Friday, August 14, 2026
Lifting notes 8/14/2026
Today was a lifting day.
I got to the gym and started my maintenance routine.
Just for yucks, I set up my phone to record video just before my third set at 205 pounds. It was mostly blocked by the plates on the end of the bar but that kind of thing happens on the first attempt.
After the set, I looked down and saw blood seeping down my shin into my sock.
I had made the tiniest change to how I was lifting. I moved where I was gripping the bar about 1-1/2" (40mm) farther from the centerline with both my right and left hand. I had widened my stance to match.
That resulted in the knurled part of the bar gliding up the front of my lower-legs rather than the smooth part of the bar. I already had some scuff-marks on my left leg and the knurling was enough to strip off the scab.
I ended my lifting session a little bit short. Instead of four sets at 205, I stopped after three sets. I sopped up the leakage dribbling down the front of my shin and soaking into my sock and double-washed the bar with the quaternary ammonium impregnated wet-wipes the gym provides. Not that I have any communicable diseases, but the other gym goers cannot know that.
I really like how the slightly wider stance feels. I will be wearing compression socks in the future to protect my shins.
Nuns and dementia and exceeding expectations
In 1986, a large, longitudinal study was started where approximately 700 Roman Catholic nuns were tracked as they aged. Convents are considered prime research subjects because many of the confounding variables that complicate these kinds of studies (like drinking, smoking, irregular sleep, diet, poor preventative care) are very muted.
The convent archives were "mined" for prior histories, including samples of the nun's journals and early writing (to provide baseline cognitive ability assessments).
The nuns consented to having autopsies done after they died.
One of the nuns was 101 years-old when she died. She remained "as sharp as a tack" right up until the day she died. Her autopsy revealed that her brain was a total wreck of amyloid plaques and tangles. It was a junk-yard of neural tissue. By all conventional understandings of dementia, she should have been a drooling vegetable.
And she was not the only one. Many of the nuns grossly exceeded expectations physicians would have predicted if they only looked at biopsies of their brain tissue.
One of the questions Mrs ERJ's friend asked was "What kinds of prescription drugs were they taking?".
Darned good question! I wish I had an answer. My impression is that most of those nuns were able to avoid many of the life-style induced, chronic conditions that result in rest-of-your-lifetime statin, metformin, diuretics, SSRI type prescriptions.
Ever wanted to force-feed somebody a big dose of worming medicine?
---Disclosure: Some details have been fuzzified to protect the guilty---
Have you ever listened to somebody for ten minutes and thought, "If this guy was my dog, I would give him a whacking-big dose of worming medicine"?
There I was....
There I was in a phone call with the "On-boarding Specialist" for a multi-level marketing organization. I had emailed him and waited two days with no acknowledgement or response from him. I emailed his boss suggesting that he share his expectations regarding getting back to underlings and I got a text from the on-boarding specialist three minutes later. "Is it OK if I call you tomorrow?"
I emailed him a list of issues I wanted covered in the phone call. Examples:
- What is the suggested attire?
- What are the key competitive points between what I am selling and the major competitors?
Pretty basic information, I thought.
He started right off rambling. He acknowledge that he had received and reviewed my list of questions but didn't start answering them in the first five minutes of the conversation so I started asking him directly.
"What is the suggested attire?" I asked.
His response, "Well, we just want you to seem like the neighbor-next-door so you can wear whatever you want".
"What are the key competitive advantages that I should be hammering?" I asked.
His response, "It is my opinion that canned responses don't work and you should just wing-it".
In the nine-minutes and nineteen seconds I was on the phone with him (gotta love smartphones) the only thing he offered to do for me was to email a link to a "killer app" and he told me that I was expected to attend sales "pep-rallies" on Saturdays where "inspirational speakers" would energize us.
Every issue I raised where a proper response required that he actually DO SOMETHING/ANYTHING was met with the equivalent of an old, tired, worm-riddled Basset Hound mournfully lifting its eyes (but not its head) and huffing out a sigh. Does anybody want to guess the age of the OBS?
After cutting the phone-call short (hey, I was going to the beach and he had spent more than nine minutes saying nothing useful), I sent a quick email to the On-boarding Specialist's boss informing him that I didn't think I was a good fit with his organization's culture. That was the politest way I could think of to inform him that I have no intention wasting my time.
Thursday, August 13, 2026
The day ERJ went to a swinger's bar...
Mrs ERJ and I were invited by Southern Belle and Belladonna, our two daughters, to join them for a fun day at the beach.
We went to our usual spot, Duck Lake State Park which is just south of Whitehall, Michigan. It is a family-oriented spot and not a "meat market" like some of the other beaches. Mrs ERJ likes it because there is no phone reception (other than 911). If you get a signal it is likely to be from Milwaukee, Wisconsin and your phone will change time-zones. One great thing about Milwaukee, though, is that it is always beer-thirty.
After the fun in the sun and surf, the kids wanted to go to a restaurant they had visited before. I only heard dribs-and-drabs of conversation as I was stowing cargo but I thought I heard that this restaurant was popular with "swingers". You can imagine my consternation when Mrs ERJ seemed very excited about visiting this restaurant.
The restaurant's name is "The Deck" and it is in Muskegon, Michigan. Entrees are in the $15-to-$25 range. Food arrived five minutes after ordering. The band was decent.
Work-tickets
We have been getting some spin-off from the storms raging through Northern Indiana for the last half-week. Random sprinkles, mist and fog. It makes cutting grass tedious because I have to stop frequently and clear the deck from wet clippings.
