11/06/2026
11/01/2026
Thoughts On A Sunday
There’s something I’d like to mention right at the start: For some reason my humble little blog saw over 650,000 visitors in October. I have no idea why. At best I might see less than a tenth of that every month. I only post three days a week, and only one post on each of those three days. My stats page also says I have had over 3.3 million visitors over the past 24 years. (There are a couple of year’s worth of data missing as I did host this blog on other platforms here and there, but I doubt that would have a major effect on the visitor count.) Oh, and I am not boasting as I really haven’t paid a lot of attention to the blog stats. I usually look at the stats to see which posts saw traffic over previous month. I hadn’t paid attention to the weekly or monthly stats
I must be doing something right. Now if I could only figure out how to fix the commenting so I can turn it back on….
It was Halloween yesterday and the little ghosties and goblins were out last night trick or treating. We generally don’t see any here at The Gulch as we are off the beaten path and we don’t have any families in my neighborhood with kids. The same was true over at The Manse. (Interestingly enough the two are on opposites sides of the same hill.) Both The Gulch and The Manse are in neighborhoods that have about half of the homes being seasonal residences that are not presently occupied by the owners. Many of the ‘seasonal’ families do have children, but we only see them in the summer, something that isn’t all that surprising in a town that is basically a ‘lake’ town.
The kids who were trick or treating last night most likely went to our ‘downtown’ village which has a lot of homes and where the main roads are closed to vehicular traffic, making it safer for the kids walking from home to home. From my understanding it was quite busy which is something nice to hear.
The first day back on Standard Time has been disconcerting. I know my cat certainly hasn’t liked it as it meant she got fed an hour later than usual this morning and she let me know her displeasure.
I have never cared for the twice yearly change and would be quite pleased to stay on DST year round. That we live on the eastern edge on the Eastern Time Zone certainly has something to do with it. Were we to remain on Standard Time year round we could look forward to sunrise on June 21st taking place at 4:06AM here at The Manse. Thanks but no thanks. I’d rather have a late sunrise (8:15AM) on the first day of Winter and have sunset at past 5PM that same day. Some claim it would be dangerous for kids to be going to school in the dark, but for a lot of kids around here that’s going to happen anyway as some have to catch a school bus at 6AM to get to school on time which is more than an hour before sunrise when on Standard Time. As I have said more than once, I think New Hampshire and Maine should stay on DST year round, or change from the Eastern Time Zone to the Atlantic Time Zone if we have to remain on Standard Time.
I will be working the polls on Tuesday, being an election official and all that. It will be a long day that starts well before the polls open a 7AM and it won’t end until well after the polls close at 7PM. If history serves as any example I expect we won’t finish the hand counts (mostly write-ins) and finalizing and signing the vote tallies until 9PM. If nothing else, this election will certainly be interesting.
Is it time to abandon ObamaCare, aka ACA? It certainly hasn’t kept its promises as it has seen health insurance premiums rise while also reducing the amount of health care available. Some are saying that was its purpose to begin with, to force socialized medicine upon us.
The more I look the more I am beginning to thinks that is indeed the case. It doesn’t help that it looks like Obamacare premiums are expected to rise 13% next year.
Sometimes parody is closer to the truth than most people realize. All we need to do is look to Alaska to see how that may be the case.
Somehow, this doesn’t seem so farfteched.
This is an abbreviated version of TOAS as I have had to deal with a slight problem rather unexpectedly. It’s nothing to worry about. Rather it’s something annoying that I can’t put aside easily.
This has been the news from Lake Winnipesaukee where the weather can’t seem to make up its mind, most of the leaves here at The Gulch have fallen from the trees, and where I’ll have to clean the gutters at the front of the house tomorrow after work.
I must be doing something right. Now if I could only figure out how to fix the commenting so I can turn it back on….
==++++++==
It was Halloween yesterday and the little ghosties and goblins were out last night trick or treating. We generally don’t see any here at The Gulch as we are off the beaten path and we don’t have any families in my neighborhood with kids. The same was true over at The Manse. (Interestingly enough the two are on opposites sides of the same hill.) Both The Gulch and The Manse are in neighborhoods that have about half of the homes being seasonal residences that are not presently occupied by the owners. Many of the ‘seasonal’ families do have children, but we only see them in the summer, something that isn’t all that surprising in a town that is basically a ‘lake’ town.
The kids who were trick or treating last night most likely went to our ‘downtown’ village which has a lot of homes and where the main roads are closed to vehicular traffic, making it safer for the kids walking from home to home. From my understanding it was quite busy which is something nice to hear.
==++++++==
The first day back on Standard Time has been disconcerting. I know my cat certainly hasn’t liked it as it meant she got fed an hour later than usual this morning and she let me know her displeasure.
I have never cared for the twice yearly change and would be quite pleased to stay on DST year round. That we live on the eastern edge on the Eastern Time Zone certainly has something to do with it. Were we to remain on Standard Time year round we could look forward to sunrise on June 21st taking place at 4:06AM here at The Manse. Thanks but no thanks. I’d rather have a late sunrise (8:15AM) on the first day of Winter and have sunset at past 5PM that same day. Some claim it would be dangerous for kids to be going to school in the dark, but for a lot of kids around here that’s going to happen anyway as some have to catch a school bus at 6AM to get to school on time which is more than an hour before sunrise when on Standard Time. As I have said more than once, I think New Hampshire and Maine should stay on DST year round, or change from the Eastern Time Zone to the Atlantic Time Zone if we have to remain on Standard Time.
==++++++==
I will be working the polls on Tuesday, being an election official and all that. It will be a long day that starts well before the polls open a 7AM and it won’t end until well after the polls close at 7PM. If history serves as any example I expect we won’t finish the hand counts (mostly write-ins) and finalizing and signing the vote tallies until 9PM. If nothing else, this election will certainly be interesting.
==++++++==
Is it time to abandon ObamaCare, aka ACA? It certainly hasn’t kept its promises as it has seen health insurance premiums rise while also reducing the amount of health care available. Some are saying that was its purpose to begin with, to force socialized medicine upon us.
The more I look the more I am beginning to thinks that is indeed the case. It doesn’t help that it looks like Obamacare premiums are expected to rise 13% next year.
On Friday, the federal government published the proposed 2027 insurance rates for 30 states with marketplaces managed by the federal government. According to an analysis by the health research organization KFF, the average cost of health insurance premiums in the Affordable Care Act (ACA) marketplace is expected to rise by 13 percent next year.Of course I expect the Democrats will point their fingers at Trump for this even though this is what Obama wanted the ACA to do.
Projections show that premiums for employer plans could rise by about 10 percent in 2027, while premiums for federal workers are also set to increase by over 10 percent.
A KFF poll found that health care affordability remains a major economic concern for voters heading into the midterm elections. Approximately 60 percent of registered voters said they were worried about being able to afford healthcare for themselves and their families.
==++++++==
Sometimes parody is closer to the truth than most people realize. All we need to do is look to Alaska to see how that may be the case.
Alaska Democrats Caught Busing In Thousands Of Dan Sullivans https://t.co/Lz7bRBBynp
— The Babylon Bee (@TheBabylonBee) October 31, 2026
Somehow, this doesn’t seem so farfteched.
==++++++==
This is an abbreviated version of TOAS as I have had to deal with a slight problem rather unexpectedly. It’s nothing to worry about. Rather it’s something annoying that I can’t put aside easily.
This has been the news from Lake Winnipesaukee where the weather can’t seem to make up its mind, most of the leaves here at The Gulch have fallen from the trees, and where I’ll have to clean the gutters at the front of the house tomorrow after work.
10/31/2026
New Nukes? - Part 2
As I promised last week, this post will be bringing forward information about the developing nuclear renaissance taking place, specifically in the US. While most news about this renewal in interest in nuclear power had dealt with the theoretical, it has now shifted into actual hardware and new plants being built. Despite what the proponents of renewable energy have been selling, renewables will never be able to meet our growing demand for electricity, particularly in light the ongoing development and construction of data centers. Since I doubt we’ll see new coal plants being built and natural gas fueled combined cycle powerplants are limited in some areas because there aren’t enough pipelines to feed them, that pretty much leaves nuclear. As I have mentioned both in other posts and comments, “This isn’t your grandfather’s nuclear power.” My post of last week delved into some of the why’s of the push for a return to nuclear power, but not so much the nuts and bolts or the progress that has been made to date. It’s time to fix that lack.
One of the bits of interesting news is that Amazon is funding the construction of a dozen small modular reactors at the site of an old coal power plant in Indiana.
It must also be understood that there isn’t just one reactor technology being used. Some use a more traditional U235 type fuel cycle, some are using pebble bed gas cooled designs, some liquid metal cooled reactor designs, some molten salt reactor (MSR) designs, and some liquid fluorine thorium reactor (LFTR) designs. The one thing they all have in common is that they are not just knockoffs of granddad’s Generation II reactor designs. One of the nice things about the MSR and LFTR designs is that they can use the ‘depleted’ fuel from old Gen II reactors to fuel these new reactors. That can help eliminate the need to store that depleted fuel for 25,000+ years as is done now. We have tons of such fuel sitting in storage casks waiting to be put to use.
A lot of this technology is no longer on the drawing board. It is being built. Some reactors using the new designs have been built and have reached criticality, meaning a self-sustaining nuclear reaction, proving that the designs work. Here’s a look at what’s being done in the US:
It’s not just the US forging ahead with new nuclear power technologies. Believe it or not Denmark has also been a leader in one of these technologies.
I don’t recall seeing this amount of work being done on nuclear power since the early 1960’s. Sorry, I don’t have any memories of the ‘excitement’ of nuclear power in the 1950’s since I was too young. But I saw presentations made at school assemblies about the promise of nuclear power while I was in elementary and junior high school. That there isn’t just one path to create a nuclear power renaissance is promising. That there are also some states, mine included, that want to see such a renaissance, to see a resurgence in the use of nuclear power to meet our present and future energy needs is also promising.
Let’s hope it all comes to be.
One of the bits of interesting news is that Amazon is funding the construction of a dozen small modular reactors at the site of an old coal power plant in Indiana.
Amazon is funding development of a proposed 960-megawatt nuclear plant in Indiana and would be the first customer to buy its power, the companies announced Monday. Utility company American Electric Power (AEP) would operate the plant. X-energy, which designs small modular nuclear reactors and went public in April, would supply the reactors.I have a feeling that this will be a common scenario of those building such nuclear plants to provide power for data centers: selling the excess to the electrical utilities. Since Jeff Bezos’ Amazon is doing this, I have no doubt that Bill Gates Terra Power will use the same model to power his data centers. Call it a “twofer” with the data centers getting the power they need while also making extra money selling power to the utilities. And since these reactors are relatively small compared to the One Big Nuclear Plant of the past and are modular in design and construction, the time to build will be much shorter and the costs a lot less since all of the module components are built on an assembly line rather than being custom built one at a time.
The new power plant would consist of 12 Xe-100 small modular reactors and be located on the site of a demolished coal power plant just south of Terre Haute. The deal is the second commercial agreement between Amazon and X-energy, and it’s three times larger than the first, which was announced two years ago.
