KFC Oatmeal

The other day, we decided to have some real Kentucky Fried Chicken, from KFC of course. Two big barrels gave us enough for several days worth of eating. As usual in these situations, we saved the bones, chicken fragments, thick peppery coating, and all. Once we had eaten everything eatable, we threw the rest in the pressure cooker, along with half an onion. It made three quarts of surprisingly mild tasting broth, that looked like thin chicken gravy. Just the thing for breakfast.

Setup: 1/3 cup of stone ground rolled oats, one cup KFC broth, salt (we didn’t add any to the stock because of the coating). Cook for 10 minutes or so, depending on the exact style of oats.

Results: Very good.

Rating: Three stars — ***

Memories of my youth: Korea in the spring

Springtime in Korea brings pink cherry blossoms and yellow skies. They are actually brownish-yellow, and they are the result of sandstorms blowing in from the Gobi Desert.

When the dust clouds move close to the surface they can really lower the air quality, making it hard to breath. On the other hand, they do add nutrients to the Sea of Japan, much the way that dust blowing off the Sahara feeds the mid-Atlantic Ocean.

TL;DR — Anime I never finished, Spring 2024 Part 2

Bartender — Glass of God
Listen, Kenji, ever since Girls und Panzer put that seaside carwash on the map, every out of the way prefecture’s been pestering studios to set an anime in their neighborhood. I think that vein has been pretty well mined out. We need to go into something different, maybe product placement — like that  motorscooter thing from Super Cub. So, what about we go to all the hard liquor companies and promise we’ll feature their product in a drink? Two different drinks per episode. They’ll slurp it right up!

The Banished Former Hero Lives as He Pleases
Not an isekai. Really! The hero was just reborn from a previous life on the same planet. Totally different. I know the animation on the first episode kindof sucked, but you can’t blame the studio. We spent our entire budget on it.

Oblivion Battery
I hated the pitcher in Big Windup but I stuck with it because the baseball was really, really good. I really hate the catcher in ObliB even more, and there’s no sign of real baseball at all.

Astro Note
So Galaxy Next Door was mediocre, and Elegant Yokai Apartment Life was even worse, but maybe if we combined the two, and threw in a cooking show (and maybe a dog), people would forget we also did Cosmo Samurai and Seven Deadly Sins.

Reincarnated Aristocrat
Yet another overpowered protagonist in short pants.

TL;DR — Anime I never finished, Spring 2024 Part 1

The really good anime for this season are just starting to roll out, so it’s nice that I’m able to get through the chaff early. Plus, as an added bonus, a few of last season’s that I finally gave up on.

Train to the End of the World
Kemono Friends meets Zom 100

Reincarnated as the 7th Prince
I am severely uninterested in high-powered protags in short pants

Studio Apartment…Angel Included
As others have said, Oh, My Goddess did it better, and wasn’t so squeaky.

And finally, a trio of programs I followed almost to the end, but finally gave up to watch re-runs of Log Horizon. I preface this with a comment from Mark Twain, that captures my feelings about them all.
Mark Twain wrote a comedy classic titled “Fenimore Cooper’s Literary Offenses.” In it, he lists some requirements for good writing. Adapting one of those rules gives us an idea of why I finally became so bored with the following anime that I dropped them a couple episodes short of the finalel:

 “…the anime Director shall make the viewer feel a deep interest in the personages of his tale and in their fate; and that he shall make the viewer love the good people in the tale and hate the bad ones. But the viewer of these programs dislikes the good people in them, is indifferent to the others, and wishes they would all get drowned together.”

7th Time Loop
Villainess protagonna forced to repeat her life until she gets it right. Maybe the eighth time around they will make it.

Shangri-La Frontier
Excruciatingly detailed playthrough of an MMORPG by a totally devoted and overwhelmingly enthusiastic gamer.

Solo Leveling
Game within a game within real life. Bonus overpowered protag with a little sister. Double bonus for their mother’s Anime Wasting Disease.

Wrong Way to Use Healing Magic
Oscar nomination for the best portrayal of the shouty life of a combat medic in a non-isekai sekai.

Springtime in Spokane

April 5th! Time to get those cold-hardy cabbages planted!

Oatmeal Pilaf

So, I made a large pot of rice pilaf the other day, using a recipe from Chef John’s Food Wishes (minus the saffron — my crop hasn’t come in yet). Of course there was some left over, and of course I held out some for breakfast.

Setup: 1/3 cup of stone ground rolled oats, one cup broth, two fat dinner tablespoons of leftover rice pilaf, salt. Cook for 10 minutes or so, depending on the exact style of oats.

Results: Excellent. It was primarily the browned onions that gave it a distinctive flavor.

Rating: ****

Big Drones

It looks like Ukraine has started making big drones at home. According to a couple of Forbes articles, they converted a civilian sport plane that they then flew into a Russian drone factory some 600 miles from the border.

Once again we see Ukrainian innovation, leveraging aeronautical engineering know-how in the face of resource constraints. People tend to think of Ukraine as a country of mostly farmers, growing wheat and sunflowers. They forget that it was a center of Soviet aerospace innovation, back in the day, with modern Antonov airlifters like the AN-124 and AN-224 being designed and built in both Kyiv and Kharkiv, and satellites, control systems and rocket engines being designed and built in Dnipro, AKA Rocket City. The facilities are gone, destroyed by the Russians, but the brains remain.

Aeroprakt A-22

By all accounts, this was the simplest of shade-tree conversions, perhaps a day to install and half a day to remove and convert back to civilian use, assuming you wanted to. We can expect future versions to have longer ranges and greater payload, thus allowing the Ukrainians to strike deeper into Russia, including perhaps the petroleum processing facilities like Samara, or Ufa, in the eastern part of European Russia. Once those go off line and a good hard freeze cracks the pipelines, the Russians will lose a good fraction of their total oil production.

The other lesson to be learned is that the Russian air defense system is surprisingly brittle. It provides a cordon defense along (some) of the border, but if that is penetrated — say, by a small, low-flying, mostly fabric drone — there’s nothing to protect the core. Oh, there’s (some) point defense of (some) major cities, but once you have penetrated to the interior you can toddle around to your heart’s content until you find a really deep, really important target. And although drones like this don’t carry much in the way of payload, they don’t need to. You don’t have to carpet bomb a refinery any more. You just pick out the most important part of the most important catalytic cracking tower, and set off your explosives right on top of it.

Last chance to see

President Putin inspecting the remaining surface ships of the Black Sea Fleet while they are still on the surface.

Iceberg runs aground in Egypt

It’s a well-known fact that Libya is running short of water. Recently, they attempted to solve this problem by moving a large iceberg from Antarctica to use a source of drinking water. Unfortunately, shortly after the iceberg transited the Suez Canal, an errant gust of wind forced it to run aground in northern Egypt.

Currently, Egypt and Libya are negotiating over the cost of melting the iceberg in place and piping the water overland to eastern Libya. More details may be found in an upcoming Discovery Channel special.

Pork and Oats

We had pork chops the other night. Three fat, big-boned chops. We ate two, cut the meat off the bone of the third, and saved it for later. That left us with three big, meaty, bones. I put them in a pan, covered them with water, and simmered them for a couple of hours. Result was almost three cups of cloudy-but-tasty pork broth. The first two cups went for other things. The last, not quite cup, was supplemented by about 50ml of apple juice, as well as about an eighth of a real apple, chopped but not peeled. A few shakes of sage.

Setup: 1/3 cup of stone ground rolled oats, one cup pork-n-apple broth, salt. Cook for 10 minutes or so, depending on the exact style of oats.

Results: Very good. Just the right proportions so that nothing overpowered anything else. Cheese helped, but not as much as you might think.

Rating: ***

EggOats

The other night, MJ made some Chef John Mitzewich’s Parmlets: inverted cheese omelettes with the cheese on the outside. The inner, egger part was a scrambled mix of eggs, chicken, onion, mushrooms, and red bell peppers, along with other odds and ends, chopped. It was pretty good, although the cheese shell was a little overdone, and therefore steak knife tough. More to the point, there was half an omelettsworth of mix left over (no cheese), so I chopped it up and put it in my oatmeal.

Setup: 1/3 cup of stone ground rolled oats, one cup broth, half a cup of chopped omelette innards, two dinner teaspoons of potato flakes, salt. Cook for 10 minutes or so, depending on the exact style of oats. Add the potatoes at the end.

Results: Very good. The egg matrix broke up and contributed to thickening the mix. The onions and mushrooms added an almost bacony taste, and the chunks-o-chicken provided all the protein one might want.

Rating: ***

Buffy the Vampire Slayer

Twenty-seven years ago today, BTVS aired on the Warner Brothers network. It was the only TV series I followed religiously, and I haven’t found one that interested me as much since then.

