Ball Diamond Ball

I am assuming that nobody was too bereft by the de-provisioning (this is a wonderful word which should soon become Orwellian) of the blog site Lobster Forest. That site was similar to this in being a free-to-use group blog based on WordPress. At Lobster Forest, there was a ridiculous focus on privacy which made open sign-ups challenging, but which also received high praise from security-minded folks early on. I’m proud of it, but it was unsustainable.

Well, for the third time in my life, I am coming OFF a wave of privacy and security effort — I’ve been on the downslope for a year or two, knuckling under to the prevailing pressure. Maybe I should have a Google account (I have none — nothing), and a LinkedIn, and … Continue reading →

I have just begun this book. What a find! Curiousities of Puritan Nomenclature (1880) by Charles W. Bardsley of the still-extant “Harleian Society” regarding genealogy and heraldry — witness their motto The Glory of Children are their Fathers, which is as spectacularly self-serving as it gets for a bunch of Fudds doing genealogy. But go grab the FREE book: https://www.gutenberg.org/files/39284/39284-h/39284-h.htm

The first lines of the first section shed a mighty light on English nicknames, with the opening shot: “The Paucity of Names After the [Norman] Conquest.” The old English (indeed Old English) names were simply driven out of the language, and a very few Norman names caught on rapidly. And so for four hundred years there was a great winnowing of names, so that:

In every community of … Continue reading →

Yes, it’s true, I’ve been banned. While I disagree about some specifics along the way, I can’t complain. They didn’t have to let me back in again at all, but they did. I’ll always be grateful for that.

Ricochet.com has improved by leaps and bounds over the past several years. The thing seems to have been purchased by Charles C. W. Cooke (not sure if I have the technicality right, but that’s close), and this was a great improvement over some of the previous structure. But things had been getting better behind the scenes for a while, which was blisteringly obvious to me as a “returnee” after being absent through the entire Trump administration and up until shortly after our collapse in Afghanistan. Here at my blog, I … Continue reading →

I’ve seen a few of this guy’s clips now, and here’s one entitled “Diversity Doesn’t Work.” The guy is endearing, and his slow-burn comedy is no doubt a product of the thick skin required in an Iranian-born Italian who loves freedom and the west.

I hope to see this guy in bigger gigs!

So here’s a guy showing clips of media propaganda pushing EVS juxtaposed with clips of EVs failing miserably once the chips are down. I’ve had conversations with completely nice people who simply do not get the physics of this, and it’s not complicated. You just need to understand two things: First, chemical reactions slow down a lower temperatures, and all battery actions (charging and discharging) are chemical reactions. This means longer charge times and reduced driving range. Second, power grids of nations across the world, including the US and Canada, are *already* challenged when the weather gets too cold or hot. This means that EVs will not be charged at all in a prolonged emergency, regardless of how long it might take.

Electric Vehicles “unfit for purpose” — … Continue reading →

Getting rid of over 18K bogus users. I didn’t even bother with my usual hoarding of metrics. Just plugging away…

I’m feeling better and better about having gotten rid of my Coulter books. I had several, and now I have none. This is an improvement. Without simply guessing at paydays, I cannot fathom how she makes up her mind whom to support from day to day. She was big on “severely conservative” Romney and has tried to sell us Christie several times. I think she supported Trump for about three minutes at one point.

It’s not even her disdain for a particular candidate that I find so off-putting. It’s her contempt for the conservative base. It’s a pretty well-established point that if the Democrats are allowed to pick our candidates by blowing up the ones they don’t like, then all we will get are Democrat-approved candidates. Trump is … Continue reading →

I think (again) I have this thing restored. It’s been years.

Conduct a surface scan.

Is this thing working?

Recommissioning the old Battleblog.  Again.

This thing is in rough shape, and I deleted my WordPress.com account after seeing what Gravatar had done.  My guess is that’s why I cannot update.  Just a guess, though.  I’ll fire up this or something similar.  But different.

I have some ideas, but we’ll see how the execution goes.  Watch this space.