I went for a run this morning. It had been on yesterday's work-ticket but didn't happen. I chugged along for an entire mile at the blistering pace of 13:52. I had not run in over a year. I had no expectations. I hoped to be able to run more than a half-mile and I managed a mile. I was pretty sure that I would not be able to crack 12-minute-miles. 13:52 is a start.
Tomorrow is a lifting day. We are expecting rain the day after tomorrow, so I need to prioritize my outside tasks. Some weeding, which almost always gets pushed to a back-burner, needs to get done. Pushing a lawnmower is on the list. Picking up a half-yard of fill sand to level out a depression and to get water to flow away from the house is another "must".
The four Khaki Campbell ducks I purchased in May are starting to show secondary sexual characteristics. I am pretty certain that one of them is a girl and another is a boy. The other two seem to change characteristics based on the angle of the light. The one senior duck that I thought was a Khaki Campbell is probably a Khaki Campbell x Peking duck. It has many white feathers compared to the KC I purchased in May.
Bonus video
The creator of this video argues that modern chickens had most of their "survival instincts" (street-smarts) bred out of them. They are docile, slow and much too trusting and don't fare well in free-range programs when there is high predator pressure.He contends that there are some "less improved", borderline feral, heritage breeds that still retain the street-smarts of the chickens that survived thousands of years of rough-and-tumble, laissez faire care. He specifically mentions Icelandic land-race, American Game and Old English Game.
In climates that are warmer than his, you can probably add Egyptian Fayoumi, Sumatra, various "fighting" breeds and other "flighty", small-bodied chickens. You might get 100 eggs a year out of each hens. They are likely to go broody and hatch out chicks in the oddest places. They also tend to be very protective mothers.
Sisyphus, Prometheus, Snowden and others
There is a class of hero who defies convention and goes off-script. He operates outside of sanctioned channels and defies the power-brokers. If you comb through history you will see this character, an uncomfortable combination of Jung's Hero and Rebel archtypes, popping up at random intervals.
Adam defied God and ate from the tree of knowledge, bringing death and pain into the world. He suffered the pain of having one of his sons murdered by another one of his sons.
Prometheus stole fire from Apollo and gave it to humans. He was chained to boulders on top of a mountain and his liver was pecked at by vultures only to have it grow back over-night. In ancient Greece, qualities like bravery and fortitude were believed to reside in the liver, much like way we say "have heart".
Sisyphus bartered with the gods for a spring that never ran dry for Corinth. He was sentenced to roll a boulder up a steep mountain only to have it slip from his grasp mere feet from the top and roll all the way back to the bottom.
Jesus defied the scribes and pharisees and the powers appointed by Rome. He promised mankind eternal life, something that was reserved for gods. He was crucified.
"vehement suspicion of heresy".
Snowden revealed that nothing is private on the internet. Big-Brother trawls all traffic. Snowden fled to Moscow, Russia.
Batman?
There are others. Some would include various politicians who defied the puppet-masters who were pulling strings in smoke-filled, back rooms. They campaigned and won in spite of the puppet-masters' dictates. You know who ISN'T one of these archtypes? Bernie Sanders. He rolled over even though he was set to trounce Hillary Clinton for the Democratic POTUS nomination in 2016.
These heroes (or antiheroes, depending on your perspective) are sprinkled through history and the stories about them shape how we perceive and process events. They created the mental structures we use to bring order to our lives.
Have you been to the beach lately?
A palate cleanser
It is very nice to see a picture of a woman who hasn't turned her skin into a comic-strip or her hands into horror-movie props.
I am sure that she has a very pleasant personality.
Wednesday, August 12, 2026
Advanced Directives
Mrs ERJ and I are thrashing through our "Advanced Directives". I will be Mrs ERJ's decision-maker and she will be mine. We have a second person, an alternate, lined up in case the primary is not available. That can happen, for instance, if we were both in the same auto accident.
One of the difficulties is providing the alternate with some simple, clear-cut questions to ask the surgeon or attending doctor and communicate what the GO-NOGO criteria will be.
So, the picture in my head is that if I can sit in a wheelchair and hold a fishing rod or a shotgun 60 days after the surgery or intervention then I want the intervention. If there is a 50% chance that I will have that level of capability, I want the intervention. If there is a 25% chance that I will be able to reach that capability in 60 days, I want the intervention. If there is only a 20% chance that I will reach that level of capability in 60 days...I think I don't want the intervention.
Critical to this process is that the medical caregiver who is providing the information not be aware of what the cut-off values are.
I need to have some tasks on "the other side" that give me a feeling of being productive, whether it be catching bullheads, carp or bluegills, or whether it be slaying bunnies, woodchucks and red squirrels intent on ravaging the garden and orchards.
Studies on how the human brain calibrations for various probabilities are pretty consistent. Most people are fairly well calibrated for 50:50 probabilities. The calibration gets shaky at 25:75 events and goes totally into the weeds at 20% probability.
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| May 31, 2022. Mrs ERJ was out-of-town and the tomato plants weren't going to plant themselves. That is precisely 31 days after I got whacked as I was crossing a street by a Malibu going 35 mph. |
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| I got a big assist from Belladonna. She moved the trays of pepper plants to the garden for me. And she didn't rat-me-out to Mrs ERJ. |
A physically-fit person in a wheel chair can probably run a zero-turn mower if there are not too many obstacles. If he is sufficiently motivated, he can probably do some straw-bale gardening and grow tomato seedlings, brew small batches of beer and, with a little bit of help, run a still. He might even be able to do a little bit of blogging on the side.
He can shake a bucket with corn in the bottom of it but he cannot chase cows and probably cannot close the gate.
Any thoughts?
