Enjoy the Democratic infighting

There seemed to be a lot less attention to my recent post about fighting between various Democratic coalitions than to the one about Preference Cascades. That's too bad because we are seeing that fighting right out in the open, and it explains a lot about why things are happening.

Exhibit A: the firing of Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle.  Sure, it was the Right Thing to do, but when has anyone in Washington DC done the Right Thing?  Instead, let's look at coalitions and their current dynamics.

Cheatle was firmly in Biden's coalition, seemingly close to "Doctor" Jill herself.  But now Sleepy Joe is gone and doesn't have the stroke to protect his coalition members.  It seems that Kamala was key in pressuring Cheatle to resign - Kamala is constructing her own coalition and needs to show the world that she's the one with stroke.  Also, she needs the assassination story off the front pages, so this kills two birds with one stone.  Plus, it opens up a position in the bureaucracy that she can dangle in front of people she wants to join her coalition.  It's a threefer.

Exhibit B: The Far Left coalition is throwing its weight around, rioting in Washington's Union Station and the Capitol, and tearing down and burning American flags:

Sansour was direct. She warned the Democratic Party might lose the Muslim and Far Left votes in November. “Let us be clear. Our votes are still to be earned.”

The dynamic here will be familiar to Europeans, looking at smallish but influential parties like the Greens. Sarsour is looking after her own coalition, trying to maintain the money and plum positions she can offer to supporters in return for their support.

I think I need to update my list of the coalitions in the Democratic Party's ongoing civil war:

• The Bidens (fading fast)
• The Clintons
• Nancy Pelosi/Gavin Newsom
• The Obamas
• The Far Left 

All of these are jockeying for power right now.  We will see a lot of seemingly random events transpiring between now and at least the Democratic Convention that are anything but random.  They are about power and coalition building - and tearing down an opponent's coalition.

Quite frankly, that last is the Democrat's biggest problem - none of these factions really like each other very much.  The best that you can say is that they see the other factions as useful to their goal to get and keep power.  As more and more backstabbing occurs (as it must, there's only a month to the Convention and the time to strike is now or never), there will be less and less loyalty that they can count on from other factions after the convention.  90 days from then to the election doesn't give a lot of time to rig the results.  

That will take a deep level of commitment, which will be really, really hard for them to achieve. So enjoy the infighting. It will be going on for a while yet.

UPDATE 25 JULY 2024 11:53: This would be inexplicable without thinking about rival factions jockeying for position inside the Democratic Party: 

House Republicans and six Democrats voted on a resolution condemning President Joe Biden and his border czar, Vice President Kamala Harris, for failing to secure the border.

Which faction(s) do they support? Well, not Biden's or Harris'.

Dad Joke CCCXXXII

Tom emails a Dad Joke:

Golf balls are like eggs. They’re white, sold by the dozen, and a week later you have to buy some more.

It's Funny Till It's Not

 The Democrats finally recognized that running an 81 year old man with dementia was a losing proposition. So they told us he had Covid, took him back to Washington, and announced he was not going to be the candidate in November.

So we have a President everyone on both sides agrees is unfit to run for office, still in office.

And who has the final launch authority on the U.S. nuclear arsenal for the next seven months?

Why the Democrats can't put Humpty-Dumpty back together

Well, they can't in time for the election, anyway.  There's an old saying in politics that "personnel is policy" which refers to a lot more than just having someone competent in the job.  It's a reflection that politics is about coalitions - building them and maintaining them.  The coalition members get their cut of the government largess, and pay for it with loyalty to the guy at the top.  If they're not loyal, he gives them their pick slip and they lose the largess.

This was actually Trump's biggest mistake when he was president, not filling the Federal Government with his coalition.  In his defense, he was in the middle of a Republican civil war, where there were multiple factions and multiple coalitions.

That's exactly what the Democrats face now, and why they can't put Humpty-Dumpty back together.  Because there are multiple coalitions, whoever emerges on top won't know if he (she?) can trust these coalitions because they aren't his coalitions.  They might be able to be integrated into his coalition, given time, but time is exactly what the Democrats do not have right now.

It takes time to forge a governing coalition - just look at any parliamentary system: when the government is stable it is because the governing coalition is solid.  Ministers can issue policy with a reasonable expectation that it will be supported and carried out by the coalition members.  When the governing coalition is unstable, chaos results.  Orders get ignored or slow walked or subverted because the Minister no longer has the loyalty of the coalition members.

Eventually a leader emerges who can attract key talent from outside coalitions and integrate it into his.  This will involve rewards like positions in the bureaucracy or some such - featherbedding is the name of this game.  But until this all gets sorted out and the new coalition is filled with people who think they're better off with the new leader than without, nothing is going anywhere.

Even worse, there will always be serious back stabbing between different coalitions.  Trust is not a virtue most politicians hew to, and quite frankly until they are in a position to remove perks as well as give them, they would be a fool to trust just about anybody.

Some day a leader will emerge to stitch together the various coalitions that make up the Democratic party.  It won't happen in the next 100 days, sure as God made little green apples.

The biggest implication of this is that it will be much more difficult for the Democrats to "fortify" the upcoming election via 2020-style shenanigans.  Sure, the party bosses will want to, but how much do they trust the other coalitions to support them?  Would other coalitions even go so far as to rat them out (with plausible deniability, of course) - leading to various party elders behind bars.  That certainly would make it easier for other party elders to construct a winning coalition once they've taken out some of the competition.

