Election Integrity

It is my opinion that at this time, there is no issue more important than "election integrity". Everything else in the political sphere is a distraction.

Election integrity is critical because the 10% who believe that the end always justifies the means are driving the nation off a cliff. Zealots are dangerous and they are able to illegitimately grab the reins of power through corrupt elections.

We can recover from an economic collapse. We always have. We can recover from bad policies and bad adjudication. We cannot recover from "Kings" or mandarins and the systemic corruption that results.

Look at Israel in the Old Testament. They survived 120 years from the coronation of Saul (the first King) to the end of Solomon's rein. Then the kingdom shattered into chaos. Absolute power corrupts at an absolute level.

The two sides (D. and R.) are going to quibble about which side "wants to be king". But how do

• One citizen, one (and only one) vote
• Vote in person
• No vote without picture ID from an authoritative source 
• Real-time reconciliation of voter to the rolls 

...result in "Kings"?

The argument that "it will suppress the vote" tells me that there are legions of would-be voters who simply don't care enough to go to the polling place and to vote in person...and yet, miraculously, their votes get cast. If they don't care, then "their vote" should not count.

The cynics will undoubtedly start commenting that "voting doesn't matter". If that is true, then the cynics would also have to support the contention that there would have been no difference between a Donald Trump administration and a Kamala Harris administration. I don't know anybody who would support that position. 

Palate cleanser

The background music was very easy to listen to.

Large, young family in Russia Ukraine harvesting root vegetables. "Work must be organized!"

I used a link instead of an icon to pop you into the video because I want you to start at a certain place. The girl (maybe seven years-old) is SKIPPING as she works. You can go back to the beginning if you want or you can continue to watch from where I ported you in.

Turn on "Subtitles" (which will be in Russian). Then turn on auto-translate and select English.

Why, yes my child. We found you beneath a radish leaf.

Muscles hurt, some people carping about everything

I did almost nothing yesterday. My muscles ached. Mrs ERJ was OK with my playing hooky.

Mostly my traps and delts

I did order some grapevines for this spring. I picture an arbor for Southern Belle. The exact location is not nailed down but good nurseries run out of choice selections quickly.

Fishing (Jonesing for springtime) 

Source

I was watching a bunch of fishing videos on Youtube. It never really registered for me, but carp must go into a feeding frenzy before the spring spawn. 

The guy in the video is fishing April 21, 2025 and the bank vegetation looks like he is at a latitude similar to southern Michigan or perhaps a little farther north.

There can be a lot of gardening "dead time" after a heavy rain. The soil is too wet to work without destroying its structure (especially if it has a high clay content).

Carp are bottom-feeders and eat a lot of dead material that is carried by the current. They also live a long time. That means that they are at risk of carrying higher loading of mercury and PBC-alphabet soup chemicals than sunfish.

I have one river drainage system in my operating area that is still listed as "clean". The hardest part of fishing it is to find a safe place to park the truck while fishing. The roads are narrow and the river is surrounded by private property.

Maybe I will be able to talk my Polish neighbor into going with me and we can work as a team.

If I get time, I might replace the line on my spinning reels today. There! Saying it makes it more likely to happen. 

Bull cookies?

AI generated content

The average U.S. citizen manages about 168 personal passwords, while for work-related accounts, the average is around 87, bringing the total to approximately 255 passwords. This number has increased significantly due to the rise in digital services and online accounts.

Our dentist is transitioning from humans to software. We are being pressured to funnel all of our transactions and communications with his office through "the portal".

Our dentist is in Ingham county, in the city of Lansing.

I like my dentist a lot. I understand about cost pressure. I also know that businesses that put the customer/client/patient third-in-line are walking the plank toward insolvency.

At some point my dentist will retire. Maybe it makes sense to make the jump BEFORE driving to Lansing becomes totally intolerable. 

Who said 3 year-olds don't have a sense of humor

Actually, before we had kids, Mrs ERJ said that.

"Row, row, row your boat..."

Quicksilver surprised me by asking to play "Row, row, row your boat..." where I sing the song and she sits on my knees facing me. She holds my thumbs and I make rowing motions.

I was confused as she melted into uncontrollable, hysterical laughter near the end of every stanza. She shrieked with delight and gabbled away in the blurred enunciation of a three year-old (+ 8 months).

Finally it dawned on me.

"Row, row row your boat,
gently down the stream.
Merrily, merrily, merrily
life is butt a dream." 

