An observation after No Kings

Benito Mussolini's philosophy of government was  "Tutto nello Stato, niente fuori dello Stato, niente contro lo Stato"

"everything within the state, nothing outside the state, nothing against the state"

The left holds rallies and calls them "No Kings", but when they are in power, no one is allowed to do anything not approved by them. No guns, no freedom of religion (for Christians and Jews, anyway), limits of free speech, limits of the type of toilet, lightbulb, car you can buy. Mandated medical care for the flu, but no restrictions allowed on abortion, including for your teenage daughters.  You have no say in the choices your children make, and will have them taken away if you promote the wrong ideals to them.  The state runs every single thing when they are making the decisions.

1890 Singer VS3 hand crank with painted roses

Model: Singer VS3

Decals: Painted roses

Serial: 9680544

Year: 1890

Purchased from Ebay for $200 (plus shipping and tax), $300

I have a Singer 28*** hand crank in Victorian decals.  Pretty rough.  Bought it from a neighbor for $20 or so at his garage sale a few years ago.  It was his wife's and had a handwritten note to her in the base, explaining how to thread the machine.  Pretty cool.  I also have a 128 in quite nice shape, with La Vencedora decals.  The 28 hand crank won't fit on the 128 due to handwheel differences although it might be possible to also swap out the handwheel.  The fact is, I never really liked the LV decal set.

So when a VS3 (early version of the 28) came up for sale on ebay I started to give it serious thought.  Asking price $275 from Florida, so figure on adding another $75 to that for shipping, I threw out an offer of $200, thinking it would be rejected.  Next morning it was mine and on the way.  One of the pricier machines I've bought as most of my collectable acquisitions have ranged from free to $200 (OK, to be fair, most of the free machines aren't actually collectable, they are projects which may become collectible) but in general, my hobby has not been an expensive one.

*** The Model VS3 is the 3/4 size version of the VS2, the 28 and 128 are the same, respectively, with the 27 and 127.

Should you pay attention to the main stream media?

 

Democrat leads in Georgia Senate District 21 race

Technically a true headline.   Let's dig a little further.

Democrat Debra Shigley won 39.51% of votes cast 

What about the other 60.49%?  Well, turns out that most of it was split between six Republican candidates.  So what is the relevance of Shigley's "victory"?  The Republicans are very likely to hold this seat, which was vacated by the new Treasury Secretary.

Takeaway: When you read the headlines, and you wonder how conservatives and republicans are doing, keep in mind that the media wants you to think the right is collapsing due to Trump's policies.

Story here: https://www.thecentersquare.com/georgia/article_17d2098d-28f2-44c8-b4f1-6e50691da9c8.html

Kerr County assistance

 I'm down here in the Texas hill country, on vacation.  For the last three days I've been watching the floods and news in real time and close up.

In case you've been confused by all the chatter, there were flash flood warnings, but no one expected the Guadalupe River to rise by 27 feet in the space of 45 minutes.

If you want to help, this seems to be the best one:

Community Foundation of Texas Hill Country

Community Foundation of Texas Hill Country created the Kerr County Flood Relief Fund that supports relief and rebuilding efforts. The Community Foundation will direct funds to vetted organizations providing assistance in Hunt, Ingram, Kerrville, Center Point, and Comfort.

All donations are tax-deductible.

CLICK HERE TO DONATE TO THE KERR COUNTY FLOOD RELIEF FUND

Around Canada Day, a little truth about Indian Residential School

 Spoiler alert, they didn't murder Indian children and bury them in unmarked, mass graves.

https://quillette.com/2023/08/02/not-a-genocide/

The sweet, sweet benefits of aging

 Yesterday, while working on a MacGyvered sprinkler system to keep my lawn and plants alive while I go away for a month, I had the greatest idea for a blog post.  That's one I really want to get out there, I thought.  My readers, all three of you, will love this one.

Yeah.  Exactly.  No clue whatsoever.  I'm not even sure what the category might have been, let alone the specific topic.

Oh well.  

Also, in case you were wondering, cobbling together a sprinkler system instead of having one dug into the ground, is a royal PITA.  I did, however, finally get it done.  Only to find out that the four zone timer I had bought was counting in seconds instead of minutes.  Sprinkler activates as expected, runs for fifteen seconds, shuts back down.  And of course I had bought the last one.  Hopefully the store in the next town has one on the shelf.  

Microsoft OneDrive is a bunch of happy horsesh!t

 Bought a new laptop last year.  Been working with it for the past several months.  Suddenly found out that half my stuff is stored on Microsoft's Onedrive.  I didn't ask for that but presumably agreed to it during setup when you have to agree to a half a million things in order to use your new computer.

Now I can't get rid of it.

De-linked Onedrive from my computer, all my stuff disappeared.

Re-linked and it came back.

Went into the Settings for Onedrive and told it I wanted local access to all my files.  Not sure if it's doing anything and the Documents, Desktop, and Pictures folders, plus who knows what else, all still show  folder path as including OneDrive.

I'm trying to change the settings so that everything is stored on my computer, but I am finding, now, two of each folder, and they have different contents.  There's the OneDrive set of folders, which have everything; and there's the plain old users/me folders which don't.  The Download folders seem to be the same; the non-OneDrive Pictures folder doesn't even seem to exist; the Documents folders are completely different.

So apparently Microsoft decided to create a cloud file storage structure, barely mentioning it when the customer buys a new computer, which is almost impossible to leave, without losing stuff.  This is such BS and now I'm tired of messing with it when I could be doing something productive.  So I will walk away, having wasted the last 45 minutes, and start all over again at some future time, wasting even more time.

Thanks Microsoft.  Any wonder that people hate you?