The apples are doing well this year too. Not just ours; the other night at the concert I picked an apple off a nearby feral tree for my wife. She said it was delicious.
Last night my wife and I rode over to a mountain town and heard a local band singing the old songs, then we rode back on the very edge of a severe thunderstorm. We made it home so close to the edge that while my wife got into the garage dry, I was soaked because I parked less than a minute after her.
Tonight we just got caught in it.
Sometimes you get rainbows out of these thunderstorms near dusk. That one last night was a visible double.
We are the children of Numenor... but who truly brings us back to Numenor and its values? Is it the directionless Stewards? The absent kings? Or will it be the One who served directly under Ar-Pharazôn himself in Numenor’s Golden Age? Character matters: record matters too, and Sauron has one.
One of each, as a matter of fact.
It’s hard to exaggerate how bad this policy is. It is, in all but name, a sweeping set of government-enforced price controls across every industry, not only food. Supply and demand would no longer determine prices or profit levels. Far-off Washington bureaucrats would. The FTC would be able to tell, say, a Kroger in Ohio the acceptable price it can charge for milk.At best, this would lead to shortages, black markets and hoarding, among other distortions seen previous times countries tried to limit price growth by fiat....If your opponent claims you’re a “communist,” maybe don’t start with an economic agenda that can (accurately) be labeled as federal price controls.
The rent caps are the “ugly” part of Harris’ plan, said Lanhee Chen, director of domestic policy studies at the Hoover Institute at Stanford University and a past CNN opinion contributor who worked on campaigns for Republicans, including Utah Senator Mitt Romney.“What is effectively a federal rent-control measure … was a bad idea when President Biden proposed it a few weeks ago,” said Chen.
The pretty part? Repurposing public lands for housing. I wonder how well 'developing the national parks into cheap housing tracts' will poll?
UPDATE: The W. Post follows up its pre-speech editorial by a single author with a full-fledged editorial from its entire board condemning the Kamala plan as unserious "gimmicks."
Clues hidden in rocks about the freeze have been wiped out everywhere - except in the Garvellachs. Researchers hope the islands will tell us why Earth went into such an extreme icy state for so long and why it was necessary for complex life to emerge.
The relevant island is uninhabited except for researchers.
A South Dakota ranch couple is fighting federal indictments served to them by a U.S. Forest Service agent who allegedly showed up unannounced on their front steps — armed and in tactical gear. The agent was there to serve them with indictments in a modern-day range war between the ranchers and feds.“It’s is stressful, financially and mentally. It’s something nobody should have to go through,” rancher Charles Maude of Caputa, South Dakota, told Cowboy State Daily on Tuesday.He and his wife Heather, who is a Wyoming native, were served with separate federal grand jury indictments June 24, for alleged theft of government property. The government claims the fence put up by the ranchers is over a boundary with federal grasslands.The charges carry a maximum penalty of 10 years in prison and/or a $250,000 fine.
If it sounded to you like they had a good-faith agreement that shouldn't be occasion for indictments, it sounds that way too to some retired rangers the paper interviewed about it.
[T]he situation in South Dakota might have been one in which the old standard of a “common sense, reasonable interaction” would have been more effective — and not left the Forest Service looking bad, he said.
Brauneis said that in the wake of what happened in South Dakota, and similar incidents eroding the Forest Service’s relationship with the public, some soul-searching might be in order for the agency.
To illustrate how things used to work, he recalled an incident from his career... “I drove out to talk to the land owner who was an elderly lady. She invited me in and we had coffee. I explained what happened and she understood,” he said.
“We concluded that if we burned the slash on her property along with ours and planted trees the same as on forest that we were all good to go,” Brauneis said. “We shook hands and I left. Old-school community in a Christian culture.”
Another ranger they spoke to wasn't surprised, and said he would have expected the agency to send armored vehicles and a dozen agents to deliver the indictments. The culture of the agency has changed, he said.
The new interpretation shows that the Vikings had a system where both oxen and silver served as units of payment. This system allowed for multiple types of units of accounts to be used concurrently, reducing transaction complexity and making it easier for people to meet their financial obligations. The new interpretation also aligns better with how the system functioned later according to later regional laws and is, according to Rodney Edvinsson, significant for our understanding of both Scandinavian and European monetary history."As an economic historian, I particularly look for historical data to be economically logical, that is, to fit into other contemporary or historical economic systems. The valuation of an ox at two ore, or 50 grams of silver, in 10th-century Sweden resembles contemporary valuations in other parts of Europe, indicating a high degree of integration and exchange between different economies," says Rodney Edvinsson.
A human thrall was six times as expensive, if you're keeping score at home.
