved memory and reduced cognitive aging.
🌿 Katuk thrives in full sun or semi-shade, making it a versatile and healthy addition to your #garden or kitchen.
🛒 Add Katuk Superfood to your edible garden today:
https://t.co/1o1n7JuAqH
Don in Kansas knows how to prepare for holiday visitors through research:
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Puttering, Self-Improvement and Connection
This is one of the non-political Saturday threads, but if you missed it, someone posted in the comments on a recent thread an AoSHQ thread by Warden from another hard time, in 2012. It is entitled Where do we go from here? We talk about home and preparedness issues here, and we should probably talk sometimes about how we connect with neighbors.
Topics touched on in Warden's post include:
Focus on self-improvement
Get in shape
Outperform
Prepare
Preparation is a topic that fits into this thread. There are some ideas in Warden's post that we may sometimes neglect.
Small things add up
Some interesting ideas on doing the things you can and maintaining an attitude of gratitude.
Some AoSHQ threads have staying power.
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Adventure
Remember the Halloween quilt lady? She and her husband teamed up with a hiking friend for a post-Halloween adventure:
We finally got to hike in the Superstitions. The saguaros are abundant and thriving, the jagged skyline crystal clear blue with puffy clouds, the trail rocky and beckoning us on. We reached the end where there was running water from the rain storms. Also some very cool petroglyphs. There were a lot of people out enjoying this trail today!
After our hike, we drove to Tortilla Flat. I didn't know such a place existed. It's a teeny ghost town. The saloon/restaurant walls are covered in dollar bills. People write their names and the date on the bill and staple it to the wall. Some are layered 4 deep. My favorite had colored over Washington's face with a Batman mask and put a conversation bubble saying "I am Batman." There were even dollar bills under plastic on the tabletop. I'm sure there was at least a million dollars stapled to the walls. For being out in the middle of nowhere, there were a heck if a lot of people having lunch there. The food was great! Part of the road was still flooded, but it wasn't on the part where we drove in.
Wyatt Earp?
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Gardens of The Horde
What's happening in your garden?
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Hope everyone has a nice weekend.
If you would like to send photos, stories, links, etc. for the Saturday Gardening Thread, the address is:
ktinthegarden at g mail dot com
Remember to include the nic or name by which you wish to be known at AoSHQ, or let us know if you want to remain a lurker.
It's getting hard to keep all the streams of messaging straight now
—K.T.
"Our new Constitution is now established, everything seems to promise it will be durable; but, in this world, nothing is certain except death and taxes." - Benjamin Franklin (November 1789)
The Democrats thought that "Our Democracy" was over before last Tuesday. And of course, Trump is still President. So some of them may still think it is over.
But some of them are sounding awfully feisty. On the other hand, I ran across a guy who was cheerfully enthusiastic about Mamdani's popularity in NYC.
Hard to keep up. How should we react?
So are we living under a fascist dictatorship or is democracy alive and well?? I’m just trying to keep up with the messaging😂😂 https://t.co/o2jE8Zj7as
When combined with government, the only human characteristic stronger than the desire to be benevolent toward others is to do it with someone else’s money.
I mentioned yesterday how dismayed I was that in the aftermath of our shellacking on Tuesday, there are the expected people on the left and a surprising number on the right who want the U.S. government to “do something” about the price of tea in China (archaic reference alert).
It reminded me of reading about how, on January 10, 1794, James Madison rose in the House of Representatives to challenge a proposal to provide financial assistance to French refugees who had fled the violence in Saint-Domingue (present-day Haiti).
Setting aside the fact that Americans are still paying for benevolence program in Haiti some 232 years later, Madison did not question the suffering of the refugees or the humanitarian impulse behind the appropriation, rather whether Congress possessed the constitutional authority to spend taxpayers’ money on charity.
According to the Annals of Congress, Madison declared:
"Charity is no part of the legislative duty of the government."
He continued:
"It would puzzle any gentleman to lay his finger on any part of the Constitution which would authorize the government to interpose in the relief of the St. Domingo sufferers."
Drawbacks to such humanitarian relief and the ingenious way Congress bypassed Monroe's objection are summarized in a colorful manner at the link above.
Madison’s objection was evidently the last time anyone in government could be shamed about such spending since today, depending on how broadly we define benevolence, roughly two-thirds to three-quarters of federal spending now goes toward social insurance, income support, healthcare, and other programs intended to provide financial or material benefits to individuals. That seems a remarkable proportion when considered against Madison’s objection to spending $15,000 for humanitarian relief.
Which brings me to the “affordability” crisis, and how the newly anointed Democrat controlled government deigns to “solve” it.
