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It's started, and we'll see how the record labels handle it this time.

Also, there's this.

Should be an interesting couple-few years ahead.

Anybody read his classics as a kid?

From Fox News:

A publisher has altered children's books by Roald Dahl – the author of several well-received children's books that were later made into hit movies, including "Matilda," "James and the Giant Peach," and "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory" – to remove language now deemed offensive.

Puffin, the publisher of Dahl's classic works, has hired sensitivity readers to make changes to certain portions of the author's wording in the U.K. editions as part of an effort to ensure the books "can continue to be enjoyed by all today." (emphasis mine)

Also at The Guardian.

A very wise man I worked w/ in radio once told me, "You'll never do a show that's all things for all people."

One of America's best known paleoconservative authors, Pat Buchanan has announced his retirement from his syndicated column:

Pat Buchanan has retired from his syndicated column ahead of a presidential election that will test the staying power of a more populist and nationalist conservatism and after a midterm election cycle that demonstrated its growing pains.

In addition to his decades of commentary, Buchanan advised Presidents Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan as they integrated the “silent majority” into the GOP. He ran for the office three times himself, on a platform similar to the one former President Donald Trump was elected on in 2016.

[...] Originally a Cold War hawk and free trade proponent, Buchanan began to espouse a less interventionist foreign policy after the Soviet Union disintegrated and trade policies designed to protect the U.S. industrial base. He rejected the 1990s bipartisan consensus in favor of economic opening with China, dismissing then-General Secretary Deng Xiaoping as a “chain-smoking communist dwarf.”

“[Alexander] Hamilton created the ‘American System’ to end our reliance on England and Europe, because he and Washington believed economic independence was necessary for political independence,” Buchanan wrote. “If we did not depend on Europe, they knew, we could stay out of Europe’s wars. Is all that Made-in-China junk at the mall worth the loss of our economic independence?”

I had the honor of interviewing Pat in 2006 when I worked in radio. We discussed his recently published book, "State of Emergency, The Third World Invasion and Conquest of America." I found him to be polite and cordial as we dove deep into the topics covered in his book during our 1/2 hour discussion.

Love him or hate him, you have to respect his knowledge of politics accumulated during a career that goes back more than 6 decades. I'm kind of surprised he didn't choose to die in the saddle in the same manner as Robert Novak.

I'll never forget the day we met. When you strayed over to my neighbor's house, I was curious. I watched you from afar for a day or two. When they left for a vacation, they made the mistake of leaving you some food outside. I may be just a mutt, a lowly beagle/spaniel mix, but we're all opportunists, and I took advantage by wandering up and eating everything left out for you. You watched me in subdued silence, and while I was licking my chops, I said, "Hey little girl, why don't you follow me down to my house? It's fun there."

So when Master whistled me home, I trotted down the driveway with you in tow. At first we didn't know what to make of you, since you were such an ugly calico. You had a mark on your face that looked like someone hit you while wearing brass knuckles. So we named you "Knuckles" and you decided to stay.

I'll never forget the time you figured out how to open the refrigerator, and we gorged on raw venison and jerky until it felt like our bellies would pop. Remember how spicy it was? How we drank every drop of water we could find? I always felt guilty about that incident since you were banished to the basement afterwards.

I'll never forget the times we spent together in the basement, huddled together to keep warm while Master was out at work. We shared both blankets and beds and never complained. It's weird how I was more than twice as big as you but it seemed like you were always the one who kept me warm.

Luckily you were allowed back upstairs at dinnertime every night, and I'll never forget how we wrestled and played while waiting for Master to prepare our meals. I was always fed before you and finished first, so you got to eat up on the bar, where your food was out of reach of my curious nose.

I'll never forget watching you through the window as you stalked all manner of critters in the yard. Do you remember that time I ate the chipmunk you laid at the door to show Master what a good little hunter you were?

When you got sick, I didn't know how bad it was at first. We tried cleaning your wound every night, but it wouldn't heal. When the Doctor said, "It's cancer," I may have been more devastated than you. I knew your days were numbered, but you didn't seem to care that much.

