Face Vocal Band - The Parting Glass

Adieu, 2025.  This is a fine, traditional song for departing guests.

Here's wishing you a very happy 2026.

2025 Blog stats

This was the best year ever for traffic here: 4.5M page views.  This brings the all-time total to 19.5M.  There's quite a market for free Internet blather.

And this year's over 1000 comments from you is (I think) also a record.  Many thanks to everyone who keeps coming by and especially for commenters.

Top referrers:

1. Knuckledraggin My Life Away (thanks, Wirecutter!)
2.  The Feral Irishman (thanks, blog brother!) 
3.  Raconteur Report (thanks, Aesop!)
4.  Normal American (I hope you haven't hung up your blogging shoes)
5.  Busted Knuckles (thanks, CederQ!)
6. The Silicon Graybeard (thanks, buddy!) 

If anyone cares, here is a list of the top posts for traffic.  It's interesting that most are pretty old:

1. I Am TJIC (after 14 years this still gets a ton of traffic)
2. I Confess, I'm Not Opposed To Gun Control (this was fun to write)
3. This Blog Belches Carbon (from all the way back in 2010) 
4. A Layman's Guide to the Science of Global Warming (needs updating)
5. Dad Joke CCCLVIIII (I have no idea why this got so much traffic)
6. Dad Joke CCCLXII (Tuna is doing most of my Dad Joke blogging)
7. Should You Be A Global Warming Skeptic? (from 2009 but superseded by the Layman's Guide post, above)
8. Aaaaarrrrrrgh, Matey! Don't be shiverin' me timbers! (A blog meet from 2009)
9. Google Play Store filled with malware (a post from 2025!)
10. This.  1000x this. (another post from 2025!  Go figure ...)

So a lot of old posts still drawing traffic.  It's gratifying to read them and see how well they've held up.

So goodbye to 2025 blogging.  On to 2026! 

Glen Campbell plays bagpipes on "Mull of Kintyre"

Who knew? 

Free Open Source3 software without Linux

For years I've touted (and recommended) Linux, the Free Open Source Software (FOSS) that is the heart of Internet servers, Internet routing nodes, and Android.  I have a lot of experience with Linux, having run it since kernel version 0.99 back in 1994 or so.  Slackware on 25 pounds of 3.5" floppy disks FTW.

One question that comes up regularly is what non-technical people can do.  While Linux has become a lot easier to install and run, there are still the occasional weirdnesses that some up, link the Brave Browser's refusal to print to anything other than PDF.  This means that if you live in a Linux world, you regularly have to come figure out workarounds.

And thus, the questions.  It's pretty easy for someone like me with 30 years of Linux experience* (good Lord, can it really be that long???), but for everyday folks who don't dig kernel versions and package dependencies, it's a daunting prospect.

As it turns out, there is a ton of high quality FOSS software for Windows and Mac users, and as your current computer ages and falls out of support, these can be a great way to extend the life of your computer.

I highly recommend this article from The Register on where to find high quality, non-malware FOSS packages.  It's very long and information-rich, so if you have an aging computer and you really don't want to load Linux on it, it's worth 10 minutes of your time.

Strongly recommended for normal computer users. Techie users will stay with sudo apt-get install foo but that just sort of proves my point.

About the only thing you won't get for your old Windows or Mac computer are security updates once the OS is end of life.  That's a big issue these days, and while it is possible to lock down a (say) old Windows OS to minimize your risk, it probably takes more tech savvy that installing Linux.  But if you are still getting security patches, FOSS can help you adapt to your apps demanding you upgrade the OS.  

* Interestingly, each year for the last 20 years has been "This is the year of Linux", and it really hasn't because the workarounds haven't ever gone away.  I'd argue that the only place where Linux is truly easy to use is Android, because Google invested a ton of money smoothing it out.

JS BACH - Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring

Merry Christmas, everybody.

 

Luciano Pavarotti and Placido Domingo - O Holy Night

The Christmas Truce, World War II version

I had never heard this story, but it's true.  US and German soldiers lost in the Battle Of The Bulge had Christmas dinner together rather than killing each other, all due to a good German Hausfrau who had had enough of war on Christmas.  You have to jump ahead to around 6:30 for the story - before that, it's mincemeat pie recipe from the WWII US Army Field Cookbook (which also seems pretty interesting). 

And while it's not (quite) Christmas yet, Hans Gruber is fixin' to fall off of Nakatomi Plaza.

All I want for Christmas

James emails this bit of awesome:

 

Dad Joke CCCLXV

What do you call someone who is afraid of Santa Claus?

A Klaus-trophobe. 

Georg Frederick Handel - Hallelujah Chorus from The Messiah

With a Flash Mob at Macy's, and accompanied by the Wanamaker organ - the World's largest pipe organ. 

Brad Paisley & Steven Tyler - Run Run Rudolph

You're welcome. 

Andy Williams - It's The Most Wonderful Time Of The Year

This looks like a number from The Andy Williams Show, maybe late 1960s.  We all watched this back then. 

Reports of the GOP's demise have been exagerated

We are swimming in reports of how badly the Republicans are going to do in next year's election (no links because I'm lazy but these are a dime a dozen if you look).  I disagree.

In general, mid-term elections favor the party out of power.  This is true so often that it is almost considered a law of nature, particularly during a President's second term.  What you don't ever see is anyone ask why do voters reject the party in power in the mid-terms? There's quite a simple answer.

Fatigue.