Some of the bright ideas for extracting money from groups under current disapproval are described, along with other typical plans to increase dependency on government. Mr. Smith also mentions things that the Congress DOES NOT intend to do to improve "affordability". This is refreshing.
Did I mention we are still sending aid to Haiti 232 years later?
Madison's corpse is so pissed right now.
And others remember:
* * * * *
SHOULD WE TAKE A LOOK AT HISTORY OF PSYCHOLOGY?
Book Review reminding us of the limits of second-hand benevolence
Empathy without that troublesome suicidal empathy
(You can listen to this article in a high-quality reading at the link.)
Summary:
Decline is a choice, and self-governing citizens can choose renewal instead.
Theodore Dalrymple is among the English-speaking world’s most insightful social critics. For decades, he has written about the pathologies that have ruined our cities and resigned entire neighborhoods to the antagonist world of the state of nature. . .
Among his most important works is the 2001 book, Life at the Bottom: The Worldview that Makes the Underclass now out in a new twenty-fifth anniversary edition. Drawing on his experience as a physician and psychiatrist in some of the most blighted slums of our society, Dalrymple argues that the West is facing a crisis of personal responsibility rooted in the determinist ideology that has infected the elite. As he writes in the book’s original introduction, “In the modern world, bad ideas and their consequences cannot be confined to a ghetto.”
One striking thing about Dalrymple’s work is its profound empathy. “In the course of my work over fifteen years, I spoke to thousands of people about their lives and the lives of the people around them,” he writes in the new preface. “As a result, I could not conceive of them as simply vectors of abstract social forces acting upon them.” A doctor treats persons, not statistics, human beings with real agency and life stories. Yet Dalrymple does not let his empathy calcify into excuses for their poor decisions. As much as he acknowledges how the “system” has failed his patients, he maintains that criminals bear ultimate responsibility for their crimes.
Armed with this experience, Dalrymple argues that modern liberalism’s great error is its social determinism. “The very form of the explanation offered by liberals for modern crime—from social conditions direct to behavior, without passing through the human mind—offers those who commit crime an excuse in advance,” he writes. The social scientists who attribute crime to poverty or inequality are in fact guilty of dehumanizing the very people they claim to want to help. By attributing social dysfunction to grand, sweeping trends outside of the control of any individual, they deny the impoverished a path out of squalor and delinquency.
One of Dalrymple’s most fascinating examples of how ideology disempowers people is the shockingly common use of passive voice in his sessions with British prisoners and addicts. His patients often spoke of themselves as “marionettes of happenstance,” in a dialect he calls “the psychobabble of the slums.” The fashionable relativism of academia and other areas of professional life filtered down to these unfortunates through mass culture, giving them a vocabulary to shift blame as far away as possible. Though many had “absorbed nothing at school, [they] had nevertheless absorbed the shibboleths of political correctness” and therapeutic culture. The immiserated then wield the notion of a true “inner self” to ward off responsibility, speaking as if they have no control over their actions. One man who had been guilty of stabbing someone uttered “the knife went in,” rather than acknowledge he chose to thrust the blade.
Leftist ideology adopted by Criminal:
"The knife went in."
Leftist ideology adopted by Journalist:
"The truck went up onto the sidewalk and hit five pedestrians."
Sources of social pathologies which affect the underclasses and criminal classes are described. Few of them are remedied significantly by passing bills or adopting "programs.
While these cases are depressing, the book is even more troubling when Dalrymple delves into the ideological roots of this mass enervation. He has a particular ire for insipid Rousseauian theories of the self, which cloak selfishness in romanticism. “This is the lie that is at the heart of our society, the lie that encourages every form of destructive self-indulgence to flourish,” he writes, “for while we ascribe our conduct to pressures from without, we obey the whims that well up from within, thereby awarding ourselves carte blanche to behave as we choose. Thus we feel good about behaving badly.” As a doctor, he is concerned above all with the practical effects of these theories—and his case-studies demonstrate how dangerous the lie of subjective morality truly can be.
Beyond his medical experience, Dalrymple’s upbringing under the roof of his outright communist father predisposed him to see the fatal flaws in collectivistic social theories. One essay recounts a barbaric episode in which his old man viciously destroyed a collection of old Victorian paintings on little more than a whim as a metaphor for the total cultural leveling of British society. Out of devotion to egalitarian and anti-colonial ideology, the bureaucrats of the centralizing state have graffitied or torn down the physical remains of the past. In both Britain and America, people are governed as if we were livestock, and our places are treated little better than pigsties. Is it any wonder that the prevailing mood of our age is despair?