Amazon has invested heavily in X-energy, leading a $700 million Series C-1 round in October 2024. The two companies have said they ultimately plan to build 5 gigawatts of new nuclear generating capacity in the U.S. by 2039.
Unlike many newly announced power plants, these reactors would be connected to the public electric grid, though Amazon says the power would also serve its data centers.
It must also be understood that there isn’t just one reactor technology being used. Some use a more traditional U235 type fuel cycle, some are using pebble bed gas cooled designs, some liquid metal cooled reactor designs, some molten salt reactor (MSR) designs, and some liquid fluorine thorium reactor (LFTR) designs. The one thing they all have in common is that they are not just knockoffs of granddad’s Generation II reactor designs. One of the nice things about the MSR and LFTR designs is that they can use the ‘depleted’ fuel from old Gen II reactors to fuel these new reactors. That can help eliminate the need to store that depleted fuel for 25,000+ years as is done now. We have tons of such fuel sitting in storage casks waiting to be put to use.
A lot of this technology is no longer on the drawing board. It is being built. Some reactors using the new designs have been built and have reached criticality, meaning a self-sustaining nuclear reaction, proving that the designs work. Here’s a look at what’s being done in the US:
It’s not just the US forging ahead with new nuclear power technologies. Believe it or not Denmark has also been a leader in one of these technologies.
I don’t recall seeing this amount of work being done on nuclear power since the early 1960’s. Sorry, I don’t have any memories of the ‘excitement’ of nuclear power in the 1950’s since I was too young. But I saw presentations made at school assemblies about the promise of nuclear power while I was in elementary and junior high school. That there isn’t just one path to create a nuclear power renaissance is promising. That there are also some states, mine included, that want to see such a renaissance, to see a resurgence in the use of nuclear power to meet our present and future energy needs is also promising.
Let’s hope it all comes to be.
10/30/2026
10/25/2026
Thoughts On A Sunday
It is fully fall here at the lake. The foliage is just a little past peak color and we’ve been seeing some overnight temperatures at or just above freezing. (No frost here at The Gulch yet.) Summer clothes have been swapped out for fall/winter attire more appropriate for the temperatures and weather. The Official Weekend Pundit Lake Winnipesaukee Runabout has been pulled from the water and I have emptied out the boating gear and done some cleanup and it’s ready for its trip to one of the local boatyards for winterization and shrinkwrapping. Then it’s back to The Farm where it will be until the start of boating season next May.
The trusty RAM 1500 will be having a little more bodywork taken care of and then to one of the local mechanics garages to have the heating looked at and repaired. And then it will have its annual undercoating performed to protect it from winter road conditions (meaning the salt used to keep the roads from freezing up).
There will be some curtains that will need to be swapped out here at The Gulch, replacing sheers with thermals in order to help keep fall and winter chills in abeyance. There are also things that need to be moved in the garage to make it easier to deal with the winter weather once it arrives.
And we haven’t even reached Election Day yet!
I found this on Instapundit earlier and found it intriguing for two reasons as it involves Elon Musk, one pro and one con.
The first paints Musk as a savior as ‘X’ seems to be the only thing keeping democracy alive in France.
The second refers to an “Elon Musk hit piece movie” that flopped bigly in movie theaters and has already been pulled.
It seems that some people only see him as an evil trillionaire who is enslaving the planet and others see him as a self-made trillionaire who is doing things people have only dreamed about doing, has made millionaires of many of his employees (even some of the janitors), and has even more ambitious ideas to expand humanity’s reach outside Earth’s atmosphere.
Yeah, this sounds right on the money.
Nothing more need be said.
Yeah, this is going to work out well. NOT.
Ideologues Try Their Hand At Ordering Up An Electrical Grid Powered Only By “Renewables”
That sounds more like fever dream by folks who are seriously ill.
Something I have been seeing over the past year has becoming more prevalent, that ‘something’ being more people deciding that they no longer want to be held in thrall to Microsoft, and more specifically, Windows 11. While I never really cared for much for Windows, I didn’t particularity dislike it. In fact, I didn’t really have any real problems with it until Windows 11 showed up.
At work Windows has been the “go to” OS for most of our operations. Yes, we did use a version of Linux on some of our higher end instruments as the employed single board computers rather than just a micro-controller and we didn’t have to pay use Linux. But then Windows 11 came out and we found that a lot of our desktops and laptops couldn’t support it as it required more memory, a TPM ‘security’ co-processor, and a few other hardware upgrades. A lot of our computers that were only a few years old couldn’t handle Windows 11. What happened to those computers?
Most were returned to corporate IT for disposal, most likely meaning sold to third parties for resale on the used market. I expect most of those ended up having Linux installed by either the resellers or the new owners. Some of the computers were retained and had Linux loaded for use in the Engineering department for services and programs that didn’t require Windows to operate properly.
Out in the real world we have seen governments of entire countries decide they weren’t going to use Windows any more and have switched or are switching over to Linux. (France is one of those countries.)
One problem a friend has run across with Windows 11 is having to reverify their computer with their online banking and other apps after almost every Windows 11 update. That’s not a good thing.
Am I prejudiced in favor of Linux? Without a doubt. I have seen few downsides to Linux, at least for what I use it for. That there are Linux distributions out there that look and feel like Windows and can run Windows programs is a plus.
If Microsoft keeps angering the customers who depend upon Windows with their ‘changes’ that have made Windows 11 less than friendly, I expect to see even more people and businesses abandoning Microsoft for Linux.
And that’s the news from Lake Winnipesaukee, where the weather has been very nice, the foliage is till quite colorful, and where we don’t care if Monday is coming around again...at least this week.
The trusty RAM 1500 will be having a little more bodywork taken care of and then to one of the local mechanics garages to have the heating looked at and repaired. And then it will have its annual undercoating performed to protect it from winter road conditions (meaning the salt used to keep the roads from freezing up).
There will be some curtains that will need to be swapped out here at The Gulch, replacing sheers with thermals in order to help keep fall and winter chills in abeyance. There are also things that need to be moved in the garage to make it easier to deal with the winter weather once it arrives.
And we haven’t even reached Election Day yet!
==++++++==
I found this on Instapundit earlier and found it intriguing for two reasons as it involves Elon Musk, one pro and one con.
The first paints Musk as a savior as ‘X’ seems to be the only thing keeping democracy alive in France.
The second refers to an “Elon Musk hit piece movie” that flopped bigly in movie theaters and has already been pulled.
It seems that some people only see him as an evil trillionaire who is enslaving the planet and others see him as a self-made trillionaire who is doing things people have only dreamed about doing, has made millionaires of many of his employees (even some of the janitors), and has even more ambitious ideas to expand humanity’s reach outside Earth’s atmosphere.
==++++++==
Yeah, this sounds right on the money.
I get tired of Democrats claiming to be on the “right side of history” when both their past and their present are so utterly sordid and destructive. So, if you are a Democrat, let me tell you about MY side of history and YOUR side of history. My side of history is Cato the Elder, John Locke, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, Irving Babbitt and William F. Buckley. Your side of history is Thomas Hobbes, Karl Marx, Josef Stalin, Mao’s Little Red Book and Noam Chomsky. My side of history is George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt, Martin Luther King, Ronald Reagan and Donald Trump. Your side of history is Tories who fled to Canada, Jefferson Davis, Woodrow Wilson, Bull Connor, George Wallace and Nancy Pelosi. My side of history is freedom of thought, freedom of speech, freedom of religion and spirited debate. Your side of history is ThoughtCrime, Speech Codes, religious persecution and Cancel Culture. My side of history is Brown v. Board of Ed., Loving v. VA, Gitlow v. NY, and Heller v. DC. Your side of history is Dred Scott, Korematsu and Roe v. Wade. My side of history is Jackie Robinson. Your side of history is Colin Kaepernick. My side of history is head held high, standing straight, hand over heart. Your side of history is sullen glances at the ground, kneeling. My side of history is the family as the foundation of society. Your side of history is mutilating confused children. My side of history is the rockets’ red glare. Your side of history is imagine no religion. My side of history is firefighters going up the stairs into the Twin Towers. Your side of history is 28-year-old men playing Call of Duty in their mothers’ basements. My side of history is smoked brisket. Your side of history is a no-foam, no-sugar, soy latte. My side of history is Lincoln freeing the slaves and General Patton liberating Buchenwald. Your side of history is Fort Sumter, the Gulag and Pol Pot’s killing fields. My side of history is Mel Brooks. Your side of history is Amy Schumer. My side of history is all men and women are created equal and endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights. Your side of history is critical theory and only some lives matter. My side of history is 20-year-olds storming Omaha Beach. Your side of history is 20-year-olds in their safe spaces with adult coloring books. My side of history is American men and women disabled by an IED. Your side of history is American men and women disabled by anxiety. My side of history is the Kentucky Rifle, the Springfield 1861, the M1911, the M1 Garand, the M14 and the AR15. Your side of history is whimpering submission. My side of history is Thomas Edison, the Wright Brothers, Apollo 11 and Jonas Salk. Your side of history is “global warming,” 100+ genders and porous cloth masks stopping viruses. My side is of history is laughing babies. Your side of history is selling aborted baby parts on the open market. My side of history is the Sistine Chapel and Monet’s water lilies. Your side of history is an inverted crucifix in a bottle of urine. My side of history is construction. Your side of history is deconstruction. My side of history is civilization. Your side of history is nihilism. And, MOST OF ALL: My side of history is liberty. Your side of history is tyranny. *finis*
— Cynical Publius (@CynicalPublius) May 12, 2023
Nothing more need be said.
==++++++==
Yeah, this is going to work out well. NOT.
Ideologues Try Their Hand At Ordering Up An Electrical Grid Powered Only By “Renewables”
That sounds more like fever dream by folks who are seriously ill.
In my post several days ago on October 18, I recounted the story of how ignorant Chinese Communist Party ideologues in the late 1950s convinced themselves that they knew how to achieve limitless agricultural production by just ordering each community to produce large, arbitrary amounts of food. Do you want to double grain production? Then just plant twice as many seeds in the same acreage! The ideologues had no idea how agriculture actually worked in the real world. Within a couple of years, there was widespread famine, probably the largest in world history. Tens of millions died horrible deaths of starvation.From some of the examples I have seen, I can say that it hasn’t been working out all the well. If you keep reading the linked post above it delves into one such experiment that hasn’t been working all that well because proponents didn’t do their arithmetic. What sounds good doesn’t always meet what the real world dishes out. They still depend on diesel fueled generators to meet their needs because the renewable system provides under a half of the power required. And so it has been in other places that have tried switching a large portion of their electrical generation over to renewables. But that doesn’t mean they won’t keep trying...and failing again and again.
At the end of that post I noted that, here in the West, equally ignorant ideologues were engaged, actually for a few decades now, in ordering up an energy transition to replace electricity generation by fossil fuels with generation mostly by intermittent wind and sun. Today’s energy transition ideologues have a lack of knowledge of how an energy grid works that is comparable to the ignorance of the Chinese ideologues of agriculture. How is this one working out?
