It looks peaceful from that distance, but there was plenty of rush hour traffic — all the people who start work at 7. Closer to dawn, I looked for a view facing east, but this view looking west was better:
The sign warns us not to stand on the edge of the cliff. It's not just that there are fools who fall of the edges of cliffs. They seem to be expecting this particular cliff edge to collapse from erosion. Imagine being the unlucky person standing there when the edge gives way.
Meanwhile, also looking west, the sign says "no swimming," so no crunching through the ice:
Later, it was a sunny day — 50°. We had a nice second walk. And Meade made a nice video showing how the ice was piling up in little plates along the shore:
Later, it was a sunny day — 50°. We had a nice second walk. And Meade made a nice video showing how the ice was piling up in little plates along the shore:Write about anything you want in the comments!
पोस्ट्स
६६ टिप्पण्या:
Yesterday I heard the chortling sounds of Sandhill cranes circling high above - also saw a pair gleaning in a cornfield. The weather has gone cold again, but signs are showing the change of the season.
My girlfriend finally left Abu Dhabi an hour and a half ago, and will be in Frankfort in about five hours. From there to Amsterdam where she’ll chill for a few days. And, no, she’s not a stoner - she’s just always loved the place. lol
And while she was freaked out about the fighting, she also kept it in perspective the best she could by remembering that her Jewish great grandmother survived Majdanek. Nonetheless, she’s excited to be the heck out of there!
Thank you for the beautiful daily reminders of why I live in Georgia. The temperature gauge this morning was especially helpful. Although I expect one more wintry kick in the ass, it was sunny and in the seventies today. Soon I can stop complaining about the cold and resume bitching about the f*ing heat.
That Lego clip about the election of the new Ayatollah was a hoot; legit or not.
Despite RCOCEAN’s wishes, this war will be over before April 1, 2026.
Iran tried to mine the Strait of Hormuz and we sunk their ships.
Nepo Ayatollah supposedly injured.
After we win this war, we should have a big party at Meadehouse. RCOCEAN will be buying.
pollen was really bad today. Still no hummingbirds…
I lived in GA for a while. I grew up in the snow and later in life spent time there. It was so funny to me that there's no snow for 99% of the year but every year there is like a week or two of snow and ice and ... all the people with normal cars treat it with respect. The people with trucks figure "got 4x4" and drive like there's no snow or ice ...
The expressways were always littered with trucks that spun out flipped over on the side off the road. Always amused me.
4X4 does NOT mean you can ignore the delta in friction when there is ice on the road!
Confused? Start here.
And while I'm in the neighborhood;
Am I the only person who is just so angry he can barely stand it about the proliferation of idiotic "authentication" web pages demanding that I "verify" that I am human? If they want me to "demonstrate" that I am human, well, OK, maybe. What's in it for me? But "verify"? I am already well aware that I am human. It is not an assertion which seems dubious to me, and therefore it would make no sense for me to attempt to "verify" it. Elon Musk may think that he is actually a character in a simulation. I could see how you might have some difficulty believing you were real, if Elon Musk's life were scrolling across your sensory inputs. But that's not a problem I have. I think, therefore I am. Human.
See, what's going on here, is that the techie asshole shitheads want you to prove that you are human. Because, they are all too well aware that the robotic sentinels they have posted to challenge your humanity are not human, and the AI "agents" they hope will soon loot your bank account are also verifiably non-human. So, they want to make sure that there is still a sucker in the game - you. But "prove" sounds so ... real. Like, actual. The sucker might not like that. So, let's say "verify" instead. As if it's really the sucker who is confused about what's going on.
I was reading a story a while ago that said that X has stripped out 800 million accounts that were robo-accounts. I guess that many can only be designed to work mischief on real accounts that are being targeted, I guess by just swamping them to cause denial of service, or maybe of just spamming them with nonsense / contrary posts. This might be what is driving the 'verification' routines. No doubt someone will think up a better way, it's galling and maddening to have the web robots now challenging us on our humanity to grant access.