University of Michigan goes all "Alice in Wonderland"
Alice: If I had a world of my own, everything would be nonsense. Nothing would be what it is because everything would be what it isn't. And contrary-wise; what it is it wouldn't be, and what it wouldn't be, it would. You see?
For a very brief period, sanity prevailed in the education industry. The leading thinkers claimed that test-scores were much better at measuring the teachers' performance than a measure of an individual student's ability.
The logic was that a single test score was a snap-shot of a single student at an instant of time. Did he need to visit the restroom (anxiety)? Was there a big fight with his dad the night before. Did the girl he was interested in disrespect him just before the test? Maybe he had been up all night writing plug-ins for Call-of-Duty or software that compressed video in real-time. A single test score is a single number with very little context.
However, if a teacher is teaching three sections of freshman algebra, then there are seventy-five data points. It becomes crystal clear if a teacher skipped over some material that the students were responsible for because nearly all of the students will bomb the questions that measure that skill. If the scores of the classes are segregated with the earliest (in the day) class scoring poorly and the latest class scoring best, it indicates that the teacher failed to prepare for the class the night before and was "winging it". Or, if all of the students struggled with story-problems, it indicates that the teacher needs to do more story-problems on the chalk-board in front of the class, even if she absolutely hates story problems.
As you can imagine, this insight was extremely unpopular with teachers and they quickly buried it.
Which brings us to the University of Michigan
University of Michigan will not issue grades to some freshmen students.
This is an admission of stunning failures of multiple systems within the education industry.
It is a failure of the admissions process. If the students are not ready to start their freshmen year at U-of-M, then why were they admitted? They can enroll at a community college, beef up their skills and then transfer to U-of-M.
It is a failure of the high schools feeding U-of-M. They were giving inflated grades to students who then hit-the-wall when presented with college-level work. There are multiple examples of valedictorians with +4.0 GPAs requiring remedial math classes as freshmen.
It is a failure of the high school academic advisors who "encourage" students with puffery rather than calibrating their expectations with reality.
It is a failure of a higher education system that prints reams of 4-year diplomas with zero market value, thereby requiring students to seek Master's degrees. In turn, the need to get into a Master's program puts pressure on students to generate high GPAs during their worthless 4-year program.
It is a failure of the U-of-M College of Education which has an enrollment of over 50,000 students. They are churning out teachers and administrators who cannot produce a "product" that is acceptable to the down-line customer, be it industry or higher education. Universities are trapped in the jaws of conflicting interest. They require better incoming students even as they churn out teachers who cannot teach and administrators who cannot "improve" the inadequacies of those teachers or discipline the students with criminal behaviors.
Consequently, they must dilute the value of their primary product, diplomas. Like Rome adding lead to their silver coins, it is a one-way street. Home schooling is looking better by the day to the normal people.
The only question is whether the education industry dies a slow, tortuous death by starvation or whether they are catastrophically defeated like the Spanish Armada which sailed top-heavy ships into the storm.
P.S. Parents and grandparents, self-esteem should be EARNED. Proper self-esteem is based on reality and is an unshakable foundation. It is a source of confidence and is the basis for a robust outlook on life. The false-esteem shilled by the education industry is a fragile, over-inflated balloon and grossly INCREASES the student's fragility.
Don't be scared off if you kid calls you "a dream killer". Better they should grapple with reality while they can make adjustments then to get trapped by debt for a worthless degree that they cannot repay.
Doublemint girls
Yesterday was a lifting day. I didn't hit my usual time-slot and got to the gym at about 2:15 PM.
One of the people at the desk noticed my hospital socks and very gently and very professionally informed me that they were not allowed. He also added that he understood why I want to wear them. He also explained that they get a lot of high school kids who want to work-out in shower-slide. Shower slides have unstable soles and no side-stability; they are accidents waiting to happen when lifting. Ergo, only lace-up athletic shoes are allowed in the weight-room.
I think he was surprised when I didn't give him any push-back. "I used to be a supervisor. I understand that you represent the organization and that you have to enforce rules. Thank-you for telling me."
I went back to the locker room and put on my regular socks and my street shoes (which are athletic shoes) and went back and started lifting.
As I was recovering between my second-to-last set and my last-set, two young women started using the hamstring machine behind the dead-lift platform. That is where they lay on a table on their belly and hook a padded bar with their heels and lift it by flexing their knees.
I could go into great deal describing them physically, but it is enough to call them "The Doublemint Twins". You will get the picture.
I finished my five minute recovery and got on the dead-lift platform and squatted/bend down to grip the bar...and I felt their eyes on me. A quick glance around confirmed that the eyes of the girl on the machine had her eyes locked on me.
Six repetitions takes me sixty seconds. That feeling never departed.
It was a what-the-hell minute. Are they checking out my gluteus maximus? I wear baggy clothing when lifting but the fabric gets stretched tight down there when lifting.
The feeling was so novel and disquieting that I completed the last three reps with my eyes closed. It is entirely possible that I lost count of the number of reps and done more than six.
I immediately started breaking down the set-up after the last rep, pulling off the plates and she maintained her intense stare the entire time.
When I left the platform to get the sanitary wipe to wipe-down the bar, I noticed that the girl on the hamstring machine kept her eyes locked on where I had been....which was between her and the mirror on the wall.
Mystery solved.
Frankly, I am very relieved. I am wearing enough hats already and don't have time to do all of them well. I don't need to add teen "heart-throb" to the list.
Today's work-tickets
Pick up the yard.
Mow the grass.
Go for a run.
Weed in the garden for an hour.