Yes, gentle readers. She was melting into uncontrollable laughter because she had tricked "Grandpa" into saying the forbidden word "Butt" (British interpretation "Arse" or "Buttocks") 

Bonus image

I got even when she was looking for her stuffed bunny. 

Bonus lyrics

Row, row, row your boat
Gently down the stream.
If you see a crocodile,
Don't forget to scream

Row, row, row your boat
gently down the stream.
Ha, ha, fooled you
I'm a submarine. 

Row, row, row your boat
Gently down the stream.
Grab an oar, jokes on you,
I'm out of gasoline 

I am always looking to expand my repertoire. Any other G-rated lyrics will be appreciated.

Not unexpected

Minneapolis

The housing market has become an unexpected casualty of Minneapolis’s political turmoil. 

Home sales in the city plunged nearly 20 percent in January - the sharpest drop of any major US metro outside the ultra-expensive Bay Area - as buyers and sellers alike pulled back amid mounting political unrest.

(ERJ notes: Markets freezing up before prices drops. Sellers are reluctant to drop prices while buyers stop looking. Oddly enough, some sellers RAISE their asking price so they can "offer the buyer a discount") 

At the same time, home prices have fallen by more than $20,000 since summer, wiping out equity and raising fears that the city’s housing slowdown is only just beginning.       Source

 

Portland

 

Twenty most expensive downtown properties.    Source

Seattle

Rents are at the same rate as 2019 which represents at least a 23% decline when inflation is factored in.

There are rumblings of Amazon and Microsoft pulling their Headquarters out of Seattle. "Impossible!" you declare?  Bezos yanked the rug out from the Washington Post after losing money too many years in a row. He may be a progressive, but a dollar is a dollar and Seattle sees Amazon as a tax-donkey. 

Finding the limits and The Big Thaw

Today's big push was to drag as much wood out of the back-lot as possible while the snow was still firm.

I got a huge boost from Kubota, my youngest son. He had a doctor's appointment at lunch and rather than going back to work he came over and helped me! Yeah family!!!

I put in about four hours and Kubota worked for about two. Frankly, the little nipper did as much in two hours as I managed in four.

I had a proud moment when he latched a hold of one of the larger diameter, 16" long pieces and picked it up. "Holy crap! This is heavy."

Kubota works in construction so he is not a shrinking violet. I have to admit that I secretly puffed out my chest. The secret is on how you grip them. If you get a good grip on them, then you can lift them up close to the centerline of your core. If you get a crappy grip then you are bending over and lifting with your back.

Kubota was NOT impressed with my equipment. "Say dad, I have a buddy and we could have this job knocked out in a few hours."

How do you explain to a "kid" that my priorities are different than those on a commercial job-site where having your trade finish their dance-card and then clear the room so the next trade can come in and start work is not the highest priority.

I am also gathering "intelligence" in terms of how little equipment I need and how many hours it will take. I am also studying the limits of my endurance at the age of 66. I can probably work 2 hours a day at this level three-days-out-of-four and not be hammered into a grease spot on the pavement. At my present level of fitness, four hours a day, three-days-out-of-four would be WAY too much.

The big thaw

German Shepherd-cicles.

I saw some raccoon tracks frozen in the slush yesterday. With the big thaw coming I anticipating some VERY hungry predators around the farmstead, I baited up a live-trap with chicken bones scavenged from a SB party, best-by sale, hot-wings package. Thanks to SNH for the tip.

A thaw is coming, Muscovy ducks

 

It looks like I have until noon tomorrow to make use of the easy sledding.

Blogging might be light.

Muscovy ducks

Muscovy ducks, contrary to what you would assume from their name, are not from Moscow. 

The species is originally from Latin America.

So I am surprised to see this kind of duck show up on almost all of the "Village Life" type videos that originate in eastern Europe. They are easily identified by the fleshy, pink growths around their eyes and on the sides of their heads.

Have any of you readers raised them? Do you have any opinions on why homesteaders and other, lower-technology enterprises value them? 

 

Yes. Old guys (and mature gals) can make an incredible difference.

So I have been thinking about what advice I would give Tad Retz, the young artist featured in Fine Art Tuesday.

Steven Hanks

I had decided to tell him (if he asked) that no image is more evocative to me than to see a mother in a garden with two or three of her children. It really doesn't matter what they are doing. They could be pulling weeds or thinning the carrots or picking green beans or berries. Likely the youngest isn't really helping, he is eating whatever the other three are picking.

Hans Dahl

To me, everything is "right" about that kind of picture. It is the circle of life. It shows humans and the environment engaging in a dance-of-peers and each treating the other gently. It is how humans passed on culture and technology before paper and ink existed.

