Michelob Ultra

 

It has been reported that Progressives are boycotting Michelob ULTRA beer because that is the brand that the Gold Medal winning, US Hockey team was drinking in the locker room after winning against the Canadian team.

The Michelob marketing team responded that Progressives drink, on average, 3.4 bottles of beer a year and that they stand by their decision to provide the beer to the team. 

***Satire***

LED Headlight flicker and migraines

I was driving this evening and the vehicle behind me had LED headlights.

The flicker of those lights made me wonder if they trigger migraine headaches in those who are susceptible to that malady.

I know there were workers who could not work in the shop where there was welding because the sudden flashes of bright light lit-off migraines.

I THINK the flicker of the lights is a way of modifying their intensity in an RMS kind of way. It seems to me that a capacitor would smooth that out or perhaps there is some rate of on-off that is faster than our eyes can perceive.

What do you think? Do you get migraines? Have you ever heard of anybody complaining about the flicker? 

 

An email from a friend and a reality-check video

 

I got an email from one of my friends in an unnamed state west of the Mississippi. Springtime hits sooner out there than it does here in Michigan.

He wrote about replanting orchards, potting plants, picking mushrooms and trapping pests. I think he was trying to cheer me up. It worked.

The video at the top of this post is a good reality check. We start molding our property with a lot of ideas in our heads. And then reality hits us upside the head with a two-by-four.

Some people can deal with reality. They improvise, adapt and overcome. They adjust their expectations. Others fold. 

"Active" aging: What does it mean?

A friend emailed me one of those "maps that makes you think". It purported to show which states were most favorable for "active seniors". It listed the average age for each state that seniors remained "active".

It looked to me like they took the median life expectancy and subtracted ten years from that number, but it got me to thinking, "How would you measure that? Is there a standard for what defines an active-adult?"

It turns out that Occupational Therapists and people who study senior citizens do have a measure and it has little to do with how physically fit you are. 

The Basic Activities of Daily Living

• The ability to move yourself from one location to the next (usually in your home) as you go about your daily routine
• Personal hygiene, brushing your teeth
• Showering and bathing (which combines novel movements and slippery surfaces with hygiene
• Toileting and cleaning up afterward
• Dressing, including selecting appropriate clothing for the day
• Self-feeding 

Instrumental/Intellectual Activities of Daily Living

• Housekeeping, laundry, and other home chores
• Money management
• Meal Preparation
• Moving or changing residents
• Managing your medications (including arranging doctor visits)
• Using the telephone or computer to communicate and get information 

A sad reality

It is a sad reality that many people feel righteous in ripping-off old people.

If they bother to rationalize their actions, they say that the only reason an old person can afford something is because "they exploited others" during their working years.

A million years ago, an older people had no problems finding a neighborhood "kid" to mow the grass with a push mower, rake the leaves,  shovel the snow or clean the gutters on the roof.

Now you have to hire a business to do those chores on an annual basis. They show up driving $50k trucks and pulling another $15k in high-speed equipment. The only way they will do anything extra (like not mow down your prize peonies) is if you pay the EXTRA money.

And the entire "money management" issue has become a goat-festival. We are being pushed into "Apps" that come and go at a bewildering rate. We get messages "We discontinued this app here at the Doctors office and you have to sign up for this new one".

Oh, and data breaches happen daily. So how do we discern if the message is real or bogus?

It is no longer safe to put checks (in envelops) into your mailbox for the mailman to pick up. Scammers pull outgoing mail and "wash" the checks to create a signed but otherwise-blank-check on YOUR account. Note: Uniball 207 pens are more resistant to "washing" than most other pens. 

At least the thief has to put some effort into stealing your money when you use paper checks. He can't do it from the other side of the globe with the push of a mouse-button.

And don't get me started on inflation and the heat-death of Social Security. 

Yes, modern technology has advantages. Ride-share apps are a life-saver for my blind sister-in-law. Home delivery of groceries can take the sting out of the inevitable restrictions on driving.

It doesn't mean that I have to like it. 

Rejuvenating a pollard willow tree

Before

After

From a different angle

Before

After (close up)

The electric pole saw is a good tool for this job.

I was able to be off to the side of where the limbs dropped. The larger limbs are about 6" in diameter. Willow wood has a nasty tendency to "barber-chair" when they fall.

I planted this tree beside the gully that drains my property. My thinking was that the tree gave me one last chance to capture nutrients before they left the property.