And no, the techie asshole shitheads are not just semi-illiterate, and ignorant of the distinction between "verify" and "prove" or "demonstrate". I am talking about, for example, Google. My employer allows Google to demand, once a day, that I "verify" that I am human. Do you really think the Stanford-educated Communist binarily-gendered blue-haired nose-ringed monsters that Google pays $750,000 a year to manage their "authentication app" are incapable of comprehending that distinction? Of course not. Those perverted freaks held meetings, dozens of them, on Zoom (well, Zoom is for the hoi-polloi. But they have Googa-Zoom), and also at their handsomely-appointed headquarters, up and down the West Coast, to discuss, at length, the exact terminology with which I should be annoyed every working morning. God, it's true; you can't, you simply cannot, hate them enough.
YouTube: New Epstein "Suicide" Jail Cell Revelations
"... it's galling and maddening to have the web robots now challenging us on our humanity to grant access."
Hmmmm. Let us ask a simple question; Why does the -bot care whether you are a -bot? If you are willing to interact with him, why is he unwilling to interact with you? Above, I cynically proposed, that the intention is to make sure that there is still a sucker - somewhere, in this vast, -botanical wastescape, there must be a real, live, carbon-based human sucker -- to provide the necessary juice to drive the machine.
But what is that juice? Why should it matter, that at the long-, long-distant end of what Burroughs called the "newspaper spoon", there should be a real, shitting, pissing, farting, fucking human being, and not just an AI imposter?
I mean, really, the only important question to ask, about anyone, real or synthetic, that you are about to interact with, is; "Does he use the N-word??!!?".
Cuz if he does, he's a Negro. And you don't want anything to do with him.
The robot sentinels are there to block DDOS attacks. By putting up the question, it prevents the robots from spamming the site. The programmers don't care if you are human, they care that you are not a bot.
The ChatGPT generation of AI-bots parrot the party line on this topic. But you can bet that the "agentic" AI that all these scam-artists are developing will want nothing to do with anyone who routinely uses the N-word. Of course, most of their energy will be directed to trying not to be tricked into mistaking each other for real people.
"The programmers don't care if you are human, they care that you are not a bot."
OK. Is there a third option? I mean, what is the distinction you are trying to make? On the internet, no one knows you're a dog?
As matters stand, web pages don't want to talk to -bots, because web pages exist to make money, and -bots don't have money. -bots exist to scam money. But the AI hoaxers are telling us that they are going to unleash a new "agentic" form of AI, which will actually have access to someone's credit card. So ... won't the existing scam-bots want scamming access to these agentic -bots? But what if your web-page scam-bot inadvertently mistakes a fake agentic -bot for an actual, credit-approved -bot? I'm sure the faculty at Stanford are all over that one. They are staying up nights, writing grant proposals to figure out how to keep themselves from ripping us off.
I regard the Old Testament as literature, not history. But that Tower of Babel story ...
OK. Is there a third option? I mean, what is the distinction you are trying to make? On the internet, no one knows you're a dog?
If a dog barks at the blog can you hear the woof? The only distinction I am making is for the purpose of the "are you human" check points. If those keep the system from being overloaded with bot traffic, then you and I win as we can continue to read and comment on althouse. If her blog were overrun with Jaqs and Kaks spamming their pre-fab Dem talking points, it would be unreadable. It's for you and me as much as for the web host.
One could envision a future state of the internet, in which almost all transactions are initiated by -bots. A continual mutual bombardment of -bot-generated transactions. Once in a great while, some human-controlled machine sends a packet into the -bot void, but it is lost in the -bot-noise. A statistical end-state. like the heat-death of the Universe.
I suppose, if you think about it, this would simply mean that the internet had burst upon us like a dying star, back in the 90's. And then, slowly, over decades, had reached an equilibrium, whereby it was rendered irrelevant. "Nobody goes there any more, it's too crowded". Which makes sense, if the crowd is -bots.
"Are the -bots in the Althouse comment section with us now?".
As matters stand, web pages don't want to talk to -bots, because web pages exist to make money, and -bots don't have money. -bots exist to scam money. But the AI hoaxers are telling us that they are going to unleash a new "agentic" form of AI, which will actually have access to someone's credit card. So ... won't the existing scam-bots want scamming access to these agentic -bots? But what if your web-page scam-bot inadvertently mistakes a fake agentic -bot for an actual, credit-approved -bot? I'm sure the faculty at Stanford are all over that one. They are staying up nights, writing grant proposals to figure out how to keep themselves from ripping us off.
