W.O.O.D. – 25 November 2018

Intro

This is another of the W.O.O.D. series of semi-regular
Weekly Occasional Open Discussions.
(i.e. if I forget and skip one, no big)

Immediate prior one here:
https://chiefio.wordpress.com/2018/11/16/w-o-o-d-16-november-2018/
and remains open for threads running there
(at least until the ‘several month’ auto-close of comments on stale threads).

Canonical list of old ones here:
https://chiefio.wordpress.com/category/w-o-o-d/

So use “Tips” for “Oooh, look at the interesting ponder thing!”
and “W.O.O.D” for “Did you see what just happened?! What did you think about it?”

What’s Going On?

The G20 is coming next week. The Globalist Cabal is pushing Climate Change, Migration, and “Multilateral Trade Agreements” (that are more about removing sovereignty than actual trade). Trump continues to push “America First” (as he ought, being our President) and the YSM is calling that “isolationist” when it isn’t. He’s “winning” on China, which is causing all sorts of heartburn for everyone not in America. Heiko Maas (German Foreign Minister) is pushing “Europe United” in counter point…all while Europe is becoming ever less united over their own invasion of “migrants”.

Turkey Day is behind us (but the ‘fridge is still full of turkey…). The Spouse did her entire “Christmas Shopping” in one day all on-line… So we’ll get a month of intensive advertising for no reason.

The Climate Change Fraud continues. Very Officious Reports bemoaning that All Will End and Death Is Near and Abandon All Hope!!! Unless, of course, you hand over money and sovereignty to un-elected folks in the UN… I really want to “continue the good fight” on this, but really, once it became clear that “science” was only a prop for a political agenda driven by a small powerful rich globalist cabal, it became less clear why to bother pointing out the crap being passed off as science. You can’t fight propaganda with science and what the other side is pushing is pure propaganda, with lipstick on it.

Brexit drags on. Lots of votes. Lots of noise. Where it ends up nobody knows.

France is in full riot over rising fuel costs in the “Yellow Vest” protests. So how’s that forcing people to move away from gas and Diesel working out for you, eh Macron? What happens when Globalist Ideology meets financial reality.

The USA Stock Market has been killed by The Fed with incessant rising interest rates. Tech stocks are dropping too (Twitter Facebook Google Apple…) but that is also enhanced by their desire to drive 1/2 their customer base away by suppressing conservative voices.

Oil prices are dropping nicely due to more production. Another thing the Globalists must contend with: How to keep justifying expensive alternatives as oil & coal remain very cheap. It’s pretty clear very high prices are due to political stupidity, not production limits. Piss off people enough, well, see France.

The Republican House ought to be busy getting done what they can while they still are in a position to do something. They instead are busy with holidays and drinks. The Democrats are continuing to “vote late and by the crate” – will anyone ever go to jail for this fraud?

Somewhere around Monday a new Mars Lander will try to not turn into a fireball. Stats have not been good, so “we’ll see”…

It has become very clear that government “Of the People, By the People, and For the People” has ended. Instead we have government driven by external and often foreign actors, for the benefit of the rich and powerful, and not at all of American values. What is very unclear is how to reverse this state of affairs. Just the octopus of influence agents and agencies fielded by George Soros has acted to plunge America into a variety of chaotic and disruptive processes. The Globalists are far more than just Georgie Boy, and they are pushing the same agenda in countries all over the world. This is exactly the opposite of “of the people” and “by the people” and “for the people”. It must end. But how?

Will it end in violent revolt? With 100K to 200k folks in the streets of France, it looks like that is the only way to be heard. When the Dimocrats take over the House and turn it into an “Attack Trump And The Deplorables” machine, it will be hard to avoid similar stresses here. The Color Revolution playbook says the goal is just such violence. Is it really a choice of “giving them what they want” (and hoping they can not leverage it) or just accepting their level of irritating violence without response? I hope not.

Then a ponder. In retrospect, realizing Hillary & The Big O are firmly in the Globalist camp: Was the war in Syria (and perhaps other wars back even to Libya) done for the purpose of creating the “refugees” to flood into Europe? How far back in time does this process have roots? How many of the various regimes were overthrown mostly due to their being Nationalists who would not surrender to the Globalist Cabal?

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About E.M.Smith

A technical managerial sort interested in things from Stonehenge to computer science. My present "hot buttons' are the mythology of Climate Change and ancient metrology; but things change...
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157 Responses to W.O.O.D. – 25 November 2018

  1. A C Osborn says:

    E M, in your previous WOOD you said you had a Global Cooling post, it does not appear to be showing up.

  2. H.R. says:

    @ossqss & E.M. – I saw ossqss’s request to pass along email address and I saw that E.M. has done so.

    Turns out that hotmail account is valid, but in the last year or so they changed thigs up so you have to use Outlook to access your old hotmail account.

    That hotmail account profile has me as a 106-year old woman living at Wrigley field and some other amusing personal oddities. The only valid thing they have is my IP address.

    Anyhow, to convert my account to outlook, they want either a phone number so they can call me or text me or an alternate email, which is much more identifying. NOT gonna do it.

    My H.R. blog handle was chosen long ago to poke a stick in the eye of a large corporation, whose General Counsel was inclined to file SLAPP suits. The hotmail account name was chosen to match those initials. So long as that hotmail account remains valid, I’d like to keep it, even though I can’t access it at the moment.

    I don’t care about the ‘usual suspects’ here knowing more about me.No worries at all. Actually, as we travel about, I’d like to meet up with any of the regulars as the ‘real me’ as far as my name goes, if I’m ever in their neck of the woods.

    My posts themselves are ‘me’ but the H.R. name I use is just to let that company know I’m still around. They do keep a watch on blogs for me and about 1/2-dozen others in case we start weighing in on them again.

    Soooo…. E.M., I’m going to give a one-off post that uses my somewhat identifying email account but will be connected to a different posting name. It will take a human, not a bot, to connect that name to H.R. and I don’t see anyone bothering to do that.

    Then I’d appreciate it if you email me at that email account with ossqss’s email so we can get together over a beer and some gator tail at the Linger lodge.
    .
    .
    .
    E.M., I’m headed over to the end of the last W.O.O.D thread to post that one-off under a different name with a good email address to pass along. I will post under the name of the hottest burning wood we’ve been discussing over the past several months.

    I’ll be back here soon for our regular programming under my regular handle 😜

  3. jim2 says:

    On Meet The (De)Press(ed) today, the panel is excoriating Trump on various of the latest issues. MTP doesn’t even try to balance the panel with a Trump supporter. All participants are extreme leftists.

  4. E.M.Smith says:

    @A.C.Osborn:

    That’s a Global Cooling category (see list of categories on the right side) and the prior W.O.O.D. was added to that category.

    @Jim2:

    That’s basically what I’ve noticed. The Word has gone out: NO Trump Support Ever on all the major media and Academia. It is an astounding admission of coordination (directly or via being a social mono-culture).

  5. H.R. says:

    @jim2 and all: There was a political cartoonist/satirist that drew single panel cartoons, George Lichty. As I recall, his cartoons were funny enough that they ran on the regular comics pages. They were general barbs aimed at politicians in general, and not so topical as the ones that ran on the editorial pages. He skewered just about everything establishment and the things he satirized are still relevant today. Things don’t change much.

    The cartoon panel was titled, “Grin And Bear It”. One of his usual characters was “Senator Snort” and he would often draw his characters appearing on the panel show, “Faze The Nation.”

    Here’s a link to a bit more about him and the comic panel.
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grin_and_Bear_It

  6. Rhoda Klapp says:

    HR, I access hotmail through Thunderbird, no need for Outlook or an account with anybody.

  7. H.R. says:

    Oh, thanks, Rhoda. I’ve not heard of Thunderbird. I’d like to keep access to hotmail away from Outlook. I will check it out.

    I’m not sure when I’ll be able to check out Thunderbird as I am transitioning between computers all while preparing for our trip to Florida. We’re leaving this coming Thursday and there’s still much to do. I think my alternate email is the best shot to connect in the next week or so.

    One way or the other, ossqss and I will get connected to set a time for a meet ‘n greet.

  8. Larry Ledwick says:

    HR I also use thunderbird in most cases it is trivial to set up just down load it, install and it opens a config menu that most times has the right info after you answer a couple questions. Look at the config settings in your current email setup and just pass the proper info to Thunderbird if it misses something. Takes about 5 minutes to set it up.

  9. jim2 says:

    @H.R. says: 25 November 2018 at 3:59 pm

    Yes, I remember that cartoon from childhood. Loved it!

  10. H.R. says:

    @Larry L.: I’ll definitely check out Thunderbird for the new computer. An endorsement from Rhoda and now you clinches it for me.

    I’m fighting with the new computer over setting up Firefox as my browser. It really doesn’t want me to have anything to do with anything that isn’t Microsoft. However, once I beat it into submission, I’ll try a couple of others that have been mentioned here, too.

    Bought the new one last Wednesday – the holiday guests arrived, I’m getting ready for the Florida run – so I probably won’t finish getting the new rig to my satisfaction until the first week in December.

  11. E.M.Smith says:

    FWIW, I have typically used Thunderbird (or the more open knockoffs from GNU) as my email reader on things from the R. Pi to Wintel machines.

    @H.R.:

    I know M$ has been making it harder to do, but you really ought to try a Live CD or “Live boot USB” of some Linux distribution. Many will let you read mail and save it to the USB drive, along with saving files and settings. It lets you have a non MSnot platform to learn with / play on / be private without the need to disrupt the major configuration or use of the machine.

    I’ve used several. Mostly Knoppix (who was the big one that started it, really) but also Ubuntu (to see what I thought of it) and Debian (as a more generic Ubuntu like without the bloat… along with RedHat Centos) I now typically keep set of 3 or 4 “USB Keys” or sticks configured and ready to go at any one time.

    One caveat: I understand EUFI has tried to make this hard / impossible. You will likely need to get some setting changed to allow you to boot a guest OS.

    Oh, and I’ve used the “Mail” program on the Mac to get into gmail, as you saw in the ones I sent to you. IMAP / POP3 / SMTP are pretty much standards you can rely on for most mail readers to be able to get / send mail from most major mail provider. SMTP – Simple Mail Transfer Protocol. POP – Post Office Protocol. IMAP – Internet Message Access Protocol. Same idea just different eras. IMAP is the preferred these days, but most mail readers still do SMTP and POP3 if pushed. IIRC the Mac used IMAP for sending and SMTP for pickup? Something like that ;-)

    You will find web pages full of the “right settings” for server, port, etc. for the major mail providers. Usually it is something like smtp.gmail.com or imap.gmail.com and the default ports. Plus your login credentials YourEmail.gmail.com and YourPasswd. That’s pretty much it.

  12. E.M.Smith says:

    @Larry L:

    Well there’s your answer to “What is for dinner” during the coming LIA ;-) It may not be Mastodon, but the niche is the same… just need a modern hunting rig…

  13. Larry Ledwick says:

    Totally different topic may not have shown up on major media yet, last hour or so lots of items where Russia has engaged Ukraine ships trying to run their blockade, shots have been exchanged and one Ukraine ship has been damaged, the Ukraine Navy is reporting the returned fire for effect to protect themselves – so we have a small shooting war going on there right now.

    Agenda-Free TV
    ‏@AgendaFreeTV
    2m2 minutes ago
    More
    LIVE COVERAGE coming up: Russia Reportedly Fires on Ukrainian Ship

    Doge
    ‏@IntelDoge
    Follow Follow @IntelDoge
    More Doge Retweeted ELINT News
    #URGENT: Several sailors of the Ukrainian navy have reportedly been shot and wounded by Russian forces. Russian special operations reportedly attempting to take the vessels by storm.

    ELINT News
    ‏@ELINTNews
    Follow Follow @ELINTNews
    More
    #BREAKING: Now reports ‘several sailors’ from Ukranian Navy have been shot and wounded by Russian forces, Russian Spec Ops is trying to take the vessels by storm- @Defence_blog

    Liveuamap
    ‏Verified account
    @Liveuamap
    10 minutes ago
    More Liveuamap Retweeted Liveuamap
    Also Ukrainian Navy reports that FSB boats opened fire when Ukrainian boat was already in International waters

    Liveuamap
    ‏Verified account
    @Liveuamap
    Follow @Liveuamap
    More
    Gyurza-M class artillery boat U175 Berdyansk is damaged, lost engine, one wounded. Ukrainian Navy responding with deadly fire to protect itself https://liveuamap.com/en/2018/25-november-gyurzam-class-artillery-boat-u175-berdyansk-is … via @KrimRt #Ukraine

  14. jim2 says:

    This is reminiscent of when Carnegie’s man Frick called in the Pinkerton’s to put down a strike at one of his steel mills. Several strikers dead in that case.

    “Amazon asked police in Spain to intervene in a mass strike on Friday by enforcing worker productivity inside a Madrid warehouse, according to local reports.”

    https://www.businessinsider.com/amazon-asked-police-in-spain-to-intervene-warehouse-strike-2018-11

    https://www.britannica.com/event/Homestead-Strike

  15. Larry Ledwick says:

    Strategic Sentinel
    ‏Verified account
    @StratSentinel
    6 minutes ago
    More Strategic Sentinel Retweeted Liveuamap
    According to Ukrainian Navy, FSB vessels opened fire on Ukrainian vessels even though the Ukrainian vessels were in international waters. If confirmed, it would be a clear violation of the UNCLOS, and also would be considered an act of war by the same document.

