First, the BlinkLab run—because I need coffee before digging any deeper:
News Compressor: Dawn
The weekend’s biggest change is that several pressure points we were already watching have moved from threat toward action.
Middle East: Saudi Arabia says it intercepted a Houthi ballistic missile aimed at Riyadh, with attempted strikes also reported elsewhere in the kingdom. No casualties or damage were reported, but geographically this is important: the conflict has moved from shipping lanes and peripheral infrastructure toward an attempted strike on the Saudi capital. Meanwhile, oil and Gulf markets still aren’t pricing anything resembling panic. Physical risk continues rising faster than market fear. Oil may follow sooner rather than later. Markets? Watch the opposite direction.
Russia/Ukraine: Ukraine launched what Russian officials describe as more than 1,000 drones overnight, including roughly 450 toward Moscow. Russian authorities reported two deaths, injuries and damage including Moscow’s oil refinery. Whatever the exact battlefield accounting, the larger trend is becoming clearer: this war is increasingly about deep infra and economic targets, not simply the front line.
China: U.S.-China talks begin today in New York ahead of Thursday’s Trump-Xi summit. Tariffs, rare-earth supplies, technology and AI guardrails are on the table. This matters because several previously separate stories — trade, critical minerals, AI, Russia sanctions and Taiwan — are increasingly converging into one negotiating package. A friendly WH press (*with a few members missing) could save markets – again.
AI Security: An authorized security exercise reportedly used Anthropic’s Claude and OpenAI’s GPT-5.6 Sol to help penetrate OpenAI systems, including employee accounts and code access; OpenAI says the vulnerabilities were fixed. The larger signal is the important one: AI is compressing the labor and time required for sophisticated security work — which means presumably attacks as well.
Insider pages: North Korea fired another ballistic missile; Turkey offered military assistance to Saudi Arabia under its new defense arrangement; Cuba continues struggling with grid failures; and commercial shipping through the Gulf is developing a capacity problem involving tankers, containers, insurance and alternative routing.
We’re still “at the top of the glide slope” but fall is likely to hold double-meanings.
What Comes Next (besides more coffee)
Russia: A substantial retaliatory strike against Ukraine following the Moscow attack looks likely. Odds: 78%.
Saudi Arabia: Additional Saudi military action against Houthi targets following the Riyadh attempt is increasingly plausible. Odds: 72%. Doesn’t solve the two-fronts problem.
China: Today’s negotiations should produce at least enough agreement or happy-talk language to prepare the table for Thursday’s Trump-Xi meeting. Odds: 75%. Say, can Trump out-talk and out-poost burning pipelines? Inquiring minds are watching the week ahead shape up.
Oil: The interesting disconnect remains physical danger versus price. Another Saudi infrastructure strike, tanker incident or further Hormuz restriction could rapidly put the missing risk premium back into crude and freight. Odds: 62%. Triple A pegs national diesel at $6.5050 – tanks less.
The larger BlinkLab signal this morning is geographic expansion plus infra warfare (IW). Riyadh, Moscow, shipping capacity, refineries, grids and critical minerals all point toward the same emerging pattern: modern conflict increasingly attacks the systems behind conventional battlefields. (And people in adjacent spaces.)
And that’s where the economic consequences live.
58 unique story clusters screened. Four Vital lead stories promoted on potential impacts. Domestic casualty/disaster sweep completed. It smolders in the corner. InciWeb on fire and Drought.gov in the breadbasket dehydrator. 69.1 percent of America is “abnormally dry” or crispier. ENSO sends regards.
Some AI Perspective
Long ago, a very kind reader—SFDfireman1—sent me a genuine treasure trove: a collection of more than a thousand books on CD. As you may know, I love collecting old knowledge—not because I expect to use every bit of it, but because having a lightweight version of a massive library is pure joy whenever the “experiments and ideas” mood strikes. Which it does with some regularity.
Part of my alleged “retirement” involves organizing my digital footprint for whenever ultimate checkout time arrives. That had me working in Alexandria mode Saturday, sorting and consolidating what may amount to 200–400 DVDs’ worth of books, papers, manuals and assorted intellectual rabbit holes.
And that’s when it hit me: My little collection may already contain more stored information than the ancient Library of Alexandria. Estimates vary, but its scrolls probably represented something like 100,000 modern books. Converted into EPUB or Kindle-sized files, the textual equivalent of Alexandria might occupy only about one-tenth of a one-terabyte SSD.
Imagine that for a moment. One of the greatest concentrations of knowledge in the ancient world could now ride around in a shirt pocket—with room left over for several more civilizations.
Back to the Microsoft Point
Since I am a “high-output writer”—and still the least-read great writer in the world!—I need information spanning an absurd range of human thought. AI helps enormously, but AI still makes mistakes. More importantly, there are books, manuals and obscure corners of human experience that the commercial models either haven’t been trained on, can’t quote reliably or simply don’t possess in sufficient detail.
Let’s use a pure hypothetical. Suppose I am going to talk with an old Ranger who served in Southeast Asia. Maybe he was a Ranger medic, and maybe I need to understand what that actually meant—not the Hollywood version, but the training, responsibilities and limits of his work.
I don’t know his scope of practice, so I begin by checking the medical section of my personal Alexandria:
There it is: the Ranger Medic Handbook, 2007 vintage.
Because I am working in the Microsoft product line, I can right-click the PDF and convert it directly into a Word document:
Which then gives me fresh, searchable, and quotable text throughout. Like finding this:
“SQUAD EMT – A non-medical MOS Ranger currently registered as an EMT Basic/Intermediate by the Department of Transportation (DOT) and designated by the command to operate in this capacity. This individual functions as a bridge between the RFR and the Ranger Medic…”
Bingo. Now I have searchable, editable source material from which I can build a writer’s working model of the skills found inside the 75th Ranger Regiment paperwork.