==++++++==
Something I have been seeing over the past year has becoming more prevalent, that ‘something’ being more people deciding that they no longer want to be held in thrall to Microsoft, and more specifically, Windows 11. While I never really cared for much for Windows, I didn’t particularity dislike it. In fact, I didn’t really have any real problems with it until Windows 11 showed up.
At work Windows has been the “go to” OS for most of our operations. Yes, we did use a version of Linux on some of our higher end instruments as the employed single board computers rather than just a micro-controller and we didn’t have to pay use Linux. But then Windows 11 came out and we found that a lot of our desktops and laptops couldn’t support it as it required more memory, a TPM ‘security’ co-processor, and a few other hardware upgrades. A lot of our computers that were only a few years old couldn’t handle Windows 11. What happened to those computers?
Most were returned to corporate IT for disposal, most likely meaning sold to third parties for resale on the used market. I expect most of those ended up having Linux installed by either the resellers or the new owners. Some of the computers were retained and had Linux loaded for use in the Engineering department for services and programs that didn’t require Windows to operate properly.
Out in the real world we have seen governments of entire countries decide they weren’t going to use Windows any more and have switched or are switching over to Linux. (France is one of those countries.)
One problem a friend has run across with Windows 11 is having to reverify their computer with their online banking and other apps after almost every Windows 11 update. That’s not a good thing.
Am I prejudiced in favor of Linux? Without a doubt. I have seen few downsides to Linux, at least for what I use it for. That there are Linux distributions out there that look and feel like Windows and can run Windows programs is a plus.
If Microsoft keeps angering the customers who depend upon Windows with their ‘changes’ that have made Windows 11 less than friendly, I expect to see even more people and businesses abandoning Microsoft for Linux.
==++++++==
And that’s the news from Lake Winnipesaukee, where the weather has been very nice, the foliage is till quite colorful, and where we don’t care if Monday is coming around again...at least this week.
10/24/2026
New Nukes?
As I have mentioned here and there, I have been a supporter of nuclear power for a long time. While public sentiment about nuclear power became quite negative in the 80’s and 90’s and construction of new nuclear power plants ended decades ago, attitudes and opinions about nuclear power have been shifting. This is particularly true as new generations of reactor designs have come out and some, such as those used in newer US Navy nuclear submarines and aircraft carriers, have begun operating.
While a lot of people have been pushing the use of ‘renewable’ energy sources, they have major drawbacks with some of them being that they are a lot more expensive than proponents claim, take up a considerable amount of land area for the amount of power they generate, are not readily dispatchable because of their intermittent and weather dependent operation, do not have the promised service life and require a lot more maintenance than promised.
The beauty of nuclear is that it is generally available 24/7/365 regardless of the weather, time of day, or time of the year. The one downside, at least to the old style Generation II reactors, was that they took a long time to build, cost a lot of money to build, particularly when “do overs’ are ordered by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission which requires changes to portions of the plants that have already been completed, and such changes could also mean that two reactors built side-by-side using the same design would not be identical because the NRC mandated changes. However the new nuclear power plant designs, specifically the reactor designs, are easier, faster, and much less expansive to build, with most of them being built in factories and trucked to the construction site for final assembly. These are the so-called Small Modular Reactors, or SMRs, that are the future of nuclear power. Another plus to these new designs is that many of the are what are called “Walk Away Safe” since those designs do not used a high pressure cooling loop and cannot melt down. Instead, they use a system that operates at atmospheric pressure and in a number of cases, uses convection to circulate the coolant rather than pumps. If there are no pumps, there are no worries about pump failures. (Yes, this is an overly simplified picture of the more modern reactor designs, but I didn’t want to get too deep into this during this post. It is something I will delve into in a follow-on post next week.)
The nice thing about these SMRs is that they can be built to provide a specific amount of generation capacity up to about 300MW. The smallest SMR design I’ve read about generates about 15MW of electrical power. The beauty of the wide range of capacity designs means they can be installed almost anywhere depending upon the need and surrounding infrastructure. The can be clustered together to provide a total output equivalent of the older Generation II plants, meaning 800MW to 1500MW. Or they can be dispersed across a wide area in various locations which would not require a lengthy and expensive construction timetable. It could be one reason some companies planning on building hyperscale data centers are investing billions to develop and build SMRs to power their data centers. Both Bill Gates and Jeff Bezos have done so, with Gates investing in TerraPower and Bezos in X-energy. Excess electricity capacity can be sold to the utilities, assuming utilities don’t buy some of those same SMRs to add to their overall generation capacity.
One thing that helps as that we are seeing some states deciding their future is nuclear. New Hampshire’s governor, Kelly Ayotte, has been pushing for a nuclear renaissance here and sees SMRs as the way to go. Goodness knows we could use a less expensive means of generating electricity here.
While a lot of people have been pushing the use of ‘renewable’ energy sources, they have major drawbacks with some of them being that they are a lot more expensive than proponents claim, take up a considerable amount of land area for the amount of power they generate, are not readily dispatchable because of their intermittent and weather dependent operation, do not have the promised service life and require a lot more maintenance than promised.
The beauty of nuclear is that it is generally available 24/7/365 regardless of the weather, time of day, or time of the year. The one downside, at least to the old style Generation II reactors, was that they took a long time to build, cost a lot of money to build, particularly when “do overs’ are ordered by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission which requires changes to portions of the plants that have already been completed, and such changes could also mean that two reactors built side-by-side using the same design would not be identical because the NRC mandated changes. However the new nuclear power plant designs, specifically the reactor designs, are easier, faster, and much less expansive to build, with most of them being built in factories and trucked to the construction site for final assembly. These are the so-called Small Modular Reactors, or SMRs, that are the future of nuclear power. Another plus to these new designs is that many of the are what are called “Walk Away Safe” since those designs do not used a high pressure cooling loop and cannot melt down. Instead, they use a system that operates at atmospheric pressure and in a number of cases, uses convection to circulate the coolant rather than pumps. If there are no pumps, there are no worries about pump failures. (Yes, this is an overly simplified picture of the more modern reactor designs, but I didn’t want to get too deep into this during this post. It is something I will delve into in a follow-on post next week.)
The nice thing about these SMRs is that they can be built to provide a specific amount of generation capacity up to about 300MW. The smallest SMR design I’ve read about generates about 15MW of electrical power. The beauty of the wide range of capacity designs means they can be installed almost anywhere depending upon the need and surrounding infrastructure. The can be clustered together to provide a total output equivalent of the older Generation II plants, meaning 800MW to 1500MW. Or they can be dispersed across a wide area in various locations which would not require a lengthy and expensive construction timetable. It could be one reason some companies planning on building hyperscale data centers are investing billions to develop and build SMRs to power their data centers. Both Bill Gates and Jeff Bezos have done so, with Gates investing in TerraPower and Bezos in X-energy. Excess electricity capacity can be sold to the utilities, assuming utilities don’t buy some of those same SMRs to add to their overall generation capacity.
One thing that helps as that we are seeing some states deciding their future is nuclear. New Hampshire’s governor, Kelly Ayotte, has been pushing for a nuclear renaissance here and sees SMRs as the way to go. Goodness knows we could use a less expensive means of generating electricity here.
10/23/2026
10/18/2026
Thoughts On A Sunday
It was cold this morning here at the lake, though not quite freezing. No frost on the grass or plants or windshields was seen. Some of that might be because the lake water is still relatively warm which moderated the nighttime temps. A friend of mine in a town about 50 miles northwest of here saw frost on her lawn and plants. The low temp there was 21°F, so it’s no surprise she got some frost.
However, this morning did bring a nice sunrise with a cloudless blue sky and the fall foliage at peak with the full range of reds, oranges, and yellows among the greens of the pines and some of the ‘slow’ deciduous trees. I have been sending pictures of the fall foliage colors around New Hampshire to friends and colleagues in the UK and South Carolina. More than a couple thought they had been edited for more color saturation, but they weren’t.
Unfortunately, from here on the colors will start to dull and the leaves will start falling in greater numbers going forward. It also means cleaning out the gutters along the front of The Gulch in order to make sure they don’t get clogged with leaves. The gutters at the rear of The Gulch all have leaf guards installed since they are unreachable by any of the ladders I own. At least the gutters on the front only require a step ladder to reach them.
Sorry, but I believe that what’s good for the goose is good for the gander, to borrow an old phrase. To what am I referring?
Obama, Whose Own IRS Targeted the Right, Clutches Pearls Over Ilhan Omar Raid and Wow, That Was DUMB
Yeah. Right.
‘Nuff said.
From the “Just When I Thought They Couldn’t Get Any Stupider” Department comes this winner:
Rutgers Scholar Opposes Integrated Churches Because Black People May Vote Republican
Oh my Goodness! Black people voting Republican?! This just can’t be!!!
Tell us something we don’t already know.
Blue States Have Highest Electricity, Gas, And Taxes Across The Board
We do have problems with high energy prices, much of which of the blame can be laid at the feet of the governor of the state directly south of New Hampshire, Maura Healey of Massachusetts, who made sure we would suffer a deficit of natural gas by blocking not one, but two different natural gas pipelines that would have brought abundant (and cheap) natural gas into New England from Pennsylvania. (By cheap, I mean US natural gas rather than the natural gas New England has to import from foreign countries at world market prices rather than domestic prices. The problem is that even with these foreign imports demand is outstripping the supply.) That certainly drives up both heating and electricity prices.
One thing we do not have that is a good thing are lots of taxes. We have no income tax. We have no sales tax. We have lowered business which actually resulted in an increase of revenues. Yes, we have high property taxes, but when one looks at the overall burden from state and local taxes are some of the lowest in the country ranking either 48th or 49th as it seems to vary a little from year to year. We have more people (and businesses) moving here.
Is it perfect here? Oh, heck no. It’s not even close. But as compared to the other states here in New England, all Blue states, we’ve got it good. As compared to Blue states elsewhere line New York, California, New Jersey, Illinois, and others, we’re golden.
Now if we could just solve the housing prices problem around here…
This next item is near and dear to my heart, that being LED headlights and just how awful they are. I certainly have a great dislike for them because they are just too damn bright and blinding. I do have so-called ‘night driving’ glasses which have yellow lenses which help cut down the glare, but they aren’t perfect.
The reason they are so awful? The inaction by U.S. Government to fix the problem. But it looks like the Feds are finally catching up with the rest of the world when it comes to making the use of LED headlights far less problematic.
While this change won’t fix the problem of those vehicles already on the road with ‘awful’ LED headlights, it will help solve the problem going forward...but only if they allow the needed changes.
And that’s the news from Lake Winnipesaukee, where the foliage colors are brilliant, the weather has been a bit cooler, and where Monday is coming around all to soon.
However, this morning did bring a nice sunrise with a cloudless blue sky and the fall foliage at peak with the full range of reds, oranges, and yellows among the greens of the pines and some of the ‘slow’ deciduous trees. I have been sending pictures of the fall foliage colors around New Hampshire to friends and colleagues in the UK and South Carolina. More than a couple thought they had been edited for more color saturation, but they weren’t.