Like I said, these people would have to be fools to trust very many people, and an election cheating scheme requires a lot of people to pull off.  When everyone is on-side you get the 2020 election.  When lots of people are very much not on-side you get, well, the Italian government which has had something like 60 Prime Ministers in 80 years.

The best analogy I can think of is the scene from The Godfather where all the families get together to divide things up.  Nobody trusts anybody.  That's where the Democrats are right now.

I repeat: you can't put a coalition together overnight - heck, it's taken almost a decade for Donald Trump to put together a serious coalition and a lot of his party still hates him.  I think that the Democrats will come more apart before they start to come together as the various factions start putting out mob hit style rumor whispers about their Democratic competitors.  We will hear a lot about this in the next few weeks.

And this is why the only choice at all for them to to fall in behind Kamala and hope for the best in the down ticket races.  But remember, while Kamala might have inherited Slow Joe's campaign cash, she was never really part of this coalition.  It's not loyal to her at all.  It may be that she's been so ineffective in office because Joe's coalition kept sabotaging her.  She has to build a coalition, and right quick.  The cash will help her there but coalition building takes time.

She doesn't have that.  What she does have is a whole boatload of enemies in the Democratic party.  Some of these think that their best bet to get to the top of the greasy pole is for her not to get there.  They'd rather have Trump in the Oval Office because they will have 4 years to build a coalition.  If Kamala is there, things are a lot trickier for them.

I almost feel sorry for the Democrats in general and Kamala in particular.  Almost.  It's ironic that all their short term tactical maneuvering has led them to this very spot.  Couldn't have happened to a nicer bunch of Mob Bosses.

Well that didn't take long

Leaked video from Rehoboth about Biden's advisors convincing him to drop out of the race.

This is really funny, and really well done.  I love how he gets names and dates repeatedly wrong.  And was Corn Pop really a Soviet General?  Who knew?

Oldest photo of a First Lady

The National Portrait Gallery has acquired the oldest photo of a First Lady, an 1846 daguerreotype of Dolly Madison.  This is a very cool picture, as it captures some of her personality - people chose very formal poses back then.  No smiling.  Except for a hint of a smile from Dolly.

The preference cascade has begun

A Preference Cascade is when a large portion of the population begins to realize - despite relentless government and/or media propaganda - that a lot of other folks think like they do and that the propaganda is, well propaganda.  This is almost always catastrophic for The Powers That Be, because Preference Cascades tend to accelerate.  As this progresses, formerly reliable underlings begin to think that TPTB are going to lose, and start to refuse to stick their necks out to protect the current order.

It's one thing to stuff ballot boxes when you think that everyone on your side is on board and your guy is going to win - and any potential investigation will be done in the most slipshod manner.  It's quite a different thing when you wonder just how many of the guys on your side are actually going to go through with this, and if the other guy wins will you be facing 20 years in Club Fed.

At the extreme, the security services join the preference cascade.  They smell an emerging winner and want to be on side when that happens.  At this point, things get pretty grim for TPTB.

I think we're at that stage now - well, not the up against the wall shooting stage - but a cascading loss of confidence and loyalty in the Democratic Party itself for Joe Biden.  This will shrink the Margin of Cheat except in the most blue of blue states, and given that it looks like New York and New Jersey may be in play, there may not really be a lot of blue left.

In other words, everyone is starting to realize that the propaganda was just that - propaganda.

Add in the drop in contributions to the Democratic Party (the preference cascade is hitting the donor class, who are realizing that this "investment" may not have a return, and hedge their bets by contributing to Trump).

Now add in the media, who start to see that they are better off trying to help the Democratic Party, rather than mean old Joe Biden.

The question is not whether Trump will win, but whether the Preference Cascade will give him coattails, and how long they will be.

My guess is that the Preference Cascade is in full swing in the Secret Service, as competent and dedicated agents there start to wonder when (not if) to throw their corrupt bosses under the bus.  There's a lot coming out about this Charlie Foxtrot in the SS, so that suggests that the lack of loyalty to Joe Biden is advancing nicely there.

Once the Preference Cascade begins, TPTB have precious few tools to counter it.  For example, cracking down on leaking from within the Secret Service will do nothing but convince the undecided there that TPTB are untrustworthy and have to go.

Which will make Donald Trump only the second President to serve non-consecutive terms.

Endorsed

BREAKING: Donald Trump calls for Robert F. Kennedy Jr to receive Secret Service pic.twitter.com/vRvxTzghvX

— ALX 🇺🇸 (@alx) July 15, 2024

 

Well, duh. Kind of makes you wonder why they haven't so far.

Richard Strauss - Elektra

So they tried to assassinate Donald Trump.  The question is whether they will try again.  The next question will be what will be the reaction if they succeed.

It's that second question that made me think of Strauss and his ferocious opera Elektra.  That girl had family issues: Her father was Agamemnon, leader of the Greeks against Troy.  He sacrificed her sister to the Gods to gain favorable winds for the invasion fleet.  Her mother Klytemnestra murdered her father in revenge.  Her brother Orest kills their mother in revenge.  Mad with fury, Elektra dances in the blood of the guilty.

Quite a story.  The Nazis quite admired it, the necessity of bloodletting to purify the family.  Yesterday's events made me think on what might befall should they succeed in their manic desires to stop Trump by any means necessary.

May God save this Honorable Republic.

Is anyone using old D-Link DIR-859 WiFi routers?

If so, you need to replace it right away.  There is a critical vulnerability which allows a Bad Guy to dump user accounts and passwords - basically, this lets him take over the box.  Because the routers are End Of Life (EOL) there will never be a software update to fix this.

Fortunately, home WiFi routers are pretty cheap these days.