Unfortunately, the BTVS demographic has aged out, and Joss Whedon has fallen out of favor. Of the fifteen Buffy bookmarks in my collection, only one — a set of BTVS transcripts — is still active. The others are dead, for sale, or want to sell me bitcoin…

That doesn’t matter. I think I’ll start marathoning the series again this weekend.

State of the Union

I didn’t watch it.

Politically, my mind is made up. I’m going to vote for Joe Biden in November, even if he drops dead between now and then. Watching the SOTU would therefore be just a kind of political entertainment, and I’m not really into that.

The reason is, of course, that I’m a Never Trumper. He’s a clear and present danger to the Republic, and should never be allowed anywhere near the reins of power, ever again. From that standpoint I’m a single-issue voter. But going beyond the candidate himself, I — a former Republican, who even voted for Richard Nixon, God help me — deeply and sincerely disagree with everything today’s Republican Party stands for and supports.

I am not, in general, a single issue voter. I prefer to look at the totality of an individual’s or party’s positions on a wide range of topics. Politics is the art of the possible. You don’t always get what you want. There’s a lot of truth behind the ancient term half a loaf is better than none. You look at the sum total of each party’s policies, and you choose the lesser of the two evils. If offered the choice between a dog and a cat, you can’t say I want a pony and go pout in a corner. Well, you can, but that usually means you end up with the pet you like the least — protest voters take note. There are, of course, policies, boundaries, red lines, beyond which I will not go. Republican positions on Women’s rights, Social Security, support for Ukraine, and Immigration are among those. Another one, of course, is their craven, cowardly, unpatriotic willingness to submit to the will of Donald Trump. I want my politicians to be statesmen, not yes-men.

Oily Oats

MJ cooked some turkey thighs the other day, browning them in olive oil and finishing them in the oven. Then she cooked some red Bell peppers and sliced onion in the turkey-infused olive oil. Never one to waste the chance of a new taste for breakfast, I dumped a third of a cup of oatmeal into the oil, and let it sit overnight.

Setup: 1/3 cup of stone ground rolled oats, soaked in flavor-infused olive oil, one cup broth, two dinner teaspoons of potato flakes, salt. Cook for 10 minutes or so, depending on the exact style of oats. Add the potatoes at the end.

Results: Meh. It was more oil-flavored than turkey-flavored. Pepper and onion showed up only when my spoon picked up an appropriate fragment. Perfectly acceptable as a savoury breakfast, but not worth repeating. Including more (any) of the pepper/onion mix would help, as long as you can find some leftovers.

Rating: **

15th Anniversary of the blog

Found On Web is now an impressive 15 years old. At least, I’m impressed. Who’da thought I could maintain my concentration for that long?

Brief summary stats (because the new WordPress interface doesn’t provide the level of detail in their data that they used to):

Between 2009 and 2024 there were 53,000 visitors to the site, from all over the world. Aside from the overwhelming majority of US visitors, the country count ran from 6,000 from the UK, to 1 from little Timor-Leste. The peak year was 2015, with 14,000 visitors. Last year (2023) we were down to 4,200 (all values rounded).

In that time we have published just over 1,900 essays, maintaining our 10/month average. Highschool of the Dead remains the all time winner, with 3,100 views total and a peak 120 views in May, 2020.

If I can push it for another five years, I’ll have spent about the same amount of time blogging that I did in each of my two previous careers, academia and the military.

Advanced Russian aviation technology

Over on YouTube is a four minute vid from UK Forces News channel on lessons learned from the air war in Ukraine. It is illustrated by lots of stock footage of advanced Russian aircraft, mostly the MiG-31 Foxhound, but including the most advanced Russian bomber, the TU-160/Blackjack.  One interesting shot is of what appears be a TU-160 defensive systems operator, preparing to operate his advanced technology defensive systems, once he gets his calculations right.

My wife found this hilarious

Trump and the destruction of American influence

Nothing is forever. Times change, situations change, and government policies change. Nobody likes change, particularly in regards to international relations. The trouble is, governments are run by people, and as the people running the government change, so can policy. Monarchies provide stability for the life of the monarch. Dictatorships provide stability for the life of the dictator, which is usually not as long as that of a monarch, dictator life expectancies being what they are. Policies of a Democracy have the possibility of being even more ephemeral, since the ruling party, and even the current ruler of the ruling party, can change every few years.

It has been said that one of the admirable things about America is the stability of its international policies. Yes, it has had major policy changes — NEWT, PRC — but those were understandable changes in response to observable changes in the international situation. Once a new policy comes in, it tends to remain relatively stable across administrations and parties. Unfortunately, that no longer holds.

From his earliest campaigns, Trump has been opposed to US participation in multinational organizations, particularly NATO. He has displayed a total inability to understand the reasoning behind such agreements, grounded in his inability to understand the concept of a military in general, and a dislike of any agreements that are not transactional. The latest reports of his earlier statements, that as President he would let Russia do whatever the hell they want, are emblematic of his thought processes. There are two problems with this, one immediate and tactical, and the other long term and strategic.

Most immediately, his remarks signal to the aggressor nations of the world that they now have a free hand to take whatever actions they want, presumably as long as they do not directly attack US assets. So, Russia can continue to attack Ukraine, and move from there to Latvia or Poland. China can attack Taiwan. North Korea can attack the South. Even aggressor use of tactical nuclear weapons are not clearly off the table.

More concerning, and more long term, is the damage to the image of the US as a strong and above all firm ally. It’s no longer just about Trump. What he has made clear is that any US President can overturn the entire international system if he changes his mind, or even in a fit of pique. Now, this has always been true, as true as it is of democracies in general. But for eighty years the international interests of the US have militated against such actions. US Presidents have not taken such far-reaching changes, because they are US Presidents, and realize the long term impacts on US interests.  Until now.

Trump is the least qualified man ever to become President. He has no concept of the functions of the office, and is not interested in learning. He does not understand what he has done, even though he is out of office and is not likely to get back in. But the damage is tremendous.

Consider. You are the leader of a smallish country, dependent on international trade and threatened by an aggressive and expansion-seeking Russia or equivalent on or near your border. You can no longer trust the US to come to your aid in the event of an invasion, and you can’t even trust America to keep to the terms of any economic trade agreements. What do you do? You cast about for neighboring countries in the same economic boat and you build a local and regional trade network that is specifically designed to function without US involvement. If the US comes seeking some sort of a trade agreement, you will be much more hard-nosed about it — if the US wants a transactional agreement, then you will give away absolutely as little as possible. As for Russia. If you cannot depend on US support, then you have to be prepared to deter Russian aggression on your own, and the only way to do that reliably is with your own nuclear weapons. Suddenly, Poland, Germany, Turkey, Taiwan, South Korea, and Japan all need to start thinking about the nuclear option in a non-US world.

The problem is, this is the world we now live in. Trust is a fragile thing, and Trump has destroyed it. Not as completely as he would if he became President again, but enough that all the countries that sheltered within the US system, and took directions from the US will now start edging for the exits. Nuclear proliferation will expand from Russia/China/North Korean clients to other countries around the world. The US, and the presumably-non-US United Nations might object, but the incontrovertible reply will always be, we can’t rely on you, so we have to rely on ourselves. That’s the irreparable damage that Donald Trump has done.

Fish Cake Oats

We had frozen fishcakes the other night. I don’t remember the brand, but it was your standard breaded-whitefish squares, about 5cm on a side. There was one left over. Not enough for dinner, but just enough for breakfast.

I diced it up into ~10mm squares and added it to my standard chicken-broth-and oatmeal. No special seasonings. I used home made chicken broth, ’cause we had it. I didn’t use beef broth, ’cause I thought the beef would overpower the fish.

Setup: 1/3 cup of stone ground rolled oats, one cup chicken broth, one diced fishcake, salt. Cook for 10 minutes or so, depending on the exact style of oats. No potatoes, because of the breading.

Results: Very good. The breading dissolved, and helped thicken the broth. Much more flavor than plain broth-n-oats, but not overly fishy, probably because of the breading.

Rating: *** three stars.

Russian ASAT

Earlier this week we had a typical Washington DC tempest in a teapot over a 14 Feb Congressional briefing on Russian efforts to develop an AntiSATellite system. It was based on highly classified information that could only be reviewed in a secure area, a SCIF, so of course it was leaked by politicians within hours. The Russians, it seems, are working on a nuclear ASAT.

That sentence appears to contain all the information initially available on the topic. Immediately, the click-hungry press blew that up into “the Russians are orbiting nuclear weapons”, with associated discussions of which treaties were broken and the Starfish/Kessler implications. Later information revised that information to “nuclear powered” ASAT, and everything settled down. Settled down so far that by today, the 16th, there was no mention on the front page of CNN. Looks like a nine-days-wonder doesn’t even last three days any more.