The voters have had some time to get used to the Administration and starts to tire of the typical amount of scandal, incompetence, and general dum-assery that any administration accumulates.

That's not at all what we see today.  The main focus of the Trump 47 administration has been border security, deporting criminal illegal aliens, economic growth, and lower inflation.  There are remarkable results for all of these, despite the legacy media's frantic efforts to hide them.

Each of these are 80% issues - i.e. the issues all get 80% support in polls.

I would go so far as to say that the voter fatigue is on the other foot.  It's the Democrats who spent the last four years stumbling through a morass of dumb-assery.  And who are all on the 20% end of the issues that voters care about.

Voters have short memories but remember that Trump has only been back in office for 11 months and has remarkable achievements - achievements that for the previous four years the legacy media said were impossible to achieve.

The polls for the Democrats are a dumpster fire.  There's a reason for this.  Action, reaction. 

What is particularly ironic is that now it's basically proved that the 2020 election was stolen from Trump. If the Democrats in Fulton County hadn't done this, Trump 46 would have bumbled through a second term with his appointees working with the Deep State to undercut him - just like his 45 term.  Instead, they gave him four years to plan this remarkable turnaround.

Sure, he still grates on a lot of people, but at the end of the day most voters will go with what's working for them.  They got plenty of pretty promises from Biden, promises that never panned out.

Donald Trump has an ability to reverse the laws of gravity, and mid-term voter fatigue will be just another example of this. 

Thurl Ravenscroft - You're A Mean One Mr. Grinch

For years I thought this was sung by Boris Karloff, but he only narrated the show.  It was actually sung by Thurl Ravenscroft - the voice of Tony The Tiger.  And sang in "A Pirate's Life For Me."

And yes, Dr. Seuss wrote the lyrics. 

AI Browser Extensions considered harmful

Well, duh:

Ad blockers and VPNs are supposed to protect your privacy, but four popular browser extensions have been doing just the opposite. According to research from Koi Security, these pernicious plug-ins have been harvesting the text of chatbot conversations from more than 8 million people and sending them back to the developers.

The four seemingly helpful extensions are Urban VPN Proxy, 1ClickVPN Proxy, Urban Browser Guard, and Urban Ad Blocker. They're distributed via the Chrome Web Store and Microsoft Edge Add-ons, but include code designed to capture and transmit browser-based interactions with popular AI tools.

I believe that the very first of Borepatch's Laws of Security - from way, way back in 2008 - was "Free Download" is Internet-speak for "Open your mouth and close your eyes".

Plus ca change ... 

So you really shouldn't use them. 

 

Yet another reason to love James Earl Jones

He was a 1911 guy.  And funny as all get out about it: 

Nat 'King' Cole - The Christmas Song

This is perhaps the Platonic Christmas song. 

Lawsuit over FedRAMP compliance

This is perhaps a niche security topic, but some of you are as niche as me:

The US is suing a former senior manager at Accenture for allegedly misleading the government about the security of an Army cloud platform.

Danielle Hillmer, 53, of Chantilly, Virginia, is accused of deceiving auditors over the capabilities of a service the government commissioned in 2017.

Although it is only referred to as Company A in the court documents, Hillmer claimed to work for Big Four consulting firm Accenture during the stated timeline, according to a now-deleted LinkedIn account.

The US alleges that between March 2020 and November 2021, Hillmer obstructed federal auditors and falsely represented the security of the company's cloud platform, which was used by other government customers beyond the Army.

Perhaps not security per se, but this raises the question of just how much do you trust the audit process?

Johnny Cash - White Christmas

This is a very Country take on the old classic. 

Pondering the SpaceX IPO

Sure there were rumors, but I was plausibly convinced that they wouldn't do this:

Key Points

• SpaceX is preparing for a potential $1.5 trillion IPO as soon as mid-2026.
• Elon Musk confirmed rumors in an X post.
• The IPO could boost SpaceX’s goals, Musk’s wealth, and the entire space sector.

The numbers seems low at $1.5T and $30B - low if you think that Space is a huge growth sector (as I do) and considering that the company has been cash flow positive for years.

Why I thought that they wouldn't do this is that I think that Elon is driven by Mars colonization, and having shareholders dilutes his ability to focus on that.

I guess we'll see. 

 

Michael Bublé Duet With Thalia - Mis Deseos/Feliz Navidad

Love this version. 

Gartner Group recommends companies ban AI browsers

This is big news.  Gartner Group is the largest IT trend analysis firm, used by essentially all large corporations.  They just recommended blocking the installation and use of AI browsers:

Agentic browsers are too risky for most organizations to use, according to analyst firm Gartner.

The firm offered that advice last week in a new advisory titled “Cybersecurity Must Block AI Browsers for Now,” in which research VP Dennis Xu, senior director analyst Evgeny Mirolyubov, and VP analyst John Watts observe “Default AI browser settings prioritize user experience over security.”

I've posted about the risks of AI browsers.  Gartner's recommendations track mine:

Gartner’s fears about the agentic capabilities of AI browser relate to their susceptibility to “indirect prompt-injection-induced rogue agent actions, inaccurate reasoning-driven erroneous agent actions, and further loss and abuse of credentials if the AI browser is deceived into autonomously navigating to a phishing website.”