Nutrient runoff is a real issue with livestock operations. The animals poop on the frozen ground and then it is leached by rain or washed downstream. That is not good for the surface water quality nor is it good for the long-term fertility of your soil.

The logical fallacy of this concept is that the tree does not have any leaves when the ground is icy. It cannot absorb those nutrients unless you have some kind of swale or settling pond to slow the water before it leaves the property. Then the particles can settle out of the stream and your tree can harvest them as they decay in the spring and early summer. 

Speaking truth to power

Black podcasters responding to the "Chicago" Bears possibly moving out of Chicago.

Savage.

Winning quote "I know the people who are living in Indiana. They are quite happy and quite fine. Thank-you very much." at the 7:14 mark.

Thinking about willow trees

The image above is an elevation slice along the property line that will be getting a windbreak.

What is notable is that more than half of the distance the elevation is at or only slightly above the water-table.

Joe, the fruit and nut grower instantly sees the elevated areas with good drainage. The soggy parts are much harder to populate.

At this point, in a rare moment of practicality, the initial plantings in those areas will almost certainly be various types of willow trees. There are other species that would work, Bald Cypress, Tamarack, American Elm, Silver Maple and a few others...but it is tough to beat the ease of propagating willow cuttings.

This clone was collected along Peppermint Creek and is typical for the species. It is currently trained as "pollard" and needs a haircut.

Several of the clones I will be using were collected "in the wild". Michigan grew a lot of vegetables on "muck fields" before most of that moved to Mexico. Muck is not a "mineral" soil. It is mostly grass that grew in marshes and the old roots and blades of grass fell into the water and did not decay due to lack of oxygen. It is organic. It burns when dry. It also blows away when it is drained. So, most muck fields had windbreaks of...willow trees (or spruce). The farmers used White Willow (Salix alba) or Crack Willow (Salix × fragilis) which are European species. They have more vigor than our native Black Willow (Salix nigra).

Some of the selections have twigs with brown bark. Some have yellow bark. Some of the selections have better "tree" form (called "apical dominance" in the biz). I even have some selections with "curly" twigs which don't get as tall and have denser branching than the standard forms.

Schools, then-and-now

I counted the number of students who were in the same 3rd grade class I was in back in 1969-1970.

There were 38 students and the picture-frame had 15 blank spaces. That suggests that somewhere there were classes with  53 students in them.

Preposterous?

It was a different era. There were lots of kids. High schools in the Cleveland, Ohio area were running two-shifts because they could not build new ones quickly enough.

Most families were two-parent families. I only knew of one kid who "didn't have a dad" in my class of 38. That number was skewed because it was a Catholic school and Catholics believed, at the time, that divorce was as shameful as getting caught with hookers (Matt 5:32).

The teachers had standards and they expected you to toe-the-line. 

If you caused a problem in school, the teacher had a great deal of authority to "handle it" right then-and-there.

And if word got back to your parents that you had been disruptive, dad would-and-did whip your butt as soon as he came home from work. For one thing, your parents paid MONEY to send you to a Catholic school. While $200 dollars a year might not sound like a lot of money today, you could buy a brand-new, VW Beetle for $1995 dollars in 1969 so sending one kid to Catholic school was 10% of the cost of a new car.

There were fights on the playground but there were no knives pulled or tire-chains employed, at least at the grade-school level. I think the teachers were practical enough to realize that boys have a different way of establishing pecking-order than girls and they let us sort it out.

Today

Today, there is EXTREME pressure to not touch a child. God forbid that you should paddle them.

Today, there is EXTREME pressure for schools to not suspend kids. The thinking is that the SCHOOL is endangering the child by suspending them if they live in a single-parent home. If mom is working, then kid will be unsupervised and, somehow, that is the school's fault.

One principal told me that they were forbidden by the school board to suspend a kid for more than 10 days in a single school year. FORBIDDEN!!

The kid could bring a weapon to school and the principal could not drop-kick them out if they had already hit their ten days. They could assault a teacher. They could sexually assault another student in the rest-room. They could do drugs on school property...and the teacher and the administration's hands were tied. Oh...and don't even think about reporting it to the police.

In many places, class-loads are restricted to 25 kids or fewer per classroom. And it doesn't make any difference. 

The kids have this all figured out. The good ones still learn. The bad ones...well, without guard-rails they go flying off into bad places. 

