Making Pigs Look Smart
Well, as the regulars know, I added a new career to my resume a while back, in addition to Submarine Sailor, Cop, Shipyard worker/instructor/manager, Author, and of course surly curmudgeon, I’m now a farmer.
Specifically, a Hog farmer, although we also grow other things here at Morrigan’sport Farm, and will be selling various things bye and bye, My main crop is pork. I guess that makes me much like most politicians, who sell other things; like their soul, their constituents (down the river), their honor if they ever had any… but primarily they sell pork.
Well, having now a tiny little bit of experience with pigs, I will tell you that the rumors of their intelligence (most intelligent farm animal, smarter than dogs, and so on, the headlines scream) are overblown. Oh they’re smarter than cows, and much smarter than domestic turkeys for example… (A domestic turkey will literally drown itself in the rain, by looking up in shock at the water falling from the sky.) They do have enough brains that after about the third or fifth time they get zapped by the electric fence wire, they figure out that “white ribbon bites, don’t touch!” After a week they figure out that “two legs bring the really good food, so running away from him means my sisters get more food than I do, and I have to make do with just graze.”
Compared to your average dog though? Well, they just ain’t all that.
Compared to your average Democratic politician on the other hand, they’re fucking stable geniuses. We’re going to look at a few of these rocket surgeons, and their foibles today. Dinner is going to be Fajitas, you know where the liquids are, grab something, and please don’t forget the tip jar where we collect for the mess.
Lets take California (Oh gods would someone PLEASE take California?) Now a pig figures out after only a day or two, that this action HURTS, don’t do this action. California? Not so much.
In 2008 (nearly twenty years ago, for you Californians in the group.) Money was first cut to start a High Speed Rail line (HSR) between LA and SF. It was quoted as costing $33 billion, and would take twelve years to complete. (2020 ribbon cutting, for you Californians.) At that time, and at that price, I will admit that it looked like a semi reasonable idea. It would beat flying (barely) because the Tom Foolery at the airports on both ends makes a one hundred and ten mile an hour train faster (home to hotel and back) than a three hundred mile an hour aircraft.
To me, that’s more of an inditement of the Aviation industry than a credit to the Rail industry, but hey… Still, it would probably be more comfortable, as aircraft have to pack ‘em in like sardines, to get a decent profit margin when JP-5 is spendy.
Meanwhile, Rail can use cheaper fuels or even use electricity if it’s cheaper than diesel on a ton per mile basis. And of course since California is notoriously concerned about the environment, even as they wreck it… Well Rail using electricity would be far less polluting, (if you use nukes, solar, wind, and hydro) to move the same weight over the same distance.
Having driven that stretch a couple times, it would be vastly better to ride the train than to drive it, if you are not moving enough crap that you need your car/truck.
OK, so yes, on the face of it, it started as a good idea.
Now let’s look at how it’s gone. Here it is, 2026, how much track has been laid? ZERO!
It took SIX YEARS to build the first Transcontinental Railway in the US. For the Californians in the house, that’s a third of the time that it’s taken these assholes to build… Nothing.
OK that’s not quite fair, they’ve built a couple overpasses, with no track on them, and nothing connecting them to each other. They’ve poured a lot of concrete for no actual progress.
What is the route now? Merced to Bakersfield. (That’s 171 miles, vice the original planned 348 miles.)
Ticket prices? Expected to be at least double the original planned price.
Expected Ridership? Original projections were 95 million by 2030. Now we’re at 36 million by 2060. So a bit over a third as many, and thirty years later.
Of course any of my pigs could figure out that if, instead of going between the second biggest population center in the US, and the 17th, you chose to go between places that most people have to look up on Google Maps (Bakersfield comes in at 47th in the nation, Merced doesn’t show up in the top 350…) there’s less folks that might want to use the service, and thus it’s going to cost more per head to recoup the money spent…
And the cherry on the shit sundae; how much is it costing? That’s $231 billion. In a state that can’t afford to pay their employees.
This isn’t news. Even politicians have been screaming that this thing is the ultimate white whale. And yet the whaling vessel ‘Sacramento Statehouse’ keeps chasing the damn thing. Why? Well we’re back to what politicians deal in most. PORK.
