Bah

AC no workee.  Jury rigging things with rubber bands and bailing wire while waiting for folks to call me with ETA on parts.

Not happy. 

Quote of the Day: Peak Western Civ edition

Aesop's post on the anniversary of the Moon Landing is a must read on many levels.  This part jumped out at me, as he remembers the even as he experienced it as a kid:

But on the day, that summer Sunday afternoon in 1969, when Armstrong stepped out the door to rendezvous with destiny, there wasn't one single car on the streets, anywhere. I was there, and I went outside, and I saw it with my own eyes, kids, from a house just up the street from where Rocketdyne made the Saturn V engines that took us there, again and again.
Nothing outside moving, anywhere. Not. One. Single. Person.

Every single human on the planet with access to one was huddled in front of black-and-white or color TVs, back when TV had those choices, and each holding their breath waiting for the moment that the cream of 1969 video technology broadcast the shadowy moment to the waiting world.

It made me remember huddling around a TV with family and friends, back in 1969.  Dad wasn't there - he was in Paris researching a book in the French national archives.  He said that the State Department set up an enormous screen in the Place de la Concorde where they projected the landing live (at Oh-My-God-30 in the morning, Paris time).  The place was packed, and he said that as an American, his money was no good in Paris that evening.  France and America have always had a complicated relationship, but not that day.

Go read Aesop's post.  You're welcome.

Dad Joke IC

What do you call a Mummy with a cold?

Sir Cough, I guess. 

When you erase history it's awfully easy to look like an idiot

So General Lee's statue has been removed from Charlottesville's main drag.  People have been tossing the word "traitor" around quite generously.  Of course, to these folks it's Year Zero, and there's never been any history until today.  Or something.

And so they look like morons.  They literally know nothing.

To help you understand this, here is a parable:

Let me try to make the decline of history more concrete by way of an analogy. Imagine that you had fallen asleep in 2005 and stayed asleep until 2150. Further assume that when you woke up in 2150, everyone loved the Iraq War. Not just Rumsfeld-style liked it, but fucking loved it. They loved it so much, that if you dared to question the righteousness of liberating the Iraqis from bondage, you’d be considered unfit for civil conversation. Intellectuals in 2150 prove their intellectual-ness by signaling to each other they support the Iraq War more than other people. In other words, by 2150, mainstream opinion on the Iraq War would be such that Donald Rumsfeld in 2005 would – by 2150 standards – be considered only moderately pro-war. 

Regardless of what you think about the Iraq War in the present day, you’d have a pretty low opinion of history as practiced in 2150.

We have all sorts of historians today rewriting the history of that period, because Reasons.*  Color me unimpressed.

As it turns out, there are a ton of primary sources from the day that are available to us, that we can use to check today's historical narrative.  That war was a defining event for the people of the day, and like the Greatest Generation's memoirs of World War II there were many, many who wrote of their experiences in the American War of Southern Independence.**  We can use these memoirs to see just how retarded today's narrative is, if we are careful.

We want to choose quality sources, of course.  There are quite a lot that can immediately be discarded as hopelessly biased - pretty much everything from Jubal Early and the "Lost Cause" school, for example.  But how can we tell reliable sources from propaganda?

We want to look for a number of things: We'd like someone who understood history and how it is documented; a professional historian would be ideal, as he would be writing at least in part for future historians.  We'd like someone who participated directly, of course, ideally fighting against the side that he defends in his writing.  As lawyers like to say, this "admission against interest" gives a lot of credibility.  And since the claim here is that modern historians lack credibility, we want credibility uber allies in the memoirs we choose from the time.

Is there such a source?  There is.

Charles Francis Adams, Jr. was a Harvard history professor, and first President of the American Historical Association.  Grandson and Great-Grandson of Presidents, he was from that Massachusetts Adams family,  He is more properly referred to as General Charles Francis Adams, having served in the Union Army during the war.

(Then) Capt. Adams of the 1st Mass. Cav. is second from the right.

And so to today's charge of Treason leveled against Robert E. Lee, what can we learn from General Adams?  After all, Adams ticks all the boxes in what we are looking for in a credible source from the day.

Adams wrote a book (actually the transcript of a speech he gave to the Phi Beta Kappa Society - another box for us to tick!) that is available for free download today: Shall Cromwell Have a Statue?  You can download it yourself (it's a pretty easy read), but Fosetti covered this years ago:

  The essay begins by questioning whether or not England should build a statue to Oliver Cromwell.  The purpose of the essay is really to discuss whether or not the US should build a statue to Robert E. Lee.  (Please keep in mind that Mr Adams fought on the Union side against Lee). 