I used to run D-Link in the past (I'm pretty sure I had one at FOB Borepatch, back in the day) but those are long gone now.  If you have one then run, don't walk to get a replacement.

Details here for those who are interested.

Dad Joke CCCXXXI

What's a golfer's worst nightmare?

The Bogeyman.

Censorship: Action, Reaction

So Youtube hates guns and is trying to demonitize shooting channels.  So one of the channels decided to follow the rules, with hilarious results.

I believe that this is the first BBQ security vulnerability

Oops:

Keen meatheads better hope they haven't angered any cybersecurity folk before allowing their Traeger grills to update because a new high-severity vulnerability could be used for all kinds of high jinks.

With summer in full swing in the northern hemisphere, it means BBQ season is upon us, and with Traeger being one of the most trusted brands in grilling and smoking, there's a good chance that many backyard cookouts could be ruined if crafty crims have their way.

Nick Cerne, security consultant at Bishop Fox, discovered a few weaknesses in certain Traeger grills, ones that have the Traeger Grill D2 Wi-Fi Controller installed – an embedded device allowing a grill to be controlled using a mobile app.

Successful exploits could allow a remote attacker to execute day-ruining commands such as temperature change controls or shutting down the grill altogether.

I think that we can all agree that the definition of a Black Hat hacker is someone who changes the temperature on your smoking briskit to 400 degrees ...

But put a computer in it, expect security bugs.

 

 

Happy Birthday, Eduardo Falu!

In keeping with The Queen Of The World's birthday, here's a composer from a part of the world I had never heard of.  I grew up on classical music, and for guitar that meant Andres Segovia (with a tip of the old chapeau to Julian Bream).  I had never heard of Eduardo Falu, Argentina's great guitarist.  He's been dead these ten years or more but many of his songs are on Youtube.  This is an entire concert he gave in Seville in 1978.  He would be 101 years old today.

Aaron Tippin - Where The Stars And Stripes And The Eagle Fly

The Queen of the World and I were talking today, remembering the bicentennial celebration in 1976.  She pointed out that two years from now will be the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence.  Wow.

It's still worth celebrating.

Happy birthday, Queen Of The World!

 If you wanted to launch some fireworks in her honor, that would be just fine.

Britain's National Health Service throws away confidential medical information

And then blames the medical student who had to take out the trash:

A data protection gaffe affecting the UK's NHS is being pinned on a medical student who placed too much trust in their bin bags.

An investigation was launched following the discovery of confidential medical data sprawled across a back alley in Jesmond, a pricier suburb of Newcastle in the North East of England.

The medical student is thought to have thrown the documents into their domestic waste, which was placed outside for collection, but through one means or another, the documents escaped to the freedom of an alleyway off Lonsdale Terrace only to be found by a passerby.

So what can we say about the NHS from this?  Well, they have a terrible process for sensitive waste disposal.  They may actually not have any process at all.  Certainly the evidence does not suggest rigorous training and enforcement.

Also, we see Yet Another circling of the wagons, with a hopelessly weak excuse that blames the lowest guy on the totem pole.  That does not suggest that their process will be improved next week, or next month, or next year.  Remember, the Organs of the State do not self-correct.

But socialized medicine is awesome, amirite?

 

Even Hitler knows that Joe Biden is done

This is pretty well done, with Hitler watching the debate.

So what's going on with Kaskersky antivirus?

It looks like just about all of their corporate execs (other than CEO Eugene Kaspersky) have been sanctioned by the US Fed.Gov.  Oh, yeah, the software is banned in the USA after July 20:

The US Treasury Department's Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) cited national security threats in designating the 12 individuals as under sanction. In making the announcement, it also noted: "OFAC has not designated Kaspersky Lab, its parent or subsidiary companies, or its CEO."

The Treasury did, however, designate just about every other exec who reports directly to the Moscow-based firm's chief exec "for operating in the technology sector of the Russian Federation economy," which under EO 14024 is a no-no.

It follows Thursday's actions by the Commerce Department that prohibit Kaspersky Lab Inc from providing its software and other security services in America from July 20 — plus years of directives and mandates to kick Kaspersky products out of US government networks.

This seems weird - maybe it's just more escalation of Great Power Politics between the US and Russia by the neocons in our government.  Kaspersky has made good products, and a scan of the Borepatch archives shows only references to what has been a quality security company. 

If you use their antivirus, it looks like you need to go shopping.

I like the cut of her (possibly Vice-Presidential) jib

Tucker Carlson interviews Tulsi Gabbard.  She is seemingly under consideration by Donald Trump for potential Vice President.  Clearly he hates women.  Or something.

In particular, if you are worried that she is a typical Hawaiian liberal Democrat, you should skip t0 45:00 or so.  Or 55:00.  but you should really listen to the whole darn thing.

No. this is not (yet) a Borebatch ensorsement for Tulsi Gabbard for Donald Trump's Vice President.  But her journey is a lot like mine, and she is very, very impressive (and very, very not a Mike Pence or Kamalal Harris way).

Keep an eye on Tulsi Gabbard.  Just sayin'.

Henri Vieuxtemps - Souvenir d'Amerique, Variations Burlesques sur "Yankee Doodle"

We are all the way to the middle of the year, and hard up against Independence Day this week.  I have long thought that you can better know your own country by visiting others (at least, this has been my experience).  Sometimes a foreigner can tell you something you hadn't known about your own land.

Henri Vieuxtemps was a Belgian composer and violin player in the first part of the 19th century.  A child prodigy, he toured all over playing for the Great and the Good.  In the 1840s he came to tour America.  He left us this, what is perhaps his most famous composition, at least on these shores.  It's quite different from other versions of the song, which makes it interesting (at least to me).