Someone is making an obscene profit off of this disaster, a couple construction companies, and a lot of planning types are rolling in dough, and giving some of it back in the form of reelection money to guys like Garry Noose-cum. You remember him, right? The guy that has completely and utterly destroyed California, and wants to be elected to the Presidency so he can bring that flavor of sundae to the rest of the nation?
Seriously, my pigs are fucking PHDs compared to the people that elected that bastard.
Let’s take another example. The partial Government shutdown finally ended this week. Seventy-Five days. Two and a half MONTHS. Oh, yes, and this budget that they passed? It goes through the end of September.
That’s four months! SO all of this pain, all of the drama, a vast number of people quitting because, really, how long can you afford to not get a paycheck? If you’re a government worker, and you’re not a double digit GS or better, probably not very damn long.
As a retired Government worker myself, I can tell you that until my last couple years in the job, a shutdown of that long would have lost me my house, my cars, my every-damn-thing, probably. (well maybe not, because I would have still had my pensions from the military, and I had invested; mostly wisely, with one or two notable exceptions, who know who they are.)
Well, yeah, but the guys that were running the shutdown, at least got what they wanted, Right??? I mean, yeah, they put a whole lot of people in a lot of pain, but they achieved their goals, right?
Uh, NO.
Yes, it’s true, ICE and the Border Patrol are not funded in this budget. They’re going to be funded separately in a “Budget Reconciliation” bill that can be passed without any support from the Democrats, and gets exactly the same result as if it had been part of the original bill. Now the Dems aren’t the only bad guys in this piece, that never to be sufficiently damned idiot Mike Johnson, the House Speaker, could have passed this same plan a month ago. He was holding out for “total victory and humiliating the Dems.” Of course he’s now spinning this as his total victory, and taking his victory lap…
Who actually won? Nobody.
Who lost? The Democrats, the employees of Homeland, the customers of the various branches of Homeland like anyone who flies commercial air, and anyone who relies on the guys that enforce laws like anti-counterfeiting laws, bank fraud laws, and so on… In short, EVERYONE who is NOT independently wealthy, or a congressman.
Lest it seem like I’m just picking on California and Democrats, Let’s go to Texas.
You would think that a judge, especially a Criminal Court of Appeals Judge, would know the law, right? I mean if ANYONE would know the law, it ought to be a judge. David Newell is such a judge. He’s on the appellate court, and it seems, he’s not going to run for reelection. So, he decided to donate a lot of his reelection campaign money to other people that ARE running. To the tune of $4,000 to Alison Fox, who is running for a position on the same bench.
He also gave $1,000 to the campaigns of Jo Ann Pierce-Linzer, Paul Still, and Mark Hanna, all of whom are running for various judgeships.
OK, you ask, so what?
Well, it’s against the law for a sitting judge or other office holder to give more than $100 to another candidate. Texas Election Code Section 253.1611. https://texas.public.law/statutes/tex._election_code_section_253.1611
A person who violates this section is liable for a civil penalty not to exceed three times the amount of political contributions used in violation of this section. That’s a total of $21,000 in fines, your honor.
Here in Tennessee, we’re finally figuring it out… You all know that I’m not a huge proponent of Solar. Look, it’s got its place, but it’s nothing like the “Save the world” technology that the PRC shills (why PRC shills? Look at who makes over 80% of the solar cells and get back to me.) would have you believe it is.
Still, if you’re going to put solar cells in, let’s do it smart huh? Here in TN, until recently, if you wanted a subsidy for your solar plant, you had to put it on the ground, not on top of your buildings, and that had to be the only thing you were using the land for. Now if that’s not the stupidest policy in the world, it’s at least in the running.
Seriously, the amount of good growing land here (or anywhere for that matter) is limited. Now you’re going to tell a landowner, probably a farmer, that he can either use his land as a solar farm, and get money from the TVA, OR he can raise crops and critters on it, but not both??? Who thought that up, and why were they not run out of town after a good tarring an feathering?
Well, IDK, maybe Kiti and I moving in tipped the scales over to being on average a smart state, vice a dumb one, or maybe it just took this long for someone to figure it out, but in Christiana TN they’re allowing Silicon Ranch to put the cells high enough to graze cattle under them. Seriously, this is a winning idea. There’s a lot of folks that absolutely would not put a solar array on their farm, because “we’re ranchers. We raise cattle. It’s what we do. We don’t raise silicon cells, you can’t eat those, asshole.”