Images like that resonate in primal, atavistic ways that are deeper and truer and more compelling than our intellects. 

So imagine my surprise when one of my internet friends sent me a treasure-trove of pictures of that very thing today.

In the text he told me that he had been approached by a long-time business associate and friend. The friend said "Things are getting crazy. I want my kids and grandkids and great-grandkids to know how to grow food here in southern Nova Ruritania. Just in case.

My internet friend has been doing exactly that for fifty years. He has grown vegetables and many species of farm animals in Nova Ruritania and done it as a business. He, too, has felt the temperature rise and the pulse-rate speed up. He agreed to give the entire, extended family a crash course on growing food in their unique climate and soils as long as they agreed to participate in his HANDS-ON methods.

Alas, it did not occur to my internet friend to take pictures until the end of the class, i.e. harvest.

I asked him if he could reach out to the patriarch and ask if I could post the pictures he sent me. To my surprise, the patriarch whose family received the hands-on crash course agreed to let me post them as long as I didn't use any names or mention any location more specific than "east of Scottsbluff, Nebraska and north of Huntsville, Alabama".

With no further ado and in no particular order....

Kids caring for younger siblings is a time-honored tradition in the garden.

Harvesting tomatoes ahead of the frost...and a sugar beet?

One of these guys is my internet buddy and the other is the patriarch who had the foresight to inoculate his clan against future chaos, tumult, tempest and storm.

I cannot imagine a more perfect picture. Tad Retz...are you reading this?

End of season means harvest. Obviously, my internet buddy is a good teacher and the students put in an A+ effort!

That kid now knows where carrots come from and he probably thinks they taste pretty good. They taste like "Victory!"

Another million-dollar image

And another million dollar image. Who said you shouldn't beet your kids?

Getting ready to spike it in the end-zone.

Another perfect picture of a "Mom" and "Kids". These are real people living life to the fullest.

It is like every player who stepped up to the plate hit a home run, one after the other.

Look at the grins on their faces. This is food that is even better than what they see at Piggly Wiggly...and THEY grew it.

This picture is "OK"

This one is fabulous! All you see are elbows and pony-tails.

And this one too!

Good photo, getting down to the kid's level

Busting with pride...good pride...earned pride.

Toiling away in the background. Not showy. Not forgotten.

 

Lots of moving parts. This family is going to do "OK" and it gives me hope for the future.

We can do this.

...but can she bake a cherry-pie, darling Billy?

As a nod to the Canadian Voyageurs and lumberjacks, I have been drinking tea with a couple gently rounded teaspoons of sugar for my "energy drink" while cutting wood.

 I recall reading about a "Rendezvous" in Canada where one of the contests was to build a fire and heat up a "tea billy" of water to boiling. The people running the contest provided the wood, typically an 8" long piece of 1X8 lumber and the contestant had to provide all of his own tools.

The "grey-hairs" had to use a flint-and-steel to start the fire while the tenderfeet were allowed to use one match.

If I recall, the best times were in the four-to-five minute range and the winners used only a razor-sharp hatchet because putting down and picking up tools takes time.

Pro-tip: Split three pieces off to use as pegs driven into the ground to support the billy above the fire. 

Flawed natality data

Number of births in 2023 and 2024 siloed by highest educational attainment of the mother

Annual birthrate per 100 mothers based on US Census data for number of women in each educational silo. The birthrate for women with Ph.D.s appears to be a flier.

Birth numbers from CDC Natality site. You need to drill through several layers to get to the request form. Only number of births available for Educational Attainment silo.

Number of women by highest educational attainment from US Census Bureau.

Flawed number. "...for women 25 years old and older..." so the denominator is too low (except for the Ph.Ds and maybe the Master's). The discrepancy is in the denominator so I would expect the "some college" denominator of "Bachelors to decrease for births to 20 and 21 year-olds and for Master's to decrease for births to 20-to-24 year-olds thereby shortening the "some college" column and raising the Bachelor's and Master's columns slightly.

Number of births siloed by age of mothers. The blue columns are 2016 data and the red columns are 2024 data.

 

In 2016 the population was estimated to be 329million and in 2024 the population was estimated to be 345 million.

The graph appears to show women choosing to delay their child-bearing until "later". 

A delivery of pewter for my manufacturing hobby

 

"Holy macaroni! What is in this package?" the lady at the post office asked.

"Gold Krugerrands" I replied.

With cities yanking out lead service pipes, this is a good time to stock up on heavy metals. In ten years it might be hard to find castable pewter-like metals on the open market. 