  16. Larry Ledwick says:

    just need a modern hunting rig…
    Already have that covered, routinely have deer not far from my place, just that little minor detail of hunting license and seasons issue, and if the SHTF the deer will be hunted to extinction near the metro area in just a few months.

  17. Larry Ledwick says:

    The Russian navy has apparently closed the Kerch strait
    passage to Azov Sea through Kerch strait

    https://liveuamap.com/en/2018/25-november-russian-authorities-have-closed-kerch-strait

  18. Larry Ledwick says:

    Numbers Stations
    ‏@Spy_Stations
    23 minutes ago
    More
    On October 25, Ukrainian navy gunboats accompanied by a tug attempted to transit to the sea of Azov, which is shared by Ukraine and Russia
    In the morning, Russian coast guard ship “Don” rammed Ukrainian tug Yani Kapu and another Russian coast guard vessel Izumrud

    Numbers Stations
    ‏@Spy_Stations
    21 minutes ago
    More
    That provocation did not cause Ukrainian naval detachment to open fire, and they proceeded to the Kerch strait. Russian forces built up in the area of Kerch bridge, with patrol boats, a vessel serving as an obstacle, helicopters and attack planes.

    Numbers Stations
    ‏@Spy_Stations
    18 minutes ago
    More
    With the entry denied and clear preparations to capture UA naval detachment, the latter set to return to Odesa. According to reports, after 19:00 CET situation escalated when the gunboats were attacked in neutral waters (outside 12 nmi zone). UA navy boats returned fire.

    Numbers Stations
    ‏@Spy_Stations
    12 minutes ago
    More
    UA Navy HQ – 3 Ukrainian vessels captured and towed to Kerch. [Source: @prestupnostiNet ]

    Numbers Stations
    ‏@Spy_Stations
    Following @Spy_Stations
    More
    Gunboats “Berdyansk” and “Nikopol” damaged and lost propulsion, all three vessels captured by RU special forces – 2 wounded among UA crews confirmed by UA Navy Staff

  19. Larry Ledwick says:

    Ukraine just put all their tactical air resources on hot alert standby 15-30 minutes to get airborne.

    World Events Live
    ‏@IdeologyWars
    47 seconds ago
    More World Events Live Retweeted The Intel Crab
    #UPDATE: ALL tactical/attack assets in #Ukraine air force are required to be airborne within 15-30 minutes if activated. -Gage

  20. Larry Ledwick says:

    Now comes the Ukrainian response to Russian seizure of its naval vessels.

    Numbers Stations
    ‏@Spy_Stations
    26 seconds ago
    More Numbers Stations Retweeted Мілітарний портал
    🇺🇦Ukrainian navy on emergency alert – ships and support vessels are going to sea @mil_in_ua

    The Intel Crab Retweeted
    Murad Gazdiev
    ‏Verified account
    @MuradGazdiev
    1 minute ago
    More
    Reports coming in from Donbas of intense artillery shelling by Ukrainian military in Donetsk, Lugansk regions.

  21. Larry Ledwick says:

    Meanwhile the caravan is storming the border crossing at San Ysidro, almost like it was timed as a distraction from what is going on in Ukraine.

    Cristina Laila
    ‏@cristinalaila1
    16 minutes ago
    More
    BREAKING: San Ysidro Port of Entry in San Diego Closes in Border Showdown with Honduran Migrants https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2018/11/breaking-san-ysidro-port-of-entry-in-san-diego-closes-in-border-showdown-with-honduran-migrants/ … via

    Chris Sherman
    ‏Verified account
    @chrisshermanAP
    Follow @chrisshermanAP
    More
    US Border Patrol has just launched tear gas into Mexico. Breeze carrying it hundreds of yards. Parents running away with choking toddlers. #migrantcaravan

  22. Larry Ledwick says:

    BNL NEWS
    ‏@BreakingNLive
    9 minutes ago
    More
    BREAKING: U.S. – Mexican border crossing near Tijuana completely shut down after dozens of illegal immigrants tried to cross.
    Photo from the scene:

  23. ray warkentin says:

    The US has been encouraging the Ukraine to provoke Russia. Here is a link showing the current incident from the Russian point of view.
    https://sputniknews.com/russia/201811251070120633-kerch-ships-pursuit/

  24. Larry Ledwick says:

    It appears earlier reports of Ukraine shelling were false (or perhaps this retraction is false – who knows) Take all the above for what it is first raw reports

    Murad Gazdiev
    ‏Verified account
    @MuradGazdiev
    Follow Follow @MuradGazdiev
    More
    Reports of Ukrainian military shelling Donetsk appear to be fake.

    Just called several people in the city; all confirm everything is relatively quiet. No escalation.

    1:41 PM – 25 Nov 2018

  25. Larry Ledwick says:

    Citing a Russian news source famous for being an the modern Pravda official outlet for propaganda is not particularly believable.

    The recent history of this conflict clearly shows Russia like in Georgia is trying to take back control of the old Soviet Union buffer states a bit at a time, just below the threshold of provocation that will illicit a strong response.

    The fact that just the other day the Russians announced that they could use nuclear weapons in Ukraine if the EU or America intervened is a strong indication this is a planned provocation by the Russians, they have been threatening to close off the strait for some time.

  26. H.R. says:

    We’ll see what happens between Ukraine and Russia. I wonder how President Trump will react to the situation?
    .
    .
    .
    As for the border, over on The Conservative Treehouse, there was an article about President Trump tweeting that he was prepared to completely close the Southern border if the invaders tried to come into the U.S, either storming in or sneaking in; doesn’t matter.

    The San Ysidro incident may just be a test of President Trump’s resolve and to gauge public reaction. I would expect the YSM to paint the Bad Orange Man as a baby and woman killer and try to elicit as many crocodile tears and outrage among the American public as possible.

    If some of the polls are accurate, 70-80% of Americans would cheer the closing of our Southern border, not rise up in mass protest. There will be protests, of course.

    I am dead set against illegal immigration, as is my daughter-in-law, a legal immigrant. I’m fine with useful, vetted legal immigrants. We need them.

    I wish we could reset public schools and immigration back to the 19th Century when both of those were more sanely administered.

  27. Larry Ledwick says:

    Video of the ramming of the Ukraine tug boat by the Russian gun boat. It was clearly an intentional collision, if you watch the prop wash the tug went dead in the water then tried to back down to avoid the collision while the Russian gun boat turned in on an intentional collision course to punt the Tug in the starboard bow.

  28. ray warkentin says:

    Larry,
    You should try to get an understanding of things relating to Russia from outside of the propagandist Western media presentation. Your Georgia example is a poor one. With US encouragement Georgia threatened Russian interests, killing several Russian peacekeepers in the process. Russia responded with a brief incursion, demonstrating to the US a line in the sand, withdrew , and Georgia remains solidly in the US sphere of influence.

    In 2014 the United States orchestrated the overthrow of the properly elected pro- Russia Ukrainian government and installed what amounts to a US supported group of thugs as the government of Ukraine. This unelected government of thugs then launched a campaign to cleanse the eastern provinces of ethnic Russians by attacking them and forcing them to flee to Russia and even had plans for concentration camps for those who didn’t leave. This would ensure victory in future elections. The Ukraine would then be absorbed into NATO and US military bases established in the country. The Russian population in east Ukraine organized militarily and fought for their survival supported with foodstuffs and armaments by Russia. That Russia would do this from both a humanitarian and geo-political and national security point of view is perfectly understandable from any rational point of view. Yet the west and their media propaganda organs spin this as Russian aggression and it was used as the excuse for sanctions.

    In the face of these events, the Russian population of Crimea were very afraid and wanted to return to where they belonged. Crimea had been part of Russia for hundreds of years before Krushchev in a goofy drunken gesture signed Crimea over to Ukraine when it was part of the Soviet Union and it didn’t matter anyway. But later the sequence of events left Crimea and its Russian people separated from the motherland. So they returned to the mother country via election.The United States has supported that kind of self-determination in other instances and it is only for cynical reasons that it doesn’t here.

    These actions are spun via Western propaganda as Russian aggression. In truth, they were defensive actions in the face of Western aggression in the interest of security and long-term national survival. In fact, outside of the nuclear context Russia is no threat to the United States or to Europe. She has neither the ability or desire to invade or subjugate either and war is not in her economic interests. But neither can NATO win a conventional war against Russia. Any attempt would be futile and result in horrendous losses. Indeed, not only has Russia not been acting hostilely toward the West but has been reaching out desperately for peaceful cooperation while at the same time taking defensive actions that they deemed necessary. If Russia is an enemy of the United States it is only because certain interests in the United States want it that way and they are using the full power of the bought and owned corrupt Western media toward that purpose.

  29. jim2 says:

    From the Dimowit Propaganda Channel (NYT) we find …

    For instance, the 2014 assessment forecast that coastal cities would see more flooding in the coming years as sea levels rose. That’s no longer theoretical: Scientists have now documented a record number of “nuisance flooding” events during high tides in cities like Miami and Charleston, S.C.

    “High tide flooding is now posing daily risks to businesses, neighborhoods, infrastructure, transportation, and ecosystems in the Southeast,” the report says.

    As the oceans have warmed, disruptions in United States fisheries, long predicted, are now underway. In 2012, record ocean temperatures caused lobster catches in Maine to peak a month earlier than usual, and the distribution chain was unprepared.

  30. jim2 says:

    Or, could it be, let’s see ……. subsidence?

    Expanding the list beyond ten would see the addition of Amsterdam and the Western Netherlands, Calcutta, Mumbai, etc. Cities in the United States where subsidence significantly adds to the rate of sea level rise would likely lead with Annapolis, Maryland; Charleston, South Carolina; and Savannah, Georgia – just to name a few.

    http://www.johnenglander.net/sea-level-rise-blog/top-10-sinking-cities-in-the-world/

  31. H.R. says:

    “I’ll take ‘Subsidence’ for $1,000, Alex.”

  32. p.g.sharrow says:

    NASA has reported a reduction of 0.56 degrees Celsius world wide over the last 2 years with more to come as the Solar output declines. No matter how long and loud the WGW Religious fanatics yell and holler God has turned against them and their extortion scam…pg

  33. E.M.Smith says:

    @Ray Warkentin:

    While I generally agree with much of what you say (for example, the signing over of Crimea was never properly ratified and it sure looks like Krushchev did not have the power to do it) and it is the case that Ukraine had a legitimate government that was illicitly overthrown; I have a few details to pick over…

    1) Ukraine had a lot of “Russification” against their will under the USSR. To a large extent those “innocent Russians” in eastern Ukraine were in fact a foreign occupying presence from that era. (No, I have no good way to unscramble those eggs…). Stalin murdered a LOT of Ukrainians to enable putting those Russians in place…

    2) While the USA had involvement in the overthrow in Ukraine, I think there is more depth to get to the real root of the rot. It was another of the “Color Revolutions” being pushed by the Globalists and with the back room manipulations of Soros and fellow travelers. While they DID managed to use the USA (probably through their near ownership of the Clintons and Obama & Friends); I would assert it was not America that did it, but a parasitic cabal using America. Small consolation, I know… but since there is Right Now an attempt at a Color Revolution against Trump (and for the same anti-Nationalist reasons…) I think it is important to see that connection and know the source of that black influence. Democrats are in bed with the Globalists & Sorors, Trump is not.

    3) Isn’t part of Georgia still occupied by Russia?
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occupied_territories_of_Georgia

    Occupied territories of Georgia (Georgian: საქართველოს ოკუპირებული ტერიტორიები) are the territories occupied by Russia after the Russo-Georgian War in 2008. They consist of the regions of Abkhazia and the former South Ossetian Autonomous Oblast of Soviet Georgia (currently divided between several administrative divisions of independent Georgia), whose status is a matter of international dispute.

    After the 2008 war and subsequent Russian military occupation of Abkhazia and South Ossetia, the Russian government, along with several others, considers the territories as sovereign independent states: the Republic of Abkhazia and the Republic of South Ossetia. Before Russian occupation, the unrecognized Republic of Abkhazia and the unrecognized Republic of South Ossetia did not completely control their respectively claimed territories. Russian military bases were established in Abkhazia and South Ossetia. Russia does not allow the European Union Monitoring Mission to enter either Abkhazia or South Ossetia. Russia has signed agreements with the de facto civilian administrations of both territories to integrate them militarily and economically into Russia. Russian troops have started the process of demarcation (also known as “borderization”) near South Ossetia-Georgia administrative boundary line and meanwhile gradually advancing the occupation line inside Georgia to enlarge the Russian-held territory.

    I hope we are not playing word games about what IS Georgia and you are not leaving Abkhazia and South Ossetia out of Georgia in your usage…

    4) In general, Russia does act 100% in their own interests and they do act to expand their influence and control in their border States. (That is one of the things I admire most about them, BTW, their honesty in that…) Russian citizens in any region can expect the support of their nation. It is silly to deny that. It chooses not to look at things like historical Russification, but rather just says “Russians are here now, so we protect Russians.” That can be a bit, um, rude about the historical path that got to that point and the sensibilities of others (like the Ukrainians, and the peoples of the Baltic States). It does matter when you choose to start your historical counting up of “wrongs” to be redressed… for both sides.

    That All Said:

    In general, it is a very bad idea to pick a fight with the Russian Bear, and clearly the present government in Ukraine has done that. Now were in a lite shooting war. Who knows where this will lead next… Some problems are largely intractable, and this is likely one of them. Ukraine can’t just let go of a big chunk of their country (and in some ways the better parts / ports) while Russia can’t just let go of their Ethnic Russians in those lands nor their historical claim to Crimea.

