Divemedic

Wayne Must Need Cash

I have been a life member of the NRA for about 25 or 30 years now. It cost me $300 back then. Before that, I was a recurring annual member. So I will say that I was surprised to get this email:

I haven’t gotten my magazines in more than a decade. That doesn’t stop them from bombarding me with requests for money from the NRA-ILA. Apparently, they have lost my membership information. Or maybe Wayne LaPierre just needs to add to the $100 million or so that he has stolen already.

No thanks. There are other organizations that are actually doing stuff to protect my rights. I donate my cash to FPC, and they are using it to kick some ATF ass.

By Divemedic, ago

Updates

I am getting annoyed at the new technology trends. It seems like everything that you own, from your computers, to cell phone, and even your car is being controlled by someone else. These endless “system updates” are becoming another income stream for technology companies that are looking to use your connected equipment to make more money. Car companies are charging people a monthly fee for things like using their cruise control and their air conditioning. The air conditioner costs $15 a month, the ability to tow a trailer is $20 a month, and engaging the four wheel drive sets you back $40 a month. Heck, even the seat warmers cost $4 a month. It will cost you $20 a month to use your key fob to remotely unlock or start your vehicle.

Remember when you used to buy software? Now you rent it by paying yearly fees to use the stuff that you bought.

One of the things that I did at my current house was to make it a smart house. I have more than 150 smart devices: I can control ceiling fans, lights, irrigation, and even the thermostat- all with smart devices. The backbone of the system is Samsung Smartthings. It has been great. I started doing home automation back in 2014. Since then, my system has expanded.

One of the best things is my lawn sprinklers. I have a personal weather station on the roof of my house, and the system analyzes how much rain I have gotten, using that to adjust the schedule and amount of water the lawn gets. The lawn looks amazing, and the only effort it requires on my part is some weed and feed every 3 months or so.

When I am out of the house, the system monitors for intruders, water leaks, fires, turns the air conditioning to a more economical setting, turns off the water heater, locks the doors in case I forgot, and even turns lights on and off to make it look like I am home. It monitors my freezer temperatures and the humidity of the gun safe and will alert me if there is a problem. The system feeds and waters my wife’s cats, and empties their litter box. My carpets are vacuumed and floors mopped. All automatically. Until we decided to move, I was going to add robotic lawn mowing to the stable and get rid of my lawn service. I feel like George Jetson. Nearly every household chore is automated, and it makes things very convenient and easy.

Until recently. Samsung has been making changes to their systems so that they are easier for people with no tech skills to use. What this means, is that my devices are getting changed and “dumbed down” to the point where I don’t think my next house will be a smart house. Where I used to be able to write, edit, and change the drivers to my system, it is becoming less so.

It all started with changes to how the system dealt with my Sonos speakers. I once had it set up so that the system made announcements over the speakers: things like “your wife is home” when she would arrive, or “your in-laws have arrived” when they came over, so that I knew to put pants on. Then there was a system update 2 years ago, and the speakers don’t talk to the system anymore.

It’s little things. I used to have the ceiling fans set up so that I could adjust their speed from 0-100 percent. Last night, there was a system update, and now my choices are low-medium-high. If I had wanted low-medium-high, I would have set it up that way.

It isn’t just Samsung. A couple of years ago, Google bought out the company that made my fire alarms. Now I can’t change, replace, or add anything without updating the drivers to Google device drivers and becoming a NEST customer, which will charge me money for monitoring the system.

So going forward, I have a few choices:

  • Continue with Smartthings, and keep losing functionality. It will still require a fair bit of time and money to set up the new house
  • As long as I am moving, I could switch to Home Assistant, which I have been playing with and will give me a lot of control, but will even more work, a steep learning curve, a good bit of money, and I just don’t know if I want to invest the time and money to do it right now
  • go back to having a “dumb house”
  • or sharply cut back on what automation I do have, to get what I refer to as “a mildly retarded house” with a lot less functionality, but at low cost and not a lot of work.