My take is that the Russians are working on a nuclear-powered, probably laser/directed energy ASAT. Not one driven by exploding a nuke and converting the energy into a stream of x-rays, suitable for killing an ICBM, but simply one that can hit another at a distance and damage its optics or solar panels. No Starfish-style EMP-ing of everything in orbit, no kinetic destruction leading to a Kessler-style cascading breakup. Nothing in orbit yet. Nothing to see here, move along.

So why did DoD feel they had to do the briefing now, and why did a Republican congressman feel they had to leak the data now? Well, there’s a Ukraine war to support, aid to which is being held up by a bunch of GOP quislings. And there’s a Federal Budget extension coming up, likewise being stalled by the same goon squad.

So, did it work? Well, the Speaker of the House just adjourned that body until March, so probably not.

Green Thumb Up My Nose: Plans for 2024

This year I plan on major changes to the garden. This writeup is a first pass. I will add to it as things develop.

1. Put up cattle-panel arched trellises. A standard cattle panel is 4×8, so I need two of them to complete an arch I can walk under, and four of them to provide full coverage of one garden section — they do make 4×16 CPs, but I don’t think I can fit those into my Subaru. Initial build is Sections 1 and 2, for tomatoes and squash.

2. Arched cattle-panels give me four planting areas across a given section: an 8in strip along the CP, and another 8in between that and the center path. Identical layout on the opposite side. Center path is 16in wide. Leafy greens along the edges and main crop along the CP.

3. Staggered planting of lettuce, every few weeks, starting from the western side and working more into the shade as the summer gets hot.

4. Tomato spacing is 8in. That gives 12 plants per side. Starting in late April/early May.
Indeterminate Candidates (two each):
Beefmaster (80)
Early Girl (60)
Arkansas Traveler (80)

That leaves space for up to six more not yet decided. That’s why they’re indeterminate.

5. Trying out short season determinates in the house bags. More sun and warmer, so I can start in early April.
Determinate Candidates:
Celebrity (70)
Oregon Spring (60)
Early Boy (60)

6. If the above setup works out we should have our first tomatoes from the house bags in early June. Garden should start yielding in early July. House bags then available for another 60-90 day crop — maybe additional squash, or a second planting of determinates from seed.

7. Squash spacing is planned as 12in. That gives 8 plants per side=>16
Spaghetti (2)
Delicata (2)
Cocozelle (1) (bush)
Kabocha/Buttercup (2)
Pumpkin (1)
Acorn (1)
Butternut (1)

With room for six more, or maybe wider spacing

8. Bush variety squash for the house bags:
Burpee Butterbush (Butternut)
Table King (Acorn)
Cocozelle

I still need to fill in Sections 3 and 4. I still need to figure out where/how to try some bagged sweet/potatoes, plus cucumbers and peppers. I’ll be investing heavily in anti-insect netting. Plan to keep it over the flowering plants until they … flower.

TLDR: Anime I never finished, Winter 2024 Part 2

Things are going pretty well this season. I haven’t queued up that many anime, so I’m not forced to drop that many. Herewith, my final drops.

The Witch and the Beast: Generic josei wherein Plucky Heroine meets Mysterious Domineering Male under suspicious circumstances. Turns out he’s really a softie with a heart of gold — when it comes to her. Not badly done, but it just couldn’t hold my interest.

7th Time Loop: Generic josei wherein Plucky Heroine meets Mysterious Domineering Male under suspicious circumstances. Turns out he’s really a softie with a heart of gold — when it comes to her. At least she’s a person with her own agency, having been through this six times before. It could be worse. It could be Endless Eight.

Doctor Elise: Generic josei wherein plucky heroine meets … actually, Plucky Heroine, MD, makes her own way in the world, despite handicaps such as being the betrothed of the Crown Prince and respected by the King. Opens with her surviving the crash of a fuel-laden airliner that doesn’t burn, giving her the opportunity to perform open chest surgery on another crash victim, using a chunk of window glass and some dental floss, all the while bleeding out from her own wounds. Dies from a thirty foot drop from an open door plug and isekais into a medieval world that knows neither modern medicine nor mayonnaise.

SpargleO’s 2

We had asparagus the other night. Nothing special — trimmed, steamed, buttered. There were, of course, trimmings left over. You know, the tough, woody bottoms. I thought I’d try them in oatmeal. Well, not them exactly, a broth made from them.

Chop up about 1/3 cup of asparagus stems. Heat in chicken broth and simmer for ten minutes or so, then turn off the heat and let sit overnight. In the morning, strain out the chunks of asparagus (because even after all that they are still tough and woody). Top up with more broth, to make one cup.

Setup: 1/3 cup of stone ground rolled oats, one cup asparagus broth, two dinner teaspoons of potato flakes, salt. Cook for 10 minutes or so, depending on the exact style of oats. Add the potatoes at the end.

Results: Meh. The broth tasted like vegetable broth, with very little hint of asparagus. The resulting oatmeal was OK, but nothing to write a blog about. Um…

Rating: ***

TLDR: Anime I never finished, Winter 2024 Part 1

OK, game show fans, it’s time for the latest round of Anime Jeopardy! I’ll give you the answer, and you come up with the question that points to it.

Round 1 Orphaned girl finds isolated traditional-style house occupied by a family of strange men and moves in with them. I know that one, Alex! What is Fruits Basket (2000)? No? Demon Prince of Momochi House (2024)? Really?

Round 2 Everyman-kun is ending high school with no particular skills and no great prospects, except for a goal that seems forever out of reach. Gets a job as dorm manager for a bunch of cute girls with a wide range of personalities. I know that one, Alex! What is Love Hina (2001)? No? Chained Soldier (2024)? I don’t remember any chains in Hina.

Round 3 Mysterious princess enters his life. They find they are drawn to each other, but she has to return to her home. I know that one, Alex! What is A Galaxy Next Door (2023)? No? Tales of Wedding Rings (2024)? Are you sure that’s not Tolkien?

Has copyright run out on 21st Century anime already, or has anime run out of ideas?

New Puppy

His name is Rhythm and he already knows how to get to his water dish. First male we’ve raised in a quarter-century.

Rhythm and MJ

Rhythm and water dish

Chicken Corn Chowder … Oats

MJ made a very good, very hearty corn and potato chowder, with lots of chopped shredded chicken. I used the remnants for oatmeal.

Setup: 1/3 cup of stone ground rolled oats, three quarters of a cup of chicken broth, two scoops of chicken corn chowder (a third of a cup or so), salt. Cook for 10 minutes or so, depending on the exact style of oats. Add the chowder at the end so that the oatmeal is cooking in plain liquid, unhindered by thickening.

Results: Very good, as in Excellent.

Rating: ****

In the wake of Pearl Harbor

We tend to forget the things that went on in the immediate aftermath of the attack on Pearl Harbor. Discussion of the war in the Pacific usually starts with the attack, and then immediately jumps to the Battle of Midway, six months later. But Admiral Kimmel was not relieved until 17 December, 1941, and in the first ten days of the war he was responsible for putting the Pacific Fleet on a war footing and fending off an expected Japanese followup attack. AdmiraL Kimmel’s staff established a  “Running Estimate and Summary” to keep track of all activities influencing CINCPAC. This came to be known as the Gray Book, and it’s what I’m drawing my entries from. The book was kept throughout the war.

Less than twelve hours after the attack, the Secretary of the Navy directed that War Plan 46 be executed, and just over three hours after that, OPNAV directed the start of unrestricted air and submarine warfare against Japan. At this point the US also believed that a follow-up strike was imminent, and that we would not be able to hold on to Midway. TF-12 (Lexington) was SW of Oahu, but was making slow progress because rough seas were continuing to impede refueling efforts. This was one reason why it was not in port at Pearl on the 7th. TF-8 (Enterprise) was kept north of Oahu to intercept any Japanese second strike.

Elsewhere, Prince of Wales and Repulse were sunk on the 9th, and Guam was taken by the Japanese on the 10th. Also on the 10th was the first Japanese assault on Wake.

TF-12 (Lexington) entered Pearl Harbor on the 13th, and the next day it was re-designated TF-11 and Admiral Kimmel sent it out to raid Jaluit in the Marshall Islands, about 2500 miles SW of Oahu. So deployments for retaliatory airstrikes began within a week of the attack on Pearl Harbor.

Other than the immediate preparations for combat, Kimmel was heavily involved in organizing reinforcements and logistics. At the time we were deathly afraid that the victorious Japanese would continue to expand their holdings in the south Pacific — Johnston, Palmyra, Samoa, Tahiti. For example, a ten page analysis of the threat to Tahiti calculated that supporting one Marine regiment and one defense battalion would take about 2000 tons of supplies per month, not counting ammunition, support for the NAS, or construction equipment.