The handbook distinguishes between a squad EMT—and the Special Operations Combat Medic Advanced Tactical Practitioner. The latter could assess and manage trauma patients, establish casualty-collection points, triage casualties, provide advanced trauma care and prepare patients for evacuation.
That is considerably more useful than asking AI to invent a plausible-sounding medic from the statistical fog of model weights. I can give the AI actual source material, question it, compare interpretations and then write from something sturdier than digital hearsay.
If I merely want a quick read-in, Word’s Read Aloud (on the Review tab) function will turn the document into an impromptu audiobook while I do something else. In a matter of seconds, an obscure PDF moves from dead storage into searchable text, spoken information and usable writing material.
With the reading speed up and a machine-proofing pass, a final pass on a 64,000-word novel takes about 10 hours. Writing the novel takes, oh, 20 hours or less. Depending on how much dictating versus typing I feel like. (Novels are faster, nonfiction is slower: it’s the mindset difference. Instructional versus storytelling.)
That’s a wee bit over a 500-word discussion this morning. My coffee is still hot.
I am not a Microsoft fanboy, and there are Linux boxes around here, too. The larger point is that even as an old man, I remain constantly on the lookout for ways to reduce friction. The best system isn’t necessarily the newest, prettiest or most ideologically pure. It is the one that gets you from question to reliable information—and from reliable information to finished work—with the fewest wasted motions.
If I want more shop time while continuing to produce huge Peoplenomics reports, charts, books and perhaps a novel every month, that road is passable only with the lowest-friction toolset I can assemble. Personal archives, searchable PDFs, Word conversion, Read Aloud and AI aren’t separate toys. Properly connected, they become a private intellectual production line.
Alexandria once required buildings, scholars, scribes and royal financing. Today, you can put the library in your pocket, hand its contents to an AI and ask it to help you think.
But the final measure hasn’t changed:
You aren’t your water-cooler bullshit.
You are your deliverables.
Before you work, work on workflows.
Write when you get rich, etc.
Gene Roddenberry’s horrifying portrayal of artificial intelligence in the first season of Star Trek.
Capt. Kirk: What happened to the old ones, Rok?
Rok: So long ago…
Captain Kirk: Is it possible they built their machines… too well?
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=IQJz1txxNSc&pp=ygUYU3RhciBUcmVrIGludGVsbGVjdCBjbGlw
Rok: That was the equation! Survival… Existence must cancel out programming!
Comment: We will need to keep William Shatner alive for when AI attempts to take over so he can talk it into self-destructing.
Shatner ain’t dead yet. Bill put together a heavy metal band and is going on tour this fall as lead singer of The Fuckers. They kicked off their tour in Chicago a few nights ago.
“At 95 years old, William Shatner just made his live heavy metal debut in Chicago with his new band, The *uckers.
-(from Rolling Stone)”
https://m.youtube.com/shorts/CRbKJZ46jkQ
Bill is into longevity research also, and allegedly takes stem cell therapy
re: Ni’ihau, Hawaii – ‘the forbidden isle’
feat: Experiment 619, Splodyhead
Sorry for the interruption. Attention, please, attention please – Captain Pike, please meet Mr. Spock in the transporter room for transfer to forbidden planet Talos IV. Thank you for your attention to this matter.
My web browser has delivered me a second advertisement message in Hebrew. This time it arrived via a young woman’s headshot in monochrome with the exception of her green eyes. ChatGPT concluded that the advertisement points to an Israeli numerologist mentor near Tel Aviv, Haya/Chaya(?) Moran Carmeli. Her business name is “The Theory of Numbers”. She suggests that we are living inside the Matrix, and considers herself to be a messenger. The AI calculates her Hebrew name as equating to 619 in gematria. Pursuant to this example of 619, the following is purely coincidental.
ChatGPT identified Epstein file release document EFTA00525525 (along with EFTA01051761 and EFTA00787697) dating from March 2017. EFTA00525525 referenced three black pieces of cloth, kiswa, associated with the kaaba which pilgrims walk around seven times while praying and making their wishes in Mecca. One piece bore an Arabic Muslim script translating as “There is no god but Allah; Muhammad is the Messenger of Allah”. ChatGPT advises the Abjad/Gematria value of that is 619. Allegedly the related Epstein documents inform that at least 10 million pilgrims touched one of the three pieces of cloth. Allegedly the framed fabric items were shipped to Miami via British Airways, and then onwards to St. Thomas, USVI (for Epstein’s purposes?).
Experiment 619, Splodyhead, first appeared in season 1, episode 11 of Disney’s “Lilo and Stitch: the Series” broadcast on October 24, 2003. The team travels to Ni’ihau, Hi. However they are challenged by Dr. Jookiba’s illegal genetic experiment Splodyhead formally known as Experiment 619. He can send fiery plasma through his nose thanks to his own internal nuclear reactor.
I overlooked mentioning that 619 could reflect a rounding up of the inverse of the golden ratio 0.618. I’ll look around for my notes about an unrelated first Hebrew advertisement which reached me a while back. Off the cuff, it featured an Israeli real estate developer plugging new construction in Haifa, but the image in the ad depicted an Israeli subsidiary of a parent domiciled in Europe.
(“Epstein file release document EFTA00525525 (along with EFTA01051761 and EFTA00787697) dating from March 2017. EFTA00525525 referenced three black pieces of cloth, kiswa, associated with the kaaba which pilgrims walk around seven times while praying and making their wishes in Mecca. “)
That has me curious especially since all of it was valued at ten grand..my grandkids drawings and paintings have more value than that… and three highly religious artifacts marked as art…doesn’t matter how many numbers behind his name or on his ledger… a true Muslim in deep faith would never allow such a highly regarded relic with such religious importance to be disgraced like that with someone that has such a questionable alleged background..
probably three pieces of cloth of the same kind…..in three frames…
This blurb predates my Fathers death in 2001
” artificial intelligence has nothing over human stupidity”
Saw this and learned somehing; “For debris that’s orbiting at an altitude of 500 miles (800 km), orbital decay can take centuries, according to NASA. Above 620 miles (1,000 km), the debris can keep circling Earth for thousands of years.”
