Beef up, July 4th prices down

 

Same article says:

Carefully manipulated propaganda (pork is NOT beef)

You might wonder, maybe not, why I'm bothering with 3AM non-political filler stories (from bureaus)

But it's for next month's monthly budget.

Pot roast gets devoured in 3 days, and then there are 28 or so days left.
mmmm, pot roast.

The flat chuck is smaller. But the same Price per pound.
Now, if you get food *delivered* I wonder if they know the difference.
"Tri-tip" is horrible but it's cheaper

Besides cows going extinct and the menacing flesh-eating screw-worm just across the border, 
And imports going tits up, 

You'd *think* someone is trying to tell you that the beef industry is doomed.

Right this exact second I'm looking for foods that cause a person to retain water, and the foods that are diuretic (Get rid of the water your execrable diet is causing) But it's proving difficult.
They usually hate bread, and salt.
I LOVE salt, and I live on bread.

Diuretic foods are boring and they themselves contain LOTS of water... I'm missing the point.
Cucumbers? Boring. 
Asparagus? Arugula?
Geez, I was never a model, I (no. ew)

WTF relatively dry food (non bulky) Tastes good?
Cheese? (I'm hoping?)
Avocados!! But if they're healthy they're expensive. 
TOO expensive.
And hard (inedible)

I don't really know how my stomach feels about acid. Enough acid to make a difference to everything else but keep my stomach quiescent.
The picture in my head you can't see is lemon-slices boiling with my summer squash,

Organic free-range zucchini, (Link)

 
or maybe (even better) a bottle of lemon juice.

PS the Farm Bureau (or whoever) thinks that you can eat decent picnic-food for $7.00 a person.

Hardly seems worth it.

Buy now, save thirty Cents? OMG, get in the car

They also don't differentiate between Costco and Vons-Pavilions, a store is a store.

😢😿😿😿😢😭😭

Russian food:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qlbdCFwPEG0

"Fish" is vague.
Caviar and sturgeon or canned tuna??

The subject of vitamins comes up from time to time.
"Folic acid" isn't covered.

I wouldn't know, no one told me, and it isn't covered anyway.
"Methylfolate" just in case?

Neural-tube-defects, isn't that Spina-bifida?
Maybe I quoted the wrong unreadable.

Ya gotts to know, I had to choose, and so I chose methylfolate 1000, or four times the recommended daily dose. I don't want to go all "outer Limits" 

so I'm researching as best as I can.
I might switch from daily dosages to once weekly, but it's almost for sure they'll gather dust on a shelf if I do that.
And how do I know if my doctor is being all preventative (just in case) or there's some actual need?
And plus he never mentioned "B12" but I'm taking them together, is that overkill?
(omg)

Ain't AI great (sometimes)?

Snarky-shielding:
No, that 33-bucks was not Only for vitamins.

"Optimized Folate" does Nothing, says one reviewer.
yeahbutt I was directed to take it, verily, and so I shall.

Grant recipients talk funny to receive more grants; if they talked in plain english,
Associations and councils would lobby against them and reduce their money,
"Too woke, Too Racial, too Diverse"
So they obfuscate like puzzles in my game (And I hate puzzles)
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9318947/
There is an "Inverse relationship" between monolithic cheese (all cheese looks alike, right?)
and heart disease.

Hem vs haw

Only organic free-range cheese is worthy.

I love cheese. The yellow and the white, although the white gets old.
My stomach endorses cheese.
No comment from my heart.

Real cheese doesn't smell like a cow's butt.
"American cheese" was invented by a Canadian, who went on to become a zillionaire putting cheese in spray cans.

I'm not snooty, my stomach is. It doesn't like "American cheese"

In conclusion, I'm only interested in cheeses like "Cheddar" not the stratospherically expensive kinds for the terminally-refined...

So cheese goes on my shopping list.

herodotus

 

O sure, blame Pilate

creepy questions

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/picture/2025/jun/18/nuclear-armageddon-is-back-baby-so-how-does-one-survive-a-nuclear-explosion 

fleeting train (really fast express)

WHY do most apps want access to contacts and the phone-dialing system?