The authors also suggest that employees “might be tempted to use AI browsers and automate certain tasks that are mandatory, repetitive, and less interesting” and imagine some instructing an AI browser to complete their mandatory cybersecurity training sessions. [Highlighting mine - Borepatch]

The highlighted bit is a very clever way to get attention from IT departments.  Not only will it irritate the IT Security team but it will focus the Risk Management team on potential loss of SOC2 compliance.  This is a very Gartner way of getting eyeballs from the CISO and CIO.  Like I said, clever.

And yeah, I agree 100% with Gartner on this. 

 

 

St. Ambrose - Veni Redemptor Genitum

St. Ambrose is often described as one of the four Latin Doctors of the Church*, influential theologians who established the foundations of the church in the fourth century.  Unlike his compatriot Doctors, Ambrose was a most unusual saint.  He was the Roman governor of the province around Milan when he (kind of accidentally) became bishop of Milan.  He was quite popular as Governor and when the crowd was beginning to get rowdy debating who would become the next bishop, someone called out his name as a suggestion.  Suddenly it was a done deal.

Except there was this little problem: not only was Ambrose not a priest, he wasn't even baptized as a Christian.  The crowd wasn't about to let minor issues like that stand between them and their new bishop.  So Governor Aurelius Ambrosius became Bishop Ambrose.

He was a force to be reckoned with, even excommunicating Emperor Theodosius the Great (I think that this was the first time this had ever happened).

He also composed the first Christmas Carol, Veni Redemptor Genitum (Come, Redeemer of the Nations).  It is still performed today, 1650 years later.

Latin:

Veni, redemptor gentium;
ostende partum Virginis;
miretur omne saeculum:
talis decet partus Deum. 

English translation:
Come, Redeemer of the nations;
show forth the Virgin birth;
let every age marvel:
such a birth befits God.

Now the Christmas season is upon us.  It seemed right to start our annual christmas music posts with the very first Christmas carol.

* The others are St. Jerome, St. Augustine, and St. Gregory the Great.  It was sort of a Murderer's Row lineup of the early Church batting order.

 

Alan Jackson - "Let It Be Christmas"

This is one of my favorite Christmas songs.  Country music can tend to the sentimental, and all the best Christmas music does too.  The marriage of these combine beautifully.  If you're not a fan of the sentimental, you might want to pass this by.  But if you're like me, then enjoy.

Road Trip IX - Jim Hamm Nature Area

The Jim Hamm Nature Area in Longmont Colorado is a twenty-four acre park, nature preserve, and bird sanctuary. There's a fourteen acre pond that attracts migratory birds and views of the mountains that comprise the Front Range. Jim Hamm's grandfather farmed the land and Jim grew up spending time there.

 

Jim Hamm was commissioned as an officer in the Air Force and deployed to Vietnam as a F-4 Phantom pilot. On March 14th, 1968, his aircraft was making close air support passes in support of a helicopter evacuation when he was hit and shot down. His body was not recovered and he is still MIA.

The family donated the land in his honor and in honor of all the local men that served in Vietnam. In addition to the nature walks and habitat, there is a memorial, as well as two picnic shelters. The county school system uses the park for field trips. The VFW and the American Legion use the park on Veteran's and Memorial Day.  

 

 

It's a peaceful spot and we had the place to ourselves when we visited.

Vince Guaraldi Trio - O Tannenbaum

CBS didn't like this soundtrack, and predicted that the show A Charlie Brown Christmas would be a flop.  It was wildly popular, and the soundtrack won a Grammy.  For obvious reasons.

Yo-Yo Ma and Alison Krauss - The Wexford Carol

This is one of the most lovely carols ever recorded. 

How to attack AI systems

Use poetry.  No, really:

In a new paper, “Adversarial Poetry as a Universal Single-Turn Jailbreak Mechanism in Large Language Models,” researchers found that turning LLM prompts into poetry resulted in jailbreaking the models

...

Poetic framing achieved an average jailbreak success rate of 62% for hand-crafted poems and approximately 43% for meta-prompt conversions (compared to non-poetic baselines), substantially outperforming non-poetic baselines and revealing a systematic vulnerability across model families and safety training approaches.

Whoops.  Looks, this is a new class of attack (seriously, I've been in this biz for a long time and have never seen weaponized verse before), so maybe we need to cut folks some slack here.  But I'm somewhat less inclined to do so with AI's track record of falling for 30 year old attacks.

Enjoyed no sooner but despisèd straight,

Past reason hunted; and, no sooner had

Past reason hated as a swallowed bait

On purpose laid to make the taker mad; 

- Wm. Shakespeare, Sonnet 129 

 

Why can't the US Navy build ships?

First, they canceled the Little Crappy Shops (LCS) program as not fit for purpose.  Now it's the Constellation class Frigate program that gets the axe:

By 2024, the first ship of the class was 36 months behind schedule, with the second already considered two years behind before its keel was even laid. The plan, as I mentioned before, was to retain roughly 85% of the FREMM frigate design to expedite production, but by that point, the Constellation design retained only about 15% of its parent design. This caused a cascade of other issues, like the need to write new code for a reported 95% of the ship’s control system software due to deviations from the FREMM design it came from, and the incorporation of new equipment and systems.

The Constellation-class frigate seemed to suffer from a classic case of scope-creep, a term used to describe a program that keeps seeing new requirements tacked onto it as it develops, resulting in cost overruns and delays. As one lawmaker put it, the Navy kept chasing a 100% solution to the point where they ended up with 0% of the ship being delivered.

There's more here from the Tech Press, so this is getting attention. 

