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Month: October 2017

20 gallons

… and it took me only the better part of the year. When the world’s most spectacular Christmas present — a shiny new Honda Eu200i generator — landed on my doorstep last December, I rushed right out and bought four five-gallon gas cans to feed it. I bought those, and a cover, and some spare parts with an existing generator fund started by yet another kind friend. People are so good. I filled two cans right away with non-ethanol gas treated with Sta-Bil*. The other two cans were to be filled with much more durable avgas on the recommendation of…

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Low tide on the slough

aka four more reasons I love living here. Click to embiggenate. We don’t get the spectacular fall colors around here, but I thought this was an okay approximation. This last one’s not particularly beautiful, but I’ve always been attracted to landscapes that look “layered,” as the various patches of vegetation in the foreground do. The yellow-brown band nearest the hill is cattail. Closer to camera is some type of heather or close relative of heather, and closer yet just some grasses, maybe some sedge. I don’t know what all the plants are. I just know I like looking at them…

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Monday links

  • Muslim reformer Maajid Nawaz wins a defamation lawsuit against Thomson Reuters. Also suing the vile hate group, the Southern Poverty Law Center.
  • “She consented!” … despite being handcuffed and in the back seat of their squad car.
  • I am so totally losing track of this whole “Russians in U.S. elections” thing. Russian-backed green-energy group goes bust because they bet on a Hillary win. Or something. 6 Comments
  • Weekend links

  • When you worry about big corps taking over the world (and I admit I often do, when those corps are Silicon Valley outfits that try to control how people think), remember that only 12 percent of The Fortune 500 companies from 1955 still exist in 2017.
  • Catalonia is not alone. Two prosperous northern regions are seeking more autonomy from Italy. (But then, Italy’s never quite been a country in the way we tend to think of country.)
  • Holy cats. I had no idea that product reviewing was either that lucrative or that dirty a business. (Via Adam in comments) 10 Comments
  • Friday links

  • It was no false alarm. The social-justice pecksniffs really are coming for the math curriculum — even in Texas.
  • David T. Hardy — who knows, and who has even written a new book on it — explains how government avoids accountability for killing innocents.
  • A right to repair is inherent in ownership. There should be no more black-box products under the DMCA. (There shouldn’t be a DMCA, but that’s another issue.) 10 Comments
  • Random ruminations

    I was thinking about the Harvey Weinstein scandal (we should soon be thinking about something else, but this 15 minutes, it’s Weinstein). And realizing that as he’s off there in Europe or wherever he’s hiding for “therapy” and making all his weepy-eyed acts of contrition, he’s really just sitting there thinking, “Those disloyal bitches betrayed me.” That’s the difference between a psychopath and the rest of us. That’s the guy who can’t ever learn that real relationships go two ways, and that other people exist as something more than props or discards on your way to power. —– I have…

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    Rainy day cheer

    Well, we have entered the Big Dark. The Big Dim. The Big Wet. Late October and the first weeks of November are usually the wettest part of the NorthWET’s year, and the rainy season has arrived with a series of three storms strung between China and our doorstep. Today the wind howls, small branches fall, mysterious knocks and crashes can be heard through the neighborhood, and rain blurs the windows. But it’s not cold and I am cozy now that all Ava’s required walks are done for the day (Neither snow no sleet nor gloom of night shall stop Ava…

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