Adams' answer is unequivocally "yes." 

He goes through a long argument about how Lee was not a traitor.  For if we wish to call Lee a traitor, we would have to call Washington, Cromwell, William of Orange and Hampden traitors as well.  Lee was loyal to his state, which was where he believed his primary loyalty lay. 

Then Adams tries to make a distinction between Virginia's decision to secede and other Cotton States' decisions to secede.  The latter states seceded when Lincoln won the election.  Virginia did not.  Virginia believed in secession (as did everyone who ratified the Constitution, according to Mr Adams).  Virginia was willing to let the other states peacefully secede, but did not wish to secede with them.  Only after the US government tried to re-supply Sumter, an act of war against a sovereign state (i.e. South Carolina), according to the logic of Virginia and the original understanding of the Constitution, did Virginia rebel.  According to Virginia, the North had effectively changed the Constitution at that point and Virginia seceded to defend the original Constitution.  Mr Adams understands this argument but sees it as hopeless outdated and out-of-touch.  Nevertheless, he sees it as consistent.  Lee then went with his state.

They should read Fosetti's review (or better yet, Adams' book) and learn what one of the best sources of the day believed.  Or they can keep calling Lee a traitor and keep sounding like morons.  Alas, my view of the world is so jaded lately that I suspect that I know how many people will choose.  That's why I have a tag for "Decline of the Progressive West".

* I think there's something to the idea floated on Instapundit that as long as the South voted Democrat, historians were happy to present a different history.  Now that the South reliably votes against the Democrats, it's book burning time:

But there’s also this: “Don’t overthink this, because it’s quite simple, really. When Democrats’ national position depended on unwavering support from ‘the Solid South,’ we got lots of pro-Southern propaganda: the Lost Cause, Gone With The Wind, Disneyfied Uncle Remus, etc. As a vital Democrat constituency group, southerners, even practical neo-Confederates, were absolved of all sins as long as they stayed in line.” If the south were still a vital constituency today, Democrats would sound like Bill Clinton did in the 1990s.

** It wasn't a Civil War because the Confederate States did not want to take over the north.  "War Between the States" is ambiguous, losing the underlying motivations.

Note: This is a repost from 2017 but is as topical today as then.

Dad Joke IIC

My kid asked me to sync his iPhone, so I dropped it in the lake.  I really don't see what he's so upset about. 

Security Smorgasbord, vol. 13 no. 3

Insurance Industry consortium grappling with ransomeware payments:

Both are signs of the cyber insurance world trying to wrap its arms around ransomware, a phenomenon that is leading to costlier payouts, prompting insurers to demand security improvements from policyholders and in some cases driving companies to step back from what they’re willing to cover.

For instance, the annual growth rate in cyber insurance premiums the past four years has been 20%, while the average growth in claims has been more than 39%, according to a report from credit agency AM Best that warned of a “grim” cyber insurance market. Ransomware, AM Best said, now accounts for 75% of cyber claims.

The dirty secret is that insurance has been negotiating payouts with hacking gangs for years.  Unsurprisingly, this has made ransomeware a viable business model for the gangs.

Western Digital mybook live storage system gets remote data wipe command from factory:

Western Digital, maker of the popular My Disk external hard drives, is recommending that customers unplug My Book Live storage devices from the Internet until further notice while company engineers investigate unexplained compromises that have completely wiped data from devices around the world.

The mass incidents of disk wiping came to light in this thread on Western Digital’s support forum. So far, there are no reports of deleted data later being restored.

...

“I have a WD mybook live connected to my home LAN and worked fine for years,” the person who started the thread wrote. “I have just found that somehow all the data on it is gone today, while the directories seem there but empty. Previously the 2T volume was almost full but now it shows full capacity.”

Other My Book Live users quickly joined the conversation to report that they, too, had experienced precisely the same thing. “All my data is gone too,” one user soon responded. “I am totally screwed without that data... years of it.”

This is exactly why you have more than one backup.  Like with carry guns, two is one and one is none.  And I've recommended Western Digital in the past.  I guess I need to reassess that.