    I don’t know who will win this tussle, but hope not too many die in the process and the West stays out of it.

    @Larry L:

    Yup, early shooting war / sparring started. Saw it on the Euro News and D.W.

    Per Mexico Border:

    The YSM is doing their best to play up “2 infants injured by tear gas”… so maybe their parents ought not to endanger them by putting them up against the US Army in a conflict zone…

    They are also doing the scoff and nix thing on the idea of a full border closure. “It just could not be done as there are” $xx Billion of commerce per / whatever. Well yes, it can be done, and it OUGHT to be done; until such time as Mexico gets their act together and deports their illegal aliens and I’d even go so far as to add “and shuts down the drug traffic and cartels”.

    OTOH, watching 1/2 the Dimocrats go through drug withdrawal would be tough to tolerate. They would get even crabbier then ;-)

    @Jim2:

    It does look like word has gone out to make The Big Propaganda Push. Everywhere I look it’s even more Over The Top FUD (Fear Uncertainty & Doubt) being pushed. The End Is Neigh! Send us your money! Repent NOW!!! Or Long List Of Biblical Proportions (minus the Bible…) will befall you!!!

    Not sure why. There’s 2 to 6 more years of Trump. Is there something in the pipeline to be signed or done? Or is it just supposed to be “cover” for DumbDumbs like Governor Jerry “Moonbeam” Brown? Or do they have some harebrained idea they can sell it as endangering the Nation so grounds for impeachment? I donno… but it sure looks like something unknown of that sort, or just incredible panic.

    I’m pretty sure folks minds are fairly made up and set. Don’t see a lot of folks changing sides (either way). Gridlock can be a good thing some times… Or maybe they know it is going against them in terms of Epic Cold (now and more coming) so it’s one last giant push? I wonder….

  34. ray warkentin says:

    Justin Trudeau in Canada has created a slush fund of taxpayer money to give to media outlets–but only the ones he can trust. Oh, there’s an election coming in a few months.
    https://www.therebel.media/justin-trudeau-liberals-give-595-million-to-media-sector-ottawa-fiscal-update

  35. Larry Ledwick says:

    @ray warkentin
    https://www.france24.com/en/20181123-video-revisited-ukraine-maidan-revolution-protests-kiev-corruption-russia

    The Ukrainian people threw out a corrupt kleptocrat who was wholly owned by the Russians (he took refuge in Russia after their little green men invasion started). His replacement is not a lot better but leans more toward the EU than Russia a small gain but a gain none the less. That little green men invasion was Russian hybrid warfare using regular Russian troops pretending to be protesters. It was a stage managed war and lots of fingers were in that pie but the primary actor was Russia.

    Note military blockade of primary shipping lane through which 80% of Ukraine sea traffic passes is an act of war by the Russians in violation of negotiated co-control agreement of that sea lane. They have been engaged in a creeping blockade for months now slowly clamping down on Ukraine shipping enforcing huge delays and bottle necking shipping. Yesterday they closed off the strait (under their newly built bridge) and cut off the majority of Ukraine sea traffic. The Russians officially opened the Crimea bridge May 15, 2018, it was built to both create this bottle neck and to formalize the ownership of Crimea by Russia.

    There is a 2003 agreement between Russia and Ukraine establishing the Kerch Strait and the Sea of Azov as internal waters of both countries.

    Aurel Sari
    ‏@aurelsari
    15 hours ago
    More
    Art 2 of the Russia-Ukraine Agreement on Cooperation in the Use of the Azov Sea and the Kerch Strait provides for free passage of Ukrainian warships through the Straits. That should allow innocent passage irrespective of the status of Crimean territorial waters.

    Luchkov Andrii
    ‏@AndriiLuchkov
    20 hours ago
    More
    Russia blocked Kerch Strait and stopped Ukrainian vessels from entering the Sea of Azov via the Kerch Strait by placing cargo ship beneath a Russian-controlled bridge. They stole our Crimea and now they tell us what we can do in our territorial waters!

    Jack Laurenson

    @JackLaurenson
    21 hours ago
    More
    Russia has attacked Ukrainian ships in the Azov Sea and blocked the Kerch Strait, in contravention of the UN Conventions on the Law of the Sea. Not unexpected by those keeping a close eye on the deteriorating situation on the #Azov — #Ukraine #Russia

  36. llanfar says:

    @E.M.Smith December 5th is a HUGE date and I am sure there will be many attempts to suppress it with other events.

  37. Larry Ledwick says:

    Upcoming Mars re-entry today

    NASA Live: Watch InSight Mars Landing Online

    NASA’s InSight lander is scheduled to touch down on Mars at approximately 3 p.m. EST, Monday, Nov. 26. NASA TV live coverage of the InSight Mars landing will begin at 2 p.m. Eastern (7 p.m. UTC). Follow @NASA and @NASAInSight for #MarsLanding news. See a list or an interactive timeline of landing milestones. News briefings and launch commentary will be streamed on NASA TV, YouTube.com/NASAJPL/live and Ustream.tv/NASAJPL.

    Monday, Nov. 26, 2 p.m. Eastern: NASA TV live coverage of InSight mission landing on Mars. Live landing commentary runs from 2-3:30 p.m. The Entry, Descent and Landing phase will be the final plunge of NASA’s Mars InSight Lander through the Martian atmosphere. It lasts about six minutes and delivers the lander safely to the surface of the Red Planet.

    https://www.nasa.gov/nasalive

  38. Jon K says:

    Well this is a terrifying idea. Imagine what the impact to your credit score would be from visiting Mr. Smith’s blog…

  39. Another Ian says:

    “Attack of the Malicious ads” WordPress

    https://wattsupwiththat.com/2018/11/26/attack-of-the-malicious-ads/

  40. E.M.Smith says:

    @llanfar:

    The repeal of Prohibition? Or was there some other HUGE Dec. 5th event you were referencing?

    @Another Ian:

    Quoting from the article quote:

    Now, researchers have uncovered one of the forces driving that spike—a consortium of 28 fake ad agencies. The consortium displayed an estimated 1 billion ad impressions last year that pushed malicious antivirus software, tech support scams, and other fraudulent schemes. By carefully developing relationships with legitimate ad platforms, the ads reached 62 percent of the Internet’s ad-monetized websites on a weekly basis, researchers from security firm Confiant reported in a report published Tuesday. (Confiant has dubbed the consortium “Zirconium.”) The ads were delivered on so-called “forced redirects,” in which a site displaying editorial content or an ad suddenly opened a new page on a different domain.

    This is why I run a fairly aggressive advertising suppressing DNS, NEVER click on an ad, have my browser set to suppress “pop-ups” (even though it only marginally works), and have my browser set to block re-directs to another site (unless I inspect the request and approve it via an OK button).

    Oh, and if any link does something I really don’t like (like shove crap in my face) I just click the “close tab” button and escape it…

    It’s a war, and you are either engaged in it, or you are a POW.

  41. llanfar says:

    Comey testimony December 3rd
    Lynch testimony December 4th
    Huber testimony December 5th

  42. jim2 says:

    @ llanfar says: 26 November 2018 at 8:41 pm

    Our Intrepid Republican mount a charge against the Demon Dimowits. It’s really too bad they waited until they won’t have time to finish the battle. But, hey, it looks good to some people.

  43. jim2 says:

    A bit belated, but …

  44. ossqss says:

    @EM, I have noticed a new type pull down that needs pushed up on mobile lately.

  45. Power Grab says:

    The new type pull down menu also appears on PCs.

  46. Power Grab says:

    @ EM re “The Big Propaganda Push”

    I reckon you’re right.

    OTOH, I think they’re just trying to keep themselves and their myth “above the fold”. They want to be the story that “leads” because it “bleeds”…or they want people to think it bleeds…or it might bleed… You get the idea. Scared people spend more money, right?

    IMHO that strategy has gotten so old that it has become a parody of itself.

    A few summers ago, I ended up being in charge of the music for our Vacation Bible School (VBS). Only I couldn’t just let it go with using the material they had chosen. Since there were kids from preschool to high school in the group, I wanted to give them more to chew on than just the little kids could handle.

    I ended up writing 3 skits and modifying a 4th. Each skit had the featured Old Testament hero, 2 talking animals, and the rest were non-talking characters. David had his 2 talking sheep, and the rest of the flock. Moses had his 2 talking cows, and the rest of the herd. Joshua had his 2 talking stones (in the wall of Jericho), and the rest were people. And Elijah had his 2 talking birds, and the rest were people. Oh, and I wrote a theme song, too. A friend recorded it. He played all the instruments and sang the solo. I didn’t even know he had all those hidden talents!

    One of the 2 talking non-humans was always goofy and prone to fly off the handle, and the other was more sensible.

    Because the cartoons my own kid seemed to enjoy most (e.g., anime) always had a problem to solve that involve a life-or-death situation (“We’ve gotta save the world!” “We’ve gotta save your brother!”, etc.), I thought I would throw in this line in every skit:

    “WE’RE AAAAAALLL GONNA DIIIIIIIIEEE!”

    I thought it was a good wake-em-up line. You know, make sure you got their attention again if the set-up was taking too long. The line was always said (screamed, actually) by the goofy, talking non-human. The more sensible, talking non-human would always try to set them right.

    The high schoolers did the acting in the skits. At the end of the week, one of these high school guys (junior? senior?) came up and asked if I was going to write some more skits for the next summer’s VBS. (OMG! They liked my skits, they really liked them!!)

    Bottom line–these days if you want to capture the attention of the public, you’ve gotta fling some poo or shed some blood. Or make them think that’s what you’re doing. It’s gotta be outrageous or no one will pay attention.

    It feels so strange to me, in my 6th decade, to see how much concocted stress young people consume these days. I mean, in my day “1984” was the edgiest play my peers put on at school. But not many years ago I discovered that today’s school-age kids prefer something even edgier/bloodier: “Carrie: The Musical” or “Sweeney Todd: The Junior Version”. :-P

    It’s really hard to find any entertainment that demonstrates how to avoid fixing your problems by blowing someone away with a weapon, so everyone’s first thought is to deal with an adversary by maiming or killing them. I guess when the climate cools enough and crops are scarce, then TPTB can just hole up in their little fortresses and let the peasants kill each other in the streets. Robert Felix (iceagenow.info) reminds his readers of that fairly often.

    I’m sorry to seem so accepting of the conspiracy theory ideas, but there are just so many pieces of the puzzle that seem to be coming together to form that picture. “Let’s you and him fight. I’ll hold your coat.” (Thanks, EM!)

    However, I would not be in the least disappointed to be proven wrong! ;-)

  47. E.M.Smith says:

    I was wondering where they got all those 200,000 Yellow Vests on such short notice for the French Yellow Vest protests. Tonight on France24 they said “yellow vests that they have to keep in their car”… So I take it there’s some silly French Law that says everyone must own a Yellow Vest and keep it in their car. No doubt so they can put it on when their car breaks down while they wait for the tow truck… I guess the Yellow Vest makers had a good lobbyist…

  48. Simon Derricutt says:

    EM – here in France we need to carry two such yellow vests in the car at all times, and also a warning triangle. In Spain, you need a second triangle too. Thus anyone who drives will have those vests and triangles anyway. If you break down or have an accident, the triangles should be placed 100m from the car in each direction (so have a good chance of disappearing since that will be out of sight of the car) and you put on the yellow vest. In reality, of course, the triangles are rarely deployed and the vests not worn. C’est la vie….

  49. Power Grab says:

    I just transcribed this from a video on Twitter. The teller of the joke appears to be an “asylum seeker”. He thinks it’s really hilarious, as we can tell from the way he laughs his head off after telling it.

    The joke:

    An African asylum seeker, a black guy, is walking around the city of Nuremberg.

    He talks to the first person he sees and says, “Thank you for taking me in, that I may live here, for giving me health insurance, a place to live, food to eat, and everything else.”

    The person says, “I’m not German. I’m Albanian.” The African says, “Oh, excuse me.”

    He continues walking and speaks to the next person. He says, “Thank you I may live in Germany, thank you for everything you do for me.”

    The person says, “I’m not German. I’m Turkish.” The African says, “Oh, excuse me.”

    He continues walking and speaks to the next person. He says, “Thank you for allowing me to live in Germany, that you took me in as refugee.”

    The person says, “I’m not German. I’m Arab.” The African says, “Where are all the Germans?” The Arab looks at his watch and says, “Probably working.”

  50. philjourdan says:

    Well, the Mars lander did, the Russians did as well. The Gruniard has a bombshell that has managed to stay hidden for almost 3 years with all the known world looking for it, And Assange is running short of money so is trying to make a sucker bet with the Gruniard.

    Nothing has changed.

  51. Larry Ledwick says:

    Hmmm very interesting video clip here, one of the Mexican migrant caravan says they are getting help from Russia.

  52. Larry Ledwick says:

    Mexican Law Enforcement trying to talk some sense into the caravan protesters.