Unfortunately, from here on the colors will start to dull and the leaves will start falling in greater numbers going forward. It also means cleaning out the gutters along the front of The Gulch in order to make sure they don’t get clogged with leaves. The gutters at the rear of The Gulch all have leaf guards installed since they are unreachable by any of the ladders I own. At least the gutters on the front only require a step ladder to reach them.
==++++++==
Sorry, but I believe that what’s good for the goose is good for the gander, to borrow an old phrase. To what am I referring?
Obama, Whose Own IRS Targeted the Right, Clutches Pearls Over Ilhan Omar Raid and Wow, That Was DUMB
Barack Obama just posted a lengthy defense of Ilhan Omar, solemnly lecturing the country about how the government must never selectively target people for their political beliefs.So it’s only the Democrats that can do what Obama did to Republicans but when one of their own is investigated it’s somehow wrong? Really?
--snip--
Can't help but notice he omitted the part where his own administration used the full weight of the intelligence agencies and Justice Department to spy on Donald Trump’s campaign and push a fabricated Russia collusion narrative that consumed years of American politics. The same man who green-lit the Crossfire Hurricane operation and watched the FBI cook the Steele dossier into something resembling an investigation now wants everyone to clutch their pearls over questions about whether Omar was actually 18 when her father naturalized.
Yeah. Right.
FLASHBACK: Obama’s IRS singled out Tea Party and other conservative groups for heightened scrutiny based on their names and political positions, delayed tax-exempt applications for years and demanded unnecessary donor information. The IRS ultimately admitted wrongdoing and apologized. Obama insisted there was “not even a smidgen of corruption.”
— Will Ricciardella (@WillRicci) October 18, 2026
‘Nuff said.
==++++++==
From the “Just When I Thought They Couldn’t Get Any Stupider” Department comes this winner:
Rutgers Scholar Opposes Integrated Churches Because Black People May Vote Republican
Oh my Goodness! Black people voting Republican?! This just can’t be!!!
Black people should mainly attend churches with just other black people so that they keep voting Democrat, according to a Rutgers University professor.It’s obvious to me that Professor Cobb hasn’t bothered looking at history to see how the Democrat party no longer represents the working man and is still the party of racism, more specifically the party of the “soft racism” of lowered expectations and the belief that Blacks, Hispanics, and other racial/ethnic groups can’t possibly advance without their guiding hand. Far too often that “guiding hand” is used more to hold them back rather than help them advance. After all, if they do advance they may find that they don’t need the Democrat Party or its demeaning and totalitarian viewpoints and policies. Heaven forbid that Blacks ‘leave the plantation’ without their political leaders’ permission.
Professor Ryon Cobb argues “while 84% of Black adults identify as Democrat or lean Democratic, that number hides what congregational diversity costs Black politics.”
“Among Black nondenominational Protestants, that figure drops to nearly 60%, with one in three calling themselves independents,” Cobb wrote in an essay for the Brookings Institution.
Cobb, an “inclusive excellence in research” scholar considers it a “loss” when black people vote Republican.
==++++++==
Tell us something we don’t already know.
Blue States Have Highest Electricity, Gas, And Taxes Across The Board
We are now less than a month out from the mid-term elections, and the single biggest theme that the Democrats have chosen to run on appears to be “affordability.”My home state is what some people consider a ‘purple’ state despite having a Republican governor, a Republican majority state House, a Republican super-majority in the state Senate and Executive council. Our Congressional slate is made up of Democrats, two in the House of Representatives and two in the Senate. (It is one of the ‘weird’ things about New Hampshire.)
How can this possibly be? We live in the age of immediate availability of information, let alone artificial intelligence to track down anything that might previously have been challenging to find. If you want a state-by-state comparison of costs for any particular thing, you can get it in a fraction of a second. The results are in: the Democrat-run states are less “affordable.”
The Democrats and Republicans propose opposite strategies for dealing with the economy. The Democrats advocate for higher government spending, higher taxes, and more regulation of business; and the Republicans advocate for lower spending, lower taxes, and less regulation of business. The states are the “laboratories of democracy,” where we get to see the consequences of disparate policies play out, and to evaluate the results. Neither party is perfect in implementing what it advocates, so there are always some complexities. But in the main it is easy to collect data that give a relatively clear picture of the results of Democrat versus Republican policies.
We do have problems with high energy prices, much of which of the blame can be laid at the feet of the governor of the state directly south of New Hampshire, Maura Healey of Massachusetts, who made sure we would suffer a deficit of natural gas by blocking not one, but two different natural gas pipelines that would have brought abundant (and cheap) natural gas into New England from Pennsylvania. (By cheap, I mean US natural gas rather than the natural gas New England has to import from foreign countries at world market prices rather than domestic prices. The problem is that even with these foreign imports demand is outstripping the supply.) That certainly drives up both heating and electricity prices.
One thing we do not have that is a good thing are lots of taxes. We have no income tax. We have no sales tax. We have lowered business which actually resulted in an increase of revenues. Yes, we have high property taxes, but when one looks at the overall burden from state and local taxes are some of the lowest in the country ranking either 48th or 49th as it seems to vary a little from year to year. We have more people (and businesses) moving here.
Is it perfect here? Oh, heck no. It’s not even close. But as compared to the other states here in New England, all Blue states, we’ve got it good. As compared to Blue states elsewhere line New York, California, New Jersey, Illinois, and others, we’re golden.
Now if we could just solve the housing prices problem around here…
==++++++==
This next item is near and dear to my heart, that being LED headlights and just how awful they are. I certainly have a great dislike for them because they are just too damn bright and blinding. I do have so-called ‘night driving’ glasses which have yellow lenses which help cut down the glare, but they aren’t perfect.
The reason they are so awful? The inaction by U.S. Government to fix the problem. But it looks like the Feds are finally catching up with the rest of the world when it comes to making the use of LED headlights far less problematic.
While this change won’t fix the problem of those vehicles already on the road with ‘awful’ LED headlights, it will help solve the problem going forward...but only if they allow the needed changes.
==++++++==
And that’s the news from Lake Winnipesaukee, where the foliage colors are brilliant, the weather has been a bit cooler, and where Monday is coming around all to soon.
10/17/2026
It Isn't Working As Intended, Ten Years On
Seeing this post about New Hampshire’s Hands Free Lawover at Granite Grok got me to thinking about it more than I have been, its purpose, and its utter failure to do what it was supposed to do, which was to reduce distracted driving. I don’t know if it’s been an issue of lax enforcement, an overwhelming amount of motorists ignoring the law which in turn makes it more difficult to enforce effectively, in inadequacy of the law, an unwise expansion of touchscreens in cars by automakers, or a combination of all of them. But we’re still seeing accidents being caused by driver inattention to the road, with too many of them being fatal. This is something brought up by Steve MacDonald in his Grok post:
As I have written here and in comment threads, the auto industry’s move to touchscreens to control vehicle functions may have seemed logical from a cost point as the touchscreen eliminates most of the buttons, knobs, and switches which is convenient since just about everything in a vehicle is controlled by computers these days. But when those cost-saving moves add to the distractions experienced by drivers, then it can end up being more costly than any of the supposed savings, particularly in damage to vehicles and injuries or fatalities to drivers, passengers, and pedestrians. This has prompted some auto manufacturers to take a step back and return to those archaic buttons, knobs and switches because the touchscreens require a driver to take their eyes off the road in order perform a simple task on the touchscreen.
Yes, I did get a little off topic as the original reference was made to Hands-Free Laws, but those off-topic items did show that even if a driver wasn’t using their phone or tablet or whatever in contradiction to the law, there are plenty of other things inside a vehicle that multiplied the distraction problem.
In any case, I have to wonder about how other states have been handling their versions of Hands-Free Laws and if they’ve seen the same thing seen here in New Hampshire or are their laws working as they were supposed to work?
Governor Margaret Wood Hassan signed New Hampshire’s hands-free device law in 2015. We told them it wouldn’t do what they claimed and might just make matters worse. After all, the research showed that people who got distracted still would, and people less inclined would be more often, as they tried to avoid detection.Goodness knows I’ve seen numerous blatant violations of this law over the years with the worst being a fellow traveling south on I-93 with a tablet on his steering wheel he was using to watch video. I let him get far ahead of me because I didn’t want to be a statistic if he ended up causing an accident because of his inattention. Another blatant example I’ve seen again and again is people at stoplights texting and being so focused on their texting that they never saw when the light turned green and would sit there, oblivious to the fact that they were blocking the traffic behind them...or they didn’t care because their texts were far more important.
The law prohibits drivers from using hand-held electronic devices while driving. This does not include styling wands, razors, or anything else you can hold. It also does not include interacting with embedded in-vehicle devices the size of iPads or anything else distracting, including passengers.
--snip--
Ten years later, there is no evidence it did anything but inconvenience safe drivers and jack up car prices, as every model had to have hands-free tech, even the sort that was more distracting than talking with a cell phone held to your ear.
As I have written here and in comment threads, the auto industry’s move to touchscreens to control vehicle functions may have seemed logical from a cost point as the touchscreen eliminates most of the buttons, knobs, and switches which is convenient since just about everything in a vehicle is controlled by computers these days. But when those cost-saving moves add to the distractions experienced by drivers, then it can end up being more costly than any of the supposed savings, particularly in damage to vehicles and injuries or fatalities to drivers, passengers, and pedestrians. This has prompted some auto manufacturers to take a step back and return to those archaic buttons, knobs and switches because the touchscreens require a driver to take their eyes off the road in order perform a simple task on the touchscreen.
Yes, I did get a little off topic as the original reference was made to Hands-Free Laws, but those off-topic items did show that even if a driver wasn’t using their phone or tablet or whatever in contradiction to the law, there are plenty of other things inside a vehicle that multiplied the distraction problem.
In any case, I have to wonder about how other states have been handling their versions of Hands-Free Laws and if they’ve seen the same thing seen here in New Hampshire or are their laws working as they were supposed to work?
10/16/2026
10/11/2026
Thoughts On A Sunday
It’s been a cloudy and cool day here at the lake. Things have been pretty low key today with our two most important things today being attending church and having a visit from my Dear Brother and his missus. About the only other thing the WP Mom and I did today was watch the New England Patriots play the Las Vegas Raiders down in Foxborough. The rest of the day was taken up with a little TV, some YouTube videos, and some reading. And seeing that I have Monday off I will likely be busy as all get out doing things I would likely have gotten done today.
As I mentioned in yesterday’s post, plans for pulling the Official Weekend Pundit Lake Winnipesaukee Runabout out of the water are being made. I expect it will be safely ensconced at The Farm (the official name of BeezleBub’s new home) long enough to be cleaned up and all of the boating gear pulled out and stored away. Then it will make its way to the boatyard for winterization and shrink-wrapping before returning to The Farm for the winter.
You would think that after all these years we would know how to bathe, and more specifically, how to take a shower. Apparently that is not always the case.