Medicate lacks consistent oversight of Cykbersecurity for networked medical devices:

CMS's survey protocol does not include requirements for networked device cybersecurity, and the AOs do not use their discretion to require hospitals to have such cybersecurity plans. However, AOs sometimes review limited aspects of device cybersecurity. For example, two AOs have equipment-maintenance requirements that may yield limited insight into device cybersecurity. If hospitals identify networked device cybersecurity as part of their emergency preparedness risk assessments, AOs will review the hospitals' mitigation plans. AOs told us that in practice, however, hospitals did not identify device cybersecurity in these risk assessments very often. Assessing hospital safeguards for the privacy of medical records may prompt AOs to examine networked devices. Finally, CMS and the AOs do not plan to update their survey requirements to address networked devices or general cybersecurity.

I've been posting for years about how security for medical devices isn't an afterthought.  It wasn't thought of at all.

Windows Print Spooler under attack:

Microsoft has provided mitigation guidance to block attacks on systems vulnerable to exploits targeting the Windows Print Spooler zero-day vulnerability known as PrintNightmare.

This remote code execution (RCE) bug—now tracked as CVE-2021-34527—impacts all versions of Windows per Microsoft, with the company still investigating if the vulnerability is exploitable on all of them.

CVE-2021-34527 allows attackers to take over affected servers via remote code execution with SYSTEM privileges as it enables them to install programs, view, change, or delete data, and create new accounts with full user rights.

Under active exploitation

The company added in a newly released security advisory that PrintNightmare has already been exploited in the wild. Microsoft didn't share who is behind the detected exploitation (threat actors or security researchers).

This is exactly the sort of attack that you would expect.  The print spooler code is almost certainly very old and not really maintained from a security perspective.  It's deployed everywhere and very often enabled by users who have been burned once too much by clicking "No" to "Do you want me to turn this on?" messages.  And so print spoolers are enabled all over the place when there's very little reason for the software to be running at all.  If you have a modern printer (i.e. 5 year old or newer network attached printer) there is no reason for you to have the printer service enabled.  You can turn this off via the instructions in the link.

The Persistent Hammer of History

[This is a guest post by Tacitus]

Nobody saw it coming. Well, almost nobody. Gerald Ford mentioned off-hand once that there was “…no Soviet domination of Eastern Europe”. He was ridiculed and it was said he had played too much college football in the days before helmets. No, the Soviet Union would endure forever. Marx, Engels and Lenin, the hirsute triumvirate of Communist saints looked sternly over Red Square. Across 11 time zones the centrally planned economy provided “To Each According to His Needs”, an early form of Equity. Tass and Pravda solemnly reported ever increasing tractor production. The Soviet Union showed both strength (weight lifters! Tanks!) and grace (ballerinas! Chess Masters!).

There was one small problem. Oh, one hardly worth mentioning. It was all a crock and on some level everyone inside the Eastern Bloc knew it.

It took a million small taps of the persistent hammer of History to bring down the largest and most self important empire the world has ever seen. A tired worker standing in line, cheap shoes making his toes cramped and wet, sees a sleek black ZIL limo flash by. With an imperceptible shake of the head another small bit of faith is chipped away. With an inward sigh the worker goes back to his long wait for something only half way shoddy. That is to say, made in East Germany.

In 1989 someone in the Hungarian border police just said, “Eh, screw it”. They stopped trying to keep people from crossing over into Austria. The geriatric Central Committee droned on as usual, and tractor production figures still dominated the news. But oddly no consequences were forthcoming. And in a stunning display of how Immigration Policy Matters, it set of a cascade of disillusioned people saying in many different languages, “Eh, screw it”. Soon the Berlin Wall was being reduced to rubble by the persistent hammer of history and the less abstract hammers wielded by fed up people.

We might be in a similar situation today. Everyone knows that that Equity, Economic Recovery and so much more are inevitable, right around the corner. Our versions of Tass and Pravda assure us of this. The current Central Committee is every bit as sclerotic as their 1980’s soul mates but don’t go in much for statues. Still, they have their own icons looking down across public spaces from murals.

I suppose we should make allowances. A certain percentage of people answering surveys are intentionally messing with their earnest or venal inquisitors. Another percentage, rather small in my opinion, are sincere people who have just not thought things through. But honestly, hardly anyone really Believes you can borrow and spend forever. Or that it makes sense to allow biological males to win medals in Girl’s Sports. Or that the current CRT nonsense is anything more than a veneer of pop morality spread thin over a reparations grift.

Maybe Gerald Ford was not surprised by the Hungarian border guards. Everyone else sure was. And who knows what the equivalent trivial event in our times will be?