  53. Another Ian says:

    “We Don’t Need No Flaming Sparky Cars”

    “I’m old enough to remember when there were going to be “a million electric cars on the road by 2015”: SIX YEARS AGO OBAMA PROMISED TO BUY A CHEVY VOLT. NOW IT IS DEAD. ”

    And the comments

    http://www.smalldeadanimals.com/index.php/2018/11/27/we-dont-need-no-flaming-sparky-cars-14/#comments

    Plus https://wattsupwiththat.com/2018/11/26/vehicle-electrification-common-sense/

  54. Another Ian says:

    “NYT: Climate Deniers are Depraved and Corrupt”

    ” NYT columnist Paul Krugman believes climate “deniers” are depraved and corrupt, because he read a book written by Michael “Hide the Decline” Mann.”

    https://wattsupwiththat.com/2018/11/27/nyt-climate-deniers-are-depraved-and-corrupt/

    Walter Sobchak and azraycatcher in comments

  55. Another Ian says:

    Re azraycatcher item

    Could also be called “Egg on Face Syndrome” IMO

  56. Larry Ledwick says:

    In Ukraine as martial law goes into effect:

    The Intel Crab
    ‏@IntelCrab
    6 minutes ago
    More
    Panic buying has begun in local supermarkets near #Kherson as martial law comes into full effect. Buckwheat, matches, and salt are purchased in large quantities, with some shortages reported.

  57. philjourdan says:

    This has got to be a British SJW Snowflake!

    “They’re letting us protest but they’re eating the flesh of animals in front of us.”

    https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/7837858/video-vegans-steakhouse-recording-cows-slaughtered-forced-leave-diners/

  58. Terry Jackson says:

    R pi kit on WOOT
    https://www.woot.com/category/computers?ref=w_ft_tn_cp_4
    CanaKit Raspberry Pi 3 B+ Ultimate Starter Kit – 32GB Edition, Clear Case
    $69.99

  59. E.M.Smith says:

    @Terry Jackson:

    I’ve bought Pi CanaKits before and they are nice.

    At this point I’ve got excess power supplies and all, so don’t need the whole kit. It’s a nice place to b,e ;-) FWIW, I was looking at the open hardware spec version / knock off. Doesn’t have a Devuan port, but does have Armbian so that and a Devuan uplift, ought to work:

    https://www.amazon.com/Libre-Computer-AML-S905X-CC-Potato-64-bit/dp/B074P6BNGZ/

    $45.00 with 2 GB, a quad core A53 processor at 1.5 GHz… and a more common video system so might actually be enough to run videos…

    HIGH PERFORMANCE DESIGN: Quad 64-bit 1.5GHz ARM Cortex-A53 Processors, 4K Ultra HD ARM Mali-450 750MHz GPU, 2GB of High Bandwidth DDR3, 4K 60FPS High Dynamic Range Display Engine for H.265 HEVC, H.264 AVC, VP9 Hardware Decoding and 1080P 60FPS H.264 Harware Encoding, Up to 50% faster than Raspberry Pi 3.

    I’ve put one on my Christmas Wish List… we’ll see if the family really really loves me ;-)

    It’s only a hair faster CPU ( 1.5 vs 1.4 GHz for the R.Pi3 B+) so it’s not generally a faster board (actual speed difference will depend more on the SW than HW when they are that close…) so the major “feature” for the extra $10 is the video engine.

    The same folks make a much faster board too, with up to 4 GB of memory… but it’s like $80+ so not on my shopping list…

  60. E.M.Smith says:

    Matches I’ve got. Salt I’ve got (several 1/2 gallon jugs…), buckwheat? That’s an interesting choice… Grows well and fast in cold climates. Makes decent pancakes and muffins, and can be cooked as a porridge… Probably a better choice than rice…

  61. Larry Ledwick says:

    Hmmmm – Looks like a good cold climate option.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buckwheat

    Buckwheat, a short-season crop, does well on low-fertility or acidic soils, but the soil must be well drained. Too much fertilizer, especially nitrogen, reduces yields. In hot climates it can be grown only by sowing late in the season, so that it blooms in cooler weather. The presence of pollinators greatly increases the yield. The nectar from buckwheat flower makes a dark-colored honey. Buckwheat is sometimes used as a green manure, as a plant for erosion control, or as wildlife cover and feed.

    The plant has a branching root system with a primary taproot that reaches deeply into moist soil.[8] Buckwheat has triangular seeds and produces a flower that is usually white, although can also be pink or yellow.[9] Buckwheat branches freely, as opposed to tillering or producing suckers, causing a more complete adaption to its environment than other cereal crops.[8] The seed hull density is less than that of water, making the hull easy to remove.[9]

    Buckwheat is raised for grain where a short season is available, either because it is used as a second crop in the season, or because the climate is limiting. Buckwheat can be a reliable cover crop in summer to fit a small slot of warm season. It establishes quickly, which suppresses summer weeds.[10] Buckwheat has a growing period of only 10–12 weeks[11] and it can be grown in high latitude or northern areas.[12] It grows 30 to 50 inches (75 to 125 cm) tall.[10]

    It is the world’s highest-elevation domesticate, being cultivated in Yunnan on the edge of the Tibetan Plateau or on the plateau itself. Buckwheat was one of the earliest crops introduced by Europeans to North America.

    Historically, the Russian Empire was the world leader in buckwheat production.[13] Growing areas in the Russian Empire were estimated at 6.5 million acres (2,600,000 ha), followed by those of France at 0.9 million acres (360,000 ha).[14] In 1970, the Soviet Union grew an estimated 4.5 million acres (1,800,000 ha) of buckwheat. As of 2016, it remains a key cereal.[15][16]

  62. Larry Ledwick says:

    From an amazon listing for buckwheat

    Buckwheat Grain

    ANCIENT SUPERFOOD GRAIN. Naturally gluten-free buckwheat fluffs up when cooked so that you can use it as a sweet or savory dish. Nourishing, energizing and tasty, it also contains “resistant starch,” a type of fiber shown to lower blood sugar after meals, help weight loss, reduce food cravings and improve diabetes.

    1. Best source of high-quality, easily digestible proteins.

    Sounds like as a grain for rough times it has a lot of desirable characteristics

  63. Ossqss says:

    Buckwheat?

    I am in…. Gluten free too! Not that it matters since I don’t have Celiac disease… Why is that considered a disease?

    Little Rascal’s Image redacted….

  64. Larry Ledwick says:

    Nice summary of the nutritional characteristics of buckwheat.

    https://www.usaemergencysupply.com/information-center/all-about/all-about-whole-grains/all-about-buckwheat
    (preserving copy here since these small business web pages have a bad habit of going away unexpectedly)

    It is believed that buckwheat was first domesticated in China. As it spread across Asia and Europe during the centuries, it took a particularly strong hold in Russia where kasha is popular. A relatively new grain, it hasn’t been in cultivation for much more than a thousand years. Saying it’s a grain is a misstatement as it’s not really a grain at all. It’s actually, technically, a fruit. It’s a hardy plant that thrives in poor soil conditions and continues to live through freezing temperatures, droughts and excess rain.

    The unprocessed, three-sided buckwheat seed has a thick, hard outer hull that must be mechanically removed before it’s ready to eat which is the way it’s sold. After the seed has been de-hulled, the inner seed or groat has a light brown or light green coloring and is so soft that it can be easily chewed. Having a distinctive, pleasant, rich flavor all it’s own, 100% buckwheat flour makes delicious pancakes. Mixed with wheat flour, buckwheat makes great tasting biscuits, muffins and breads and can be mixed up to 50% with wheat flour for making yeast breads. In Eastern Europe, the groats are toasted and are known as kasha. Commercial food processors mix buckwheat flour with other flours to make pancake mixes, breakfast cereals, breads and turkey stuffing. In Europe, buckwheat groats are used whole in hot cereals and soups. They can also be boiled until they become soft and fluffy and then eaten like rice. The Orient is the largest user of North American grown buckwheat where it’s used to make sorba noodles.

    Whole grain buckwheat is an amazingly nutritious food. Even though it’s protein is relatively low at approximately 11%, the protein buckwheat does have contains the eight essential amino acids and is one of the few “grains” (remember that buckwheat isn’t a grain at all) high in lysine. If you use half buckwheat flour with your wheat flour, the buckwheat’s amino acids will round out the limiting amino acids in your wheat nicely, giving you a nearly perfect balance of the 8 essential amino acids. This particular balance between half wheat and half buckwheat flour is much more closely aligned to your dietary needs even than lean beef!!! It’s also rich in many of the B vitamins as well as the minerals; phosphorus, magnesium, iron, zinc, copper and manganese. In addition to this, it’s a good oil source of Linoleic acid, one of the two essential fatty acids we must have to be healthy. Nutritionally speaking, buckwheat is a truly impressive food.

    Buckwheat contains rather volatile essential fats inside the seed that aren’t protected very well after the air-tight hull has been removed. It isn’t a good storing grain unless precautions are taken to remove the oxygen. Like brown rice, oxygen makes the essential oils in the seed go rancid, giving it a bad taste and making it unfit to eat. So, when storing buckwheat for long term storage, be sure you place it in airtight containers and use oxygen absorber technology which should give it a long storage life.

    The buckwheat plant is also very useful as honey bees love it’s flowers for making dark, rich flavored honey. And farmers also use it as a green fertilizer. Just a couple of years ago, buckwheat hull pillows were the rage. You can still find buckwheat hull pillows advertised in different catalogs. These pillows are famous for providing a soft yet cool pillow that permits the skin next to the pillow to breath.

    Buckwheat is certainly a versatile plant and is definitely a seed worth storing to round out the nutrition in your food supply – especially if you’d prefer not to eat beans to get that lysine to augment your wheat.

    Buckwheat Recipes:
    Over 100 Recipes at Soar
    http://inikwww.gfrecipes.com/buckwheat.txt
    http://cgi.fatfree.com/cgi-bin/fatfree/recipes.cgi?buckwheat+or+kasha

    References:
    The Prudent Pantry by Alan T. Hagan
    http://www.agric.gov.ab.ca/agdex/100/118_20-2.html
    http://www.godsbanquet.com/recipes/grain.htm

    It apparently is a very popular food stable in that part of the world.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kasha

  65. H.R. says:

    @Larry L.: I grew up on buckwheat pancakes. It’s one of the few tastes I don’t remember well – stronger than wheat flour – yet I remember that they were tasty and I liked them a lot.

    I have no clue why my Texas farm-girl mom was “into” buckwheat. Perhaps it was a winter crop in Texas, where it’s hot a lot but there is also a chilly/cold/freeing-ass cold potential December through February.

    So perhaps they did their usual crops and for the Winter, sowed some buckwheat as a filler just to see what happened that particular year. Most years, I’d expect, they got a nice between-growing-seasons crop of buckwheat, with the occasional ‘blue-norther’ wiping it out.

    A good gamble? A regular crop? Too late to ask mom now, as she died in 2017.

    Bacon, eggs, and buckwheat pancakes…mmmm g-o-o-o-d! That I remember.

  66. Power Grab says:

    As a kid, when we went to visit my grandparents, my grandmother would make us wonderful bacon-and-egg breakfasts. We kids naturally preferred “hotcakes”. She gave us our choice of buckwheat or regular hotcakes. I always asked for buckwheat. I guess I liked the nuttiness of the buckwheat a bit more than the regular ones. I would eat both kinds, but when given a choice, I chose buckwheat.

    She went through the Great Depression, of course, so maybe buckwheat was cheaper than regular wheat???

  67. Another Ian says:

    “The Sound Of Settled Science”

    “Biparental Inheritance of Mitochondrial DNA in Humans”

    http://www.smalldeadanimals.com/index.php/2018/11/28/the-sound-of-settled-science-32/#comments

  68. beththeserf says:

    Dog-gone-it, in preparation fer a coming LIA or more, I am gonna’ git myself some buckwheat ‘n i am gonna cook myself some pancakes ‘n I am gonna try out some tasty accompaniments, washed down with moonshine. .. :)

  69. H.R. says:

    Here’s an interesting unanimous Supreme Court decision (8-0, Kavanaugh abstaining since he wasn’t seated when the case was heard). They sent the case back to a lower court.

    The case is goofy enough in that the frog isn’t even found on the land that was to be ‘taken’ by the U.S. government by designating it as ‘critical habitat’. Plus to introduce the frog into that land, the land would have to be completely transformed from its current state as a swamp; drained, trees removed, new species of tree planted.

    What’s interesting is that a 4-4 split was expected, with the liberal justices voting to uphold the taking for the sake of the frog and the conservative justices siding with the landowner.

    Didn’t happen. Instead, the justices’ ruling in effect was, we’re not going to decide the fate of the land or the frog. If the land is needed, then so be it. But the unsettled question is who compensates the landowner?

    The land was going to be used (taken) by force of law (The Endangered Species Act) and the landowner was going to be screwed to the tune of at least $33 million. It seems the 8-0 decision surprised everyone, but the Supreme Court came down on the side of landowners and fair compensation to the owner if the government must take the land.

    This will affect a lot of those cases where the greenies find a 3-toed bug-eyed yellow bellied crap weasel on some poor farmer’s property and try to force the farmer to quit farming the land by using the Endangered Species Act. The landowner may lose the land for farming, but the farmer will have to be fairly compensated for the loss. Until this case, landowners used to be just plain screwed.

    https://nypost.com/2018/11/27/supreme-court-orders-lower-court-to-review-endangered-frog-case/

  70. H.R. says:

    Larry L.: “According to this link you can get a useful crop out of a plot as small as 40 sq ft, and buckwheat likes to follow an early pea crop.”

    Hmmm… that sounds like a possible reason for my grandfather putting in some buckwheat. Grow a small patch of buckwheat on the side for family use, regardless of what you’re growing for the cash crop on the rest of the land.

  71. jim2 says:

    @H.R. says: 28 November 2018 at 11:58 am

    Thank you for a great read to start my day!