Super Bowl Halftime Shows

Marketing missteps create opportunities for competitors

I don't see the latest Super Bowl Halftime Show as a political play. I see it as a gross misread of "the market" by marketers.

Marketing is tricky business. Most customers are not able to use words to describe what they desire. In many cases, we don't have a firm picture of what we desire. Rather, we have experiences with products and services that left us dissatisfied, so we can tell you what we DON'T want.

Another major issue that marketing teams have to deal with is that prospective customers unconsciously tell marketers what the customer thinks the marketer wants to hear. That is why marketing clinics are run by third parties and have an equal number of samples from the proposed entry's main rivals in the market segment.

The Ford Edsel is a prime example of poorly designed market-surveys  telling the marketing team what they wanted to hear.

This gets tricky because marketing teams have to guess what the customers will want in two-to-five years due to tooling and regulatory lead-times. The "really smart people" look at various bleeding-edge pundits and trend-setters and place their bets. They see the growth rates in numbers of transgenders (Bud Light) and Hispanics (Super Bowl) and throw the dice.

The Fly in the Ointment

The cost of this strategy is that loyal users of your "product" might feel abandoned while the target of the marketing campaign might totally dismiss your offering.

One place I think this is happening is when the Church Elders (often in their 70s) hire a trendy, "young", forty-year-old, with tie-died hair and wears Wiccan charm bracelets "to attract younger people to the congregation".

That fails spectacularly. Nobody under the age of 35 thinks a 40 year-old is young. They look at a 40 year-old preacher trying to look "trendy" the same way 50 year-old me looked at 60 year-olds with mullets and tie-died, "Give Peace a Chance" tee-shirts. My first reaction is "Grow up!". My second reaction is "Let go of your childhood".

Fashion trends age like un-refrigerated milk. The value of Christianity is that it is changeless. Chasing "trends" is wasted effort and results in people taking their eye off the ball. Man's nature and the war between good-and-evil does not change. God's message has not changed.

Opportunities for competitors

I think the NFL and the broadcasters screwed-the-pooch because there is now a precedent for "alternative halftime shows". How much will advertisers be willing to pay when the first, shambolic alternative halftime show siphoned off 10% of the TV viewers and pulled in 20% more via on-line viewers?

The major broadcasters (CBS, NBC, ABC, ESPN and FOX) who are in rotation to broadcast the Super Bowl collude to NOT compete with the official halftime show because they have a piece of the action.

The dike has been breached. Viewers will be able to click-over to their favorite Country Music or Polka Music or Gospel Music cable channel and watch their alternative with 1/4 the advertising and then click-back to the game when it restarts.

Fine Art Tuesday

 

Tad Retz was born in 1996 and currently resides in Syracuse, New York.

He started his professional career immediately after graduating from high school in 2015.

I reached out to him and asked permission to post his art. He agreed.

When I told him that many of my readers are apt to be curious about his (obviously) intense love of the outdoors, he responded:

I think just being raised with some property and the ability to go do things out on the property like hike, bike, ski. Growing up doing these things then making friends that do the same things has made me really feel enjoyment, peace, excitement when I'm out in nature. I think this is why I like painting it. I am pretty much either painting in the outdoors, exploring in some way the outdoors, or painting from inspiration of my experiences outdoors while in my studio. 

Retz also noted that the act of painting and creating energizes him.

Then I asked him a question about his technical expertise, "Have you spent more than 10,000 hours painting? And if yes, when did you hit that number?" As many of you may realize, 10k hours is frequently mentioned as a benchmark required to attain mastery of a skill like playing a musical instrument and, I assume, painting.

I think it takes a very specific kind of personality and work ethic to work through the ups and downs to become a good artist in reasonable time. You also need the right home/work environment with people on your side but also pushing you to get better fast. I was/am fortunate to have an older brother in the art industry who pointed me in the right direction after high school and have since had great mentors who have done the same. I must have hit the 10,000 hr mark around 2020.  

I must second his comments about work ethic and personality. When I go to the gym I see that most people are working pretty hard on the cardio machine but only about 20% are really "working" on the weights. Most of the people are taking selfies with the equipment as background and flirting with patrons of the other sex.  Very few people are hitting the free-weights...maybe because they are not photogenic.

The best way to keep an eye on what Mr Retz has for sale is to frequent his website. He is exceptionally productive and new art shows up on a regular basis. Also, his prices are very reasonable. 

 

Grab-bag

I am getting a rhythm cutting and moving the wood.

