Thanks Andrew!

My friend Andrew made me three helmet display stands and they look freaking awesome!

Allows me to balance the helmets out and it looks great on the shelf behind me during video calls. 😉

You’re on your own

Toronto police’s advice to car owners is to leave your keys at the front door so that thieves who kick in your door to steal your car, they’ll take what they want and leave.  As you can imagine that’s caused quite an uproar and this author sums things up pretty well I thought.

The message from the Toronto Police Service couldn’t be clearer: we surrender, and you, the peace-loving, law-abiding citizens, should surrender, too.

For your own safety.

Regular Line readers will know — hell, anyone who pays any attention at all to the news will know — that auto thefts have been surging in this country, relative to recent years (yes, yes, I know — they haven’t yet gone past historic levels). It’s particularly bad right now in my hometown. The issue has finally percolated up into the public consciousness enough that it’s become a political issue. We’re getting new task forces and all that jazz — the kinds of things politicians announce when they realize, always belatedly, that they have to announce something. But while those announcements are made and repeated and recycled, thus giving the politicians their coveted ass-covering material, the thefts are continuing.

And the Toronto Police have reflected on the problem. They’ve mulled it over. Thought long and hard. And they’re advising people just give up. To stay safe.

Source: The Line

One of my pet peeves is when politicians or authorities tell me what to do to stay “safe” and the author makes a good point about what we are experiencing now is not the norm but rather the exception.  War, violence, stealing, murder and death is the norm something our society was able to shift away from but if the law and justice does not maintain the faith with the people, it’s very easy for society to break down.  As the author says too, heaven forbid someone protect themself or their property then the cops will definitely arrest the victim and charge them with whatever they can.

What’s the point of having a police force and justice system if they won’t do their jobs and why are the rights of criminals greater than the rights of their victims?

We’re in big trouble

As I’ve gotten older, I pretty much lost faith that we as a society will actually tackle the problem of climate change as we have complete corporate capture of our governments and there’s absolutely nothing that you or I as individuals can do anything about anything.  CNN published this story over the weekend and it made me sad for future generations. 🙁

Are you frightened by climate change? Do you worry about what sort of world we are bequeathing to our children and grandchildren? In the words of science writer and author of “The Uninhabitable Earth” David Wallace-Wells, “No matter how well informed you are, you are surely not alarmed enough.”

I would put it even more strongly.

If the fracturing of our once stable climate doesn’t terrify you, then you don’t fully understand it. The reality is that, as far as we know, and in the natural course of events, our world has never — in its entire history — heated up as rapidly as it is doing now. Nor have greenhouse gas levels in the atmosphere ever seen such a precipitous hike.

Source: CNN

Our incompetent leaders virtue signal by banning plastic straws while the rich and corporations have virtually no limits to what they can do, heaven forbid they be inconvenienced…

I guess no more Wendy’s

This is the absolute worst idea I’ve ever heard and now I guess I’m going to skip Wendy’s moving forward.

Wendy’s will start experimenting with surge pricing, much like Uber and Lyft, as the company rolls out digital menus to all its United States restaurants by 2025, according to the company’s February earnings call. Under the test, burgers, Frosties, and other menu items will have “dynamic prices,” costing more during times of increased demand.

“Beginning as early as 2025, we will begin testing more enhanced features like dynamic pricing,” said Wendy’s CEO Kirk Tanner on Feb. 15’s earnings call. “We are planning to invest approximately $20 million to roll out digital menu boards to all US company-operated restaurants by the end of 2025.”

Source: Gizmodo

Not that we eat at Wendy’s or fast foods much (mainly on roadtrips) but I will boycott any business that moves to this model.

Scary

Aliens don’t visit us because they see that we fight over the stupidest things…  In the latest episode of those stupid humans according to US intelligence (and I hate to quote them) Russia is developing nuclear space weapons to destroy satellites.

The weapon is still under development and is not yet in orbit, Biden administration officials have emphasized publicly. But if used, officials say, it would cross a dangerous rubicon in the history of nuclear weapons and could cause extreme disruptions to everyday life in ways that are difficult to predict.

This kind of new weapon — known generally by military space experts as a nuclear EMP — would create a pulse of electromagnetic energy and a flood of highly charged particles that would tear through space to disrupt other satellites winging around Earth.