On 17 December, Admiral Kimmel was replaced by Vice Admiral Pye. On the 21st, Admiral Pye called off the Jaluit raid and recalled TF-11 in order to beef up defenses of the Hawaiian island chain. Five days later, Wake island fell to a Japanese landing force.

Incrementalism

This is a tale of two frogs, and how they were boiled. One of them was dropped directly into a pot of boiling water. The shock to its system stopped its heart and it died immediately. The second was dropped into a pot of cold water, that was slowly brought to a boil. While that was happening, the frog learned to swim, grew water wings, built a boat, and survived.

Incrementalism doesn’t work. We found that out in VietNam. We forgot it in time for Putin’s war on Ukraine.

A common problem amongst people who don’t understand how interactive systems work is the failure to account for the ways the system responds to their actions. If Coke spends 10% more on advertising and takes 10% of market share away from Pepsi, that doesn’t mean that doubling their advertising budget will drive Pepsi out of business, because Pepsi will just increase their own spending. In warfare, this is the meaning of the term The enemy gets a vote.

In VietNam, we started with a small ground contingent and limited air support inside the country, gradually ratcheting up to multiple ground divisions and a massive air campaign across four countries. This happened over a period of years. While we were doing that, the Viet-Cong and North Vietnamese were improving their ground and air forces, as well as dispersing their logistics system. The famed Ho-Chi-Minh Trail, for example, was actually a network of roads, tracks, and creek bottoms. By the end of the war, you could travel on a road,  under the canopy, the whole way. In 1965 there were a handful of SA-2 SAM sites around Hanoi. By 1968 there were over 200 across the country.

We are seeing the same thing happening in Ukraine. If the West had given Ukraine ATACMS, HIMARS, Bradley IFVs, and Stormshadow in the summer of 2022, does anyone doubt that the Russians would have been driven out of Crimea and the southern Kherson region by now?

Given most of the last half of 2022 and the first half of 2023 to prepare, the Russians have done what they excel at — preparing a defensive battlefield for a major armor battle. In particular, the Russians had time to place millions of mines, up to five mines per ten square feet, bogging down the Ukrainian armored advance. Without air superiority and with limited minefield breaching equipment, the summer offensive ground to a halt and became a war of attrition. As a result, with the defeat of the summer offensive, Russia sees no need to either change its goals or negotiate for peace. In fact, it seems to be more dedicated to moving beyond Ukraine, into NATO territory.

One of the reasons given for the laggardly delivery of new weapons to Ukraine is the fear that such actions might cross some sort of red line, that will cause Putin to go nuclear. This is not like strategic nuclear deterrence, where both sides know that a strike on the other’s homeland will inevitably result in a counterstrike. Instead, it is our estimate of the enemy leader’s mental state, something that is traditionally very difficult to do. So we have essentially deterred ourselves. Meanwhile, we have seen Ukraine, time and again, cross these supposed red lines with impunity.

Because of the dilatory nature of Western support, the job ahead will be more difficult and more costly, but we know that Ukraine can win if we provide the support. As Winston Churchill said Give us the tools, and we will finish the job.

 

 

I’m in Love with the Villainess

I’m in Love with the Villainess is a five volume light novel series, dating from 2019. The first volume, and the first four chapters of the second volume were turned into a 12 episode anime released in the Fall of 2023. I’m going to be reviewing the anime…well, a mini-review. There will be spoilers.

WataOshi is an isekai, the story of Oohashi Rei, a typical overworked Tokyo OL, who suddenly is transported into the body of Rae Taylor, the protagonna of her favorite otome game, Revolution. No reason is given for the change. She isn’t hit by truck-kun, doesn’t die at her desk, and there’s no intermediate meeting with a goddess. She’s just suddenly sitting at a desk in school, inside the body of Rae Taylor. No indication of what the original Rae Taylor thought of all this.

Rei/Rae, it turns out, isn’t interested in men. While Revolution presents a series of handsome males for the main heroine to romance, that’s not why Rei played it. Instead, she played it because she was infatuated with the villainess of the piece, Claire Francois. Waking up in the middle of the game, with no cause or explanation, she promptly accepts and assimilates what happened and what it implies, declaring her love for Claire within four minutes of the opening scene.

The rest of the anime is a yuri rom-com that runs through many of the standard isekai tropes. Magical school [√], magical duels [√], magical monsters [√], multiple crown princes [√], bullying of our commoner heroine by the noble girls [√], and finally, of course, introduction of Japanese food to an otherwise bland isekai diet [√][√][√]. What makes it a nice change of pace is the introduction of various yuri elements, including a straightforward, and as far as I know unprecedented, discussion of lesbianism that takes of most of the second half of one of the episodes.

The dramatic peak comes with the visit of Claire’s old friend and semi-love interest (for a while she thought she was a boy), Manaria Sousse. Manaria seemingly makes a play for Claire’s affections, goading Rae to challenge her to enter a ‘whose love is stronger contest’ that just happens to pop up at this point in the school year. Using her deep knowledge of the game, Rae obtains a rare item that overcomes Manaria’s entry. Conceding defeat (and for plot reasons), Manaria returns to her home country, Claire realizes that she really does love Rae, and the anime ending is quite determinedly tied up in a nice neat bow.

Except that it isn’t. If one pays attention to the details (OK, and reads ahead in the novels) there’s a lot of loose ends in the plot of the anime. What happened to the commoner’s revolt? Why did Rae keep insisting that Claire should never give up? Who was that masked man? Why did Prince Yu look so good in a maid costume? Finally, why was the game called Revolution, and what happened in the rest of Volume 2?

The answer, of course, is that there was a revolution. In the remainder of Volume 2, Rae and Claire team up to save the royal family and bring the revolt to a peacefully successful end. Then and only then do they retire to a quiet suburban home to raise some adopted children and enjoy a contented yuri lifestyle, while awaiting their next call of destiny.

I really liked the books (read via J-Novel). I thought the anime was just OK. The character designs were OK. The artwork was OK. The animation was just fair. They captured most of the action of the first 1.3 novels, but they lost the nuance you can only get through reading the printed word, and they did their best to close off any chance of a second season.

Funny thing about Yu, wasn’t it?

A tragedy in Gaza

The recent tragedy in Gaza, where Israeli troops killed three Israeli hostages, tells us a lot about the IDF approach to combat there. I am reminded of what Peter Zeihan has said about Russian operations in Ukraine. This is not an exact quote:

Once the Russians have destroyed all the civilian infrastructure, the population will self select. A portion of them will evacuate and you never have to worry about them again. The remainder will obviously be there to fight and you can kill them on sight.

This sounds very much like what appears to be the current IDF philosophy — if it moves, shoot it; if it doesn’t move, blow it up.

The big difference between the Israeli and the Russian armies, and what makes Israel a civilized country, is that when friendly civilians are killed in Gaza, it’s a tragedy. In Ukraine, it’s a Tuesday.

Green Thumb Up My Nose — November Summary

Garden Report for November 2023

four short items.

1. Finished the last of the bathtub-ripened tomatoes just after Thanksgiving. Some of them were bright green, going in — you don’t have to limit your indoor ripening to those with some color. Lost about 15% of them to mold and such.

2. Finished both of the big winterized tromboncino just after Thanksgiving as well. I left them on the vine too long, and the football part had started to rot. The necks were fine. Tastes like a winter squash. If you wanted to say it tasted like Butternut you could, but only in the way that carob tastes like chocolate.

3. I planted some Amsterdam 2 carrots indoors in October. After three weeks, nothing had sprouted. I planted another set on 9 November, on a heating pad, covered with paper towels and plastic. After a month,  nothing had sprouted. I don’t think I’m going to buy any more seeds from Seed King Express.

4. I’ve been watching YouTube vids on using 4×8 cattle panels as a trellis. Unfortunately, they seem to be not easily available in the Spokane area, so I might have to go with a slightly smaller reinforcing grid for concrete.

We are failing Ukraine

…and it looks like we’re doing it on purpose.

Ukraine is the poorest nation in Europe. After 1992 it struggled for decades to overcome the results of seventy years of Soviet misrule. Just as it looked like it was starting to get somewhere, Russian proxies invaded and occupied the most productive part of the country. Contrary to our promises, the West in general and the US in particular failed to provide the support needed to keep Ukraine free and whole. Nevertheless, Ukraine dug in, and held off the Russian proxies for eight years, meanwhile working to break the Soviet legacy of corruption and inefficiency and reform their government to European Union standards. Again the Russians invaded, and again, the West has provided less aid than was needed. Let’s break this down and look at some of the details.