Stretch target: clean out the bed of the truck
Tuesday, August 11, 2026
Spinach, Hibiscus blossoms, Tortoises and Goat Festivals
It was my attempt to not excessively penalize the Red Tabby seeds by having them start later. They were fully hydrated and spinach seeds will germinate when it is quite cold, so the seeds were producing enzymes even though they were refrigerated.
The seed bar had issues. Some of the shallow divots were fuzzy with wood fibers and that was enough to keep the seeds from falling out even when it was inverted 180 degrees. I can fix the fuzzy holes by drilling them a tad deeper and then sanding. I am not sure it is worth the effort.
Hardy Hibiscus
I got scammed by a seller on Etsy who was selling heirloom tomato varieties.
I got lucky by a seller on Ebay who was selling "Luna, assorted" hardy hibiscus seeds. Germination was only 50%. I did not expect them to flower the first year because they are perennials, but some of them have. The flowers are absolutely stunning!
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| My hand is the same distance from the camera as the flower. It REALLY is that big. |
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| This was the first to bloom. This is the 5th blossom. |
A Goat Festival
I was invited to a goat festival. My readers who are fluent in earthier language can make substitutions as desired.
A neighbor was sending her goats to auction. The trucker showed up. The goats escaped. We were able to (finally) get most of them into the trailer.
The trucker was a professional. As the sweating woman was paying him and apologizing, he said "I've seen worse. Just last week I had to capture an escaped bull. He was in heavy brush and the plot was cut by deep gullies."
I need to start running again. Goat festivals can be extremely aerobic.
Bonus video
HERE. This link ports you into the "bottom line".
Your brain at 101 year-of-age can look like a junk-yard and it is not inevitable that you will have the symptoms of Alzheimer's.
Fine Art Tuesday
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| A hunter flirting with a girl who seems a bit uncertain about his intentions. You can see that the hunter's weapon is a muzzle-loader, still in use in the 1880s and beyond. |
Emil Rau was born in 1885 in Dresden, Germany and died in 1937 in Munich.
He is best know for his paintings of everyday life in rural Germany.
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| Mountains are HARD places from which to grow enough food to survive the year. Multiple types of livestock were the norm. |
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| A rare image of Old NFO from the 1880s. |
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| Scythman enjoying a break with a pretty girl. He is smoking a pipe. The knee of his pants are patched and the toe of his right boot has been repaired. |
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| Unlike the Hudson River School that shrank the human elements in the frame, Rau amplified them. The house and man on the right side of the frame are much larger than the perspective and distance warrant. |
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| Probably hunters. A long-arm is leaning against the bench on the left side of the frame. Chamois horns on left side of frame by window. |
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| Open fire beneath a trivet on far right side of frame. Black ceiling might be soot, it ends at the top of the window in the background. |
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| Clothing (socks?) drying beneath the eves of the roof |
Monday, August 10, 2026
William Lawrence: Restoring the Rule of Law
Restore the rule of law. DC politicians are letting billionaires, bullies, and corrupt politicians get away with violating our constitutional rights and engaging in criminal behavior. Lawrence will fight to:
- Prosecute the Epstein class for human trafficking & tax evasion
- Hold ICE accountable for unconstitutional conduct
- Ban stock trading by members of Congress & the executive branch (Source)
Prosecute the Epstein class for human trafficking & tax evasion
This bullet seems like a no-brainer, and it is except for one word: the word "...class..."
The Marxist/Communist zealot recasts all conflict into a story of class-conflict. Lysenko is famous for saying that common grass seed will produce full crops of wheat if it was treated with all of the advantages that seeds of wheat were afforded.
The deepest danger of class-warfare is that it operates on the basis of guilt-by-similarity. If Jeffery Epstein was rich and born in the 1950s and has a surname typical of Jewish ancestry, then guilt-by-similarity means that all "wealthy" people and/or all people who were born in the 1950s (who typically have greater net assets than people born in the 1990s) and/or all people with surnames that are associated with Jewish ancestors will be prosecuted.
The characteristics used as the basis to determine "class" are flexible and quickly rearranged to create the desired outcome.
This is probably a good time to point out it is a matter of public record that that William Lawrence's father was a "visiting scholar" in Beijing, China from February, 2005 to July, 2005 when William was an impressionable fifteen year-old. I think the electorate has a right to ask if William Lawrence formed uncritically favorable opinions of Communist China at that time and remains highly influenced by the experience.
Hold ICE accountable for unconstitutional conduct
Lawrence went on record Feb 13, 2026 as saying "They (ICE agents) murdered people in the streets..." That statement presumes guilt and violates the "presumption of innocence" implied by the 5th and 14th Amendments.
He also favors disbanding ICE and closing down the facilities needed to efficiently deport illegal aliens.
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| From FBI Top Ten Most Wanted criminals, August 10. You can click on the pictures to embiggen them. |
The fact that Lawrence will protect illegal aliens (who broke laws to be here) before protecting citizens who are struggling with the burdens of the crimes committed by those aliens suggests that he has no intention of restoring the Rule-of-Law. Rather, he is using the talking point to promote the same WOKE agenda that normal people always seem to end up on the losing side of.
Ban stock trading by members of Congress & the executive branch
I agree with this position. I have no problems with it...It should also include trading by their family members and other obvious loop-holes.
William Lawrence for Congress: Say No to Endless War
From his platform statement August 10, 9:15 AM
Politicians in both parties have said there’s money for war, but not anything for Social Security, childcare, or education. That’s a lie. We need to get our priorities straight: stop bombing kids overseas, start delivering for American families. We need to:
End the war in Iran
Sadly, the leadership in Iran have a great deal to say about whether hostilities continue or not. Iran declared war against the US in 1978 and never withdrew it. Their belligerent actions escalated and included proxy attacks on civilian shipping in the Red Sea and declarations that they had nuclear devices.