Turns Out There Really Is a Right Way to Shower
I am one of those adults who much prefers showers to taking a bath. Mostly, it has to do with the fact that it takes a lot less time to take a shower than to take a bath. I can generally perform all of the showering “tasks” in less than 10 minutes including turning it on, stepping into the shower, cleaning myself, shutting off the shower, and drying myself.
I am not going to delve into all of the recommended steps and how they should be performed, but I will say that I have been doing them for most of my life. But I am going to mention one that I didn’t expect:
Every time I think there’s nothing new to learn, I find I’m wrong.
The Winter Is Coming! The Winter Is Coming!
Yes, I know we’ve not even made it through the first month of autumn, but we do need to start thinking about the coming winter. Winter up here in New England can be harsh with lots of snow, sleet, freezing rain along with sub-zero temperatures and high winds that can cause problems with power outages and wind chill factors that are well below zero.
However, it seems that 19 states may be seeing heavy “snow blasts” this coming winter.
Other than that I doubt I will need to make any additional changes to the usual winter preparations.
When I first heard about this, I wondered if they had the age of the schoolchild involved wrong. But it turns out it was correct and it is disturbing to no end.
The Six-Year Old Psychopath
This is another thing I had to read more than once to make sure I hadn’t misunderstood what it said. What is “this”?
The City by the bay admitting it f**ked up?
You see what I mean?
It’s been years since I was in San Francisco, the last time I was there being 1996. Back then things weren’t all that crazy and SF was one of the places to be. However, over the past 30 years it has deteriorated to a place most folks don’t want to visit, businesses and residents have been leaving, and nothing seems to work anymore. (Two friends of mine who escaped from San Francisco years ago for the freedom of New Hampshire stopped going back there to visit friends and family because it was too depressing to see the city where they were born and raised turned into a Third World s**thole. They took to the New Hampshire way of doing things not too long after they arrived here.)
Of course, the mayor will have to fight the Leftist establishment and the Progressive lock on California’s state government to make progress, but who knows what will happen at the November elections. Maybe California could end up with a Republican governor.
And that’s the news from Lake Winnipesaukee, where the foliage colors are approaching peak, the weather is cooperating, and where I won’t have to deal with Monday this week...
As I mentioned in yesterday’s post, plans for pulling the Official Weekend Pundit Lake Winnipesaukee Runabout out of the water are being made. I expect it will be safely ensconced at The Farm (the official name of BeezleBub’s new home) long enough to be cleaned up and all of the boating gear pulled out and stored away. Then it will make its way to the boatyard for winterization and shrink-wrapping before returning to The Farm for the winter.
==++++++==
You would think that after all these years we would know how to bathe, and more specifically, how to take a shower. Apparently that is not always the case.
Turns Out There Really Is a Right Way to Shower
I am one of those adults who much prefers showers to taking a bath. Mostly, it has to do with the fact that it takes a lot less time to take a shower than to take a bath. I can generally perform all of the showering “tasks” in less than 10 minutes including turning it on, stepping into the shower, cleaning myself, shutting off the shower, and drying myself.
I am not going to delve into all of the recommended steps and how they should be performed, but I will say that I have been doing them for most of my life. But I am going to mention one that I didn’t expect:
Showering thrice a week is optimal, but seven times is the limit to avoid stripping skin of essential oils.I will admit that I do not shower every day. I do skip a day now and then, so I’ll shower four, five or six times a week. Most of that depends upon the time of year as I may shower less often over the winter. However, when I was doing heavy physical labor back in my youth I showered every day, usually after work.
Every time I think there’s nothing new to learn, I find I’m wrong.
==++++++==
The Winter Is Coming! The Winter Is Coming!
Yes, I know we’ve not even made it through the first month of autumn, but we do need to start thinking about the coming winter. Winter up here in New England can be harsh with lots of snow, sleet, freezing rain along with sub-zero temperatures and high winds that can cause problems with power outages and wind chill factors that are well below zero.
However, it seems that 19 states may be seeing heavy “snow blasts” this coming winter.
A recent long-range forecast model from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) revealed a massive shift in the bands of heavy precipitation between December 2026 and February 2027.I remember more than a few winters with heavy snows. One of them was when I still resided at The Manse where one winter we saw 150 inches of snowfall. We usually see an average of 60 inches. In any case I think we’ll be okay as we’re used to severe winters around here. The only concessions I will make will be ensuring I have enough propane on hand for the Official Weekend Pundit Portable Generator to operate for 5 days straight, dig out my tire chains in case I need them for the trusty RAM 1500 pickup, and make sure the winter emergency kit is checked and stored in the pickup as well.
That map shows a growing chance that the entire US East Coast will see above-average precipitation this winter, from southern Maine to the tip of Florida and stretching across the country into Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana and Texas as well.
On the West Coast, California is also expected to see above-average precipitation this winter, which likely means feet of snow in the Sierra-Nevada mountains and other high-altitude areas out west.
Other than that I doubt I will need to make any additional changes to the usual winter preparations.
==++++++==
When I first heard about this, I wondered if they had the age of the schoolchild involved wrong. But it turns out it was correct and it is disturbing to no end.
The Six-Year Old Psychopath
You may have come across this video of a 6-year-old who shot and almost killed his teacher:Listening to how this child acted and how he spoke he sounded more like a hardened street thug rather than a six-year old. It begs the question whether or not this is something he hears and sees at home. If so, it seems he’s been learning the wrong things. If not, then it has to be determined if the child is a murderous psychopath. Either way, this is scary.
🚨 A 6-year-old shot his teacher. Richneck Elementary, Jan 6, 2023. Court unsealed Officer Brian Torrez's bodycam Oct 6, 2026. 🎥 The Virginian-Pilot / Daily Press https://t.co/TPphaycltx
— Patriot (@_Patriot1776Q_) October 7, 2026
--snip--
It seems this child was already lost at the age of 6. Can a child who clearly has been exposed to terrible parenting be saved if rescued at that age? I would say it depends. It depends on whether he’s a psychopath. Let’s just say I wouldn’t want him mainstreamed. But what to do with a child who’s already shown such a propensity for evil?
==++++++==
This is another thing I had to read more than once to make sure I hadn’t misunderstood what it said. What is “this”?
The City by the bay admitting it f**ked up?
You see what I mean?
Did you know the Mayor of San Fransisco is a jewish son of a Rabbi Democrat Capitalist? Yeah try and string that sentence together in another context. Anyway, San Francisco Mayor Daniel Lurie blamed the city’s progressive politics for fueling its homelessness, drug overdose and business exodus crises, admitting in a new interview that the city had “lost its way.”If Lurie is serious it may be possible that San Francisco can be saved from itself. If he can change the focus of San Francisco government and political policies in favor of “things that work” rather than those Progressive things that sound good but don’t work, there may be hope for the City By The Bay.
Lurie, who has made restoring San Francisco’s battered public image a priority since taking office, told CNN’s Dana Bash that his administration is taking a more hard-nosed approach to crime while working to make the city friendlier to businesses. But Bash pressed the mayor on why San Francisco needed a turnaround in the first place - prompting a blunt admission about the city’s far-left reputation.
“We lost our way as a city. We were focused on the wrong things and today we’re focused on common sense,” he said. “I mean, we got so, entrapped in our progressive values and talking about progressivism that, we weren’t taking stock of what was happening on our streets,” he added.
It’s been years since I was in San Francisco, the last time I was there being 1996. Back then things weren’t all that crazy and SF was one of the places to be. However, over the past 30 years it has deteriorated to a place most folks don’t want to visit, businesses and residents have been leaving, and nothing seems to work anymore. (Two friends of mine who escaped from San Francisco years ago for the freedom of New Hampshire stopped going back there to visit friends and family because it was too depressing to see the city where they were born and raised turned into a Third World s**thole. They took to the New Hampshire way of doing things not too long after they arrived here.)
Of course, the mayor will have to fight the Leftist establishment and the Progressive lock on California’s state government to make progress, but who knows what will happen at the November elections. Maybe California could end up with a Republican governor.
==++++++==
And that’s the news from Lake Winnipesaukee, where the foliage colors are approaching peak, the weather is cooperating, and where I won’t have to deal with Monday this week...
10/10/2026
Random Thoughts While Out And About
I took a ride around some of the local towns with my 92-year old mother, something she asked to do to “just get out of the house for a while.” It was certainly a nice day for it with blue skies, some wind here and there and cool temperatures. All in all, it was a great day for taking a ride.
While it is fall the fall foliage colors are still developing here in the Lakes Region of New Hampshire and probably won’t be at peak for another week. However, that didn’t diminish what foliage we did see with a lot of reds and yellows mixed among the leaves that are still green. Traffic wasn’t all that bad, particularly once we got off the main roads and onto the back roads that still got us where we were headed even though they were a more roundabout way of getting where we were going.
Like the main roads, the back roads were festooned with campaign posters for state offices in the legislature – the House, Senate, Executive Council, and Governor – and federal offices – two House seats and one Senate seat, all of which will be voted on this coming November 3rd. (I have to admit that the TV ads have reached the point where I no longer hear or see them as it’s the same campaign rhetoric over and over and over again, ad nauseum.)
There were plenty of leaf peepers out and about. (Leaf peepers are what we call foliage tourists up this way.) Unlike the summer tourist, most of these folks are well behaved and cordial. They want to drive around and look at the landscapes bright with reds, oranges, and yellows of the leaves. Certainly the local restaurants and hotels are loving the influx of tourists. Though not quite to the level we see in the summer, there are more than few up here in the Lakes Region and large quantities of them up the White Mountains and North Country where the foliage is at peak.
I have been considering pulling the Official Weekend Pundit Lake Winnipesaukee Runabout out of the water sometime over this coming week. The weather is expected to be rather nice and will give me time to remove all of the boat gear and give the boat a good cleaning before I have it winterized and shrink-wrapped for the winter. There are still a lot of boats in the water from what I’ve seen at the local marinas, but not for much longer.
One thing I did notice during our trip around the area – gas prices have fallen a bit more. Towards the end of our trip today I stopped by my go-to gas station and filled up the gas tank of the WP Mom’s car and paid $4.06 per gallon. That’s down 5 cents from last Wednesday.
I did have to put on the heat here at The Gulch the other morning to take the chill off the inside. Not that I needed to leave it on for very long, but it had reached the low 40’s outside overnight and the heat was on just long enough to get the temp inside up to 69ºF. It took less than 15 minutes and then I shut the heat off. I will have to do that every now and then until we get into the consistently colder weather.
And so it goes.
While it is fall the fall foliage colors are still developing here in the Lakes Region of New Hampshire and probably won’t be at peak for another week. However, that didn’t diminish what foliage we did see with a lot of reds and yellows mixed among the leaves that are still green. Traffic wasn’t all that bad, particularly once we got off the main roads and onto the back roads that still got us where we were headed even though they were a more roundabout way of getting where we were going.
