Geoengineering can also be unbelievably stupid. The British government is planning to fund high-altitude geoengineering to block sunlight. This is a pet project of some very rich people who consider themselves geniuses, and it is a real thing – I have directly heard their discussions on similar projects from people who can pay for them. It is based on the interesting conviction that while all previous episodes of global warming were due to some natural phenomena, the current one is solely due to the work of man, and that somehow dimming sunlight by setting up a reflective layer in the upper atmosphere is therefore a good thing (i.e. not interfering with nature, but saving it…).

There is irony here. We now have 9 billion people on earth, and have defied all previous predictions of Malthusian catastrophe and starvation, partly because vegetation (i.e., our crops) grows faster and uses water more efficiently than it did 50 or 100 years ago. The reason for this is higher carbon dioxide (CO2). Plants need mainly CO2, sunlight, and water to grow. Whether CO2 is the main cause of global warming is irrelevant here. It is a reasonable theory, but anthropogenic emissions do not explain past warming periods. CO2 has doubled from previously very low levels, but it was much lower in the Middle Ages when the Norse grew crops in Greenland.

So, whether or not sun-blocking will reduce global temperatures, it will certainly reduce sunlight and plant growth. This will reduce harvests, both in yield and in some places in frequency. Mass starvation will be much more likely – all apparently for the greater good. It may even be better for investors in failing fake meat companies and other factory foods, which may explain some interest in sun dimming. A clever commercial approach, but likely to be fairly widely fatal. While the British government is embracing this, it is almost certainly happening already, at least experimentally. There are no rules, just stupidity. //

So, perhaps we should concentrate on the industrial and political stupidity that is endangering us all through stuff that is proven and readily demonstrable. Labeling nature or air travel as evidence of evil will gain likes on social media, but also help the cause of those who would own and control our atmosphere and food supply.

Many applications create and manage directories containing cached information about content stored elsewhere, such as cached Web content or thumbnail-size versions of images or movies. For speed and storage efficiency we would often like to avoid backing up, archiving, or otherwise unnecessarily copying such directories around, but it is a pain to identify and individually exclude each such directory during data transfer operations. I propose an extremely simple convention by which applications can reliably "tag" any cache directories they create, for easy identification by backup systems and other data management utilities. Data management utilities can then heed or ignore these tags as the user sees fit.

TargaGTS | August 27, 2025 at 8:22 am
The New World Screwworm is yet another pestilence/disease that was once eradicated in the United States only to be reintroduced by poor border control. Back in the 1950s, a massive project to interrupt the life-cyle of the pest by introducing a critical mass of sterile flies, was surprisingly effective. By the mid-1960s, NWS was no longer a thing in the US & Canada (although they still persisted in parts of Mexico for another 40+ years)….until Joe Biden’s tenure.

In one of his amendments, Moulton proposed a clause that he said would have reaffirmed the US military's long-standing doctrine of nuclear deterrence known as "Mutually Assured Destruction" (MAD). In other words, an adversary should think twice about a nuclear strike against the United States because the US would launch an overwhelming nuclear attack in response.

Moulton argued that a missile shield like the Golden Dome would change the decision-making of a potential adversary. If another country's leaders believe the United States can protect itself from widespread destruction—and therefore remove the motivation for a massive US response—that might be enough for an adversary to pull the trigger on a nuclear attack. Inevitably, at least a handful of nuclear-tipped missiles would make it through the Golden Dome shield in such a scenario, and countless Americans would die, Moulton said.

"If nations know that they will get obliterated if they use nuclear weapons against us, they are never going to use them," Moulton said in the House Armed Services Committee's markup hearing.

Rep. John Garamendi, D-California, put it succinctly: "If you're playing defense, you're likely to lose... somebody out there is going to figure out a way to get around it."

Moulton's Republican counterpart on the strategic forces subcommittee, Rep. Scott DesJarlais of Tennessee, had a different view of the matter. The US military's existing missile defense system is limited in reach. It's designed to take down a small number of missiles launched at the United States from a "rogue state" like North Korea, not a volley of hundreds of missiles from a nuclear superpower.

"The underlying issue here is whether US missile defense should remain focused on the threat from rogue states and... accidental launches, and explicitly refrain from countering missile threats from China or Russia," DesJarlais said. He called the policy of Mutually Assured Destruction "outdated."