Meaningful peace cannot be declared unilaterally.
Stop arms sales to Israel & other human rights violators
Seek diplomatic solutions to global challenges, not more war
The State Department will be stunned to learn that they were supposed to send diplomats to other countries and seeking win-win solutions. Maybe somebody should tell them. Or maybe the number of employees in the State Department should be reduced by 90%. I am good with either (or both) solutions.
Regarding diverting the funds used for defense to education, full disclosure on the part of Lawrence would involve telling the public that his parents receive salaries (and benefits) that tot-up to about $250k per year from a public university. And he wants to send more money to them.
William Lawrence for Congress: Environment
The environmental agenda that William Lawrence shares with the public is nothing like the radical, humans-last agenda that dominated most of his adult life.
His published agenda is still pretty radical.
Data centers
Let's explore how this would play out.
First, it would hand the data centers that are already in-operation a monopoly and destroy any chance of start-ups being bring new data centers on-line. The new data centers would have to eat the fixed costs for 12 months with no revenue. That would tank the economics. That works at cross-purposes with the "wealth inequity" portions of his platform.
Second, very large amounts of public pension funds are invested in AI build-out. A 12 month moratorium on new data centers would jeopardize the pensions of the foot-soldiers the Progressives need.
Third, data centers are key to predicting "thought crime" and are pivotal to the plans of the Thought Control Police.
Conclusion: It just isn't going to happen. It is grand-standing in front of a gullible audience.
Protecting Michigan waters
This intersects with several themes.
The prime reason given for shutting down the Enbridge 5 Pipeline is the risk it poses to the Great Lakes and inland rivers and streams. Enbridge 5 is a 30" pipeline that carries half-a-million barrels of oil and liquid propane a day from Western Canada to the US mid-West and eastern Canada. Shutting down Enbridge 5 will increase the cost of LP (for heating), gasoline and diesel in Michigan because it will have to be transported by trucks from states with pipelines fed by the Gulf states.
Another theme is the infringement on private property rights. Environmental purists want all toilets connected to sewers and waste-water treatment plants. They don't care how remote your home is from the waste-water treatment plant. The cost of hook-ups are astronomical and they won't be optional. If the cost of the hook-up exceeds the value of the property, then the owner was deprived of his property by the government without due-process.
Preserve game and wildlife areas
In Southern Florida, you cannot cut down a tree on your own, private property without getting a permit. That might make sense in a crowded urban area but is lunacy in rural areas.
The Department of Natural Resources already considers every non-domesticated animal on your private property as "public property". It is not much more reach to include the grass growing in an unmowed field (which you would then need a permit to mow), brushy fence line (need a permit to burn) or a small woodlot (need a permit to collect downed wood on your own property).
Those who like to quibble are likely to point out that Lawrence meant Michigan State Game Areas. My rebuttals is that is not what Lawrence wrote. Secondarily, "State Game Areas" is a proper noun (you can type it into a search engine with lower-case letters and see if the engine returns the term caps or lower-case) and state game areas is a common noun. That is, the text refers to all areas that harbor game and wildlife.
Based on prior behaviors, this can only be seen as an aggressive infringement on private property rights.
Hold polluters accountable
When has a progressive ever held anybody accountable?
Did the manager of the Flint water treatment plant go to prison?
Did the management responsible for the maintenance of the Potomac Interceptor Sewage line ever have charges filed against them?
Those are both environmental disasters with huge human costs that happened in political jurisdictions with huge Progressive majorities. No accountability. Just sound-bites and free air-time.
It is very difficult to take this point seriously
Life is good
I got 2/3 of the spinach planted yesterday before God reminded me that I am not supposed to work on the Sabbath. He sent bolts of lightning down.
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| Four, 16' long rows for each variety. Not planted as blocks but A-B-C-A... |
"Flamingo" and "Space" are planted. Red Tabby is in the on-deck circle.
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| Red for "Red Tabby", Blue for "Space" and Pink for "Flamingo" |
It is raining brick-bats as I type this (4:40 AM). Portions of Barry County, the county just west of Eaton, have been blessed with 5 inches of rain according to the Raindrop app.
I opened a new jar of instant coffee today. Yes, I am one of those heathens who drinks instant coffee. Walmart Great Value brand. A fellow needs to be almost dead if he doesn't feel a lift of delight when opening a new container of almost any kind of coffee.
Unless the roads get flooded out, I will be going out to breakfast with MTV, my buddy from high school. I expect to thoroughly enjoy myself.
I know I sound like I am bragging. Some days start out grand and have the potential to keep getting better.
Sunday, August 9, 2026
Who is William Lawrence?
William Lawrence is the Democratic candidate for Michigan's 7th US Representative seat.
William Lawrence (born 1990) is an American politician and activist who co-founded the Sunrise Movement. He is a member of the Working Families Party and a former member of the Democratic Socialists of America. He resigned from the Democratic Socialists in July of 2026 less than a month before the primary. Lawrence is also pro-immigration. (condensed from Wikipedia)
In many ways, William Lawrence's career trajectory is a clone of Seattle Mayor Katie Wilson's. Like Wilson, Lawrence never held a job where he had a boss or worked with customers or had formally scheduled hours to work.
Sunrise Movement
When Sunrise Movement was launched in 2017, the movement's goal was to be a more confrontational environmental movement and use civil disobedience and protest to achieve their goals.
