POLITICAL: After pricing many low-skilled workers out of job, maybe she can repeal the Law of Gravity?

Thursday, June 18, 2026

https://reason.com/2026/06/08/the-living-wage-attack-on-jobs-and-prosperity/

The ‘Living Wage’ Attack on Jobs and Prosperity
Rep. Ro Khanna’s minimum wage proposal promises prosperity but would likely price many low-skilled workers out of the labor market.

J.D. Tuccille | 6.8.2026 7:00 AM

*** begin quote ***

“Extractive capitalism” is a slippery concept that tends to mean whatever the speaker wants. Rep. Ro Khanna (D–Calif.) invokes the term as a bogeyman to be slain by the economic snake oil he peddles in the form of a $25 “living wage” bill he and other Democrats introduced. Fortunately, the legislation is not only unlikely to pass the current Congress; it’s almost as slippery as Khanna’s bogeymen. It’s still a bad idea.

*** end quote ***

Politicians think that they can over rule “natural laws”.   Like the “Law of Gravity”, it’s firmly established by whatever power you recognize.  Call it “God”, “Dog” (God spelled backwards; man’s Guardian Angel), “the Universe”, “Mother Nature”, or the Flying Spaghetti Monster worshiped by wearing a pasta strainer on your head for your “drivers’ license” photo!  There are Universal Constants that can be observed or reasoned to.  That doesn’t mean that the “Law of Supply and Demand” is any less real than the “Law of Gravity”.

There is so much that we can’t see that’s not real — Santa, the Great Pumpkin, the Easter Bunny, Zombies  —  and so much that we can’t see that’s real —  electricity, the wind, atom, love, and hate.  So why is it so hard for politicians to see their hubris in their opinions and the diktats that they label “LAWS”.  

Real laws, like “Law of Gravity”, are unbreakable.  I dare them to try it.  While overriding the “Law of Supply and Demand” will not have the immediate impact of defying the “Law of Gravity”, it will be just as catastrophic when they “hit” it.

Argh!

— 30 — 


IOS: iMessage on a wifi only iPad will not work text to an android

Wednesday, June 17, 2026

IOS: iMessage on a wifi only iPad will not work text to an android

I’ve struggled with this for months and numerous chats and voice calls.  Today someone finally told me that.

Of course, no one ever told me that before I bought one!

— 30 —


GOVEROTRAGEOUS: Armstrong paid homeless individuals on Los Angeles’ Skid Row to register to vote … … 

Wednesday, June 17, 2026

https://sharylattkisson.com/2026/06/california-us-attorney-says-multiple-election-fraud-investigations-underway/

California US attorney says multiple election fraud investigations underway
By Sharyl Attkisson | June 6, 2026

*** begin quote ***

Essayli pointed to the case of Brenda Lee Brown Armstrong, who pleaded guilty to a felony count of paying another person to register to vote in a federal election.

According to prosecutors, Armstrong paid homeless individuals on Los Angeles’ Skid Row to register to vote and, in some cases, used her address so mail-in ballots would be sent to her home. Authorities say the scheme operated for roughly 20 years.

*** end quote ***

Sure, Stalin was wrong.

“It’s not the people who vote that count, it’s the people who count the votes.” — attributed to Joseph Stalin

“As long as I count the Votes, what are you going to do about it. say?” — attributed to William M. “Boss” Tweed in Thomas Nast cartoon, 7 October 1871).

“As long as I count the Votes, what are you going to do about it. say?” — attributed to William M. “Boss” Tweed in Thomas Nast cartoon, 7 October 1871). — Not Stalin 

Maybe not?

These fraudsters eliminate the need to “stuff the ballot box” or “rig the count”.  They just “invent voters”. Are there more votes than register voters?   All the mainstream media “swears” election are totally fair and honest.

So why don’t I believe them?

“The Italians having a Proverb, ‘He that deceives me once, its his fault; but if twice, its my fault.’” — The Court and Character of King James by Anthony Weldon, 1651

— 30 —


IDEA: Reuse versus Recycle?

Tuesday, June 16, 2026

Instead of destroying boxes by flattening them for “recycling”, why not bring them to Costco for Customers to reuse?

— 30 —


INSPIRATIONAL: Never destroy what you can not create

Tuesday, June 16, 2026

https://nautil.us/the-cold-wars-accidental-whale-observatory-1281682?_bhlid=1aaad0977e3eed40b090ec5815edb50bdc7f742b

The Cold War’s Accidental Whale Observatory

  • Built to track enemy submarines, the Navy’s underwater listening network inadvertently revealed that whales may be singing across entire oceans

By David Rothenberg
9:39 AM CDT on June 4, 2026

*** begin quote ***

Yet the thousand-mile song takes hold of our imagination right away: “I could show you the evidence today. I can listen in Puerto Rico to a whale way up on the Grand Banks. Can the whales do that? You might well ask, ‘What would they have to say?’ Then you’re suddenly putting on this silly human restriction. A whale might turn around and say to me, ‘What would you possibly have to say to one another sitting just two meters apart?’”

