If Pam Bondi Was a Waitress
14:10 Thursday, 12 February 2026
Current Wx: Temp: 24.03°F Pressure: 1020hPa Humidity: 72% Wind: 12.71mph
Words: 22
Yesterday's embarrassing performance by the corrupt and incompetent Pam Bondi at least offered ripe material for mocking satirization.
✍️ Reply by emailFree as in beer
12:12 Thursday, 12 February 2026
Current Wx: Temp: 23.83°F Pressure: 1020hPa Humidity: 73% Wind: 13.58mph
Words: 346
I had an OpenAI api account with $19 on it, and an order to keep the account between $10 and $20. I've removed the credit card, so that's over. I thought I was paying for ChatGPT, but I'm using the "free" tier. (Nothing is free, I'm sure they're harvesting something of value from our chats.)
Mitzi and I intend to build a new home on her property here, and so we need to come up with some plans. We had originally intended to go with a timber frame design, but it looks like it may be somewhat out of our budget, even with the smaller designs.
So we're looking now at building with insulated concrete forms. ICF construction is also somewhat of a premium over stick-frame construction, but there are savings over the long term, so we're leaning in that direction now. (Whether we'll live long enough to be considered "long term," is another question.)
We have a consultation this afternoon with a design firm that specializes in ICF construction. We're relatively uninformed on these matters, so I've been chatting with ChatGPT, and it's been pretty helpful. I installed Claude and used the free version to ask the same questions of it, and ChatGPT's answers seem more complete, though some of it may be excess verbiage.
I asked both of them to come up with a "cheat sheet" of questions to ask during the consultation. Both complied, but Claude insisted on learning how to use Word, which I don't have, and created a .docx file to download. ChatGPT just created the text in the chat window, and it was much faster and seemingly more thorough.
I feel more prepared using the information from ChatGPT, though both conversations would have been more helpful than just going in blind.
For full transparency, the guy she bought this place from builds using ICF, and we've seen one of his homes under construction, so we're not totally clueless; and he's given us some good tips. But ChatGPT is "always" available and entertains seemingly endless questions, so that's another plus.
✍️ Reply by emailA random list of silly (or not) things I hate
07:57 Thursday, 12 February 2026
Current Wx: Temp: 21.49°F Pressure: 1019hPa Humidity: 80% Wind: 12.33mph
Words: 121
A lazy prompt for content, but I can't pass it up.
1. Markdown
2. "Plain text" (If you're not using ASCII, don't even talk to me.)
3. Capitalism
4. Corporations
5. Moral cowardice
6. Willful ignorance
7. Curly quotes (See #2 above.)
8. PKM (I think we'd be better off if people tried to "manage" their ignorance first.)
9. "Social" media
10. The AppleTV remote
11. Liquid Glass
12. Greed
13. Lickspittle, sycophantic obsequiousness. (Looking at you, Tim Cook.) (See #5 above.)
14. Amazon
15. Palantir
16. Google
17. Trump's cabinet
18. Trump
19. Elon Musk
20. Billionaires in general
21. DHS/ICE/CBP
22. Trump's family
23. Typography aesthetes (See #2 above...)
The list goes on, but life is short.
✍️ Reply by emailI've Got More Mail
07:46 Thursday, 12 February 2026
Current Wx: Temp: 21.61°F Pressure: 1019hPa Humidity: 80% Wind: 12.33mph
Words: 190
Helmut Schierer of www.rundumadum.at sent me a nice note about drone coverage of skiing. He sent along some links to a video web site in Europe that included drone coverage. Unfortunately, I couldn't view them here. So I searched on YouTube and got a montage of drone videos from NBC, and fortunately much of the sound is muted. Clearly, they can get some compelling views using the drone, but the noise is like fingernails on a blackboard on a blackboard to me.
Must be tough for the producers, they want the environmental sounds and crowd noise, but they haven't figure out a way to suppress the drone sound and they have to know how awful it is.
It's always nice (and a surprise) to hear from a reader. I can use the translate function to read Helmut's blog, which is great because his English is far better than my German!
That is one of the remarkable things about blogging. It's almost like leaving a message in a bottle and tossing it into the sea. You never know if, or where, it'll turn up.
And the beat goes on...
✍️ Reply by emailResolving the Issue (Not)
07:39 Thursday, 12 February 2026
Current Wx: Temp: 21.61°F Pressure: 1019hPa Humidity: 80% Wind: 12.33mph
Words: 82
No luck so far on closing my account at PayPal. They're insisting that they must "resolve the issue" and "release the limitations" on my account before they can close it. I've insisted that I wished to do so by closing my account, and that I no longer wished to do business with PayPal, and that I had no intention of uploading a copy of a photo ID to them.
We shall see what happens next.
Maybe Resist and Unsubscribe should include PayPal.
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