Remember: China is a Hostile Power

Apparently, there are kill switches in the electronics of Chinese inverters to shut down solar farms and wind turbines.

Chinese “kill switches” that could allow Beijing to cripple power grids and trigger blackouts across the West have been found in equipment at US solar farms.

The rogue devices, including cellular radios, were discovered in Chinese-made power inverters that are used to connect solar panels and wind turbines to electricity grids across the world, including the UK.

The hidden communications equipment could be deployed remotely to switch off inverters with potentially catastrophic results.

The discovery, reported by Reuters, will heighten concerns that China has installed covert malware in critical energy infrastructure throughout the US and Europe. The kill switches could be deployed at any time in the event of a confrontation between China and the West.

Some serious work needs to be done on this crap in all Western countries. And any installations in the works need to be examined closely.

Also, for any utility company that thinks they'll be able to avoid damage claims using an act of war defense, they should rethink that.

Caturday

The outdoor tuxies.

We have been feeding Speck (top) for years. He's gone from running when he saw us to making eye contact and sometimes talking. But we can't get closer than six feet to him. Somebody had to have really abused him to make him so wary and may those people be damned to the hottest, most caustic circle of Hell, for half of the time. The other half, may they be submerged in pools of liquid hydrogen, with frequent cycling between the two spots.

Supreme Court Rules, 7-2, that Fascism is Bad

Pee-Wee German is, no doubt, having a full-blown temper tantrum.

The Supreme Court on Friday barred the Trump administration from quickly resuming deportations of Venezuelans under an 18th-century wartime law enacted when the nation was just a few years old.

Over two dissenting votes, the justices acted on an emergency appeal from lawyers for Venezuelan men who have been accused of being gang members, a designation that the administration says makes them eligible for rapid removal from the United States under the Alien Enemies Act of 1798.
...
Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas dissented...

The question that will soon present itself is what will happen if Trump has a bunch of guys put on a plane and deported without a shred of due process, in defiance of court orders. I have zero doubt that the supine ball-lickers in the GOP in the Congress will do anything about it.

Because It's Friday

Zapping These Down Here

We'll start with our idiots in charge:

EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE

A family emergency just blew up. It's one of those bad "unexpected but anticipated" ones. Some of the routine features are already queued up, others, not so much.

Both blogging and comment moderation may be irregular for awhile.

Trump's Concern About Antisemitism is Just a Smokescreen for Bigotry Against Muslims

The proof is that his own White House is a nest of white supremacist and antisemitic people, including but likely not limited to Paul Ingrassia, currently serving as the White House liaison to the Department of Homeland Security; Rachel Cauley, the communications director for the White House Office of Management and Budget; and, of course, Ed Martin, Kash Patel and Department of Defense spokesperson Kingsley Wilson. All have a track record of statements, behaviors, and haning out with neo-Nazis.

The FLOSS has no problem with antisemites, as long as they're mostly white people or, at least, not Muslim.

Magnum Force, Abated

I recently shot my .44 Magnum while wearing anti-vibration gloves. They work. If you're shooting heavy magnums or pistol-grip shotguns, you might want to give them a try. You could also search for gloves for jackhammer operators.

Trump Coup 2.0

He's trying to take over Congress by an attack on the Library of Congress, which is not an executive agency.

Meanwhile, it's slowly sinking in with MAGA that Trump is only out for himself, what with his grift of an airplane. By the time they damn near disassemble that Qatari 747 to look for bugs, install electronics, install an air-to air refueling system, and examine every line of code in the FMS, Trump will be out of office, in exile, in a cell, or dead. Some of the crazier MAGA loyalists are comparing the jet to the Statue of Liberty, which is just fucking insane. Congress authorized acceptance of the Statue and the president at the time, Grover Cleveland, didn't take the Statue home with him when he left office.

And the Chinese Communist Party is pulling off machinations to buy $300 million of Trump's crypto. There's a huge "For Sale" sign blinking over the White House. Nobody is going Trump $300 million in cash or a $400 million dollar airplane.

I've said before that the plane would take years to retrofit. So all I can say, now, is Toljaso, I did.

Time to Defund ICE and DHS

Considering the fascist shit they are doing, like trying to confiscate a house that someone they don't care for no loner owns, they need to be defunded and made to find honest jobs.

The Right lost their collective minds over the "little pink house" twenty years ago. Their silence on this case is telling.