RUBIO: Mr. President -- first of all, everybody's made this comment already, it needs to be echoed again: you were elected as president of working Americans. And that's why this Labor Day is so meaningful.

For me, personally, this the most meaningful Labor Day of my life, as someone with four jobs. //

Rubio, of course, has taken on a few side gigs to complement his main role leading the State Department (he was the first Cabinet secretary to be confirmed, with his nomination having passed the Senate on Inauguration Day). Here's what else is currently on his resume:

Interim National Security Advisor;
Acting Administrator of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID); and,
Acting Archivist of the United States. //

Secretary of Transportation Sean Duffy also moonlights as Interim Director of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). Russ Vought is Director of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) by day and leads the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) by night. And Jamieson Greer does double duty as acting Director of the Office of Government Ethics and acting Special Counsel of the Office of Special Counsel.

A few non-Cabinet-level appointees are also pulling extra weight, with Daniel Driscoll serving as both Secretary of the Army and acting head of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF), and Todd Blanche holding the positions of Deputy Attorney General and acting Librarian of Congress.

In the past few years, many environmental and academic activists have been undermining the work of Norman Borlaug and the successes of the Green Revolution by publishing false information. The environmental activists behind these headlines claim that the Green Revolution failed. Here is a random sample of examples of these activists lying to the public. //

Fortunately, evidence easily refutes the misinformation spread by such activists’ claims. Wheat yields rose dramatically in the late 1960s and throughout the 1970s. By lying to their audience and the public, these groups are ignoring that wheat yields in India more than doubled between the period of 1967 and 1972.
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0111629

There’s no “new research” as claimed by the above activist headlines. The evidence is clear: the Green Revolution resulted in higher crop yields that contributed to preventing one billion deaths from starvation. Dr. Borlaug made an amazing contribution to improving global food security. In 1970, he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for his work.

The customization marketplace for Windows and programs. Customize your programs with available code snippets or create your own customizations.

Windows 11 replacement for 7 Taskbar Tweaker

A few weeks ago, Windhawk, the customization marketplace for Windows programs, was released. You can read the announcement blog post for more details and for the motivation behind creating it. One of the sections of the blog post was dedicated to 7+ Taskbar Tweaker.

Regarding the future of 7+ Taskbar Tweaker: It will keep existing as a separate program which supports Windows 7 to Windows 10. As mentioned in a recent blog post, most parts of the taskbar were reimplemented in Windows 11, and 7+ Taskbar Tweaker can’t be made to work with the new taskbar without a huge amount of work. My plan, at least in the short term, is to implement the most demanded customizations for Windows 11 as Windhawk mods.

Below is a table with features that are available in Windows 10 but are missing in Windows 11. Some of the features are part of Windows 10 (marked with the Windows icon icon) and some are part of 7+ Taskbar Tweaker (marked with the Tweaker icon icon).

You’re probably wondering what’s going to happen with 7+ Taskbar Tweaker as a result of these changes in Windows 11. I see three options going forward:

1. Fix the incompatibility by reimplementing and/or adjusting the code to work with the new taskbar implementation of Windows 11.
2. Create a new tool (11 Taskbar Tweaker?) or come up with a new solution to achieve the customization that 7+ Taskbar Tweaker provides for Windows 10 and below.
3. Do nothing and give up on taskbar customization for Windows 11.

I’ll do my best to go with option 1 or 2, not 3. I need to get more familiar with the new technology and implementation, and I also want to wait and see whether new customization options are added to the new taskbar in newer builds. For now, I lean towards option 2, but I don’t promise feature parity, and currently I can’t tell when I’ll have something to show.

• Nobody knows how much warming will occur in the next century. The computer models vary by 400 percent, de facto proof that nobody knows. But if I had to guess—the only thing anyone is doing, really—I would guess the increase will be 0.812436 degrees C. There is no evidence that my guess about the state of the world one hundred years from now is any better or worse than anyone else’s. (We can’t “assess” the future, nor can we “predict” it. These are euphemisms. We can only guess. An informed guess is just a guess.)

• I suspect that part of the observed surface warming will ultimately be attributable to human activity. I suspect that the principal human effect will come from land use, and that the atmospheric component will be minor.
  Before making expensive policy decisions on the basis of climate models, I think it is reasonable to require that those models predict future temperatures accurately for a period of ten years. Twenty would be better.

