Yeah, Nothing Saturday

      I was busy with the fiction critique group -- those folks are good writers and getting steadily better -- and the news has done nothing to disabuse me of the belief that we've gotten ourselves locked into the dumbest timeline.

     This morning (1:30 a.m., really the middle of the night), the Secret Service shot and killed a time traveler nutjob man who'd got inside the security perimeter at Mar-A-Lago carrying a shotgun and a gas can and didn't surrender when confronted.  The President has been rather publicly in Washington, DC this weekend, the club has Head-of-State level physical security layered atop the usual "private resort for the insanely wealthy" stuff and the U. S. Secret Service is known to be very good at what they do, which makes the entire thing fractally dumb.  (Unless, I suppose, he was targeting some other member of the exclusive club, in which case it's just ordinarily stupid, though on a grand scale.  But how likely is that?)

     Moral consistency and my own crazy notions both insist that heads of state (etc.) ought not be assassinated.  Oh, I think a lot of them are crooks, fools or villains; when it comes to U. S. Presidents and members of Congress alone, I've got lists and lists of them who should have been hauled up on various charges, tried and, if convicted, punished as the law requires.  A few of them were even run through parts of the process, though I think not nearly enough.

     Don't tell me those politicians should be above the law or immune from prosecution, "so they'll be free to make hard decisions;" that's let-George-do-it irresponsibility; it's lazy bullshit.  Presidents and Congress can equip young men (and women) with explosives and firearms and send them off in the middle of the night, singly or en masse, to breach defenses and do harm to people and property, and deciding to do so should not be undertaken lightly nor free from consequences.  If it's wrong to undertake such actions against a heavily defended Head of State, it's even more wrong when done to any more vulnerable target.  They ought to think it over and be answerable for it on multiple levels when they do wrong.

     But, hey, dumbest timeline: I don't expect things to get any better or make more sense any time soon.  We're stuck in this chair for the entire duration of the root canal and the only way to get through it is to go through it.  I hope it doesn't hurt too much.

Half A Vote

     There's a former friend who's annoyed at me.  You see, we didn't vote for the same person for President, and he thinks I stopped being his friend because he didn't vote for Kamela Harris.

     "You couldn't possibly have thought I'd vote for a Democrat!"

     You know what?  I didn't.  But I didn't think he'd vote for a thuggish authoritarian who had, at best, egged on an unsuccessful coup, either.  That's why we're not friends any more.  I don't hate him; he's not a bad guy himself, despite making such a bad choice; but I'm not friends with authoritarians, period.

     Too many people treat voting as a binary choice, and back themselves into a corner, trying to justify their pick.

     Even when there are only two choices on the ballet, you always have three choices.  Can't stand one of 'em and the other is someone who shouldn't have the job?  Then skip the contest!  Yeah, people keep saying, "Hold your nose and vote," and you really should take a look at all the candidates; could be the positives of one will outweigh their negatives, or you can be pretty sure one of the other branches of government will keep them in line.*  But if not, why not just pass?  A vote is a reward, and if neither one has earned it, withhold it.  Or go shopping for a third party candidate, because a vote is also a signal, and if the lunatic from the steam-clean-the-sewers party gets a big pile of votes, that part of the electorate is telling candidates they think it's time to get down there and flush out the pipes.

     Voting for the same party you always have and then retconning your choice no matter how big a stinker the person is?  That's a bad approach.  It's lazy and thoughtless.

     I get that in the 2024 election, a lot of voters decided they were okay with cult-of-personality neo-fascism, or whatever the historians are going to call it, and that's one problem; but another problem, maybe a worse one, is that big block of voters just went into the booth and pulled the lever for R (or D) because they always do, having already made up reasons why that was okay, or coming up with them afterwards, and for the Rs of that group, sunk-costs fallacy means many of them still are.  Telling them "you voted for this" only reinforces it, no matter how bad prices get or how many people Federal almost-police kill in the streets and detention camps.

     Vote smarter.
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* I admit it, I'm a big fan of divided government.  I think having an Executive from one party and a majority of the other in the legislature keeps them focused on two things: the tasks that actually need to get done, and harmless sparring with one another.  With both those branches under one party's thumb, they start servicing their base with frippery and bullshit instead of ghetting down to useful work, and if they've got the Judicial branch, too, look the hell out.