Working Families Party
The Working Families Party supports raising the minimum wage, expanding public education, universal paid sick leave, Medicare for All, forgiving student debt and increasing the tax rate on people they consider wealthy. They also support the elimination of fossil fuels in favor of solar and wind energy.
WFP is one of the organizations that was spawned under the ACORN legal umbrella. ACORN dissolved in 2010 after accusations of an organizational culture that encouraged illegal activities by its daughter organizations.
William Lawrence for Congress
William Lawrence won the Democratic Primary for Michigan's 7th Congressional District. Looking at the first items in William Lawrence's "Platform":
1. Lower the cost of living. Everything is getting too expensive and Mid-Michigan families like us are feeling the crunch. We need to:
- Protect social security by taxing the wealthy
- Build affordable housing & end corporate landlord price-gouging
- Guarantee healthcare for all
- Stabilize prices & markets
Tax the wealthy
It is interesting that the first way he proposes to lower the cost-of-living is to raise taxes. Most people who were paying attention in Second Grade math class realize that if you add or increase taxes then prices go up.
Another point is that the tax-and-spend crowd have a very flexible definition of "wealthy". It is always $10,000 more dollars a year than the average guy in the crowd. As a matter of expediency and a rapacious appetite for revenue, the family consisting of an electrician and an aide at the local school (two incomes) will be labeled as "wealthy" in the final draft of any legislation and be taxed at a punishing rate. So will the retiree who is forced to liquidate part of his 401-k or IRA to make needed house repairs or pay medical bills.
Build affordable housing
Government does not "build" housing. Contractors do.
Government almost always stop construction. They slows it down through the permitting and inspection requirements. Mandatory features make houses increasingly expensive. Petty bureaucrats make contractors play endless games of Mother-may-I as their interpretations of the laws becomes more restrictive and expensive and more focused on CYA.
Guarantee healthcare for all
Frankly, we have guaranteed healthcare. If you walk into an Emergency Room you will get care. Even if you cannot pay. Even if you cannot speak a word of English.
So I am mystified by what Lawrence means unless he is offering addicts a endless supply of prescription opioids that are paid-for by the productively employed. Oh, and maybe he intends to have the taxpayer provide free sex-change surgeries, hormones and counseling to the gender-confused.
Stabilize prices and markets
The road to hell is paved with good intentions. Setting prices increases demand while simultaneously destroying supply. Rent control is a prime example.
Since the relationship between price control and supply-destruction has been documented hundreds of times, then Lawrence is either very stupid or he is not interested in helping people but is actually very interested in control.
Via price controls, entire industries can be smashed and favored competitors made to flourish. Fully Electric Vehicles, anybody? Hey, let's save the planet by destroying farmers who raise beef.
You cannot say this is a strawman argument because these are exactly the things that The New Green Deal pushed.
Family Reunion After-Action-Report
I survived the family reunion
I hung-out with the mature guys on the shady side of the house for the first part of the reunion.
Ordered by age, it was Howard, Mike, Mike, Joe and Phil. They gave me permission to use their actual names in "that internet thing that I do".
Conversation wandered and was interspersed by thoughtful silences. That was a sharp contrast with the conversation on the other side of the house. From what we could hear of it, those conversations sounded like a bee-hive that had been bumped by a lawnmower, not that our hearing is all that good.
We talked about collectibles like baseball cards. How the price had been low and then spiked. And then it tanked. And now it is climbing back to the sky. We talked about the age of the collectors. The interest in cards seems to have jumped over the kids who were born in the 80s and 90s.
Phil, who was sitting next to me, went with the flow. I know from prior conversations that he has a keen interest in business cycles and it is his belief that speculative excesses are symptoms of old, played-out economic expansions. All of that "money" from the timid investors (or smart ones) has to go somewhere and it floods into tiny, illiquid markets as players cash out of stocks, bonds and real-estate.
It is similar to all of the passengers on a cruise ship trying to pile into too-few life-boats. The bulk of the investors see the outrageous run-up in prices and pile into collectables running from zero-income and chasing the momentum.
Another thread of conversation involved charity work. Howard was mowing the lawn of the 90 year-old Italian widow next door. Then the house on the other side of his was inherited by a family of alcoholics. Howard started mowing their grass too (because they let it grow waist-high). Finally, seeing the light, he gave them one of his older but still serviceable mowers so they could cut their own. The immediately sold it and bought a couple bottles of vodka with the proceeds. Howard no longer mows their grass.
One of the Mikes volunteered at an organized charity. They received a call from a needy family and visited a house. Several of the children were sleeping on the floor. The charity bought the family two mattresses and had them delivered. The next week, another family in the same block called the charity. They had kids sleeping on the floor. Then two more houses called the next week. Then it was three a week calling the charity. The game stopped when an unmarried, cohabitating couple called and ordered a new mattress. The faith-based charity decided that they were not going to subsidize sex outside of matrimony by purchasing mattresses for unwed couples. In fact, they decided that they were not going to buy any more mattresses, ever.
Another riff involved renting nice places on a lake to vacation. The speaker marveled at the size and cost of the houses. According to Zillow, they started at $1.8M. He also marveled that most of them were vacant even during the prime summer vacation time slot. He said the fishing on the lake was spectacular. He said that even though every house had a dock and every dock had multiple boats moored, nobody was on the lake. Nobody else was fishing.
I spent the last part of the reunion sitting with the "Karens".
I was not the center of attention. I was not a ball of fire. I was still sore from lifting the day before.
I ate too much. I had two glasses of wine over the six hours we were there. I did not water ski or swim or go out on a boat. I didn't talk with the out-of-state relatives but I will get reports from Mrs ERJ.