Russia, China, Iran, North Korea, etc.

 In my most recent post, I brought up the 25th Amendment. The comments uniformly consider the impact from a national perspective. Which candidate and party will win the White House in November? Would leaving Pr. Biden in office improve the GOP's chances?

If it was only that simple.

Military and political leaders in every country in the world watched Pr. Biden's performance in the debate. They looked at his expressions. Watched Jill Biden help him off the stage and then praise him like a toddler at the after party. I suspect they already knew but now everyone knows and we know they know.

Every day he remains in office is a day we don't have a Commander in Chief. 

Hillary Clinton once ran an ad asking who you wanted answering the phone at 3 AM when a crisis happened. The answer wasn't Hillary, but it's a good question.

Who is answering the phone at the White House tonight?

 

Let's Be Honest

I am not suggesting that Pr. Biden step aside and allow his party to select a different candidate in this year's election.

I am stating that the Vice-President and the Cabinet are duty bound to invoke Section 4 of the 25th Amendment and remove Pr. Biden because he is clearly unable to discharge the duties of the office.

Dad Joke CCCXXX

I just burned my Hawaiian pizza.  I should have baked it at aloha temperature.

The Rat Bastards lose a privacy battle

Good:

One of the major data brokers engaged in the deeply alienating practice of selling detailed driver behavior data to insurers has shut down that business.

Verisk, which had collected data from cars made by General Motors, Honda, and Hyundai, has stopped receiving that data, according to The Record, a news site run by security firm Recorded Future. According to a statement provided to Privacy4Cars, and reported by The Record, Verisk will no longer provide a "Driving Behavior Data History Report" to insurers.

Skeptics have long assumed that car companies had at least some plan to monetize the rich data regularly sent from cars back to their manufacturers, or telematics. But a concrete example of this was reported by The New York Times' Kashmir Hill, in which drivers of GM vehicles were finding insurance more expensive, or impossible to acquire, because of the kinds of reports sent along the chain from GM to data brokers to insurers. Those who requested their collected data from the brokers found details of every trip they took: times, distances, and every "hard acceleration" or "hard braking event," among other data points.

You will no doubt be shocked to hear that car dealers "helped" customers opt-in, as part of getting their brand new vehicles ready for the road.

But it looks like the revenue from this didn't offset the bad PR and customer bad feelings associated with the program, and so they dropped it like a hot potato.

GM quickly announced a halt to data sharing in late March, days after the Times' reporting sparked considerable outcry. GM had been sending data to both Verisk and LexisNexis Risk Solutions, the latter of which is not signaling any kind of retreat from the telematics pipeline. LexisNexis' telematics page shows logos for carmakers Kia, Mitsubishi, and Subaru.

...

Disclosure of GM's stealthily authorized data sharing has sparked numerous lawsuits, investigations from California and Texas agencies, and interest from Congress and the Federal Trade Commission.

Act like a Rat Bastard, get treated like a Rat Bastard.

Illegal food

It seems that there are some types of food that are illegal in the United States - for example, you can't sell horse meat for human consumption.

Enter Illegal Chips, which allows you to taste these forbidden fruits in potato chip form.

I had not known any of that.  Of course, my tastes are more mainstream, such as Walkers Roast Chicken crisps.

Sweet Sixteen

This blog is sixteen years old today.  Dang, in a couple of years it will be able to vote.

Lots of changes in the last sixteen years.  I started blogging because of the Heller decision.  The gun control wars continue, but it's an entirely different landscape today than it was then.  Good.

I do miss a bunch of the old regular blogs I used to link to - Gormogons, Aretae, Fosetti, a bunch of others.  Miguel has now joined them.  I can understand the feeling as I came within a whisker of giving up myself 9 or 10 years ago.

It's weird that the blog has been around long enough that it saw Wolfgang's entire life, from when I first got him to that last awful day.  I still go back through the "Wolfgang" tag once in a while.  He's a dog that is taking some getting over.

The blog saw me move from Massachusetts to Atlanta to Maryland to Florida.  That's a lot of moving around in not a lot of time.

And it let me introduce The Queen Of The World to you.  She kind of scratched her head at the whole blogging thing at first, but she's the one who suggested I post about film scores and Dad Jokes.  I need to do more of both of those.

Because the old passionate topics - gun control, global warming, politics - have gone stale for me.  I've said pretty much all I have to say on them, and have come to realize that the world has gone mad and shouting into the wind is just adding hot air to cold.  I actually feel better doing Dad Jokes, not getting myself all wound up.  

The Queen Of The World has helped here as well.

I emailed Miguel when he hung up his blogging spurs to tell him that I was sorry to see him stop but understood his motivation.  He was very gracious in his reply, complimenting my stuff - but I am convinced that my best blogging days were long ago, 2009-2012 or so.  That's a decade in the rear view mirror.

So apologies if this place isn't what it used to be.  I'm not what I used to be, and that is probably a good thing.

In any case, when I put up my first post, what I did not expect at all was:

16 years
Almost 14,000 posts
Over 50,000 comments (!!!)
Over 14 Million page views (!)

I guess that predicting the future is hard, especially about things that haven't happened yet ...

Anyway, thank you to everyone who stops by here.  It's the readers - and especially the commenters - that make this place what it is, and keeps me coming back.

Vaya con Dios, Miguel

Miguel is hanging up his blogging spurs, which is a shame - but I understand his motivation.

Thanks for the free Internet ice cream, buddy.