WHY does everyone everywhere want access to "Location services"?

Location permissions are required?

If you only need the SSID (in a database) you don't need location services to be on.
IOW you're FOS, but nvm

I get all interested in "RSSI" which is a fancy-assed way of saying "Signal strength."
The minimum needed for a high-speed connection, limited hopefully by distance and maybe the ceiling.
But this turned out to be a multi-part miniseries....No, my router won't show RSSI except as an icon with little bars, and connection-speed.

Parenthetically, My RSSI for cellular modem service is, -89 to -86, which is horribly bad supposedly but I''m still here (You bastards)

SO when the router asks me what my RSSI connection boundaries are, I totally guess, 

or,

use a freebie wi-fi spy-thing that wants me in some database.

THEN (in part xxxviii) I learn that the whole RSSI-Boundary thing is only a request to clients that they switch to a different node in my mesh, not a bubble to keep wifi-hackers out.

Assuming most cellular companies follow the law, and the law wants to know where your phone is 24/7 (watch any cop show)

I guess I answered my own questions. The Law and hackers need to know where and who you are. 
I'm supposed to have a "Burn phone" but I don't.
So blame me, right?

Anyway, I want my battery to last long.
It does not.

Under my wifi-button, with it turned OFF, it continually says "Networks available."

This is because of "Location services", I am told.
So I disable "Location services" and get dire warnings.

I'm still seeing the "Networks available" on the wi-fi button. It doesn't scroll anymore, does that mean it's frozen, or it just scans slower? No, wait, It scrolls now. Must have been a choice I made that something overrode.

My number and the towers I use must impart valuable location information to the 
"Powers that be" so Wi-fi is more of a micromanaging-thing, to know e x a c t l y where I'm at.

This just got edited down, it was more bombastic than creepy.
"Creepiness" is so subjective anyway...

---

---

---

---

Not "creepy," more bland homogenized patter.
https://www.mobilesignalguru.com/blog/why-does-your-mobile-signal-get-worse-at-night/

It's You, you didn't choose the right company, you're still awake when you should be sleeping,
And you didn't buy a "Signal Booster."
Apparently the latest cellular slogs through the worst signals ever, so nobody really cares, except maybe cellular gurus wanting to save a buck on electricity.

Someone said that one of our town's Towers died and they're replacing it.
Then they changed the palaver and said they're modernizing an existing (dead?) tower.
Both scenarios mean that one of the towers will stay dead for a while(?), and the surviving tower is doing double-duty.
IDK, but it sounds great, like some submarine-movie.

To the zillions of iPhone-users who have never seen nor used a VCR,

this next bit is meaningless, so stop reading.

The "Back Arrow" meant "Rewind"
The circle meant "Record" 

and the square meant "Stop (recording.)"

Yeah-yeah, I know, "Times have changed."

 
I press until the desired result happens.

(e.g., "square"="screenshot-menu")

I get it wrong two out of three times.
I don't like it much, but I like the "Screenshot"-thing when I actually get it to work.

I always thought that the woman on the train holding her phone up, so the people behind her could see it,

was swapping apps mindlessly using gestures to sell her cool phone brand (this was maybe 2004.)

She might maybe have been practicing gestures....
Or maybe she was recording us watching her, or maybe she was testing the phone's responsiveness??

I thought she was very weird at the time, not stopping on any one app nor really watching the screen...

I'll choose to believe (for now) that she was testing her new phone.

Was that the day my wife nearly had an aneurysm cussing me out for worrying what other people think or do?

I try not to think about it much.

-----------------

getting told your blood pressure is high, almost-high or whatever, might make you want to go out and buy a meter, which never gets used.
The exercise (spelling "Exercise" correctly,) dragging the meter from the closet, rearranging furniture and plugging the damn thing in and turning it on, And one-handed cuff acrobatics, vs braving traffic to get to their offices on time and be all nervous, um, means your blood pressure will ALWAYS be above normal, it's futile to fight it.
Unless there's some trick, like holding your breath or completely going limp or arm-positioning.
Putting on the cuff *very loosely* (cuz if it's nice-and-tight before you begin, your pressure will be higher.)