Like the main roads, the back roads were festooned with campaign posters for state offices in the legislature – the House, Senate, Executive Council, and Governor – and federal offices – two House seats and one Senate seat, all of which will be voted on this coming November 3rd. (I have to admit that the TV ads have reached the point where I no longer hear or see them as it’s the same campaign rhetoric over and over and over again, ad nauseum.)
There were plenty of leaf peepers out and about. (Leaf peepers are what we call foliage tourists up this way.) Unlike the summer tourist, most of these folks are well behaved and cordial. They want to drive around and look at the landscapes bright with reds, oranges, and yellows of the leaves. Certainly the local restaurants and hotels are loving the influx of tourists. Though not quite to the level we see in the summer, there are more than few up here in the Lakes Region and large quantities of them up the White Mountains and North Country where the foliage is at peak.
I have been considering pulling the Official Weekend Pundit Lake Winnipesaukee Runabout out of the water sometime over this coming week. The weather is expected to be rather nice and will give me time to remove all of the boat gear and give the boat a good cleaning before I have it winterized and shrink-wrapped for the winter. There are still a lot of boats in the water from what I’ve seen at the local marinas, but not for much longer.
One thing I did notice during our trip around the area – gas prices have fallen a bit more. Towards the end of our trip today I stopped by my go-to gas station and filled up the gas tank of the WP Mom’s car and paid $4.06 per gallon. That’s down 5 cents from last Wednesday.
I did have to put on the heat here at The Gulch the other morning to take the chill off the inside. Not that I needed to leave it on for very long, but it had reached the low 40’s outside overnight and the heat was on just long enough to get the temp inside up to 69ºF. It took less than 15 minutes and then I shut the heat off. I will have to do that every now and then until we get into the consistently colder weather.
And so it goes.
10/09/2026
10/04/2026
Thoughts On A Sunday
There have been two big events for the WP family that have taken place over the past few days. The first?
On Wednesday BeezleBub closed on the farmhouse he bought here in town.
The second?
It was 21 years ago yesterday when I adopted BeezleBub as my son. It was one of the best days of my life and I am very happy that I’ve been able to be his dad.
Today was the day that BeezleBub picked up the trailer for the Official Weekend Pundit Lake Winnipesaukee Runabout from the boatyard. It will reside at his new house until we pull the boat from the water in a couple of weeks and it makes the trip to the boatyard for winterization and shrink wrapping. Then it will return to BeezleBub’s to be stored for the winter.
A lot of boats have already been pulled from the water as can be attested to by empty slips and a lot of boats on trailers waiting at marinas and boatyards fro winterization and storage. However, there is still plenty of boating activity seen on the lake. From prior experience it is likely lake area residents enjoying the lake and the coming foliage colors without having to worry about summerfolk being out on the lake, too.
I saw this over at Instapundit 10 days ago and it took me a while believe that it wasn’t a joke. Kamala Harris is really that clueless.
To quote the late great Kevin Samuels, “You can’t make this s*** up!”
I’ve been having discussions with folks about high gas prices and many of them are surprised when I tell them prices were higher about 4 years ago. They didn’t believe me. I showed them a picture on my phone taken at a gas station in my area from about 4 years ago showing the prices or Regular gas and diesel and they saw that the prices back then were indeed higher. (I wish I could post pictures here on Blogger, but I still can’t as something is still broken and Blogger has been absolutely no help in fixing the problem. However, I can embed posts from ‘X’.)
This is something I also saw on Instapundit recently and it addresses some of the gas price issues.
Yes, this is California and prices still aren’t as high today as they were 4 years ago despite its efforts to make sure it will be a dwindling supply over time.
From the “Just When I Thought They Couldn’t Get Any Stupider” Department comes this little gem:
White Paint is Racist
My first thought was somebody must be off their meds or has escaped from a mental institution. But this appears not to be the case as Associate Professor Wendy S. Walters at Columbia University has actually written about this.
It’s getting to the point where everything is racist. But if that’s the case, then that means that nothing is racist, right? The folks that believe this tripe need to give it a rest because this has slid from the sublime to totally and inequivocally insane.
It seems Hollywood is about to prove that they’ve lost their ‘mojo’ if what I’ve heard about Tom Cruise’s latest movie is true.
Tom Cruise’s Global Warming Propaganda ‘Digger’ About to Lose $100+ Million
Based on several reviews, even from leftist critics, Tom Cruise’s Digger is a shrill, unsubtle, 129-minute attack on those of us who dare to use oil to better our lives.
And it’s about to lose a fortune.
--snip==
“Endless speeches, most involving the horrors of Climate Change and how dern evil oil is. Cruise’s Digger gets an extended close-up where he rants, raves and reveals the truth about oil and culture,” warns Christian Toto. “We need it. We crave it. We’ll risk everything to burn it. So this is all our fault.”
“Digger is bloated, dull, obvious, utterly lacking in self-awareness and, yes, exhausting. Would you want to spend two hours with grown men screaming at the top of their lungs?” Toto asked.
Yet another ‘message’ movie that no one wants. Hollywood has indeed forgotten the lesson from the late 60’s to mid-70’s, that lesson being “No one wants ‘message’ movies. If people want to be preached to they’ll go to church.” Moviegoers avoided those movies like the plague. Studios lost money. Studios stopped making ‘message’ movies and started making movies that people wanted to watch again.
I just have to wonder if what’s left of Hollywood will learn that lesson again in time to save themselves. If I had to guess, and I do, I’m going to predict that they won’t.
And that’s the news from Lake Winnipesaukee where the leaves are turning color, die-hard boaters are still out on the lake, and where Monday is showing up prematurely.
On Wednesday BeezleBub closed on the farmhouse he bought here in town.
The second?
It was 21 years ago yesterday when I adopted BeezleBub as my son. It was one of the best days of my life and I am very happy that I’ve been able to be his dad.
Today was the day that BeezleBub picked up the trailer for the Official Weekend Pundit Lake Winnipesaukee Runabout from the boatyard. It will reside at his new house until we pull the boat from the water in a couple of weeks and it makes the trip to the boatyard for winterization and shrink wrapping. Then it will return to BeezleBub’s to be stored for the winter.
A lot of boats have already been pulled from the water as can be attested to by empty slips and a lot of boats on trailers waiting at marinas and boatyards fro winterization and storage. However, there is still plenty of boating activity seen on the lake. From prior experience it is likely lake area residents enjoying the lake and the coming foliage colors without having to worry about summerfolk being out on the lake, too.
==++++++==
I saw this over at Instapundit 10 days ago and it took me a while believe that it wasn’t a joke. Kamala Harris is really that clueless.
@LeadingReport https://t.co/dgHWny6Ljo
— Bored Certified (@Bored_Certified) September 23, 2026
To quote the late great Kevin Samuels, “You can’t make this s*** up!”
==++++++==
I’ve been having discussions with folks about high gas prices and many of them are surprised when I tell them prices were higher about 4 years ago. They didn’t believe me. I showed them a picture on my phone taken at a gas station in my area from about 4 years ago showing the prices or Regular gas and diesel and they saw that the prices back then were indeed higher. (I wish I could post pictures here on Blogger, but I still can’t as something is still broken and Blogger has been absolutely no help in fixing the problem. However, I can embed posts from ‘X’.)
This is something I also saw on Instapundit recently and it addresses some of the gas price issues.
Wow I can't believe Diesel is over $9/gallon Wait nevermind this was 2022 under Biden https://t.co/YzxSsFjeaN
— RightWI (@RightWI1776) September 19, 2026
Yes, this is California and prices still aren’t as high today as they were 4 years ago despite its efforts to make sure it will be a dwindling supply over time.
==++++++==
From the “Just When I Thought They Couldn’t Get Any Stupider” Department comes this little gem:
White Paint is Racist
My first thought was somebody must be off their meds or has escaped from a mental institution. But this appears not to be the case as Associate Professor Wendy S. Walters at Columbia University has actually written about this.
According to Professor Walters, there are “black transwomen murdered with alarming targeted frequency”. When she saw the walls of her children’s school, she felt “apprehension” and wrote, “I could not stop thinking about the walls. I said to myself: They are so very white.…”What gets me the most is that other people are taking her seriously. Really? White paint is racist? This is effin’ ridiculous.
Oh The Horror!
A less sensitive person might assume that white is the most reflective color and painting walls white maximizes the effectiveness of natural and artificial light. But that person is probably a white racist who drinks milk, lives in a house with white walls and has never even thought about the targeted campaign of mass murder against “black transwomen” by Sherwin-Williams.
It’s getting to the point where everything is racist. But if that’s the case, then that means that nothing is racist, right? The folks that believe this tripe need to give it a rest because this has slid from the sublime to totally and inequivocally insane.
==++++++==
It seems Hollywood is about to prove that they’ve lost their ‘mojo’ if what I’ve heard about Tom Cruise’s latest movie is true.
Tom Cruise’s Global Warming Propaganda ‘Digger’ About to Lose $100+ Million
Based on several reviews, even from leftist critics, Tom Cruise’s Digger is a shrill, unsubtle, 129-minute attack on those of us who dare to use oil to better our lives.
And it’s about to lose a fortune.
--snip==
“Endless speeches, most involving the horrors of Climate Change and how dern evil oil is. Cruise’s Digger gets an extended close-up where he rants, raves and reveals the truth about oil and culture,” warns Christian Toto. “We need it. We crave it. We’ll risk everything to burn it. So this is all our fault.”
“Digger is bloated, dull, obvious, utterly lacking in self-awareness and, yes, exhausting. Would you want to spend two hours with grown men screaming at the top of their lungs?” Toto asked.
Yet another ‘message’ movie that no one wants. Hollywood has indeed forgotten the lesson from the late 60’s to mid-70’s, that lesson being “No one wants ‘message’ movies. If people want to be preached to they’ll go to church.” Moviegoers avoided those movies like the plague. Studios lost money. Studios stopped making ‘message’ movies and started making movies that people wanted to watch again.
I just have to wonder if what’s left of Hollywood will learn that lesson again in time to save themselves. If I had to guess, and I do, I’m going to predict that they won’t.
==++++++==
And that’s the news from Lake Winnipesaukee where the leaves are turning color, die-hard boaters are still out on the lake, and where Monday is showing up prematurely.
10/03/2026
Educational Spending In New Hampshire - Who's Keeping An Eye On The Ledgers?
While the topic upon which I am pontificating about tonight is more New Hampshire-centric than it might otherwise be, I think it has some relevance in other states, too. To what am I referring?
Education funding.
I will not be getting into the bits and pieces about how it is handled in New Hampshire as there is already debate enough about it going on and there is one ballot question related to it that will be addressed during the election in November>
Instead, I have some questions for the school systems in New Hampshire that had some pretty large budget deficits over the past school year. One community, Claremont, has a $5 million deficit. Concord’s school budget deficit was almost $17 million back in February of this year. Yet another town, Milton, is also reporting that it has a $2.5 million school budget deficit.