This may be a weird thing to have noticed but I saw a huge range of maternal instinct in the women. Several were drawn to the infants-through-seven year-olds like moths to a flame. Others were actively repulsed by them...they could not control their facial expressions.
Four of the married ladies were pregnant and one had given birth two weeks ago: K, Kr, L, B & H so there will be no shortage of screaming kids for the next ten years or so.
Saturday, August 8, 2026
The cost of eating-out, Peaches and Reunions
Mrs ERJ and I splurged this past week. One day we joined another person and ate at a fast-food establishment. One of us ordered fish. I ordered a fried pork patty. The other person ordered a burger. The bill came to $39.
Another day this past week, we took a small carry-out pizza topped with green peppers and onions and and order of bread-sticks. We dined-in at another person's house. That bill came to $24.
I remember the tab from my first date with Mrs ERJ. Her half of the tab came to $1.47.
No matter how much money you might have saved up, inflation can make that not-enough.
Peaches
One of the amazing success stories in the Upper Orchard are the five, unassuming peach seedlings that a friend in Arizona sent me. He had collected the fruit from a tree and grown them out for a year. I planted them in Michigan, not expecting much in terms of winter-hardiness since their home city is classified as USDA Zone 8b.
They handled our one night of -25F last winter and took-off like gang-busters this spring.
My friend told me that the tree that he collected the pits from had excellent fruit. Peaches, in general, tend to produce fruit that is kind-of close to their parents in terms of quality due to the degree of in-breeding and self-pollination.
I decided to hedge my bets and I budded three of them to Contender peach, just in case. I only put a bud on one vertical leader. I want to see what kind of fruit the seedlings produce and I also want to have a back-up plan. Putting one bud on one major shoot provides me with that back-up plan.
Budding trees that are actively growing make the grafter look like a genius. Trying to bud on trees that are shutting down due to low soil moisture make the grafter look like a smuck. An inch of rain is predicted for Monday. I might get lucky.
Family reunions
Our family reunion is this weekend. Some people will show up. Others will not.
My "generation" range in age from 55 to mid-70s. One family has three deceased members, two have a single deceased sibling. The fourth family still has all members who are alive.
Traveling has become increasingly difficult for some of us. Some are still working crazy hours, crazy shifts. Some people are stressed by other people in the family and will opt to stay home. The cast of characters changes year-to-year.
Fortunately, each branch of the family has one member who LIKES to travel. They show up at the reunion, collect news on the various family shoots and take it back-home to share.
That probably means I need to dust-off my 15 second, elevator sale-pitch.
Something like:
"Not running. Still walking. Still lifting weights. No animals except ducks. Dog died. No health issues. My wife still likes me. Great to be a grandparent. Garden needs weeding. Orchards are shaping-up nicely. Yes, I am going deer hunting."
On the positive side, a large percentage of the "kids" in my children's generation are in-the-family-way right now. Their children are heavily tilted toward girls...girls who take great joy in shrieking.
Friday, August 7, 2026
What a difference a few days make!
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| I felt like an exhibitionist wearing these socks...like the morbidly obese guy in South-Florida wearing a skimpy Speedo swim-suit. |
I went to the gym this morning to lift. I wore hospital socks as suggested by some readers.
I felt strong. The weight jumped off of the platform. I went through my maintenance routine with no issues:
6 x 135 pounds (45 pound bar plus a 45 pound plate on each side).
6 x 185 pounds (same as above + a 25 pound plate on each side).
Four sets of 6 x 205 (same as above + a 10 pound plate on each side), with straps.
The reason I consider 205 to be my maintenance goal because that is what I weigh. It seems like a natural place to stop even though I SHOULD only weigh about 175 pounds but am carrying a little extra fat on me.
I had 5 minute recovery between sets. I lifted slow. Each set was about sixty seconds from the weight first lifting off the floor until I set it back down at the end of the set.
After the last set I still had some gas-in-the-tank. I decided "Why not?"
I added a 10 pound plate to each side of the bar to bring it to 225 pounds and did a set of six after my mandatory five minute recovery.
Three days ago, it was all I could do to lift 220 pounds a single time.
I have no clue what changed. Maybe I had a virus that didn't manifest obvious symptoms. Maybe I needed a rest. Regardless of the reason, I am pretty happy with today's outcome.
Random photo
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| Kerr applecrab with a heavy fruit load |
Storing apples
This short essay touches on the steps that are within the reach of a competent home-orchard grower that will improve storage life.
Pick at the optimal stage of ripeness for STORAGE
They will be under-ripe for eating out-of-hand. Spraying cut apples with diluted tincture of iodine will give you a qualitative look at the ripeness of your apples. You need to test apples from several places in the tree's canopy to get a complete picture of what your crop is doing. Do NOT include apples with visible insect damage in your assessment.
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| Empire apple. Best time to pick for storage highlighted with red line. Source |
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| Idared |
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| Jonathan |
The iodine stains the starch. When the flesh between the core and the skin of half of your samples start to show lightening, then the ripening process is irreversibly started and it is time to pick that variety of apples, speedy-quick.
One alternative to the iodine test is to cut at least four apples open and inspect the seeds. If most of the seeds are brown and a few are at least half-brown, it is time to get cracking and get the apples off of the trees.
Cool the apples as quickly as possible
The old rule-of-thumb was that biological processes double with every 10 degrees F. Fruit left in the sun can hit 80F or 90F.
At one time it was a practice to soak freshly picked apples in a 1% calcium chloride/water solution to address water-core and bitter-pit issues and to cool them down. Soaking them for twenty minutes in two changes of very cold, well water is not a bad option. You can even add ice to the water if you can get it cheaply.