Not In The Job Parameters

     U.S forces, by Presidential directive, are stacking up within striking distance of Iran -- and look, he can do that, shuffle the U. S. military around on U.S. soil, the open sea and (by agreement) the territory of our allies.  The job includes "Commander in Chief," after all.

     What no President can do -- Republican, Democrat, Whig or George Washington standing clear of parties in disgust -- is start or declare a war.  That's up to Congress, the majority of whose members have to worry about re-election in the very near term, whose consensus contains the aggregate wisdom of 535 men and women (stop laughing).

     Of course you wouldn't know that from the way our current President is talking about it, as he opens the first meeting of his "Board of Peace."  Nope, he says we'll know his plans for using armed forces against Iran in a week or ten days.

     That ain't how it works.  I'm sure my comment filters will get a few "Nuh-unh, he can, too, and besides [other President] did it."  I don't care.  The ones who have pulled that kind of trick in the past were also in the wrong, and the incumbent has already broken the rules by kidnapping a foreign head of state in a military incursion.  It doesn't matter that the guy they grabbed was a bad guy; it doesn't matter if he was helping out drug smugglers, masterminding the whole drug-gang show or, despite being a bloody-handed autocrat busy running his country into the ground, had stood well clear of the whole dope thing: other countries still aren't supposed to send soldiers in and grab him.  Ya don't do it.  There is -- well, there was -- a rules-based international order; there are ways to line up a criminal leader for arrest and trial (and yes, they're pretty toothless as long as he or she is careful where they go visiting) but they do not include TV plots from Mission: Impossible or The A-Team.

     Russia, the smallest and weakest of what passes for a Great Power these days -- and they wouldn't even be one, without the nuke in their teeth and the mad gleam in their eye -- has been hacking away at the notion of having rules for the game ever since they grabbed the Crimean peninsula.  Red China would like to (little matter of Taiwan), but all their neighbors are watching.  Our President shouldn't be picking up an axe and joining in.

     But he has been and he still is.  In a better timeline, Congress would be straining at the reins, digging its heels like a mule.  This Congress is more like a Pomeranian purse-dog: yappy and occasionally it makes a smelly little mess in there, but mostly it's just riding along.

You Want The Truth?

     Me, I'd just as soon have my MGB fixed and get to wear a shiny hat.  The truth doesn't change anything. 

     But the truth about the Epstein files is, the people with the most power -- not necessarily in the files themselves and possibly entirely unconnected from that sort of wrongdoing (or maybe in the thick of it) -- are busy, in a kind of jostling and organic way, picking out patsys from the next ranks down, most of whom will have been up to some kind of Epstein-related lawbreaking anyway.  They'll throw 'em to the wolves, er, public (and courts) and those malefactors will get whatever they get, based mostly on how good their lawyers are.

     That's it.  That's what will happen.  No matter what's in there or how damning it is.  The highest and mightiest will not be felled, unless there is also some enormous national-security stuff involving the U.S. and/or the UK and Europe, or staggeringly huge sums of money.  Because none of these politicians -- not one! -- gives a single, solitary gosh-darn-it over what happened to a bunch of cute girls at the hands of creepy, wealthy men.  They all know in their grisliest viscera that's just the way of the world: girls and young women are a consumable commodity to the wealthiest people.

     I'd like to tell you different.  I'd like to, but I can't.

About Those Headlights

      Okay, I thought the normal beams were dim.  The lead guy at the oil-change place laughed when he checked them.  His trainee looked puzzled and said, "What?"

     "That lady's headlights are out."

     I've been driving with only the running lights working (unless I had the high beams on), which explains why they were so pitiful.  Oh, they're kind of white, and they do light the road some, which works okay if there are streetlights -- but it means oncoming headlights are dazzling in comparison.  And they live in the same twin-bulb fixture as the actual headlights, so if you look at them during the day, they do light up, they just look like lousy lights.

     They're okay now.  The drive home tonight was a lot better than any since it started getting dark early.

     Changing the bulbs was as dusty-dirty as I expected, and they had three men on the job.  It would have taken me four times as long, if not longer, so I'm resigned to the additional cost.  And I got the oil changed at the same time, so it counts as a win.

     Bonus, sort of: they slapped a battery analyzer on it, just in case, and my battery could be happier than it is.  They don't sell 'em but they suggested I might want to shop around before too long.