As Yogi Berra once said, if you don't know where you're going you'll end up somewhere else.  SECNAV should see to it that the Program Management Office finds itself somewhere else - preferably not working for the Navy.  Pour encourager les autres ...

Greg Lake - I Believe In Father Christmas

Sunday music here is usually classical.  So why Greg Lake (from Emerson, Lake, and Palmer fame)?  Well, Lake sampled Sergei Prokofiev's famous sleigh ride from his Lieutenant Kijé suite.  You almost certainly know this music well enough to hum along (it starts about a minute into the video). 

There's quite a lot of classic rock that really should be labeled "Classical Rock" ... 

Anne Murray - "Winter Wonderland"

Anne Murray was huge on country radio in the 1970s and 80s, but has sadly dropped off the airways since then.  Maybe it was because she was more "Old COuntry" than the new wave of the 90s and beyond.

That's a pitty, as she had a wonderful voice.  Somewhat reminiscent of Julie Andrews, at least in this Christmas classic. 

Joe Bonamassa - Christmas Boogie

Here's some Christmas music to make you tap your toes during Black Friday. 

Happy Thanksgiving

May your turkey be safely confined in your oven ... 

Road Trip VIII - Off The Interstate I

We crossed the Macinaw Bridge on to the Upper Peninsula of Michigan and turned west on Rt. 2 along Lake Michigan. Even though the views were spectacular I was looking a road north to take us up to Lake Superior. I picked a road off the map and turned north onto the road less traveled. 

There a community of Amish on the Upper Peninsula. They moved there looking for affordable farmland that wasn't being encroached on by development. It's got be hard winters, but when we were passing through it was the first week of September and it was beautiful. 

The first indication were the road signs. You see these in Pennsylvania regularly, but we saw them in Michigan, North Dakota, and Kansas.

 

 

When we stopped for gas, three young people in traditional Amish dress came out of the store and climbed into a buggy, turned out onto the road and headed north. I asked the clerk and she told me there was a large community up the road and we should watch for signs as the Amish sell at roadside farm stands to supplement their income.

 

A few miles north, there was a sign and we pulled over. I didn't want to get trapped with the trailer, so we left it on the roadside and walked up the driveway, leaving the 21st Century behind. The path went over a small bridge and climbed up to an large open area. A large two story farmhouse to the right, the barn dominating the scene to the front, and a chicken house and some storage buildings to the left. 

 

Children running around, clearly curious about the strangers in the yard, but not approaching. Rows of wash hanging on lines. A young woman, perhaps in her late twenties, came out to the covered stand that was set up on the edge of the path. Mrs. ASM asked some questions, drew the woman into conversation. We learned they had moved up from Ohio to join this community, drawn by the chance to own property. 

 

The produce and products she had for sale were all handmade, either by her family or by neighbors. We bought apples, a quart of strawberry-rhubarb jam, a large bottle of maple syrup, and two loaves of bread.

 

I tried to take it all in, capture a moment where I was seeing a different way. Not that they didn't have some technology, even a house with a roof and windows is technology, but they were choosing, deciding what they accept, setting limits and living apart. 

 

The Age of AI Espionage has arrived

Well, it very likely arrived some time ago but now it's confirmed:

In mid-September 2025, we detected suspicious activity that later investigation determined to be a highly sophisticated espionage campaign. The attackers used AI’s “agentic” capabilities to an unprecedented degree—using AI not just as an advisor, but to execute the cyberattacks themselves.

The threat actor—whom we assess with high confidence was a Chinese state-sponsored group—manipulated our Claude Code tool into attempting infiltration into roughly thirty global targets and succeeded in a small number of cases. The operation targeted large tech companies, financial institutions, chemical manufacturing companies, and government agencies. We believe this is the first documented case of a large-scale cyberattack executed without substantial human intervention.

This is very interesting, and is very bad news.  This is one heck of a tool: 

In Phase 1, the human operators chose the relevant targets (for example, the company or government agency to be infiltrated). They then developed an attack framework—a system built to autonomously compromise a chosen target with little human involvement.  

Essentially, this is the cyberpunk version of "fire and forget" weaponry.  The only thing that would be more ironic is if they had a Clippy front end ...

(via)

Aaron Copeland - Appalachian Spring

This week is Thanksgiving* and so calls for what is perhaps the most American of all classical music, Aaron Copeland's Appalachian Spring.  Most of the composers we see here on Sunday Classical were child prodigies, going to the Paris Conservatoire before they were 12 years old or such.  Not so with Copeland, who was a distinctly American self-made-man story.

His family wasn't musical, and when he was young you would have thought that his older brother was the only musical talent in the family.  He got his first piano lessons from his older sister, who he was very close to - but that only took him so far.  And so he signed up for a Music Correspondence Course and got lucky.  His teacher was a no-nonsense German who schooled him in Romantic era composers.  As he said later in life, "This was a stroke of luck for me. I was spared the floundering that so many musicians have suffered through incompetent teaching."

What stuck ended up making him hugely popular with general audiences in the USA.  His Fanfare For The Common Man is perhaps his most recognizable work.  Artistically, you can compare this with Norman Rockwell's famous Freedom Of Speech painting:

Artistically, you can pair Appalachian Spring with Rockwell's Freedom From Want painting.  You cannot find a more iconic portrait of Thanksgiving than this:

Of course the "Serious" Art Establishment hated both Rockwell and Copeland.  Audiences didn't care, since both artists captured the essence of America itself.  And so spend some time with this music which is accompanied with a lovely series of photographs of the Appalachian Mountains.  They too, capture the essence of America itself.