Vice President Kamala Harris’ campaign team has been quietly editing news headlines in Google search ads to make it seem like major news outlets are on her side, according to a report.The altered headlines — appearing on Google ads and paired with a “Paid for by Harris for President” banner — were changed without the news outlets’ knowledge, Axios reported Tuesday.Nearly a dozen publishers were swept up in the faux headline campaign, including major companies like the Guardian, Reuters, CBS News, the Associated Press and PBS.
This is an amazing scandal because the news is already so deeply on her side that there's no need for it. Let's do a quick review of Google News' headline aggregator. There are five stories about Trump, all of them negative, highlighting his weaknesses and losses; one of them compares his appeal to Harris', casting his as "old" and "White," while painting her vibrantly as youthful and energetic.
There are four stories about Harris, all of them either positive or actively defensive of her where she needs help. Two of them are 'fact checks' by the press intended to correct storylines they think are hurting her; one of them uncritically quotes her aides to defend her lack of specifics on her economic/climate plans.
All of the major papers seem to be reporting on polls that show Harris tied or ahead; I dug into the crosstabs of the NYT poll that found her four points ahead and found that it assumed a +3 Democratic advantage was natural in those states, and the margin of error was +/-5.1. The assumption that Democratic turnout will beat Republican turnout by three points is doing almost all the work, in other words; and even then it's within the margin of error. But it turns it into a 'She's got momentum!' headline, so it's everywhere.
Yet in spite of this atmosphere of complete support and devotion, her campaign isn't satisfied until they actually get to rewrite media headlines to be even more in her favor. That seems like a lack of confidence to me, perhaps a sense that there's really nothing holding up the magic carpet they're floating upon.
Tom expressed several of Aristotle's political points on tyranny in the comments to a recent post. Thoughtful people on both sides of the political aisle are thinking about Aristotle's account of tyranny; the above video was posted on Facebook by a left-leaning retired academic I know, and generated a discussion of how well Trump fits the model Aristotle described.
Imperfectly, actually, but there are some qualities that do apply. For example, Aristotle says that tyrants use 'the meanest group of people as leaders' to avoid challenges from within, and Trump historically has empowered some pretty low-class people like his former lawyer (the one who later confessed to perjury, but on whose sole testimony was Trump convicted of all those 'felonies'). He's also accepted leaders from within the group of his enemies, though, which was probably his single biggest mistake from his first term.
Perhaps he's learning on that score? Vance is a fairly strong choice with a genuine intellectual center (a point unrecognized by these left-leaning academics, for whom his intellectual influences are déclassé, a quality they confuse with stupidity). On the other hand, Trump outright rejected Heritage Foundation Project 2025's collection of cleared people who could work for his administration and had the right values and temperament. That could mean that he is rejecting qualified people in preference to ones he can control; or it could suggest he does not trust anyone in DC, even on the right. It will have to be seen if he is better on personnel choices than previously.
What is likely obvious to readers of this blog is how well Aristotle's account fits the establishment -- except that the establishment is definitely not a tyranny on Aristotle's terms, because there isn't a single ruler. It is an oligarchy, where even the President is now a figurehead (and that will certainly remain true if Ms. Harris should succeed to the office, as she has no accomplishments of her own: she will also be a puppet). Rule is being exercised extra-constitutionally by a group of people who were never elected to the relevant office.
I am going to put further reading, from the left side of the conversation, after the jump. In a second post I will later do an analysis of both positions and try to summarize where I think they are right and wrong.
While officers in this country kill far more people than any other highly developed democracy and are shielded by powerful police unions, dog shootings still receive extensive national attention. “Given that there’s no shortage of actual human beings getting shot by police officers, pointing these stories out can sometimes seem a bit callous,” says Radley Balko, a journalist who has done much to expose cops killing dogs. “But I think they’re worth noting."
Indeed, the “Regime” believes that ordinary white citizens and working-class people are the problem—not jihadists, Pakistani groomers, rampaging Muslim mobs, “undocumented” refugees, Palestinian demonstrators, or foreign criminal gangs. Heritage citizens are, apparently, the greatest threat to the status quo, purveyors of “disinformation,” by which the social and political elite mean what Steve Sailer in an important book has called “Noticing”—that is, seeing what is happening around one and to the culture by using common sense and honest observation.Thus, to say what you have noticed—and suffered—is to be guilty of disinformation, racism, bigotry or hate speech. To look the reality of immigrant and refugee violence in the face, to confront visibly corrupt two-tier policing, media duplicity, and Regime hypocrisy, and to describe it accurately is to be tarred by the state as a far-right extremist, a hooligan, a fascist or a white supremacist.