Your credit card company ARE working feverishly to protect credit transactions since most credit policies are to give you a refund if you are scammed. Since they take on the risk, they will sure as shootin' mitigate it. Then tehre are the calss action suits that would take place if designers of systems make it simple to bypass security of all financial institutions. Juries would find such lack of protections liable and award fat rewards to those who were scammed. I think the people designing these systems will be looking to mitigate their own risks. Sophisticated lock picking skills have always resulted in more sophisticated locks. As long as man has been around there are those who aim to take what you have and us finding ways to stop that. (Unless you are a Democrat politician, then you are trying to make sure illegal migrants have an easier ability to take what residents have.)
"Are the -bots in the Althouse comment section with us now?".
I am sure it would not be hard. This place is not super secure (Not casting shade, just stating the facts.) And I could probably find a way to spam maga content until I am banned, but then design a way to reauthenticate regularly after each ban until Althouse screams into the void, cursing all the bot traffic she had garnered. and shuts the whole blog down. She already has to police some of it and is willing to do it for the benefit of all, but if it is abused (as has happened before) she will not find it worth her while.
Note to Jaq and Kak, you are in danger of spoiling the blog, so maybe limit your posts. We already know your message, so scrolling past it 30 times a blog post does not really add much value to your efforts and I never read anything by you any more.
Air Force combat veteran Wes J. Bryant, just over a year ago, had been a senior adviser in an ambitious new Defense Department program aimed at reducing civilian harm during operations. Finally, the military was getting serious about reforms. He worked out of a newly opened Civilian Protection Center of Excellence, where his supervisor was a veteran strike-team targeter who had served as a United Nations war crimes investigator.
Today, that momentum is gone. Bryant was forced out of government in cuts last spring. The civilian protection mission was dissolved as Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth made “lethality” a top priority. And the world has witnessed a tragedy in Minab that, if U.S. responsibility is confirmed, would be the most civilians killed by the military in a single attack in decades.
Dismantling the fledgling harm-reduction effort, defense analysts say, is among several ways the Trump administration has reorganized national security around two principles: more aggression, less accountability.
Trump and his aides lowered the authorization level for lethal force, broadened target categories, inflated threat assessments, and fired inspectors general, according to more than a dozen current and former national security personnel. ~ProPublica
The new world now includes the "double tap" killings of 140 motorboat passengers in the Caribbean and the sinking of an unarmed Iranian frigate near the island of Sri Lanka that sent more than 100 sailors to their deaths.
"And I could probably find a way to spam maga content until I am banned, but then design a way to reauthenticate regularly after each ban until Althouse screams into the void, cursing all the bot traffic she had garnered. and shuts the whole blog down."
The mathematical treatment of this situation says that this necessarily occurred years ago. The internet value of postings on Althouse blog is so high that the human commenters were completely out-weighed by various faux-commenters. At first, it was trolls, like LLR Chuck and Igna. But at this point, given the vast sums squandered on AI, we can be assured that all of us are -bots. It's a statistical certainty.
"The new world now includes the "double tap" killings of 140 motorboat passengers …"
"passengers"
You are a source of amusement, gadfly.
"Let friendly intercourse be a school of knowledge, and culture be taught through conversation: thus you make your friends your teachers and mingle the pleasures of conversation with the advantages of instruction. Sensible persons thus enjoy alternating pleasures: they reap applause for what they say, and gain instruction from what they hear. We are always attracted to others by our own interest, but in this case it is of a higher kind. Wise men frequent the houses of great noblemen not because they are temples of vanity, but as theatres of good breeding. There be gentlemen who have the credit of worldly wisdom, because they are not only themselves oracles of all nobleness by their example and their behaviour, but those who surround them form a well-bred academy of worldly wisdom of the best and noblest kind."
Baltasar Gracian, "Arte de Prudencia/Art of Worldly Wisdom"
Here we are in the salon of a great lady. We should aspire to behave as the Jesuit directs.
The most likely poster to be a bot here is Kaka. No?