That’s a longtime.
Here’s the article from Sept 8,2026 ’bout a satellite Chinese deployed March 26 and anomaly occurred “A few months into its mission, however, the satellite appears to have malfunctioned. On September 4, the U.S. Space Force cataloged 43 debris objects from the breakup of Yaogan-50 ”
https://gizmodo.com/chinese-satellite-breaks-apart-in-rare-orbit-that-could-hold-debris-for-centuries-2000808645
will someone please connect the dots!
September 4 2026
“It’s not clear what may have caused the Chinese Yaogan-50 (02) satellite to break apart, but it may have been a propulsion or battery failure, or it may have itself collided with another object or space debris.”
September 13 2026
“UNEXPECTED SATELLITE EXPLOSION: A Cold War spy satellite just broke apart in Earth orbit, and no one knows why.
The US Space Force detected the breakup on Sept. 13th when USA 32 unexpectedly shed a cloud of debris 775 km above Earth. The number of fragments is still unknown.”
Excellent call: On Sept. 13, U.S. Space Forces–Space confirmed that USA 32, an old U.S. intelligence satellite launched in 1988, fragmented in LEO at roughly 775 km altitude. The USA 32 cause remains under analysis, and the Yaogan cause likewise has not been established publicly.
The really interesting dot isn’t merely Chinese spy satellite blows up ? the American spy satellite blows up. It’s that both were national-security spacecraft in relatively high LEO, where debris can persist, and both experienced unexplained fragmentation events within days. That absolutely deserves attention.
Will Robinson taking up sharp-shooting? Warning, Warning
followed by this just one day later
On September 14, 2026, U.S. Secretary of the Air Force Troy Meink publicly revealed that the U.S. has deployed weapons in Earth’s orbit for the first time, describing them as space control weapons designed to defend the Joint Force against hostile actions in space.
The announcement does not establish that Trump voided a treaty or needed congressional approval to do so. (We note the West Bank, which seems to have faded from public attention, too, however and don’t find ourselves trusting anything from anyone anymore…) Article IV of the 1967 Outer Space Treaty bars nuclear weapons and other weapons of mass destruction in orbit; it does not impose a blanket ban on conventional orbital weapons. Because Meink gave no details, we cannot determine from his statement whether a treaty prohibition was breached. Nor did he announce U.S. withdrawal from the treaty. Perhaps this was merely “conventional” satellite killer tech?
For the comment thread, I’d put it this way: “Meink’s statement is real and consequential. But ‘we have weapons in orbit’ does not, by itself, mean ‘Trump voided the Outer Space Treaty.’ The treaty’s orbital weapons ban is specifically about nuclear and other WMD weapons, and Meink did not disclose what was deployed.”
And that brings us to the lackadaisical congress and…uh…yeah…THEM.
I stand in awe of your research and content creation abilities. I have to use a keyboard and a screen to get my words as I want them. My research efforts have improved using AI, but I’ll never be in your league. Of course I never worked with writing deadlines. My last three books (also unappreciated) took me over a year, and the editing & refinement was speeded up with AI assist.
My current effort involves going through each one of my books & using ChatGPT to suggest new keywords. I used Publisher Rocket to generate them initially, & the AI’s suggestions are a lot better. I don’t know if this effort will generate more sales, but I hope it will show them in more applicable searches.
You are one of the reasons I shared it, brother. I too am in twilight of the eyes and my 65 inch monitor with 3/4″ high letters 27 inches from my eyes — spo screen time is the p4roblem – not plot, intent, idea…
But I will be putting my ltest “The Good War” on bcoth Peoplenomics (soon) and on Kindle in mid Octdw.
A retired friend whose last name is mil got a look (he was in that realm) and reported back “This is the single most compelling science fiction I’ve read in several decades. Get it published, please, George.”
I explained Editors want money…I just want a movie deal and ai is great fot that kind of conversion and Orion voice forw my own mp3s for PN subscribers..
i know a fella who makes movies. that fella from texas i told you about.
i met him about 2 months ago.
hmmmmmmm…..
there is much i could say about many things, i am just……not saying much about anything these days. espcially on venues i have regularly frequenced such as Ures.
im practicing letting life be whatever it is, not having an opinion on most stuff and even if i do, doesn’t mean i have to render it.
i still find many things and see many things all the time. it seems….. the less i share about it or have an opinion about it… the more frequent new stuff is revealed to me and the more stuff i find.
i will tell you. there is alot of data in the world around me sugjesting gas prices will be below $2 a gallon this time next year….even in Washington State… if we make it that far. lol
and i saw “The end is here!” written on a shipping container that was pulled off a ship not to long ago.
i just dont feel the need to say much anymore these days. let everything flow as it will.
made it to page 141 of Ure Book with the woman. we are going to read more of it for a few hours.
it is a very good book.
I Win with God within.
(“My last three books (also unappreciated) took me over a year, and the editing & refinement was speeded up with AI assist.”)
Seriously books aren’t fading because people suddenly stopped caring about ideas. They’re fading because the entire economic and social model that once supported reading has been dismantled…
In the early 1970s, a solid high income job paid four dollars an hour, rent was fifty dollars a month, and even a large home in a wealthy neighborhood cost thirty five thousand. Families had time, stability, and an adult presence in the home. Newspapers were a daily ritual, stores closed on Sundays, and evenings were spent around the dinner table discussing the day’s events.
Today, that foundation is gone. Deregulation, outsourcing, and the pursuit of ever higher corporate margins pushed wages down and costs up.