Adobe updates License terms to be less douchy

The key word here is "less":

Adobe has promised to update its terms of service to make it "abundantly clear" that the company will "never" train generative AI on creators' content after days of customer backlash, with some saying they would cancel Adobe subscriptions over its vague terms.

Users got upset last week when an Adobe pop-up informed them of updates to terms of use that seemed to give Adobe broad permissions to access user content, take ownership of that content, or train AI on that content. The pop-up forced users to agree to these terms to access Adobe apps, disrupting access to creatives' projects unless they immediately accepted them.

...

On X (formerly Twitter), YouTuber Sasha Yanshin wrote that he canceled his Adobe license "after many years as a customer," arguing that "no creator in their right mind can accept" Adobe's terms that seemed to seize a "worldwide royalty-free license to reproduce, display, distribute" or "do whatever they want with any content" produced using their software.

...

Adobe's design leader Scott Belsky replied, telling Yanshin that Adobe had clarified the update in a blog post and noting that Adobe's terms for licensing content are typical for every cloud content company. But he acknowledged that those terms were written about 11 years ago and that the language could be plainer, writing that "modern terms of service in the current climate of customer concerns should evolve to address modern day concerns directly."

...

"You forced people to sign new Terms," Yanshin told Belsky on X. "Legally, they are the only thing that matters."

The original story is here.

I'm not sure this brouhaha is over.

Quote of the Day - Cancer edition

This week's ordeals made me think of a Churchill quote - unexpectedly a quote about Sir Winston, rather than by him.  His great bete noir in Parliament was Lady Nancy Astor of the Unionist Party (Churchill led the Tory Party).  Probably the most famous Nancy Astor story is the one where, after a particularly contentious Parliamentary debate she remarked "Winston, if you were my husband I would poison your coffee" and he replied "Nancy, if you were my wife I would drink it with pleasure."  Good times, good times.

But that's not the quote, although it does come from Lady Nancy.  Churchill developed a tumor, and it was removed.  Naturally, this was front page news throughout the realm.  A week or two later, the news reported that the tumor was benign.

At this, Lady Nancy remarked that "They seem to have removed the only non-malignant part of Winston".

UPDATE 25 JUNE 2024 14:27: Dwight has more Churchill here.  Funny and interesting at the same time.

Oldest bottle of wine unearthed

Long time readers will recall that awhile back I posted about a bottle of Roman wine from around 325 AD.  Well, that discovery has just been pushed back by three centuries:

In 2019, a glass cinerary urn containing a reddish liquid was discovered in a 1st century Roman mausoleum in Carmona, southern Spain.

...

Researchers from the University of Córdoba analyzed samples of the liquid to determine its composition. They found that it had a PH 7.5, close to neutral, and contained biomarkers that are exclusive to wine. High-performance liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry (HPLC-MS) identified seven wine polyphenols all of which matched those in modern wines produced in this area of Andalucía, including dessert wines from Montilla-Moriles, sherry-type wines from Jerez, and manzanilla from Sanlúcar. 

Cool.

Operation after action report

So yesterday had the expected and the unexpected.  The procedure itself went smoothly - it was a Mohs surgery, where they shave off layers of skin and then have a pathologist analyze them under a microscope.  If there's cancer in the cells, then GOTO 1 and repeat.  Keep going until there's no cancer left.  Simples.

I assumed (correctly) that they'd numb my ear right up so I wouldn't feel a thing.  What I hadn't expected was that I would hear everything, up close and personal.  Scrapey-scrapey.  Then when they were done they cauterized the area, which kind of sounded like crackle-crackle.  And the whiff of black smoke that floated past and the smell of burnt barbecue just added to the whole experience.

Still, it's better than cancer.

My cancer was Squamous Cell Carcinoma, the middle (on the deadly scale) skin cancer.  The one you want if you get one is Basil Cell Carcinoma, which doesn't really spread.  The worst kind is melanoma.

I had noticed a bump on my ear that didn't go away.  I went to the dermatologist after a couple months because, well, it didn't seem like it was improving with age like a fine wine.  While I was there I pointed out various other bumps and blemishes which they were unconcerned with, but they told me that they weren't going to let me leave with the thing on my ear.  And so off it came.

A week later they called and said that the pathologist had determined squamous, and I had to come back in for Mohs.  And none of that waiting six months for the next open appointment slot, can I come in next week?

And so there I was yesterday.  Done and cancer free.

What was unexpected was how bad I felt yesterday when I got home.  Everything was out patient, and I drove myself.  But I kind of felt like I had been run over by a bus.  Probably it was something unrelated (summer cold) that happened at the same time.  Spent most of the afternoon in bed and crashed early, but feel pretty good now.

Lessons learned:

1. Early detection is A Very Good Thing Indeed.  When something pops up on your skin and doesn't go away in a couple of weeks, go get it checked out.
2. Wear a hat.  I've been in Florida for 4 years and do a lot of walking.  It's Florida for crying out loud.
   

Going under the knife today

Skin cancer - hey, it's Florida, right?

I expect this is just going to be a pain in the butt (well, ear) since we caught it early and since it's not the nasty variant.  Back later.

55 year old bug fixed

This may be the oldest bug fix in history, in the 1969 "Lunar Lander" text based computer game.  I really enjoyed that, back in the 1970s.

And yes, it printed out on paper.  The story is very cool:

In 2009, just short of the 40th anniversary of the first Moon landing, I set out to find the author of the original Lunar Lander game, which was then primarily known as a graphical game, thanks to the graphical version from 1974 and a 1979 Atari arcade title. When I discovered that Storer created the oldest known version as a teletype game, I interviewed him and wrote up a history of the game. Storer later released the source code to the original game, written in FOCAL, on his website.

