Sunday, March 02, 2025

The Tesla Bubble Is About to Pop

Tesla is a bubble stock — all hype with nothing but hot air underneath.

The current p/e ratio is 175.88..  Anything over 24 is nuts.  

Toyota — a REAL car maker — has a p/e ration of 7.44

The Tesla S and X were novelty electric cars5 years ago.  

No new models is a rusting business model.

Self-driving cars have been a thing in San Francisco for 5 years — Tesla has been promising a self-driving car for at *least* that long, and it *still* can’t deliver.  

Musk is a “vapor ware” guy with a bad drug habitat, a Nazi fetish, profound bigotry, and absolutely no technical skills or ability other than a nose for investing early in tech which was made easy with apartheid blood dollars.

Amazingly, Musk has made Tesla, X and his space company toxic brands.  

Once you know a turd floated in a punch bowl, you never want to drink from the punch bowl again. Musk is the turd.

Musk’s fortune is tripple-tied to Tesla.  He has borrowed heavily on the supposed value of his Tesla stock, which has lost a quarter of its value in the last two months.  More decline is ahead as the Tesla trucks fly apart, the Europeans boycott, and both Tesla and Starlink face competition.

At some point, his creditors will call in the notes, and then it’s over.

Saturday, March 01, 2025

Cleaning Up the Shed


This is Bees Wax recovered from the hive that swarmed off late last year.  This will be melted down to  coat this year’s foundation.

The bee hive that swarmed off did not go far — about 100 yards onto my neighbor’s property.  They’re in a hollow Locust tree about 15 feet up.

If they swarm again, I might be able to trap them in a swarm trap.

Friday, February 28, 2025

The Simple Point the Billionaires Won’t Suggest

If the People Unite

The Fight We Must All Enjoin

THANK YOU TO GERMANY, FRANCE, BRITAIN, CANADA, SWEDEN, NORWAY, SPAIN, ITALY, JAPAN, NETHERLANDS, DENMARK, BELGIUM, FINLAND, LITHUANIA, ESTONIA, PORTUGAL, AUSTRALIA, GREECE, SLOVAKIA, IRELAND, ROMANIA, AUSTRIA, KOREA, and CZECHIA. ❤️

Thank you for standing with Ukraine! ❤️ 

THE AMERICAN PEOPLE stand with Ukraine, not the convicted rapist, fraudster, con-man, and Russian asset that is Donald Trump.

PLEASE HELP US HELP UKRAINE.

PLEASE STOP BUYING AMERICAN GOODS whether food or weapons, tractors or airplanes.

PLEASE STOP TOURISM TO THE US. Visit Canada and Mexico instead. Spend your vacation dollars in Europe.

PLEASE STOP SELLING THE US NEEDED RESOURCES, whether aluminum or potash, refined gasoline or coffee beans. Trade among yourselves and freeze out the US.

PLEASE TANK THE AMERICAN ECONOMY.  Do not load ships going to the US, and do not unload ships coming from the US.

Thursday, February 27, 2025

Lost Swarm of Bees Did Not Go Far


ONE OF MY HIVES swarmed off last year, and my neighbor found them in one of his many hollow trees. Glad they didn’t go far — maybe 100 yards downhill.

Monday, February 24, 2025

Newtonian Bombing


Back in 1940, Arthur "Bomber" Harris observed that:
“The Nazis entered this war under the rather childish delusion that they were going to bomb everybody else, and nobody was going to bomb them. At Rotterdam, London, Warsaw, and half a hundred other places, they put that rather naive theory into operation. They sowed the wind, and now, they are going to reap the whirlwind."

Now re-read that quote and substitue a few words.
"The MAGA entered this war under the rather childish delusion that they were going to inflict trauma on everybody else, and nobody was going to inflict trauma on them. In Washington, Georgia, Texas, Florida, Pennsylvania and Kentucky, they put that rather naive theory into operation. They sowed the wind, and now, they are going to reap the whirlwind." 
Right.

The whirlwind is coming, and where you stand may depend on where you sit.