Well anyway.

O, and doctors get paid more if your blood pressure is high and they can prescribe stuff
(that depresses you and makes you dizzy)

If one blood-pressure-pill makes your pressure go lower than 200 (say,) then TWO blood pressure pills might be even better...buut nooo, that extra pill would make you nearly black out and order an (expensive) ambulance....the creepy feelings from the memory are still there.
Blood pressure is either high or it isn't. "Above normal" doesn't count. 

I wonder about manual testing. The cuff doesn't have to be positioned exactly, and the sphygmomanometer /stethoscope (ear-hose thingy) gets pressed to your arm wherever.
You might be more nervous than with a soothing machine
(It reminds me of executions, and no, I couldn't find a picture yet)
...bottom line, for all the wrong reasons, it's high, based upon the opinion of the fancy manual machine operator.
Now comes the home meter. 
I failed biology-stethoscopes, couldn't hear a damn thing and the model-type was totally pissed anyway.

I failed buying a cheapo meter (The one they all use) because the cuff was too damn small.
With googling, I managed to get a Bentley/Lexus meter, which I avoid except once a year when the subject arises.
If you're old, they can profit tons and if they make a mistake, well you're old anyway.
Bah! Humbug.
Now that I've really worked myself up, I shall press "test" on the old Bentley.
3 tests average: 124/70!!! In your FACE!!

Now I'll wonder why my left ear whistles sometimes, to the beat of my pulse...

Random prophetic papers and famous phrases.

"Peace for our time" (Neville Chamberlain)
Mount Megiddo (and the park it's in) 
Project 2025 (The reader's digested version)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6mWtHKhRszs 

google amongst yourselves...

None of these entries really warrant publishing but there is no way to really prioritize them, snarky observations vs grave historic pronunciations. (important from very trivial)

OK you've just told a lady and her man-friend, that monsters have been loosed on earth.

"Mythalanost" she says.
"Sheit," he says.

Let's assume "Mythalanost" is "Goodness gracious" for now, until I can spell it correctly, into a googleable word.

catchphrases (and stuff)

 https://forward.com/opinion/729922/huckabee-text-to-trump-israeli-iranian-conflict/

The vitamin salesman wants the world to end, so Jesus will come back (I'm readers-digesting)
Too flippant? 

Then go read three tomes about biggie history,
And existentialism vs nihilism,
with a dash of predestination thrown in.
Binge on "Millennium" (the TV show from before the Millennium.)

"The specific Christian theology to which Huckabee subscribes, known as dispensational premillennialism, promotes a narrative that the whole of history, past and future, is already written. Rather conspiratorially, it suggests that elect believers have the knowledge to interpret future history by claiming to read the Bible literally.

What this means: Despite their infallible belief that the future is foretold, Christian Zionists grant themselves some agency by claiming their actions were guided by God. If Trump chooses to act as another Esther, in this framework, he is doing so as part of the pre-established chain of actions that will lead to the Rapture."(Link)

(Link)

neither day nor hour (totally ignored)
-------

A month later, several additions to this ramble are on my mind.
Donations (you are encouraged to charge your credit card)
and why "Millennium" the TV show isn't shown much anymore.
OK so it's horribly dated (they used 56k modems back then) but then so is "Twilight zone"

The church asking for the donations is among a small forest of well-heeled, ostensibly needy.
I expect a guy with a cowboy hat to drone on about (OK I'll wait until it happens, no need to rub more salt) But Dogs, kids christians and Jews could really use some of that money churches already have,
making the govt. look bad because it was their job to do what the commercials say they will do if you'll only donate.