In 1992 when the Soviet Union fragmented, the various component parts kept those forces and infrastructure that were within their new national boundaries. So, for example, Baikonur Cosmodrome was located in Kazakhstan, and so passed to Kazakh control. Ukraine inherited almost 200 ICBMs and another 200 medium and heavy bombers, with a total of 1700 nuclear weapons. They did not get the PAL codes, and so could not arm the weapons (although they might have used them as the basis for dirty bombs by using conventional explosives to scatter radioactive debris).  Those delivery systems, however poorly maintained, and those warheads, however impossible to use as nuclear explosives, provided the basis for a minimalist deterrent force against Russia. Under intense pressure from the US, Ukraine agreed to give those up, in return for security guarantees. They didn’t get them. What they got was security assurances, that the US would look very seriously upon any invasion of that country.

To get an idea of the level of support that is possible, I note that the first shipment of advanced weapons to Israel happened three days after the 7 October atrocities, and US airlift aircraft started regular deliveries on October, with a total of 11 C-17 cargo aircraft arriving in the next ten days. US aid included our entire stockpile of Iron Dome air defense munitions.

We have thousands of tanks in reserve (including 450 tanks the USMC decided they no longer need). We sent Ukraine 31. We waited months to finally approve the shipment of ATACMS missiles, and even longer to approve the delivery of cluster munitions. We still haven’t delivered any of the late model, long range ATACMS. The tanks are obviously excessive to our requirements. The ATACMS and cluster munitions are all end-of-shelf-live models that would otherwise have to be disposed of at great expense. They are mostly being valued at replacement cost, instead of the scrap metal prices we should be using.

Finally, both the US Senate and House are holding up additional funds, primarily as a way of hamstringing a Democratic President.

If we were really serious about all this, all these weapons would have arrived in May, and the Ukrainian summer offensive would have had a chance of succeeding. Instead, we have greater loss of life, and stalemate on the battlefield, stalemate that only leans in Russia’s favor.

Sustainable Mirage

The world’s first passenger flight powered by 100% sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) — made from waste products — took off Tuesday morning from London to New York (Semafor.com). It’s being hailed as the dawn of a new age of carbon-neutral air travel.

There are two big reasons why this is a snare and a trap, greenwashing by the airline industry.

First, we don’t produce nearly enough biofuels to replace all of our petrofuel usage. As Do The Math puts it:

Have you ever seen a tanker truck loaded with gasoline? Lots of times, right?. You’ve seen them on the freeway, unloading in gas station parking lots, and spectacularly blowing up in any number of action films. Now, how about cooking oil trucks delivering fresh supplies to restaurants, or picking up waste oil? I’ve seen them, but nowhere close to the frequency I’ve seen fuel trucks.

We don’t produce nearly enough to replace petro, even if we include home-recycled plastics.

So, the solution is to convert more agricultural land away from food production and into biofuel production. Right? Cut down all the trees and repurpose all the farms ( Semafor reports the UK alone will need to devote at least half its area to this effort) in order to maintain our same rate of travel? Of course, that will mean less food exported to third world countries, and more starvation, but they can die happy, knowing that they have contributed to massive petroleum savings.

Second, it’s sustainable only in the sense that we’ll never run out of farms but we might run out of oil. It’s not sustainable in the don’t turn the Earth into a scorching hell-hole sense. Plants sequester CO2, so the carbon emitted by a SAF engine is called carbon neutral because it doesn’t increase the amount of carbon in the atmosphere when it returns that CO2 to the air. Assuming the whole production process is carbon neutral (so far it’s not), and ignoring the percentage of the plant that normally remains in the soil as a permanent/long-term carbon trap, along with the nutrients those remains provide the soil.

The fact is, the only way to cut down on carbon emissions from flying is to cut down on flying. Anyone who tells you different is creating a mirage from smoke and mirrors.

Street Corn Oats

Mexican Street Corn is corn on the cob, slathered with various Mexican condiments and spices, and sold off a cart in Tiajuana. The U.S. counterpart is stripped off the cob, sprayed with USDA Corn Flavorant #12, and sold in the frozen foods section of your local supermarket. MJ brought home a box of Beecher’s Street Corn for dinner. The description said it had a touch of Serrano heat. Boy, did it ever. Too spicy for dinner, the only thing to do with the leftovers was throw them in my oatmeal.

Setup: 1/3 cup of stone ground rolled oats, one cup chicken broth,  quarter cup of Beecher’s Street Corn, two dinner teaspoons of potato flakes, salt. Cook for 10 minutes or so, depending on the exact style of oats. Add the potatoes at the end.

Results: Very good. Corn flavor came through. Condiments added a nice background touch. Serrano Heat was diluted by the ever popular Oatmeal Bland. I’m not going to run out and buy another box of the stuff, but I will eat all the remainder.

Rating: ****

Green Thumb Up My Nose: Lessons learned from 2023

Summary of the Year

Growing season was about like last year. It started out cold — not hitting 70F until early May — and then turned scorching hot, with record-breaking warm into early October before crashing to killer frost at the end of the month.

Lessons Learned from 2023  

1. Add screws to furring stakes before you put them in. Makes it easy for plants to grow up them
2. Either don’t plant the center row, or plant them early, so they don’t get shaded out.
3. Put down more fertilizer earlier — as soon as I can work the ground.
4. Harvest winter Tromboncinos as soon as they turn brown.
5. Don’t bother planting potatoes.
6. Plant more Delicata squash. Only planted one, and that only had one fruit.
7. Don’t bother with Zucchini. Cocozelle is better.
8. Don’t bother with Pattypan. Hard to cook and tastes about like Summer squash.
9. Don’t use old cocoa or chips containers for seedlings. The metal rims make it hard to transplant.
10. Weed whackers with plastic cutters work well on chopping up tomato and squash remnants. I can bury the detritus into the soil, or into grow-bags.

Results of Lessons Learned from 2022

1.  For some reason, possibly because of shade from plants on the furring stakes, the plants in the middle column didn’t do well. That means we should only plant 8 plants per section, or maybe plant the central row early. I forgot to do this, and had the same problem.
2.  Planting singleton potatoes in 10″ pots didn’t work out. Possibly too cold. Planted potatoes in Section 4 and got lousy yields.
3.  Planting carrots in a cooler works pretty well. Did not try that this year. 
4.  If I want to plant late harvest (October) determinate tomatoes, I need to plant out seedlings in early/mid July (except that the nurseries close out in mid June). Or buy seeds and start them in early-mid May. Forgot to try this.
5.  Cut spaghetti squash along the lines of latitude and cook the ensuing donuts. This works very well and makes nice single servings.
6.  Soaker hose doesn’t cover a lot of ground, so young seedlings a few inches away get dehydrated. Maybe try a sprinkler hose, instead. Tried sprinkler hoses, but they all leaked.

Re-set your clocks tonight

And remember, we set them back in the Fall, not forward.

Me and Myeloma Update — Nov 2023

Results of the latest round of tests. TL;DR — Some measures drifting up but no major changes. MM is returning, but still in remission.

Green Thumb Up My Nose

Garden Report for 231030

This is the last crop report of the year, although I will have a Lessons Learned and Plans for 2024 coming soon. Weather was cold (lows around 20F), with snow.

Closed out the garden. Harvested 2kg of ripening tomatoes (not red but lots of color), and 9kg of greenies. Also brought in the last of the squash, including a large green one that looks like a kabocha, except I didn’t plant any of those.

Squash

Green Tomatoes

Red Tomatoes

As part of the closeout process, I’m trying a new chop and drop method. Turns out, my new whipper-snipper (AKA weed-whacker) is one with stiff plastic blades instead of nylon twine. The blades are strong enough to chop their way through most tomato and squash vines. So once I cut down all the remaining plants onto a tarp, I went through and hashed it all up. Part of it went into a trench in Section 3, and part was layered into four of my grow bags (along with some pelleted fertilizer).   I also took up all the old black soaker hose, and plan to replace it next spring.

Week Ending 10/30	Vegetable (bold = final)	Count	Total Weight g	Unit Weight g	Grand Total	Total Weight kg
	Tomato	81	11000	135	331	32.8
	Butternut	1	880	880	2	1.9
	Potato				52	4.83
	Cabbage				2	0.45
	Tromboncino				37	13.5
	Cocozelle				40	11.14
	Acorn				3	1.29
	Pattypan				7	3.87
	Zucchini				11	2.93
	Carrots				–	0.57
	Pumpkin	2	2610	1300	8	8.82
	Spaghetti	3	1200	400	3	3.9
	Beets				–	0.25
	Beans				–	0.81
Grand Total						87.06

So we beat 2019’s 67kg, but were nowhere near 2021’s all time high of 107kg.