Where a lot of Americans sit is within a 100 feet of the more than 400 million guns and a billion rounds of ammunition in private hands.

Those are real numbers, and speak to why the Second Amendment was created

America was founded in opposition to kings, and we have a history of killing fascists.

Angry Americans outnumber oligarchs. The oligarchs can be — and will be — overwhelmed.

Donald Trump, Elon Musk, Stephen Miller, Pete Hegseth, Kash Patel, RFK Jr., Tom Homan, Russell Vought, JD Vance and the rest of them are hell-bent on burning down the lives of millions of people who are just one paycheck away from having no reason to not make the supreme sacrifice.

They’re killing cancer research, defunding grandma’s  nursing home care, and tossing hundreds of thousands of families onto the unemployment lines.  

They’re preparing to tell US troops to fire on American demonstrators, even as they scrap vaccine and vital public health programs. 
   
The battle ahead is very much an existential battle, not only for American democracy, but for millions of American lives as jobs are scrapped, services cut, environmental protections torn down, and bank deposit protections are removed. 

Medicaid, Medicare, OSHA, veterans benefits, and Social Security are being shoved into Elon Musk’s self-described “chipper” so that he and his merry band of billionaire “bros” can continue to be subsidized by taxpayers even as their companies pay no taxes.

Last week Elon Musk said he wanted every federal worker to send him “five bullets” telling him what they did, and that failure to comply would be taken as voluntary resignation.

Right.  

Elon Musk wants bullets?  

He’s *asking* for a hail of bullets?

Trust me… they’re coming, and my bet is they will not all be on paper.

Yes Elon, the trauma is coming, and you are not exempt.

In America, most of us still believe that the best Hitler is a dead Hitler.

They think that in London, Paris, Toronto, Mexico City, Hamburg, and Rome as well.  

The world is rapidly organizing in opposition to American fascism, and job one is to stop buying American farm goods, tractors, and weapons.  

In Sweden, the dock workers will not unload Teslas, and the mechanics say they will not work on them.

The Europeans have already said they will dump Musk’s US-government funded Starlink system and replace it with their own IRIS program of over 300 satellites to serve Europe alone. 

Mexico has its own death-blow in the wings; a low-cost electric vehicle called Olinia, which I predict will sell like hotcakes in the US and around the world.

And have no illusions:  the trauma ahead for the US is generational.  

No one will trust American intelligence again. 

No one will take America’s promises as anything more than thin paper covering a pile of dog shit.  

Foreign markets and suppliers that shift to Brazil, China, Canada, or Australia are not going to come back to the US soon.

In 30 days, Trump and Musk and MAGA have destroyed a reputation that America built over 125 years.

And these fools think Trauma will not come for them?

I assure you it will.

A New World of Understanding


My mother was a very young girl when Hitler rose to power.

Living in a small town — Augusta, Kansas — she tried to make sense of the bits and pieces she heard adults talking about.

Finally, she went to my grandfather with a world map.

Where is the United States, she asked?

My grandfather circled it with his finger.

And where is Canada?

Russia?

Britain?

France?

My grandfather circled each in turn.

And where is Germany?

My grandfather circled it.

My mother grew silent.

Finally, she asked in a very quiet voice, “Do you think Hitler has a map too?”

Sunday, February 23, 2025

The Bees Seem to Be Thriving

The bees were flying so, with the winter wrap and sun, they were clearly warm enough.

I briefly popped the top to add sugar fondant, but they still had most of the fondant I gave them in early December, which was great to see. Starvation, varroa mites, and hive beetles are the enemy and the likely cause of most colony collapse. I treated for varroa and beetles in early December, when I added the fondant. All seems fine.

First Americans First


Saturday, February 22, 2025

A Land Of Dragons, Bears, Lions, and Wolves

Some of the descriptions of British terrier work can border on the absurd. 

Does every fox have to be described as a "lamb killer"? 

I suppose so in a country that has no coyote, wolf, bobcat, mountain lion, black bear, alligator, or grizzly! 