  72. rhoda klapp says:

    “where the greenies find a 3-toed bug-eyed yellow bellied crap weasel ”

    Common habitat is Washington DC. In the swamp there.

  73. H.R. says:

    @Rhoda – Yeah, you don’t ever want to find a congressman on your farm. 😜

    @jim2 – Thanks! That story warms the cockles of your heart, eh?

    The headlines of the various news outlets were totally misleading for the article. They made it sound as if the SC unanimously signed the death warrant for the frog.

    The only reason I read the whole article was because an 8-0 SC decision is so rare that I had to see what was going on. My summary is close enough to what happened, but the article didn’t get to the reason for the decision – who pays? – until almost the end of the article. The implications of the decision are my own conclusion.

    Hmmmm… maybe this will ripple back and affect the spotted owl and snail darter rulings. If so, that would be very interesting. It could be a payday of billions of dollars for the forest products industry. I suppose it will be years before all this plays out.

  74. philjourdan says:

    @Rhoda – Residing a mere 90 miles from that cesspool, I guess that makes us their “alternate” home. ;-)

  75. E.M.Smith says:

    @Beththeserf:

    Buckwheat groats make a nice pilaf like dish, or you can get it cut / ground for an interesting porridge. I also like the Japanese Soba noodles made from it (we have a lot of nice Asian markets where I can get them – they have a more gray or light brown color and more flavor and as noted above the amino acid mix is better).

    When I was a kid we had buckwheat cakes sometimes. Not sure why we stopped. I think it was just that the “green revolution” made plain wheat so cheap it was just priced out. I’ll need to see if Whole Foods has buckwheat pancake mix (or make it myself from buckwheat flour…). I’d been pondering what to do to replace wheat cakes ;-)

    My major interest in Buckwheat was just in how hardy it is to cold and crappy soils and how it can make a useful crop in as short as 2 months. There are many members of the buckwheat family, and one of the wild ones in California grows on bare mine tailings. It is being used to recover old mine sites. Yes, you read that right: It grows and makes a thin crop on bare crushed rock piles. Note that this is NOT the commercial buckwheat, but a close relative. The commercial stuff has been pampered too long. While it still doesn’t like too much nitrogen, it expects dirt…

    So traditionally Buckwheat was used as a “catch crop”. You would plant your, say, winter wheat and it would sprout, over winter, start to grow in spring and then some Shit Happens and it gets killed. (Hail, hard freeze?, trampled, dought). You would, when conditions looked good enough, plant Buckwheat in the hopes of getting something off the land in a couple of months. (Big agribusiness is more likely to just collect the “crop insurance” money and not bother…)

    Anyone prepping for a Big Aw Shit ought to have a bucket of radish seeds (a big one…) and a bucket of buckwheat seeds. Radish seeds can be sprouted and eaten inside a few days, while some are planted to start yielding a crop of radishes inside a month. The greens ARE edible, but need a lot of cooking as they are tough and rough; but if starving… Similarly peas. The greens ARE edible (and not too bad, really…) and grow in cool weather. ( I’ve grown Fava beans in winter here in California, they don’t seem to mind a light freeze). With buckwheat, peas / favas, and radishes you can start sprouting and have food in a few days, and planting for crop in a few weeks (depending on weather / time of year / water ).

    There’s a LOT of radish types, from the bland Daikon that the Japanese use as garnish to the Fire Breathing Black Spanish (that grows in winter… so put up with a bit of spice to have seeds for something that doesn’t mind cold growing…). FWIW, I’ve let a few radishes overwinter and run to seed the next year. They make a fairly big bushy plant with LOTS of seed pods. There is even an Indian? I think radish that is grown for the edible pods. So it isn’t like you need to buy a bucket of seeds if you have some dirt, patience, and don’t mind shelling and winnowing some hard pods.

    We have wild radishes of some kind that, every spring, grow all over the hills here. They make white to pink to reddish flowers. I doubt 1 in 1000 folks here know what they are… Similarly we have fields of wild mustard that makes yellow flowers. Whole mountainsides end up covered with various blends of yellow, pink, red, and white flowers. All of it edible stuff… So I’ve explored some of the mustards as well. Also a bit spicy for some of them, but there are many and some of them quite cold hardy.

    I have a patch of horseradish I’ve been tormenting in the garden for a few years now. It’s generally maintenance free. I managed to kill off a lot of it one year by being in Florida and leaving it completely un-watered over a very dry year. Then it recovered with some water. Even if you don’t think you have a use for 5 lbs of horseradish roots, the leaves have a particularly tasty nature… kind of horseradish overtones in a mildly spicy leaf. I’ve been known to much one while working in the garden ;-) I just bought a horseradish root at the grocery store, ate / grated the bottom 1/2 of it, and then when it was looking less than stellar having spent a few weeks in the fridge, stuck it in the ground… (Did I mention that I call this “Darwin’s Garden ™”? Where the survivors will be eaten. ;-)

    There’s a lot of plants where the “traditionally eaten” part is only a little bit of what is edible. In a real Aw Shit lots of less conventional approaches work. Take greenbeans. The leaves are edible and nutritious. A bit bland, but hey, add a bit of mustard leaf if you want “zip” ;-) Now think about your patch of green bean plants. That mountain of green. Yet most folks would go hungry for weeks waiting for pods to form, and then not eat that big mountain of greens… Instead, over-plant your areas, eat the thinnings and use some as ‘early greens’ until the pods are ready. If you have extra stored seeds, some can be used as been sprouts for “greens in a week”.

    Or that whole broccoli, cauliflower, cabbage family. I’ve cooked and eaten the leaves off of a large cauliflower along with the stems. Very edible. Similarly the large leaves folks toss from a head of cabbage and the leaves of a broccoli plant. Kind of like a collards that is less bitter. (That family, too, is a cold loving branch). Related are the Russian Kale and Rutabaga. (Both the same odd cross of turnip x cabbage but with different results). Both have edible leaves (and rutabaga plants make a lot of them!) and can grow in snow. Yes, Russian Kale is known to stand there in light snow and not care.

    So for that “OMG! LIA!! Garden Prep”, I would make sure to have some Russian Kale and Rutabaga seeds too…

    Maybe I need to make an article on “cold weather crops” and “famine foods”… though it would really just be a reduced extract for North America of things listed here:
    https://www.purdue.edu/hla/sites/famine-foods/

    If you have not visited there, do so. It really opens the eyes about some bits of history and what folks have eaten in the past; along with breaking out of the mindset that says you only eat the white flower of the cauliflower plant or the pods of greenbeans…

  76. Larry Ledwick says:

    I am thinking that buckwheat would be a really useful co-crop with other crops for several reasons. It is a tap root crop that does well on poor soil, so would be something good to plant on fallow plot that both gives you a useful harvest, but green manure and helps restore the soil while suppressing noxious weeds, and attracts pollinators to the garden plot.

    Some interesting comments here on how to use it to improve soil by planting an early crop and then tilling it in while also smothering early weeds.
    http://www.mofga.org/Publications/The-Maine-Organic-Farmer-Gardener/Summer-2001/Buckwheat

    How to dehull it is a bit of useful information :
    http://www.countrylivinggrainmills.com/how-to-de-hull-buckwheat-with-the-country-living-mill/

    Like all this stuff there are so many little tips and tricks on how to use a “tool”
    https://www.deercreekseed.com/buckwheat
    https://dnr.wi.gov/wnrmag/html/stories/2003/feb03/plots.htm

    Looks like it is a favorite food for critters like deer and some game birds so could be planted as a “bait crop” to draw them to your area, and increase the general wild life head count in a given area.

    Just one more tool to use in high intensity gardening if you needed to maximize production on a small victory garden or family farm plot.

  77. Larry Ledwick says:

    The only issue I have with buckwheat is although it grows quickly and will sprout in cool soil it apparently have very low frost tolerance. So if you are in some place like the pacific northwest where it might be cool and cloudy a lot would be a good crop, but in year without summer where you have frosts even into late June and late august it would kill the plants although some of the buckwheat might be mature enough to harvest the seeds.

    Now if you had a means to put cold covers over it during cold spells you might be able to dodge that bullet in the interior continental areas where occasional unseasonable cold snaps and frost would be a a problem for a LIA climate growing season.

  78. E.M.Smith says:

    interior near frozen most of the time, I’d grow barley…

  79. E.M.Smith says:

    FWIW, Perdue has great pages on plants.

    More than you would ever want to know about buckwheat:
    https://www.hort.purdue.edu/newcrop/afcm/buckwheat.html

  80. philjourdan says:

    I’ll need to see if Whole Foods has buckwheat pancake mix (or make it myself from buckwheat flour…).

    Save some money, go to Cracker Barrel. I have seen buckwheat flour there many times. Like most, I had no idea of the difference until now. But I remember buckwheat pancakes being touted as a kid, and now I know why.

  81. jim2 says:

    We get buckwheat flour at Whole Foods and make pancakes with it. Hmmmmmm good.

  82. E.M.Smith says:

    @Jim2:

    Got a recipe for those pancakes? Hmmm? Willing to share???? ;-)

  83. jim2 says:

    Gladly:

    Base Mix:
    2 C buckwheat flour
    2 C all purpose flour
    2 tbsp sugar
    4 tsp baking powder
    1 tsp salt

    Pancakes:
    1 C Mix
    1 C Milk
    2 tbsp melted butter
    1 beaten egg

  84. jim2 says:

    Oh, I think the wife measure 1/4 cup per pancake on a griddle. But do whatever u normally do.

  85. Larry Ledwick says:

    This is funny –
    GalacticRedPill Retweeted
    Breaking911
    ‏@breaking9111
    8 minutes ago
    More
    DEVELOPING: Press pool reports President Trump’s motorcade has abruptly left the Christmas tree lighting ceremony in D.C.; reason unknown

    POTUS_Schedule 🇺🇸‏

    @POTUS_Schedule
    18 minutes ago
    More
    Wednesday, 28 November 2018
    18:33:50 #POTUS #Motorcade Departure – The Ellipse en route The #WhiteHouse
    18:37:17 Arrival

    18:45 – No #POTUS travel outside the #WhiteHouse secure area is expected for the remainder of tonight.

    POTUS_Schedule 🇺🇸‏

    @POTUS_Schedule
    Follow Follow @POTUS_Schedule
    More
    Side Note: When we were ready to leave the Ellipse, the Press Pool Vans were not loaded, so… (get out your tiny violins) We left them behind.

    4:55 PM – 28 Nov 2018

  86. Ossqss says:

    Hummm, never had a Buckwheat pancake….. But I will this week, now. TYVM!

    What the heck is it with all the waffle and chicken advertisements?

    I am missing something….

  87. E.M.Smith says:

    @Ossqss:

    Waffle & Chicken ads? Where?

    (As I run ad block in my browser, an ad blocking DNS, and watch TV mostly on non-advertising channels, maybe it’s just me, but I’m not seeing such ads… Then again, as everyone is trying to “customize” ads, it might be you… Have you been looking up things about chickens lately?)

  88. Ossqss says:

    Not here EM, on TV during football. Hummmm, nevermind. Now I am hungry again! It must be working…..

    This was quite an interesting watch. Suppliments much of what has been discussed here.

  89. beththeserf says:

    EM and others, so much food for thought here on buckwheat, grows on mine tailings, like the fig tree growing in a cleft of stone, and re yr Darwin’s garden and let’s add that Russian kale.

  90. beththeserf says:

    Creepy Ossqs. Coupla ‘ Trilateral Commission New World Order members there, Google Chairman, Facebook Director, https://freddonaldson.com/2017/09/19/trilateral-commission-2017-members-list-of-who-really-makes-american-national-foreign-policy/ maybe Utopian philosofer king ideal-ists, maybe power play-ists, who knows, the results r the same…Poor cits / rode ter serfdom.

  91. H.R. says:

    Sister Jean has a ring even the Pope can’t get.

    If she gets an audience with the Pope, who does the ring kissing?

    http://www.espn.com/mens-college-basketball/story/_/id/25400269/loyola-chicago-presents-final-four-ring-sister-jean

  92. Power Grab says:

    Re waffle-and-chicken…I only heard of it a few years ago via TV news. Some famous athlete had a restaurant in a hot entertainment district that served it. I thought: “Weird. When I wants waffles, I eats waffles. When I wants chicken, I eats chicken.”

    Then my little burg got a drive-through restaurant that serves waffle-and-chicken. So I tried it. The waffle is always limp by the time I get it home to eat it, but it’s the only waffle place that has a drive-through window…so there ya’ go.

    Actually, I just ordered a new Cuisinart waffle maker (not Belgian-style) and received it yesterday. There’s nothing like fresh, homemade waffles. I can’t find my original one (it’s somewhere in storage…divorce makes you lose track of stuff…), and the new replacement from Wally World and the old replacement from eBay both disappointed. So I finally broke down and went shopping for something that would actually work. It looks promising. I think we’re having waffles Saturday morning. ;-) And bacon. :-) :-)

  93. Larry Ledwick says:

    Laura Loomer protests being banned by twitter for stating facts, by chaining herself to the Twitter HQ building in New York – using the Left’s tactics against them.

    https://www.infowars.com/live-laura-loomer-chains-herself-to-twitter-hq-in-new-york/

  94. E.M.Smith says:

    @Larry L:

    Watching it on InfoWars via Roku (despite the “shouting” nature…).

    IMHO, the ultimate answer is a “Rumor Monger” like anonymous P2P platform with encrypted data channel / data exchange. I suppose until then, this is how it will be. They have shut down the whole street in NYC just because one woman is changed to a door with a sign. Just crazy.