Losing weight, tendons and an artful Info-mercial

I stepped on the scale yesterday and saw that I weighed 198 pounds. This morning it was 200. I was under the impression that I wasn't losing weight but that some of my fat was changing to muscle. It appears that I was wrong. Either wrong, or I need to replace the battery in the scale.

Tendons

A physical therapist talks about strengthening tendons in ===>THIS VIDEO<=== I skipped over the biology lesson to get you to the important stuff. The more detail-oriented readers may want to skip back to the beginning.

When Info-mercials are artwork

The Info-mercial. 

Some of the back story 

Niles Kinerk is the real-deal.

He started a business called Gardens Alive in the mid-1980s selling organic gardening "biologicals". That is, lady-bugs, praying mantis, nematodes, milky-spore, mycorrhizal dips for roots and so on. 

He grew the company by aggressively promoting his vision and by shipping high-quality products. By high-quality, I mean the product arrived in the customers' mailboxes alive and viable. Remember, living critters are perishable.

Around the year 2000 he bid on a raft of bankrupt nursery (trees, plants, seeds) companies. A venture capital company had collected the companies like so many Beanie-Babies earlier in the 1990s, borrowed a bunch of money through their businesses and passed the assets through a firewall to the parent company. Then they divested the soiled-doves with the debt but kept the assets.

The soiled-doves quickly face-planted and filed for bankruptcy. The judge required that they be auctioned-off.

One of the bunch put together an employee buy-back offer which the judge accepted.

Most of the rest were scooped up by Mr Kinerk.

At the time, I assumed it was so he could get their customer lists so he could send them Gardens Alive! literature and so he could have Gardens Alive! literature blown into their catalogs.

I was wrong.

Mr Kinerk hired a fellow Indiana nurseryman who was famous for his blunt manner of speaking and for being a leader in organic gardening. That was Ed Fackler.

I was not in the room, but I think it went something like this.

"Niles, they went bankrupt because they deserved to go bankrupt. The pictures in their catalogs look like they were drawn by third-graders with dull crayons and they were shipping crap to their customers" Ed might have said.

Then Ed explained that while that sounds harsh, they never would have fallen into the clutches of the vampire capital firms if they had been thriving. 

"What is it going to take to fix it?" Kinert might have asked.

"It is going to cost a lot of money..." Ed said.

"That is my problem. Figure out what it will take to fix it and fix it fast." Kinert responded.

Ed reached out through his network of contacts and collected horror stories. He made a plan and constructed a detailed list of what needed to be done.

Kinert found the money and made it happen.

Means, Motive, Opportunity...

Population of Los Angeles County, California: 9.8 million

Population of LA County ages 0-19: 2.2 million

Population of LA County ages 20-to-infinity: 7.6 million

Number of ineligible voters purged from the voter rolls after a legal challenge by Judicial Watch: 1.2 million names. That is more than 15% of the names.

While that is not "proof" of electoral fraud, you have to wonder why the people in power never got around to keeping the rolls "clean". Isn't that their job?  What could possibly have motivated them to not do their job?

Fine Art Tuesday

 

Hans Dahl was born in 1849 in Norway and died in 1937.

While much loved by "common people", Dahl was intensely criticized by other artists and by "intellectuals".

Even today, his paintings radiate joy and burst with youthful vigor. Somehow, he captures the essence of the female-form in the jaunty curve of a hip and angle of an elbow.

On the way to the Wedding Reception.

If you asked any person under 40 what she is doing, they would say she is checking her phone. In fact, she is knitting while she walks.

I suspect that the young man in the boat is going to get kissed shortly after he beaches the boat.

A dad and daughter fishing (video)

I enjoyed watching a couple of videos from a channel where a father takes his daughter fishing. She is about four years-old. They are speaking Russian so it could be Russia, Ukraine, Romania, Bulgaria, Moldova, Belarus, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania or one of the 'stans.

I am going to "port you in" where he is letting his little princess choose which bobber she wants to use.  ===>HERE<=== 

I think the dad does an excellent job coaching his daughter in the fine art of fishing. He appears to be very well attuned to how his daughter handles stress and emotion. He pressures her a few times "OK, it is YOUR turn to take the fish off the hook" but then backs off when the fish decides to get frisky. A few minutes later, his daughter had time to become comfortable with the idea and she gives it a whack. 

Quicksilver found this video to be pretty interesting, too. She watched with me almost to the end.