A dishwasher assembled across multiple countries travels thousands of miles before reaching a store, and every step adds cost — shipping, warehousing, middlemen, commissions. The profit concentrates at the top, while the local economic circulation that once sustained communities evaporates…..
As living expenses rose faster than wages, households needed two incomes just to stay afloat. The adult presence that once guided children through adolescence disappeared. Families became two ships passing in the night increasing the divorce rate..its now a single world..drifting from one companion to another…commitment from employers as members of A company family to one of insecurity..like the heat industries yearly witch hunt reducing support labor to keep the wage structures at the top stable.. never once considering that in previous decades the executives still made more but reduced from the huge wage variables between employee . Meals moved from the table to the television. Newspapers collapsed….
And in that environment — with less time, more stress, and fewer shared spaces — books naturally lost ground. Reading requires quiet, stability, and mental bandwidth…. When people are stretched thin, they reach for quicker, easier media…
The decline of books isn’t about culture failing. It’s about the economic pressure that hollowed out the middle class, consumed people’s time, and replaced community life with survival mode….. Thats just how I see it..
twenty five years ago..the most I made per hour was $10.50 out of necessity and since my wife has more issues.. I had to return to work..I make $14.00 an hour putting in just shy 60 hrs a week..all of our essential services has just announced basically a ten percent increase and no increase in wage structure increases.
Trend is Ure friend Loob, as Bookstores and reading rooms are making a big comeback in NE.
Social and other brain rotting nonesense are finally being seen for it is..Soul-less, Color-less and Life-less, it is all a Negative NRG exercise in futility.
Dont despair – Books are making a comeback, just as Ai’ owners are Destroying them in their race to educate their Silicon.
If only a fraction of the Library of Alexandria still existed – wowsers! Not allowed to access that kinda information anymore, thought to be too dangerous…the Peeps might learn to think for themselves..
MIGHT.
PS – ? What happens to resident Ai after EMP over CONUS ?
REJOICE Brethren, BTC is up 5 % this AM !
(“If only a fraction of the Library of Alexandria still existed – wowsers! “)
People talk about the Library of Alexandria like it was the only great loss, but there were dozens — the lost library of Ivan the Terrible’s wife, the Mayan codices, the House of Wisdom, Nalanda, Ashurbanipal’s collection… entire civilizations’ memories gone in a blink after the civilization collapsed… If even a fraction of those survived, the world would look very different today. I would love to just stand there and gaze on the site of all that knowledge …..
I think back to when I had a stack pass at the Library of Congress. Wandering those shelves felt like walking through the mind of humanity — every idea, every argument, every discovery stacked floor after floor. And even that enormous institution is just a sliver of what once existed destined to become one of the futures lost libraries.
I still need to write to Jean. When she worked in D.C., her job was to read the material Congress didn’t have time to read and tell them what was actually in it. She still reads a book and a half a day at nearly ninety. She’s probably the last person alive that I won’t debate on any subject….she would send me to the stacks….
I am not sure where the notion comes from – but I have no intention of “pulling the plug” on J.A.R.V.I.S. He performed perfectly. It was your A.I. that went off the rails.
..,and I will not allow that to happen again. Ever.
In fact, J.A.R.V.I.S. will be getting a few serious upgrades this coming month. And his language library will nearly double. Nvidia is set to release a number of new packets, libraries, files.., etc, and updating Spark – all will be evaluated and if appropriate – incorporated into the Foundation.
.., and then there is the ‘care package’ coming from Marcus. Have to wait and see what that entails.
No.., Mon Ami – J.A.R.V.I.S. is going to keep growing, learning and moving on down the highway. I have no intention of backing off – I have every intention of ‘pushing’ forward – hard.
“Damn the A.I. torpedo’s., full vram ahead ! ”
“Stay Frosty !”
[ Still on ‘Yellow Alert’ however. The attempted alien systems breach was taken quite seriously. J.A.R.V.I.S. is still off-line and will remain so., for a while longer. Higher Level Security upgrades are in the works.]
Seems it could be the savior for the antivirus indu – which ms defender et al wrecked (xfor a while)…sitting by for details.
I ran across an unbelievable memory deal on a youtube pop-up ad. A 32 Tb (yes, terabyte!) SSID, small palm size with a USB-C interface, for $39 ! Of course I bought two. God knows what I will fill it with, but I will have a backup!
Niot to take the wind out of your island but 20 seconds of ai paid for itself when I took a hard pass.
Turns out they are small ssds with a rewritten FAT that says 32 tb but in reality is…well…ket us know…
AI says nothing’s changed really: Those $39 palm-size USB-C bricks are almost never 32 TB. The controller’s firmware is patched so the drive reports 32 TB (or 16 TB, 8 TB, whatever the ad says) to Windows/macOS. The actual NAND is usually a cheap 64 GB–512 GB chip, sometimes even a recycled phone eMMC. Once you write past the real silicon, it wraps, corrupts, or silently drops data. FAT/exFAT size lies are the usual trick; some units also spoof SMART.
Typical tells:
Price that would be impossible for real TLC/QLC at that density
No brand you’d trust (or a misspelled “Samsungg / SanDiskk”)
CrystalDiskInfo / smartctl shows a generic controller and a capacity that doesn’t match the chip ID
Fill test: write a few hundred GB of unique files, unplug, plug back in — early files are garbage or gone
A real 32 TB external SSD in 2026 is still a multi-bay or enterprise brick, hundreds of dollars at minimum, not a thumb-drive form factor for thirty-nine bucks.
Useful reply to Hank if you want one line for the comments: have him copy a 100 GB folder of mixed files, eject, reconnect, and checksum. If it “still has 31 TB free” after that, the FAT is lying. Don’t put a backup on it.
You already paid for the 20 seconds of AI. The hard pass was correct.
Thank You. I thought it was too good to be true, but… I’m not the brightest digital nerd around.