Now I understand Dalrymple better! His early exposure to communism helps explain why he so effectively notices the destructiveness so prevalent in the Left today. There's more on specific actions of politicians, bureaucrats and ideologues at the link above.
* * * * *
Another interesting way to look at the actions of Trump, from Michael Smith:
Sometimes leading means poking the bear to see what he will do.
As an executive, I’ve always hated working on the required 1-, 3-, and 5-year plans. I worked with my teams to create them because they were required and because the analysts wanted numbers even if they were bullshit. At best, they were believable bullshit and only directionally correct.
My approach to understanding policy and politics is to define electoral politics and the subsequent governing stages with a mashup paraphrase of Mike Tyson and General George S. Patton:
“Everybody has a plan until you get punched in the face, your enemy gets a vote in what you do, and a good plan violently executed now is better than a perfect plan executed next week.”
I had a couple of mentors during my early career who taught me the difference between a manager and a leader was that a leader makes decision and then course corrects when necessary and a manager just follows the plan because nobody ever blames someone for following “the plan”.
My first mentor told me, “Son, you already know a bear is a bear and generally know what bears do but sometimes you have to have the courage to poke the bear to find out exactly what he will do. The trick is to know when, where, and how hard to poke him and not only that, know what you are willing to do after he is poked.”
So, I guess that is my basis for supporting President Trump. He seems to poke the bear to see what the bear will do and then adjust accordingly based on that feedback.
That’s really the extent of his plan.
We need to acknowledge the difficulty of defining the problems we now face.
We need to do some bear poking.
The first step is to understand the enemy. Ours can be understood in their words, but also in their actions – so let’s look at both for a moment.
I really recommend clicking on the link for the following section of this essay, which provides examples of the behavior of our domestic opposition. Rather unsettling. Frightening, actually.
So, we already know the bear is a bear and have some insight into what that bear is going to do. They are showing us in real time.
The question we must answer is whether we have the courage to do what needs to be done.
So far, the GOP has not shown that courage and because we haven’t, the Democrats are about to give us yet another lesson in how far they are willing to go.
I’ll admit to liking HBO’s Game of Thrones – a lot - one scene that keeps penetrating my mind is the Battle of the Bastards in season 6, when Jon Snow stands alone facing Ramsay Bolton’s army. That seems to be our destiny because it is repeated again and again – when we do find a leader worthy of the fight, our army deserts him.
Right or wrong, Trump demonstrated the resolve to go shield to shield with the worst of the Democrats – but in the end, like Jon Snow, he was left alone on the battlefield.
If we want that to change, we need to field the right army.
World's toughest bear nicknamed "The Boss" survives being hit by train, and fathered 70% of cubs in his region. https://t.co/cJOEQ0V55V
NAME the Signer of the Declaration of Independence who was dragged from his bed and marched in only a nightshirt and breeches in freezing weather to prison by the British.
RICHARD STOCKTON signed the Declaration of Independence knowing his life, fortune and sacred honor was at risk. Four months later he was imprisoned.
Stockton had been moving his family to safety because the British were following George Washington and his army into New Jersey after the Battle of Long Island, when a treacherous neighbor of the friend whose home he had moved his family to, led a band of loyalists to Richard Stockton.
They dragged Stockton from his bed and marched him improperly clothed (only a nightshirt and breeches) in freezing weather to a common jail in Perth Amboy, New Jersey. Later he was moved to Provost prison in New York City, which was notorious for its harsh conditions. It is estimated that about three times as many prisoners died in the prisons and prison ships of New York City, as soldiers in combat during the Revolutionary War years.
After five weeks of being locked in irons and nearly starved, Stockton was released. The condition of his release was that he was not to engage in American affairs during the fight for freedom. His health was compromised to such an extent, that it is doubtful he could have contributed much on the battlefield. His home had been plundered of his furniture and livestock. His extensive library had been destroyed. His monetary wealth was also gone as he had donated most of it to the cause.
Richard Stockton died before the Revolutionary War ended in 1781 at the age of 51. He is the subject of one of the two statues representing New Jersey in the National Statuary Hall Collection in the U.S. Capitol.
Well THAT was no fun. No fun at all. But what is the Democrat plan for improving America? You can summarize it in one word—no, not “affordability,” but subpoenas. Think this is an overstatement? Let’s start here, and cheer up, this will be the Democrats’ undoing. (At least Newt Gingrich had a Contract with America with a policy agenda his House largely passed. The Democrats have no policy proposals for “affordability,” and appear instead to have a Contract on America.)
Comments are closed on the thread above so you won't ban yourself by trying to comment on a week-old thread. But don't try it anyway.
