Ice is falling out of the sky here inside the Beltway Swamp.
Still feverishly working to get stuff moved to new/old VM. No idea what I’m doing with mailman yet, but at least the WordPress stuff for HRGeeks is kinda-sorta moved.
Getting there, but today was started with a full filesystem on the hold host.
I should have coffee, see if I can calm down a bit.
i was trying to do things this morning to really get back on schedule, perhaps get the thinking working.
And, voila — two things to write about.
So…things to consider as I look to write this week.
Since I finished NoJoMo, I’ve really had it.
I need to write something for OWT. I might need to update resumes.
But I’m fumbling around with other things, and waiting until I can update hosting, etc..
So, what am I up to that’s filling my brain?
More later, maybe.
In the 1990s. Keep that at the front of you mind. I’m watching paying a big of attention to the coverage of the WAR CRIME that was the attack on the remints of the Venezuelan boat in the Caribbean.
WORST THING EVER
HEGSETH IS A MURDERER
TRUMP PHONED IN THE ORDER
LITERALLY HITLER
(God, I miss the Blink tag….)
From “the other side,” you have Megyn Kelly essentially cheering the survivors’ deaths in the additional strike.
Hmmm.
Yeah, I’m not sure I’m 100% comfortable with all of this. At the same time, I’m also very, very, very uncomfortable with the Maduro regime, and what they’re doing in many areas.
The Fifth Column had an interview with Thor Halvorssen
where he discussed what’s going on in his home country. Then María Corina Machado won the Nobel Peace Prize.
There’s a ton of information that’s come out courtesy Milei in Argentina about some of the stuff the Iranians, Russians, and Chinese were trying to do there under the Peronists. Venezuela was a friendly place to the north sitting on a ton of oil.
You get into some of the ancillary conspiracy theories about things like the coding of the electronic voting machines originating from .vz, etc.. I’ll leave that to Lara Logan, but there’s more than a little smoke about what’s happening.
OrangeManBad points the finger at Fentanyl, but I suspect the boats were probably carrying cocaine smuggled in under a compliant Maduro government. Do whatever y’all want so long as we get our cut. Oil ain’t selling all that well, now. Those stupid Americans and Canuckistanis learned a new way to coax oil of the ground. Imperialists!
After several cuts, we’ll hold fast, even as the price keeps dropping.
But on the drug boats, I was reminded of the Iraq No-Fly Zone from the Bush41 and Clinton years. (Okay, I’ll admit that I was thinking about some of the A2A glories of the F-4, and that was probably one of the last times it was used in combat, but…)
Pappy Bush justified it under another UN resolution. The UN Security Council couldn’t block what the Americans, Brits, and French were doing. Several other countries went along with it.
This is what the Air Force was doing when Khobar Towers happened. (I know, I know, Libertarian Institute; this was only to sell weapons to defense companies, and was all a par5t of a regime-change operation aimed at Iran from Saudi Arabia. Complete. i get it. I listen, Jersey Dave. I understand!!1!)
To me, what’s happening looks an awful lot like a maritime version of the no-fly zones.
Hmmm.
Yeah, I’m okay with it.
I should probably work on an OWT entry on it.
Maybe this weekend.
I dropped a mention of his interview on Rogan in this entry. After being impressed with him on that interview, I delayed listening to the interview with Bari Weiss on her p0dcast. Here is the paywalled ep on TheFP’s site, but you can find the interview on Honestly.
I don’t c0mpletely agree with him on some things, but this sort of thing that makes me really regret my professional career.
There is only one way of doing things, and, regardless of what money it might save, it’s dictated how you’re supposed to operate. Thou shalt not deviate. If you do, your system’s going to be shut off. Information security is completely procedural on things that don’t work well at all, and you’re supposed to devote a significant amount of your time to adhering to procedure.
Put your solution through the following procedures, generate the following artifacts, and submit again for cybersecurity authorization.
Does the solution work? Well, it passed muster through an extensive waterfall engineering effort. It passed its cybersecurity scans. It cost a ton of money to create. It must be good.
The discussion of the time and materials contracts almost necessarily requires expensive solutions put together by people with expensive “educations.”
Getting back to Palmer, though, it certainly evokes memories of my time getting into IT/government contracting. On the Defense side of things, there seemed, to me, to be a resistance to doing anything at all that was cheap and simple.
I worry about being Captain Queeg with the strawberries.
But when I started, I was coming from an environment where I basically had no budget. I’d scrimp, and find a way to get things done with what I had available. Sure, there might have been many ways to do things “more correctly,” but how long would that have taken, and how much would it have cost?
Luckey’s discussion of designing his company’s products based on what they’ve got available.
There was a lot made of the OceansGate Titan’s use of a PlayStation controller. Watch this if you’re curious.
But the problems there weren’t because they didn’t engineer an expensive control system. The problems were because the hull collapsed. If Titan’s hull hadn’t collapsed, would anyone have said anything about the controller?
