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You probably saw who said that, so I don't have to mention his name.

But you know, there are all those tax and other incentives that sent the jobs overseas. He could, like, take them away? Without sounding like a crazy man? Even if he is?

What is there to say? Genius! Got the whole world in a fishing net...

This morning, I took a quick look at the website of the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster, https://www.venganza.org. I got a very short web page: "You Are Banned." text centered on the top line. Hmm. Was their website down? What's going on? I tried a proxy website, and that worked. Checking with Chrome (I use Firefox), I had no trouble viewing the web site. I ran Firefox under another user account, and had no problem viewing the website that way either. On the user account with the problem, I could view other pages on the FSM website, eg. https://www.venganza.org/join/ but when I hit the Home button on the FSM site, I got the "You Are Banned." message again.

And then, as I continued to investigate, things mysteriously just started working. Pulling up another window in the browser, I was able to see the FSM site. I hit refresh on the page with the message and the site came up like it should, no more strange message. On the one hand, no more problem is nice, but I really wanted to learn how my browser had been compromised. Cookies? Add-ons? Some other website I visited? Maybe it's not my browser, it is the FSM site after all, doing some sort of browser fingerprinting? Or, could it be my ISP? A quick search for "You Are Banned." in the page source turned up nothing.

OK, so my favorite talk radio show. John Walton has passed away, and some millennial is trying to fill John's shoes. Kenny is from Chicago, raised up in a liberal city, by liberal parents, taught by liberal teachers, and probably had liberal preachers if he went to church. And, Kenny has grown into a right-leaning Libertarian. He made a comment that "Being conservative among millennials is counter culture, like being a hippy in the sixties was counter culture then."

That was worth a chuckle, obviously. But, maybe it's worth more than just a chuckle? Hmmm. In my own home, out of three millennials, two are political agnostics. That third one? I'm proud to say he's pretty much the same sort of asshole I am. He has plenty of contempt for Trump, and much of the rest of the right - but he hates the left with a passion. All the time he spent in college, he mocked all the SJW's and activists. When campus concealed carry was made legal in Texas, he concealed carried on campus.

So, I'm listening to the talk show host, thinking about my own son, and finally did a search for millennial counter culture.

Zane Turbyfill has some ideas on the subject here - https://www.quora.com/Why-are-Gen-Z-people-so-much-more-conservative-and-right-wing-than-millennials

9/10 of us are absolutely supportive of the LGB_ community. See the blank? We look at things logically, not Ethos (republicans) and not Pathos (democrats). LOGOS. We don’t hate transgender people, we just think you can’t logically change your gender by cutting your d_ck off and saying you changed. You make about as much since to us as those instagram girls that swear up and down that they’re black but are very obviously not. We think people with Gender Dysphoria should seek better treatment (becoming transgender showed a less than 1% decrease in deppression among people with gender dysphoria last I checked) and people who become transgender without Gender Dysphoria (or any other condition that would make you want to become transgender)… Pretty much the entire right wing Gen Zs response: F_ck you, you’re being an illogical idiot who likely goes to Antifa riots and preaches about the evil fascist ways of Trump (Not that Gen Z was proTrump as much as it was anti-Hillary, but his progress in the presidency has caused us to look at him in a much more positive way). Gun control is stupid to us, because it logically does not work. Communism (and socialism) is stupid to us because it logically does not work.

Hmmmmm - logic before feelz? What a concept!!

But, wait - there's a Z in his name. There's a Z in my son's name. Maybe it's the Z that does it to them? Let me search some more . . .

Alternet, of all places, has some thoughts on millennials and boomers - https://www.alternet.org/2019/05/lessons-millennials-can-learn-from-boomers/

Yet there is a certain irony in the popular depiction of Boomers as out of touch, conservative, and entrenched in their economic interests. Boomers were, after all, originally the opposite: the counterculture generation — who lived through the Cold War, rejected the American imperialist experiment in Vietnam, stoked the civil rights movement, and spread liberal social ideals through music, art and culture — was largely comprised of Boomers. Arguably, the generation born between 1946 and 1964 were more radical than millennials or Generation Z: the Black Panthers, Young Lords, American Indian Movement, Students for a Democratic Society, and the Weathermen all were semi-militant Marxist groups who saw themselves as connected to a larger international socialist movement — and were, need I remind you, largely Boomer creations. The New York Times noted that there were 4,330 bombings in the United States between January 1969 and April 1970, more than one every day. Leftist millennials may have coined the term “woke,” but our politics are downright tame compared to our bomb-slinging parents’ generation.

