RANT: Gooferment “codes” change without notice or a chance to object

Friday, August 14, 2026

In trying to sell our “old” house, I have a few example of “spectacular stupidity”.

Evidently NOW to sell a house and get a Certificate of Occupancy, all the smoke detectors and carbon monoxide detectors —  regardless of lifespan left —  must be replaced with a non-removable battery. 

WTH

My detectors were replaced when we bought the house 5 years ago because they were flakey and so were the carbon monoxide detectors because they were old and generating false alarms.  No Gooferment involvement!

Argh!

There’s a few dollars (more than 1,000) down the rat hole. And, now there is a fee for the City Inspector come out and confirm.

My Realtors, Handyman, and Contractor were all surprised by this.

And it’s not like a rental.  It was and will be owner occupied so there is NO motivation to cheap out.

Yet Another cash grab and expense incurred.  Glad to be out of the Pepuls Republik of Nu Jerzee.  Hope the last person out shuts the lights off!

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POLICY: Here’s a good idea for a Gooferment diktat about corporations

Thursday, August 13, 2026

✔ 2026-08Aug-09 solar panel.

As much as I am against Gooferment diktats and “tax policy”, how about, until we get to a free open AnCap¹ society, the Gooferment require “corporations”² to purchase offsets from private homeowners’ rooftop solar panels.  

With the inet, there would be no need for the Gooferment to run anything but a domain to facilitate and document the transfers.  Not that homeowners would cheat and sell the same rooftop solar array credits to multiple corporations or the corporations would fudge “buying” the credits!  (Unlike how every Gooferment (welfare) program gets abused. Argh!)

Corporations are a construct of Gooferment diktats which most little L libertarians hate.  Since with public ownership, they do represent a collection of people. Where it gets further diluted is when “shares” are held by other corporations.  That actually dilutes the power of worth of individually owned shares. See how the Big Pension Funds supported the “DEI” initiatives of large corporations despite the general public’s opinion DEI. Argh!

Opinions?

# – # – # – # – #

¹ Anarcho-capitalism is a political ideology and economic theory that advocates for the abolition of state monopolies and the expansion of economic liberalism and market economy through the promotion of a voluntary society. Proponents argue that a society could function without a centralized state through voluntary exchange and private institutions that provide legal and security services relegating coercion to the collection of tort damages, and refining recoupment in the context of a free and open marketplace. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarcho-capitalism

² Libertarians generally oppose the idea of corporations being treated as individuals with the same rights, arguing that this can lead to excessive corporate influence in politics and undermine democratic processes. They believe that while corporations should have some rights, they should not have the same rights as individual citizens. https://www.libertarianism.org/videos/what-you-probably-havent-heard-about-citizens-united

³ Libertarians often argue against corporate influence in politics by advocating for limited government intervention and regulation, which they believe can reduce the opportunities for corporations to exert power through lobbying and political contributions. They emphasize the importance of free markets and individual liberties, suggesting that when government is less involved, corporate interests will have less sway over public policy. https://leadershipnowproject.org/corporate-political-influence-101/

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MEME: “There’s an App for That”

Wednesday, August 12, 2026

https://www.malone.news/p/sunday-strip-theres-an-app-for-that?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=583200&post_id=210458209&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=3snn7d&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email

*** begin quote ***

“There’s an App for That”

Remember when you could just do things?

Check into a hotel. Board an airplane. Park your car. Order lunch. Buy a ticket. Enter a museum. Pay a bill. Turn on the television. Apparently those days are over.

Now there’s an app for that.

Checking in for a flight on an obscure foreign airline you will almost certainly never fly again? Download the app.

Parking for 37 minutes in a small town in Virginia? Download the app.

Want to look at the menu? Scan the QR code. Actually, no, download the app.

Want to pay for the parking meter? App.

Charge the car? Different app.

Open the hotel room? App.

Use the hotel Wi-Fi? Create an account, verify your email, accept 46 pages of terms and conditions, then download the app.

And naturally, every app would like to get to know you better.

Please provide your full legal name, date of birth, home address, email address, mobile number, two forms of identification, emergency contact, name and phone number of your closest living relative, credit card, billing address, location permissions, Bluetooth access, camera access, microphone access, contacts, notifications, and apparently a small vial of blood.

Then create a password containing 14 characters, one capital letter, two numbers, a hieroglyph, a Sanskrit character, and the name of your third-grade teacher.

