Chris Johnson

Today my father passed. He was missing his wife, Prue, of 64 years. For the last 4 months, since her passing, he has been asking everybody that talks to him if they have seen Prue.

I believe he is in a better place, with his wife, young and joyful, once again.

My social feeds are full of people claiming that Trump’s campaign is imploding. That Kamala’s got the biggest crowds ever. That Vance has weird interactions with people.

But the one thing that I keep seeing over and over again is crowd size claims.

I’ve been aware of crowd size estimates since Glenn Beck held his tea-party rally back in the 00s. People were showing overhead shots and then doing counts.

The numbers reported by the right were much larger than the number reported by the left. Taking them from the same images.

Then there were the images from Watt’s Mommy’s Demand group. For years, it looked like they had massive crowds outside the NRA annual meeting.

Then we were able to see photos from gun owners. The crowds were staged to look very dense, but there were barely a 100 people there.

Before Kamala was installed, the media was constantly going on about how Trump’s crowds weren’t really that big.

We would see photos seeming to show a rally half full. Then we would find out that the images were taken before Trump got there or after he left.

Once Kamala was installed, suddenly the left was much more concerned with crowd sizes. They started to post images of the Kamala crowds with all their joy and excitement of getting to vote for a person who has received zero votes.

Then I started to notice something, the images, and videos posted by Kamala’s people didn’t have the numbers that her team was claiming.

“Look at this massive line of people to greet the annotated one!”. And there is maybe a block of people, barely 2 people deep.

As a child, I watched Nixon’s inauguration parade. It was January in D.C. It was cold. My brother and I were bundled up in our winter coats. There were people lining both sides of the street, shoved up on one another 4 or 5 people deep. All to get a glimpse of our new President.

That isn’t what I am seeing in the Kamala videos, posted by her people.

Here is my point, the right is poking fun at Kamala’s crowd sizes based on her videos and images. The left has to take their videos and images that are of questionable integrity to attempt to show small crowds at Trump events.

Video editing is from before CGI. An example of early VFX.

While at the Fort, one of the visitors to come through, was from Australia.

I wanted to break out into songs from Men At Work, but restrained myself.

During our conversation, we were talking about the nasties that live in Australia.

Of course, there were the spiders. We agreed that spiders were worse down under.

We agreed that koala bears are cute to look at but nasty, vicious animals if they aren’t drugged.

She explained that the big red kangaroos are nasty critters. They will lean back on their tails, then kick out with their legs in a way that will knock a strong man down.

The little gray ones are not as nasty.

Another thing I didn’t know, was that kangaroos are extremely destructive to crop land. They will eat a field bare.

This led to a discussion about the definition of varmint. I am not a lawyer, so check the regulations where you are before you depend on some random guy on the net.

It is my understanding that farmers are justified in removing destructive varmints. So when that cute deer is eating your crops, they are not deer, they are a varmint that can be removed. Same with several other animals.

Which led her to talking about American’s having guns. I described the lever actions over the sofa. Bear, Deer, Raccoon and Squirrel rifles. Or in gun culture language, 45-70, 30-30, .357 Magnum, and .22LR.

While we agreed that there were some nasty faunae in Australia, she felt that bears were worse. She wanted that 45-70, “Bear Rifle” if she was going walking in the woods of New England.

For me, the most interesting part was getting to ask her about the gun confiscation.

It was obvious that she had been asked this before. She started by trying to answer for the group. Not herself. I had asked her explicitly about her opinion, not the opinion of others.

She explained that she had turned in their rifles. Not because the state knew that she had the rifle, but because she and her family were afraid that somebody would snitch on them.

Once the guns were collected, crime started to go up. She wishes they still had guns, envoys the gun culture of America. And of course, strongly suggests that we not give up our guns.

It was a beautiful day for a visit to the Fort.

You all would have had a chuckle if you had seen me.

Remember the movie True Grit with John Wayne and Glen Campbell? Mattie Ross wore a black hat. That is the hat I felt I was wearing yesterday. Except mine didn’t have a tie strap. I kept waiting for it to fly away in the wind.