Forbes - https://www.forbes.com/sites/ashleystahl/2017/08/11/why-democrats-should-be-losing-sleep-over-generation-z/#66af4ade7878

According to research, Gen Z is more individualistic, more conservative both socially and fiscally, and they’re already making waves of impact on our political system. Gen Z, those born in 1995 or later, is possibly the most conservative generation since World War II, and it is worrying that their impact has been completely overlooked during this election. While our fears might be preemptive, we should not make the mistake of disregarding the intriguing yet also possibly worrying world views of Generation Z.

Oftentimes Millennials have been criticized for being notoriously liberal, but it looks like the generation right behind us has completely rebelled. A U.K. Study at The Gild did a survey of almost 2,000 adults and found that on issues like gay marriage, marijuana legalization, transgender rights, and even tattoos, 59% of Gen Z respondents described their views as ‘conservative’ and ‘moderate’.
 

Oh, crap, that's another Z there? Maybe it is the Z that's doing it!! Maybe conservatives need to name all their babies with names with Z in them? Nahhhh, O'Crazio Cortez blows that theory out of the water, dammit!

OK, I'll stop A̶r̶i̶s̶t̶a̶r̶c̶h̶u̶s̶i̶n̶g̶ editorializing, and give a few more links on the subject:

https://canadafreepress.com/article/hip-conservative-counter-culture-vs.-repressive-liberal-establishment
https://time.com/4909722/trump-millennials-igen-republicans-voters/
https://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/generation-zs-rightward-drift/

For those who prefer not to read - a video! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=avb8cwOgVQ8 "You can't be the dominant culture, and the counter culture"

Maybe culture today is so far left, the only direction left to go is right?

Red pilling - awesome!!!

Speculation: No operating system can have a version number higher than 10.

It started with Apple Mac OS X.

Next Microsoft Windows 10. Version 10 seems perpetual. It seems there will be no Windows 11. So why not just rename it: Microsoft Windows OS X ?

Next . . . Google deserts desserts: Android 10 is the official name for Android Q

Google has officially named the next version of Android, which is due to be released this fall: Android 10. Breaking the 10-year history of naming releases after desserts, the company is bailing on providing a codename beginning with a subsequent letter of the alphabet (in this case, Q), which is the way we’ve been referring to Android up to now. This year is Android 10, next year will be Android 11, and so on.

So maybe there will be an Android 11 ?

But then, there is Linux. To complicate things, Android is built on top of Linux.

The kernel isn't past version 10. Yet. Some distributions are well past version ten.

What about other OSes? MS-DOS didn't make it past six? What about the mainframe or minicomputer era?

Maybe older systems don't count. Maybe the trend toward X is a recent 21st century thing since Apple's Mac OS X and the need to identify with it.

(now back to the study of incandescent transistors!)

Intel goes on the defensive against AMD at Gamescom

Intel has been talking up its processors at Gamescom 2019, hosting an event where it admits that AMD, its chief rival, has “done a great job closing the gap, but we still have the highest performing CPUs.”

If that sounds a little defensive to you, we agree. We were at the event in Cologne, Germany, and there was a bit of a feeling that Intel wanted to remind everyone that while AMD has been getting a lot of positive news lately thanks to its new Ryzen 3000 series of processors, when it comes to gaming, Intel still has the best processors.

At the event, Intel’s Troy Severson said that “when we introduced the i9 9900K… it was dubbed the fastest gaming CPU in the world. And I can honestly say nothing’s changed. It’s still the fastest gaming CPU in the world.”

And the finisher:

Holding an event to essentially say that ‘nothing’s changed’ and ‘we’re still the best’ felt a little odd, and we (and many others) left feeling that Intel was a bit rattled by AMD’s recent success. At one point, it even talked about how it was sending anthropologists to live with gamers to study their habits – which doesn't sound like a job we'd fancy doing.

