Starting next week I have four weeks on the road out of the next eight. Hopefully I’ll remember to write enough of these beforehand.
There’s a pretty simple story playing out this week in the sky: MERCURY RETROGRADE gains increasingly greater influence over Jupiter until it reaches a maximum Saturday-ish. So if you’re some sort of ruler (none of you) and/or comedian (not professionally anyway), it’s going to be an unusually shitty week.
more stuff
Cancer: Justice – Justice. This card seems to be popping up a lot lately.
Leo: Knight of Cups reversed – Trickery, artifice, subtlety, swindling, duplicity, fraud.
Virgo: The Empress reversed – Light, truth, the unravelling of involved matters, public rejoicings, vacillation.
Libra: 6 of Cups – The events of this week re either the direct result of or reference back to the past
Scorpio: 7 of Coins – Money, business, barter, altercation, quarrels, innocence, ingenuity, purgation.
Sagittarius: Knight of Swords reversed – Imprudence, incapacity, extravagance.
Capricorn: King of Wands reversed – Good, but severe person; austere, yet tolerant.
Aquarius: Knight of Wands reversed – Rupture, division, interruption, discord.
Pisces: 9 of Swords reversed – Imprisonment, suspicion, doubt, reasonable fear, shame.
Aries: Ace of Swords – Triumph, the excessive degree in everything, conquest.
Taurus: 3 of Swords reversed – Mental alienation, error, loss, distraction, disorder, confusion.
Gemini: 2 of Cups reversed – Broken promises, cooled affections
Sagittarius: Knight of Swords reversed – Imprudence, incapacity, extravagance.
Impudent extravagance? I should send my top hat to the cleaners.
[waggles eyebrows]
Not one of you accused Lindsey of dying of the super AIDS or at least monkeypox?
It’s M-Pox bigot
I’ve earned the rank of Super Bigot on Reddit and you will address me as such.
I’m not going to lie I’m nearly as proud of being a Super Bigot as I am being The First Of All Firsters.
Hanson’s disease?
That’s MMM-Pox
Just back from an international flight. I’d guess blood clot.
Cancer: Justice – so you are saying the hot new intern chick at work will ask me to bang in the office bathroom?
It’s an intern, the polite thing would be to violate her with a cigar first.
look not to be sexist or nothing but I am an engineer. hot female interns are not a frequent phenomenon.
“ Cancer: Justice – Justice. This card seems to be popping up a lot lately.”
You know what else has been popping up a lot lately?
I know what hasn’t been popping up as much as it used to.
Lindsay Graham?
“You can’t fool Mother Nature”
Or the calendar, as OL’ Lindsey found out.
Had Lindsey taken retirement at as early as possible he’d have enjoyed his last years. Anyone that enjoys work more than not work either has a BS job or a derangement.
WTF was he doing in the Ukraine? Certainly not making peace.
I thought I loved my job, then we decided to retire at the end of the year. I can’t wait to stop working. Friday nights filling out 941 quarterly doesn’t help matters and I’m not going to miss that shit in the least.
“For a man who is a man, work, in my belief, must serve no other means beyond itself.” – Another famous war mongering homo from history.
But you know Alexander the Great actually got shit done and did it himself so…
It were the Russians what dunnit.
Joint Statement on the Tenth Anniversary of the Philippines-China South China Sea Arbitral Tribunal Award
The text of the following statement was released by the Governments of the United States of America, Australia, Canada, Estonia, Germany, Italy, Japan, Latvia, Lithuania, New Zealand, the Republic of the Philippines, Romania, Slovenia, and the United Kingdom on the occasion of the tenth anniversary of the Philippines-China South China Sea Arbitral Tribunal Award.
https://www.state.gov/releases/office-of-the-spokesperson/2026/07/joint-statement-on-the-tenth-anniversary-of-the-philippines-china-south-china-sea-arbitral-tribunal-award/
without Romania this would not carry any weight
@Toxeth from the old thread.
Move on and stay safe.
Having been married to schizophrenic, I heartily agree. Toxteth needs to save herself.
In all likelihood things will not get better.
Remembers the difficulties Bob experienced in MI. Maybe it wasn’t his relatives.
My thoughts on “Bob” aren’t much of a secret and I’ve gotten into Toxteth over it on occasion. But just echo to be careful. I’m not aware of the details here or everything shared beyond looking at the morning post so hesitant to weigh in more.
Ditto.
Addendum from the AM thread:
https://x.com/JustACineast/status/2076344452268847373
Were there rattles attached? I ask because the markings more resemble copperheads.
Timber rattlesnake
And I just noticed that since the last time I was there, they put up signs in the cab of the fire tower point out what the various mountains are in the views. Those weren’t there last time, and I didn’t take dedicated pictures of them.
I stand corrected. On western rattlers there is almost always a diamond-based pattern.
https://rattlesnakesolutions.com/snakeblog/arizona-snakes/can-you-tell-the-difference-between-a-western-diamondback-rattlesnake-and-a-mojave-rattlesnake-by-the-tail-bands/
Mohave rattlesnakes are also notoriously foul tempered.
Trump so crazy
President Donald Trump is suggesting he has left standing orders for the U.S. military to destroy Iran “ at levels they’ve never seen before ” if Tehran follows through on its long-standing threats to kill him.
But the U.S. government has no way to create an automatic, preauthorized “dead man’s switch” that would prompt immediate retaliation.
Instead, if Trump were killed, the transfer of power to his successor is governed by the 25th Amendment and the Presidential Succession Act of 1947. Vice President JD Vance instantaneously would become commander in chief and have authority for any retaliation.