  95. Larry Ledwick says:

    Brian Cates
    ‏@drawandstrike
    16 minutes ago
    More
    #LauraLoomer, who has been banned from Twitter, is now the NUMBER ONE TREND ON US TWITTER.

    *gigglesnort!*

    What a fun month @jack is having….

  96. Larry Ledwick says:

    Rosie Memos Retweeted
    Joe Perticone
    ‏Verified account
    @JoePerticone
    38 minutes ago
    More
    lol police inform Laura Loomer that Twitter isn’t pressing charges and she can stay chained to their door as long as she wants

  97. E.M.Smith says:

    Someone needs to tell Twitter about the Streisand Effect ;-)

    I have an idea: Each month, have a “lunch in” where all the folks banned from a given platform gather on the steps of their offices and just sit down to eat a nice bag lunch together… With the hundreds to thousands banned, it would tend to be a big batch of folks to get past.

    Last time I looked, it was legal to buy hotdogs from carts in NYC and eat them while “on the street”… so seems to me they would either need to make it illegal (and piss off the street vendors) or let it happen…

  98. Larry Ledwick says:

    Statement from gab on their support for true 1st amendment free speech rather than the politically correct pseudo free speech advocated by others.

  99. Another Ian says:

    Hmmm!!

    “A Short Hike Through Mexico”

    “Kinda seems like some people other than the good folks taking the hike were calling the shots and choosing the itinerary for political reasons … but maybe that’s just my well-earned paranoia regarding “spontaneous” forty-day marches across two countries.”

    https://rosebyanyothernameblog.wordpress.com/2018/11/28/a-short-hike-through-mexico/

  100. Another Ian says:

    “Foreboding – FBI Raids Home of Clinton Foundation Whistleblower…”

    https://theconservativetreehouse.com/2018/11/30/foreboding-fbi-raids-home-of-clinton-foundation-whistleblower/

  101. jim2 says:

    The anti-Trump people have won it seems. We have an FBI that is out of control and under the supervision of no one, for all practical purposes. The Redimowits have squandered their chance to bring justice to Hillary Clinton and the rogue FBI agents, save some conservative virtue signalling in the last few weeks of control of the House. If anything happens to Trump, there will be no more chances I think, because the odds of anyone like him to be elected to the office of President are small to non-existent.

  102. jim2 says:

    On The View, they are twisting the news, saying Trump cancelled the meeting with Putin due to recent events RE Mueller. They are apparently ignorant of the recent Russian aggression. Idiots.

  103. Larry Ledwick says:

    Looks like the police in the UK have finally come up with a winning strategy on at least one form of crime, now all they have to do is move on to some of their other issues, and deal with them in the same no nonsense manner.

    https://www.breitbart.com/europe/2018/11/30/uk-police-win-public-support-adopting-dirty-harry-tactics/

  104. E.M.Smith says:

    @Larry L:

    Why Gab is the only Social Media site I visit… Nice letter!

    @Jim2, Larry, Another Ian:

    An interesting set of links and topics… But I’ll need to get to them after lunch. Looks like a few hours of “dig here!” get wrapped around it. For me, that works better with lunch done and coffee in ;-)

  105. Larry Ledwick says:

    Looks like Comey is not going to get a warm welcome from the courts on his recent adventure.

    Kelly
    ‏@Torian_Girl
    4 minutes ago
    More
    The intro tells you how the General Counsel of the House Committee feels about Comey’s lawsuit. Hooo boy. Comey hit a hornet’s nest with a short stick.

  106. Larry Ledwick says:

    Also getting some action on election games
    Alex Salvi
    @alexsalvinews
    37 minutes ago
    More
    #BREAKING on @OANN: Florida’s Republican Gov. Rick Scott has suspended #Broward Supervisor of Elections Brenda Snipes for “misfeasance, incompetence and neglect of duty.” #OANN

  107. Ossqss says:

    This was quite an interesting interview.

  108. Larry Ledwick says:

    Former President George H.W. Bush had died at age 94, he is now with Barbara again.

  109. Larry Ledwick says:

    The statement by President Trump and Melania

  110. E.M.Smith says:

    Things it is nice to know about “in advance”…

    https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=EXT4-Linux-4.19-Corruption

    Having just downloaded a variety of Linux System Images built on the 4.19 Kernel, knowing that some folks are reporting file system corruption on EXT4 file systems is kind of important to me… It looks somewhat rare, and limited to only some hardware, but still “Disk Corrupt” is never acceptable.

    I’m also enjoying a slight Smug Moment due to my “Spidey Sense” having caused me to move the vast bulk of all my disk partitions back-level to ext3. That whole business of type-1-ext4 being auto-updated to type-2-ext4 and then not being readable on older systems… just wrong.

    I still have a few ext4 file systems – mostly on system chips where it is the default of the install and I’ve not cared enough to go back and change them (and why bother? THAT system will not become an older one and unable to read itself…). So it’s a low probability issue for me, other than that the new install of a 4.19 kernel could barf on its own install partitions…

    FWIW, “back then”, I looked at a variety of other file system types as “possibles” to use instead. I liked the xfs file system most. I mostly stuck with ext3 due to the ubiquitous support for it (not a lot of need to install anything anywhere, unlike xfs where it isn’t there if you don’t install it.) In modest use, xfs has been Just Fine. This matters as now ext3 is implimented as a sub-type inside the ext4 file system software / support code. Depending on what tickles the bug, it might do something in ext3 (though the odds are very low as they do use different bits of the code).

    In any case, on any new build system with a 4.19 kernel, I’ll likely put “user spaces” on xfs file systems and just avoid the whole thing. Stuff like /tmp and /var (where log files end up along with some system stuff) I’ll likely put on ext3 or leave on ext4 “as built” since recovery would just be “unplug my user space disk and reinstall”…

    Some Users Have Been Hitting EXT4 File-System Corruption On Linux 4.19
    Written by Michael Larabel in Linux Storage on 28 November 2018 at 07:27 AM EST. 66 Comments
    LINUX STORAGE —

    Adding to the headaches around Linux 4.19 stable is an EXT4 file-system corruption issue that has yet to be sorted out.

    Linux 4.19 was already a bit rough due to the hastedly back-ported STIBP code that sharply dropped performance only to be reverted in a later point release. Separately and a still-active issue with Linux 4.19 are multiple users in varying configurations reporting EXT4 file-system corruption problems.

    The STIBP code is to fix Spectre and Meltdown by preventing the predictive branch operations that are used by the exploit. It also slowed the CPUs waaaaay down and was reverted out in 4.20 (that looks like it also does not have the ext4 corruption issue… )

    For now, for most of my stuff, I’m just staying off 4.19 kernel and not bothering to update it. I may play with the version I downloaded on a dedicated chip, but not depend on it. Slower and might corrupt your disk is not my idea of better…

    Going back to the middle of November is this still open bug report about EXT4 file-system corruption. Activity has ticked up this week with veteran Linux kernel developer Guenter Roeck also chiming in with EXT4 corruption under Linux 4.19 stable that was not occurring under Linux 4.18.

    In fact, Guenter is hitting the problem on at least two systems. For some other users, they can reportedly reproduce this issue reliably on every boot.

    There was initially some belief it could have been due to the multi-queue block code (BLK MQ) code in Linux 4.19, but that appears to be ruled out. Unfortunately, EXT4 file-system maintainer Ted Ts’o has been unable to reproduce this corruption issue on his own hardware.

    In the aforelinked bug report, today he commented that he doesn’t think the corruption issue was introduced in the EXT4 between 4.18 and 4.19, so is asking affected users to test a Linux 4.19 kernel that patches in the EXT4 file-system code from 4.18. It seems Ted’s hypothesis right now is that this EXT4 file-system corruption issue is coming from outside of the EXT4 driver code.

  111. E.M.Smith says:

    What happens when “Forced PC” meets reality? Can you say “Passive Aggressive”?

    It looks like the SJW attack on Linus has things all hugged up… Oh, and warning: The following text contains “Hug Bombs”… and the F-word… but I repeat myself…

    https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Linux-Kernel-Hugs

    Dropping Profanity In Kernel Code Comments: Linux Gets “Hugs”
    Written by Michael Larabel in Linux Kernel on 30 November 2018 at 02:48 PM EST. 65 Comments

    In seeking to comply with the Linux kernel’s new Code of Conduct enacted by the recent 4.19 release, a patch series has been sent out today replacing profane kernel code comments with “hugs”.

    Like with most complex codebases — especially ones developed over the course of many years by many different developers — the Linux kernel has its share of colorful words within code comments left by developers. With a set of 15 patches sent out today by Jarkko Sakkinen of Intel, the kernel has no more fucks but instead only hugs. “In order to comply with the CoC, replace **** with a hug.”

    Some of the revised code comments now include “IOC3 is hugging hugged beyond belief”, “Only Sun can take such nice parts and hug up the programming interface like this. Good job guys…”, “Hugging broken ABI”, “avoid hugging up the memory controller (somehow)”, and “Hug, we are miserable poor guys…”

    Well, now, don’t we all feel better? I certainly feel like I’ve had a PC Hug…

    Just be careful now who you ask if they need a hug…

    Surprisingly, at least with this initial patch series, it’s just 33 lines of changed comments out of 3.3+ million lines of code comments within the kernel source tree but we’ll see what other words may get cleaned up next for making the Linux kernel more inviting to all. Linus Torvalds has also cleaned up his colorful language and refrained from any outbursts on the mailing list since his brief retreat during the 4.19 cycle.

    Gee, Linus in on retreat during 4.19, some code gets rapidly back ported and crammed in, and some EXT4 file systems start getting sporadic corruption. Then he returns, and it is pulled out for a rewrite in 4.20 and fixed… problem goes away in 4.20 testing. Could it be that PC Crap in Linus’ face is a very Bad Thing for code quality? Hmmm? Or maybe we all just need to buck up and give all the SJ Warriors involved a great big Group Hug… in appreciation of their fine efforts at hugging things up…

  112. Another Ian says:

    “Knowledge and Certainty “Laundering” Via Computer Models”

    https://coyoteblog.com/?doing_wp_cron=1543653790.2287991046905517578125

  113. H.R. says:

    We’ll be in Florida in a few hours (~7:00 am EST as I write, and we’re over-nighting in Perry GA, a little north of the FLA border). This is our 3rd stay at Fair Harbor RV park in Perry, GA. It’s a super place to stay as it has a lot of pull-through spaces for transients. No need to unhook and hook up, which saves a bit of time.

    They have a large private pond so there’s no need for a fishing license. I got a jumbo bluegill and a small bass. That’s a nice way to unwind after a day of trailering. They have somewhere between 20-30 goats on a couple of fenced acres. Our Scotty had no interest in them. Our Cairn terrier did a nose-to-nose with a couple of them and then, “Meh… where are the squirrels?”

    They are laying utilities in a new area to add more camp sites. It’s near the dog park (very nice!). I was walking the dogs to the park when KABOOM! They dynamited some rock that was too large for the backhoe to handle. That was fun. The dogs didn’t react, so maybe I have the makings of a couple of good gun dogs 😜

    They cater to horse people and have a horse barn. There are people with the usual golf carts to get about the campground and here and there you’ll see someone on horseback toodling around the campground.

    @ossqss – there’s still time to hit up Home Depot for a hasp and padlock for that beer fridge of yours. Just sayin’. 😜 Oh, I’ll have a few repairs to make when we land in Florida, so I’ll probably give you a shout Monday or Tuesday.
    .
    .
    .
    Re the passing of Bush Sr.: Goodbye and good luck at the Pearly Gates. I think you may need it. (That’s the best I can do since being Red Pilled.)

  114. Larry Ledwick says:

    Interesting graphical display of how the Alaskan Earthquakes energy rippled across the US mainland and Alaska. You can clearly see the “ringing” as the energy dissipates and subsides. I find it interesting how the energy appears to be concentrated along the eastern sea board coast. Not sure if this is an artifact of the local geology, proximity of the ocean, or a high concentration of very sensitive seismographs.

  115. Larry Ledwick says:

    Just a historical note on the 1991 Ukraine vote for independence from Russia.

  116. Larry Ledwick says:

    Interesting comment by Putin – so far being reported by at least 2 sources:

    World Events Live
    ‏@IdeologyWars
    23 minutes ago
    More
    #BREAKING: President #Putin of #Russia has made a statement “The war in #Ukraine will continue as long as the current government is in power”. This is the first time Russian leadership publicly states that they are at war with #Ukraine. -Gage

    Strategic Sentinel
    ‏Verified account
    @StratSentinel
    26 minutes ago
    More
    #Russian President #Putin says ‘War will continue’ so long as Ukraine government is in power.

  117. Larry Ledwick says:

    Now three sources:
    INTELLIPUS
    ‏@intellipus
    30 minutes ago
    More INTELLIPUS Retweeted AFP news agency
    In the world of geopolitics there is political signalling, obvious political signalling, GLARINGLY obvious political signalling, and Putin smacking Porshenko across the head with a bottle of vodka obvious.

    AFP news agency
    ‏Verified account
    @AFP
    Following @AFP
    More
    #BREAKING “War will continue” as long as Ukraine government in power, Putin says

  118. E.M.Smith says:

    Was there any doubt Russia and Ukraine were at war? I thought all the artillery shelling in East Ukraine kind of gave it away… well, that, and the tanks in Crimea and war ships in the Azov…

    Per quake energy east coast: Perhaps it reaches the end of the continent, doesn’t couple to water well, and reflects back in ward… so double density at the places near the edge – coming and going.