Follow-up
The people who asked questions about COVID early on may sometimes get a little weird, but sometimes they make some good points and point us in some useful directions, even now. Independent of the piece below, I saw a comment by Bret Weinstein stating that COVID would have been the biggest scientific investigation (or words to that effect) IF DATA HAD BEEN COLLECTED AND WERE BEING ANALYZED.
Good morning, C&C, it’s Thursday! Apologies for the late delivery— your author is navigating the nation’s airports again (ugh). Our election hangover continues, creating a challenge to report real news, since the Great Shellacking is still busy throwing its weight around. But, only 48 hours in, twists and turns are appearing and some of the numbers are paying hide-and-go-seek. Today’s roundup describes what’s causing folks to scratch their heads a little. Plus, more good news from Florida.
By the way, I’m en route to the lovely city of Chattanooga, where I’m attending the Brownstone Institute’s sixth annual conference, “The Challenge Ahead.” For two days, a crowd of doctors, scientists, journalists, and assorted heretics of various sizes and descriptions will compare notes on how to unwind the capture of our institutions, preferably before the next “two weeks to flatten the curve” arrives.
Please submit any prayer requests to “Annie’s Stew” at apaslo at-sign hotmail dot com. Prayer requests are generally removed after four weeks unless we receive an update.
Prayer Requests:
9/18 – Random Dave posted an update to his job progress. He is still looking for FT work, but has accepted a substitute teacher position (more flexibility for interviews, some income to slow the bleeding). He asks for prayers that the interview results he is waiting on will get back to him soon, especially if one is the “right job”. If any are “not the right job”, they would fall away soon and get back to him, and that if all of them are “not the right job”, the ‘right job” would show itself aggressively, so he doesn’t miss it! He also thanks the Horde and the folks at church for their prayers and support.
8/14 Update – Random Dave needs continued prayers for his job situation, that God would guide him to the right one soon, and also for prayers for M’s grandmother, who fell the other day and tore a ligament.
10/22 Update – M’s grandmother is healing well. She is mostly mobile now (on crutches), and occasionally has bouts of bad pain. They praise God for the healing and humbly request additional healing. Random Dave reports no real change on his job situation. He continues to pray for God to make the path known as he applies, and periodically deal with “good” interviews that end up going nowhere.
9/18 – Brother Tim posted that he has been overnight in his car more than indoors. He is convinced that his retirement/resignation was a severe error, a result of fatigue and depression. He asks for prayers.
10/17 – Bother Tim posted that he has been in the hospital for 3 weeks.
10/10 – Just Some Guy asked for prayers for his former work colleague, who had a heart attack and stroke.
10/10 – Mile, okravangelist, requested prayers for Mama Publius, for grace and fortitude, and that she passes in her sleep. Mama Publius is in home hospice care.
10/24 Update – Mama Publius passed away this past week.
10/14 – NR Pax requested prayers for a friend, whose husband died on 10/10 after a long illness.
10/17 – Pooky’s Girl posted that she is in the hospital, because Wee Pooky is threatening to come early at 30 weeks.
10/24 Update – Pooky’s Girl’s contractions have been stopped. She is at 31 weeks along, so every week that Wee Pooky stays put is less time in the NICU.
10/31 – Annie’s Stew (and, I assume, all the Horde) ask for God’s blessings on Misanthropic Humanitarian as he steps away from the blog. We thank him for his service to the Horde and to Christ’s Kingdom.
10/31 – ChristyBlinkyTheGreat requested prayers that her mother’s eventual passing into heaven be in peace as she sleeps, without any pain or fear. She thinks it will be in the next few weeks or months, as she is approaching 96 years old.
11/4 – Teresa in Fort Worth sent an update that she is not feeling well. Every muscle and bone hurts, on top of the fatigue and weakness she was already experiencing. The nurse at UTSW thinks it may be due to receiving chemo on top of radiation, on the same day. The good news is that the CA19-9 number is 4.9, below the threshold of 37. This was her twelfth chemo treatment, marking a year since she started this protocol. She is worried that it may be a preview of how she will feel when the cancer starts to take over.
For submission guidelines, please contact Annie's Stew, who is managing the prayer list. You can contact her at: apaslo at hotmail dot com. If you see a prayer request posted in a thread comment, feel free to copy and paste it and e-mail it to Annie's Stew.
Please note: Prayer requests are generally removed after four weeks or so unless we receive an update.
2 Corinthians 4:8-9
We are troubled on every side, yet not distressed; we are perplexed, but not in despair, persecuted, but not forsaken; cast down, but not destroyed.
Because it coincided with the rise of AI development tools and independent creators working on the "they can't sue all of us" philosophy quickly reskinning Linux to look and feel like MacOS but without the flaws. (Replacing them with different flaws, I'm sure.)