Just what the heck is going on in these communities that is causing such large deficits? Haven’t there been any audits that show where the money has gone? When an audit of Windham’s school was performed a while back it showed all kinds of vulnerabilities which could lead to misspent funds. I have to ask just how often such audits are performed in our towns and by whom? My town’s school budget is around $32 million for the present school year. I’d like to make sure it is being spent properly and that we aren’t overpaying on some line items. I’d also like to see whether what are normally “Nice To Have’s” haven’t been morphed into “Need To Haves” when they really aren’t. That goes for our municipal budget as well.
Considering that the school budget in most towns ans cities are between 60% and 70% of all municipal spending, ensuring the spending of those funds is being handled properly is paramount.
Education funding.
I will not be getting into the bits and pieces about how it is handled in New Hampshire as there is already debate enough about it going on and there is one ballot question related to it that will be addressed during the election in November>
Instead, I have some questions for the school systems in New Hampshire that had some pretty large budget deficits over the past school year. One community, Claremont, has a $5 million deficit. Concord’s school budget deficit was almost $17 million back in February of this year. Yet another town, Milton, is also reporting that it has a $2.5 million school budget deficit.
Just what the heck is going on in these communities that is causing such large deficits? Haven’t there been any audits that show where the money has gone? When an audit of Windham’s school was performed a while back it showed all kinds of vulnerabilities which could lead to misspent funds. I have to ask just how often such audits are performed in our towns and by whom? My town’s school budget is around $32 million for the present school year. I’d like to make sure it is being spent properly and that we aren’t overpaying on some line items. I’d also like to see whether what are normally “Nice To Have’s” haven’t been morphed into “Need To Haves” when they really aren’t. That goes for our municipal budget as well.
Considering that the school budget in most towns ans cities are between 60% and 70% of all municipal spending, ensuring the spending of those funds is being handled properly is paramount.
10/02/2026
9/27/2026
Thoughts On A Sunday
It’s been a rainy and windy weekend up here at the lake. We’re at the northern edge of the Nor’easter that made its way up the Atlantic seaboard over the past couple of days. We haven’t had to deal with the heavy rains and wind being seen along the seacoast, but we are seeing some rain. The winds aren’t nearly as strong as seen elsewhere but there have been a few power outages due to the winds knocking down trees and tree limbs here and there.
If we’re lucky we’ll see about 1.5 inches of total rainfall here by the time this Nor’easter wraps up sometime tomorrow. Goodness knows we have certainly needed it.
At least once this Nor’easter has departed we’ll be seeing warmer temperatures.
Just when I thought those running my alma mater couldn’t get any stupider they prove me wrong. What’s it doing that has me making this declaration?
The University of Connecticut will be holding three sex toy workshops this fall.
My first thought was that was an article from the Babylon Bee because it must be satire. But it’s the real deal.
This is the same university that wanted to bring back segregated dorms at the request of minority students but decided not to go forward when both the state and federal government reminded them that segregated housing was illegal and could mean the loss of both state and federal funds.
If I went back in time and visited the Storrs campus in 1978 and told the students, faculty, and staff that this would be happening in the future, I doubt anyone would believe me.
By way of the comments to this Instapundit post – Why Are Heterosexual Women Attracted To Each Other – comes this comment that almost had me spewing coffee on my monitor:
Anyone paying attention knows this was coming.
Trump Ends Joe Biden’s Electric Vehicle Mandate.
It’s about time. Such a mandate may have sounded good, but it wasn’t realistic for a number of reasons. Two that came to mind when I first head of it were these:
As to first question, considering the materials needed to make the present generation of EV batteries, in this case lithium-ion batteries, both the cost and the means of obtaining some of the needed materials are too high.
Removal of the mandate is a move in the right direction. Let the market decide. If EVs are viable, let the market decide that question, not the government.
Could the Governor’s office in Oregon flip from blue to red in November?
According to some of the latest polls the GOP challenger Kristine Drazen is polling 2% over the incumbent governor, Democrat Tina Kotek.
Two percent is within the margin of error for most polls. Seeing that the election is still over a month away that lead may not last long...or it could widen as more Oregon voters decide they’re tired of Kotek’s leadership.
Only time will tell.
It appears the Governor Kotek isn’t the only one who may have a reason to worry about the November election. Republican Rep. Maria Elvira Salazer (FL-27) released a campaign ad that has been receiving quite a bit of backlash.
Again, only time will tell.
And that’s the news from Lake Winnipesaukee, where the wind and the rain have yet to depart, preparations are being made to pull the Official Weekend Pundit Lake Winnipesaukee Runabout out of the water, and where Monday is yet again harshing our weekend mellow.
If we’re lucky we’ll see about 1.5 inches of total rainfall here by the time this Nor’easter wraps up sometime tomorrow. Goodness knows we have certainly needed it.
At least once this Nor’easter has departed we’ll be seeing warmer temperatures.
==++++++==
Just when I thought those running my alma mater couldn’t get any stupider they prove me wrong. What’s it doing that has me making this declaration?
The University of Connecticut will be holding three sex toy workshops this fall.
My first thought was that was an article from the Babylon Bee because it must be satire. But it’s the real deal.
The University of Connecticut (UConn) in Storrs will hold three workshops on Oct. 6, Oct. 22, and Nov. 16 where students can handle demonstration versions of sex toys, including vibrators and plugs.Really? Is this something that really needs to be taught? Are student activity funds being used to pay for this?
The events, titled “Good Vibrations: A Pleasure Pop-Up Workshop,” will be led by the “Sexperts” student group and are being advertised by the university’s Student Health and Wellness.
This is the same university that wanted to bring back segregated dorms at the request of minority students but decided not to go forward when both the state and federal government reminded them that segregated housing was illegal and could mean the loss of both state and federal funds.
If I went back in time and visited the Storrs campus in 1978 and told the students, faculty, and staff that this would be happening in the future, I doubt anyone would believe me.
==++++++==
By way of the comments to this Instapundit post – Why Are Heterosexual Women Attracted To Each Other – comes this comment that almost had me spewing coffee on my monitor:
As the joke (?) goes, “All women are bi. It’s up to you to figure out if it’s polar or sexual.”‘Nuff said.
==++++++==
Anyone paying attention knows this was coming.
Trump Ends Joe Biden’s Electric Vehicle Mandate.
It’s about time. Such a mandate may have sounded good, but it wasn’t realistic for a number of reasons. Two that came to mind when I first head of it were these:
To address the second question first, I (and others) figured it would require a doubling of the electrical grid capacity in the US to meet the demand. Anyone understanding how long it can take to expand grid and generation capacity knew that wasn’t going to happen. It didn’t help that a lot of the focus on new generation capacity in general was on renewables, something we have come to see isn’t workable. We have an endless number of examples showing renewables aren’t nearly as effective as claimed and are a lot more expensive per megawatt-hour than some of the more traditional generating technology. (I know from the options we have here in New Hampshire for electrical suppliers - not to be confused with the electrical utility companies that provide the transmission grids - the higher the percentage of renewables we select should we desire, the higher the price we pay for the electricity.)
Where were we going to find the materials needed to manufacture the number of batteries that would be needed?
Where were we going to get the electricity needed to charge all of those EVs?
As to first question, considering the materials needed to make the present generation of EV batteries, in this case lithium-ion batteries, both the cost and the means of obtaining some of the needed materials are too high.
Removal of the mandate is a move in the right direction. Let the market decide. If EVs are viable, let the market decide that question, not the government.
==++++++==
Could the Governor’s office in Oregon flip from blue to red in November?
According to some of the latest polls the GOP challenger Kristine Drazen is polling 2% over the incumbent governor, Democrat Tina Kotek.
Two percent is within the margin of error for most polls. Seeing that the election is still over a month away that lead may not last long...or it could widen as more Oregon voters decide they’re tired of Kotek’s leadership.
Only time will tell.
==++++++==
It appears the Governor Kotek isn’t the only one who may have a reason to worry about the November election. Republican Rep. Maria Elvira Salazer (FL-27) released a campaign ad that has been receiving quite a bit of backlash.
On September 17th, Republican Rep. Maria Elvira Salazar (FL-27) released a campaign ad in both English and Spanish in which she lectured President Donald Trump about immigration policy while standing in front of the White House.One has to wonder what the heck she was thinking. Her claim that Hispanics who help Trump gain the White House are feeling betrayed seems to go against polls and studies that show no such disatisfaction.
In it, she suggested that some of his “immigration enforcement efforts have gone too far,” pointing to ICE data she claimed showed that 50% of detainees apprehended in July “had no criminal convictions or pending charges.”
“Be careful what your advisors are telling you on immigration policy,” she went on to warn, adding that “the same Hispanics who helped you get to the White House in 2024 feel betrayed today.”
Towards the end of the clip, Salazar stressed that she wasn’t “talking about giving them amnesty. I’m talking about giving them a dignified life in this promised land, and only you can do that.”
--snip--
Salazar is facing a tough reelection fight in a midterm election year. The Cook Political Report noted that “though Salazar has a history of overperforming the top of the ticket, Trump’s sinking approval rating in South Florida will be an anchor on the congresswoman.” On September 25th, it changed its race rating for the district from Likely R to Lean R.
Again, only time will tell.
==++++++==
And that’s the news from Lake Winnipesaukee, where the wind and the rain have yet to depart, preparations are being made to pull the Official Weekend Pundit Lake Winnipesaukee Runabout out of the water, and where Monday is yet again harshing our weekend mellow.
9/26/2026
The Rhetoric Is Cranking Up
Watching the multitude of campaign ads on TV, Letters To The Editor in our local paper, posts on blogs and on Facebook, it is easy to see the political rhetoric has been cranked up to ‘11’. There’s a lot of opinion out there about various candidates or government policies and so on. There are plenty of reasoned opinions on both sides and well as wholly delusional and ignorant opinions, too.
However, one topic that has been very hot, specifically on Facebook, has been something I wouldn’t have expected, something that crosses political lines as those on opposite sides of this issue does not fall along political lines. What issue am I talking about?
Daylight Saving Time.
There has been a running debate between people who want to remain on DST year round and those who want to remain on Standard Time.
I have been passionate about wanting to remain on DST or , if not possible, switching New Hampshire (and Maine) to the Atlantic Time Zone. Then I would be quite happy to remain on Standard Time.
As I have mentioned now and then, here and there, I think the support for remaining on DST is probably heaviest for those who are on the eastern edge of the four time zones in the Lower 48. This also implies that support for remaining of Standard Time is probably heaviest from those who live on the western edge of the four time zones.
I dislike the idea of remaining on Standard Time over the summer because that means sunrise will be taking place at just after 4AM here at Lake Winnipesaukee on the first day of summer. Thanks, but no thanks. Sunset will be at 7:30PM. On the first day of winter sunrise will be at a little after 7AM and sunset will be at a little past 4PM. (Both of these times are a little misleading because with the hills and mountains around the lake, sunrise and sunset is a little later or earlier, respectively. Here at The Gulch the sun disappears behind the surrounding hills at between 2:30PM and 3:30PM during winter months.)