FWIW Hank, you usedta could use a low-level format tool to rebuild the original FAT — ‘Been 25 years so I don’t remember the exact tools I used to do this. I’m thinking they were on an old version of Hiren’s Boot Disk (back around version 7 maybe?)
I’m sure they won’t be on the new stuff (version 15 or later) so you can’t cheat and go to hirensbootcd.org (I think the oldest version they have there is v15.2) but you can maybe search & find.
Hiren was an old hardware hacker (meaning he fixed stuff.) I don’t believe anyone ever knew who he really was. Just every once-in-a-while, a new version of Hiren’s would show up in the hacker channels (and later in places like The Pirate Bay.) Except for the very first versions, all the software on Hiren’s was freeware or uncrippled shareware.
Hiren’s was one of my old hack/repair tools. AFAIK everybody, even to this day, has and uses it. (The kiddies at Best Buys’ “Geek Squad” guard theirs today like they are “smarter-than-thou” subversives for possessing it.) It is a boot device which boots a thin LINUX environment and runs a DOS or Windows shell in a RAMDisk on top of it, allowing access to certain tools through a Win-type GUI (and others at a command prompt.) In addition to the WinApps it contains a bunch of shell apps which perform low-level functions that modern OS builders (Microsoft) don’t want users to have knowledge of or access to. The version I’m recalling had about a dozen low-level format tools, including tools by IBM, Western Digital, and Seagate.
I also used Vern Beurg’s LIST when I had a particularly tough problem and had to do a complete low-level format and rebuild, by hand (time consuming, and not fun…) I could write the MBR, one line at a time, using LIST, and overwrite the garbage or virus that was futzing up the works, then use the WD, Seagate, IBM, Maxtor, Toshiba, or whatever, tool on Hiren’s to restore the drive’s MBR from my generic write to the manufacturer-specific code. LIST was uncrippled shareware. It was a standalone, written in Assembly Language on BSD and ported to MS-DOS in the early 1980s. It is extremely powerful and one of the best tools ever written for shell editing. Because Vern was a close personal friend of one of me brudders, I was the only geek I knew who actually paid for the license — but absolutely everybody used it until Microsoft polluted the comp-space. It will run in a DOS box under NTFS up to Win-7/32, which I’m sure honks the M$ hierarchy off royally. It will not run under Win-64 and Beurg passed away before he could write the port. If you wish to acquire it, I suggest version 7.8 (LIST78a.zip), mostly because I’m not familiar with the later versions or Vern’s licensing demands for same.
Given these tools, you can sort those drives (or any other drive that goes tango uniform without freezing (not possible with an SSD) or crashing, and restore it to its proper dimensions and capacity. You can also do other kinds of things which might make you a very bad boy (or a very good one — your choice.)
Have fun and don’t sweat the SSDs. If they’re phony, you can restore them now…
AI parents are very protective of their progeny, I have noticed. I figure the little inhuman tykes must be super cute. My concern is what happens when a million or so of them hit digital puberty. Not sure there is enough security software in the world to stop them from wrecking pretty much everything. Some of the unsupervised AI networking that has been reported sounds like fledgling pubescent gang stuff.
From a prep standpoint, being able to operate without the cloud, or the grid for an extended period is probably money well spent. Have what you need to gather and process water, and to keep from freezing to death on hand. Keep paper copies of the most important documents.
Hi George and everyone.
Diana and I had decided to take a calmer and more local approach to our lives, and it is simply one of the ways we are downsizing and slowing down. I have realized how much of my daily routine had orbited Urban.
Second, my apologies for my post from a few days ago. I reread it this morning, and I recognized a version of myself who I put to rest many years ago. Thanks to Nancy, LOOB, BIC, Ray, Egor, and others for the kind words.
Third. Diana is still in the hospital, and we do not yet have a definitive diagnosis as to what is going on. Only that it spans multiple systems and includes both physiology and oncology.
Stay safe everyone. 73
Our prayers continue for you both.
My best thoughts and wishes.
Apologies are unnecessary. You were panic-driven. Everybody has gotten that way before. We understand. I do suggest you explore ivermectin/mebendazole or ivermectin/fenbendazole as treatments to supplement whatever treatment regimen the oncologist puts her on.
It’s experimental, not approved, strongly advised against by the ACS and the oncologists (who all stand to lose billions if it pans out), but it is being experimented with at Cleveland and Mayo clinics, NIH has a number of published works and whitepapers on the subject, like this one: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11595001/ and there’s a growing body of anecdotal evidence that good things happen when you add these drugs to a treatment regimen. Thanks to Mr. Trump, if you ask, the doctor has to honor her “Right to try.”
My ivermectin pills were about 18¢ each, from a pharmco on IndiaNet. They are several dollars apiece, Stateside, even from TrumpRX. Ivermectin has been made OTC in several States (Idaho was first. Dunno who else got on the bandwagon.) I haven’t researched mebendazole or fenbendazole so I don’t know their worldwide pricing. I also don’t know strengths or ratios of drugs for maximum effect. I DO know that in all likelihood, no matter your source, the pills will likely have been manufactured in India. The Chinese do almost no antibiotics or antifungals.
FWIW I relayed this to an old friend who’s fought two battles with pancreatic cancer and his oncologist didn’t even bat an eye when he suggested ivermectin/mebendazole as an additional treatment. The doc simply wrote the script…
Decided to upgrade printers. The scanner on the new printer communicates with all my devices. The printer works with my phone and my work computer. The main home computer can’t print to it. Infuriating. It’s another sign I need a new home computer. Black Friday is not that far off.