My train of thought skews towards owls(?) and Roosters(?) (I'll edit this later),

Both groups know the world will end.
But one of the groups feels as though the "end" needs a push, a nudge.
Very preliminary link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roosters_(Millennium)

pointless arguments

 My aged relative, who everyone says is wiser than I, expounds upon some nicknames having no difference to the longer name.

Preach on, reddit (lol)

But it makes a BIG difference, to notaries. It's cute, but it's WRONG!!

I had more but it's too location-specific, or too time dependent.
To quote a person who officially knows, 
"Times have changed"

(Uh,) fill in your preconceived notion here)

It's as if (the train depot in my mind said) a person firmly believing in existentialism tried to survive free and alive in US-2025.

There are plenty of people anxious to preach the meaning of life, and what your freedoms are, and they have an AR-15 to back them up.
Plenty of cops, 

preachers,

podcasters

No, you're fucked unless you conform.
I'm severely misquoting my own train-of-thought but what it actually said
("A nihilist and an existentialist are arguing at a party") makes even less sense.
No one would convince anyone, and the argument would fall flat on its ass when the party was over)

*I* think, in a normal happy society, that you might actually FIND a person 

who thinks "Sally" and "Sarah" are the same, 

but would you want to test this in El Paso Texas or Kazakhstan?

Googled "Sally"

(Link)

People usually lump together other people based on their surname, I'd think.

Somewhere in here (but, no)
Conservatives living way-back-when objected to thumbprints on their licenses, and referred menacingly to the bible where it says (somewhere) about people having to have the mark of the beast to live with everyone else.
Yeah but then planes crashed, and I haven't heard any of this for a reeeally long time.
But morbid curiosity makes me want to go google 666.

https://www.govtech.com/security/papers-please.html

2nd point, if you're counting:
If you receive retirement funds or whatever politically-correct name you want to call them,

The fund-people could stop your funds if your name changed.
Pick the biggest fund you get your money from, and change your name to exactly whatever it is they call you, or be cursed with visits to district offices for months.

gargantuan titans suing for power get stalemated daily in Google news....
What chance does an ordinary citizen have?
Save the pedantic answer, it was rhetorical.

https://www.economist.com/1843/2025/06/06/a-historical-guide-to-surviving-and-thriving-in-the-court-of-trump

Bed?

 This never comes up....
It's a silly thing anyway. 
People throw away stuff when they move, that's how I got my enormously huge gargantuan behemoth,
and you don't remember my wife, and the bed got bigger when she died anyway.
(I say "anyway" too much)
My ultrasound for my stomach was nightmarish because their bed was too small, and I was deathly afraid of rolling off onto the floor. 
I threw my arms around for balance, which really pissed off the ultrasound lady.
NOW I look at beds in my mind, wouldn't it be nice to have a teeny W I D E bed?
No rolling off.
Reality is, people like Tall beds, narrow or wide.
Waste of space.

My width is fine, it's my length that is wasted. 
My laundry and my discarded items have built a little sanctuary under the bridge of my TV.
Couldn't I just (fill your suggestion here)? No, it would only make stuff worse.

"Crib" looks nice but it's too narrow. 
"Small Single"? too Narrow.
Up until "Full" which is too tall.
The old bug-bitten behemoth will have to do.
Or maybe, a really nice couch??

The RTG (Richer than GOD) bed would be a hospital bed, but they add mattresses after the bed (or something, at least at the hospital I was at)
And they used air mattresses shaped like egg cartons...
the mattresses breathed loudly.

IDK...

But generally speaking, they have rails and height adjustments, so cool.
Banal and boring vs very specific TMI. I choose the boring.

(Link)

Nyah.

I don't suppose anyone says "She Anne-Franked herself for years"
The only other famous person I know doing that was "Howard Hughes"

Fallout New Vegas

Break-up, come-out, wake-down (OK "wake-down" is made-up)

right this exact second, 

I'm wondering which series of romantic variables exist 

to change my character's love-scene with "Bellara" 

from a dutiful peck and a sigh to a long nap on the tiny couch.