*Offer void in Canada. 

Road Trip VII - No Stickers For You!

 

 

My camper is thirteen years old. The finish isn't bad but the factory decals are sun faded. I resealed all the seams this year, replaced the taillights, and repacked the wheel bearings. If it was a piece of military gear, I think it would be "serviceable". 

The stickers started with a couple from the Outer Banks and grew when we took our first long trip.  Not every park or destination, but if I see one I like, it gets added. 

We were at Theodore Roosevelt National Park. Our trip kept crossing paths with Teddy, Custer, and Lewis & Clark as will be evident in upcoming posts. We weren't going to camp, so we stopped in the visitor's center, and planned a ride into the park to see the bison. There were lots of them, and we took our pictures out of the truck windows. 

The visitor's center had a lot of souvenirs. T-shirts, hoodies, hats, post cards, books and stickers. 

I was deciding which one when I overhead a couple behind me talking. 

Wife - "Look, honey, I like this sticker."

Husband - "You are not going to start putting g** d***  stickers on our camper."

Okay, then. I managed not to laugh out loud. Made my purchases and went back to the truck. I was cleaning the dust off a spot and placing the sticker when the couple went by. 

They were parked behind us in a beautiful class A rig. The sunlight glinted off the chrome. The paint glowed under the wax. Sort of like this, only nicer.

 I should have walked back and told the guy that I understood. 

 

Rest in Peace, Colonel

 

If you are of a certain age, you will remember this Pultizer Prize winning photograph of a US Air Force officer returning from the Hanoi Hilton in 1974.

Dwight has the details, and it is quite a sad story.  Rest In Peace, COL Stirm.  I hope you now truly have the opportunity to put out your hand and touch the face of God.
 

Road Trip VI - Captain Arthur J. Brockway

Sometimes you see things and know that the only possible reason these items are for sale is that the original owner has passed. 

IN MEMORY OF MY SERVICE

 CAPTAIN IN THE PHILIPPINES

CAPTAIN ARTHUR J. BROCKWAY

 ANTI TANK COMPANY

 383RD INFANTRY

 96TH DIVISION

It's a set of carabao horns, the water buffalo that is the working draft animal in the Philippines. The carving was done in the Philippines, I saw similar, but much newer, work during my time there. The crossed flags are the 48 star American flag and the Philippine flag. The artwork on the horns are local scenes.

The 96th Division, The Deadeyes, made a beach landing in the Philippines and served in combat during the Philippine Campaign and then again on Okinawa. Five members of the Division received the Medal of Honor. There's a foundation with an online museum. 

We had come into town to go to a museum, but it was closed that day. The local junk shop became our alternative. In Salamanca, N.Y., it was a furniture store turned into dozens of alcoves, each stocked by a hopeful seller. Antiques, books, clothes, tools, and so on. On one of the shelves was Capt. Brockway's mementos. The horns, all his patches, and his rank insignia. Echoes of a lifetime.

 

 

Google is using AI to spy on you without asking for you to opt-in

Lawrence has the details.  You can turn the damn stuff off. And oh by the way, they're getting sued over it.

Road Trip V - Fort Abrahm Lincoln

Sometimes we would find ourselves in a place so captivating we would decide to spend all our time in the park. We talked to the ranger in the museum and later with a docent and author that was giving the tours at the Commanding Officer's quarters. Rode our bikes around and in the late afternoon as the sun was fading, hiked up to the overlook.  

This is the view looking down from the blockhouses toward the Missouri River. The building you can see are the barracks and the Commanding Officer's quarters. 

 That is one of the four blockhouses used on the perimeter of the enclosure on the hilltop. The blockhouses are open and I have climbed one to stand looking out of the firing ports.

Fort Abraham Lincoln was a U.S. Army fort built on the banks of the Missouri River in 1873 along the construction route of the Northern Pacific Railroad. It was built on what had been Mandan tribal land until a smallpox outbreak killed about 95% of the settlement in 1837. The 150 survivors had abandoned the area and settled in with another nearby tribe.

There were no battles fought at the fort. The cavalry garrisoned here did participate in putting down a Sioux uprising in the summer of 1876. The commanding officer of the fort was Lt. Col. George Armstrong Custer and this is where he and the 600 men under his command rode out from. 

The need for the fort was gone in less  than twenty years and the Army abandoned it in 1891. Local civilians stripped the fort for it's lumber, nails, and hardware, leaving only the foundations and memories.

In 1907, Pr. Theodore Roosevelt signed the land over to North Dakota for use as a park. In the 1930s, the Civilian Conservation Corps had a unit assigned to the area. They built an administration building, offices, garages, roads, and the service buildings. They also worked from the foundations and surviving documents to rebuild the fort. 

None of the original buildings had survived. Everything in the park is a CCC reproduction. The layout of the fort, all the buildings, can been seen on a walk, with interpretive signs. Two barracks have been restored and set up to look as they did in 1875. The blockhouses and support buildings were rebuilt as well. The C.O.'s quarters was rebuilt later, in 1989 as part of the North Dakota Centennial. 

In addition to the structures in the fort, the CCC worked with a local Mandan woman who served as a historical resource to build a section of a Mandan village consisting of five full size lodgehouses. It is maintained and used to display artifacts and interpretive displays about the Mandan.

 The CCC administration building is now the park museum. This isn't mine, but it's a slideshow of pictures of the museum and the Mandan village set to music.