Nerdy details

The pond is surrounded by a pasture that is used for multiple species of animals (cattle, horses, turkeys(!) and possibly sheep) and the pond provides water for the animals.

All of the bright green in both photos are cockleburs.

The pasture would embarrass any proponent of Management Intensive Grazing. It has a major infestation of cocklebur (which is native to North America).

The cane pole's terminal tackle are a couple of "tear drops" that get earthworms added. I assume that they are on different length "droppers".

 

"Stuka", the plane

"Stuka", the fish

One of the surprises is that the dad catches a pike (Esox  lucius) when it inhales a small "roach" (Rutilus rutilus) that had taken his bait. The Russian word for "pike" is pronounced "Stuka" just like the German, WWII dive-bomber. The plane could have gotten that nickname due to the slender profile of the plane's nose resembling a pike or it could have been named that because pike hunt their prey from ambush. 

At the 1:10 mark you can see other vehicles in the background. I wonder if the land-owner "rents out" fishing rights on sort of a you-pick basis. The spot where the dad and daughter fish is frequently used for fishing. There are carp scales on the bank. That would be an interesting way to generate revenue. 

Spicy dirt, scion and slippers

We are not watching Quicksilver on the weekends, so it is our time to catch up on the things that are difficult to do when she is here.

Spicy Dirt

The numbers in the manuals are dependent on many factors. For one thing, the cut of the chamber, the amount of free-bore and taper of the lands-and-grooves of the throat can make a HUGE difference in velocities and pressures.

Even though those features are detailed with excruciating precision, the specifications are for MAXIMUM material (i.e. smallest chamber) which results in the highest pressures. Manufacturers can make the chamber somewhat larger than the specification. They can make the free-bore longer and the angle of the taper more gentle.

Manufacturers whose customers are most fixated on accuracy want the tighter chambers. Manufactures whose customers are fixated on robust operation even when the beast is fed...um...diverse feed want the more generous chambers.

That is a lot of words to explain why some barrels are "fast" and some are "slow". It also points to the utility of taking velocity measurements of the items you are manufacturing. If you get significantly higher velocities than the manual led you to expect, then some kind of interaction is happening and you are generating higher pressures than Mr Sammy allows.

To record today's findings:

4.0 grains of the spicy dirt of St Marks with a 147 grain, powder coated, cast, antique pewter bead measured 880fps of an expected 925.

4.8 grains of spicy dirt with one brand of 124 grain shiny-things measured 1035fps of an expected 1060fps.

5.1 grains of spicy dirt with a different brand of 124 grain shiny-things measured 1050fps of an expected 1120fps.

That is great news. That tells me that the pressures are within the design envelop and rapid disassembly of my toys is unlikely. If, on the other hand, the measured velocities of the 124 grain assemblies had exceeded 1200fps then that meant that I was exceeding +P pressures and all bets are off. 

I took some scion from this tree. There is a drainage ditch full of flowing water in the foreground. I am curious to see how this variety will do on a size controlling rootstock in a sunny location with a little bit of pruning and fertilizer.

Southern Belle has some pretty chickens.

 

I promised Quicksilver that I would make her some slippers.

She was not impressed. 

I made a trip to the Big-Box store to buy some spike-lights and an electrical timer, cat food (for chum) and sunflower seeds.

I went to the property and picked up a load of wood. It took me an hour-and-forty-minutes to load the truck. I may have had more than 1000 pounds in the back of the 1/2 ton pickup.

Possible carp fishing location

Lake Ovid is an artificial lake in Clinton County. This shallow arm should warm up quickly.

 

Random photo

 

Who says you need a helmet when you are arc welding?

Tradecraft

It is commonly accepted in espionage tradecraft that there is actionable information embedded in even the most mundane of "enemy" communications.

From the Youtube transcript of Susan Rice podcast with Preet Bharara

Note: I cut-and-paste directly from the auto-generated, Youtube transcript without attempting to make it more readable. I did that to avoid accusations that I "spun" Susan Rice's words. My comments are at the bottom of this post.

My apologies for how difficult it is to read.

7:30

support them. You know, I I wish we could muster that kind of energy with greater frequency. But but when it comes

7:37

to the elites, you know, the the the corporate interests, uh the law firms,

7:42

the universities, the media, I agree with you, Pit, it it it is not uh it's

7:48

not going to end well for them. For those that uh decided that it was, you know, that they would act in their

7:55

perceived very narrow self-interest, which I would underscore is very short-term self-interest.