Like so many great scientists, Clark is not afraid to be a bit of a dreamer. More than once, he has sought out the advice of musicologists: “Marty Hatch, a specialist in Indonesian gamelan here at Cornell, had this to say to me, ‘You know Chris, you look at all this singing as data, but I think of it as a musical, emotional experience.’ Musicians hear song, and this is where I sometimes lean away from the scientific and tend to agree with them. Why can’t we just appreciate it as a phenomenon that is phenomenal?”

No human musician could stay in time counting as slowly as these whales do. These incredibly low thumps and moans are rhythms at such a lax pace that they are barely perceptible to human beings. Speed a blue whale song up 10 times, and 30 minutes becomes three. Move the pitch up to the realm of a cello, bowhead song, or a human moan, and exactly every three seconds comes the same soft moan. Only when we slow down time do we hear the thousand-mile song, a great sigh in the deep sound channel, echoing from one end of an ocean to another.

*** end quote ***

Hard not to be fascinated by the whale sounds story.  Like birds, we know so little about their vision; so too, we seem to know so little about whales.

Maybe someday, humans may truly appreciate the beauty of the natural world around us.

It reminds me of the Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home (1986).

The crew travels back in time to 1986 San Francisco to bring back two humpback whales — George and Gracie — because an alien probe is destroying Earth waiting for a response from humpback whales, which are extinct in the 23rd century. They need the whales to “answer” the probe.

Why is that so hard to imagine?

Maybe we do need “time travel”!  Can you imagine if the cure for cancer or some other terrible disease was contained in the passenger pigeon?

Remember Colossal Cave Adventure by William Crowther, expanded by Don Woods. “You are standing at the end of a road before a small brick building.”  When I was playing that, I had friends, who after killing the snake in an early cave, became disgusted with the game when they couldn’t get past the bird in (I think) Cave 7.  Of course, I, like several others, never told them their mistake.  It became a standing joke in the in the nerd circles about noobs and I D ten errors.

Laugh!

From that single lesson, I learned one should never destroy what you can not create.  Seem like a good heuristic (rule of thumb) for life.

— 30 —

 


POLITICAL: U.S. military involvement everywhere, but not in Sudan?

Monday, June 15, 2026

https://tuckercarlson.com/morning-note?

Marshall Worth
June 4, 2026

*** begin quote ***

Please Drop the Act

According to the people who constantly demand U.S. military involvement in foreign nations, America must send its troops to die around the world in the name of humanitarianism. We are the international community’s good guys, Lindsey Graham and his friends say, which means we are obligated to fight the bad guys.

This argument has surfaced countless times. Whether their focus is on Iran, Russia, Cuba, Venezuela, Iraq, Syria, or nearly any other country that permanent Washington decides to demonize, neocons always tend to fall back on the same basic messaging: going to war is the right thing to do.

What’s interesting is that this so-called morality never seems to apply to Sudan. Corporate cable news networks rarely report on this, but the African nation is home to some of the most brutal atrocities taking place anywhere on Earth. This AP News report shines a light on the details. They are jarring.

“The United Nations calls sexual violence one of the ‘most defining features’ of Sudan’s war, now in its fourth year,” the piece reads. “Many women have been subject to sexual slavery and forced to pay ransoms for their release, sometimes up to $10,000,” it continues.

The article centers around interviews with three women, each of whom says they are victims of abduction and sex slavery at the hands of the Sudanese Rapid Support Forces (RSF). One of the women recalled RSF fighters ambushing her on the street as she fled her home, forcing her to strip before binding, beating, and transporting her to an abandoned desert village. Once there, she and her fellow captives, some of whom were teenagers, “lay bound in a shelter, urinating on themselves” and “were raped multiple times by different men.”

“The captors would enter [the chambers] and choose who they wanted, untie them, assault them, and bind them again,” the AP reported.

This cycle lasts until the victims die or find a way to buy their freedom. Ransoms routinely run high enough to force the women and their families to sell their cars, homes, and plunge into debt. All just for a chance of release.

