Month: May 2021

Praying Mantises, Children’s Books and Pa – Part 2 – The Arrival

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Preying Mantises, Children’s Books and Pa Part-1

 

Well, the little buggers arrived two days ago and unharmed apparently.   Some hatched out today so I held onto a few and attached the egg cases to tree and shrub branches around the perimeter of the yard.

They’re minuscule.

 

 

 

But I’ll try to feed them by raising fruit flies and letting them feed on them.  Here is my fruit fly attractant.

 

The game is on!

33.33% of 2021 is Gone Down the Chute and What Do We Have to Show for It?

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Time certainly flies when you’re being tortured by an evil cabal of troglodytic Morlocks.  But here we are at the one third mark of 2021.  And if you’re in the noticing and opining business, which I am, then it’s time to see if there’s anything worth noticing and if there is, then it’s time to opine about it.

The first thing I notice is that nobody on the Right believes a thing being said by D.C. or the Media or the rest of the cabal.  Now, I’m not counting quislings like Liz Cheney or Mitt Romney as “on the right.”  And there is a pretty general feeling that Cheney and Romney are going to get theirs as soon as the voters get a shot at them.  In fact it’s so bad that even the spineless jellyfish in the Republican Congressional Caucus are rethinking their vote a few months ago to retain Cheney as a “Republican Leader” (boy, there’s an oxymoron).  Word is Liz will be booted out of the leadership at the end of the month and some other spineless jellyfish with slightly less stupidity will be enthroned.  Romney was booed long and loudly at a Utah Republican meeting.  He missed being censured by the Utah Republican party by a pretty close margin.  But I want to believe that when he’s up for re-election someone a lot better than that empty suit will have the initiative to challenge him in a primary.  That would be worth the price of admission.

So getting back to the point.  Nobody with even a flicker of intelligence is talking about bipartisanship or compromise or even avoiding the worst excesses of the Democrat control of all the levers of government.  If somehow the Democrats fail to do all the horrible things they say they want to do, then fine.  But if and or when they make DC the 51st state or pack the Supreme Court or make 40,000,000 illegal aliens, citizens I’m not going to be surprised.  I’m not going to despair.  For a lot of people those things happening are a given.

What we’re looking at is what are people from our side doing.  What is Ron DeSantis doing and what might he do when Dementia Joe sets his stormtroopers on the citizens of Florida?  Several states are passing legislation to protect their people from attacks on the 2nd Amendment and all the transgender madness.  Several states are already starting to prosecute Social Media for discriminating against the Right.  Even small things like the Basecamp furor and the retreat by Coke and Delta in the face of boycott threats are the beginnings of action from our side.

So far nothing tremendous has happened.  But I detect momentum is lacking on the Left.  As Portland and Minneapolis burn no one on the Right cares except to laugh at the pain of the idiots living there.  If 2021 has another summer of riots it will do more for our side than theirs.  Dementia Joe owns it and he is welcome to it.  Our side is consolidating control over the Red States and looking for ways to separate our lives from the madness that the Left “says” they want for themselves.  Our answer should be, “Be our guest, wallow in your depravity, just stay on your side of the line.”  As the Red States continue to open up their economies after learning their lessons from the COVID fraud hopefully the Blue States will continue the mask pantomime and aggravate their citizens even more.

One third through this year I’d say some progress has been made toward coming to grips with the cold civil war we have going on.  Some progress doesn’t mean enough progress though.  I am far from satisfied with where we are.  But I will say there is definitely a sense that the wake up has happened to a large extent.  What remains to be seen is if leaders will emerge who have the brains and guts to seize the moment and free us from the oligarchs.  Let’s see what it’s like after August (66.66%).

05MAY2021 – American Greatness – Post of the Day – Oligarchy, and Remedies by Angelo Codevilla

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This is a short post by Codevilla asserting that before we can act effectively against the usurpers in Washington, we must first acknowledge that the Republic as we knew it is already extinguished and replaced by the oligarchy that controls both the bureaucracy in Washington and the globalist corporations that work hand in glove with them.  But once we do acknowledge this reality, we can take effective action to organize like minded people to start effecting a different future for ourselves that doesn’t revolve around the oligarchic domain.

Codevilla points in the direction of the governors of red states beginning to nullify the dictates of the federal government where they overstep constitutional limits.  But he does not go into any detail as to how this will happen and what level of resistance the federal government will offer.  But I think we all are beginning to see that some extremely brave men will be needed to cross a kind of Rubicon at some point in the not-too-distant future.  If not, then the idea of escaping the oligarchy will be just a fantasy.

