Author: Derek
Ward Manor Happenings
State Fair Happenings – Last weekend, The Wife and I stopped in at the State Fair. The nice thing about getting into the State Fair is that I just have to find the deputy on duty, show him my CCL, and he waves me through. We went through the winners of the various arts and crafts. There were some neat things people had created. We also had a long conversation on whether Lego pieces should count if it’s just putting together a kit versus creating something completely new using Legos as a medium.
We went through Cracker Country. The house they used for showing life in the late 1800s was ringed with a fence. Milton had done a mischief on the house. The rest of the place was fine, and we enjoyed going through the buildings. The Wife picked up some wood utensils, including something for her crochet.
We went through the “Artisan Marketplace”, which I tend to call Etsy Hall. Lots of gourmet doggie food booths. Lots of other booths. We ended up picking up some wax melts because we are always on the lookout for new and interesting scents.
On our way to Expo Hall, we decided to stop in at a food stand offering boba tea. For the love of all that’s holy, do not get boba tea at the state fair. The tea itself wasn’t bad, but the boba was… well, how to describe it? Stale, flat jelly might be the closest.
Expo Hall was about what I expected. I tend to refer to it as MLM Hall, as that tends to be most of the vendors. Nothing really caught our fancy, so we left empty-handed. It was a pleasant way to spend the morning.
Co-Pilot Happenings – For my fantasy novel, one of the things I’ve been experimenting with is using flavor texts to tell the backstory. On a lark, I put one block of flavor text and asked it to rewrite it in a particular style. Damn. That LLM put out a really good bit of flavor text. I think I’ll keep using it for the flavor texts.
Court Happenings – We had to go to court this week. For anonymity sake, I will not explain why. So why bring it up? Well, let’s just say getting through security was interesting. They had me half-unpack my carry bag because their detector had trouble with all the little pouches. Then it flagged on the small pair of trauma shears I keep in my bag. The deputy took one look at it and just waved me on. After our business was conducted, a fee had to be paid – which was in another part of the court complex. At that point The Wife just told me to wait outside instead of having to deal with me trying to get through another security checkpoint.
Clean Out Happenings – Over the weekend we finally got the tubs of Christmas decorations over to storage. We also did some cleaning out of the master closet. Finally, we assembled a pair of those Ikea shoe storage cabinets. Damn, that ended up giving us a lot of space back.
Monday Links
You forget in four years the frenetic pace of news from Trump’s last time. There’s a bunch of news. This week DOGE, corruption scandals, tariffs, and guns feature heavily.
Let’s start with DOGE first.
From Reason, DOGE has uncovered fraud in its review of federal spending.
From Reason, 5 of USAID’s worst scandals. Folding it back into State was a good move. Let the diplomats direct how we use soft diplomacy.
From Reason, in the name of transparency, DOGE is starting to put its finding on the web. However, according to 404, there was a lack of security on the database.
Let’s discuss a couple of big corruption scandals.
One concern with Musk was that he would use his influence to direct more government money to his companies. From NPR, State was set to buy $400 million of armored Cybertrucks. No, it was armored electric vehicles. No, never mind, we aren’t really going to buy anything.
The other big one brewing was the Thursday Night Massacre. BBC has the overview. Trump ordered corruption charges to be dropped against New York Mayor Eric Adams in return for Adams’ help with immigration sweeps. Seven New York prosecutors resigned instead. The Free Press took a look at the Trump-appointed lead prosecutor who first refused the order to drop charges and resigned. At least Trump says the quiet part out loud when he’s doing corrupt actions.
A couple of Reason articles on tariffs.
Why steel and aluminum tariffs are bad for American energy.
Reciprocal tariffs could be the largest tax increase in the last eighty years.
Let’s look at guns.
From The Hill, an article by David Yamane looking at the changing face of gun ownership.
From The Reload, Trump orders a review of federal gun policy. One hopes that it will include conforming the rules around carrying concealed on federal property to the laws of the state.
From Reason, Little Rock is getting rid of its Shot Spotter contract. The city joins many others in realizing how worthless the whole system is.
From Reuters, Baltimore is suing Glock over “Glock switches”. It will be interesting to see how this runs up against the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act.