...

Fast forward to 2024, when Martin—an AI expert, game developer, and former postdoctoral associate at MIT—stumbled upon a bug in Storer's high school code while exploring what he believed was the optimal strategy for landing the module with maximum fuel efficiency—a technique known among Kerbal Space Program enthusiasts as the "suicide burn." This method involves falling freely to build up speed and then igniting the engines at the last possible moment to slow down just enough to touch down safely. He also tried another approach—a more gentle landing.

"I recently explored the optimal fuel burn schedule to land as gently as possible and with maximum remaining fuel," Martin wrote on his blog. "Surprisingly, the theoretical best strategy didn’t work. The game falsely thinks the lander doesn’t touch down on the surface when in fact it does. Digging in, I was amazed by the sophisticated physics and numerical computing in the game. Eventually I found a bug: a missing 'divide by two' that had seemingly gone unnoticed for nearly 55 years."

Very cool story.

A Roman bath that has been in continual use since the 1st Century

The narrator kind of drones on a bit, but this is pretty amazing - a Roman bath that has been used continually for almost 2000 years.

Dad Joke CCCXXVIIII - special Father's Day edition

Why wasn't one Father's Day gift better than the other?

Because it was a tie.

It's time to opt out of Windows Recall

Holy cow, what a nightmare:

Microsoft is not giving up on its controversial Windows Recall, though says it will give customers an option to opt in instead of having it on by default, and will beef up the security of any data the software stores.

Recall, for those who missed the dumpster fire, was announced on May 20 as a "feature" on forthcoming Copilot+ Windows PCs. It takes a snapshot of whatever is on the user's screen every few seconds. These images are stored on-device and analyzed locally by an AI model, using OCR to extract text from the screen, to make past work searchable and more accessible.

The ultimate goal for Recall is to record nearly everything the user does on their Windows PC, including conversations and app usage, as well as screenshots, and present that archive in a way that allows the user to remind themselves what they were doing at some point in the past and pull up relevant files and web pages to interact with again. The archive can be searched using text, or the user can drag a control along a timeline bar to recall activities.

But security testers have raised doubts about the safety of recorded information and have developed tools that can extract these snapshots and whatever sensitive information they contain. The data is for now stored as an easy to access non-encrypted SQLite database in the local file system.

"Dumpster fire" doesn't even begin to describe it.  It's easy to imagine all sorts of ways that this would violate laws (e.g. storing healthcare PII unencrypted is a HIPAA violation).

Never mind what sort of reindeer games hackers might get up to - after all, Windows has historically been so difficult for viruses and malware to invade, amirite? 

If you're still using Windows, you should configure it to opt out of Recall.  Or upgrade to Linux.  All the cool kids are.

This is getting out of hand

Someone is going to die if this keeps up:

England's NHS Blood and Transplant (NHSBT) has issued an urgent call to O Positive and O Negative blood donors to book appointments and donate after last week’s cyberattack on pathology provider Synnovis impacted multiple hospitals in London.

On June 4, operations at multiple large NHS hospitals in London were disrupted by the ransomware attack that the Russian cybercrime group Qilin (a.k.a. Agenda) launched on Synnovis.

The incident impacted blood transfusions, with many non-urgent procedures being canceled or redirected.

 And so for the lack of adequate backups, Blighty is running out of blood.

Alternative to Adobe Photoshop

OldNFO points out a post at Lawrence's place about how Adobe has changed their terms of service.  Basically, you have to agree that they own all the work you create with their software, in order to get access to your work that you created on their software.

Sweet. 

Now IANAL, and so don't know how the (inevitable) Class Action lawsuit(s) will play out.  However, I am an enthusiastic user of The GIMP, a free (as in speech) Open Source Photoshop-alike application.

Yes, it has a Photoshop-worthy learning curve, but it is full featured and powerful, cross platform, and free.  No weird terms of service getting changed at midnight.

If you're looking for an alternative to Photoshop, I highly recommend this.

In which I (kind of) disagree with Divemedic

Divemedic posts a complaint about squishy RINOs.  I actually don't have any disagreement on this.

Where my opinion diverges from his is that the old "left" vs. "right" paradigm is kind of ending.  I haven't seen a good name for hte new emerging paradigm, so let's just call it "populists" vs. "business as usual".  Lousy name, but this is where the political action is, both here and all over the place (Argentina, El Salvador, France, Germany, the UK).

The Press is hyperventilating about the emergence of the "far right" in Europe, which entirely misses what's happening.  I've posted endlessly about this, but this is maybe what comes the closest to a (non-Borepatchian length) summary.

Populism is regularly trashed by the Great and the Good, but the inroads that Trump is making with the Black community doesn't seem to be typical pandering, but rather tapping into a real sense of dissatisfaction with Business As Usual.  Kind of like what the rest of us feel.

It also seems that RFK's support comes from the same well spring of dissatisfaction.  If that's true, it implies that RFK's candidacy will hurt Trump more than Biden.  And I still have the feeling that there's a non-trivial chance that the Deep State will try to assassinate Trump, and maybe succeed.  The Great and the Good keep complaining that Trump has "overturned norms" but it sure looks to me that they're the ones that are doing that.

Your mileage may vary, void where prohibited, do not remove tag under penalty of law. 

Dad Joke CCCXXVIII

If someone is playing a sub par round of golf, are they playing well or poorly?

A day for remembering

80 years ago the Allies stormed the Atlantic Wall.