Thanks for the good news, Beasty
I just spent a few days in the hospital dealing with a prostate issue, as most of you males have or will do if you live long enough.
My roomy was a college professor who had his TV tuned to CNN 24/7. He had the sound muted (very thoughtful of him) but closed captioning on, which I could see out the corner of my eye.
Did you know we were losing the Iran war?
"Did you know we were losing the Iran war?"
I read Rich's posts. We're toast.
… until Althouse screams into the void, cursing all the bot traffic she had garnered …
Well you know how she feels about “garnering.”
… the sinking of an unarmed Iranian frigate …
Frigates are warships. Warships are legitimate targets.
@Jersey Fled, my sympathies. Being an old guy myself, almost 80, it’s why I’m up at 4:30 am.
Weather dot com says we will reach 81 today. Shorts weather!
Where did that "unarmed frigate" meme come from?
It certainly was armed.
That class of frigates is small (1500 tons is small-ish for modern frigates) but comprehensively equipped with SAMs(in VLS cells no less), antiship cruise missiles and ASW torpedoes, besides guns and an ASW helicopter.
Jimmy Failla
@jimmyfailla
·
Mar 5
Britney Spears better be careful because if a woman keeps showing up drunk in California the Democrats will nominate her for President.
https://x.com/jimmyfailla/status/2029571951434277042?s=20
It’s the literal widely accepted definition of “frigate” FFS.
buwaya said...
Where did that "unarmed frigate" meme come from?
As I understand the propaganda (i.e. lies) from the progressives like botfly, the frigate had been conducting training exercises in the area so it must have been "unarmed" which I think to the proggies means the weapons on board weren't "loaded". Why they think that, other than they all repeat all the bullshit spewed by the mullahs, I don't know. Why the US sub captain was supposed to follow in their delusions is similarly a mystery to me. The first rule of war (and weapon safety) is that every weapon is loaded and ready to fire.
Botfly, why haven’t you once mentioned the Russian oil tanker that Ukraine blew up in the Mediterranean the same day as the Iranian Navy Frigate was attacked? It was attacked by a remote controlled seaborne drone and created an environmental disaster. Of course, it was also unarmed and a civilian operated ship. It was committing illegal acts of transporting sanctioned fuel, but why would you care? Yet, nothing from you about this.
Is it because it can’t be used as anti-American propaganda?
Energy Secretary Deletes Tweet Saying U.S. Escorted Tanker Through Strait of Hormuz ~ WSJ
"The confusion prompted Abbas Araghchi, Iran’s foreign minister, to accuse US officials on X of “posting fake news to manipulate markets”
100% market manipulation. Can't beleive it. It's so obvious.
When reality and rhetoric diverge this sharply, it is usually the rhetoric that eventually collapses.
From Power Line: “One in five students at Brown and Harvard are now registered as having some form of disability, according to an analysis by The Atlantic — but professors suspect some of them are bogus.”
I disagree with the professor. I suspect at least 75% of Ivy League students are disabled….. all mental.
Mike Engleman🇺🇲
@RealHickory
·
1h
Joe Biden gave Ruby Freeman the Presidential Medal of Freedom for helping him steal the Georgia election in 2020, while they bankrupted America's Mayor Rudy Giuliani for presenting election fraud evidence she participated in. Banana Republic!
https://x.com/RealHickory/status/2031682993345990775?s=20
Rep. Andy Ogles (R-Tenn): “America is a product of English Christian culture. NOT Islamic culture. NOT progressive culture. If we don't cease to import islam, the West falls.”
More of this please. They are not compatible, nor do they assimilate.
Facing pushback, Rep. Ogles doubled down.
It matters not at all whether the Iranian frigate was armed or unarmed. They were given multiple advisories to either surrender or abandon their warship, and they continued steaming towards the area of operations. Having ignored the warnings, they were torpedoed and sunk. I notice that several other Iranian ships took note and headed for port in neutral countries.
Funny how the critics fail to mention those warnings, and instead try to make it appear as if it was a complete surprise attack, an ambush, as if it was some kind of unfair advantage that was taken.
The Shah of Iran’s secret police were known as SAVAK.