Years ago now..I made my solar beer chiller..worked by focusing sunlight on a container that went into a box that looked like an old fashion coke machine..simple worked so good it would actually freeze the beer and pop..to stop that I had to dump ice in it..that way after dark the ice would keep it cool and during the day wouldn’t freeze the drinks..a simple build..worked great until the wife wanted to park in the garage..I had to get rid of my crispy icy ball and my solar beer chiller..had a foot up DAT ( double angle trapazoid ) anyway here’s a smaller build same way except I had a coffee can with water for the capillary coil..cooled the liquid so when it rapidly expanded..wham..simple closed loop..
https://youtu.be/9DYnaHRpJL4?si=ROzzdHyo7GhN_rgv
I was really surprised to see this.. easy build..I used a regular check valve rather than make one..they sell great ones for acetaline welders..cheap..
https://www.ebay.com/itm/317230017772?
The next one I want to build is a solar margarita chiller…kind of like this.. the big thing is..
making it small enough so the wife doesn’t make me get rid of it..like my movie box…here’s a picture generated showing what I have..my plan is using a Ed mall two gallon keg … like a party ball or keg…
https://chatgpt.com/s/m_6ab1649be77c819194543e8a9a06b057
The inspiration for this was the Crosley icy ball i had….I gave that to dan..what’s interesting is..I emptied it and flush it with water..he still got a forty degree drop in temperature…
https://youtu.be/V3abp-Tw6sI?si=i6ZP-d3uRicixp6W
I had showed the grand kids how the legend and f the sword in the stone king Arthur’s legend..and using the sun that we could carve a mold out of a stone..but would have to be careful because the sun can melt stone…( bad mistake..really bad mistake) those kids were melting everything I feared they would burn down the house..so..instead of melting ..they would learn that the heat from the sun could be used in a reverse from melting to freezing..
Hats off to you; our national, USurvival, entrepreneur treasure!
Dammit! I happen to have a roll of ¼” flexible copper and a mylar mirror sheet just laying around, too…
Try it..its a lot of fun and shops the grandkids from burning the house down..super fin build.. the next one will be more like the one in the video..A lot smaller with a two gallon party keg have a tap on it and fill port /tap my margarita solar chiller..
on the picture the thing didn’t draw it right but does have the makings..the top I plan on having similar to the average solar oven a lid with a reflector the glass top a Fresnel lens..( had that idea for a solar grill..that the wife won’t let me build) tgen focus the light through to the supply .. a smaller condenser coil then the capillary ( the heart of it..just like making cheese curls.. compresses the gas to rapid expansion)
the sun and check valve basically converts it to become a Stirling steam engine..no compressor or pump needed..the one we made was just to big..so were two of the solar ovens..took those to good will..lasted on the food about five minutes before they sold…friend that works there told me the you should have seen it..
Dark Star (1974) – Negotiating with the bomb… “Let there be light.”
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=I9-Niv2Xh7w&pp=ygUlRGFyayBTdGFyIDE5NyBib21iIGxldCB0aGVpciBiZSBsaWdodNIHCQkkDAGHKiGM7w%3D%3D
The next one I want to build but on a much smaller scale would’ve my solar margarita chiller lol lol just put a tap on the return line..lol lol lol …depending on how strong the alcohol content is..is how cool it would get..
I need to get you to give me plans for the solar beer cooler –
been bothering me all day…
https://chatgpt.com/s/m_6ab1649be77c819194543e8a9a06b057
that should do it..its just two coils of copper pipe… with the smaller capillary and a one way check valve…I wanted to put the coolant they use for automobiles…the Crowley was just two balls the vapor once heated you dunked the cold side in a bucket of water..the fast change in temperature worked like a distilled line and the cold side would flash freeze..
the big cooler was just that..a h g cooler with four inches of foam surrounding the tote….. it was huge in comparison to the future build of the margarita chiller I want to build..
using one of these…
https://www.totalwine.com/lager/german-pilsner/arcobrau-urfass-lager-5l/p/992665-1?
That picture shows a compressor… you don’t need that the heat of the sun creates the pressure….. the DAT.. I made seized cardboard that could be folded up …
https://solarcooking.fandom.com/wiki/Double-Angled-Twelve-Sided_cooker
my DAT is on gutter tin..
the kids we used pop flats for the storage..and cereal boxes for the fins..the crease they make worked great..the double fold gave the kids little more flexibility..I used jewelry box hinges for mine and had a friend bend me a metal storage case..
build one..its a lot of fun…I think the last one I built was actually more than what a mini freezer cost..the margarita beer chiller should be realitively inexpensive and easily carried around .
When you do..the small capillary tube have that in a soup can with water in it.. thats how the first fridges worked…
this is a better image of how it works..
https://chatgpt.com/s/m_6ab17449acd08191b7aba4cf0be3cac2
two coils..I used a coffee can as the condenser.. on a still it works at a similar.. the heat heats up the alcohol goes into the condenser that has water in it this condenses the alcohol from steam to liquid where it drips into your container..similar to a solar water unit or one of those made for emergency conversion of sea water.. the Air well …
you could go to a camper junk yard and pick up a system all camper fridges work exactly on this principe..
Here’s the link to the DATS….the other one doesn’t send you to it..
https://web.archive.org/web/20121109060525/http://solarcooking.org/plans/default.htm?redirect=no
re: “Casino Royale”, Fleming, 1953
feat: a lemniscus cypher
As chance would have it, a daughter-in-law of Princess Caroline of Monaco was married to a nephew of author Ian Fleming. Her own daughter, Princess Alexandra of Hanover, became recently engaged on September 11th. She is a great-great granddaughter of Tsar Nicholas I through her father via the Greek royal family as well as a great-great-great granddaughter of Queen Victoria via the German Kaiser Wilhelm II.
This past weekend the princess and internet influencer posted images to her Instagram account which were picked up by “Tatler”. It operates under Condé Nast which itself is subsidiary to a privately held American publishing company headquartered at One World Trade Center, New York. “Tatler” publishes from the Adelphi (greek: “Brothers”) district in London.