Sort-out damaged apples or process/can them
Damaged flesh generates ethylene. Ethylene catalyzes the ripening process which, in term, creates more ethylene. The ripening process accelerates from there. DO NOT STORE DAMAGED APPLES with the apples you intend to hold long-term.
Key point: The ripening process wants to accelerate. It is like a drunk dancing at the top of an icy sledding hill. Once it starts, there is no stopping it. The longer you can keep it near the start of the process, the longer they will keep.
Dry the apples after soaking (if you opt to do that)
You don't have to go crazy over this but get as much of the water off of the exterior as you can.
Put the apples in relatively small containers
Five gallon nursery pots are a decent option. So are the wooden or cardboard trays that grapes are shipped in.
The goal is to promote ventilation so ethylene cannot concentrate locally and to promote drying of residual moisture. It also firewalls-off rot if it starts in one container.
Keep them cool
Remember: Every +10F halves the storage life.
Keep them ventilated
This sort of works at cross-purposes with keeping them cool.
Keep the storage area humid
Self explanatory
Final notes
Many of the best storage apples are almost inedible when picked at the proper stage for optimum storage life. GoldRush is a good example. It is acid, tannic and rock-hard.
Six weeks of storage mellows out the acidity, changes the starch to sugar and converts tannins into aromatic molecules.
The most common "mistake" in storing apples is to wait too long to pick them. That is, waiting until the fruit is prime for eating-out-of-hand is to wait much too long for picking storage apples.
So you are thinking..."What is the difference whether it is waiting on the tree or in my cellar?"
Fair question. On a sunny afternoon in late-September, that fruit can get up to 90F. If it is sitting in your cellar after you chilled everything down, it might be 60F or 65F. HUGE difference.
Curing before storing, melons and general-chaos
Nobody told you curing was a step. They just sold you a refrigerator.
For centuries, harvest was only half the job. Before any root or bulb went into storage, it spent days or weeks in controlled heat and moving air. That process is called curing, and it is why cellar food lasted until spring.
POTATOES: 50-60F for two weeks seals skin cuts and stops rot before it starts.
SWEET POTATOES: 80-85F for ten days converts starches and hardens the skin for months of storage.
ONIONS: warm dry airflow for two to four weeks dries the neck completely and locks out mold.
GARLIC: three to eight weeks at 70-80F tightens the wrapper and pushes viability past six months.
WINTER SQUASH: ten days at 80-85F hardens the rind so it holds through midwinter without softening.
This knowledge did not vanish because it stopped working. It vanished because the cold chain made it unnecessary for people selling food at scale. Wholesalers cure before shipping. They just never taught you to do it at home.
What replaced it was the assumption that the refrigerator handles everything. It does not. A sweet potato cured correctly at harvest and stored at 55F will outlast an uncured one in the fridge by three months. The fridge is not a substitute for a process that changes the vegetable at a cellular level.
Cure your harvest this year. One shelf in a warm room, a box fan on low, and ten days of patience will do what no appliance can replicate. Source
Information supplied by the Tireless Lucas Machias.
Watermelons
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Women's greater susceptibility to social pressure
As a population, women appear to be more sensitive to certain types of social pressure than men do.
Whether it is due to DNA or social conditioning is not important. It simply IS.
Most observers of human nature would bet that it was a combination of both nature and nurture.
From an evolutionary biology standpoint, women had much more to lose then men when being pushed to the edges of the herd. They are slower than men. And, when they are carrying children or caring for them, they are much, much slower than men who were rarely encumbered with family duties before the Industrial Revolution.
Reformers who obstinately attempt to over-write DNA and deep social conditioning with patterns that conform to their ideology are idiots.
Taleb in his book Antifragile discusses how a "dumb-bell" investment strategy can exploit chaos. The benefits of asset rebalancing are totally dependent on different asset classes having surges that are off-set in time and/or having different volatility characteristics.
Men are responsible for most technical innovation because the greatest risk-seekers are men. Orville and Wilbur would have never invented heavier-than-air flight if they craved social approval through conformity. Many Most Nearly all innovations were created by men who didn't give a rat's ass about the approval of the mean-girl's club.
Women foraged for most of the day-to-day food. Men brought home "windfalls" of protein and fat. The two modes of food production were complimentary.
Ukraine-26
My source of information about what is happening in the Black Sea region informed me that the escalation of targeting continues on both sides. Ukraine is almost completely sealed off in terms of bulk-shipping. Their major ports on the Black Sea are shredded. Since July 23, 2026 there is only one rail-line that still connects Ukraine to the west and it remains vulnerable to Russian attack. Vessels carrying Russian wheat and other agricultural commodities are being attacked by Ukrainian drones on the high seas.
The fact that foreign markets for wheat and barley is being denied to Russian and Ukraine means that the local prices for those grains will quickly be driven down below the cost of production, according to my expert.
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| Historic wheat prices. Circled region marks start of Uke-Rus war |
Both Ukraine and Russia are trying to strangle each other's access to currency and arms. Both countries get hard-currency by shipping food via the Suez Canal (which has its own issues) to Africa which is paid for by Western aid money. They also get hard-currency from India and Pakistan, both big consumers of wheat products. The bottom line is that a real shit-storm is brewing in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia. It is unlikely that the African chaos will interest western journalists but the South Asia tension will get lots of press because it could go nuclear.
There is also the likelihood of Indian and Pakistani ex-pats going at it in places like London and Toronto and Vancouver and San Jose as calories back-home get scarce, so watch your six.
I get the sense that the same targeting escalation is happening in the Iran war.
Who knew that Universe-25 was code for Ukraine 2026? They only missed by a year.
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