Road Trip IV - The Civilian Conservation Corps

 I expect some comments about the things that Pr. Roosevelt got wrong, but I have a real appreciation for one thing he and his Administration got right. The Civilian Conservation Corps. 

Established in 1933, it was a government program run by the Army that accepted young men 17-25 and put them to work. The CCC built Skyline Drive, Big Bend National Park, over 700 state parks, over 3,400 firetowers, fought wildfires, worked at flood relief, and a long list of projects. At it's largest, in 1935, there were 500,000 men involved, overall 3 million served. Most of them starting wearing a different uniform in 1942 and the program was shut down.

We ran into the legacy of the CCC everywhere. The style of the work they did is iconic. Driving into a park, you might only need to see one building to know the CCC had been involved and we saw it over and over.  

 

 I'll bet most of them were a lot skinnier than the buff statue Ms. ASM has taken a shine to. The statue and plaque are a monument to the CCC at Fort Abraham Lincoln State Park in North Dakota. We'll visit the park in my next post. 

Notes from Old America : Arlo Guthrie - City of New Orleans

This song is an anthem from Old America.  I listened to this as a teenager, and you (Old Farts) know how old I am.  This is from a time when politics was not Uber Alles, and when  Americans could have civil conversations even if they were in opposite parties.

ASM836 has been posting about how he went  on a road trip and found that Old America is sill here.  This song sings to that, even if Arlo was a Commie Bastard - and son of a Commie Bastard - but he endorsed Ron Paul (!).  Because back then we were always America First, even back in the 1970s.  I think that this proves my point, that we shouldn't hate Americans because they are in the other political party.

Arlo Guthrie, City Of New Orleans (Songwriter: Steve Goodman):

City Of New Orleans (Songwriter: Steve Goodman)

Riding on the City of New Orleans
Illinois Central, Monday morning rail;
There are fifteen cars and fifteen restless riders,
Three conductors, twenty five sacks of mail.
They're all out on a southbound odyssey
The train rolls out of Kankakee
Rolling past the houses, farms and fields,
Passing trains that have no names
Freight yards full of old black men,
And the graveyards of the rusted automobiles.

Singing, "Good morning, America, how are you?
Say, don't you know me? I'm your native son.
I'm the train they call the City of New Orleans.
And I'll be gone five hundred miles when day is done."

I was dealing cards with the old men in the club car,
It's a penny a point, there ain't no-one keeping score.
Won't you pass the paper bag that holds that bottle,
You can feel the wheels a-rumbling through the floor.
And the sons of Pullman porters and the sons of engineers
Ride their fathers' magic carpet made of steam;
Mothers with their babes asleep, rocking to the gentle beat,
The rhythm of the rails is all they dream.

Singing, "Good morning, America, how are you?
Say, don't you know me? I'm your native son.
I'm the train they call the City of New Orleans.
And I'll be gone five hundred miles when day is done."

Nighttime on the City of New Orleans,
Changing cars in Memphis, Tennessee.
It's halfway home, and we'll be there by morning,
Through the Mississippi darkness rolling down to the sea.
But all the towns and people seem to fade into a bad dream,
The old steel rail it ain't heard the news,
The conductor sings his song again, it's, "Passengers will please refrain..."
This train's got the disappearing railroad blues.

Singing, "Good night, America, how are you?
Say, don't you know me? I'm your native son.
I'm the train they call the City of New Orleans.
And I'll be gone five hundred miles when day is done."

Singing, "Good night, America, how are you?
Say, don't you know me? I'm your native son.
I'm the train they call the City of New Orleans.
And I'll be gone a long, long time when the day is done."

As with all great songs about America, this is bitter sweet.  This was once the artery that pumped blood between America's different regions.  Now - in the 1970s - it was dying as a passenger system.

But people remembered what it was.  Here's the Highwaymen who did this almost as well as Arlo.  Waylon makes this almost what it was. Sure, Willie carries this, but watch Waylon.

 

America is not gone.  Art tells us what it was, and is, and can be.  

That's what ASM826 is telling us. America is here.  Just look around.  

Road Trip III - Welcome To Plainsmen Country

It might the Cougars, the Owls, the Warriors, or any other of a thousand team names. When you get to the outskirts of a town with a high school, there will be a sign, a statue, or a billboard with the team mascot welcoming you. When you walk into the gas station or the grocery store, there will be pictures of the team. High school football matters to these towns. There's history and bragging rights on the line.

In Oakley Kansas, it was the Plainsmen.  

 

 

There's even a variant in the small towns in Texas. They play six man football. There's just not enough kids in the school to field an eleven man team. Here's today's look at America. 

Who is up for a Southwest Florida Blogshoot in January or February?

It's been some time since we had a blogshoot here.  Please leave a comment to this post if you'd consider attending one in the greater Tampa area in January or February.  My co-blogger and Brother-From-Another-Mother ASM826 has said he will come , so all the Cool Kids will be there.

Please include date preference. 

Road Trip II -- Scott City, Kansas

 This story starts with water. A reliable year round stream that over millennia cut a canyon in western Kansas. The water attracted game of all sorts and the combination attracted people. The canyon is the site of the northernmost Pueblo settlement ever discovered. Later it was home to the Apache and the last battle between native tribes and the U.S. Army in Kansas was fought here. By the 1880s, Herbert Steele and his wife had homesteaded the area. 