When your biggest game animal eats worms and bulbs, and your largest predator dines on mice, you may have to dress up your rationale for the hunt every bit as much you dress up yourself. Mere sport with dogs cannot do!

In America, of course, such a claim would be met with laughter. 

A red fox threatens your farm? A badger? 

Please! 

We have real predators from one end of this country to another. No need for tales of Beowulf here! 

A country full of bears and coyotes does not need to invent dragons.

Not when we have... you know... dragons.

Friday, February 21, 2025

Newspapers Always Butter the Rich

“If you're not careful, the newspapers will have you hating the people who are being oppressed, and loving the people who are doing the oppressing.” Malcolm X, who was assassinated 60 years ago today.

The Guillotines Are Coming

New Business Plan



The Evil in the Heart


WHAT KIND OF PERSON
looks at the world's problems and says the biggest problem is that his taxes are too high?

WHAT KIND OF PERSON says we need to cut assistance to the oldest, sickest, and poorest in order that Tesla, Facebook, Amazon, Pfizer, FedEx, and Nike pay no taxes?

Thursday, February 20, 2025

How Do You Think It Will End?




HOW DO YOU THINK IT WILL END for Trump? 

For JD Vance?  

For Tom Hollman? 

For Kash Patel?  

For RFK Jr?

For Stephen Miller? 

For Dr. Oz?

For Leonard Leo?

For Pete Hegseth?

For Tulsi Gabbard?

Do you honestly think it will end in accolades?

Do you honestly think it will end in a positive write up in the history books?

How has fascism and kleptocracy ended in the past?

▪️The Italians shot Mussolini and his mistress and 15 of his key cabinet and entourage, stoned their bodies, and then hung them by their heels from a gas station awning.

▪️During the French Revolution, the French invented the guillotine to behead potentates, including King Louis XVI, Marie Antoinette, Robespierre, and dozens of others.

▪️The Lincoln conspirators were hanged

▪️Hitler, a coward, killed himself and his girlfriend-wife.

▪️Hermann Goering committed suicide on the eve of his scheduled execution.

▪️Ten Nazis were hanged at Nuremberg and thousands were jailed for long terms by other courts.

▪️Oswald Mosley was beaten by a mob of anti-fascists, jailed, and then driven from his country.

Monday, February 17, 2025

Sunday, February 16, 2025

Fog on the Knoll

Strange Sex

Male argonauts (a type of pelagic octopus) have a weird reproductive system. Their penis is a detachable arm called the hectocotylus. When mating, the male argonaut releases this arm, which autonomously swims to the female and deposits sperm. The female then stores the sperm for later fertilization.

Male argonauts are tiny compared to females -—often less than an inch long -- while females can grow up to 12 inches. Early biologists mistakenly believed the hectocotylus was a parasitic worm rather than a reproductive organ.

Training 101


You get what you tolerate or encourage.

Our Policy Is Enforced

Our policy is enforced.

The policy >> It’s not new.

Thursday, February 13, 2025

Wednesday, February 12, 2025

Happy Darwin Day!


This little ditty
will be featured in the hymnal of the First Church of Field and Stream as soon as we write a hymnal. Let us prey.

Tuesday, February 11, 2025

A Complete Lesson in Animal Training

Sheep to Slaughter

"They married at 20, they were middle-aged at 30, they died, for the most part, at 60. Heavy physical work, the care of home & children, petty quarrels with neighbours, films, football, beer, and, above all, gambling, filled up the horizon of their minds. To keep them in control was not difficult." —- George Orwell - 1984 

Sunday, February 09, 2025

Lessons Learned



My garage door is a very good trainer. I will not be doing *that* again. 

Though I am a slow learner and a quick forgetter, this lesson was one and done. 

Am I ruined by it? Am I cowering? Has it inflicted a lifetime of trauma on me? 

Nope, I just learned, same as I learned that bald guys need more scalp protection than a regular bee veil provides.

I will not be doing *that* again, either.  

Bees are very good animal trainers.