Excellent.

Now verify your identity with a six-digit code we have sent to the phone you are currently using to read the six-digit code.

Whoops! The password has expired, create a new password. Be sure it doesn’t contain anything related to the last password. Oh, now verify your identity again.

All because you wanted to park the car.

There may indeed be an app for everything.

Unfortunately, there does not yet appear to be an app for leaving me the hell alone.

*** end quote ***

Laugh!  

Yes, IKTF (I Know The Feeling).

Shouldn’t there be a genre of single function apps that can satisfy these “marketers” and yet not drive us all nut and fill up our “phones”.

It seems a misnomer to call what we carry around today as a “phone”?  I miss my Mickey Mouse handset that I had until my Mom came to visits eons ago and asked for it.  How could I say “NO”?  Good thing it had a switch for touch tone or not.  She never got touch tone because she didn’t want to pay for it.  I laugh even when I think about it because she kept it and her other extension phone switched to pulse even after the country switched to touch tone from pause for free.  When I’d use her phone I’d have to wait while the pulses were sent … … click … Click click … Click <eight more times> … Click <nine more times>… <<You get the idea?>> All to “dial” 1-90 something.  Felt like an eternity.

Laugh!

And I am called “cynical” and “curmudgeon”?  At least I am not a “LUDDITE”!

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BIGOTRY: Catholic Nuns Battle extremist judges and States that infringe on faith and conscience

Tuesday, August 11, 2026

https://johnklar.substack.com/p/catholic-nuns-battle-in-court-to?publication_id=779141&post_id=208475297&isFreemail=true&r=3vwsqx&triedRedirect=true

Catholic Nuns Battle in Court to Serve the Poor and Keep the Faith
Extremist judges and states infringe on faith and conscience.
John Klar
Aug 07, 2026

*** begin quote ***

The Little Sisters of the Poor, a Catholic charity that serves poor elderly citizens both in the United States and around the world, is battling in court to preserve the humble sisters’ rights of conscience against efforts of government coercion. Secular state governments, whose highest moral value appears to be ensuring as many babies are prevented or aborted as possible, seek to compel these feisty nuns to provide birth control (including the week-after pill) as part of their healthcare services. This attack on conscience is unconscionable.

*** and ***

For years, the secular US monolith that oppresses Christians while advancing Islam has waved off claims of anti-Christian bias with gaslighting dismissals. Yet the evidence is clear that the far-left, TDS-fueled crusade Americans are witnessing against these nuns marginalizes Catholics and is far out of balance with the clear meaning and purpose of the First Amendment. Pennsylvania and New Jersey are not just abridging the fundamental liberties of a noble group of devoted nuns. They are advancing a state secularist religion in violation of the Establishment Clause. When Obama and Biden agreed with Trump, but the far left is pushing an extremely toxic and blatantly unconstitutional anti-nun lawfare, clearly an important liberty Rubicon has been crossed.

That’s why the Little Sisters of the Poor will win their legal (and spiritual) battle in any US court that understands and upholds the US Constitution. This will likely be seen in the pending Third Circuit opinion in this case, and possibly (if either party appeals) in another trip to SCOTUS for clarification.

*** end quote ***

At what point does “We, The Sheeple” recognize that the Gooferment seeks to become the state secularist religion?  Just as in a bee hive, there can be only one queen, — “There can be only one!” — Highlander (1986) —  I firmly believe that the Gooferment suppressed the Catholic Church’s paedophilia scandal and bribed it with “illegal immigration benefits” to firmly put the Catholic Church, and all “churches” under its total dominion.  I don’t understand why the Gooferment allows them to have “tax exempt non-profit” status other than another “chip” to use in suppression.  As a matter of fact, I like Hillsdale College’s strategy to ignore all Gooferment diktats and golden lures to accept it as “god”.  If I had a Church, —  heaven forbid — like the Flying Spaghetti Monster in Keene —  then I’d say to the Gooferment: “Keep your gold and your diktats, we are free and independent of your tyranny.”  Like what they did to Ian Freeman and many many other libertarians, they would soon see us the one true threat to their complete domination of “We, The Sheeple”.  And, make us an object lesson,

Argh!