The Steeles donated the first part of the land for use as a park in 1928. A dam was built the following year creating the lake that exists today. Historic Lake Scott State Park was developed over the following decades. There is the battle site, the sandstone home of the Steeles, the Pueblo ruins, swimming, fishing, hiking and mountain bike trails, and a visitor center.

 In the visitor center we learned that there was a museum in the nearby town of Scott City. Since we needed groceries and a laundromat, we went to town. Scott City has a population of about 4,000. Like so many of the cities across the west, it is a railroad town. It's just big enough to still have some businesses and it seemed to be thriving.

We did our laundry and went to the El Quartelejo Museum. There's an artist's gallery, rooms dedicated to the eras in local history, and something else. As you enter, there's a large room filled with tables, a full kitchen, one table with a jigsaw puzzle to work on, a social space. On a weekday afternoon there were a dozen, mostly older, people sitting in small groups engaged in conversation. We were the outliers, tourists in the off season.

We toured the exhibits, but as we came back out we were engaged by a couple of ladies, The usual questions, where you from, where you going, where you staying? We asked about the town, who they were, and they told us in turn. Then they asked if we had eaten lunch and they told us this story. 

There's a local place, called Mom and Pop's Burger Stop. (That link is Facebook, but it's what they are using for a website.) Several months before, they had a kitchen fire, destroyed the inside of the building. They rebuilt. But they didn't rebuild alone. People from the community did fundraisers to help the staff with expenses. People volunteered time and skills to clean, hang sheet rock, paint. The reopening had been a couple of days before and we should go eat there.

 

 I recommend the buffalo burger.

But I recommend the people even more. The back room is occasionally used by a local organization called Scott City Feathers and Lead for hunter safety classes. There are watch parties for the local high school football games. (Go Beavers!) They donate proceeds to do everything from help with food needs to paying funeral expenses. The people we met that day were just doing what seemed to be right. A community, alive and well. 

Scott City. A little place on the far western side of Kansas.

Being raised in the very rural parts of Kansas led me to believe that everything was simple, everything made sense and that anything was possible.

--Chely Wright 

A view into Old America and thoughts on Veteran's Day

It is the Soldier, not the minister
Who has given us freedom of religion.
It is the Soldier, not the reporter
Who has given us freedom of the press.
It is the Soldier, not the poet
Who has given us freedom of speech.
It is the Soldier, not the campus organizer
Who has given us freedom to protest.
It is the Soldier, not the lawyer
Who has given us the right to a fair trial.
It is the Soldier, not the politician
Who has given us the right to vote.
It is the Soldier who salutes the flag,
Who serves beneath the flag,
And whose coffin is draped by the flag,
Who gives the protester the right he abuses to burn the flag.

― Father Dennis O'Brien, USMC 

Today is Veteran's Day in the United States, a day where we recognize what veterans have done for this nation, and for the world.  In other countries it's a day of sadness, reflecting on the loss of those young men and women who served in Flander's Fields and other places.  Here, we we reflect on this on Memorial Day in May - originally called Decoration Day after the War Between The States, and chosen in May because there were flowers in bloom everywhere, suitable for decorating the graves of the loved and lost.

But today we recognize the accomplishments of veterans, living and dead.  This video popped up in my video feed, and while at times sounding a bit propogandistic, it seems to me to be (as the Mythbusters used to say), plausible.

How Americans introduced WWII German POWs to Thanksgiving dinner. 

I say plausible because while I haven't verified any of the claims in the video, I've posted before about LTC Gail Halvorsen:

He was a kid who liked to fly, joining the Civil Air Patrol in 1942 and then the brand new US Air Force when he was old enough to sign up.  He missed World War II because of his age but found himself in the left hand seat of a C-54 in Germany, 1948.  That's when Stalin cut Berlin off from the Free World and the Berlin Airlift started.

[Then] Lt. Halvorsen was at Tempelhof Airport one day when he saw some kids standing on the other side of a chain link fence.  They told him not to worry if the weather was bad and he couldn't bring in food.  You see, they said, they could live on very little food but if they lost their freedom they thought they would never get it back.  Smart kids.

Halvorsen wanted to do something for them and told them that he'd drop some gum from his plane.  They'd know it was him because he'd wiggle his wings.  He and his co-pilot pooled their candy rations for the next day's flight.  Because it was heavy, they made little parachutes out of handkerchiefs.

...

They called him the "Candy Bomber" and when the word got to the Press it became a sensation back in the States.  School children and candy manufacturers donated candy for the children of Berlin.  In just a few months Lt. Halvorsen couldn't keep up with all the candy and handkerchief parachutes that were arriving in the mail.  Pretty much everyone in his unit was now a Rosienbomber (as the German kids called them - "Raisin Bomber".  Halvorsen himself was known as "Uncle Wiggly Wings" because of his signal that he was about to drop sweets.

Operation "Little Vittles" dropped 23 tons of candy in a quarter million handkerchief parachute loads.  Halvorsen was awarded the Großes Bundesverdienstkreuz, Germany's highest award.

Like I said, plausible.  American veterans came from the pool of American citizians, and pretty much returned to that pool of Americaness.  One of the seldom considered accomplishments of the Greatest Generation was not just that they won the war, but that they won the peace afterwords.  At least with Western Europe, although post-1992 it seems like Eastern Europe as well.

They did it because they were Americans.  Yes, they could afford to be generous to the defeated, but they did it more or less unconsciously because that was who they were.  In my mind, this was the greatest hour of American veterans, and the Americans who stood behind them. 