Under such a scenario, Vance could do exactly what Trump called for, though there also is a chance he could decide not to follow his predecessor’s orders — or offer a direct response in a different way.
I think we all know the correct response would be a message of heartfelt thanks.
Nothing says ‘thanks’ like a pallet full of cash.
This is the dumbest argument/fact check yet maybe. Trump can easily issue a standing order based on a conditional set of circumstances. Yes in theory his VP would assume power and could call it off, but the odds of that happening here are slim to none. These are not serious people. Neither is Trump, but he can almost look like it by comparison to our clownish elites.
Trickery, artifice, subtlety, swindling, duplicity, fraud.
Sufficiently shitty.
“Taurus: 3 of Swords reversed – Mental alienation, error, loss, distraction, disorder, confusion.”
See, I *reverse* your damn reversal! How ’bout that? I start new work tomorrow! Completely different environment and feels like a ‘new Korea,’ which was a spectacular foray into that realm. Interesting steps, ahead.
Hope all is well, particularly with TOG.
Take up the white man’s burden
As industrialization, artificial intelligence and electrification push demand higher, experts say the bottleneck in transitioning to cleaner energy has shifted from technology to the systems supporting it, including funding. Overcoming such obstacles is vital for securing access to power for the 600 million people in Africa who are yet to be connected.
“Clean energy is now cheaper than fossil fuels in virtually every part of the world,” former New York City Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, the U.N. Secretary-General’s Special Envoy on Climate Ambition and Solutions, said in late June while announcing a new $285 million Bloomberg Philanthropies initiative to strengthen clean energy industries in emerging and developing economies.
“But fixable obstacles are still slowing down deployment, and with energy demand rising at an unprecedented speed, we can’t allow those obstacles to continue standing in the way,” he said.
Rather than financing solar farms or wind projects directly, the initiative will invest in strengthening market design, regulatory capacity, technical expertise and industry institutions, areas increasingly viewed as essential for attracting private investment and accelerating use of renewable energy.
Bring the ignorant savages into the modern age. They just need more missionaries to guide them.
Garbage in, garbage out.
Let me guess, to get that result they compared the cost per unit produced of solar panels under peak conditions extrapolated out over the lifetime, ignoring the hours of darkness, clouds, seasonal variations etc. Compared to fossil fuel generation using peak fuel prices extrapolated out as though oil is going to start at $200 a barrel and rise by 20% per annum.
My neighbor got solar approx 5 years ago. Then a hail storm ruined his panels. $80k later he’s up and running again. We only get hail about twice a year around here, so this should be an ongoing thing. Makes all the financial sense in the world.
Maybe he should put a roof over them.
🤪
I’m waiting to hear about insurance companies excluding solar from policies. Sustainable energy is not financially sustainable.
Are they including government subsidies in these calculations or nah?
Can’t someone just put in some outlets in the grass hut walls? Duct tape them in to something. Stop worrying about windmills and solar and all that nonsense.
USAID people had years to figure that out but NO, they wanted to stay on the pad.
“Cancer: Justice – Justice. This card seems to be popping up a lot lately.”
Your synopsis is woefully lacking.
It reflects a growing consensus that Africa’s energy transition is constrained less by a lack of renewable resources or viable technologies than by the institutional capacity needed to turn those advantages into financially viable projects and electricity on the grid.
Many projects remain delayed by weak market design, limited grid planning, slow permitting processes and fragmented regulatory systems.
“What has been missing is not the potential, but the institutional infrastructure and capabilities to unlock it,” said Saliem Fakir, executive director of the African Climate Foundation. “Philanthropy that targets those gaps directly is the kind of intervention that can shift the trajectory of a continent’s energy system.”
A global socialist dictatorship could fix this.
can I be dictator?
I think we found those 700,000 dead Africans. The bodies were piling up as global elites were dicking around with “green” fantasies rather than letting them achieve prosperity as they saw fit.
Went out and impulse bought a new stripped lower. Took just over a half hour round trip.
😉
Also fondled a 4516, but decided against it.
You “bought a new stripped lower?” What’s that, a post-op trans? You *bought* this? How was the tuk-tuk ride in Pattaya?
And ya “fondled” 4516, huh? We’re not even attempting to phrase, here.
Gun Glibs understand.
Yeah, y’all would. Ya get together frequently. Fondling, stroking long barrels together. You always bring pizza to the affair. Lots of pizza.
(Pizza.)
I went to a casino in Oklahoma this week. Not sure how people are dumb enough to gamble there. Blackjack, if you play by “The Book” and the table is 3:2 payout on blackjack, and dealer must stand on all 17s, is a nearly 51-49% game with the player holding the 2% advantage. Tweeking the rules to 6:5 blackjack payout and dealer hits soft 17 brings it closer to a 50.5-49.5 game with smaller player advantage. In OK, they also charge a .50 ante per hand that goes to the house. That additional 3% chews up and spits out any player advantage. Then, I thought I won a split when the dealer busted on 22, nope, that was a push I was told. Of course if I hit 22, I bust. That is before you realize you have to pay for your drink order, which is typically comp’ed in most casinos. I couldn’t get out of there quick enough.
I’ve driven right on past the I35 casino north of the TX border. Lot of TX license plates, I wager.
Of course the house has to win to stay in business. You won’t see it in writing but it’s there. We have a few casinos in MN, we always enjoyed the crab leg buffet but now that’s gone the way of covid.