Saturday, February 08, 2025

My Ted Talk on Pit Bull Terriers



▪️A cat bird isn’t a cat.
▪️A dog fish isn’t a dog.
▪️Chinese checkers are not Chinese or checkers.
▪️Porcupine caribou are not porcupines.
▪️An electric eel is not an eel.
▪️English horns are not English or horns.
▪️A star fish is not a fish.
▪️Bombay duck is not a bird.
▪️Fire flies are not flies.
▪️American Eskimo dogs are not either one.
▪️White chocolate is not chocolate.
▪️A raccoon dog is not a raccoon or a dog.
▪️A mountain goat is not a goat.
▪️A sago palm is not a palm.
▪️The Australian shepherd is not Australian.
▪️A killer whale is not a whale.
▪️Arabic numerals were not invented by arabs.
▪️A mountain chicken is not a chicken.
▪️A mantis shrimp is not a mantis or a shrimp.
▪️A maned wolf is not a wolf.
▪️A red panda is not a panda.
▪️A koala bear is not a bear.
▪️French horns are not french.
▪️Lead pencils contain no lead.
▪️Strawberries aren’t berries.
▪️Glow worms are not worms.
▪️The Norway Rat is not Norwegian
▪️Russian dressing is not Russian.
▪️Catgut is not made from cats.
▪️King crabs are not crabs.
▪️Peanuts are not nuts.
▪️Guinea pigs are not pigs or from Guinea.
▪️Headcheese is not cheese.
▪️Panama hats are not made in Panama.
▪️A horny toad is not a toad.
▪️The Chinese Crested dog is not from China.
▪️Prairie oysters are not oysters.
▪️A velvet ant is not an ant.
▪️French fries are not french.
▪️A Pit Bull Terrier is not a terrier.

Thank you for coming to my Ted Talk.

The True Story of the Blue Paul Dog


If someone tells you a useful working dog breed has gone extinct, be on alert. 

Tools generally don’t go extinct.

The observation that tools almost never go extinct is not my own, but that of Kevin Kelly of Wired magazine and Whole Earth Review.

Robert Krulwich of NPR did not believe the claim, but damn if he could find an exception.

“If you listen to our Morning Edition debate, I tried carbon paper (still being made), steam powered car engine parts (still being made), Paleolithic hammers (still being made), 6 pages of agricultural tools from an 1895 Montgomery Ward & Co. Catalogue (every one of them still being made), and to my utter astonishment, I couldn't find a provable example of an technology that has disappeared completely.”

So Krulwich being Krulwich went out to the NPR universe and after thousands of people spent scores of thousands of hours pondering and suggesting they could only come up with three:

* Radium suppositories made by quacks in the 19th century and which caused quick cancer;

* A Roman "corvus," a military boarding device used in naval warfare in the First Punic War against Carthage, and;

* The ferrite "core" of a Seeburg Jukebox of the 1950s.

To be fair to Kelly, his original claim was that no *species* of technology has ever gone extinct, in which case all three of the above items have, in fact, been replaced by better off-the-shelf items that do the exact thing promised in the original, only quicker, cheaper, and without killing you. 

All of this by way of saying that when someone tells you a legendary and excellent breed of dog is now “extinct,” your ears should probably rotate forward.

Extinct?  

A legendary and excellent breed of dog is now extinct?

No it’s not.

Or perhaps it never existed.

Take the infamous “Blue Paul” fighting dog.

Did you know this dog is named after John Paul Jones, bassist for Led Zeppelin?

It seems when John Paul Jones was writing “Black Dog,” in the winter of 1970, the bass track on the first recording was muffled or, in the words of John Bonham, it was “as diluted as Wetherspoons’ gin”.  

A Black Dog with a diluted color is called “blue,” and the original (poor quality) recording of Led Zeppelin’s Black Dog was labeled the “Blue Paul” recording on the box.  

The song, written in 3/16th time was problematic from the start, with Bonham playing a straight 4/4 rhythm over the track.  Robert Plant wrote on the original reel-to-reel that “this dog don’t hunt”.  