But here’s the thing. Cattle running around mostly in the shade are less prone to heat stress, gain more weight, and drink less water. Pasture that is in partial shade retains more moisture, is more drought resistant, and provides healthier feed.
Other states have been doing this with sheep for a few years (130,000 acres in sheep as of last year.) but doing it with cows has been a problem because of the laws and the costs for the steel to get the cells up high enough for the cattle to hang out underneath, as well as the whole “the cell tracks the sun, so in the early morning and late evening, it’s nearly vertical” piece. They’re fixing that by moving the cattle and reprograming the cells in the area where the cows are to not go as far off of horizontal. The difference in efficiency is present, but minor.
All in all, my pigs would nod, and squeal happily.
I’m a fan of using real data. Not what you think the answer should be, but what the facts on the ground say, to make your decisions. With that in mind, the National Bureau of Economic Research is publishing a study on “The Effects of School Phone Bans: National Evidence From Lockable Phones” More at: https://www.engadget.com/2164015/study-shows-that-cellphone-bans-didnt-improve-us-students-test-scores/ now they admit that this is only based on seven years, and only looked at students grades for three years beyond the school banning phones, but still, it seems that what we all thought was a good idea, was irrelevant.
Maybe it’s time to be smarter than California, and give the kids back their phones? If it doesn’t have any positive effects, it’s just another rule for the sake of rules, and I’m NOT a fan of those.
The Bad Cat fired off a beauty at the-summers-of-our-discontent
He’s long winded as hell, (as usual) but it’s all in effort of making his case, while showing the work. The TLDR version is that all the DEI bullshit is going away, and is scientifically provable to be wrong.
The basics of DEI being that: Anyone is just as good as anyone else, and if they’re not, it’s because RACIST/SEXIST!!!! Well the Cat shows the homework on why men are both smarter and dumber than women, which by itself blows the DEI theories out of the water. Then he goes on to explore Hip geometry, fast twitch muscle density, and so on. It’s worth the read, but it doesn’t go far enough.
Gato is talking about DEI as it deals with hiring and advancing people in various fields; making sure that we hire based on race, because anything else is racist! (and my pigs are squealing their annoyance at the idiocy of that concept.)
But it’s more than that. The same data is prima facia evidence that Communism and Socialism (Communism wearing a smiley face button) is idiocy. See the very basis of those systems is that people are interchangeable widgets, that anyone is as good as anyone else, and so central planning can plug them in where they are needed. If we need more brain surgeons, we simply train more brain surgeons, anyone can do it, and therefore a brain surgeon is of no more value to society than a ditch digger.
Well, even my pigs know better than that, but the science behind the Bad Cat’s thesis shows the work long form, so that even someone as stupid as Bernie Sanders or AOC could follow along, if they were honest and not making their living by arguing against reality.
One last little bit before I go, with a tip of the hat to “Not the Bee” who watches things like 60 Minutes, so that I don’t have to.
It seems that this vapid bitch Lesley Stahl, who seems to think she’s the next Woodward or Bernstien, (Gods help us) breathlessly reports that “If you’re the victim of a natural disaster, and the person that comes to help you isn’t wearing a FEMA Jacket, they’re a white supremisist doing this to recruit you.” 60-minutes-warns-white-people-may-be-helping-you-after-natural-disasters-to-advance-their-racist-cause
You know, I don’t envy the Babylon Bee, People are so out-there that coming up with fake headlines that don’t turn out to be true three weeks later has to be a nearly impossible job these days… which is no doubt why they came up with “Not the Bee” to give their reporters a break by allowing them to only write about stuff that just “seems” too far fetched to be real, and not stuff that actually is too far-fetched.
Hey, I’ve got farm work to do, so I’m going to close up here. Stay safe, and watch out for the idiots, they’re everywhere.
QOTD “For many agricultural stakeholders, it is offensive to see high-quality farmland getting graded and piled when that’s a farm family’s legacy,”
Ethan Winter, national smart solar director at American Farmland Trust.
Yours in Service,
William Lehman