Well … calling on the Car Commentariat once again. Sigh.
I mentioned the other day that I had doubts Tuesday’s wrenching actually cured the Xterra. I was right.
Author: Claire
PayPal wants to have a little robo-chat with you. (H/T MJR) This one’s weird. Turns out there could be a correlation — no known causation, but an enormous correlation — between using painkillers and committing homicide. Even ordinary OTC products like ibuprofen (Gotta be some anomaly in that study. Gotta be.) Don’t let the Wookie win when the Wookie is brute superstition. Sacred Rage. “It would be foolish indeed for a government that has lost a string of wars in “backward” foreign lands to think, even with its military and police power and surveillance apparatus, that it could suppress an…
Deep Web. Looks like an intriguing documentary. (H/T GL) Why does Google want to harvest and store your media for “free”? The four most dangerous words in the English language. (Tip o’ hat to MJR) And 24+ words that ought to be in the English language. (Ditto — and not all the words are SFW.) As usual, The Onion has the best commentary on our newly granted “FREEDOM” from NSA snooping and scooping. (H/T jed) Well, maybe. Millennials are destroying banks and the banks are to blame. Dunno if it’s worth $100k to learn the dreadful details of the secret…
Xterra’s in the shop today. Well, not a shop, per se. It’s under a shade-tree mechanic’s carport. Well, not a mechanic, per se. He’s actually the guy who cuts my lawn. But he also buys old beater cars, restores, and sells them. So I’m figuring he knows what he’s doing. Works cheap, too. And one thing’s for sure: he’s not going to robotically tell me, “Well, the computer code says …” like the other two mechanics who’ve had their mitts on my precious transport. But I worry. The idle’s been getting rougher and rougher. Dying at stop signs sometimes. Then…
The TSA failed 95% of the tests to find explosives. But not to worry. They reliably found 95% of breasts, crotches, prosthetic limbs, knitting needles, and sippy cups. (H/T LA) Soooo, while we’re all rejoicing over the momentary illusion that the NSA will no longer be scooping up all our edata, the FBI steps flies to the fore. (And where do they get all these Orwellian names? USA Freedom Act? Because it orders the phone companies to do all the collecting on behalf of the uber-government? Who do they think they’re fooling?) This month is the 800th anniversary of the…
Yesterday I was noodling something Deep (maybe goofy and full of woo, but still … Deep) when I was yanked, almost bodily, into local politics. Later, when I regained my sanity, my ‘Net connection was acting up, so I just bagged it for the evening. I had no post prepped for you this a.m. I never get involved in local politics. Never, ever, ever. But yesterday from 2:30 to 6:00 (I checked the time on my cellphone), I was in it. At 2:30 I learned that some anonymous moralists or civic betterment types were trying to use — of all…
Somebody over at Examiner.com has begun disappearing David Codrea’s columns on phony premises. Ironic considering David’s earlier censorship by the new JPFO. Really bad considering David gets paid by the page view for his Examiner work. Here, have a cigar. But only if you’re rich enough to qualify for the “crony exemption.” The corruption of DA’s offices. It just gets deeper and dirtier. (H/T S) So Ross Ulbricht thought he was better than the laws of this country. But then (as Neil Smith likes to point out) we’re all better than the the law. Sounds as if the judge sentenced…
If somebody in private enterprise did this — let alone did it again and again — heads would roll, congressthings would hotly hold hearings, new regulations would strangle business, and the fedgov would mutter about the need to take over entire fields. But … oopsie! (H/T MJR) Here’s one more for the “one term in office and one in jail” concept of term limits. Better yet, former Honorable Speaker Hastert is going down not for some real crime, but for one of those faux crimes that Congress itself invented. “In praise of uncertainty.” The art of running from the police.…
I’m still thinking of the deer-in-the-headlights stare of the mechanic who told me the Xterra needed a $1,100 computer replacement.
He was so obviously, blatantly just guessing. And so obviously dependent on whatever the diagnostic code said. “P1320? Not the distributor? Not wiring? Then it can only be the ECM. No other possibility.”
Horsefeathers.