Not A Happy Camper

Got home today and grabbed the mail out of the box. There were two interesting pieces in amongst the bills and junk. Neither one of them is making me smile right at the moment.

We’re obviously paying too much in taxes

The first piece of mail was from the city giving us a gift card to “shop locally.” In their letter they state that they got the money to send a gift card to every single residence in town through a federal distribution related to Covid-19 relief. As much as I like to support locally owned stores, this seems like a waste of money no matter where it came from. A couple of thousand dollars going into local businesses is great, but it’s hard to call it even a band-aid for the real problem of shutting down the economy over a bad cold. We’d be better off opening up everything and using this pittance to help with the Covid related medical bills of those truly in need.

I’m Catching Up On Some Stuff — According To Hoyt

Alive and REALLY hope to do a chapter of Witch’s Daughter, but RL has ambushed me as it does.So in the meantime, I’ll leave you with some stuff: This was written by a friend. I don’t think it will be that bad, at least not for most of us, but when things go bad, they […]

I’m Catching Up On Some Stuff — According To Hoyt

Public or Private, Never Be Surprised By the Pink Slip

Google apparently had an abrupt shut down of one of its platforms, the Stadia game development studio. One of the quotes was somewhat interesting and relevant to my own life.

<quote>The report says Stadia’s developers found out about the studio closure at “almost the same time as everyone else.” Stadia’s developers had to wait three days before Harrison was available for a Q&A conference call, which the report describes as “contentious.” The most chilling line in the report details Harrison’s response to a question asking why the Studio was “making great progress” one week and then fired the next: “When asked what changed from the week prior, Harrison admitted nothing had and told those on the call, ‘We knew.'”</quote>

Yeah, been there, done that in the public sphere as well. At my previous department the Chief had a monthly department meeting the first Wednesday of each month where each of different parts of the department would give an update on what they were working on to the whole department and usually end with a little training. At the 2007 October monthly meeting one year the Chief and city commissioner overseeing the police and fire departments assured us that there were absolutely no plans to get rid of Dispatch and merge with the Red River Regional Dispatch Center. About a week or two later the Chief met with the Sheriff, which wasn’t unusual. A couple of days later one of the local news crews showed up at the public access window looking for quotes from the dispatchers about the announced merger. That was a bit of a shock, as we didn’t know anything yet.

I nearly forgot about this

Why, it was only 4 years ago that this shit was going around. But I guess it’s different when they do it, right? I even wrote about it then.

The Culture War is Coming For You Whether You Like it Or Not — Monster Hunter Nation

THE WOKE: Everyone we don’t like is a nazi. If you disagree with us about anything, you’re a nazi. That black woman? Nazi. That Jewish guy? Jewish nazi. That old guy who literally got blown up fighting nazis? Also a nazi for not agreeing with us. If you question this in any way? Nazi. And…

The Culture War is Coming For You Whether You Like it Or Not — Monster Hunter Nation

I was gonna post about this myself, but the ILoH does a better job than I can in pointing out that the ones shouting about how everyone that disagrees with them is a Nazi are the ones that are behaving like actual Nazis/fascists. If you haven’t seen Carano’s “anti-semitic” tweet yet, here’s a screen shot of it.

Because yeah, pointing out that the Nazis didn’t start out sending Jews to gas chambers and ovens from day one, but rather ramped it up over time by making scapegoats out of them, demonizing them, and making their neighbors turn on them, while pointing out that’s precisely what the modern progressives have been doing for awhile now, is really, really, uber anti-semitic.

It’s not like the left is even attempting to hide in the slightest how much they hate everyone else. When your neighbors do a good deed and help you out, but have a different political philosophy than you, obviously they’re in the wrong and should probably be shunned. The progressive movement is made up of nothing but hate it seems like.

How 2021: Driving Rats

I’m impressed. Next thing you know Elon Musk will be building tiny Tesla vehicles as we send our rat friends out to run our errands for us.

These Rats Learned To Drive Tiny Cars For Science

https://arstechnica.com/science/2019/11/these-rats-learned-to-drive-tiny-cars-for-science/?fbclid=IwAR2ExzUie7yIBbXGB3PsQHPTZE4zPOHMQVDVQ9FtcHcOC_wB8ndoMzN8eKQ

This is like straight out of some Science Fiction novel. I so approve of this type of research. I would say, “Bring on the Uplift!” But Brin has shown his ass too many times for me to promote his work anymore.

Read the Room Jeep! — Monster Hunter Nation

I watched the Super Bowl yesterday. I don’t follow pro-sports. Heck, I didn’t know who was playing until Saturday, but my son plays high school football so it was fun to watch it with him. (the boy is nearly Gronk sized) I rooted for the team with all the old dudes, and as an added…

Read the Room Jeep! — Monster Hunter Nation

Gotta Love This

extexanwannabe

New bill allows state to ignore Joe Biden’s executive orders

North Dakota has introduced a bill that would allow the state to ignore any Executive Order signed by the President.

It also allows for a review of an executive order by the attorney general “to determine the constitutionality of the order and whether the state should seek an exemption from the application of the order or seek to have the order declared to be an unconstitutional exercise of legislative authority by the president.”

South Dakota too, has followed with similar action.

What a great idea. If more and more states did this, Creepy Joe would be crippled. His EOs would be worthless. Perhaps Pelosi could stand around tearing them up.

Creepy Joe telling a fishing story about “the one that got away”.

That’s the face he makes when he handles a yucky fish.

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Lest Darkness Fall

Rarely do books have such a great influence on a genre as “Lest Darkness Fall” has had on science fiction. Frequently quoted as one of the ‘favorite’ books of many of the masters of the field, this book by L. Sprague de Camp helped establish time-travel as a solid sub-genre of science fiction.

An indication of the influence and longevity of the book is by the number of best-selling writers who have written stories in direct response to, or influenced by, “Lest Darkness Fall.” This new volume also includes three such stories by Frederik Pohl, David Drake and S. M. Stirling written over a period of forty-three years—a testament to the timelessness of the book.

Similar, thematically, to Mark Twain’s “A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court”, the book tells the tale of Martin Padway who, as he is walking around in modern Rome, is suddenly transported though time to 6th Century Rome.

Once in ancient Rome, Padway (now Martinus Paduei Quastor) embarks on an ambitious project of single-handedly changing history.

L. Sprague de Camp was a student of history (and the author of a number of popular works on the subject). In Lest Darkness Fall he combines his extensive knowledge of the workings of ancient Rome with his extraordinary imagination to create one of the best books of time travel ever written.