  119. Larry Ledwick says:

    Was there any doubt Russia and Ukraine were at war?
    Yes there was, functionally it has clearly been a systematic low intensity war, by Russia on Ukraine but until now Russia has insisted on asserting it was just helping an oppressed minority and those are not our people (referring to the little green men factions of Russian military veterans who were discharged from the military then signed up as mercenary forces to support the Russian separatists in Crimea.)
    It is a big and important change in tone for Putin to own the fact there is an ongoing war taking place there and that Russia is officially a combatant.

    There are a few interesting out comes possible from this change:
    1) you get more brownie points if you end a war than if you just quit shooting folks in an undeclared boarder skirmish.
    2) It also could be a preparation of the ground for either escalation or to go to the peace table to try to hammer out a firm and recognized boarder being established permanently (until next time) creating an internationally recognized Crimea province of Russia and Ukraine relinquishing claim to Crimea and Sevastopol, agreeing to it in order to guarantee transit under the Crimea bridge and Kerch strait into the Azov sea and their major sea ports.

    Looks to me like ANTIFA is co-opting the yellow vest protests in Paris

    https://www.reuters.com/article/us-france-protests-violence-idUSKCN1O03N4

  120. H.R. says:

    @ossqss re: “Come on down, HR”

    That gave me a really good laugh. Thanks! We got here at 3:59 pm, one minute before the office closed. They had already put our packet out for after hours check-in, but one of the two women who run the place (reservations, billing, etc.) was still there. “Awww… come in tomorrow or Monday and pay up. You’re not going anywhere.”

    On the way down, we were discussing my wife’s aunt and uncle, who owned and ran a campground/RV park for years in Bradenton. My wife’s uncle “Shorty” died in the very late ’60s or early ’70s and her aunt ‘Loli’ sold out the campground and retired shortly thereafter, as best as my wife can recall. I asked my wife if perchance there was a restaurant on the property named “Linger Lodge.” She has no idea. I’ll have to quiz management there. There are several RV parks and campgrounds in Bradenton, so they might know of one once owned by Shorty and Loli.
    .
    .

    @E.M. – another tip for you to consider when choosing mobile living is aerodynamics. Today was a sucky day for driving. Off and on heavy rain reduced visibility to as little as 200 feet and we fought a 3/4 headwind from Knoxville TN all the way through Tampa. Our newer trailer is fairly good on a frontal wind, but there’s not much you can do about sidewinds. A Trailer is pretty much a big flat sail from the side. Thanks goodness I bought serious

    I was getting pushed around a bit by the side wind gusts and had to focus on driving and constant driving corrections. Normal cruise with little wind is 2300 rpm at 70mph. With the wind today, we were at 3300 rpm in the next lower gear even though GA and N. FLA are relatively flat.

    What was really apparent today was that the older trailers and motorhomes on the road were struggling and seemed to be stuck at about 65 mph. I passed those as I was varying speed between about 68mph and 72 mph. My doors were blown off by a few of the newer motor homes and newer 5th wheels, which are more aerodynamic. They buzzed by at 75-ish mph, which the state police will give you as it’s not worth writing a ticket for 5 mph over the limit.

    If you’re shopping used, and I know you aren’t afraid of buying used, just be sure it’s the newer designs that take aerodynamics into consideration. Unless you get one heck of a deal, anything too old will just eat up the savings in gas and added travel time. The difference was really apparent today.
    .
    .
    .
    @Gail Combs, if you happen to swing by here – I saw the longest horse trailer I’ve ever seen in my life that was being pulled by a regular truck, (I think) a Dodge 3500. That sucker had to be 45′ long! Seriously, it made our trailer look stubby. The only other horse trailers I’ve seen that big or long were being towed with commercial diesel big rigs. I didn’t even know you could buy a horse trailer that long for a pickup truck. So if you and hubby ever have to bug out with all the horses and goats… there is a solution for you. 😜

  121. E.M.Smith says:

    @H.R.:

    Hang out in Texas to see big horse trailers ;-)

    FWIW, our intent is to not have “schedules” and if it isn’t nice on the roads, just spend some time not on the roads… Don’t know if it will work out in practice, but that’s the idea. Just sort of putter around when it is nice and have coco w/ TV when it isn’t ;-)

    As of now, subject to a dozen more changes, we’re thinking a fixed base house in Florida w/ 3 or 4 bedrooms and a “travel RV” of smaller proportions than a liveaboard.

    We’ll see how it all changes as we a) Cash Out and suddenly have more money than we can spend ;-) and then b) rent and cope with an RV a couple of times.

    I’m sure it will all change a few more times…

  122. Larry Ledwick says:

    Pro tip:
    If all the houses in the community have pre-positioned ladders leading to the roof plan on shoveling heavy snow off the roof after storms.

  123. H.R. says:

    @E.M. – Since you and the missus, and the kids in days of yore, were tent campers – a 24-25-26 ft travel-trailer will seem like a stay in the Waldorf Astoria if you go for just a few weeks at a time.

    Shop the clearances and you can get a 2018-2019 brand new for about the same as a used 2-3 year old unit and…. it’s not a lot of money sitting in the driveway. The newer 150 series (Ford) and 1500 series (Dodge, Chevy, GMC) can tow more and get excellent gas mileage and you have an extra vehicle for settling int new digs.

    My wife and I have lived in 3 houses since we were married. Two were new builds and one was about 15 years old. The new builds needed more ‘stuff’ than the one pre-owned. The point being that in all cases, we had a truck and it was extremely useful to have for hauling ‘stuff’ we wanted to get the houses to the way we wanted them.

    Of course you and Mrs. S. will make up your own minds, but if you’re going to do a bricks and sticks as a home base and take 2-4 week excursions, spend your research time on pickup trucks and travel trailers.
    .
    .
    .
    Too cute… the critters remember this place from last year by smell. The dogs remembered that chameleons were the small game to hunt and started looking for them. The cat just loves the warmth and the smell of fish and shrimp on the air. When we pulled in and opened the trailer door, the cat was nose up, eyes wide with a look that said OH BOY!! It is surprising how much dogs and cats remember. (My recollection is that mature dogs and cats are somewhere between a 2-year old and a 4-year old human in mental capacity, depending on their smarts.) It was a hoot to watch them as we set up.

    And here I thought we (wife and I) were happy to get out of the freezing-ass cold weather. I think we’ll have to force the critters at gun point to come back home with us. (Note to self- keep an eye on FLA craigslist for “free dog/cat to good home” ads. Our little darlings may be craftier than I think. 😆)

  124. tom0mason says:

    You all have no doubt seen Trumps latest —
    Watch @seanhannity on @FoxNews NOW. Enjoy!
    — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 1, 2018

    Referring to

  125. Larry Ledwick says:

    Hmmm this is an interesting tid bit I did not know.
    Apparently the President has a long history of top level chess playing in his background and his son just recently was given the title of Chess Grand Master.

    http://www.thedailychronicle.co.uk/2017/10/26/breaking-baron-trump-awarded-chess-grandmaster-title/

    This makes President Trump’s strategic view of negotiation all the more interesting.

  126. Larry Ledwick says:

    Crap should have checked this first apparently the Chess item above is bogus.

  127. Larry Ledwick says:

    Hmmm interesting timing some assorted bread crumbs
    So apparently the Russian blockade of the Kerch strait ends just as the G20 meeting winds up.
    Makes you wonder if there was a back channel agreement between President Trump hidden behind the public snub that was reported.

    The Intel Crab
    ‏@IntelCrab
    26 minutes ago
    More The Intel Crab Retweeted Julianus Soter
    Yep. At least three ships already on their way to #Mariupol, with many many more on their way soon.

    The Intel Crab
    ‏@IntelCrab
    37 minutes ago
    More
    Looks like the #KerchBlockade has finally ended as both Russian and Ukrainian vessels head to their respective ports.

    Meanwhile
    James E Daspit
    ‏@treasurecolecto
    Nov 30
    More
    Russian President Putin and the 33-year-old prince grinned broadly and gave each other effusive handshake as if they were long-lost friends reunited at the G20 Their embrace comes amid reports that Russia and Saudi Arabia have reached a pact to cut oil production when the OPEC

    cartel meets on December 6 in Vienna, to help shore up collapsing crude prices.

    Kirill Dmitriev, the chief of Russia’s sovereign wealth fund, told reporters that Putin would meet the prince Saturday and discuss boosting Saudi Arabia’s $2 billion investment in Russia.

    https://www.reuters.com/article/us-g20-argentina-putin-trump/putin-trump-briefly-met-on-sidelines-of-g20-summit-kremlin-idUSKCN1O03FK

    CNN Breaking News
    ‏Verified account
    @cnnbrk
    Following @cnnbrk
    More
    President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin had an “informal conversation” at Friday night’s dinner during the G20 summit, the White House says

    Jennifer Jacobs
    ‏Verified account
    @JenniferJJacobs
    4 hours ago
    More
    Putin says he and Trump discussed the clash between Russian and Ukrainian navy vessels when they met briefly on the sidelines at G-20 summit.

    “I answered his questions,” Putin told reporters, per @world_reporter. “He has his position on these issues and problems. I have mine.”

  128. jim2 says:

    You can’t turn the TV to a news channel now without a GHW Bush marathon. I would be happy with a one hour memorial, but no, we have to have three or more solid days of it. At best he was a McCain/RINO Redimowit. He didn’t really put the interests of us Deplorables first. Not “dynasty” material in my book.

  129. Larry Ledwick says:

    I am so glad that the Police in Seattle are sane and responsible about enforcing the law.

    https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2018/12/are-you-willing-to-die-for-your-youtube-sht-antifa-thugs-with-ar15s-intimidate-journalist-andy-ngo-at-seattle-rally-police-threaten-arrest-for-filming/

    It astonishes me that people do not realize that the ANTIFA groups are engaged in a tactic of (boil the frog slowly) mission creep to slowly but surely normalize in your face intimidation and unfortunately inevitably physical violence.

    Each time they go just a tiny bit farther, two years ago they were using disguised weapons in the form of discrete weapons like wrenches taped to their forearms and flag poles to be used as clubs. Now they have moved to open carry and direct verbal threats of gun violence to intimidate a journalist.

    Eventually sooner or later someone will take that threat seriously and respond in self defense.

  130. jim2 says:

    It may take a rejuvenated/cleansed FBI to do this, but here is how the UK shut down antifa in 2004.

    The bail conditions given to the arrested members made it very difficult for them to continue political activity. “A large number of arrests and restrictive bail conditions took the most active members off the streets, and those groups which escaped mostly unscathed understandably kept their heads down in the aftermath,” Ryan explained. “I was banned from the entire national rail network, several London boroughs, couldn’t appear in public with more than two other people, was banned from attending any preplanned gathering and wasn’t allowed out of the house between 7PM and 7AM.”

    https://www.vice.com/en_uk/article/qve8zm/how-british-police-shut-down-the-original-uk-antifa

  131. E.M.Smith says:

    @Jim2:

    You are looking at this from the wrong POV: quality TV coverage.

    Look at it from a C student journalism major tasked with filling 24 x 7 with crap. They get to run 3 days of preplanned canned “when he dies run this” stuff. Party! AND a long weekend of Christmas shopping!! Nothing to do at work for 3 whole days!

  132. E.M.Smith says:

    Antifa AND local Democrat or Progressive politicians are both bought and paid for by Soros NGOs. This only ends when it becomes a losing strategy.

  133. Larry Ledwick says:

    Hmmm – Vertical forest (can you say fire hazard?)

  134. Power Grab says:

    I have a story to share that isn’t related to anything here… and a question.

    About a month ago my living room Dell desktop computer had stroke (or something) in its integrated sound card (according to my guru), and has officially retired from productive life (I guess).

    I needed to get a bunch of music files (built using Noteworthy Composer, Finale, Muse, Band in a Box — not WAV files necessarily) off that hard drive. I’m pretty sure a bunch of them are on my music laptop, but it’s not up to date. I’ve done several new projects since I copied them over. Every time I tried to resurrect the computer, the hard drive appeared to be having more and more difficulty functioning.

    So I dug out my dock (it connects via USB) that can take 2 sizes of hard drives and several sizes/types of SD cards and stuck the old hard drive into it. My new (refurbished) replacement Dell desktop computer had no trouble making the dock work, and I was able to get stuff off the old drive that wasn’t in the user documents directory structure. (the old desktop computer is now a Windows 10 machine BTW. I think it’s why I had trouble. It seems that whatever the newest version of Windows is, it will be less and less cooperative when you try to make it work with either a different version of Windows, or Linux, etc.)

    When I brought up the problem with my guru, he said I needed to give my new computer rights to read the stuff in the user directory structure. I tried to do that, but it didn’t work. It behaved like it might have a bad FAT table (or whatever the equivalent to that is now) and was unable to fix it.

    So I dug out my Ubuntu Live Disk that I made a few years ago to salvage the documents of the “dead” laptop of a friend. The story there was that it had stopped booting up and he had taken it to Best Buy. They offered to charge him $200 to return it to factory-new condition. He told them he needed at least his 60+ page genealogy document back, but they were unwilling to even try to get that back for him. He gathered up his laptop and left the store. And called me. So I did some research and found that booting up on an Ubuntu Live Disk was a viable option for bypassing the restrictions of the Windows OS and file structure, so I downloaded the necessary files and burned a DVD to do that. It worked a charm!

