Caturday

At the shelter, the frame of an old footstool was donated. Take that, put a cushion on top, put a cushion underneath and voila: Instant two-level cat furniture:

Which took all of three seconds for two of the shelter cats to get comfy in and on it.

Custody Disputes in Space

Though, unless you are on another planet where there is no effective rule of law, this will be somewhat frowned upon.

A Smith & Wesson gold-plated Model 15 would seem to be the sort of weapon that one might find in a frontier whorehouse.

From Firefly's "Heart of Gold". The dead guy had been trying to kidnap the child from the mother, because he had fathered it and he probably needed an heir.

Murder by PowerPoint

A story.

I am eternally grateful that I got out of the service before PowerPoint fixed its death grip on the armed forces. Oh, there were overhead projectors and such, but it took more effort to make the transparencies and most people didn't bother because transparency sheets cost money and somebody had to pay for all that.

Because It's Friday

Scenes from the UP Steam Shop:

I had heard of 838 being used as a parts hulk for 844. I'd never heard of 5511.

The discussions I've read seem to agree that UP's current priority is to finish the overhaul of 844 (set to return to steam service next month), then maybe 3985 before concentrating on 4014.

"Warfighter"--- Bleech!

"Warfighter" is one of the terms that the think-tankers and the boobs at Ft. Fumble have come up with in this current cycle of wars.

Personally, I believe that anyone who uses that term is either doing so under duress or they are at least a borderline mental defective.[1] The term, more and more, seems to apply to everyone in uniform, ie, "servicemen". There doesn't seem to be much of a distinction in how this douchey new term used. Between trigger-pullers, fobbits and REMFs, all seem to fall under the term "warfighter" from time to time.

Bill Mauldin came up with the term "garritroopers" for what would now be "fobbits": Soldiers too far forward to wear ties and too far back to get shot. But I digress.

"Warfighter" is a kludgy term. There is a far better term available: Warrior.

By calling them "warriors", we could also stop using the imbecilic word "operators," a term that better describes people who run switchboards[2] and machine tools.[3] Which would be an additional benefit.

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[1] The term I would have used before seems to upset people, nowadays.
[2] Go look it up.
[3] Back when we made a lot of stuff in this country.

That Toddlin' Town

CHICAGO — Murders in the nation's third-largest city are up about 72%, while shootings have surged more than 88% in the first three months of 2016 compared with the same period last year, according to data released Friday by the Chicago Police Department.

The po-po say that most of it is gang-related and if you stay out of the bad neighborhoods, you might not get shot very much.

I wouldn't be surprised if some of the rise is due to an unofficial slowdown by the cops, who are getting tired of being called on the carpet for such minor constitutional trifles such as beatings, shootings, torture and off-the-books detentions.

"Islamic Terrorism" is the Wrong Term for It

It is better called "Saudi Terrorism".

While the Saudis never officially supported Islamic terrorism they were, at the same time, very much responsible for the increase in Islamic terrorist activity since the 1970s. That’s because in Arabia (where Islam first appeared in the 7th century) the locals believe they are more Islamic than other Moslems. After all, the Koran was written in Arabic and all the founders of Islam were Arabs. Yet for over a thousand years there has been a tradition of different factions in Arabia trying outdo each other to prove who is “more Islamic” than the other. This led to constant fighting and suppression of new ideas. One of those fanatic factions is the Wahhabi form of Sunni Islam in what is now Saudi Arabia. Wahhabis, who first appeared in the 18th century, are very conservative and very hostile to non-Moslems and Moslems who are not Sunni. This meant little to the non-Moslem world until lots of oil wealth appeared in Arabia after World War II. Suddenly it became possible for Saudis to show how pious they were by funding Wahhabi missionaries who went to other Moslem (and many non-Moslem) nations to preach, establish Wahhabi religious schools and mosques (all paid for and sustained by Saudi Arabia) and create the current Islamic terrorism problem. Billions were (and still are) spent on this and the policy of getting the young boys into these free religious schools and turning many of them into hateful (towards anyone not like them) Islamic religious fanatics. This led to a major outbreak of Islamic terrorism in the late 20th century. At first this was not seen as a problem in Moslem countries. It was seen as a lot of pious and generous Saudis sharing the wealth. Soon (by the 1980s) a growing number of Moslem nations noted what was actually going on and resisted this destructive Saudi charity. Initially Moslem nations like Turkey, Iraq, Libya and Syria resisted the Wahhabi missionaries and money for political reasons as these nations did not accept the Wahhabi concept Islam dominating politics.