This was topped with a white linen vest, about four inches too small across the belly and 2 across the chest. But it looked period.

That was over a linen shirt. The shoulders of which were a little tight.

Black pants finished the look.

I had planned to do some spinning. I didn’t. I spent most of the day talking to people and learning and finding things that need to be fixed.

My primary learning goal was to observe and ask questions about how linen is made. They didn’t have anybody in the weaving room.

I did find a very knowledgeable lady, but she had knowledge but not skill.

A bit later, I managed to get one of the interpreters to actual show me how it was done. It is an interesting process. There are some specialized tools that are needed for the processing. I don’t have them, I think I can make them.

We bought a bound of flax seed from some monks a few years go. I think we might plant it this coming spring. Maybe at the fort.

Subsequently, I ended up talking to guests. I do not have the skill to disengage when I am done. So many interactions lasted to long.

Tomorrow’s post will be about some feedback I got from an Australian farmer who was there when they took the guns.

My daughter spent several years working for a corporation where she didn’t feel her skills were appreciated. One of her coworkers did not interact well with her.

When she changed positions and is in a new team, with a new chain of command, she was exposed to some people that she described as having “quiet competence”.

Ally came to me with a sickle. Told me it needed to be sharpened. I found some sharpening stones and did so.

I’m sitting out in the courtyard for the light on a capped well. The director took pictures.

Seems that there is a skill to sharpening, which I have been working on, but which I didn’t have on my list.

So I got another, “He just sharpened it, amazing.”

All in all, I had a good time. My bad knee hurts, but that’s a good hurt. I was outside most of the day. I meet people.

The only thing that would have enhanced it would have been if there was live fire involved.

I’m up at the Fort with Ally and my wife. They are having a show and tell.

She picked out the garb to wear, and I have my black felt hat.

Originally, I intended to do some wood working, but that is currently on hold until I get some raw lumber.

The lathe needs bracing before it can be put into use. We could just use 2x4s, but that wouldn’t look very nice.

My goal is to bring up a 4 or 5 foot length of Oak from the woods. It will be heavy.

That will be fed through my bandsaw to make some rough blanks. The blanks will be taken up to the fort to be hand planed and turned into braces.

So… What will I be doing up there today?

I will be combing wool and spinning it. I have my wheel up there to use, but it is likely I’ll be using something a little older. Some 100+ years older than mine.

I am also hoping to learn how to process flax into fibers for spinning. It is an example of something I have knowledge of but no skill.

The next project is to make an inkle loom. My fine felt hat is too boring, even for me. I want a hat band. That requires me to make a hat band.

To make the hat band, I will need some sort of loom. I’ve decided to use an inkle loom. I could spend dollars to buy one, instead I plan to make it.

There will be some shortcuts used. The intent is to use the modern jointer, plainer, and lathe to make the components, but we will be starting from a log in the woods.

The threads for the hat band? Those are what I will be spinning. My wife will be dying some of the thread, I will have to decide on colors.

I hope that some of you make it out to the Fort this weekend.

These are people you should know about. They are often the people to put together the NPC videos of all the MSM saying the same thing of the same scripts.

They are also the people who provide the positive vs. negative percentages for MSM.

Biden Lashes Out After Judge Pauses His Executive Order Rewarding Long-Term Illegal Aliens with Path to Citizenship https://t.co/8Tha4Bzny3

— Media Research Center (@theMRC) August 29, 2024

Damn that guy is a good shot. pic.twitter.com/BPsscZDgQy

— Defiant L’s (@DefiantLs) August 29, 2024

This is mostly to test the autopost to Twitter/X

There is this interesting point where you realize that you own a data center.

My data center doesn’t look like that beautiful server farm in the picture, but I do have one.

I have multiple servers, each with reasonable amounts of memory. I have independent nodes, capable of performing as ceph nodes and as docker nodes.

Which took me to a step up from K8S.
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