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GRAVEYARD: Google Assistant is going away on mobile devices

Monday, August 10, 2026

*** begin quote ***

We’re writing to let you know that the Google Assistant on your mobile device is being discontinued, and Gemini—our next-generation AI-powered assistant—is now the assistant experience on Android.1
What This Means for Your Mobile Device
As we transition our mobile experience to Gemini, Google Assistant will no longer be available on your mobile device. We will begin removing access to Google Assistant starting on September 4, and expect that this process may take a few weeks to reach everyone. Once availability is removed, you will no longer be able to use or switch back
to Google Assistant on your phone, tablet, or paired devices.
If your Android device meets the minimum system requirements2 and you are in a region where Gemini is available,3 Gemini will be the Google-provided assistant on your mobile device. When you invoke your assistant, for example, by saying “Hey Google” or long-pressing your power button, Gemini will appear instead of the previous Google Assistant.
Changes to Accessories and Paired Devices
When you set Gemini as your mobile device assistant, it also becomes the assistant on devices that are paired with your mobile phone. This includes:
• Watches running Wear OS
• Headphones or earbuds compatible with Gemini
• Vehicles running Android Auto projected from a user’s mobile device. For cars with Google built-in, Google Assistant will continue to function beyond September 4, 2026.
Like your mobile device, starting September 4, users will lose the ability to use Google Assistant on these paired devices.
Google Assistant on Other Devices
These changes are only for the assistant experience on your mobile device and accessories that pair to your phone, like watches, headphones, and car infotainment systems.
You can also read more about our separate plans to bring Gemini to Google TV devices
and Google Home speakers and smart displays.
Next Steps & More Information
We are committed to providing a smooth transition and are confident that Gemini will
offer you an even more capable and helpful assistant experience.
Thank you for being a valued Google user,
The Google Team

*** end quote ***

I find Gemini is a PIA on my mac, Rose, and haven’t figured out how to get it to just go away.

It’s preempted the 🌐 key that I need to use with delete.

Argh!

And, of course, no thought of the User Interface implications.

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GRAVEYARD: Microsoft sends PUBLISHER to the mortuary; no reduction in price or refund

Sunday, August 9, 2026

https://m2.infomails.microsoft.com/rest/head/mirrorPage/@x6-bK_5WcZF67WfMcc3Am7IYxtg4JLXZIy3tL3eMfEqtFW8xCwNbS-gqrgkP1cchUb7nyMaehIX6xTPutjxSaguIVKoOAO-8eL5mimKdgHl9q1uM.html?ocid=

*** begin quote ***

Beginning 10/1/2026, Microsoft Publisher will no longer be supported as part of Microsoft 365. Many common Publisher scenarios are available in other Microsoft 365 apps, including Microsoft Word and PowerPoint.

*** end quote ***

As always, we get less as they make more!

Something not fair in all this.

What if someone really uses this?  

We all paid for it.

Sigh!

Motto for the Inet: 3 is 2! 2 is 1! 1 is none! Look for redundant capability; not redundant gear!

That goes for software as well.  Watch out for depending upon a “product” that is an “island”.  Make sure it’s as easy to get off as it is to get on.

Argh!

And, of course, no thought of the User Interface implications.

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ENCOURAGING: Are shrink-wrapped licenses and HIPPA forms really “Informed Consent”?

Saturday, August 8, 2026

FROM 1440 https://join1440.com/

https://link.join1440.com/view/66c4b9c55d78644b3a882a4drwypm.5vq/c0a68b98

1440 Explains: Can Doctors Use Your Tissue Without Asking?

*** begin quote ***

Henrietta Lacks never consented to her cells being used in research. About 75 years after her cells were taken without her consent or knowledge, are patients still at risk of the same thing? 1440’s Health & Medicine editor, Dina Fine Maron, sits down with bioethicist and lawyer Anna Mastroianni from the Johns Hopkins Berman Institute of Bioethics to find out.

*** and ***

“Informed consent is not just the signing of a form. Informed consent is about a thorough process of communication between patient and provider.” —Dr. Aaron Fink

*** end quote ***

Certainly, shrink-wrapped licenses, HIPPA forms, and all manner of paperwork shoved in your face at time of purchase is NOT “Informed Consent”.

I’d be interested if this ever becomes a bone of contention in a courtroom.

I’d certainly find that there little ever “Informed Consent”!

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AI: Gave Claude my drug list and the new UHC formulary to correlate

Friday, August 7, 2026

2026-08Aug-07

When UHC hit me with a “new” formulary, I would usually spend some amount of my time, attention, effort, and whatever dikw was needed to play “Find Waldo” (i.e., look for changes that affect me in a mass of mouse print)!