8:00

um and you know take a knee to Trump. Um I think they're now starting to realize,

8:06

wait a minute, you know, this is not popular. Trump is not popular. What he is doing, uh whether on the economy and

8:14

affordability or on immigration now is not popular. Uh and that there is likely

8:20

to be a swing in the other direction. And they are going to be caught uh with

8:25

more than their pants down. they're going to be held accountable um by uh

8:31

those who come uh in opposition to Trump um and win at the ballot box. And I can

8:37

tell you PIT, you know, as I talk to leaders in in uh in Washington, leaders

8:43

in our party, leaders in the states, if these corporations think that the Democrats uh when they come back in

8:49

power uh are going to, you know, play by the old rules uh and um you know, and

8:57

and say, "Oh, never mind. we'll we'll forgive you for all the people you've fired, all the policies and and

9:03

principles you've violated, all you know, the laws you've skirted. I think they've got another thing coming

***

10:48

to that, there will be an accountability agenda. You know, companies already uh are are starting to hear they they

10:54

better preserve their documents. They better be ready for subpoenas. If they've done something wrong, they'll be

11:01

held accountable. And if they um haven't broken the law, good for them. If

11:06

they've done the right things, good for them. That also will be noted and and and remembered. But you you know, this

11:13

is not going to be uh a an instance of,

11:18

you know, for forgive and forget. Um the damage that these people are doing is is

11:23

too severe to uh the American people and to our national interest. on some of

11:29

these things that strikes me and I hear totally hear what you're saying with respect to some of the bending of the knee

11:35

people didn't break the law they just caved and and and people are allowed to make bad deals with so for example ABC

11:42

or CBS or other media outlets who settled for a lot of money even though they had very strong and meritorious um

11:50

defenses to a defamation claim probably not something you can do there

11:55

in terms of um legal violation and maybe can shine a light on it and have hearings to sort of expose some of those

12:03

outlets. Is there anything else you think can or should be done with respect to

12:09

the fourth estate um giving Trump a blank check to intimidate them?

12:14

Well, careful media media people are listening and watching. First of all, uh we we ought to lift up

12:20

those that that have not bent the knee and there are those. uh you know I think

12:26

the New York Times and the Atlantic uh even the Wall Street Journal um

12:32

deserve uh you know credit for for standing up um and uh and and among the

12:39

broadcast networks you know NBC has taken a different approach than than CBS um and so I think you know part of this

12:46

is consumers voting with their their feet and their dollars um but it's also

12:51

to examine uh what may lie behind the scenes. On the surface, it doesn't appear uh that one could argue that

12:58

there that laws were broken, but you know, some of the stuff that seems to be going on at CBS is dubious at best. Um,

***

Reasonable speculation

The Democratic party is freaked-out by the evidence that their near-total control of the media is slipping away. While Rice identified several industries that would be punished, Mass Media is the only industry where Rice mentioned specific corporations as future targets.

Rice threatened CBS and ABC with lawfare. Even though the language is passive-third person, she put them on notice that the next Democratic POTUS DOJ will comb through all of the laws on the books to find something to throw at them even though she admits 

"On the surface it doesn't appear that...laws were broken"

If this was a horror movie, the media would be the vain-but-feckless roommate who discovers that her roommate is an ax-murderer.

Stay tuned! Does vain-but-feckless move out? Does she turn state's evidence? Or does she stay in denial "Oh, he is really not that bad" and drift toward the bloody-and-now-inevitable conclusion?

It is true. NYC requires two forms of ID if you want to shovel snow

 

Source

Yes. If you want to shovel snow in Deep-Blue New York City, you need to have TWO forms of ID and to bring copies.

And yet rage-filled Progressives tell us it is "racist" to require ID to vote.

Maybe that squares with their silly idea that it is "racist" to work? 

Mamdani to Hochul "Unless you dance to the tune I am calling, I shall be forced to raise the property taxes in NYC"

 

His bit of theater reminded me of this clip from Blazing Saddles.

What kind of threat is "...I shall be forced to raise the property taxes"?

Whose political career will that torpedo? 

Weather, First Fish Fry, Spousal Privilege and WOKE judges

 

It looks like Tuesday will be a good day to drive across frozen mud to collect wood.