I watched with morbid curiosity as Master made a box for you, out of an ash board from a log he milled himself. You probably spent time in that tree at one point during your 15 years wandering in the woods.

I'll never forget watching that box gently lowered into the ground and covered with soft, muddy dirt. It was a beautiful January day, the sun shone as the wind blew crisp. I'm old too, and may be joining you soon. But not right now. I need just a little more time to never forget.

Your friend forever, Mooch

I was on a bit of a non-fiction kick this year, and got a little irritated at the author of one of the books I read. More about that later. In no particular order, here's the list for 2022:

• The Red Badge of Courage, Stephen Crane - I read this many years ago and decided to pick up a copy and read it again. If you're ever on Jeopardy!, the red badge is a bloody wound.
• The Lost Children, Shirley Dickson - Meh. The author never met a gerund she didn't like. She's written several other books about WWII and I doubt I'll read them.
• The Reivers, William Faulkner - A comic masterpiece. Faulkner has such a unique style of writing.
• The Real Anthony Fauci, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. - A very well researched and heavily documented account of someone who should be tried for crimes against humanity. If you'd like to know what really went on during both the AIDS and COVID crises, I highly recommend this book. Almost every sentence is referenced.
• To Have and Have Not, Ernest Hemingway - Once again, you're hooked into rooting for the unsung hero, only to find out he gets crushed in the end. Curse you Hemingway!
• The Prophet, Kahlil Gibran - If you like memorizing quotes to deliver at a dinner toast, this book is full of good ones. My favorite: "Forget not that the earth delights in feeling your bare feet, and the winds long to play with your hair."
• Killing the Legends, Bill O'Reilly & Martin Dugard - The stories of how John Lennon, Muhammad Ali and Elvis Presley changed pop culture but were eventually ruined because of bad management. There are a lot of interesting facts that I didn't know, such as Lennon was a heroin addict and abandoned his wife and child in England while pursuing fame (and Yoko). The author points out the book should not be used to judge the subjects contained therein, however one can't help but doing so.
• Lost Boy Found, Kirsten Alexander - Based on a true story, an excellent read and the author's debut novel. Shows the lengths wealthy people will go to in order to have what they want, sometimes at the expense of everyone else. Here's a great line that sums it up, as spoken by the housemaid of one of the protagonists: "Mary Davenport, despite any kindnesses she'd shown Esmeralda, was the same as every rich white person: enraged and hurt when confronted with the idea that the world and everything in it was not hers for the having." I highly recommend this book.
• A Patriot's History of the United States, Larry Schweikart and Michael Allen - More than 800 pages that document everything from Columbus's great discovery up to the war on terror. The facts are presented and opposing views that are often taught in history classes are debunked and shown for what they are, an attempt to destroy the legacy of men who risked everything to build a government that was unique at the time. Despite its flaws, what these men created stands out as the best attempt at freedom, provided we heed Jefferson's warning, "the price of Liberty is eternal vigilance."
• The Hamilton Collection, Dan Tucker - A collection of wisdom and writings of Alexander Hamilton, quite possibly the first man to demonstrate what is possible when you work hard and never give up. Born out of wedlock in the Caribbean, orphaned at 13, through sheer wit, talent and audacity he become a leader of the American Revolution and George Washington's right-hand man by the age of 21. The book contains excerpts of many of his letters, articles, and select passages he wrote for The Federalist Papers. Many of the institutions he created are still in use today, such as the financial system, U.S. Coast Guard, and the New York Post.
• Special and General Relativity, Albert Einstein - I've taken 3 semesters of Calculus plus Differential Equations and I still didn't understand most of this book. However, it was interesting to read about how he came about realizing the stunning notion of Relativity. Includes transcripts of lectures he gave to demonstrate his theories.
• Jack Reacher, Lee Child (and Andrew Child) - I read 3 or 4 more of these, once again, to take a break from having to think about what I'm reading. I guess Lee is planning to retire soon because the latest books were co-written with his son Andrew. As before, if you've read one you've read them all.
• 100 Great Philosophers Who Changed the World, Philip Stokes - Very well presented biographies, starting with the ancient Greeks and ending with the New Scientists. However, I felt some of his choices were questionable and at least one great was omitted. Here's why:

Stokes includes all the greats you'd expect: Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Thomas More, Francis Bacon, Galileo, Newton, Decartes, Hume, Voltaire, they're all included. There's no doubt these men have had a profound impact on mankind's thinking and reasoning. When Stokes gets to modern times (19th Century and later), he includes some names I find questionable. For example, Nietzsche, Marx, Lenin, Freud, Keynes - no doubt these men have contributed greatly. But Einstein and Turing? Were they really philosophers, or merely genius scientists? Perhaps the same argument can be made about Galileo and Newton...? Additionally, Stokes included Thomas Paine and Adam Smith, but excluded Alexander Hamilton, who (IMHO) had more of an impact on the formation of the Constitution and the USA than either Paine and Smith. Maybe I'm wrong, or biased after having read The Hamilton Collection, feel free to include your opinion on this in the comments.

Happy New Year everyone!

Last night I typed a long response to (I think) Phoenix666 about his inquiry into the "gotchas" of milling your own lumber using a chainsaw mill. Unfortunately, when the SN DB shit the bed my post was lost, so I figured putting what I typed into a journal entry would be a good idea. I think I can recall most of what I typed even though I was pretty tired last night.

I have three Stihl saws, an MS310, MS441C and an MS462. The 310 has a 20" bar and is my go-to saw for cutting everything it can handle. I've had it about 15 years and it's been rock solid. The 441 has a 32" bar and is strictly used for cutting down and bucking up big trees the 310 can't handle. The 462 is what I use in my mill.

One big "gotcha" is the price of saws. Before Covid the saw I wanted ran about $900. After Covid the price shot up to $1300 and I had to wait 5 month to get one. The price of Granberg mills went up too but not as much.

I bought Granberg's medium-sized mill. It's supposed to be used w/ a 30" bar max but I use it w/ a 32" bar in my 462 and it works fine. I've tried milling saw chains from several different manufacturers and the ones Granberg sells work the best for me. Since milling more planes the wood (instead of cutting it) you need to use specialized chains. I have both a 28" bar and a 32" bar and several chains for both that are used only for milling.

Another thing you'll want to invest in is a grinder for sharpening your chains. I think mine was made by Oregon and it was around $300 when I bought it years ago. Depending on what kind of tree I'm milling I can usually get 3-5 passes before a chain needs sharpened. If you rely on someplace local to sharpen your saw chains you'll be spending a lot of money plus there's the downtime waiting to get them back. I sharpen my regular chains at 31 degrees and the milling chains at 10 degrees. After sharpening, always check your cleanouts b/c if they're too high the chain will never cut correctly.

I use a 20' ladder to make the first pass then run the mill on the flat surface for the rest of the cuts. I made the brackets to hold the ladder out of a 2x8. Granberg's medium-sized mill has a clamp that holds the bar on the end and this helps avoid the problem where the bar wants to dip and make an uneven cut.

There's a bit of a learning curve to using a chainsaw mill so be sure to practice on a rotten log or something you don't care about. Screwing up a nice walnut log while learning how to use a mill is definitely not desirable.

I made two stout horses out of ash to hold the log I'm milling up off the ground so I can stand while running the mill. It can be done while kneeling but to me this is not desirable. If you use horses you'll need something to lift the logs. I use the front loader on my tractor, but there's ways to do this w/ a "log lifter" device too.

Of course, it's recommended you dry your lumber before using it. I have several stacks in my barn and a few in my basement. You'll need a lot of stickers to stack the lumber and I make mine on my band saw out of the cutoffs from using my circular saw to dimension the lumber. I use ratchet straps around the ends of a stack to keep the lumber from bowing up while drying.

Two good YT channels I recommend are Guilty of Treeson for learning the different notches to use on the hinge cut (I assume you'll be felling your own trees), and I like watching Surviving Ringworm b/c that guy is a master when it comes to making stuff using just a chainsaw. He also has a video about the log lifting device he came up w/ for moving heavy logs up onto the horses. Have fun!

Full story at TheHill.com.