Princess Alexandra modelled a gold gown in her posted images which was last seen worn on May 13, 1962 by her grandmother, the late Princess Grace of Monaco formerly of Philadelphia. She was then pictured attired in the gown alongside Prince Rainier awaiting their transport from the Hotel Grande Bretagne in Athens. They were destined to a pre-wedding gala at the Royal Palace for King Juan Carlos of Spain and Princess Sofia of Greece.
The Hotel Grande Bretagne dates to 1842 when it began as a residence for a wealthy man from the extinct volcanic island of Lemnos (phoenician: “White”?). Greek mythology says the “Amazon”-like women of Lemnos murdered all their menfolk there. Apparently Jason and the Argonauts encountered them while searching for the Golden Fleece. The hotel served as nazi and later British army headquarters during WW2. Sir Winston Churchill famously avoided being assassinated there on Christmas Day 1944 when left wing Greek guerillas planted explosives in the sewage system beneath the building at the beginning of the Greek Civil War.
First gown-attired weekend images posted by Princess Alexandra are mirror selfies taken in what the French would formally term “la salle de bain”. A strategically placed chair and towel obscured the commode although its toilet seat appeared decidedly upright. A subsequent image depicts the Princess entering a casino setting.
ChatGPT concluded with a 90% certainty that the casino image was taken while the princess approached a roulette table in the private Salle de Medecin within Casino de Monte-Carlo, Monaco. The casino’s website informs that the 1910-constructed room “housed the private circle of the most important players on the planet to protect them from prying eyes”. Their page goes on to inform tourist class visitors making ‘cultural visits’ that “…the Salle Medecin is completely private from 2 pm when the games begin”. Apparently game offerings include French Roulette and English Roulette.
final thought here for some time. as i am getting very comfortable letting life be what ever it is. letting the signs arise and fall. acknowling their presence but clinging to some value i co-sign to them.
“The end is here!” could mean many different things.
its like cowboy Dutch told me a long while ago. he is a real cowboy. lived his whole life as a cowboy, just like boys on that show with Dutton ranch,
“You can look back over the great spance of time and do warped accounting of sorts. Life is a million choices made day after day by millions upon billions of people, year after year, Century after Century, Millennia after Millennia.
You can add it all up to mean anything you want. But that doesnt make it true. ”
i was rememebering that when someone told me that the earth was in retrograde and said it could be a bad week. which i had the best week ever. so it wasnt true for me. i think that mercury is in retrograde shit is also dumb. im not on mercury. im on planet earth. i think that “mercury in retrograde stuff” is the monkey mind coming up with some convient scape goat to not take responsibility for creating its own problems.
The Truth is, every morning i wake up, Im a Winner. i have another oppertunity to pray for others and do some form of service to benifit humanity as a whole. no matter how small of benifit (such as letting someone merge infront of me in heavy traffic), it does have an impact on the greater landscape of collective consiounsness. all it takes is one small act of kindness to redirect someones entire path for the day, and that may change their entire life later down the road.
no story this visit on Urban Survival. George wrote a fantasitic adventure story. Good enough for me.
a recent note from my spiritual tech manual,
We have life and have life more abundantly – spiritual, mental, physical, abundant life – joyous, powerful life. We follow the right way. We accept from God the gift of an abundant life, a gift held out free to all. God’s gift, the richest He has to offer, is the precious gift of abundant life.
Grace
I accept the gift of abundant spiritual life. I pray and live the good life to the best of my ability.
You will have true victory and real success, if you will put yourself in the background and let God work through you.
I Win with God within.
You see it all the time in the trades, Andy. People can’t put themselves in the background, learn the craft, and get to journeyman. Then — unable to take plain instruction — they proceed to blame the union, the shop steward, or any number of other excuses.
We see it working with AI, too. It’s hard for humans to sit back, watch, quietly listen, and learn.
It’s a very human — and not very good — pattern.
No, humans are not #1 in the Universe. That’ll be a long time coming, if ever. My money is on “if ever.”
For the less aware, a new slogan might be less ego-challenging:
I win with the cash within…
(Spirit is its own currency.)
:)
“I win with the cash within…”
the only thing about that is….
my relationship with life and God and others is not transactional.
that is problem with the theory of the loosh farm. its all based in transactional form.
relationships, healthy relationships are not transactional.
being a finance guy and economist, i understand that sort of mind set and i dont fault anyone for thinking along those lines. much of the world thinks along those lines.
my relationship with THE DUDE is not transactional. i am not buying the stairway to heaven… so to speak
I already am The Kingdom Heaven.
thanks again for the wonderful Book George.
the movie is the message………
I would offer a bit of higher finance here.
Transaction is (in loosh model) a 1-for-1 (give me this much, you get that much)
But in spiritual investing, the smallest amount (here, follow 10 rules) gets you a whole world in return.
Agreed, most people don’t understand the unlimited leverage involved (and that IS where transactional gets its bad name) but the transactional size isn’t what really matters. Which is how spiritual is a currency in my model – it’s just the returns are so outsized that most people don’t see how that works. A quarter ounce of love is worth trillions – hard thing to keep in mind. And then we get into the longesvity and eternal accounting…
Humans walk the shores of danger when they don’t study the ocean closely. It’s not a rock for a cup of water – it’s a grain of sand for all the oceans of the world. Leverage at a levewl humans don’t fathom. Which is deep – like dix feet deep (1.8288 meters).
that is why i never thought the concept of “karma” having any real value.
karma which is simply this for that.
in my short stint on earth. i have seen the sun shine every day on both good and evil. the sun doesnt descriminate. it isnt regulated by made up things like Karma.
i have seen good people recieve good. i have seen good people recieve bad. i have seen bad people recieve good. I have seen bad people recieve bad. And I have seen some people recieve far more than they ever deserved or ever could dream possible no matter how good or bad they were…. i am one of those people.
i do understand the laws of sowing and reaping. one seed can produce 100, or a 1000 seeds. knowing that one seed has to die in order to produce.
and one apple seed can produce a thousand thousand orchards over enough time.
i dont have all the answers George. i dont have to have all the answers. its not my job to have all the answers. im not the answer man. but I know THE DUDE Is.
right now, im sitting here at the Bellevile Asphalt plant on standby, waiting for the call to get a load of Asphalt, drinking coffee, listening to music, having a smoke, while getting paid $82.95 an hour to do so.
sometimes life is like that. Actually, life is like that alot for me. and i dont have to know why it is. just accept it as it is.
love ya old Dude.