Green Thumb Up My Nose

Garden Report for 231023

No report for last week because there was nothing to report. Cool and rainy, followed by warm, with a high of 72. Forecast for cooler, with rain. And frost. And maybe snow.

I left most of the tomatoes on the vine this week to get as much color as possible. First frost is forecast for Tuesday, so I’ll do a big harvest today. Meanwhile, the pumpkins and the winter tromboncino looked to be as good as they’re gonna get so I harvested almost all of them. There was one really big winter tromboncino, 1.8kg, and a handful of medium summer varieties. (The summer/winter split, of course, just depends on how long you leave them on the vine).

Tromboncino

Pumpkin and Spaghetti

Week Ending 10/23	Vegetable (bold = final)	Count	Total Weight g	Unit Weight g	Grand Total	Total Weight kg
	Tomato	9	1007	112	250	21.8
	Butternut	1	1000	1000	1	1.0
	Potato				52	4.83
	Cabbage				2	0.45
	Tromboncino	6	4104	684	37	13.5
	Cocozelle	1	438	438	40	11.14
	Acorn				3	1.29
	Pattypan				7	3.87
	Zucchini				11	2.93
	Carrots				–	0.57
	Pumpkin	5	5003	1000	6	6.22
	Spaghetti	2	1602	801	3	2.78
	Beets				–	0.25
	Beans				–	0.81
Grand Total						71.44

Back in 2019 we closed out the garden on 28 September, just ahead of a killer frost and a touch of snow. So the 67kg cumulative total for that week was also the total for the year, and included  a couple of kilos of green tomatoes. We are now 4kg ahead of that, and I have not even started on the tomatoes.

Indications and Warning

When people talk about an Intelligence failure, they really mean a failure of the Indications and Warning process. Indications and Warning refers to the analysis of observable events which might be indicators of an adversary’s possible intention to go to war, coupled with a warning of this possibility to the appropriate decision-makers. I&W is a fairly specialized art, and as far as I can tell, no countries outside of the US have a formal I&W organization. For most countries, the function is wrapped up in the normal Intelligence process. For example, in the run-up to the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait, the UK’s Joint Intelligence Committee was tasked with the I&W mission.

So, what’s an indicator? An indicator is an action which the target country might take in preparation for a war. So, calling  up reservists, emptying hospitals to make room for possible casualties, commandeering civilian trucks, or stockpiling of supplies are all examples. In general, the more an action costs the target country, the more likely it is to be a valid indicator of war preparations. Troops need to be trained, and if they are assigned training exercises near the border, there’s relatively little additional cost. On the other hand, declaration of a mobilization of reservists takes thousands of people away from important civilian jobs, and if it’s harvest time, the reduction in a critical workforce during the few critical weeks of the harvest can be extremely costly. The job of the I&W analyst is to weigh all these activities and come to a conclusion that can be presented to the decision-maker as a warning.

And what’s a warning? It’s a formal statement to an individual or organization with the authority to take action that the analyst believes the target country is making serious preparations for an attack. The decision-maker might not accept the warning. President Bush famously listened to CIA’s briefing on the likelihood of attack on the US by Osama Bin Laden, and then responded OK, you’ve covered your ass. On the other hand, If the decision-maker accepts the warning and takes action to respond to the attack, the enemy might call it off. The analyst gave warning, and nothing happened. This is known as The Paradox of Warning.

The I&W process can be desensitized by repeated low intensity near-indicator actions, actions that are close to being a true indicator but which are not as costly or which do not last very long. Repeated call-up of part of the reservists. Exercises close to the border that terminate after a few days. Things which after a while are taken as normal. The process can also be subverted by repeated incitement of the Paradox of Warning. If the enemy can provoke a warning and response, and then do nothing, the Paradox of Warning turns into the Cry Wolf Syndrome. The decision-makers stop believing the I&W analyst. In addition, the enemy can circumvent the I&W process through the use of high levels of operations security (OpSec). German preparations for the Battle of the Bulge were made under the cover of night and bad weather, with stringent communications security.

In the Russia/Ukraine situation, there were numerous indicators, primarily the movement of troops well out of their normal training areas, including into a foreign country (Belarus), but also including anti-Ukrainian propaganda. The US I&W community (and others) picked up on these, and informed the Ukrainian decision-makers.

In Israel/Palestine (and I note that this is just a week after the attack, so everything I say is preliminary or speculation), Hamas combined excellent OpSec, along with extensive desensitivation efforts. Hamas military leadership reportedly kept the political leadership totally out of the loop, not even sharing the fact of preparations for an attack. Most of their preparations evidently took place in their extensive tunnel complex under Gaza City. None of the unit commanders were told that their preparations were part of a combined arms offensive.

Having said all that, the Israeli intelligence community has had decades to build up HUMINT resources in Gaza, and reportedly has extensive arrays of sensors there. They had to have known that something was up. If the US I&W community had seen enough indicators to make them believe an attack was brewing (and they did), there’s no way the Israelis didn’t know. In addition, the Egyptians also knew about the attack, and warned the Israeli government. Nothing was done.

Here we come to the most problematic link in the chain Indications->Warning->Response. At its heart, the conclusion that an enemy is about to attack is a political one. If the decision-maker, a politician, does not believe that the enemy is likely to attack (Gaza has been quiet for years), or has other, seemingly higher, priorities (the threat of unrest in the West Bank), or is just incapable of dealing with the idea (Netanyahu is reportedly better at getting elected than he is at governing), the warning can fall on deaf ears.  This applies at the tactical level too. High ranking Israeli generals presumably got the same warnings that Netanyahu did. They were in a position to issue orders providing a heightened security posture, even if they couldn’t raise the formal alert level. They did not, perhaps because Gaza had been so quiet. Perhaps because they were distracted by issues on the West Bank.  Perhaps because it was a holiday. Perhaps both the politicians and the generals were beguiled by the same fallacy that caused the Israeli Intelligence failure in the 1973 war — there is no way Hamas can win, so why would they even try?

The discipline of Indications and Warning grew out of our surprise at Pearl Harbor, bolstered by our failure to predict the Chinese intervention in Korea. It served us well during the Cold War, and has had to reinvent itself in the post-Cold War era. As a fifteen-year practitioner of the art, I can tell you it’s insanely difficult, requiring both extreme attention to detail and the ability to take a high-level strategic view of a situation, one where there are great holes in the data, combined with active deception efforts by the target organization. It is said that Intelligence is our last defense against wishful thinking. If so, I&W is the leading edge of that defense.

Fall 2023 Anime Season

Normally, about this time of the year I’d publish my based-on-cover-art preview of the upcoming season. Unfortunately, this season, like last, is woefully short of commentable covers. So I’m just going to be dull and tell y’all what I plan to watch and why.

First is a group of shows that are special because they are based on light novels what I have read or am currently reading:

I shall survive using potions: 30-something Office Lady gets mistakenly killed by the gods. To make it up to her, she’s isekai’d into your typical medieval world. Bullies a dim-bulb goddess into giving her the ability to create any kind of potion in any kind of container. Ends up having to conceal her abilities from all the powerful people who want to control her.

What I liked about the LN plot was that, instead of just having this one-trick overpowered skill, she also has to work on not being discovered while she’s using it. The first episode tracked well with the LN. I’m looking forward to her establishing her first shop in a new country.

Our Dating Story: Cute and popular gyaru, who sleeps around a lot (and where were girls like that when I was in HS?) decides to date a nerdy virgin guy, who doesn’t want to have sex unless it’s meaningful (another type that I never met in my hormone-sodden HS days).

A somewhat typical popular girl picks insecure boy story. The LN only just started on J-Novel and the anime only just started on Crunchyroll, so the most I can say right now is that it’s a somewhat cute romcom that looks to be worth watching.

Tearmoon Empire: Marie Antoinette kind of princess reverts to her younger self after being beheaded in a peasant’s revolt. Works hard to avoid that fate the second time around. She’s almost as dense as her plot-cousin Bakarina, but fortunately for her, all the people around her are even denser.

I liked the LN enough that I bought the books instead of just reading it once on J-Novel. She surprises one of her advisors by spouting back is economic theories before he has a chance to lecture her on them in this timeline. He decides she’s a genius, and when you’re a genius, everybody assumes you’re playing 3D chess instead of tic-tac-toe.

I’m in love with the Villainess: Full up yuri romance about an OL gamer who suddenly wakes up inside her favorite game. Her favorite character in this otome game is the villainess, who shows a surprisingly human side.

Another title that I have the books for. Yes, it’s an isekai, and yes she’s totally overpowered by being a major fan of the game — to the point of writing fan-fiction about it — but it’s still an excellent slow-burn yuri romance.