It’s believed the original tape of Black Dog was recorded over in 1974 during the making of “Physical Graffiti”.

Due to massive doses of drugs consumed by the band, and large amounts of whiskey consumed by band manager Peter Grant, it seems the original 1970 “Blue Paul” recording  was listed as 1790, the now-missing tape box became a real dog in the telling by roadies, and John Paul Jones of Led Zeppelin was somehow confused with John Paul Jones, the Scottish-born American naval officer who never owned a dog

Oh dear!  What to do?  

Why declare the imaginary dog with a fantasy history “extinct,” of course!

Job done.

But now undone.  

You see, as I write this, a “Blue Paul” dog has been found and it is lying at my feet.  

She’s a *genuine* Blue Paul and comes complete with papers verifying her pedigree and signed by John Paul Jones himself!

Want a puppy?  

Operators are standing by. 

“Special deal for American friends.”

I am also selling my author-signed first edition of the Bible.  A

Very rare!

Poem by Tara Shannon

Sometimes, a country forgets the weight of its own name. 

Forgets the hands that built it,
the blood that sealed its soil,
the voices that cracked like dry earth
demanding something better. 

Sometimes, history stirs in its grave. 

Not as a whisper, not as a warning,
but as the slow, rolling thunder
of something coming again. 

A woman stands in the doorway,
the light catching the fear in her eyes.
A man at her side, hand curled into a f!st—
not for v!olence, but for holding, for keeping,
for something solid as the ground beneath them
that does not feel solid anymore. 

It was like this once— 

when colonies turned to revolut!on,
when brother took up arms against brother,
when the world set itself on f!re,
hoping the smoke would write a new future in the sky. 

And now— 

it is like this again. 

The papers that held the country together
are fading under hands that twist law into chains,
that break truth like brittle bone. 

Democracy turns fragile in the mouth of those
who would swallow it whole. 

Outside, the streets hum with unease. 

A silence that is not peace,
but the hush before the march begins. 

The past is speaking. 

It is the rattle of chains breaking,
the ring of a hammer against steel,
the footsteps of those who stood where we now stand— 

on the edge of something vast, something dangerous,
something waiting to be decided. 

Do not wait. 

Do not let them carve your silence into consent. 

Do not let them turn your country into a graveyard of its own making. 

Do not let history whisper your name in sorrow
when it could have sung it in victory. 

The f!re has already been lit. 

The only question now— 

is what you will do with the flame.

©️Tara Shannon

Friday, February 07, 2025

I’m Hooking These Two Up


Del Reeves ⬆️ meet Joyce Paul ⬇️.


Jesus Wept


60% of US Catholics
voted for Trump in 2024. Now Catholic Relief Services is bracing for massive cuts — as much as 50 percent this year — because of draconian reductions in U.S. foreign assistance ordered by the Trump administration.

A Note for Overseas Readers

For those overseas who wonder what is going on, it’s worth mentioning that TWO-THIRDS OF ALL ADULT AMERICANS DID NOT VOTE FOR TRUMP.

There was huge vote suppression of minority votes, but just under 64 percent of all adult Americans still voted.  

Trump got less than 50 percent of that 64 percent, or (rounding up) 32 percent.  

Two-thirds did not vote for Trump and *no one* voted for killing off entire agencies, turning the government over to children under the control of Elon Musk, firing half the FBI, and abolishing the FDIC, USAID, the Dept. of Education, consumer protection, etc.

The only question now is when do the days of rage start, when we collectively fire-bomb all the Tesla charging stations at once.

Trust me… it’s coming.

Thursday, February 06, 2025

Identity Theft Is No Laughing Matter



With scores of millions of government records at Medicare, Social Security, the Veterans Administration, the Small Business Administration, US AID, and the Office of Management and Budget being vandalized, and copied onto unsecured servers by unscreened and unvetted Elon Musk employees, this nation is in SERIOUS trouble.