There is a lot going on right now, and I don’t know if I have the time for most of the options above.

By Divemedic, ago

Beggar Nations

Mali and Burkina Faso have officially announced that they will declare war if Western-controlled nations invade Niger. No one has to invade Niger, Mali, or Burkina Faso. Just cut off all aid.

  • Mali and Burkina Faso each have a GDP of $19 billion, but nearly ten percent of that is foreign aid.
  • Niger is even worse off, with almost 20% of its GDP being foreign aid

In fact, each of those countries has relied upon foreign aid as their number one industry. Niger’s main export is Uranium, but nearly all of the proceeds from that are taken by its government. The remainder of the nation relies on subsistence farming.

Agricultural activities occupy 70% of Mali’s labor force and provide 42% of the GDP. The nation is an exporter of gold, but like Niger, the government takes all of the revenue from that.

Just cut off the financial aid, and they will be back to begging within a few weeks.

By Divemedic, ago

A discussion

I’m not the NRA, but I think that I can help you. I want to start with proving that the people are each and every individual who is a citizen of this country:

The first line of the Constitution says “We the People of the United States” so the collective people are the ones writing the Constitution. The very next paragraph begins with:

The House of Representatives shall be composed of Members chosen every second Year by the People

So the people are the ones electing Representatives. Do they have a collective, or an individual right to elect representatives?

The people also have a right to assemble, as outlined in the First Amendment. Is that a collective, or an individual right? In the Fourth Amendment, we find the protection of the right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures.”

So now that we have established that the people are the ones who individually elect their representatives, peaceably assemble, and are secure from unreasonable searches and seizures, is there any possibility that the writers of the Constitution and its amendments meant for the Second Amendment to refer to a different meaning of people when they wrote “the right of the people to keep and bear arms?”

I know that it is all fashionable for the left to hang its hat on the prefatory clause about militias being necessary, but this argument has been hashed out tons of times. It’s really getting old, and this argument is nothing more than partisan bullshit.

By Divemedic, ago

Great Quote

Off Guardian takes a look into the psychology of trannies. Food for thought:

Men go into women’s toilets because the transgression of the prohibition against doing so turns them on, not necessarily sexually. Men compete against women in sports and athletics because their unfair physical advantages give them a better chance of beating the women against whom they’re competing, and they enjoy, perhaps, enacting this revenge against the women that have rejected them

This got me to thinking- the men who are trying to become women are doing so because they have been rejected by women in some way- whether it be sexually, or because their mothers have not cared for them. This is a psychological response to the rejection that they have experienced. They now get to become women, and outperform them to “show them who’s boss.”

It’s part of their attempt to intimidate women that the transvestite men who go into women’s toilets photograph themselves doing so and then share the image online, much as kids often do the same when committing petty crimes or, as happened recently in London, threatening young women on the street.

This is a continuation of the “show them who’s boss” theme- it’s an “in your face” sort of intimidation tactic where they get to force women to cower in fear- making trannies nothing but predators. I would go one further- the in your face tactics also grant them power over the men who must allow this sort of abuse under penalty of law, and over the children that they victimize by forcing them to sit there and listen to their preachy sermons and stories about boys sexually servicing men.

I believe that only a small part of the behavior seen by trannies is for sexual gratification. Much like the child who tortures animals for gratification, the forcing of others to watch and even participate in their twisted acts gives them a sense of satisfaction in that they are now controlling others and forcing them to participate in their acts of delusion and depravity. It is forcing people to commit acts that they find objectionable that gives the tranny a sense of power over others, a way to force others to pay for the rejection and inadequacy that they have felt in their own lives.

Anyhow, go read the entire article.

By Divemedic, ago

It’s Hot, Dammit

A local man was part of a landscaping crew, and wasn’t feeling well because he had used a little meth that morning. His coworkers told him to go take a break in the truck with the air conditioner running. He crawled in and passed out without starting the truck. That day, the heat index was 105 degF. Inside of that uncooled truck, it was much higher. An hour later, they went to check on him and found him unresponsive and covered in vomit, so they called 911. The ambulance crew rushed him to the ED, and he went into cardiac arrest during the trip to the hospital.