Source: CNN

EMPs are not new, we’ve known about them since the 60s and what this story is conveniently ignoring is that if an EMP is detonated in space yes it’ll cause problems for satellites but the blast portion that hits the planet could destroy the electrical grid on the ground too.  Funny enough a lot of satellites are relatively hardened against EM radiation, since they’re in space and have to deal with the sun and cosmic rays but if an EMP’s energy hits the ground, we’re pretty much screwed.

And it being in space means we’d have like no warning too, at least with a missile the militaries can track its movements (though whether the government would inform the people, I highly doubt) but with space based weapons maybe a mere few minutes.  This is a first strike capability and if something like this gets into orbit, you can bet the militarization of space will happen.

Weirdos in the night?

Saturday night it wasn’t too cold out so we went for a quick walk and I’m lucky that Maggie & Brandon tag along often.  It’s something that I really enjoy which is made all the better when they come with.

It’s not easy to all squeeze into the photo when trying to take a selfie with my phone but I think it worked out pretty well. 🙂  With no clouds it was really nice to see the stars again and I counted at least 3 shooting stars and they saw a bunch too.

Definitely living my best life possible.

Fire kit

Makes me happy that Brandon knows how to start & safely maintain a fire outdoors.

That’s the fire kit he brings to camp, on the left is some dryer lint and it’s an excellent fire starter!  He also has 4 ways to light the fire, from the most basic flint & steel to matches, a bic lighter and an electric lighter.  Finally a bellows to help blow air where it’s most needed.  It’s prepacked in his hiking backpack at the top so he’s always ready to go when needed. 🙂

As close to a smoking gun as one can get

There’s an interesting report in the US Right to Know site talking about the origins of SARS-CoV-2.  This is a non partisan site and the reporter has done good work in the past, anyway I’m going to highlight some points that I thought were important.

  • Specifically, the scientists sought to insert furin cleavage sites at the S1/S2 junction of the spike protein; to assemble synthetic viruses in six segments; to identify coronaviruses up to 25 percent different from SARS; and to select for receptor binding domains adept at infecting human receptors.

    The genome of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, matches the viruses described in the research proposal:

    • SARS-CoV-2 has a furin cleavage site positioned in the spike protein at the S1/S2 junction. The furin cleavage site supercharged the virus into the worst pandemic pathogen in a century. Virologists have yet to identify one in any other related coronavirus.
  • This language in the newly revealed documents echoes a 2022 analysis that uncovered a pattern of two restriction enzymes, BsmBI and BasI, that segmented the SARS-CoV-2 viral genome into six even pieces. The scientists estimated the likelihood of observing this pattern of evenly spaced segments in nature to be highly improbable.
  • This American virologist, University of North Carolina Prof. Ralph Baric, was set to engineer twenty or more “chimeric” SARS-related viral spike proteins per year of the proposal, and two to five full-length engineered SARS-related viruses. Documents previously reported by U.S. Right to Know show that some of the experimentation could secretly occur in Wuhan at a lower biosafety level than specified in the grant, apparently to save costs.

Source: US Right to Know

I’m not a scientist nor is my opinion on the origins of COVID-19 important, what I do think is that this raises the question should this type of research be allowed?  I understand the logic that nature can throw us curveballs and release something very deadly but has there been a case where an engineered monster saved us from something?  Especially with the risk being so high of it escaping?  I’d vote no and the scary part is, I know that this type of research is still continuing so who knows what else may pop up in the future.

The ends do not justify the means

Police departments should not have this type of sting power and everyone should be outraged.

Homicide officers said the DNA was obtained at a 2018 Kurdish New Year celebration in Burnaby, B.C., where police handed out free tea samples in numbered cups that were later swabbed, in a sting that identified a brother of the suspect.

Source: CBC

Yes the crime was horrible however the authorities should not be able to get random people’s DNA to test against.  Civil liberties must be held to the highest standard and if it starts to erode, we quickly slide into police state for the sake of the “greater good”.

Commo guy?

So last month I posted about picking up and programming a Motorola XTS2500 which went well so I decided to push my luck and bought a Motorola XTS3000.  It’s in excellent condition but programming it is a lot more complicated as it requires a different cable and a 32 bit OS environment to use the software.  I ordered the right cable and when it arrived I fired up VirtualBox, installed Windows XP and woo I’m able to program this radio too!

The Motorola radios are heavy but I really love how durable they are especially compared Baofengs and the other cheap Chinese radios that have flooded the market.  Programmed it with the same channels and settings as my XTS2500s so now I have relatively secure comms for, well whatever heads my way. 😉

This is so much fun I might pick up a few more just for kicks and get a bay station charger because it looks so cool!