Send that
Book that
Suspend that
Check that
That’s the sort of thing I’ve been doing. But November is starting Saturday, so there’s a bunch to finish up.
I’m getting through it all, but I’m not pre-planning all that closely. Read-and-react is where I am on so many things at this point.
I am actually looking forward to doing the writing this year. As has been the case in many past years, I’m hoping some of it will give me something to concentrate on other than the day-to-day worries I’m currently experiencing.
Unfortunately, the way I did it, I don’t have an easy way to get a good list of topics. I don’t have as many free-writes this year as I had in the past, but that’s probably okay. The first week I hope to be busy enough that it’s not much of an issue.
I’m making the mistake right now listening to information about the Federal shutdown, and how it might affect my plans.
Bad me.
But it’s getting cold. A couple of nights in the thirties, and it’ll really start feeling like the holidays are right around the corner.
OMFG. I’ve spent the better part of two days picking through doctors’ notes trying to get information for my attorney.
I appreciate why things are the way they are, but it’s still a royal pain.
thankfully, i think things are going to progress more quickly than I anticipated.
Ai would be great for picking through all these massive PDFs to find the interesting bits.
I think, though, I do have things set up for next month’s writing compulsive streak. I am looking forward to it, though I feel like there’s less opportunity for just longform bloviation.
I need to get better about scribbling down at least something with the drams I have.
For a variety of reasons, I haven’t written much after the last post.
I never really wanted to focus on economic issues, here. I am as much an expert on economic issues as the Uber drivers from Auburn are on foreign policy.
Honestly, though, my attention has largely been focused on personal matters. Though I was ardently opposed to doing it, it seems that I am going to have to apply for Social Security disability. Though I haven’t done that, and will delay it until I’m forced to do it, it appears that I’m going to have to do it.
There’s also a lot of disruption with the government “shutdown” here in the Beltway Swamp. The what appeared to be a somewhat sparsely-attended “No Kings” rallies yesterday showed that to the paid protestors, the only thing that’s acceptable to cut from the Federal Government is Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
But, on the economics issues, there have been a couple of other reports coming out that explain why the Bureau of Labor Statistics is having to significantly-restate more numbers. The money folks say that the lack of numbers really won’t affect market performance. I think the biggest story that’s come out is the massive restatement of job numbers for the period preceding Trump’s inauguration. Things were not as rosy as the Biden Administration was trying to say they were.
I was trying to get to the bigger point here — if you’re not good at your job, there’s nothing wrong with you getting fired. It’s not the end of the world, and things will continue without you continuing to put out your low-quality work.
The fundamental reasons for the economy’s performance are unchanged — interest rates that don’t even approach inflation combined with incredible government overspending. Senator Paul continues to be the Republican against reopening the government, though he wants to pay the govvies and troops.
Again, though, the government shutdown is being used as a rationale for all sorts of omissions on data. I can understand with the big news about the Gaza cease-fire. I’m not sure there’s a way you could really overstate the importance of that. No, I don’t think that it automatically meant that President Trump should have won the Nobel Peace Prize, though the kvetching doubt him not winning overshadowed the announcement a couple of days later about the Nobel Prize in Economics.
Here is the announcement.
My biggest take on it? Things, including innovation, happen in spite of government and regulation. Listening to Palmer Luckey on Rogan served to reinforced that.
You can’t plan everything. I’m okay with that.
On this blog.
This has fallen off pretty rapidly today after nosing to the top last night. I have memories of seeing some of Officer Harris’s campaign questions about mandating abortion in Catholic hospitals.
Her take was, yes, we’re going to do that, because abortion is part of women’s health care, and health care is a human right. Rep. CIA came to prominence in amongst the crazy things that were going on with the Progressives.
So mandating such things, putting people in prison for living by their convictions, is absolutely okay.
The Hyde Amendment was never repealed. It is still against Federal Law for taxpayer funds to go towards Abortion.
But things like this show Deep State Abby’s unwillingness to do things through a legislative process. Things that are explicitly-prohibited by law, as well as by a religious hospital’s moral bylaws, we must enforce via administrative fiat.
There are things at the Federal level that push back against this sort of thing, but it’s still the temptation.
I’ll refrain from tossing out my initial reactions, but I’m not at all shocked. You will be our slave, and there’s not a damn thing you can do about it.
I am heartened that it appears Jay Jones’s expression of his engrained barbarism is now on full display, and it seems to be negatively-affecting the party of Harry F. Byrd.
Watching Thursday Night Football last night featured an interview with Christian Cooper taking Marshawn Lynch around Central Park for birdwatching.
Did they really just do that after what he did to “Central Park Karen?”
Yep. It pissed me off. That Amazon actually featured him pissed me off. Really, Jeff?
Today I went back and reviewed some of the reporting on it, and stumbled back across this from Fred Phelps’s granddaughter.
I appreciate her push for forgiveness, but I kinda think basically-permanent “cancellation” of him seems justified.
She really didn’t do anything wrong, saw her life ruined, and he gets featured on an NFL game? Really?