Also from TFB, a review of Magpul’s TMAGs. I will admit, I’m very interested in these. Particularly in the Bren.
A couple more Reason articles.
What is the SEC hiding with all the gag orders it puts on the people it prosecutes?
Now on to other stories of interest.
From Wired, Thomson Reuters wins against an AI company using its data to make a competing product. The case has some interesting implications for the wider use of copyright materials by LLMs.
The Hollywood Reporter has an article on more people watching YouTube on televisions than any other type of device. I find this interesting as the television is the device I watch the least when it comes to YouTube.
From NPR, the Trump restores the name of Fort Bragg, by renaming the base after a completely different Bragg. Honestly? This is very clever. I fully agree with the renaming of bases named after traitorous Confederates. I also understand servicepeoples feeling connected to their bases and not want to seeing them renamed.
From The Hill, Joanne Fabrics is expecting to close some 500 of its 850 stores as it deals with a second bankruptcy. Fortunately for The Wife and MIL, the one they normally frequent wasn’t on the list. Still, it’s not a good sign for one of their favorite stores.
From a local station, a Florida lawmaker is pushing a bill to limit the amount of total time a person can serve in the Florida legislature. Honestly, this is one of the better proposals I’ve seen in regards to term limits.
From another local station, pet owners are urged to get their pets re-microchipped after Save This Life went bankrupt and stopped monitoring the chips they put in.
February Anime Recommendations
This is a good romance/slice of life show, but the dub isn’t the best. If you can do subtitles, I would recommend leaving it on the Japanese voices.
Yes, it’s a harem comedy with all the normal tropes. Still, the story does get better – with some weird zigs and zags.
This is a good entry in the isekai genre. With a twist – as the title implies.
Another entry where the demons are more another faction and less an embodiment of evil.
Ward Manor Happenings
Civilization Happenings – Thursday morning I was doing my normal morning routine and Steam helpfully informed me that The Brother was playing Civ 7. WTF? I knew my package let me play early, but I didn’t think it would be open until the weekend. I popped open Steam. Uh, no, it won’t let me download. I try a couple of times, but say screw it and log into work. On our group chat, The Brother said he had to restart Steam a couple of times before it would let it download to his Steam Deck. I flip over, restart Steam, and yep, there it is for download.
Civ 7 is very pretty, but a lot different than Civ 6. Enough I’m getting that frustration as I try to understand how the mechanics work. I’m not sure how I will like the new mechanics, but I remember I didn’t like all of the new stuff when I started playing Civ 6. So, I will play Civ 7 until the frustration gets high, switch back to 6 for a bit, and then switch back. When I get a couple of playthroughs, I will have a better grasp.
Shopping Happenings – Last weekend, The Wife and I traipsed up to the new Daiso Store in Tampa. The Wife described it as a cross between a dollar store and Five Below. It’s interesting because instead of putting tags with prices in American currency, they just have signs around the store with price conversions.
Family Happenings – Since we were close to Mom’s, The Wife and I dropped by. We got to see Shootin’ Buddy, his partner, and their little girl who is getting close to a year old. Shootin’ Buddy told me he saw me walking across the parking lot at Daiso while he was picking up food. Apparently, there aren’t a lot of folks who walk around in Stetsons and 5.11 sling bags.
Monday Links
Let me place a disclaimer here. I am not going to be immediately linking to the furor of the day. Too many of these (on both sides) pan out to be little more than the chattering class version of vaporware. I am also kind of done with both sides filling the newsfeeds with bullshit stories to chum the waters and fellate their fans. So, don’t be surprised if we have short lists. Like this week.
From Reason, a DOJ attorney is arguing in court that money doesn’t count as property. There’s part of me that wants to blame some of this on the government’s reliance of plea deals that it doesn’t have the muscle memory for actual legal fights.
From Reuters, Amazon may be debuting an AI-powered Alexa soon. This has my attention since Ward Manor is wired for the Echo ecosystem. Do I use the Echos to their full potential now? No. Will I with an AI-powered voice assistant? Maybe, but I will probably have a bunch more functionality.
From The Free Press, Betsy DeVos, Education Secretary in Trump’s first term, advocates abolishing the department.
From Gizmodo, it looks like there is a revival for Buffy.