First Fish Fry of Lent

I went to the first fish fry hosted by our church.

Many customers showed up, especially considering that it is the first week of Lent as observed by the "western" church. Listening to the chatter, several of the attendees had called around to check the prices and menu and decided to drive all the way to Charlotte. 

Is this why LGBT pushed for "marriage"?

To the best of my knowledge, the courts in the US cannot "force" a spouse to testify against the accused. Nearly all other witnesses can be compelled via threat of "contempt of court" charges.

Maybe it is just me, but it seems like the headlines are filled with crimes where there is an accomplice and the "alleged" perps are over-represented by non-traditional married couples.

WOKE Judges

There were multiple causes of the Protestant Reformation. It was comparable to systemic organ failures due to sepsis.

One of the axis of failure (or one of the organs that ruptured) was the tension between "Predestination (the reformer's position)" versus "Free will" which was more the position of the Roman church. 

"Predestination" is based on the belief that God is all knowing. He knew us before he knit us together in our mother's womb. Since he "knows" what will happen in the future, then the future must be cast-in-stone and unchangeable. Therefore, even before we are born, God knows if we will go to heaven or go to hell. Ergo, our divine destinies are not under our control.

"Free will" is based on the idea that we have the choices on a minute-by-minute basis of whether we will follow God's commandments ("If you love me you will follow my commandments") or be selfish. On Judgement Day, we will be called to account for our choices and we will either be consigned to hell or go to heaven.

The argument still rages. Today it is seen in the criminal justice system where WOKE judges and prosecutors refuse to hold criminals accountable "because of their background". It is the secular version of sin, redemption and salvation. Their "logic" is that the violent person was doomed to be violent due to their gender, place of birth, poverty or the color of their skin and therefore they cannot be held responsible for "society's failings".

At this point, society's trajectory under the secular manifestation of "Predestination" is not very promising. 

News from Canada

Meta-analysis reveals that a significant portion of the violent crime in Canada is due to an extremely antisocial family from Sweden, the Gunpersons.

No tree work today

 

It rained last night.

No tree work today. 20mph sustained winds and 40mph gusts are predicted. 

Recommended by a reader (Michael)

The modern American Liberals' search for meaning 

All things are wearisome,
too wearisome for words.
The eye is not satisfied by seeing
nor has the ear enough of hearing.    Ecclesiastes 1:8

 

Grab bag, again

The last couple of days started with rain which cleared up around noon.

Yesterday, I got a call from the gentleman who does brush-hogging near the property. I went out there and we walked the area I wanted cleared.

He gave me a homework assignment. I am to clear out all of the brush over 3" in diameter. Between this, that and the other thing at the property, I spent three hours out there.

A hair rig using corn for bait

Today also started with rain. I made a light day of it. I fiddled around with assembling "hair rigs" with super-glue. The idea of a hair rig is to not bury the hook in the bait. That leaves the entire opening of the hook exposed to catch the lip of the sucker or carp or whatever fish inhales the corn. Carp fisherman use surprisingly small (to me) hooks when using hair rigs. Size six hooks are not uncommon.

#6 hooks are about perfect for crappie. The distance from the point of the hook to the shank is about 3/8" or 9mm.

Hair rigs are almost a necessity when catching sophisticated carp in Europe where they are a prized game-fish and each specimen is caught and released many times. Those fish get pretty smart.

The basic game plan is to wrap a ball of corn and biscuit mix around a rock and then freeze it. Later, chuck it into the water where you expect carp. The biscuit and corn and rock sink to the bottom and the ball of dough thaws thereby releasing "chum" into the water.

Toss your baited hook into the water near the chum and wait. Better yet, have two or three rods going with the chum/hooks far enough apart that they are unlikely to tangle if you hook a fish. Smart yet, put a worm on one line, corn on another and a doughball or cut bait on the third.

Cutting scion

I cut pear, plum, walnut, chestnut and hazel scion today. It is light-duty work.

Seeing what is really there

Quicksilver gave me an education the other day. We were going to be out-and-about and I wanted to be sure that she could find me if we became separated.

I decided to wear a bright, orange hat to make myself easier to find

So I stood in front of Quicksilver and asked her "What color is my hat?" to ensure that she had it firmly planted in her memory.

She immediately responded "Green".

"Stop joking around" I told her. "What color is my hat?"

"Green" came the answer again.

That was disconcerting. She KNOWS her colors.