Imagine if this precise thing were happening in Iran. Mark Levin and his allies would spend months lecturing the American public about how the Iranians needed freedom, and they would demand that the president drop everything to deliver it. Nothing would matter to them more than saving the women kidnapped by the evil Mullahs, even if doing so meant tanking the U.S. economy, getting our soldiers killed, gifting terrorists troves of new recruitment material, and blowing trillions of taxpayer dollars. This is bigger than politics, they would say in unison. It is about basic decency.

How come no one seems to feel that way about Sudan? The answer exposes the entire pro-war scam. Neocons have no concern for the people of Iran, Venezuela, or any of the countries they demand the United States “set free.” If they did, then they would also care about Sudan, Uyghur Muslims in China, and albinos in sub-Saharan Africa. Their true motives are entirely different; they only sing songs about “liberating the people” to brainwash well-meaning Fox News viewers into believing that globalist foreign policy is of deep moral purity.

Instead of insulting the public’s intelligence with lies about their deep worry for the well-being of Iran’s population, warhawks like Levin should drop the act and be honest about their true reason for wanting war. They pushed for Operation Epic Fury because they thought it would help Israel, not America or the Iranian people. Every honest person knows it.

*** end quote ***

AS a little L libertarian, I don’t want “foreign adventurism” and “foreign entanglements”.  Hence, the USA should:

  • Declare Sudanese diplomats persona non grata
  • Cut off all “aid” to Sudan and anyone who supports them
  • Stop all travel visas to and from Sudan
  • Stop anyone from coming to the US that is from Sudan

That’s should shine a laser focus on the problem that they represent.

If that doesn’t work, then there is always Letters of Marque and Reprisal!

— 30 —


RANT: Online appointment schedules a slot that they don’t have.

Sunday, June 14, 2026

Recently scheduled an oil change for my Chevy Truck.  

Had some problem with the password entry. 

(No, I don’t forget them.  I use a password manger and Apple Passwords also saves them!)

Password reset TWICE?

Argh!

So I’m suitable annoyed but I get it entered.  (Even had to put in the VIN.  I bought it there.  Their system should know it.  Probably Claude AI (I call it Claudia), CHATGPT, Google, every data broker , and hacker all know it. Argh!

SO it’s booked.

TWO DAYS later, I get a call from a nice lady at the dealer saying the online system schedule me for a time that they don’t have available. And we rescheduled it a week later.

So, their online system schedules an appointment  slot that they don’t have.

How dumb is that! Sigh! Yeah, AI and computers will rule the world. Not as long as Murphy’s Law is operable.

So how much of my TAE (ie., time, attention, effort, and dikw), my compute, as well as the dealer’s computing, and their receptionist’t TAE did this all cost?

I guess I should have done it the old fashioned way and just called in at the beginning.

So that’s what I’ll do from know on.

So the dealer’s computer “front door” is just a waste of their resources!

So much for AI wiping out humans’ jobs!

Sigh! Argh! Laugh!

— 30 —


INNOVATION: The $255 Beach Shade Dividing America’s Coastal Towns – WSJ

Saturday, June 13, 2026

https://www.wsj.com/lifestyle/shibumi-beach-sun-shade-04770fba?st=iSp81z

The $255 Beach Shade Dividing America’s Coastal Towns

  • Some beachgoers love Shibumis for their simplicity and safety. Others consider them a nuisance, and some places have banned them.

By Fred A. Bernstein
Updated May 25, 2026 5:36 pm ET

*** begin quote ***

Invented by a trio of recent UNC-Chapel Hill graduates, Shibumis are practically an obsession in the Carolinas. Owners say they are easy to carry and set up and are safer than umbrellas, which can cause injuries or death when the wind uproots them. The company says it has sold about 500,000 Shibumis, many of them in the Carolinas.

*** end quote ***

​Ahhh, American inventiveness and stogy Gooferment bureaucrats can’t deal with it.

I wonder how the family of that lady who was killed by flying umbrella feels.

I guess no one has thought about the wheel chair accessible ramp at Island Beach State Park in Pepuls Republik of Nu Jerzee that provide an easy to walk “avenue” down to the water.

Would seem possible to create a “checkerboard” of “Avenues” and “Cross Streets” with what3words “addresses” that would begin order out of haphazard deployment.

Life Guards could align their “lanes” for speedy rescues without being delayed by random squatters.

In a truly little L libertarian world, an entrepreneur would own a beach and “rent” out spots. And competition would ensure that all options were available.

— 30 —



INSPIRATIONAL: Stunning demo of a dog’s memory!

Friday, June 12, 2026

https://www.facebook.com/reel/1308273337503082

This dog spooked Neil deGrasse Tyson with her impressive memory:

# – # – # – # – #

How little we understand and if a dog can do this, why can’t I? 

— 30 —