Successfully Marketed To

     I have been chairing an online writing-critique group for over a year now, and while the microphone in my laptop is more than adequate to the task -- it's a MacBook Air, bought during the pandemic specially for online meetings -- I've been wanting to try something else.

     Vintage microphones appeal to me and I own a few; but they're fragile for such everyday use, and interfacing them to a computer calls for extra hardware.  I'm especially fond of the classic RCA ribbon microphones, like the Type 44, a ribbon mike nearly as big as your head, with an instantly-recognizable angular case.  RCA also made a "Junior" velocity microphone, the 74-B, about half the size.  I used to own one of the big ones, but sold it when I was between jobs.  Even forty years ago, the price of one of those would buy a lot of meals.

     These days, you can hardly look at an original Model 44 for under $4000, and don't expect nice plating.  Modern exact-copy versions from AEA sell for that much and more; there's at least one other near-match model that goes for less but it's still four figures.

     The little 74-B is scarce, and prices are equally stratospheric.  Electro-Voice made a similar-looking line of mikes about the same size that commands less on the used market, and I own one that's still got the original ribbon pickup or "motor." The problem with those is they're a dice roll: the factory "repair" was a rough replacement of the fragile ribbon with the innards of a rugged dynamic microphone, and any E-V ribbon mike you find has about a two to one chance of having been "repaired" that way.

     A company called Behringer makes audio gear.  Much of it is popular with podcasters and not too many years ago, they started making old-timey-looking mikes with modern condenser elements.  One of them is the BV-44, which despite the name is just about the same size as an RCA 74-B.  It's got a USB output, so it plugs right into a computer.  And it sells for the cost of a fancy dinner, if you don't go too wild with the sides and skip dessert.  I've been looking at them for several years and I finally bought one.  It's not a ribbon mike, but even inexpensive condenser mics sound pretty good these days. 

     There's an amusing sidenote to this.  If you look at the working microphones of this style, they've all got a metal grille with an offset pattern of round holes, staggered like brickwork.  This provides the most open area, so the sound can get in.  (There's thin cloth inside the grille, too, and the whole thing is supposed to cut down on wind noise and the impact of plosive sounds on the mike element.)  In the old days, rather than risk an expensive mike as a photo prop, radio networks used wooden models, cut and painted to match the microphones, for publicity shots and advertising photos -- but the holes in the "grille" of the prop version were drilled into the wood block in a grid pattern.  About half of Behringer's advertising art shows a grid pattern of holes in the BV-44 grille, too -- but the real thing has an offset pattern, just like the big boys and for the same reason.  I suspect the art department got out a little ahead of the engineering and production side.

Our Fog

      Every once in awhile, Indianapolis remembers it started out as a swamp, and throws out a pea-soup fog of impressive thickness.

     Oh, there's fog all over central Indiana this morning, tapering off into Illinois, but the heart of the city holds it cupped, like someone with an unexpected handful of overcooked oatmeal and nowhere to put it down.  From the front windows of Roseholme Cottage, the houses across the street are mist-wrapped mysteries, hazy shapes bulking from the gray that might conceal anything (but probably only nurses, retired dog-walkers and a guy who deals in used vehicles of questionable provenance).

     My car has gone somewhat foggy, too.  A week ago Sunday, I worked a late shift and on the way home,  noticed the normal-beam headlights were unaccountably dim.  Most of my night driving is on well-lit city streets, but there's a stretch along a nicely-wooded road, and thinking back, I realized I'd been having more and more trouble there with the headlights of oncoming cars.  I'd been blaming bright HID and LED bulbs, but those didn't suddenly appear on the market last November.

     It's time to replace the headlight bulbs of my car,* a task that carmakers have been making more and more awkward all my life.  It looks like the passenger-side change requires removing a large plastic cover (held with snap-in plastic rivets), unbolting the windshield-washer reservoir and setting it aside, popping out a twist-to-remove weatherproof cover (with wires through it) and reaching into the back of the light housing, where the socket comes out, bulb and all, in another quarter-turn-twist assembly.  At that point, you can finally unlatch the bulb from its socket and reverse the whole process.  The driver's side requires a similar procedure, minus the big plastic cover and bottle of windshield goop.