Imagine for a moment, what if a pro se (self represented) party took a battle to the courts, and the court just copied and pasted arguments from the government's lawyers. Imagine if the pro se party cited dozens of binding cases, and the courts didn't bother to refute or cite any of them. Imagine if judges would disregard the rights of pro se parties completely. Imagine if they did this over and over in many different cases in secret opinions hidden from the public's eye that they don't publish. A shadow (in)justice system, in other words.

Would you still believe in those that say we are better than China or Russia? That we have justice? Would you still believe we live in the land of the free?

If not, what would you do? Do nothing? Call you representative and complain? Hold a town hall protest? Burn the flag? Sigh and say there's nothing we can do, all politicians are corrupt?

Answer the question, suppose this were the case, would you be okay with how things are? What would you want to do?

Aug. 13: SpaceX settles on Friday for Starhopper’s next flight test milestone, FAA permitting

Aug. 15: SpaceX’s next Starhopper flight needs more analysis for FAA go-ahead, says Elon Musk

Aug. 20: SpaceX’s next major Starhopper flight test still awaiting FAA approval, says Elon Musk

News of the next hop test’s additional delays comes some four days before Elon Musk had planned to present an updated overview of Starship and Super Heavy in Boca Chica, Texas, and it seems that both events may have to wait.

[...] According to Musk, either or both of those orbital-class prototypes could be ready for their inaugural flight tests as early as mid-September, perhaps just 1-2 months from now. Given that Starships Mk1 and Mk2 are significantly higher fidelity than Starhopper, the ungainly testbed will likely become redundant the moment that its successors are ready for flight. In other words, Starhopper is fast approaching the end of its useful life, and SpaceX’s fight for a 200m hop-test permit could ultimately be a waste of time, effort, and money if said permit doesn’t also cover Starship Mk1.

Very annoying, but hopefully the presentation on the 24th goes ahead anyway. That will be more interesting than a second hop.

There are a lot of topics that could be addressed, such as the current plan for heat shield(s), amount of engines that will be used (at least initially) on the spaceship and the booster, the type of engines (sea level, vacuum), and updated figures for tons of cargo to LEO, as well as other destinations without an in-orbit refuel. How many tons can it get to geostationary orbit without a refuel (cheaper, less complicated)?

It's not happening fast enough. He has a plan

I've been learning to sail dinghies. I live a very long way from the sea so I sail on the local pond. It's been staring me in the face for years and a few months ago, missing the sea and boats in general, I decided to sign up for some courses.

I am fairly used to motor boats and have sailed aboard small yachts very occasionally a long time ago, but I figured I'd give it a try on my own as skipper.

I have a certificate now that means I can be let loose on the village pond in the company of a safety boat (captained by a young whipper-snapper shouting at me when I sit on the wrong side of the boat etc). Sailing a dinghy is very undignified. They tend to capsize, and it happens even to the best of us. What's more the pond water is green. It's not healthy like the sea.

Still, I went sailing on the sea with my dad again recently, and for once I was able to advise him about the trim of his sails.

Hong Kong protesters call for 'Mulan' boycott after star went public in support of police

Even Mulan is getting political. Liu Yifei, the Chinese-born actress starring in Disney's upcoming live-action "Mulan" remake, waded into the Hong Kong protest controversy on Thursday by expressing support for the city's police, who anti-government demonstrators accuse of using excessive force to quell unrest. "I support the Hong Kong police. You can all attack me now. What a shame for Hong Kong," she posted on Weibo, a Twitter-like Chinese social media platform.

Immediately, people began posting #BoycottMulan on Twitter -- which is banned in China. Hours later, the hashtag was trending in Hong Kong and the United States with 37,700 tweets posted at time of writing. Twitter users accused the actress of supporting police brutality, and called out the fact that she's an American citizen. "Liu is a naturalized American citizen. It must be nice. Meanwhile she pisses on people fighting for democracy," one person tweeted.

On the flip side, she also received plenty of praise on Weibo, the dominant platform in China. Nearly all the comments on her post echoed support for the Hong Kong police and Beijing.

I'll make a man out of you.

Also at NYT and Deadline.