Next, we have a trio of gaming anime, only one of which is an isekai.

16bit Sensation: Gaming industry illustrator wanders into a suspicious-looking shop (one that disappears a few hours later) and gets dumped back in time to 1992, the peak of the hentai game era.

Interesting idea, reasonably well executed, although I think the protagonna is a little too squeaky-voiced, and she could easily prove her futureness by showing them her 2023 ID. Still, it looks like it has potential.

Shangri-La Frontier : Straight up full immersion gaming. Guy who’s been playing nothing but garbage games checks into a top-tier VR game, pursued by a girl who really likes him.

Appears to be a fun program, despite the Loony-Tunes look of the protagonist.

Let Me Check the Walkthrough: Accidentally summoned to a game world as a hero, our protagonna has to train up the real hero.

Another one with potential. I like the idea. Unfortunately, the execution is a little over-the-top. This might be the first one to go.

So that’s it. Seven programs that I’m likely to see through to the end. There’s another handful or so that I’m not so sure of. They’ll probably end up in a TL;DR Real Soon Now.

Green Thumb Up My Nose

Garden Report for 231009

The weather is what I think the Canadians call First Nation’s Summer. Highs in the  70’s, peaking at 80 by the end of the week. Then next week it falls off a cliff —  upper 50’s with rain.

Modest crop of squash. Surprising number of tomatoes getting et by slugs, or something. Harvested one of our two winter Tromboncinos. Roasted the neck for dinner, and only ate half of that. So we have half the neck and the whole — football-sized — main body yet to go. Some say it tastes a little like Butternut, but the best I could do is that it tastes very much like a winter squash.

Tromboncino

We’re gonna need a bigger stove

Making another attempt at growing carrots indoors over the winter. Took a small grow bag full of dirt (you could use a 1-gallon planting pot). Stuck in a square of chicken wire. Dropped one carrot seed into each cell of the chicken wire.

Grow Bag

Grow Bag Grid

Week Ending 10/09	Vegetable (bold = final)	Count	Total Weight g	Unit Weight g	Grand Total	Total Weight kg
	Tomato	9	787	87	241	22.8
	Butternut
	Potato				52	4.83
	Cabbage				2	0.45
	Tromboncino	1	1960	1960	31	9.39
	Cocozelle				39	10.70
	Acorn				3	1.29
	Pattypan				7	3.87
	Zucchini				11	2.93
	Carrots				–	0.57
	Pumpkin				1	1.22
	Spaghetti				1	1.18
	Beets				–	0.25
	Beans				–	0.81
Grand Total						60.29

Back in 2019 we closed out the garden on 28 September, just ahead of a killer frost and a touch of snow. So the 67kg cumulative total for that week was also the total for the year, and included  a couple kg of green tomatoes.

Green Thumb Up My Nose

Garden Report for 231002

The weather this week continued autumnal. Highs in the upper 60’s, lows in the mid-40’s, with a short but intense thunderstorm. Next week will be warmer.

Modest crop of squash. Harvested our three Acorn squashes. Grilled up the medium-sized one for dinner, saving the big one and the small one for later. Also harvested some of the unkillable rhubarb, to go with the strawberries the local food bank was forcing on everyone who walked by before they went off.

Cleaned out the Section 4 potatoes. Total for the year is 52 potatoes, weighing not quite 5kg . I’d have done as well by just eating the seed potatoes.

Week Ending 10/02	Vegetable (bold = final)	Count	Total Weight g	Unit Weight g	Grand Total	Total Weight kg
	Tomato				232	22
	Butternut
	Potato	16	695	43	52	4.83
	Cabbage				2	0.45
	Tromboncino	4	830	207	30	7.43
	Cocozelle	4	1097	274	39	10.70
	Acorn	3	1295	442	3	1.29
	Pattypan	2	424	212	7	3.87
	Zucchini				11	2.93
	Carrots				–	0.57
	Pumpkin				1	1.22
	Spaghetti				1	1.18
	Beets				–	0.25
	Beans				–	0.81
Grand Total						57.5

Back in 2019 we closed out the garden on 28 September, just ahead of a killer frost and a touch of snow. So the 67kg cumulative total for that week was also the total for the year, and included  a couple kg of green tomatoes.

Season Review: Summer, 2023*

There were not enough evocative covers this summer for me to do a Preview, so this is just a review of the four that I watched all the way through. It therefore does not include the ones I watched but didn’t didn’t finish. Those are in the various TLDR’s.

Zom 100

Vending Machine

Undead Murder

The Devil is a Part-Timer!!

Zom 100 For energy and sheer fun, I’d have to say that Zom 100: Bucket List of the Dead  takes the prize. When the feared and hated zombie outbreak happens, all this salaryman employee of a black company can think is Hurrah, I don’t have to go to work today! Once the euphoria wears off, he decides to make a bucket list of all the things he’s wanted to do, and starts out to clear it before the zombies get him. On the way, he meets an old friend (who likes to get naked), a new friend (who is extremely logical, and not much fun (at first), and a German tourist (who knows more about Japanese culture than any of them).

I think the word zany was invented for this show. In almost every episode the studio found a way to twist the plot in unexpected ways. Due to continued schedule slippage, there was still three episodes to go when I got tired of waiting and wrote this, but even if they gooned the ending, this was still a good summertime show.

Reborn as a Vending Machine Last Fall, we had Reincarnated as a Sword. This season we had the second in what will likely be a new inanimate-object-isekai sub-genre Reborn as a Vending Machine, I Now Wander the Dungeon.   Just as it says on the tin, it’s about a guy who gets reincarnated as a vending machine, only able to communicate by saying yes (Welcome) or no (Too Bad), plus a couple of other Japanese vending machine phrases. In the US, of course, they don’t communicate at all. His secret strength is that he can become any vending machine ever produced in Japan, dispensing gasoline, water, and feminine hygiene products, as well as coffee and ramen. Fun times ensue.

A good workmanlike program. It’s a one-trick pony, but they managed to hold my interest all the way through.

Undead Murder Farce has an interesting high concept — the detective is just a head in a birdcage, a woman who is looking for her body. Her companions are an expressionless, hypercompetent maid and a human-looking yokai, who likes to quote lines from rakugo. They travel from Meiji era Tokyo to London during the search, solving various mysteries along the way. The several dramatic arcs were interesting, and included encounters with various famous detectives (Sherlock Holmes), thieves (Arsene Lupine), and mystics (Alistair Crowley), among others. However, there was no overall conclusion. At the end, the detective is still missing her body.

This was obviously designed with a second season in mind. I liked the idea, the characters were well done, and the dialogue was entertaining.

The Devil is a Part Timer The Devil is defeated in his home dimension and flees to Earth. Having lost his powers, he gets a part time job at a fast food joint. A convoluted plot ensues, involving demons, angels, other-dimensional humans, office ladies and high school girls. Plus supernatural children responsible for the health of the planet. Or something.

The end of an almost ten year wait. The first season was released by studio White Fox in 2013, directed by Naoto Hosoda. The latest effort was by studio 3Hz and directed by Daisuke Tsukushi. From an artwork/animation standpoint it was not as good as Season 1, but it wasn’t terrible. I read the full light novel series, by Satoshi Wagahara. That was longer, better, and had a quite different ending. 3Hz tied up most, but not all, of the loose ends with a somewhat ambiguous finale. There’s a need for another season, but there’s not another seasonsworth of material. Maybe they will release an OVA.

​Conclusion: A lightweight season, as are most Summers. All of these were entertaining, and none of them made you think. I guess that’s the definition of a good summertime watch.

*Yes, I originally said 2020. No, I don’t know why.

Green Thumb Up My Nose

Garden Report for 230925

The weather this week was positively autumnal. Highs in the upper 60’s, lows in the mid-40’s, with occasional showers. Next week will be cooler and rainier.

Modest crop of tomatoes this week. Mostly Early Girls. I’m expecting at least as many before first frost.

Meanwhile, my face is as red as the tomatoes, both from embarrassment and anger. I’m using flat soaker/sprinkler hoses in the garden.  On the brand that I’m using, the transition from the rectangular flat portion to the round part that attaches to the extension hose is stretched, and the very first spray hole tends to rip (as does the last hole, where it transitions back). A marine epoxy plug backed by tight wraps of duct tape failed almost instantly. Since the hose goes to a two-tube configuration right after the attachment, it’s impossible to cut it and put on a new one.

The result is that most of the water comes out at the ends, and the pressure along the rest of the hose drops to almost nothing. As a consequence, Section 4, with the potatoes, has not been properly watered for months. When I harvested the first two plants I felt like a peanut farmer.