It took a couple of minutes to sort out the issue.

This is what she saw from her perspective. Yes, it is green.

A similar thing happened on the way to our "event".

I was stopped at a light and she said "Go".

I told her "I can't. The light is red."

To which she said "No, the light is yellow."

And, by golly, she was right. More than 90% of the area of the light is yellow. It is more "yellow" than "red".

I have been trained by countless repetitions to completely ignore the color the fixture is painted. 

Like an Easter Egg hunt every day

 

Source

The following is a transcript (auto translated) from one of the Ukrainian channels I am watching.

I made a video about watermelons and there were definitely, well, a fair amount of negative comments about me exploiting children and keeping them enslaved to work for me.

This is a completely stupid statement because in reality, as an adult it is much easier for me to work alone and get this job done than to coordinate the actions of a large group of children. And that is, what is their labor productivity?

I take them, firstly, it’s a joy to help work, to be together. That is, when a child is alone, he will not do anything (and be miserable), but when they are in a group, and they compete with each other, they study, they work, they try, for them, firstly, it is entertainment, and secondly for them, it is learning.

That is, everyone (in the family) takes them so that they learn to work, so that they develop harmoniously. Therefore I will mercilessly block people who write about the exploitation of children, because these are the most ridiculous fabrications, speculations, and are simply offensive.

I try to instill in children a love of work, to teach them so that they develop harmoniously, but people seem to insult me for this. That is to say, it is very stupid.

In one of his other videos, he mentioned that the steer they were slaughtering produced 200kg of meat. That looks optimistic to me since the animal in the pen looks like it weighs 800 pounds rather than 1250 pounds. It may be that he includes liver, heart, tripe, head-cheese and the bone-in in that weight. That 440 pounds was to be shared with 15 family members and it was expected to lasted 6 months. That works out to 2.5 ounces of meat per person per day.

They knew

Slowly, ever so slowly, it is starting to leak out that scientists and researchers knew back in 2020 before the vaccines were released that aspirin was the Covid super-drug. Yes, plain, old, garden-variety, low-dose aspirin.

If fact, they knew back in 2007 that aspirin was THE GO TO drug for SARS. SARS is also a corona virus and is a kissing-cousin to Covid-19. 

The power of "Big Data"

There is a type of human who is gifted at sifting through data and finding "A-Ha!" events. Sometimes they are hired by pharmaceutical companies hoping to find that their proprietary, very profitable drug has a legitimate off-label use. They have access to millions of "records" with billions of discrete history data points.

Armies of those data-sifters were doing exactly that during the early stages of Covid-19.

They quickly noticed that patients who were already on low-dose aspirin therapy were rarely (i.e. at statistically very significant levels) ending up in ICU for Covid complications.

Aspirin

It has been comment that aspirin would probably not be allowed as a drug if it was discovered today. It has too many side-effects. It is not a simple black-box drug where pushing button A fixes only symptom B.

For one thing, aspirin is an anti-inflammatory drug and one of the ways Covid killed is that it triggered cytokine storms that were a self-amplifying inflammation cycle.

For another thing, aspirin is also an anti-clotting drug. Many of the Covid deaths were due to lung embolisms (clots that end up in the lungs).

$37 will buy you five POUNDS of USP grade aspirin at Valley Vet. That is enough aspirin for 28,000 low-dose tablets.

More recently, researches discovered that Acetylsalicylic acid disrupts SARS-CoV-2 spike protein glycosylation and selectively impairs binding to ACE2

The "problem" is that aspirin is a commodity with very, very low profit margins. 

The other "problem" was that emergency certification of vaccines are not allowed if there are other approved therapies. Powerful people had patents for modified-RNA based vaccines. It was in their economic best-interest to squash alternative therapies. It is also likely that they enjoyed basking in the glory of being called "Savior".

This is one of the reasons why I have a very low level of trust in the Deep State. 

Scouting out fishing spots

 

Unusual bark on this tree

OH!!! These are Kentucky Coffee Trees (Gymnocladus dioicus). Folk wisdom is that Native Americans used the large seeds for a betting game and inadvertently spread this species when they lost the seeds.

Hmmm! I might need to cut a few branches so my cast doesn't get caught.

Viewed from left-to-right, looking downstream

Looking straight out

Looking upstream

The current is closer to the other side. I think these are "shallows" in front of me and probably get very weedy in the summer. Still, a fine place to fish in the spring.