The British government has decided to release a lot of violent criminals from prison in order to free up prison spaces for ordinary people of this sort. Five hundred prison spaces are more of a threat than a real capacity to beat the issue: if the people rise up in their millions, that won't be a drop in the bucket. So, the government is cracking down on disapproved speech, even just a remark on Facebook or X, and they aren't alone. They are afraid of their own people far more than anything else.
We all remember the way the Canadian trucker convoy was targeted in Canada -- in a manner later found unconstitutional by its courts -- to the tune of freezing the accounts of people who donated, even though the cause to which they donated was not a terrorists group but a 501(c)3 charity lawfully formed under Canadian laws. They arrested and put into solitary confinement a preacher who gave an inspiring benediction to that convoy -- hardly an act of violence. They did this because they realized that the ordinary people involved in the trucker movement could shut down Canada's economy if they chose, and they feared their own ordinary citizens more than they do anything else.
Nor is our own government immune. This piece at Hot Air helpfully summarizes several of the recent affronts that have come to light, including the VP nominee declaring that there is "no right to free speech" if the speech is deemed hateful or misinformation by the government; placing Tulsi Gabbard, who served her country faithfully when called up by the National Guard (not to put too fine a point on it), under a terrorist air watch that has her followed by armed men onto airplanes; the security state burying any discussion of its failures (we hope they were failures!) leading to Trump's almost-assassination; a swing state announcing that it won't be prepared to count votes on election day, and that its expected changing vote totals "are not evidence" of cheating; and many more. Our media has taken to declaring that there 'is no evidence' on many controversial issues, rather than exploring the evidence for different propositions in order to help readers get to a good judgment. It has accepted a duty to oppose with hostility one side on this election, while doing everything it can to support the establishment side.
What's with all this 'fortification'? It suggests that our establishment is likewise motivated by a fear, not of criminals or terrorists or invasions across the border, and certainly not of Islam, but of ordinary Americans. What sins are they trying to hide from our eyes that justifies such fear? What do they tremble to think we will learn if the levers of control pass out of their hands?
One of the old milblog crew came up with this. This is a challenge coin made up by our Mr. Walz with a Command Sergeant Major insignia on it.
His former battalion commander put out a statement affirming that "he did not earn the rank or successfully complete any assignment as an E-9. It is an affront to the Noncommissioned Officers Corps that he continues to glom onto the rank." He does express satisfaction with his performance at lower ranks, so it's not like he's 'denigrating military service' per se. Just this one little aspect of evading an assignment and yet pretending to the rank he didn't earn because of that evasion.
But remember, these claims are made "without evidence," a term of art meaning that there is clear evidence but we're all supposed to pretend otherwise. It's very important that we all make-believe very hard in cases of these claims made "without evidence."
That’s a terrifying question for a Republican ticket that offers little beyond resentment, rage and a promise to restrict the freedom and democratic power of its opponents. It explains why Vance immediately began smearing Walz’s military record, claiming — without evidence, of course — that Walz had “abandoned” his unit when he ran for Congress before the unit was deployed to Iraq.I wish I could be more sure that voters will ever get a chance to hear the stolen-valor case about Walz, not to mention his positions on communism, COVID snitch lines, the benefits to schoolchildren of closing schools, genital mutilation of minors, full-term abortion, denial of care to babies who survive abortion, abandoning police stations to rioters who have their hearts in the right place and need space to vent, and raising taxes after quickly blowing through a large state budget surplus. Instead, Walz is a manly Mister Rogers! As the Bee said, Workers of the world, let's get together sometime for a potluck! Without evidence, of course. In any case, the evidence might violate community standards. Which is lucky for Walz, because he's enjoyed full political cover for years from a compliant Minnesota press, so he's feared nothing from exposure, and most of these positions are extremely well preserved in print and on camera. Not that that will matter much if a now-compliant national press simply memory-holes them and concentrates on his Presbyterian green bean casserole recipe. I've been reflecting on this. I'm fairly certain I don't need traditional gender and racial hierarchies to validate my life choices. Trump's family life isn't much like mine, but I'm still voting for him for the third time.
J.D. Vance: I think it's a problem for Walz to have lied about having gone to war.
Dana Bash: They've corrected that.
J.D. Vance: They've corrected it by admitting that he lied.
Dana Bash: Let's move on.And it's not as though he lied about it once. He's been dining out on stolen valor for a long time.
(1) When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong.
(2) The only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a little way past them into the impossible.
(3) Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.Apropos of Law 3, SpaceX’s new Raptor-3 methane-fueled engine is so advanced the CEO of ULA doesn’t understand it. Our SpaceLink internet service continues to give us fantastic speed and zero problems, as well, while the Spectrum cable connection drives my neighbors up the wall. Long live Elon Musk, who has done more than anyone else I can think of lately to preserve free speech on Earth.