Week Ending 09/18	Vegetable (bold = final)	Count	Total Weight g	Unit Weight g	Grand Total	Total Weight kg
	Tomato	26	2126	82	232	22
	Butternut
	Potato	16	533	33	36	4.13
	Cabbage				2	0.45
	Tromboncino	2	1075	538	26	6.6
	Cocozelle				31	9.60
	Acorn
	Pattypan	2	950	475	5	3.45
	Zucchini				11	2.93
	Carrots				–	0.57
	Pumpkin				1	1.22
	Spaghetti				1	1.18
	Beets				–	0.25
	Beans				–	0.81
Grand Total						53.2

2019 is still ahead, at 55.6kg.

Get Vaccinated

From Jason Moore @moorejh

Vaccines let us destroy smallpox. By my reckoning, most of the anti-vaxxers were born after it was eradicated, and most of those old enough to remember it were first in line to get their Covid vaccine. The newest version of the Covid-19 vaccination is out. Get it.

Memories of my Youth: Getting Married

Yesterday, as my wife reminded me, was our 53d wedding anniversary.  It almost didn’t happen.

The year was 1970. I was stationed in England, at RAF Mildenhall, the Director of Intel for the 513th Tactical Airlift Wing. MJ was home with her parents in Richland, WA. I was due to fly back mid-month, for our wedding on the 19th.

On the 6th of September, 1970, a Palestinian group hijacked three airliners to a remote lakebed in Jordan.  If hostilities broke out in the Middle East, the Wing might get involved. Do I stay, or do I go? Ultimately, and with the blessings of the Wing DO, I went.

Despite the fact that the airliners had just been blown up, and that tensions were high, the security was remarkably civilized. I did have to open my carry-on to show the ten bottles of Double Diamond Pale Ale. They could see that I was only here for the beer and so they let me and the beer through. I found a nice, comfy chair in the departure lounge and settled down for a bit of a read before the London to Seattle flight took off.  A while later, not having heard any announcements, I went up to the ticket agents to inquire. “Oh, we called that flight twenty minutes ago, It’s boarding now”.

I dashed through Heathrow Airport (it was a bit smaller back then), down the jetway, and got there as they were getting ready to close the door. I made the flight, but only just.

The next evening, beer in hand, I was sitting on the floor of my incipient inlaw’s living room, watching the news. “Giant C-130 transports from RAF Mildenhall are transporting humanitarian supplies and a field hospital to Amman to support the Jordanian Army’s fight against Palestinian dissidents.”

Green Thumb Up My Nose

Garden Report for 230918

Warmer. Highs in the upper 70’s to mid-80’s.  Next week will be cooler and wetter.

I’m starting to harvest the winter squash now. Unlike summer squash, I can leave them on the vine until needed without fear that they’ll blow up like clown balloons. Started off by harvesting one pumpkin and one spaghetti squash.

Two too big

Positively cornucopic

Starting end-of-season maintenance on the planter bags — pulling up the dead/dying plants and dumping out the soil. So far, I’ve done the cucumber and zucchini bags, plus a couple of tomatoes.

Winding down

But not gone yet

I’ve planted one of the bags with pickling cucumbers. Should be ready in mid-November, if the frosts don’t get them first. It’s a gamble, but I’ve got the spare bags and soil, so why not. El Nino autumn is theoretically warmer than average (which does not necessarily mean warm).

Week Ending 09/18	Vegetable (bold = final)	Count	Total Weight g	Unit Weight g	Grand Total	Total Weight kg
	Tomato	37	2523	68	232	19.86
	Butternut
	Potato				36	3.60
	Cabbage				2	0.45
	Tromboncino	1	255	255	26	5.52
	Cocozelle	2	1050	525	31	9.60
	Acorn
	Pattypan				5	2.5
	Zucchini	2	310	155	11	2.93
	Carrots				–	0.57
	Pumpkin	1	1216	1216	1	1.22
	Spaghetti	1	1183	1183	1	1.18
	Beets				–	0.25
	Beans				–	0.81
Grand Total						48.5

2019 has now crept ahead, at 49.7kg.

All Deception is Self-Deception

People are deceived because they want to be deceived. They want to believe whatever the deceiver is selling, because it strengthens their own view of themselves or of the world. Or perhaps they want something to be true that they know isn’t true, so they act as if it is.

Think about all the Obama birth certificate crazies. They know, or were told, what the Hawaii state birth records requirements are, but they keep repeating the lie to each other, and to us, because it supports their internal narrative of a man who does not deserve to be President.

Recently, a popular “Christian influencer”, a person who runs a 2-million subscriber YouTube channel, was arrested for child abuse. Her advice was clearly abusive, but millions wanted to believe in her picture of a happy, well-disciplined, white Christian family, so they subscribed and stayed.

The list goes on. The election was stolen. Covid vaccinations are dangerous but Ivermecten can cure you. Masks make you rebreath carbon monoxide. What these all have in common are a core message that supports what their believers would like to have be true.

So it is in wartime. Since before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Moscow has been running a sophisticated, wide-ranging, flexible disinformation program to convince the West, particularly the United States, that Kiyv is not worth supporting. Ukraine is full of anti-Semitic Nazis. Ukraine is riddled with corruption. Ukraine is historically part of Russia. The counter-offensive is failing. These lies then get picked up by the press and right wing politicians in the United States and give cover for those who would cut American support for the war.

On the other side of the equation you have the deceivers, the people who originate or facilitate the transmission of these lies. Sometimes, as with Christian lifestyle influencers, the motive is simple greed. The more subscribers you have, the more money you make. This is also true of most of the anti-vaxx/anti-masking propaganda. Those who originate these stories believe them even less than do those who repeat them [viz, all the anti-vaxxers who got their families vaccinated]. In other cases the motive goes beyond mere money, to a lust for power. The political lies you see on social media and in the press are designed to discredit the other party, to activate the base, as they say.

If you follow the links above, you will see that the primary culprits in these power-seeking lies are the Republicans. Perhaps not all Republicans, just the ones in power. The rest are scared silent or are part of the deceived. The lies are both domestic, in support of Trump and therefore a threat to democracy in America, and foreign, effectively in support of Russia and therefore a threat to Ukraine and therefore the world.

What can be done to combat these lies and those who let themselves be deceived? Simple — tell the truth. Don’t counter the lies, because by reporting you are supporting them. Just report the truths the lairs don’t. Starving your kids is child abuse, counties with high vaccination rates have fewer deaths, Ukraine is fighting a successful war in their own way, but needs much more Western support.

Tell the truth, as they say, and shame the Devil.

 

Green Thumb Up My Nose

Garden Report for 230911

Much cooler weather. Highs in the mid to upper 70’s and lows below 50F.  Next week will be slightly warmer, into the lower 80’s.

As I said last week, the harvest is thinning out but it’s not done yet. I harvested my second planting of beans — yellow beans — but didn’t get very many. That’s OK, since we’re not all that fond of beans. There’s perhaps fifty tomatoes yet to ripen, six pumpkins, four spaghetti squash, two tromboncino that I’m letting go to winter squash status, and at least one each acorn and butternut squash hidden in the jungle.

Tomatoes

Pumpkin

Spaghetti

Tromboncino

Acorn

Butternut

Week Ending 09/11	Vegetable (bold = final)	Count	Total Weight g	Unit Weight g	Grand Total	Total Weight kg
	Tomato				195	17.34
	Butternut
	Potato				36	3.6
	Cabbage				2	0.45
	Tromboncino	2	425		25	5.26
	Cocozelle	4	1170		29	8.55
	Acorn
	Pattypan	1	550		5	2.5
	Zucchini				9	2.62
	Carrots				–	0.57
	Beets				–	0.25
	Beans	–	100		–	0.81
Grand Total						42

Creeping ahead of 2019, now by four kilos.

Green Thumb Up My Nose

Garden Report for 230904

Rain and cooler weather off and on all week, with highs as low as 64F. We are at the start of Meteorological Autumn.

The harvest continues to slow, but it’s not done yet. There’s perhaps fifty tomatoes yet to ripen, six pumpkins, four spaghetti squash, two tromboncino that I’m letting go to winter squash status, and at least one acorn squash hidden in the jungle.

Week Ending 09/04	Vegetable (bold = final)	Count	Total Weight g	Unit Weight g	Grand Total	Total Weight kg
	Tomato	6	480	80	195	17.34
	Cucumber				–	–
	Potato				36	3.6
	Cabbage				2	0.45
	Tromboncino	3	560	187	23	4.84
	Cocozelle				25	7.38
	Acorn
	Pattypan				4	2.0
	Zucchini				9	2.62
	Carrots				–	0.57
	Beets				–	0.25
	Beans					0.71
Grand Total						39.76

Still ahead of 2019 now, but only by about three kilos.