     Or I could just go to the oil-change place and have them do it while getting fresh oil and filters, which is what I will probably do.  It's filthy work, outdoors, and well, I'd as soon not.
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* My previous string of Hyundai Accents were successively named The Hot Needle of Inquiry, The Hotter Needle of Inquiry and either The Hottest Needle of Inquiry or The Needle of Inquiry So Hot You Would Just Plotz.  The Lexuses (Lexii?) have been much nicer, and I have never been sure if they should be The Pride of Chanur, The Solar Queen, or Unexpected Expense, but in either case, the present one rates a II after it.  (I tried The Skylark of Space for the first one, but it didn't stick.)  And bonus points to anyone who recognizes where all of the ship names comes from -- or all except the last, which was my own invention but is unlikely to be unique. 

Back Drying -- For Now

     The replacement fan impeller for my dryer arrived Friday.  I'm not terribly superstitious, but I was tired; I waited until Saturday to install it.

     The project didn't start well.  I assumed I needed to remove the drum, and when I got that far, I found that I didn't remember how.  There's a little trick to it.  Checking with an online repair video -- definitely not AI -- I learned the drum stays put for a fan replacement.  I rethreaded the belt (I'll be back to that) and took the front off the fan housing, a half-dozen sheet metal screws.  Sure enough, the fan had broken all around the hub, as expected.  I still needed to remove a lint and hair ball, a circlip and a round spring clamp.  The fuzz took a lot of work with regular needlenose pliers; it was really compressed.  For the next step, I could have sworn I had circlip pliers, but apparently I do not.

     You can use tiny round-needlenose pliers to remove a circlip, but the task requires patience.  The clip tends to slip off the tapering round jaws.  It took me five tries.  (And knowing the ways of circlips, I'd ordered a new one; in fact, I paid more for the parts because the cheaper places didn't stock them.)  Somehow the thing did not fly away to Parts Unknown when removed.  The clamp is easy; it's got three "ears" that stick up, two on one side and one on the other, and you just grab them with a pair of pliers and lift it off the hub.  The hub came off in pieces and the rest of the fan followed.  I used a cloth to remove the big chunks of lint and plastic and vacuumed the rest out before starting to install the new impeller.

     It wouldn't go on.  The shaft is D-shaped and everything needs to be lined up just right -- but it wouldn't go on even then.  It started and then stuck. I pried it off and cleaned the motor shaft with a rag.  It didn't help much.  I took it back off and cleaned up sprue around the opening with my pocket knife.  That worked a little better, but it didn't go far when I started it on the motor shaft..

     The instruction video had listed a deep-well 9/16" socket and a soft-headed hammer, showing how to tap the impeller in place.  I had them sitting ready, and proceeded to carefully apply force, expecting the worst.

     Nope.  Bit by bit, whack by whack, the impeller settled home.  I installed the new spring clamp around the hub, and then tackled the circlip.  It isn't any easier to use the wrong tool to install them than to remove them; after six tries, I got it about three-quarters engaged and popped it the rest of the way into the groove.

     From that point, reassembly is, as they say, the opposite of disassembly: cover, brace, feet (the fan cover fastens to the bottom of the chassis at two points), then the front of the dryer goes back on, two clips at the base that fit into slots, re-installation of the door switch in its holder, two sheet-metal screws at the top to hold the front to the sides (making sure the alignment pins are in their corresponding holes). Next, the wiring goes back in its clips and the top is lowered and latched.

     Tam came downstairs for the plugging in, exhaust-duct connection and, at last, the test run.  I set the dryer to run without heat and pushed the start button.

     It ran, and we looked at each other.  Whattaya know!  "Tam, keep an eye on it.  I'm going to check the exhaust opening."

     Outside, the little louvers had popped up, and there was a scattering of plastic fragments in the flowerbed, the same color as the broken fan.  Clean air was coming out of the vent.  I yelled, "It looks okay," into it and came back inside.  We watched the dryer run a little while longer.  It was...mostly smooth.

     Mostly.  There's a little vibration and rumble.  You can't see the drive pulley (it's on the back of the motor that the fan is on the front of) without removing the drum, but when I restrung the belt, it felt a little rough.  So I'm pretty sure that's going to be the next project.  I vacuumed a lot of drive-belt particles from the bottom of the dryer, too.