I know I would much prefer to have light in the afternoon rather than the morning over the winter months. Those against the idea of DST year round keep bringing up the issue of kids having to go to school in the dark. During the depths of winter, quite a few of our school kids do that anyways because they have to catch a school bus at a little after 6AM which means they are going to school in the dark. It seems to me that in a lot of places kids are going to school in the dark, particularly places that even farther north than New Hampshire and Maine and they don’t seem to have problems doing so. Another solution is to start school later in the morning, something that a number of groups have been advocating for, specifically for teenagers as their circadian rhythms are off and they do better with a later starting time.
A number of states have already passed legislation to remain on DST year round, neighboring Maine being one of them.
It will be interesting to see how this plays out going forward. One thing that both the pro- and anti-year round DST folks do have in common is they both hate having to change their clocks twice a year and deal with the aftereffects of doing so. Count me as of those folks.
However, one topic that has been very hot, specifically on Facebook, has been something I wouldn’t have expected, something that crosses political lines as those on opposite sides of this issue does not fall along political lines. What issue am I talking about?
Daylight Saving Time.
There has been a running debate between people who want to remain on DST year round and those who want to remain on Standard Time.
I have been passionate about wanting to remain on DST or , if not possible, switching New Hampshire (and Maine) to the Atlantic Time Zone. Then I would be quite happy to remain on Standard Time.
As I have mentioned now and then, here and there, I think the support for remaining on DST is probably heaviest for those who are on the eastern edge of the four time zones in the Lower 48. This also implies that support for remaining of Standard Time is probably heaviest from those who live on the western edge of the four time zones.
I dislike the idea of remaining on Standard Time over the summer because that means sunrise will be taking place at just after 4AM here at Lake Winnipesaukee on the first day of summer. Thanks, but no thanks. Sunset will be at 7:30PM. On the first day of winter sunrise will be at a little after 7AM and sunset will be at a little past 4PM. (Both of these times are a little misleading because with the hills and mountains around the lake, sunrise and sunset is a little later or earlier, respectively. Here at The Gulch the sun disappears behind the surrounding hills at between 2:30PM and 3:30PM during winter months.)
I know I would much prefer to have light in the afternoon rather than the morning over the winter months. Those against the idea of DST year round keep bringing up the issue of kids having to go to school in the dark. During the depths of winter, quite a few of our school kids do that anyways because they have to catch a school bus at a little after 6AM which means they are going to school in the dark. It seems to me that in a lot of places kids are going to school in the dark, particularly places that even farther north than New Hampshire and Maine and they don’t seem to have problems doing so. Another solution is to start school later in the morning, something that a number of groups have been advocating for, specifically for teenagers as their circadian rhythms are off and they do better with a later starting time.
A number of states have already passed legislation to remain on DST year round, neighboring Maine being one of them.
It will be interesting to see how this plays out going forward. One thing that both the pro- and anti-year round DST folks do have in common is they both hate having to change their clocks twice a year and deal with the aftereffects of doing so. Count me as of those folks.
9/25/2026
9/20/2026
Thoughts On A Sunday
It’s been a cool weekend here at the lake and rainy today on top of it. Of course ‘cool’ is a relative term. In this case it’s meant high temps in the 60’s (Saturday) and in the 50’s today. Overnight lows have been in the 40’s. And it’s not even officially Fall yet. We have also been seeing some of the trees starting to change color. Generally the first trees to change tend to be the swamp maples followed a couple of weeks later the other tree species.
We’ve barely recovered from summer and now we’re having to get ready for foliage season. A lot of the ‘leaf peepers’ will be heading up north of the lake into the White Mountains and the North Country as the foliage there is ahead of what we’ll be seeing here by a a couple of weeks or so. The leaf peepers will follow the colors as they make their way south through New Hampshire and Vermont and into Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Connecticut.
The leaf peepers are a different crowd as compared to the summerfolk being as they aren’t nearly as numerous and are from more diverse locations, with quite a few visiting from foreign countries. For the most part they won’t be flooding our roads, hotels, and restaurants to the level seen when the summerfolk are around and the won’t be here nearly as long, either.
Why doesn’t this surprise me in the least?
I remember when these were pretty much normal across all political and socioeconomic classes. And it wasn’t all that long ago.
Some of the follow on responses delve into that, too.
Uh-oh. It seems that San Francisco has reached another tipping point.
It seems that robbers and thieves have announced they are going to be leaving the city because they’re running out of things to steal.
You know it’s bad when even the criminal element is leaving because of the effects of decades of bad government by California Democrats. Is Los Angeles next? It seems so as it appears Hollywood is packing up and leaving.
I find this hilarious if for no other reason that I’ve been thinking this for some time.
Zero Hurricanes Formed By Peak 2026 Season.
I have been seeing claim after claim after claim that this lack of Atlantic hurricanes so far this year as all the fault of climate change. But, weren’t these the same folks claiming that climate change was going cause more hurricanes, with most of them being more destructive?
That much of the lack of Atlantic hurricanes can be laid at the feet of this year’s ‘Super’ El Niño is being ignored by the climate change faithful.
In the mean time, I am going to enjoy what I hope will be a relatively quiet Atlantic Hurricane season which ends on November 30th.
I’m sure just about everyone has been hearing the ongoing saga of the Lindsay Clancy case and particularly the revelations that have come from interviews with jurors which may end up with some of them being brought up on charges of perjury and obstruction of justice. One YouTuber, a fellow I watch to from time to time, delved into this with the subtlety of a semi crashing the front of a toy store.
Do I agree with everything Dan brings up? For the most part, yes. And if I disagree it’s a matter of degree and not magnitude.
One thing he brings up is a question he asks right at the beginning of the video, that being “Were they actually looking for justice or were they looking for an excuse?” Listening to some of these jurors it seems they weren’t going to convict her no matter what. The had their minds made up before the trial even began. They were not impartial by any measure. They also seem to forget why Lindsay Clancy was on trial – she murdered her three children by strangling them to death. No one denies that, including her defense attorney. But these jurors, with one brave exception, chose to make this about her and not about her children.
I hope they decide to try her again, maybe with a change of venue to one of the rural counties in central or western Massachusets where this nonsense is nowhere near as prevalent. And this time voir dire has to be harsh and unforgiving to weed out the bias seen in the jurors of the first trial.
And that’s the news from Lake Winnipesaukee where it’s presently raining to beat the band, the weekend traffic was light, and where Monday is returning again all too soon.
We’ve barely recovered from summer and now we’re having to get ready for foliage season. A lot of the ‘leaf peepers’ will be heading up north of the lake into the White Mountains and the North Country as the foliage there is ahead of what we’ll be seeing here by a a couple of weeks or so. The leaf peepers will follow the colors as they make their way south through New Hampshire and Vermont and into Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Connecticut.
The leaf peepers are a different crowd as compared to the summerfolk being as they aren’t nearly as numerous and are from more diverse locations, with quite a few visiting from foreign countries. For the most part they won’t be flooding our roads, hotels, and restaurants to the level seen when the summerfolk are around and the won’t be here nearly as long, either.
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Why doesn’t this surprise me in the least?
Things that are now rightwing: Investigative journalism Academic rigour Scientific dissent Nature Facts Biology Politeness Punctuality Normality Free speech Individual rights Rationality Objectivity Self-reliance Emotional restraint Delayed gratification
— Alice Smith (@TheAliceSmith) August 15, 2026
I remember when these were pretty much normal across all political and socioeconomic classes. And it wasn’t all that long ago.
Some of the follow on responses delve into that, too.
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Uh-oh. It seems that San Francisco has reached another tipping point.
It seems that robbers and thieves have announced they are going to be leaving the city because they’re running out of things to steal.
You know it’s bad when even the criminal element is leaving because of the effects of decades of bad government by California Democrats. Is Los Angeles next? It seems so as it appears Hollywood is packing up and leaving.
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I find this hilarious if for no other reason that I’ve been thinking this for some time.
Zero Hurricanes Formed By Peak 2026 Season.
I have been seeing claim after claim after claim that this lack of Atlantic hurricanes so far this year as all the fault of climate change. But, weren’t these the same folks claiming that climate change was going cause more hurricanes, with most of them being more destructive?
A former climate reporter said she deliberately avoided covering positive weather developments because doing so would have complicated the narrative that climate change posed an existential threat.Yup. Can’t have any reports getting out that go against The Narrative that climate change is going to kill us all and that it’s All-The-Fault-Of-The-Evil-Humans.
“When I was a climate reporter, I never covered positive climate stories because it would ‘muddy the narrative’ that climate change was an existential threat,” Lucy Biggers wrote Tuesday on X. “No one told me to behave this way. I chose to do this of my own volition.”
Biggers, who now works for The Free Press, pointed to the historically quiet 2026 Atlantic hurricane season as an example of the type of story she believes climate reporters may be reluctant to highlight.
“I think this is why we rarely see events like this year’s historically quiet eastern hurricane season covered widely by the news,” Biggers wrote. “Many reporters believe covering it will ‘give fodder to climate change deniers.’”
That much of the lack of Atlantic hurricanes can be laid at the feet of this year’s ‘Super’ El Niño is being ignored by the climate change faithful.
Meteorologists have largely blamed the unusually quiet season on a powerful El Niño, a climate pattern marked by an unusual warming of the Pacific Ocean’s surface temperatures. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) said El Niño increases vertical wind shear over the tropical Atlantic, making it harder for hurricanes to form and organize.I wish I could remember where I saw the following, but I did see an article that dove into the whole “Carbon dioxide concentration increase will destroy us” claim and finding the experiments that correlated atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration with rises in global temperatures were flawed, not because anyone was trying to deceive anyone, but because the experiments only looked at one aspect of the effects of carbon dioxide – radiative heating – but ignored convective heating which counteracts a good portion of the radiative heating. Recent follow-on experiments show the atmosphere isn’t nearly as sensitive to carbon dioxide concentrations as was once believed.
In the mean time, I am going to enjoy what I hope will be a relatively quiet Atlantic Hurricane season which ends on November 30th.
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I’m sure just about everyone has been hearing the ongoing saga of the Lindsay Clancy case and particularly the revelations that have come from interviews with jurors which may end up with some of them being brought up on charges of perjury and obstruction of justice. One YouTuber, a fellow I watch to from time to time, delved into this with the subtlety of a semi crashing the front of a toy store.
Do I agree with everything Dan brings up? For the most part, yes. And if I disagree it’s a matter of degree and not magnitude.
One thing he brings up is a question he asks right at the beginning of the video, that being “Were they actually looking for justice or were they looking for an excuse?” Listening to some of these jurors it seems they weren’t going to convict her no matter what. The had their minds made up before the trial even began. They were not impartial by any measure. They also seem to forget why Lindsay Clancy was on trial – she murdered her three children by strangling them to death. No one denies that, including her defense attorney. But these jurors, with one brave exception, chose to make this about her and not about her children.
I hope they decide to try her again, maybe with a change of venue to one of the rural counties in central or western Massachusets where this nonsense is nowhere near as prevalent. And this time voir dire has to be harsh and unforgiving to weed out the bias seen in the jurors of the first trial.
==++++++==
And that’s the news from Lake Winnipesaukee where it’s presently raining to beat the band, the weekend traffic was light, and where Monday is returning again all too soon.
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