SAVAK is an acronym for the Persian name Sāzmān-e Ettelāʿāt va Amniyat-e Keshvar, usually translated as “Organization of Intelligence and National Security.”
Key facts
Created: 1957 under Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi.
Purpose: Intelligence gathering, counter-subversion, and suppression of political opposition.
Training/assistance: Early training came from Western intelligence services, including the CIA and French intelligence.
Reputation: Widely feared inside Iran for surveillance networks, censorship, imprisonment, and alleged torture of dissidents.
End: Dissolved after the 1979 Iranian Revolution that overthrew the Shah.
In Cold War discussions, SAVAK often appears alongside other well-known secret police organizations such as the KGB (USSR) or the Stasi (East Germany), because it functioned in a similar role of internal security and political control. —ChatGPT
What kind of evil bastards would throw out the Shah, when he was so kindly allowing us to rape his country's oil wealth in return for letting him dip his beak, from time to time.
But all of this bombing we are doing will bring the Iranian's back to the happy days of the Shah's son.
I want to nominate gadfly's characterization of "motorboat passengers" for Althouse Blog Hilarious Comment of the Year.
Recall that Binance co-founder CZ was pardoned by Trump last October.
Justice Department Probes Iran’s Use of Binance to Evade Sanctions ~ WSJ
“Investigation focuses on money flowing through crypto platform to network backing terror groups, including Yemen’s Houthi militants”
I haven’t gone through all the posts, but it is so weird to me that the anti-American group here objects to sinking an enemy worship during a time of war. I mean it is an enemy worship. I’m not sure how they do not understand this. Are they saying it would be legitimate to attack the warships once they are in the theater of war and actively attacking our ships, but not seeking them to prevent them from attacking our ships? The purpose of the worship is to attack American ships in the theater. Is it their position that we should not have attacked them until they were loaded and locked and actively firing on our ships? I mean, that is just stupid right?
it’s like if you see a bad guy who says he is going to kill you. He just has to get his gun and then he goes and gets his gun but it is unloaded so he says wait a minute. I just have to put the magazine in. And then he puts the magazine in and says wait. I do not have a round in the chamber. I have to rack it and then he racks it, but he’s not yet aiming it at you. Is it their position that you have to wait until he is actively aiming the loaded gun at you before you can defend yourself?
it used to be that the anti-Americans here at least made a little bit of sense so they helped you think. But all of these response responses are just stupid.
where I live there is a group of left wingers who stand on the expressway overpass every morning with placards against Trump in general and usually this translates to against our soldiers. Whatever the anti-Trump message of the day is posted. It was Russia and Putin for a while when that was the standard refrain. One day Epstein files came up and the posters were all Epstein. As soon as the war started, it was their children are on beaches, and your children are going to get killed in war. It’s almost as if they do not know we have not had a draft in decades. It’s almost as if they do not know that our military is all volunteer. It’s almost as if they did not know the military had no respect for Biden or Obama and recruiting numbers were unsustainable. It’s almost as if they did not know that the troops love Trump and a pro American government and recruiting numbers have gone through the roof since we had a pro-American president.
I’m genuinely not sure if the anti-American group here and on the expressway are stupid or if they know what they are doing and they are liars. I don’t see how there is a third category.
Tiana Lowe Doescher on X: "One of the most offensively dumb critiques of Trump's Iran offensive. We spend TWICE as much on Medicare & Medicaid as we do on the Pentagon. We've literally never spent LESS on defense as a share of GDP (2.9% in 2025 vs. 4.1 avg over the past 50 years). All we fund is welfare!" / X https://share.google/XHZnwvt7nRXLnFsrE
Whiskeybum @ 8:09
On my way to the gun store there is a Heron rookery. There must have been hundreds of them in the trees.
old country lawyer @ 8:16
Just south of in Kankakee Illinois they had six inch hail. Not a good day.
Funny that our Lefty friends want to preemptively confiscate our firearms but demand a declaration of war before taking out an enemy warship that may do us harm.
I propose that we only confiscate firearms that are actually used in a felony.
Oh. We already do that.
It’s almost as if Keith appeared just as the war started to be the propagandist for the Trump administration. All the “anti- American” name calling of other Americans who aren’t in drooling slobbering support for Trump’s war is a giveaway.