Tacticool casts

It seems that Dwight broke his wrist (The Queen Of The World winces in sympathy).  But every cloud has a silver lining - in this case a tactical cast with MOLLE attach points ...

And I second his recommendation for Revolutions podcast. 

You might want to go leave him a get well comment.

Today's must-read post

It's over at Claire's:

Many histories of the Revolution, IIRC, trace a steady growth of resistance from the Stamp Act through the Townshend Acts through the Boston Massacre through the Boston Tea Party through the Intolerable Acts to Lexington and Concord and on to the Declaration of Independence. Maybe so, but Breen positions the Intolerable Acts as the straw that broke the proverbial camel’s back. What Britain accurately but inadequately called the Coercive Acts turned ordinary, respectable farmers, lawyers, craftsmen, and housewives from angry — but loyal! — British colonists into an outraged force of active, uncompromising, and sometimes ruthless American insurgents.

One thing that struck me as I read was that both sides labored under delusions in the months leading up to the passage of the Acts in the spring of 1774. After the Boston Tea Party on December 16, 1773, American colonists, especially in Massachusetts, held their breath. They knew punishment would come, but not what form it would take. Because most information about British politics arrived in the form of imported and re-posted newspaper articles, colonists believed the British people were sympathetic to their cause and therefore that punishment would be limited and probably focused only on the guilty. 

That was their delusion. Or one of them. They also held a long-cherished a belief that they were the legal, intellectual, and moral equal of any Englishmen, and that their fellow Englishmen saw them in the same light as they saw themselves.

They didn’t realize how implacably — if ineptly — British power brokers were against them. They didn’t realize that much of the English public, and especially the elite, looked down on them as being barely steps above the “savages” they lived among.

She then uses this history lesson to compare to today's Cold Civil War.  She lays out today's delusions that both sides suffer under.  Yes, it's long - almost Borepatchian in length.  But this is a very, very important post, and I cannot encourage you too strongly to go and read it all.  

Wait, Star Wars had Harleys?

Wow.  Just wow. 

Dad Joke IIIC

What do you call an elderly person with excellent hearing?

Deaf defying. 

Dad Joke VC

What do you call a snobby criminal going down the stairs? 

A condescending con descending.

Arise, Sir Libertyman

Yesterday's Dad Joke about Beatles music - where I gave props to The Queen Of The World - caused long time reader and FotB* libertyman to leave the following comment:

To the Queen of the world, Thank You Girl, You Really got a Hold on Me for this one, Borepatch, She Loves You so Let It Be, otherwise you will go Nowhere Man or You’re Going to Lose that Girl, When you Turn 64.
I did this with a Little Help from My Friends, and since I did go shooting this morning (not Yesterday) I Feel Fine, after all, Happiness is a Warm Gun. Anyway, Act Naturally and maybe we can Come Together soon.
The End

This made us both laugh out loud, and it's not the first time.  I think that this may actually be the funniest comment ever left at this blog.

And so in consideration to your long and faithful service to the Throne, The Queen Of The World gratefully dubs you Sir Libertyman, OBE (Order of the Blogging Empire).

*Friend of the Blog.  Libertyman is also a FiRL (Friend in Real Life).

Dad Joke LXXXXIIII

Guy #1: I think I'm addicted to Beatles music.

Guy #2: Do you need help?

Guy #1: Nah.  I already have that one.

(Hat tip: The Queen Of The World) 

I would SO go here

FOtB Pachydermis2 is tending bar at the coolest bar ever.

I would totally have a drink there.  Oh by the way, his mask was because they were excavating rock.

Seen near Borepatch Lenai

1957 Chevy Bel Air.  Pretty sweet restoration job.

Pontiac Fiero.  Not sure the year, looks like the 6 cylinder model.  Restoration seems to be a work in progress, but it was unusual enough seeing one of these that I pulled over and snapped a photo.

Florida, baby.  They don't salt the roads here.

 

Huh

It seems that I missed the 13th blogiversary here which was like 2 weeks ago.

I really am a lazy blogger. 

Celebrating the Old Republic

A Cold Civil War is here, one that seems to be flipping over to a hot Civil War.  The artists of our time will record the passions of the day for future generations, just like artists in the past recorded theirs.  For us.  The resistance has, I think, shifted from mocking to angry.  Those who think that their vision is a one way ratchet should think on what happens when a bolt is over tightened, or a pressure vessel sealed with no pressure escape.  Those, too, are one-way ratchets.