     Today, I'm on the third load of drying, and the machine is still running and still rumbling -- no worse, but no better, either.  I think I'm going to skip machine-drying my tennis shoes for awhile; even with pillows along for the ride,* they thump around pretty hard, and the drive pulley is the same decades-old plastic as the fan impeller. (Update: no, it's metal.  The tension idler is plastic but felt okay.  I may have worn out the support rollers I replaced a few years ago.)
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* This is the best trick I know for washing trainers: add a pair of pillows!  They keep action in the washer from becoming too chaotic, cushion the leaping-around in the dryer, and it fluffs your pillows at the same time!  But it's a lot of mass in motion with the shoes alone, and when you add wet pillows (washer) or damp ones (dryer) as well, it's a lot of load.  If things are going to break, that's going to make it happen sooner.

He Said What?

      Look, if you're going to put your political party forward as the party of moral probity and traditional virtues, admitting (or even claiming) you have snorted cocaine from the seat of a toilet should be an absolute bar to holding any public office, ever.  Period.

     And yet....


     I don't think we should cut politicians much slack for having smoked pot; it remains Federally illegal and it was against most or all state laws when our known pot smokers did so, even if they were only smoking it for the articles didn't inhale.  Drinking to excess is reprehensible, especially while in office.  But these are now vices at the outer edge of social acceptability, legal in many places under the proper circumstances.  Using cocaine...is not.  Snorting Bolivian Marching Powder off the seat of a commode previously used for its intended purposes is way beyond the pale.  Even joking about it (and make no mistake, that will be the face-saving retcon, despite the story having been told in utter seriousness) indicates a marked degeneracy.

     Many people in the current Administration make my skin crawl, and none more than our Secretary of Health and Human Services.

A Book And Some History

     Paperback books really got their start after World War Two as the pulp magazines were fading away -- but Uncle Sam gave them one heck of a jumpstart.

     As anyone who've served in our armed forces can tell you, service life, even during a global war, consists of a great deal of "hurry up and wait."  Once the traditional idle vices of the soldier and sailor have been used up -- complaining; telling more or less true stories of misadventure, home life or even derring-do; smoking; and idle speculation about what the brass have in store next -- and the pastimes so often assigned by non-commissioned officers (polishing shoes, peeling vegetables, making beds, shining the shiny things and painting the painted things) have been wrung dry, what's left?

     Assuming fighting, drinking and/or sex are off the table (which they usually were), one of the more portable options was reading.  But supplies of Astounding, G-8's Battle Aces, Spicy Detective or even Ranch Romances were a bit scarce, especially close to the various fronts, and the magazines were too large for easy shipping -- or a uniform pocket.  Besides, the War Department wanted to have a little say about the content; some of those pulps, well, phew.  Hardback books were even more unwieldy than pulp magazines, and they couldn't hand out Reader's Digest to everyone in uniform -- there was a war on, and paper was strictly rationed!

     But that digest size just about fit military pockets-- In 1942, a bunch of publishers, booksellers, librarians and authors got together (only so very slightly encouraged by the Office of War Information) to create the Council on Books in Wartime, under the motto, "Books are weapons in the war of ideas," and they intended for America's warriors to have the best armament possible.  They dreamed up (among other things) Armed Services Editions, genuinely pocket-sized, lightweight paperback books to suit every reader (within reasonable limits).  ASE reprints were hammered out by the millions, everything from William Makepeace Thackeray to Edgar Rice Burroughs, from H. P. Lovecraft to Thurber, Tolstoy and Thoreau.  They were printed on digest-sized presses, two books at a time, and then cut in half, resulting in a book longer than it was tall, just a little smaller than postwar paperbacks.*

     They were widely popular, carried, read, shared, swapped, and passed from hand to hand until they fell apart.

     And then, not too long after V-J Day, the presses...stopped.  As life returned to normal, the paperback book started showing up, filling the spots pulps once occupied.

     Elsewhere and years later, the delightful lunatics at Field Notes, who gave us the motto, "I'm not writing it down to remember it later, I'm writing it down to remember it now," were casting about for a new project.  Their line of notebooks includes constant variation, and they decided to do one rather wider than it was tall -- or vertically-hinged; it's got a cover on both ends for the two orientations, one short and wide, the other tall and skinny.  And someone in their office with an eye to history, or perhaps to recent books about history, saw it was just about the same size as an Armed Services Editions book.  They borrowed the bright primary color covers of the wartime books for theirs, and....