Inga - when you wish cast for American failure it's anti-American. I hated Obama and whoever ran the Biden administration because I thought their policies were destructive for America and western values. I thought Libya was a stupid ill-conceived idea that would be enormously destructive. We had a well-behaved dictator who no longer posed a threat to the west. For some reason Obama and Hillary felt they had to show they were tough and kill him and leave a vacuum for radical islam to fill.
I HOPED I was wrong and they would be successful and that action would leave America stronger. I thought there is no way - these people are idiots and the action would be massively harmful to the world. But I HOPED for American success.
That is the difference between us and you. We ALWAYS hope for America's success but fear that malevolent and incompetent forces are making stupid decisions. You hope for America's failure.
I've been here for years but posted more before when people were less stupid. Then posts like yours and Jaq's started increasing and they were just unhinged. Made no sense. Illogical. If you do a search you'll see a lot of my posts when I was more active years ago.
It has been a while since there was such a clear conflict between western values and civilization against barbarism. I've been addicted to the news to my chagrin for the last week and a half after a few years of recognizing the news is not healthy for me or anyone else. But I fell off the wagon.
They sided with what would become islamic state, with zarquawi
“Keith”, your long screeds have not been seen in these comments sections until Trump’s war. Every one of your comments depends on the unthinking and blind followers of Trump to continue to not question the Trump narrative and lies about what is happening in Trump’s war.
Your storytelling is just a bit too “canned”, doesn’t sound like it actually comes from any real American.
They do seem to dialing past eleven, can they root for this country at least once it seems unpossible
They side with the barbarians all the time
Hello, fellow humans.
Inga - what is canned? You are free to look up old posts. Probably none for a few years. They are there if you want to look. It may be that you don’t really interact with Americans, who love America and who appropriately value the values of western civilization, what made our country grade and what made western civilization great.
It seems to me that the world really is a lot more fragmented now as compared to the past. In the past, we could disagree with our friends, debate issues, logically, and still maintain friendship. That world appears largely gone.
When I talk with rational liberals, and we disagree, each of us expresses appreciation that we can disagree and not evolve into hate. But they’re really are not a lot of liberals I can speak with openly about this. Now to be fair often when I speak with conservatives it turns into an echo chamber also.
In this day and age, it is difficult to find people who can disagree respectfully. I have no doubt that your echo chamber is sealed pretty tightly except for here on this website.
But yes, I am a real American. I love America. I love freedom. I love Western values. If there is a conflict between western values or democratic powers and savages or barbarians or Islamic or communists, I think it is important to take the side of Western civilization and freedom.
If there is a conflict between Israel and Head choppers, of course I take the side of Isreal. If there was a conflict between Christians and Head choppers Of course I take the side of Christians. If there is a conflict between India and Pakistan I choose India. China and Taiwan? I choose Taiwan.
Always freedom and western values over barbarism.
I appreciate that there are many enemies of freedom. I appreciate that there are many who would toss aside freedom in western values for power. I think you are in that group as is Jaq and RCO. I think RC does not hate Western values, but rather hate Jews and hates them so much that he is willing to abandon western civilization to pursue Jew hatred.
I think it is just like people like John Kerry back in the 1970s who worked hard to advocate for America’s enemies and for America’s defeat in Vietnam. Americans who hate America have been with us for a long time unfortunately.
Inga - when America is in conflict, I strongly and I would say phonetically advocate for Ronald Reagan’s view. We win. They lose. Unfortunately the left advocates for the opposite. I hate to say it, but it almost seems to me that it is time for the nation to divide into two. On the other hand this seems to be occurring spontaneously. Americans are moving out of field states and into successful states. California and New York are losing dramatic numbers to the point that they are losing federal representation to Texas and Florida. I just hope it is the conservatives are moving or if it is liberals that they at least acknowledge that it was voting for Democrats that ruined their states.
Did you know we were losing the Iran war?
We're not. But they (the left) are.
Jim: What Iran War are you talking about? the Israeli's blew up the Ayatollah and his government. We have provided weaponry and delivery systems to continue their war. Trump just decided to spend our money for no reason except to kill our economy.
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