The Wahhabi problem is most obvious in Saudi Arabia, which practiced what it preached. Thus no other religions can be openly practiced and other forms of Islam are barely tolerated, sort of, and often persecuted. All Saudis are educated in schools that insist the Wahhabi way is the only way. As a result Saudis have always provided the largest number of ISIL (Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant) and al Qaeda recruits.

We have been in bed with those fuckers for a very long time, most prominently during the administrations of Bush I and II.

Maybe it's time that we start rethinking whom we consider to be our friends.

Starting a Dead-Tree Newsletter? The Post Office Hates You and is Betting You'll Fail

Let's say that you get the bright idea to begin publishing some sort of newsletter or other periodical. If you plan to mail them out, bring plenty of money to your startup.

Oh, sure, the Postal Service has a thing called a periodical rate. They offer it because, ages ago, Congress thought it was a good idea to encourage the cheap dissemination of news and information (and advertising). Doesn't mean the USPS likes it and they'll make it hard for you to do.

First, you have to start publishing and yes, that means you're mailing out your first few issues at first-class mail rates. Then you can take your circulation figures and proof to the Bulk Mail Unit servicing your area and apply for a periodical permit. Where you pretty much will have to engage in a sit-in if you want the application processed.

But first, the USPS will issue you a bulk-mail permit, not a periodical permit. Which costs more to mail. And which you have to establish an account and pay into, in advance, to mail your stuff. This is all while the USPS processes your periodical permit. Which takes six months, at a minimum. Usually longer.

The silver lining is that if you hang on long enough to get the periodical permit issued, then the USPS applies that retroactively, back to when you first started mailing out at the bulk rate.

But if your publication fails before then, you've paid to mail them at the bulk rate and it sucks to be you.

The six+ month delay to get a periodical permit, as you might have surmised, has nothing to do with bureaucracy. The Post Office has figured out that most new periodicals don't succeed and that they fail within (no prizes for guessing) six months.

The USPS hates the periodical rates. They make money on bulk mail, but little, if any, on periodicals. So they game the system to take the maximum profit from struggling startups and, I'll wager, they've sunk more than their share in doing that.

One might presume that the Post Office is run by people who once worked for Goldman Sachs. Or Donald Trump.

Ah, the Sweet Taste of Schadenfreude in the Afternoon

Or irony, with a garnish of hypocrisy. Your choice of flavors.

Ken Starr will resign as the chancellor at Baylor in the wake of a report last week that accused several university leaders of not properly handling allegations of sexual assault. ... Starr already had been stripped of his role as Baylor president by the Board of Regents on May 27 following the release of the university-commissioned report that came down hard on the school for doing little in response to accusations of sexual assault involving members of the football team.

The moralistic prig who spent more than $50 million trying to hang Bill Clinton for sexual peccadillos (coming up with nothing for it) apparently wasn't savvy enough to figure out that if his underlings were doing bad things of a sexual nature, that maybe he ought to do something about it.

Grifter Donald

Seems that he lied about the money that he purportedly raised and then didn't donate to veterans' groups.

Then he got found out. So he sent the money out. And got mad at the press for catching him lying.

One might conclude that he had no intention of paying out the money, at least not for a very long while. Maybe he figured he wouldn't have to. I don't know. No point in asking Trump, for every word out of his mouth is a self-serving lie.*

Donald the Liar.

Donald the Bully.

Donald the Grifter.

Choose any one (or all).
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* Or proof of his ignorance.