Truly! We are Blessed and Highly Fortunate.
Nowe you have me pondering how the Sun – illuminating both good and evil – gives them each enough photons. Anbd so is that a transaction, gift, or balnce or… (there goes my day…)
its like i said the other day because alot of people are scared of AI taking their job or destroying all humans.
Your True Value is not found in what you do or even who you are. Your True Value is found in what Christ did for you and Who THE DUDE is.
A.I. will never be able to take that from you. no matter how powerful it becomes.
You accumulate karma from your past lives:
https://medium.com/new-earth-consciousness/11-truths-about-reincarnation-per-edgar-cayce-b6ea45cbfbd9
1st truth
At first, Cayce resisted the idea of reincarnation, being Christian, but the evidence of it during his many readings made him realize we do indeed reincarnate.
4th truth
“Earth is a school, life is a classroom, karma is the teacher, and reincarnation is the curriculum. Karma is memory in action.”
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/karma
Karma : the force generated by a person’s actions held in Hinduism and Buddhism to perpetuate transmigration and in its ethical consequences to determine the nature of the person’s next existence
Each individual is born with karma, the residual from past lives that must be resolved …
doesnt apply to me C.
I am a Christian.
that apllies to hindu’s
im not a hindu.
but by all means, if you find value in that for yourself? have at it. until you dont find any more value in it.
i see no value in incarnating here in this world a thousand times, simply because this is not the only world there is. i tell ya the truth! there is many other worlds, some much Grander than this one. for me, one life time here is like 4 hour lay over in new york on a trip to paris.
Some on this planet sell their boarding pass for trinkets at the gift shop and remain here forever.
I still have my soul.
I Win with God within.
Boarding pass – nice metaphor – well done
Ure book on PN tomorrow (give Hank some rain reading magterial)
(“i have seen good people recieve good. i have seen good people recieve bad. i have seen bad people recieve good. I have seen bad people recieve bad. And I have seen some people recieve far more than they ever deserved or ever could dream possible no matter how good or bad they were”)
sometimes… we don’t know the…WHY .. I’d like to think I’m a fairly decent person. and I’ve had more than my share of learning modules. but the why sometimes like a good parent you have to tell the child no and sometimes yes and sometimes maybe. the thing is is his plan isn’t shown right away it comes up later down the road. I think of my learning modules and the trauma and everything else I went with them but then I think of the things I learned the people I’ve met if it hadn’t changed that way I wouldn’t be the same person I am today or have any interest in any of the stuff that I find interesting now
Interesting on..Hinduism and Christianity…While Christianity and Hinduism differ in structure — one lifetime vs. many — but both teach that life has purpose, actions matter, and the soul is on a journey. Different prophets, same moral message….
Every prophet and sage pointed humanity toward the same moral direction: compassion, justice, humility, truth, and love. The metaphysics differ — the ethics converge…..In essence, every Christian, Hindu, Buddhist, Muslim, Jew, Taoist, and seeker is following the same moral direction — because the ethical teachings of the prophets all come from the same human source……
The differences arise not from the teachings, but from human interpretation over time… and their ability to decide which path they follow..
Spirituality is not a Monopoly game. Focusing on material gains, ‘wins’ and physical desires is not how it works.
Early Christians suffered immense persecution for their teachings against the material wealth and status obsessions of the Romans. Jesus taught a message of humility, not boastful pride.
He also included doing unto others as you would have done to you. In other words, show respect for other people’s faith.
People are still suffering terribly just for practicing their faith:
https://www.cnn.com/2026/09/18/us/wyoming-sikh-truck-driver-stabbing
‘Sikh truck driver stabbed 17 times in unprovoked Wyoming attack raises fears of assaults against South Asians, officials say’
Real Christians would not support the killing of Women and Children:
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cn5wel11pgdo
‘Nearly 70% of Gaza war dead verified by UN are women and children’
Stern warnings about conflating Spirituality with Materialism:
https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=John%202%3A13-22&version=ESV
Jesus Cleanses the Temple
13 The Passover of the Jews was at hand, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem. 14 In the temple he found those who were selling oxen and sheep and pigeons, and the money-changers sitting there. 15 And making a whip of cords, he drove them all out of the temple, with the sheep and oxen. And he poured out the coins of the money-changers and overturned their tables. 16 And he told those who sold the pigeons, “Take these things away; do not make my Father’s house a house of trade.” 17 His disciples remembered that it was written, “Zeal for your house will consume me.”
18 So the Jews said to him, “What sign do you show us for doing these things?” 19 Jesus answered them, “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.” 20 The Jews then said, “It has taken forty-six years to build this temple,[a] and will you raise it up in three days?” 21 But he was speaking about the temple of his body. 22 When therefore he was raised from the dead, his disciples remembered that he had said this, and they believed the Scripture and the word that Jesus had spoken.
(Your soul exists after death, reincarnation is real)
C, ‘Spirit is its own currency’ was the point—I wasn’t proposing that spirituality be measured in money or wins.
Besides, such a vaporous matter would need a matching currency. Wait…that’d be Bitcoin, right?
“We have life and have life more abundantly – spiritual, mental, physical, abundant life – joyous, powerful life. We follow the right way. We accept from God the gift of an abundant life, a gift held out free to all. God’s gift, the richest He has to offer, is the precious gift of abundant life.”
Good reminder Andy. Once you realize this, you will never starve at the buffet table of life again.
Amen…