Black Lives Matter (BLM) leaders on Friday sued an executive of the Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation (GNF) on charges of syphoning $10 million in donations to the organization for use as his own “personal piggy bank.”

Walter Mosley, an attorney representing BLM Grassroots — a separate entity from GNF — filed the lawsuit in Los Angeles County Superior Court against GNF and GNF board member Shalomyah Bowers, as well as his consulting firm.

The initial complaint, seeking financial relief and a court order halting GNF’s use of the BLM identity, accuses Bowers of becoming a “turned usurper” and charging fees for BLM donors, which he then used for his own personal funds.

[...] “Global Network Foundation has been taken away from the people who built it,” she said. “Global Network Foundation is now led by a highly paid consultant who paid himself upwards of $2 million in a single year.”

Previously:
BLM Activist and Husband Indicted on Federal Fraud Charges
Amazon suspends BLM from its charity platform
BLM's millions unaccounted for after leaders jumped ship

You can pretty much do whatever you want.

For the TL;DR crowd, 27-ish minutes in for the epic sendoff.

Dear Google:

Almost a year ago, in your infinite wisdom, you stopped accepting SpamCop reports. I started keeping track of the IP addresses on your network that were used to send spam. If an IP address sent more than one, I kept track of that too.

The other day I emailed a buddy of mine about a news story and added my comment. Instead of delivering the message, I received this message in a bounceback:

<[email redacted]@gmail.com>: host gmail-smtp-in.l.google.com[142.251.16.26] said:
  550-5.7.1 [x.x.x.x      12] Our system has detected that this message is
  550-5.7.1 likely unsolicited mail. To reduce the amount of spam sent to Gmail,
  550-5.7.1 this message has been blocked. Please visit
  550-5.7.1 https://support.google.com/mail/?p=UnsolicitedMessageError
  550 5.7.1 for more information.
  fw12-20020a056214238c00b004644f310893si7584917qvb.507 - gsmtp (in reply to
  end of DATA command)

After visiting the URL, I read this nugget of wisdom:

Here at Gmail, we work very hard to fight spam.

Which made me laugh, since 90-95% of the spam I receive originates from servers under Google's control. Do you guys bother to check outgoing messages, or do you just filter and block incoming messages?

In any case, I've decided to implement my own filtering system. After adding all 509 of the IP addresses I've been recording since last year to my postfix access file, I wrote a small perl script to keep track of all the IPs, add new ones, block messages sent from them for 1 day for every spam incident, and remove the block after the time period expires. If an offending IP sends another spam message after the block is removed, it gets added back to the access file, and the block clock resets to 0 days.

It seems to be working well, since in the past 3 days there's been 98 messages that have not been delivered. In the bounceback I'm encouraging the sender to contact Google and request they start accepting SpamCop reports. Out of the 98 messages bounced back, 3 have been false positives. I can live w/ that.

Sincerely, fliptop

A Black Lives Matter activist and her husband are facing federal fraud and conspiracy charges after allegedly using a nonprofit they founded to scam at least $185,000 from donors, federal authorities announced Tuesday:

Monica Cannon-Grant and her husband, Clark Grant, allegedly used money from their nonprofit, Violence in Boston, to pay for rent, shopping sprees, hotels, car rentals, auto repairs, meal deliveries, and a summer vacation trip to Maryland, the U.S. attorney’s office said in a statement.

The couple was charged in an 18-count indictment with two counts of wire fraud conspiracy, one count of conspiracy, 13 counts of wire fraud and one count of making false statements to a mortgage-lending business. Cannon-Grant was also charged with one count of mail fraud.

Cannon-Grant was arrested Tuesday and released without bail. She will be allowed to continue working at the nonprofit twice a week but can’t handle its finances, the Boston Globe reported. Federal agents arrested Grant in October and charged him with lying on a mortgage statement and collecting pandemic unemployment benefits illegally.

Cannon-Grant’s lawyer, Robert Goldstein, claimed prosecutors had “rushed to judgment,” adding, “We remain fully confident Monica will be vindicated when a complete factual record emerges.”

Previously:

• BLM's millions unaccounted for after leaders jumped ship
• Amazon suspends BLM from its charity platform