I messed up one line of the throwaway dialogue, 

I'm not an elf, I didn't complement her hair?

repetitive games and the teeny rewards make this a worthwhile question, 

but finding the answer is difficult. Waxing philosophical without revealing plot is

a skill most of you have mastered, like some secret you refer to and wonder about but

never really say. 
Neve Gallus (the game character) seems more balanced, open and finishes her sentences,
but (IDK-Y) I like Bellara.

Doesn't reveal squat. Bombastic too. (*sigh*)

I don't need a video. I want the couch scene from many months ago. 
My hours spent (error free btw) need to be repeated to even have a chance. End the game, watch ALL the credits, is it worth it?
Prolly not.
Picking some other character to get captured and "Blighted"?

I suddenly have a theory on "DXGI" errors, and just talking about them is a taunt for them to return, but...

All those custom-textures getting compiled, instead of handed to you, might mean that a couple textures get compiled wrong, and cause errors of the undefined variety, but that's a total guess.

Maybe it's a couple of things that cause errors and my last playthrough was a very lucky one?

This next story is so confusing, at least to me.
https://www.detroitnews.com/story/news/nation/2025/06/15/protester-shot-and-killed-at-no-kings-rally-in-utah-police-say/84222296007/

A guy shot another guy, missed slightly and fatally wounded a third person.
The REASON the anonymous guy shot the other guy was his rifle. 
I'm understanding it, after I read it a few times, I just think it could have been clearer.

The anonymous guy wore a brightly colored vest...I'm guessing brightly colored vests is code for some color-of-authority, or why wasn't he arrested?

Front page news trivia

https://gizmodo.com/chatgpt-tells-users-to-alert-the-media-that-it-is-trying-to-break-people-report-2000615600

Poor satellites, they're too shiny and reflect light on the poor people just trying to get a peek at the sky.

Vantablack! Our hero.

The Vantablack Car

is a one-of-a-kind BMW.
I wonder who ends up with it,
after whipping up public-interest and congressional support for some Biggie Vantablack contract??
The normally $76,000 model (At its most basic) could be worth $300,000, but that's guessing, only BMW would know.

Flat-black from spray cans wouldn't make enough money.

You can't just go around willy-nilly painting satellites black, it isn't done.

My take:

Science lives on grants and donations, and publicity.
Black absorbs light (and heat)
Um, How do they keep satellites from getting too hot?
(shush, adults are speaking) Yeah OK nevermind

How much global oil does Iran give, anyway?
Shush!!

war, covid, supply chains, the weather.....Biden, Obama.
Please ignore the instantaneous price change at gas stations, we are in control.
We control the vertical and the horizontal
Sit back and relax

https://www.democracynow.org/2025/6/11/headlines/as_tanks_arrive_in_dc_trump_says_very_heavy_force_will_be_used_on_protesters_at_military_parade

(Missing Link: Tiananmen square)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stand_in_the_Schoolhouse_Door

Sub comment to my missing rant:
The articles on the front page vs the comments to the articles on the ... o nvm

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-14795055/trump-army-birthday-dc-military-parade-cost-millions.html

(missing video)

I got a copyright warning.... I can't see the warning except when I release this for publication.

I'm erasing it even though This is played from Youtube, I am not broadcasting.
Anyway, here is another Youtube link:

I don't know if it's just the careful multi-camera editing, but please look at 00:34-00:36 to see that people really were moved by that parade.

         This video has nothing to do with Parades (I don't think) but it reminds me of the soundtrack in

"The hunt for Red October" at the end of the movie.
It's moving because of the style of singing, Basso Profondo (which spellchecker is calling out as wrong, but Google swaps out the 'U" for an "O" (or whatever, they used low voices) 

If you reeeeally look, most playback audio is with polyphonic choirs, not the choir in my head of salty old men remembering their comrades.

A lone woman belting out "Amazing grace" sounds better mezzo-soprano, but "Eternal Father" sounds great in a lower register sung by many.
I know jack about music generally, I just know what I like at funerals