With good snow, I can cut and move +400 pounds (dry equivalent) 330 yards. 300 yards dragging in a sled by hand and 30 yards by carrying and tossing over the fence. That takes between two and three hours of steady work. 

Since I figure I would be burning 4 pounds of wood an hour over 10 hours a day in a "doomer" scenario, that means that I can put up 10 day's worth of wood in one, 3 hour work-day with the only fossil fuel being what I need to run the chain-saw. That might be 300ml of mixed gas and some oil to lube the chain.

Disclosure: Turning the 48" bolts into 16" rounds will take a bit more gasoline but I hand-split so at least that part of the process will be gas-free. 

Realistically, 400 pounds/day means I will need 18 work-days "...with good snow..." to put up 180 day's worth of wood. That ends up meaning every good day over a two month span in mid-winter.  

That 40 pounds of wood per day will not keep it balmy in the house but it is enough to keep the pipes in the basement from freezing and to get half of the living-space up to about 70 degrees Fahrenheit by evening.

On the brighter side of things, I am running this experiment cutting from the farthest, back-corner of my property. The next patch I cut will be closer to the house so the time required to transport the wood will be less than what I have to invest for this experiment. 

The work of a living artist is scheduled for tomorrow

I really like his work and I reached out to him. My batting-average is about 50%. Half of the artists (or their agents) do not return the emails. Half of those who do respond choose to not let me show their work.

Remus told me to focus on dead artists whose work were in the public domain. It was his belief that chasing after "permission" to display intellectual property was wasted effort. I usually follow that advise but I am running out of dead artists. 

My overall impression of this artist's work is that it is very "clean" and "not-fussy". It is easy to look at. 

It turned out that this artist is quite young. I will really appreciate it if you provide feedback in the comments. I think he gets a fair amount of "professional" feedback but that has its own drawbacks. "Professionals" give us freaks for dog breeds, undrinkable wines and hot-sauces that will melt your face off. Creators need real-people to weigh-in to offset the judges who hand out blue-ribbons to creators who push the envelope until it falls off a cliff.

Roasting chickens

I roasted a 5 pound chicken Sunday, two weeks ago. We finished it today. We turned into soup for the second week. We got a lot of meals out of that bird.

Some of it is that neither Mrs ERJ or I are eating all that much as we recovered from the Blue Goofus virus.

Lovage

I plan to plant some this year. It is a perennial herb with a strong celery-like fragrance and taste. Does anybody have any opinions about this herb?

There are not a lot of classic, perennial herbs that survive our winters. Mint, catnip, oregano, thyme, garlic, multiplier onions. After that, the list gets weird. Is Ground Ivy really an herb?

I can do a lot with stews and soups if I have a little bit of salt, garlic, onion, pepper(s) and celery-flavor. Throw in 'taters, carrots, turnips-if-you-like and meat-if-you-have-it.

Baby-bust in rural areas world-wide

It was notable as I looked through various "Village life" type videos on Youtube that rural areas are aging. It is difficult to find videos of young families working in agriculture. Nepal may be an exception.

Picture by Steven Hanks

Young people move to cities. Young people are the ones who make the babies.

At least two more children off-screen. One is an infant and other is an older daughter "watching" the infant. Carpathian mountains, planting potatoes.

The four steps to "crashing" the population is to first introduce the young woman to refrigeration so she does not need to go shopping every day.

The second step is to provide contraception services/sterilization. 

The third step is to provide her with a TV or smartphone so she become envious and to desire "things".

The last step is to get the young women deeply into debt so they have no choice but to go to work. "I owe, I owe, so off to work I go". They are trapped economically. They cannot afford daycare. They cannot afford to lose the paycheck.

Another painting by Hanks

There is a lot to chew on. Women captured the education industry with most guidance counselors expected to have advanced degrees. Many teachers chose career over kids. It is human nature to present our own, personal choices as optimal and other choices as "inferior". Kids are impressionable.

Half of the US population lives in the red counties

Cities originated due to geographic advantage. It could be a harbor or the confluence of several rivers. It could be a navigable river next to a broad, fertile prairie or an oasis in a desert.

Then, cities were the logical place to put factories because that is where the labor was and where non-native resources funneled through.

In the post-industrial age, are there any compelling geographical reasons for Detroit existing at its current location? How much economic support does a tunnel and a bridge to Canada provide? Detroit is a legacy city that COULD support 40k people (about the size of Jackson, Michigan)  based on the current economy as it interacts with geography.

Turkey. Cultivating sweet potatoes. The youngest "kid" is at least 40.