Now with AI in my tool chest, I downloaded the formulary pdf, and then uploaded it to CLAUDE_AI (which I weirdly call CLAUDIA).  I upload my drug list and give CLAUDIA the go ahead.

*** begin quote ***

Correlate my drugs with the formulary and show me the results

*** end quote ***

Before I can say the MAGIC WORD —  Shazam! — CLAUDIA tells me no surprises.

Since my short-term memory sucks,

*** begin quote ***

Save result in an appropriately named text file in CLAUDIA/TEXTS directory

*** end quote ***

And poof all done!

Easy Peasy!

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POLICY: Wars should be fought by the leaders?

Thursday, August 6, 2026

https://standardebooks.org/ebooks/noel-loomis/short-science-fiction/text/electron-eat-electron

Short Science Fiction

Noel Loomis
Electron Eat Electron

  • This ebook is the product of many hours of hard work by volunteers for Standard Ebooks, and builds on the hard work of other literature lovers made possible by the public domain.
  • Noel Loomis was a prolific writer of short fiction for popular pulp magazines from the 1930s into the 1970s. While he wrote many western novels and some western short fiction, the majority of his short-form work was science fiction.
  • It was first published in 1946, in Planet Stories.

*** begin quote ***

This had been a concession to left-wing agitation that, if there was to be another war, it should be fought by the leaders and not by the ranks.

*** end quote ***

What a novel idea!

To bad no one listened in 1946!

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GOVEROTRAGEOUS: Anthony Fauci is convicted by his own diary entries and with it the Gooferment’s censorship apparatus

Wednesday, August 5, 2026

https://www.themahareport.com/p/tony-lyons-why-censorship-never-works

Cartoon of hands labeled FBI, DOJ, Pelosi, Psaki, Schiff and Schumer covering Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s mouth

Censorship
Tony Lyons: Why Censorship Never Works

  • Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the man the government tried to censor, is now the head of HHS. ‘The Real Anthony Fauci.’ the book they tried to censor, sold over a million copies

Jul 30, 2026

[Tony Lyons, President of MAHA Action and host of the weekly MAHA Media Hub, introduced Wednesday’s show with the below words – just hours after Sen. Rand Paul’s hearing with former NIAID director, Anthony Fauci.]

*** begin quote ***

Let me start with the man himself, in his own words. Over the weekend, Senator Rand Paul released more than a thousand of Anthony Fauci’s diary entries and you’d think a man at the center of the deadliest health crisis in a century would focus on the lives lost, the families destroyed, the decisions that kept him up at night. That’s not what’s in there.

On a day in the spring of 2020, with global deaths mounting and Americans terrified, here’s what Fauci found worth writing down: “Big front-page article about me appeared in the Washington Post. Very flattering.”

“It is not hyperbole to say that today I am the most famous and talked-about person in the country, and one of the most recognizable persons in the world.”

He bragged that the entire Secret Service corps was coming over to chat him up, waving him through the gate without even checking his ID. He kept a running tally — not of the dead, but of his television hits, proudly logging that he’d done all five Sunday shows in a single morning. Pure vanity.

Secretary Kennedy put it best this week: the starkest impression you get reading these diaries is the massive dichotomy between what Fauci was saying privately, behind closed doors or in his journal, and what he was saying publicly about where Covid really came from, about how deadly it actually was, about how well those vaccines really worked. And it goes higher than that: Senator Paul and others believe the record shows Fauci, along with Deborah Birx, didn’t just mislead the American people — they misled the President of the United States himself.

*** end quote ***

In short, we can not trust anything that the Gooferment or its media allies (emphasis on the word lies) push out to us.

Millions killed, maimed, lives ruined, careers aborted, as well our time, attention, effort, and dikw wasted.

Argh!

Someone other than John Q. Public, Joe Six Pack, and the ordinary wage slaves needs to pay a very heavy price!

Argh!

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VOCABULARY: Defining the “x – factor” whatever that is

Tuesday, August 4, 2026

https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/tag/nfl-newsletter/?source=athletic_scoopcity_newsletter&campaign=19094208&userId=30483772

The Athletic NFL
By Jacob Robinson

*** begin quote ***

Bengals’ X factors

Around the league, at least 15 players fit the dictionary’s “X factor” definition (“strong but unpredictable influence,” per Merriam-Webster, in case you were curious) this season.