Via Chris Lynch, we see that the French High School kids in Normandy remember.

82 years ago was the battle of Midway.  The torpedo bombers sacrificed themselves almost to a man but that opened the way for the dive bombers to rip the heart out of the Imperial Japanese Navy.

106 years ago the Marines went on the assault at Belleau Woods in the Great War.  It was one of the costliest days in Marine Corps history, and took heroes like First Sergent Dan Daly to rally the men: Come on you sons of bitches!  Do you want to live forever?

 

Truly a day for remembering.  Remember them.

Google has a remembrance today, too.

Some lesbian writer.  So brave, no doubt.  So very brave.  

Hey Google - french kids spent minutes chanting U-S-A!  You might ponder what that means.

Are any readers familiar with configuring Palo Alto Networks gear?

I know Cisco, not Palo Alto.  If any of you do know hoe to do this, Old NFO could use some help.

There are only 61 living Medal Of Honor recipients

There used to be 62.   God speed, sir.

Rest in peace, and rise in Glory.

Dad Joke CCCXXVII

I made a playlist for hiking.  It has music from Peanuts, The Cranberries, and Eminem.

I call it my trail mix.

Beach Art

We ran across a local artist whose work we quite like, Tim Steller from Stellar Art Works. Here are a couple of examples:

Of course, The Queen Of The World is a mermaid.  He has that, too.

One of the things we really like is how he takes local materials and creates works that look one way during the day and a different way when light up at night.

Recommended.  I have no business relationship with Tim, I just like his work.

Oh, yeah, he does some with gun, too.  Go check his work out.

Rubicon

The Democratic Party has crossed the Rubicon.  What's strange is that they're in a fairly weak position, which implies that we will see a ratcheting up of more of their actions to protect "our Democracy".  I don't see any possibility that they will ratchet any of this down; on the contrary, Trump's chances of being Epsteined in jail are getting a lot of discussion these days.

But Rubicon isn't quite the proper analogy.  I posted what I thought was the right analogy back on January 6, 2020.  It's sad to see that it reads every bit as true today as it did then, including an ancient Roman Epsteining.

Dura lex, sed lex.

As I look ahead, I am filled with foreboding; like the Roman, I seem to see "the River Tiber foaming with much blood."

- Enoch Powell MP, quoting Virgil in "The Rivers of Blood" speech

Enoch Powell was one of the first politicians to be de-platformed.  As with most of these sorts of innovations, this happened in the Old World in the 1960s.  I posted about this seven years ago, although Google can no longer find this; DuckDuckGo can, though (and that tells you everything you need to know about search engines):

45 years ago last month, British MP Enoch Powell gave a stunning speech.  In it, he looked on the immigration of foreign peoples into the Kingdom and the way that this was changing the UK's culture.  It was widely criticized by all Right Thinking People® but at the same time was wildly popular with working class Britons.  Indeed, a thousand dockworkers marched on Parliament in protest when Powell was sacked from his positions of leadership.

Dockworkers marching in support of a Tory politician.

The most famous line in his speech is where he quoted Virgil:

As I look ahead, I am filled with foreboding. Like the Roman, I seem to see 'the River Tiber foaming with much blood'.

He was roundly damned for his "inflammatory" and "racist" remarks.  And so the British Political Class went back to sleep - indeed, the last Labour government intentionally accelerated immigration to make the UK "less British".

Today we saw the occupation of the Capitol building by people "annoyed" by what they (and many others) see as the theft of a Presidential election.  The protesters chased off first the Capitol Hill police and then the Congress itself.  It looks like one women lost her life, shot by a cop.  We'll have to see - early news is notoriously unreliable.

But looking at this, I thought of Virgil.  He of course, did not make up the Aeneid out of whole cloth; Virgil wrote propaganda for the first Roman Emperor, Augustus.  The Aeneid was propaganda, but what propaganda.  It made Caesar Augustus' family history into legend.  Because it was propaganda, it was exaggeration, but it was useful exaggeration to Augustus who while not related to the Great Leaders of the previous century was able to deftly exploit those leaders' exploits to his own advantage.

The most important leader at the beginning of the end of the Roman Republic was Tiberius Sempronius Gracchus,  He was the guy who noticed that while the Roman Republic had swept all foreign enemies before it, the working class had suffered despite the great riches of empire.  Tiberius Gracchus decided to run for public office despite his great family wealth, and to put forth his formidable political skills to benefit the Roman Working Joe.  He failed, because the Roman political establishment buried their traditional political differences in the face of Gracchus' challenge, and in fact had him killed.    

In short, the Roman Deep State closed ranks to block needed reform.  It was the beginning of the end of the Roman Republic as long cherished political norms (Mos Maiorum) were cast aside.  And so two generations of the Roman political elite were exterminated in a civil war so profound that what was left of the exhausted Republican Elite welcomed the first Imperator with open arms because he ended the civil wars.

Throughout this whole period in Roman History, the Law was supreme.  Of course, the Law bent to the prevailing political winds.  As the Roman said, "The Law is harsh, but it is the Law".  Dura Lex, sed Lex.

Donald Trump is the Tiberius Gracchus of our day.  He is the guy who noticed that while the American Republic had swept all foreign enemies before it, the working class had suffered despite the great riches of empire.  Donald Trump decided to run for public office despite his great family wealth, and to put forth his formidable political skills to benefit the American Working Joe.  He failed, because the American political establishment buried their traditional political differences in the face of Trump's challenge, and in fact had him [well, we'll have to see if they let him live free, or jail him, or kill him].