• I think for anyone to believe in impending resource scarcity, after two hundred years of such false alarms, is kind of weird. I don’t know whether such a belief today is best ascribed to ignorance of history, sclerotic dogmatism, unhealthy love of Malthus, or simple pigheadedness, but it is evidently a hardy perennial in human calculation.

• There are many reasons to shift away from fossil fuels, and we will do so in the next century without legislation, financial incentives, carbon-conservation programs, or the interminable yammering of fearmongers. So far as I know, nobody had to ban horse transport in the early twentieth century. //

• The current near-hysterical preoccupation with safety is at best a waste of resources and a crimp on the human spirit, and at worst an invitation to totalitarianism. Public education is desperately needed.

• I conclude that most environmental “principles” (such as sustainable development or the precautionary principle) have the effect of preserving the economic advantages of the West and thus constitute modern imperialism toward the developing world. It is a nice way of saying, “We got ours and we don’t want you to get yours, because you’ll cause too much pollution.”

• The “precautionary principle,” properly applied, forbids the precautionary principle. It is self-contradictory. The precautionary principle therefore cannot be spoken of in terms that are too harsh.

Unlike its rival, Intel, AMD saw the need for battery efficient chips. It bet better than Intel. It will now be competitively disadvantaged by the United States government becoming Intel’s largest single shareholder.

Apple, too, is a major player in microchip architecture. Using ARM chip architecture, which is very power efficient, Apple engineers and manufactures all its chips for its devices. The Mac uses M-chips. The iPad Pro uses M-chips. Apple’s other devices use A-series chips. Many of Apple’s processing features run faster with less power than Intel’s chips.

But, again, the United States now is the largest shareholder of Intel, which puts every other microchip company at a disadvantage. Why? Because Intel now has subsidy by taxpayers. Instead of having to let the creative destruction of the market place pick apart Intel, which has chronically made bad decisions, the leadership that made those bad decisions has been rewarded.

Uncle Sam insists it will exercise no voting with its stock. But the fine print of the deal shows Uncle Sam is getting common stock with voting rights. Saying it will not vote and not actually voting are two different things. If the situation continues and a Democrat takes back the White House, you will see ESG and DEI explode as Intel seeks to humor its largest shareholder.

This is another step down a dangerous path. Defenders will say the government bailed out Fannie and Freddie. The government bailed out General Motors. The government even bailed out Chrysler. //

The government keeps making companies too big to fail and hiding behind “national security” as the excuse. In fact, that has become the consensus talking point among defenders who will say things like, “I’m uncomfortable with this, but national security…”. It is an excuse and justification, but not reality.

Intel can now ignore most of its other shareholders. Its competitors now face a company subsidized unfairly by taxpayers. Its business decisions get to shift with the whims of political administrations.

This is a terrible decision. Donald Trump has beaten Mamdani to seizing the means of production.

The miracles in the New Testament were not recorded by imbeciles, and thousands witnessed them. You are welcome to deny all of the New Testament as mythology, but you are not free to make up nonsensical pseudo-scientific explanations for phenomena when you've obviously never read the document you're critiquing and expect not to be mocked. //

Quiverfull
4 hours ago
Putting the theological arguments aside (which I/you could write books about), if you fed a bunch of fish that had died in that fashion to folks in Galilee, it would've been recorded in secular history as a mass die-off of people!

streiff Quiverfull
3 hours ago
exactly and the locals would've balked at eating dead fish floating in the surface because they would've assumed they were sick or poisoned.

Building on the case for the intelligent design of life that he developed in Signature in the Cell and Darwin’s Doubt, Meyer demonstrates how discoveries in cosmology and physics coupled with those in biology help to establish the identity of the designing intelligence behind life and the universe.

Meyer argues that theism — with its affirmation of a transcendent, intelligent and active creator — best explains the evidence we have concerning biological and cosmological origins. Previously Meyer refrained from attempting to answer questions about “who” might have designed life. Now he provides an evidence-based answer to perhaps the ultimate mystery of the universe. In so doing, he reveals a stunning conclusion: the data support not just the existence of an intelligent designer of some kind — but the existence of a personal God.