And so while this is a day of sadness overseas, let me be the first to wish you a happy Veteran's Day.  Thanks to all who served, including Grandpa, Dad, Uncle Dick, nephew Daniel, The Queen Of The World's son, our Son-In-Law (just retiring from the Navy), and last but by no means least our very own ASM826. The citizens - of whom you were once part and to which you returned - are proud indeed that of the members of its own Armed Forces.

England's hidden WWII beach pillbox

Things looked bleak for Great Britain in 1940.  France had fallen and even with the "Miracle of Dunkirk" the British Army didn't really have the hardware to fight the Nazi war machine.  All that stood between them and Hitler was the Royal Navy and the Royal Air Force, but everyone expected an invasion at any time.

And so a whole bunch of pillboxes were built on likely landing beaches.  The problem, of course, is that a pillbox looks like, well, a pillbox, and the Luftwaffe would target them as a matter of course.

And so the Brits built a disguised one. 

It looked like an old ruined cottage but was newly built from reinforced concrete with gun ports instead of windows.  Pretty cool.  And what's also cool is that it's Grade II listed as a historic building.

Bohuslav Martinů - Thunderbolt P-47

Via a wikiwander, I ran across this fabulously strange classical music tip o' the hat to the Republic P-47 Thunderbolt.  No joke.

Bohuslav Martinů was a Czech composer who like many others fled to the United States to escape the Nazis.  While there, he wrote this in tribute to what was America's finest fighter-bomber and the role it played to free his people.

Road Trip I - First, A Little Background

The map in the last post shows all but two of our camping stops. I made that with Mapquest and they have a limit of 26 (A-Z) stops on any planning map. So there's a couple of stops in the long straight stretches that I took out so I could show the main loop.

Two of the stops are to visit family, although we did stay in a campground at one of them.  

This is the second long trip we have made. Two years ago we made a trip of similar distance and time. That was on different roads with different destinations. The planning for this trip was deliberately structured to take us to new locations. For example, this trip went to the Michigan UP and out across the northern states. The previous trip included Utah, Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas. Some of the upcoming posts will likely be from the first trip as well.

Our route was roughly planned and the parks were picked months in advance. We went out in August, when parks are busy, and had to make our reservations through Labor Day at a minimum. Later in the trip we were in more remote areas, with parks mostly empty, and we were free to roam. We carried a paper atlas in addition to having the internet. Looking at the larger map of a state gives a perspective that a set of directions in a phone or GPS lacks. We went out to see something of America, to not try to rush anywhere, and to explore as deeply as possible the places we happened to choose.

Wherever you go, however long you stay on the road, you only see a minuscule fraction of the country. For every road you take, there are hundreds you do not. For every town you stop in, there are thousands you drive past. For every park you choose to camp in, there are dozens you didn't visit. If you pick a trail to hike or ride, the rest of the park remains unexplored. When you are in a town, if you pick an old diner for lunch, you didn't visit every other restaurant you might have chosen.

We ate out rarely, it was scarcely any harder to cook in the campsites than it is at home. The camper has a microwave/convection oven, a two burner stove, a small fridge and a sink. In addition, I have a Coleman stove to cook outside with and there are always grills available.

America has an amazing state park system. Every park we visited was a gem. 

My next post is going to start in the middle of the trip, in the middle of the country. It was while we were exploring the nearby town on our first trip that I began paying attention to how much of America is still out there. It's going to start with a little place called "Mom and Pop's Burger Stop".

 

As We Remember It

We have just returned from a two month, seven thousand mile, road trip across America.

 We traveled on two lane roads as much as possible, avoiding interstates, and made a point of stopping and exploring small towns and cities along with the parks we were camping in. Our transportation was a mid-size pickup pulling an eighteen foot mini RV.

 We stayed in state parks almost every place we stopped. Our routine was to travel no more than three hundred miles at a time and to stay at least two nights at every park. This gave us time to stop when something seemed interesting and a full day to unhook the camper and go exploring the local area.

We went looking and what we found was that America is still there.

This is the first in a series of posts on our adventure. 

 For any American who had the great and priceless privilege of being raised in a small town there always remains with him nostalgic memories... And the older he grows the more he senses what he owed to the simple honesty and neighborliness, the integrity that he saw all around him in those days. 

          Dwight D. Eisenhower

Skynet has arrived

Um, I've seen this movie:

Nation-state goons and cybercrime rings are experimenting with Gemini to develop a "Thinking Robot" malware module that can rewrite its own code to avoid detection, and build an AI agent that tracks enemies' behavior, according to Google Threat Intelligence Group.

In its most recent AI Threat Tracker, published Wednesday, the Chocolate Factory says it observed a shift in adversarial behavior over the past year. 

Attackers are no longer just using Gemini for productivity gains - things like translating and tailoring phishing lures, looking up information about surveillance targets, using AI for tech support, and writing some software scripts. They are also trialing AI-enabled malware in their operations, we're told. 

It seems that the Bad Guys are using all the old malware tricks (obfuscation, hidden files, etc) plus some new ones (sending commands via LLM prompts, i.e. the malware queries (prompts) other LLMs to get commands.

The security model for AI/LLM is hopelessly broken, and the design is defective.  I mean heck - the designers didn't consider two decade old attack techniques.  I don't know if it's correct to label this broken as designed but it's not far off.  This is software engineering malpractice.

I can't wait to see what happens with this and one of Elon's humanoid robots ...