I find it is becoming increasingly easy to hear the same ideas being stated by different types of writers.  Codevilla is an academic.  But plenty of ordinary people and plenty of pundits are beginning to coalesce around the idea that a rejection of the regime in Washington is what is already happening.  The biggest question is when will a serious collision happen and who will win?

How Do You Carry Around Your Camera Gear?

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Anyone who has gotten the camera bug and doesn’t go the minimalist route via a smart phone or a point and shoot gets to the point where he has to figure out how to carry the cameras and lenses and tripods and monopods and filters and batteries and cleaning equipment and flashes and memory cards and, and, and, …, all the other crap that you think you might need on a particular day.

When I was still shooting a DSLR and I had a dozen lenses that I convinced myself I couldn’t be without I bought a tremendously large backpack, (Kata BP-502) which weighs about ten pounds empty and can fit every piece of photographic equipment I own and then some.

 

Suffice it to say this is the bag you take on an expedition to Madagascar.  I brought this thing to the Southwest once.  But because it would have to be checked at the airport, I mailed it ahead of time and we had a truck to haul it along with the camping gear we used.  Let’s just say this pack isn’t for the faint of heart.

Then I went the other way.  I bought a few slings.

The first one (Case Logic DSS-103 Luminosity Large Sling Backpack)

 

 

had a side entrance so I could sling it in front of me and do lens changes on top of it with having to put the bag on the ground.  This could be important if you happen to be in a swamp, I guess.  But it was still sort of bulky for short outings.

I bought some really small ones that fit a camera and a normal lens and some larger ones that were sized for a camera and a few lenses (Maxpedition Noatak Gearslinger, Maxpedition Remora Gearslinger)

but the problem with a sling is that it gives you a pain in the back because of the uneven weight distribution.  One of them had a strap that could be added to straighten out the load.  But I thought about it and said, “Well how about just getting a backpack?”

And that’s kind of where I ended up.  I have a coupl’a three backpacks that cover the gamut.

 

The smallest one (Lowepro LP36413-PWW Photo Traveler 150 Backpack) will fit a camera and a few lenses and it’s pretty small.  And that’s what I use most of the time.

For the larger bags there are inserts you can buy to allow you to customize the way your various equipment items are supported and separated.  These vary in cost and utility and are sort of a personal preference but in some situations they can be pretty useful in a larger pack.

But for just walking around the yard with the 90mm macro lens I usually take the monopod.  The reason being, the 90mm lens is kind of heavy and after an hour or so of trying to get very steady close ups my arm gets tired.  But the monopod takes the weight off of me.  Chances are if I know I might want to take a few landscape shots I might throw a 35mm and maybe the 10mm lenses in the small back pack and take it along just in case.  It’s light and comfortable and really only laziness should prevent me from bringing it but laziness is my forte so it’s really a crapshoot.

So that’s what I know about camera packs.

Apocalypse Basecamp: The Comedy

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Casey Newton of “The Verge” publishes the details of the Zoom meeting where the woke employees have a meltdown when a somewhat conservative manager disputes their definition of white supremacy.  It’s hilarious and maddening at the same time.  The only sad point is that the conservative manager also resigned from Basecamp.  I take that as a definite negative for the whole thing.  If he had stayed it would have been the cherry on the float.

Well, just read the thing.  Understand that Newton is extremely sympathetic to the wokesters and so take that into account with respect to any statements of opinion on motives or judgement.

Here’s the summation at the end.

“But as much as the conversation about Basecamp’s moves has been framed as “politics,” it seems important to remember that the entire affair began when a third of the company — not all of whom are among the 20 who have departed so far, by the way — volunteered to help the company become more diverse and equitable. It was only when their committee dug a skeleton out of the company closet — that list of names — that Fried and Hansson moved to shut the whole thing down.

“It was actually a positive thing we were doing,” one employee told me, marveling at the chaos that had followed. “We had identified the problem, how it happened, and vowed not to do it again. It was a company doing exactly what it should do. The founders refused to lead, and so the company was doing it itself.”

Another employee said they had been thrown by the fact that the founders, after years of telling employees that they were part of an elite chosen few who were good enough to work at Basecamp, would get rid of them so easily.

“They just want to build cool shit all day,” the employee said. “They don’t want to deal with people, which is something you have to do as a manager … Jason and David just threw us away.””

I was saddened to read that not all of the Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Council has resigned.  That, I see, as the real tragedy.  But hopefully the owners are wiser for their sad experience and will stamp out any sparks of wokeism if the appear again.

I think the lesson for the rest of us is that even non-conservatives recognize that a woke presence in a business is poison and unless you suppress its activities it will destroy your company right before your eyes.