When he arrived at the hospital, his rectal temperature was 110 degrees F (43.3 C). We worked him for an hour and a half. I was in charge of getting fluids into him. I pressure infused 6 liters of refrigerated Normal Saline into him. He was covered in cold blankets and had a fan blowing on him. We finally got his rectal temp down to 100degF, and got pulses back. He wasn’t even 30 years old, and wound up dying later that day of the heat stroke that literally cooked his brain.

I saw Graybeard’s post about the hot days of summer, and I will second that. The people who live here know that anything needing to be done outside is best done before 11 am, when the thermometer typically breaks 90 deg. It isn’t the temperature, it’s the dew point. As of right now, the dew point here in Sector Ocho is 73 degF. Yeah, we do this every year. Here we are complaining about humidity from back in 2016.

The dew point temperature is the temperature at which the air can no longer hold all of its water vapor, and some of the water vapor must condense into liquid water. At 100% relative humidity, the dew point temperature and the air temperature are the same, and clouds or fog can begin to form. Dew point is the best indicator of comfort in a hot climate. Once the dew point of the air exceeds 66 degrees Fahrenheit or so, the air begins to feel hot and uncomfortably stuffy. The reason for this, is that your perspiration can not evaporate to cool you off.

The thermometer temperature and the dew point are used to calculate the heat index (feels like) temperature. Any heat index above 125 degrees is likely to produce heat stroke, which is deadly.

Here in Florida, there are 4 seasons:

Hot: March through May
F’ing Hot: June through mid September
Still Hot: Mid September through Mid November
Snow Bird: Mid November through February

When it’s hot, you get your outside work done in the morning, then stay in the air conditioning until at least 4:30 in the afternoon, when the afternoon thunderstorms come calling. That is what we do from mid June until about the middle of September.

By Divemedic, ago

Should Have Been Shot

You pick a fight with an armed man, you SHOULD get shot. When did we decide as a people that the attacker gets to define the rules of the engagement? That’s why so much of this crap happens. Not enough of the people who start crap pay the price for it.

EDIT: Apparently, we can’t show black people behaving badly on Twitter, or X, or whatever they are called. So here is a link to the video:

Guy attacks royal king guards (i think)
by u/killerwolf38 in WinStupidPrizes
By Divemedic, ago

They Wouldn’t Dare

One of the things that I keep hearing from the right is how the military and police won’t shoot at or go door to door, because many of them have ties to the community. I have been telling people “don’t be too sure about that.” It’s because Federal law states that only U.S. citizens can serve as police officers and deputies.

It turns out that Illinois has found a solution for that particular problem. They have passed a law that permits non-citizens to become police officers. It only makes sense- illegals can become doctors, nurses, and can join the military. So why not carry guns and arrest you for violating the law? So governor Pritzker signed the bill into law on Friday. The next time a cop pulls you over in Illinois:

It’s a great way to ensure the cops will do whatever you want- they are already familiar with how third world cops act, and don’t give a shit about the constitution.

By Divemedic, ago

Pencil Pusher

The new CNO for the Navy is a diversity hire pencil pusher whose only real qualification is the possession of a vagina. Let me illustrate: She was assigned to no fewer than 9 seagoing ships and command groups during her 38 years in the Navy, but has only received 2 Sea Service Deployment ribbons. The rest of her decorations are bullshit awards for being good at ass kissing her superiors.

the Defense Distinguished Service Medal, Distinguished Service Medal, Defense Superior Service Medal (two awards), Legion of Merit (five awards), Meritorious Service Medal (five awards), Navy and Marine Corps Commendation Medal (four awards), and the Navy and Marine Corps Achievement Medal (two awards).

I was only in the Navy for six years and received three sea service deployment ribbons. My opinions on:

By Divemedic, ago