The servers Musk has attached to US Agency data bases have already been hacked, with the OMB server sending out hundreds of thousands of emails calling Trump a cunt. See >> https://newrepublic.com/post/190984/federal-employees-spammed-trump-email-change-noaa

Musk’s computer squad are age 19-24, and one is a college freshman.

Wednesday, February 05, 2025

Catch Them Young and Dumb

"If you wish to persuade people that because Adam ate an apple, all who have never heard of this interesting occurrence will be roasted in an everlasting fire by a benevolent Deity, you must catch them young, make them stupid by means of drink or drugs, and carefully isolate them from all contact with books or companions capable of making them think." — Bertrand Russell

I Will Never Pray for You


If there's a God, he's ok with cancer, auto wrecks, and the mass murder of people, including babies. 

You know who cures cancer, prevents auto wrecks, and keeps babies alive? 

Science.

I will always wish you sound science. ❤️

Tuesday, February 04, 2025

Planning for Spring Planting


I'm adding two cherry fruit trees
and three plum trees to the 8 apple trees (of three varieties), 3 peach trees, and 2 crab apple trees I planted last year.

The 550 daffofil bulbs I planted last year are hopefully waiting to spring up.

The 12 Shasta Viburnum, 6 Redwing American Cranberry Viburnum, and 8 female Red Winterberry that I planted in November are (hopefully) waiting to leaf out.

I have 22 Gold Mound Spirea in pots waiting to be planted, along with the newly acquired fruit trees.


Sunday, February 02, 2025

The Turing Test Vs the Fido Test


After dropping off my wife for physical therapy (knee replacement), I hit my local coffee establishment, where I shared a counter with a young man engaged in writing very complicated mathematics on his tablet.

I studied the math (upside down) for a minute.

I recognized a lot of the basics (my graduate degree was mostly math), but the composite of equations was quite foreign.

I chatted him up to find out what he did.  

He was a Carnegie-Mellon student working on machine learning.

Cool!  Tell me about it.

He explained a bit, and I mentioned that my daughter was one of the first three employees in the “customer success” division of the largest AI company — a parental brag, but also to suggest I was not completely clueless. The division, which had three people a year ago, had 400 now and would have 800 by this time next year.  A huge area of growth!  He was on the cutting edge of what was likely to be transformative technology.  Full applause!

I asked him about machine learning — how did it train?  

Were there rewards, punishments, and extinguishing?

Now it got interesting!

You see machine learning is, for the most part, the mythical “blank slate” that does not actual exist in the world of animals and plants.  

When building machine learning modules you are not, for the most part, pushing up against instinct.

Everything the machine is learning is a neutral trick, which is to say rewards are everything.

This young fellow mentioned that his roommate was putting together a start up. I noted there was a lot of money in the world of tech, but that I was waiting for the geeks to win the “Fido Test” rather the Turing Test.

The Fido Test?

I explained that it was a very simple one of my own design.  

Dog trainers charge $4,000 for a board and train that covers basic instruction.

Surely AI and simple robotics could train a dog to come when called, follow close, do a “down-stay” and a few other basic commands?

All the technology already existed — GPS for location, a simple feed chute, e-collars with sound, vibration, tapping stimulation, etc.  

This is a multi-multi-million dollar idea, I said, that would transform the lives of dogs and people. 

I had to run at that point, but I could see a few cogs turning in his mind.  

It’s unlikely he will operationalize what I suggested, but someone will soon enough, of that I can guarantee!

The future is coming fast.

————

The picture is of Alan Turing, who is the face on the 50£ bill.  Few people did more to benefit man, or were treated more dispicably, than Alan Turing.  See >> https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Turing

CSNY With Tom Jones

Happy Bithday, Graham Nash!

Friday, January 31, 2025

American Made and Donated

These two bikes are off to local charity. 

The old Gary Fisher was bought used, and I rode it from Cumberland to Pittsburg in one go, and from Georgetown to Cumberland in several trips over a few years

The Trek was bought new 40 years ago, and is a very good road bike in very good condition.