A new portrait of the founding father challenges the long-held perception of Thomas Jefferson as a benevolent slaveholder. //

With five simple words in the Declaration of Independence—“all men are created equal”—Thomas Jefferson undid Aristotle’s ancient formula, which had governed human affairs until 1776: “From the hour of their birth, some men are marked out for subjection, others for rule.” In his original draft of the Declaration, in soaring, damning, fiery prose, Jefferson denounced the slave trade as an “execrable commerce ...this assemblage of horrors,” a “cruel war against human nature itself, violating its most sacred rights of life & liberties.” As historian John Chester Miller put it, “The inclusion of Jefferson’s strictures on slavery and the slave trade would have committed the United States to the abolition of slavery.”

That was the way it was interpreted by some of those who read it at the time as well. Massachusetts freed its slaves on the strength of the Declaration of Independence, weaving Jefferson’s language into the state constitution of 1780. The meaning of “all men” sounded equally clear, and so disturbing to the authors of the constitutions of six Southern states that they emended Jefferson’s wording. “All freemen,” they wrote in their founding documents, “are equal.” The authors of those state constitutions knew what Jefferson meant, and could not accept it. The Continental Congress ultimately struck the passage because South Carolina and Georgia, crying out for more slaves, would not abide shutting down the market. //

But in the 1790s, Davis continues, “the most remarkable thing about Jefferson’s stand on slavery is his immense silence.” And later, Davis finds, Jefferson’s emancipation efforts “virtually ceased.”

Somewhere in a short span of years during the 1780s and into the early 1790s, a transformation came over Jefferson.

A simple, easy to use PowerShell script to remove pre-installed apps, disable telemetry, as well as perform various other changes to customize, declutter and improve your Windows experience. Win11Debloat works for both Windows 10 and Windows 11.

Ersatz-11 emulates an entire DEC PDP-11 system in software while running on low-cost PC hardware. It outperforms all of the hardware PDP-11 replacements on the market, outstripping them by a particularly wide margin in disk-intensive applications.

The PDP-11 was, and is, an extremely successful and influential family of machines which has spanned over two decades from the early 1970s through the mid 1990s. This note is an attempt to gather some of the knowledge on this family and present it for the benefit of those who are enthusiasts, curious, or downright confused as to what the -11 was and is, and how it related and still relates to its world.

What operating systems were written for the PDP-11?

Tldr: Boot into safe mode, and restart. Voila.

I cloned my 970 Evo Plus to a 990 Pro Put the 990 in place of the 970 and moved the latter to another m.2 slot. Cloned with clonezilla. Booted into windows, but it seemingly booted onto the 970, as it said the 990 had a "collision" (of ids). So, after that I took out the 970.... Got this error. Fix was to boot into safe mode, and it magically worked.

Launched in 1975, the probe outlived its 90-day mission by years and set the standard for Mars landings //

It's been 50 years since NASA sent Viking 1 on a mission to Mars.

Launched on a Titan-Centaur rocket from Complex 41 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station on August 20, 1975, Viking 1 was one of a pair of probes sent to land on Mars.

Viking 1 consisted of an orbiter and a lander and followed earlier US missions to Mars that had begun with Mariner 4 in 1964, continuing with the Mariner 6 and 7 flybys, and the Mariner 9 Mars orbital mission. //

The Viking 1 spacecraft arrived in orbit around Mars on June 19, 1976.

Power came from a pair of 35 W radioisotope thermoelectric generators (RTGs), connected in series on top of the lander. According to NASA [PDF], "the computer was one of the greatest technical challenges of Viking." There were two general-purpose computer channels, each with a storage capacity of 18,000 words. One was active while the other was in reserve. There was also a tape recorder.

Viking 1 was an unparalleled success. The orbiter and lander lasted far longer than initial expectations. The orbiter was eventually shut down in August 1980 after it ran out of attitude control propellant. It had begun to run low in 1978, but engineers were able to eke it out for a further two years. The lander kept on going until its final transmission on November 11, 1982.

Unfortunately, the lander's failure wasn't due to its hardware or the harsh environment of Mars. It was instead "a faulty command sent from Earth," according to NASA. The command resulted in loss of communication. Controllers spent the next six and a half months attempting to regain contact with the lander before the overall mission came to an end on May 21, 1983.

It is debatable how much longer the lander could have lasted. Viking 2's lander transmitted data until April 12, 1980, but its batteries eventually failed. Both landers and their respective orbiters had operated far beyond their planned mission lifetimes.