For a while.

Up until now, I've kept some psychological distance.  Humor has helped here, as has the old standby that we're all Americans at the end of the day.  Far be it for me to question someone's patriotism - after all, we all have that same common heritage.

But I'm not so sure now.  What an ugly realization.

Some of these people are bound and determined to turn this Republic into something I won't recognize, and don't agree with.  Some of them tell me that if I argue with them I'm a hater, a racist, a fascist.

Screw that noise.  I remember the saying back in the early part of the last decade about the anti-war protesters: they're not anti-war, they're just on the other side.  That may have been a slander, but I wonder where they are today with the continuing (and vastly accelerated) war by drone, the continuation of Guantanamo, the expansion of same to include American citizens arrested on American soil.

I suspect that I know: they're on the other side.  They don't care about any of this, they care about their side in this Cold Civil War.  They care about ultimate victory for their philosophy.  They care about remaking this Republic into something I won't recognize.

OK, then.  The lines are drawn.  The game, afoot.  If that's how it will be - with a political class (all three branches of Government) in disrepute, with the People believing that the Ruling Class lacks the consent of the governed, then so be it.

The Cold Civil War is arrived.  If it is time to line up on one side or the other - to choose the ever tightening ratchet or to choose the sudden break of that philosophy - then that's worth knowing.  For me, and for my house, this decision is easy.

Personally, I'd like this day to be one where we celebrate our common heritage.  But we seem to disagree on fundamental principles of what that means.  Sadly, I do question their patriotism, because if they win this Cold Civil War, I will question my own patriotism to their stunted vision of the Republic.  I wish it were not so, but a man must recognize reality.  If that's how it must be, then OK.  So be it.  I choose.

Bid us and our posterity bow the knee, supplicate the friendship and plough, and sow, and reap, to glut the avarice of the men who have let loose on us the dogs of war to riot in our blood and hunt us from the face of the earth? If ye love wealth better than liberty, the tranquility of servitude than the animated contest of freedom, go from us in peace. We ask not your counsels or arms. Crouch down and lick the hands which feed you. May your chains sit lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that you were our countrymen!

- Samuel Adams

Me and my House, we will serve the Old Republic. 

I originally posted this 9 years ago, and it seems even worse today than it was then.  But enjoy your fireworks and cookouts.

Jimmy Buffett and Martina McBride - Trip Around The Sun

Today is The Queen Of The World's birthday.  Her best friend from High School is visiting, which is nice.  Feel welcome to celebrate with some fireworks if you'd like.

Birthdays are not just a time for celebration, however - they're also time for reflection on where you've been and where you're going.  While our move to Florida has been a smashing success, The Queen Of The World has had a few health challenges these last 12 months.  Not just the three surgeries, but a month on crutches as well.  And I'm probably leaving something out.

I must confess that she's kind of fun on the knee scooter.  Dangerous, but fun.

Of course there's a country music song about this.  Happy birthday, sweetheart.

Trip Around The Sun (Songwriters: Stephen Bruton, Al Anderson, Sharon Vaughn)

Hear 'em singing happy birthday
Better think about the wish I make
This year gone by
Ain't been a piece of cake.

Every day's a revolution
Pull it together and it comes undone
Just one more candle and a trip around the sun.

I'm just hanging on while this old world keeps spinning
And it's good to know it's out of my control.
If there's one thing that I've learned from all this living
Is that it wouldn't change a thing if I let go.

No you never see it coming,
Always wind up wondering where it went.

Only time will tell
If it was time well spent.
It's another revelation,

Celebrating what I should have done
With these souvenirs of my trip around the sun.

I'm just hanging on while this old world keeps spinning
And it's good to know it's out of my control.
If there's one thing I have learned from all this living
Is that it wouldn't change a thing if I let go.

Yes I'll make a resolution

That I'll never make another one.

Just enjoy this ride on my
Trip around the sun.
Just enjoy this ride
On my trip around the sun...
Trip around the sun.

 

Another successful surgery

The Queen Of The World had a third surgery for her broken wrist.  She's resting comfortably and we're cautiously optimistic that this will be the last.  But holy cow, this has been a mess.

She's been a trooper, but it would sure be nice for her to finally be out of the medical weeds.

UPDATE 3 July 09:25: Thanks to everyone who left a comment or emailed, she is very grateful for your good wishes.  She's doing pretty well.