Among them, the Bengals’ playoff hopes rest on their linebackers specifically, as Robert Mays explains in this clip:

“People are looking at all the moves the Bengals made this offseason: Dexter Lawrence, multiple big free-agent acquisitions, and saying, ‘All right, here we go.’

“There’s plenty of reason to believe that this group will be significantly better than it was a year ago. (But) if the linebacker play from (Barrett Carter and Demetrius Knight) does not take a step forward and looks even marginally close to what it did last year, that could be enough to sink this unit.

“That is the position group on this team where they did nothing to upgrade this offseason.”

Carter and Knight are second-year players who struggled when thrust into starting roles as rookies. They improved in the latter half of 2025, but not enough to quiet concerns about Cincinnati.

*** end quote ***

Interesting. I’d never hear that defined before.  I always thought of it as a “fudge factor”.  You know when an ingineer does a load calculation and at the end multiples by two or three “just to be sure”.

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SECURITY: A scammer almost got me; I must be ready for the home!

Monday, August 3, 2026

*** begin quote ***

On Thu, Jul 30, 2026 at 12:20 PM Harold Kane <{Extraneous Deleted}> wrote:

I need to get an Amazon eGift card by email on Amazon, but I can’t do this now because all my effort purchasing it online proved abortive. I intend to buy it for a friend of mine who is diagnosed with breast cancer. Could you get it on Amazon online and have it sent to her email? I’ll reimburse you bask as soon as possible, Please let me know if you can handle this, so I can provide you with her email address.

Thanks,
Harold

*** end quote ***

Since the email looked legit, I << ALMOST >> fell for it.

I did think to ask the sender something, a shared secret, that could be used to prove identity.

Argh! 

Hard to believe that some                                        one as cynical as me <<ALMOST>> took the bait.

Stay sharp my friends the ne’er-do-wells are getting better!

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POLITICAL: Birthright Citizenship is a national disaster in the welfare / warfare state

Sunday, August 2, 2026

https://johnklar.substack.com/p/birthright-citizenship-is-the-law?publication_id=779141&post_id=204431619&isFreemail=true&r=3vwsqx&triedRedirect=true

Birthright Citizenship Is the Law of the Land
US Supreme Court holds children of illegals are Americans.
John Klar
Jul 30

*** begin quote ***

If Americans wish to override the Supreme Court on the issue of birthright citizenship, they have a challenging pathway ahead.

Since he is obviously no king, President Trump finds his hands are now tied in his response to what Justice Alito called “birth tourists” (people who travel to the United States to give birth). Even a majority-conservative Congress cannot sidestep the Fourteenth Amendment, and additional statutory hurdles remain (as Justice Brett Kavanaugh explained in his concurrence).

It’s been a long time since America ratified a new amendment to the Constitution, and it is particularly unlikely when the nation has rarely been so politically divided.

*** end quote ***

Seems like a good time to pass one.  

If we ended welfare, then we wouldn’t need it.

But if they want to keep the welfare state with all the “welfare farmers” —  some four generations —, then you have to put a a hard stop to “intruders”!

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HEALTH: What else but the covid “clot shot” could be responsible?

Saturday, August 1, 2026

https://www.thefocalpoints.com/p/international-study-finds-75-of-embalmers?publication_id=1119676&post_id=208693892&isFreemail=true&r=3snn7d&triedRedirect=true

International Study Finds 75% of Embalmers Observed White Fibrous Clots in Corpses

  • Former Pennsylvania Funeral Directors Association President Chris Calvey Jr., former Air Force Major Thomas Haviland, and embalmer Richard Hirschman joined me to discuss.

Nicolas Hulscher, MPH
Jul 27, 2026

*** begin quote ***

Former Pennsylvania Funeral Directors Association President Christopher Calvey Jr., former Air Force Major Thomas Haviland, and embalmer Richard Hirschman joined me to discuss the now-widespread reports of anomalous white fibrous clots being recovered from human corpses.

Haviland recently published the results of a four-year international survey involving 808 embalmers across the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Australia, and New Zealand in a peer-reviewed medical journal.

*** end quote ***

Indeed, what else?

Could this be the reason for all the fatalities and strange symptoms?

Checking the Conspiracy Theorist Taxonomy “thermometer” (i.e., Type, Veracity) 

     Conspiracy Theory Type
            • Government
            • Health

   Conspiracy Theory Veracity
           • Likely

IMHO!

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