The commodity dynamic memory (DRAM) found in every computer - except for example the Raspberry Pi Pico - is a tradeoff: It's much cheaper than static memory and much smaller, but it's slow and it leaks - it needs to be constantly refreshed where the contents are read and written back. That's invisible these days but if you look at older systems it was very obvious; the Zilog Z80 CPU had an integrated refresh counter and the Commodore Amiga had refresh slots baked in to the DMA allocation.
It looks like this still needs to be refreshed, but it solves a different leak: With conventional DRAM every read erases the data and the memory chip also has to write it back afterwards.
Long story short, the new memory uses two transistors per bit instead of one for DRAM or two for SRAM, is five times denser than SRAM, and fourteen times faster than DRAM. Only problem remaining is that it doesn't exist outside of lab samples yet.
The cards left Oakland bound for Texas but only made it as far as San Bernardino County before the entire truck was abducted by aliens.
Some less bleak political news closer to home: The ruling Labor (Maoist) government at the heart of the rot down under, my birth state of Victoria, is now polling third ahead of state elections on the 28th.
The Greens (Khmer Vert) are polling fourth.
First are the Liberals (Conservative Squish), with second place going to One Nation (Conservative Non-Squish).
To give you an idea of how unpopular Labor has made themselves, they are polling at 22% in their own stronghold. And thanks to preferential voting (used by Victorian state and Australian federal elections) a situation where Labor loses numerically but wins a majority of seats as happened in the UK is all but impossible.
I hope this trend spreads.
Repotted all 29 seedlings in coconut fiber propagation pots so I can just pop them in the ground.
Now in the process of digging out the ground to plant them in. It's hard clay riddled with rocks and roots and builder's debris, so this is a lot of work. I planted one boronia this morning to replace the one that didn't make it through the winter, leaving 42 plants in various sizes of pot sitting by the walkway to my front door.
This is what the half-ton of gardeny stuff is for - soil improvement so I can grow something other than tussock grass and weeds, and mulch so that the tussock grass and weeds don't grow back.
Podcast: A quick postmortem of the savage beating suffered by the Republican Party and Donald Trump. And a new reason to hit the tip jar...Buy Guns For Sefton!
Email confirmed as once used by the Muskily Heterosexual James Talarico found in leak of emails of Fling.com sex dating site:
An email address that James Talarico's attorneys confirmed belonged to and was at one time used by the Texas Democratic U.S. Senate candidate appears in a database search result associated with the adult dating website Fling.com's 2011 data breach. A Fling.com account was created with Talarico's email address just before Talarico began teaching sixth graders.
The result lists the username "mohawk787" and an account creation timestamp of December 26, 2010, at 20:56:49. The profile's interests field lists "FETISH," "GROUPSEX," "SEXUAL RELATIONS," "ONLINE FLIRTING," and "OTHER."
Townhall shared the information described in this article with the Talarico campaign and requested comment Friday morning, and in response, a mere 35 minutes later, received a four-page, detailed letter from legal counsel for Talarico that addressed some, but not all of the information described in this report.
"Well I can't believe the trans-child-obsessed Confirmed Bachelor James Talarico is into group fetish shit," said noted void phantom Doctor Nullity, The Man Who Never Existed
I'm not the guy who noted this, I saw it on X (Razib Khan maybe), but The Bulwark could be "audience capture". It might have started as the Frum / 90s-Kristol / NRO classic Eisenhower Republicanism. But nobody was reading the Bulwark except leftists.
Tallyrand has a quote on this, "I am their leader so I must follow them".
Same goes for David French, Christianity Today, and the "Anxious Bench" side of Patheos. They may have started out Christian. But it wasn't Christians signing their checks.
Flashback: "trans man" Lawyer freaks out after a judge denies "his" motion. He's ultimately arrested. "He" makes so much drama he was just recruited to develop a new CW show.
I'm just wondering if this flighty high-calorie pyrsyn is also in the news today for other reasons....
Update: No, it's not. Zee/Zem says they's name is like "Rob Hopkins" or something. Story here, courtesy of The Blade
[Song title]
Don't breathe down my neck, no
I got no trophies on display
I sign them away
I mean what the heck
All of your promises
Don't fill me with pride no
I just wanna get out on the floor
And do the Cuban slide, slide, slide, slide
From Anonosaurus Wrecks:
@NBCNews
Although Brazil's presidential election took place more than 4,000 miles away, the baseless conspiracy theory that it was stolen raced through the American right-wing media.
Podcast: The Brazil and Israel elections, the evil left, and more!
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