     Ordinary minds might have thought, "H'mm," and moved on.  For Field Notes, it was an opportunity.  ASE printed mystery novels, including a couple by Raymond Chandler, but Dashiell Hammett (a WW I veteran who had re-enlisted in 1942, despite being 48 years old and suffering from tuberculosis) was skipped.

     So they fixed it.  You can buy their brand-new, near-perfect match ASE edition of The Maltese Falcon right now.  It's a good story, well worth reading even if you have seen the film -- and the book and film are a remarkable example of how to go from the page to the screen.  Not everything makes the leap, but it's surprising how much does, and in which ways.  And you can hold in your hand the same kind of book that troops serving in WW II held, passing time in print while an entire world hung in the balance.

     I'm not getting paid to shill for Field Notes.  It's fine by me if you pick up a $1.50 used copy to read instead, or not at all; multiple versions have come out since the story was first serialized and with the film, it's practically an institution.  Copyright was renewed in the mid-1950s, so royalties from the Field Notes reprint will go to whoever presently holds the rights.

     It is indeed the stuff that dreams are made of -- but I'm not asking you the play the sap for me.
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* Alas, the paperback book is no more.  Paperbacks comprise something more than seventy-five percent of the Roberta X Library of Science Fiction, Fantasy and (separately shelved) Mystery, so this hits close to home for me.  Literally; bookshelves are what we have in the dining and living room instead of wallpaper.

Subverting The Future

     The FDA has declined Moderna's request for review of their mRNA flu vaccine, stymieing a path to approval for using the vaccine in the U.S.; that's a fact.

     I can't verify the follow-on yet; the only source is a single user on "X" (formerly Twitter), Leah Libresco Sargeant, who claims, "Moderna's CEO announced the company will no longer invest in new Phase 3 vaccine trials for infectious diseases...," sidelining develpment of mRNA vaccines for Epstein-Barr virus, shingles and herpes because without access to the U.S. market, the effort is likely to lose money.

     Big if true, and a real loss for humanity.  Moderna's a for-profit corporation, not a charity, and they didn't make the rules: if the corporation doesn't make money for its investors, the investors stop investing.

     The flu vaccine rejection is a direct result of RFK, Jr's thumb on the scales.  A successful vaccine is almost literally a "better mousetrap," and Moderna's track record is good -- not a sure thing, but about as close as it gets.  Americans voted for this, and the Senate didn't stop it.

     UPDATE: the quote looks legitimate; the original source appears to be a (paywalled, scroll quickly!) Bloomberg News article, itself quoted in Biospace, which was linked to by a piece at Marginal Revolution.  That's as much as I've found.

Rewriting Everything

     Not only does authoritarianism edit the past and abuse the present -- it wants to the steal the future, too.

     It's especially after the future for women.  The Heritage Foundation has a long-term blueprint to shove women back into "church, children and cooking," whether we want it or not -- and they're utterly serious about it.

     It's fantasy bullshit.  My mother was born in 1931, to parents who were born in the 19th Century.  Her mother was a schoolteacher who raised six children, ran a household, and worked all her life, at paying jobs and charity work.  My Mom worked full-time until her first child, worked part-time afterward, was a Girl Scout troop leader and, when my baby brother was older, a Cub Scout Den Mother; but by then, she was already working full-time again, too.

     She kept house all along, and did most of the cooking (dishes and routine gardening fell to the children when we were old enough, followed by lawn care and eventually some of the cooking and other household chores), and her jobs weren't inconsequential; starting as a secretary, she became an insurance adjuster, adjuster/manager, and ended up in the company's main office, handling claims running to a million dollars and more.   Mom and her mother were lifelong Republicans, active in their churches, and involved in local politics; but they certainly don't fit the mold today's conservatives would condemn them to.  And yet there they are, square in the past Heritage is busy lying about.

     This is -- as I wrote yesterday -- dictator stuff, and it aligns squarely with the social roles the WW II Axis powers assigned to women.

     For all their red, white and blue, flag-waving, publicly-praying poses, Mr. Trump's party is selling what the West fought to stop.  Polling suggests it's not quite working for them, but bear in mind that Axis leaders never let a little thing like public opinion get in their way.  Americans need to keep pushing back.