    It was fun calling up my friend and reading to him the first few sentences of his genealogy document, to see if it was the right document. He said, “Now I can sleep tonight!” :-)

    Anyway, I ended up having to boot up my new computer on the Ubuntu Live Disk, access the old hard drive by means of the dock, find my stuff that was in the user documents directory structure, and copy it over to my largest capacity thumb drive.

    The hard drive in the new computer was inaccessible while the computer was running Ubuntu. The Ubuntu OS said Windows was “hibernated” and couldn’t get to it until it was unhibernated. Well, I didn’t go digging for how to do that because I knew I had a large capacity thumb drive that might not be in thrall to the resident Windows 10 OS, so I gave that a try.

    Copying my files over to the thumb drive worked great! When I thought I had gotten most of what I needed (I still suspect there are files that I might need later…), I rebooted the new computer on its own normal hard drive/OS and copied the files from the thumb drive to the hard drive. I have been able to use them normally since then, so I feel like I succeeded.

    My question has to do with what might be the problem with just accessing the files on the Windows-controlled hard drive. Even though I could make the dock work to access the old hard drive without booting up on the Ubuntu disk, it seemed like the harder I tried to dig down into the user directory structure, the more it “broke”. Why would that happen?

    EM, I assume you’re not a Windows 10 user, but I thought someone else here might have some ideas.

  135. E.M.Smith says:

    @Power Grab:

    An excellent example of why I’m not a Window$ User…

    Yet just a couple of days ago I was using Windows 10… To copy off the files my Spouse had made over the last couple of years at work. She is now retired, but the “retirement” process has “her” laptop going back to the District Office where I.T. scrubs it… despite there being 2 years of work that her replacement needs… So I made an “emergency backup copy” to thumb drive that she can give to her replacement (who ought to be getting his ‘pristine’ laptop today…)

    Yes, I.T. was told he ought to get all those files and NOT to just throw them away, but they have “procedures” and folks were less than certain exceptions would be followed. The Spouse did NOT get the files the prior occupant of the chair had asked to be saved for her… so got to recreate a lot of the work.

    The point? I’m kinda / sorta functional in Windows 98, NT, 7.x, 8.x and aware of how to navigate 10 at a low user level… (Had to live on a Windows box at work at Disney… got pretty good at Excel ;-)

    So: Why is Microsoft being A Pill?

    I can only really guess.

    Factors to consider:

    1) Microsoft does regular and gratuitous changes to force upgrades and new software buys. They go out of their way to “move the cheese”. this causes incompatibilities.

    2) DRM – Microsoft is pushing ever tighter Digital Rights Management – which makes it harder to move things from one machine to another, especially things like music files and movies.

    3) Security & Proprietary hooks: Microsoft is trying to prevent folks from just booting some other OS and also trying to prevent folks from getting away with using MS OS copies from other machines. This is why I’m not fond of the “signed” software behaviour and EUFI boot locking your hardware to their OS at time of assembly. (Apple is doing this too and has a new ‘chip’ added to some new hardware that makes it functionally impossible to boot Linux. I’ll be buying NO more Apple hardware as long as that chip / process exists.) So your OS is becoming ever more paranoid about what other OS can see its stuff / disks / boot. This is good in that it prevents the “Janitor in name only” from sticking a Knoppix CD in your work computer and cloning the disk. It is bad in that it prevents your I.T. guy from sticking a Recovery Linux CD in your computer and recovering your disk…

    4) Microsoft just doesn’t play all that well with things that are not in it’s spec / build docs. So if your version of “something” is deprecated by Microsoft you can easily find it not working on the “new” machine. Similarly, if your machine is New! Improved! you will likely find disk from it are not so friendly toward the old machine / OS. (There are similar problems with generations at the hardware level – like trying to read a USB 3.0 disk on a USB 2.0 machine – hardware or drivers for the hardware)

    I’m sure there are other bits I’ve missed. I’m also sure I can’t say just which of these (or other things) would be causal of your problems. This will only get worse as folks do more “whole disk encryption” and “disk compression” and there are locks to particular hardware ID incorporated into them or they are just generationally incompatible.

    All of that kind of Support Swamp is why I’m moving to Open Source software for everything and to the extent possible onto SBC Single Board Computer hardware that lets ME be in control, not the seller. I don’t need their snooping, nor their deciding I need to spend another $1000 this year as it’s been too long since their last feeding tube in the wallet.

    At the moment, I’m very close to a “Good enough for prime time” desktop on SBC. My next iteration is a source build for it (so you know the binaries are not doctored). After which I’ll be publishing the recipe.

    I’m quite comfortable on my desktop machine, modulo a couple of minor glitches with display of cursor at boot and such. The only bit “missing” at the moment is a laptop. I’m still sucked into the Mac for that. Once the Pine / Rock64 board gets here, I’m going to see if it is “enough board” to be a decent desktop experience. If it is, I’ll be ordering a Pine Laptop for $99 and that’s the end of the Mac. If it isn’t then I’m off to Used Chrombook land for one that supports Linux (and tossing ChromeOS off of it). Then once that’s done, I’m free to trash / dispose the dying Mac (powersupply is now intermitent as the cable is flexing a break somewhere… in addition to no SSD so running from uSD card and the keycaps worn out: so the poor dear is definitely at EOL)

    From this point forward NONE of my data lives on a hard disk inside some closed box. It is just too likely to become suddenly inaccessible when the machine coughs. It lives on standard UBS disks with a standard File System and served up via a $20 SBC via a standard NFS to whatever system need to see it. With a backup copy on duplicate disk. ANY part can die and I’m back up inside 10 minutes.

  136. Larry Ledwick says:

    This is an interesting article at Zerohedge although (being an old fart) I think it also has the potential to break a lot of things that don’t need fixing.

    To borrow a phrase from N. Talab this is moving away from antifragile constructs toward very fragile business models that can grow very quickly but at the same time implode just as fast if base assumptions are broken. The last thing the world needs right not is a fortune 1000 consisting of companies built on bitcoin like models that look good superficially but have no real basis in value.
    All digital fluff is not a good plan.

    Even good models like Amazon are now running into scaling issues.

    https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-12-03/60-fortune-1000-companies-will-be-out-business-within-10-years

  137. philjourdan says:

    @Power Grab – What File system is the drive using? If it is exFAT, that may be the error you are getting (it does not do permissions like NTFS). But it still is accessible through basic permissions. But they may have to be modified.

    Remember on NTFS, you have 2 types of permissions. One only counts with accessing it via Sharing. The other restricts both.

  138. Larry Ledwick says:

    Just something to sock away for future reference:

  139. H.R. says:

    @ossqss – Check your email. I haven’t been able to use my phone since I got to the RV park in Florida. I get a strange message in my ear and a strange symbol on the display, and no completed calls.

    I think I need to upgrade the string between my tin cans. I dunno what is wrong. I’ll be stomping over to a T-mobile store in the near future to find out just exactly how they can disappoint me.
    *sigh*

  140. Pingback: W.O.O.D. 3 December 2018 | Musings from the Chiefio

  141. Power Grab says:

    @ philjourdan: What file system is it using? Good question.

    I got it as a refurb off eBay in about 2009, or maybe as late as 2011. IIRC, I upgraded it to Windows 7 before I had had it very many years. I had upgraded it to Windows 10 not all that long ago. So maybe it came with Windows 98 installed? I don’t think I ever put Windows 8 on it. It was just too crazy–what’s up with taking away the Start button? And making it so you can only run one “app” at a time? Who can work like that?!?

    I’m always a bit trepidatious about upgrading an OS in place. Aside from my thumb drives, I also have an external 1TB drive, so I back up my personal stuff before upgrading. I also have several laptops that got put on a shelf whenever I was forced to upgrade OSes or apps, and which I thought might well leave me without functionality I couldn’t live without. So when I’m faced with having to upgrade something drastically, about half the time I leave the old working version of stuff in place, put it on a shelf, and migrate just what MUST migrate to the new(er) system.

    When I was copying my files off the old hard drive onto the thumb drive under the control of Ubuntu, I kept having to fight the disappearance of windows that contained the files I was trying to grab. I don’t know why they kept disappearing. I just kept plugging away at it (getting the disappeared windows to come back, etc.) until I finally got what I wanted.

    Is it possible that a Windows 10 install that was done on top of a Windows 7 install, that was probably done on top of a Windows 98 install made the file system wonky?

    Whenever I brought up the old hard drive (in the dock) under the control of the new computer’s Windows 10, it seemed to me like it was trying to build its own version of whatever passes for a FAT table nowadays. That is just my gut feeling. I assume it wants to gather up all the directories and file names and attributes into a buffer before displaying the list of files. I would have been happy to just get an old-style DOS listing, one screen-full at a time.

    If I were to reboot using the Ubuntu Live Disk, then attach the dock with the old hard drive in it, is there a way to get to the equivalent of a DOS prompt and poke around that way? All I’ve ever done with Ubuntu (or any Linux, for that matter) is salvage stuff off recalcitrant Windows drives. But since I cut my computer teeth on DOS, I’m not at all averse to working from a prompt. I would consider that an improvement over having windows disappear.

    Sorry I didn’t really answer your question. I may have to have a conversation with my guru to figure out a way to get the answer.

  142. E.M.Smith says:

    @Power Grab:

    ALL the disk maintenance I do is at the command prompt. It is just much more predictable, reliable, and gives you more information.

    The key application is “terminal”. For most things I find it under Systems Tools or something similar.

    Inside terminal you must become root to do interesting things. “Su root” and give the password, or “Sudo bash” and the password. Some releases (and Knoppix might be one of them) lets you get root without the password. Look for a # prompt.

    Then the “df” command shows all the mounted file systems. They ought to have names like;
    /dev/sda1 /
    /dev/sdb1 /stuff
    /dev/sdb3 /volumes/mnt/system

    The first bit (/dev/sda1) is a disk /dev/sda and a partition on it (1 or 2 or…) Then a mount point – where you see it in the real system

    The “file -s” command lets you see what kind of file system you have. Type “man file” to get the manual page about “file” and learn what all it does.

    So:

    file -s /dev/sda1

    ought to give interesting information about the file system. On the Mac the disk naming convention is a bit different (it is old BSD style with slices) but here’s what the first partition looks like on my Mac:

    bash-3.2# file -s /dev/disk0s1
    /dev/disk0s1: x86 boot sector, code offset 0x58, OEM-ID “BSD 4.4”, heads 16, sectors 409600 (volumes > 32 MB) , FAT (32 bit), sectors/FAT 3151, serial number 0x70d61701, label: “EFI ”
    bash-3.2#

    (Yes, many of the same Unix / Linux commands work in the Mac terminal too ;-)

    So this is a FAT-32 file system. You might also see NTFS.

    You can make a temporary directory like ‘junk’ by:

    mkdir /junk
    and then mount the partition on it with:

    mount /dev/sdb1 /junk

    (Or whatever your actual partition name might be). You might need to give it a type:

    mount -t ntfs /dev/sdb1 /junk

    Do a “man mount” to make sure I’m remembering that right ;-)

    IF you get to this point, let me know and I’ll tell you more if I can.

  143. Power Grab says:

    @ EM: I sure see all your points operating in real life!

    IIRC, it was after Microsoft and Apple had their little partnership, then broke up, that Microsoft became more like Apple in forcing the user to spend more money on upgrading hardware, OS, and/or apps (preferably all!)

    I used a Mac at one job and was nonplussed to learn that the goto method for fixing something that had stopped working was to (1) re-install the app, or (2) re-install the OS and then re-install the app. If that failed, you were expected to return it to the store and pay more to have them make it work again.

    That seemed weird to me because my first personal computer was an IBM PC-XT with a 10MB hard drive and probably 256K of RAM. Of course, I upgraded that pretty quickly because I had apps that required a larger hard drive and more RAM. Then I needed a different video card. And an MPU for connecting to a MIDI keyboard. But that was not a problem. Hardware and software came with MANUALS! They were hard bound and usually in slip cases.

    I had been using the PC-XT for 3 years before I ended up in the Mac shop. That’s why working on a Mac (or a late model Windows computer) feels to me like doing watch repair with boxing gloves on.

  144. Power Grab says:

    @ EM: I just refreshed the page and found your detailed instructions.

    I will print that off and study it before continuing.

    Thanks! I will let you know how it goes. :-)

  145. E.M.Smith says:

    Oh, and usually on a PC type machine the boot disk is /dev/sda and the secondary disk is /dev/sdb so most likely that’s where you will find your MS stuff, /dev/sdb.

    It may also be not showing up in a “df” listing if it isn’t auto-mounted, so feel free to try:
    file -s /dev/sdb1
    file -s /dev/sdc1
    file -s /devsdd1
    etc.

    Just to find out what all disks are plugged in.

    Probably also ought to mention that if you are in a full on graphical environment (like LXDE or XFCE or MINT or..>) that often the ‘gparted’ command is present. This is the Graphical PARTtion EDitor. I’ve often found it under “preferences” on Debian type machines, but I think it really ought to be in Systems Tools. Anyway… it probes all attached disks and puts you in a graphical display showing all disks and all partitions for each disk (a dropdown menu upper right lets you chose each disk). It is Very Powerful and you may choose to completely erase a disk if you like, so be careful with just “trying things”. But the basic “just looking” is what I do first for any disk of unknown type / origin. It reports all the partitions and their types…

    It may or may not be on your Live CD, but if intended as a recovery tool, this ought to be there.

    You can also launch it from the command prompt (assuming you have a terminal window open in your GUI windowed environment) by (as root#) typing “gparted”.

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