But Tiberius Gracchus had many supporters, who didn't let the Roman political elite rest easy.  Likewise with Donald Trump, as we saw today:

Some of Gracchus' supporters were killed, as we saw today.  Looking forward, I am filled with foreboding.  Like the Roman, I seem to see the river Potomac foaming with much blood.  We're already started, it seems.  The only questions really remaining is who is to play the part of Augustus Caesar, and how many of the elite families (and, it must be said, other families) must die before a grateful Republic reaches for their savior Emperor?

But the Founding Fathers knew about the failings of the Roman Republic.  They strived to avoid them in their Republic.  As a student of history I must say that they avoided the Roman pitfalls for 200 years.  Not bad at all.

Never mind that the Romans avoided these for almost 500 years.  God Save this Honorable Republic.

Interesting security idea

Actually, it's a breath of fresh air:

A Google security bigwig has had enough of federally mandated phishing tests, saying they make colleagues hate IT teams for no added benefit.

Matt Linton leads Google's security response and incident management division. Tasked with rolling out phishing exercises every year, he believes tests should be replaced by the cybersecurity equivalent of a fire drill.

Today's phishing tests more closely resemble the fire drills of the early days, which were more like fire evacuation drills – sprung upon a building's residents with no warning and later blaming them as individuals for their failures.

Yeah, that's about right.

Linton's idea of a possible alternative is considerably different compared to the tests office workers have become accustomed to over the years.

Hello!  I am a Phishing Email. 

This is a drill - this is only a drill!

If I were an actual phishing email, I might ask you to log into a malicious site with your actual username or password, or I might ask you to run a suspicious command.

You can learn more about recognizing phishing emails at and even test yourself to see how good you are at spotting them. Regardless of the form a phishing email takes, you can quickly report them to the security team when you notice they're not what they seem.

To complete the annual phishing drill, please report me.

Thanks for doing your part to keep

A. Tricky. Phish, Ph.D

This seems like a much more productive approach, IMHO.  Which means that it will be ignored by The Usual Suspects.

Dad Joke CCCXXVI

Did you hear about the guy who collected candy canes?  They were all in mint condition.

Jo Dee Messina - Heaven Was Needing A Hero

Memorial Day is the traditional start of summer.  Beach, swimming pools, and backyard barbecue is the agenda for most.  But that's not what the day is about.  I posted this twelve years ago and it still captures the spirit of this weekend.  Christian Golczynski is around twenty five years old now.

--------------------------------------------------------------

Memorial Day isn't about barbecues for Christian Golczynski.  He was eight years old when LTC Ric Thompson handed him the flag that had draped his father's coffin.  That was five years ago.

This weekend will be the fifth Memorial Day where he won't be thinking about barbecues.  Next month will be the fifth Father's Day with an empty chair at the dinner table.

That is what Memorial Day is about.

I've posted this song a number of times over the last year or two, as it captures in music the sound of a heart breaking.  The song alternates between memories of the loved and lost, and the stumbling emptiness as the singer tries - and fails - to make sense of the loss.  It's not your typical sentimental Country music song, it's pure, 100 proof grief.

For some, that is what Memorial Day is about.

There is no official music video for this song; Messina is no longer the chart topping singer that she was in the 1990s.  But people have taken this music and found photographs that amplify the music and make it personal.  The second picture is one that I found particularly moving - nearly as much as the one of young Master Golczynski shown here.

This is what Memorial Day is about. 



Heaven Was Needing A Hero (songwriter: Jo Dee Messina)

I came by today to see you
Though I had to let you know
If I knew the last time that I held you was the last time,
I'd have held you and never let go
Oh it's kept me awake night wonderin'
Lie in the dark, just asking "why?"
I've always been told you won't be called home until it's your time

I guess Heaven was needing a hero
Somebody just like you
Brave enough to stand up for what you believe and follow it though
When I try to make it make sense in my mind
The only conclusion I come to
Is that Heaven was needing a hero like you

I remember the last time I saw you
Oh you held your head up proud
I laughed inside when I saw how you were, standing out in the crowd
You're such a part of who I am
Now that part will just be void
No matter how much I need you now
Heaven needed you more

'Cause Heaven was needing a hero
Somebody just like you
Brave enough to stand up for what you believe and follow it though
When I try to make it make sense in my mind
The only conclusion I come to
Is that Heaven was needing a hero like you

Yes, Heaven was needing a hero...that's you.

Abraham Lincoln's letter to Mrs. Bixby is justly famous:

Executive Mansion,
Washington, Nov. 21, 1864.

Dear Madam,

I have been shown in the files of the War Department a statement of the Adjutant General of Massachusetts that you are the mother of five sons who have died gloriously on the field of battle. I feel how weak and fruitless must be any word of mine which should attempt to beguile you from the grief of a loss so overwhelming. But I cannot refrain from tendering you the consolation that may be found in the thanks of the Republic they died to save. I pray that our Heavenly Father may assuage the anguish of your bereavement, and leave you only the cherished memory of the loved and lost, and the solemn pride that must be yours to have laid so costly a sacrifice upon the altar of freedom.

Yours, very sincerely and respectfully,

A. Lincoln

Christian Golczynski also laid a sacrifice on that same altar of our freedom, a sacrifice costly beyond our reckoning.  I hope that the fullness of time will ease his anguish as well.  I fear that it will not.

That is what Memorial Day is about.  Not a barbecue in sight, just pure, 100 proof grief.  This weekend as you go about your normal business of life, remember SSgt Marcus Golczynski.  And Christian.  And what that sacrifice means.  May this Republic be worthy of them.