Spicy Times

Ally is in tears. I’m angry. I haven’t been this angry since somebody tried to take my kids from me 15+ years ago.

We are seeing a breakdown of our societal norms. We are no longer a high-trust society. As the Magic Eight Ball used to say, “All signs point to yes.”

My father used to say that he was made colorblind by an act of Congress. By this he meant that as an officer in the US Navy, he was legally bound to ignore race when interacting with those that reported to him.

In my entire life I believe I’ve only seen one reaction from him or my mother that was race-based.

In 4th grade I asked my parents if my friend from school could come over. They agreed. The parents were in contact with each other, and Mom and I went to pick up my friend.

He climbed into the car, and we had a great playdate. Afterward my parents said something about, “We weren’t expecting a black kid.”

In all my descriptions of my friend, I never mentioned his race.

I feel like I remained colorblind until middle school. In high school I was exposed to N* for the first time. They enjoyed picking on the white kids. They were crass, rude, mean. I hated the bus ride, I hated school, and I hated everything to do with the N*s. But here’s the thing: I use that word today; I didn’t at the time. Those monsters destroyed my opinion of black people. It took years before I recovered.

I did recover. I was able to look beyond race and judge people by their actions. I didn’t see racism until I was at University and was introduced to the term “Oreo” by a friend. He was describing how N*s described him.

Even when I was living with Section 8 people, the people were people. The N*s dealing drugs across the street from me and my family? Not so much.

The other day, an evil monster with black skin was riding the light rail when he decided to murder a young white woman. He took a lockblade from his pocket. He opened it. He then prepared to leave the car at the next stop.

As the train stopped, he stood, took a step to his right, leaned forward, and stabbed Iryna 3 times, murdering her before walking off the train saying, “I got that white girl.”

I have been seeing videos claiming that Iryna deserved it, because she was white. There are images out there of this evil black monster with a crown on his head and red glowing eyes praising his actions.

And I’ve seen videos made by blacks calling the white people that refuse to sit in front of them “racist.”

I’m sick of it. I’m sick of being told that I’m evil and uncaring and attempting to silence people who are saying everything they think out loud and in public.

I’m not willing to make a fuss or call them on their hate-filled screeds. It isn’t worth it.

Charlie was willing. Charlie was very good at it.

He would debate anybody who came to talk with him. Ben Shapiro is good at winning debates. He isn’t nearly as good as Charlie was at bringing people to the right.

Ally watched more of Charlie than I ever did. I didn’t watch because I can’t stay that calm in the face of such idiocy.

Today we lost Charlie.

And I’m scared. There are people from the middle that are running from the far left loons as fast as they can. They aren’t conservatives, they are not right leaning, but they sure as hell aren’t with them.

I don’t know who shot Charlie. I’ll wait to find out. I am passing judgment on the reaction of the “left.” I’m passing judgment on the rhetoric of the left, of how they constantly use the language of violence against the right.

I don’t hate them; they are not worth my energy. They say they hate me.

What am I scared of? I’m scared the light switch has been flipped in far too many people.

The left treats violence as a dimmer switch; they turn it up until it starts to look like it might be too much, then they turn it down. They use it to keep things at a low boil without things boiling over.

Unfortunately, the response isn’t on a dimmer switch. It is on a toggle switch to 20,000 volts.

It is the people who are comfortable taking 300 yard shots with Grandpa’s old hunting rifle.  It is the people who walk into a place and understand egress planning as well as sight/shot lines. It is people that respond without thinking to threats as if they had been in dance class together.

These are the people who go silent while they make target lists. These are the people who will spend the time and effort to plan every part of their operation to the final degree.

And that target list is huge. It would include people who wouldn’t dream they would be on someone’s target list.  They are just a talking head on MSNBC or CNN or any of the other outlets that spew hate and lies. It includes all the low-level politicians who aren’t relevant enough to be on a target list.

There is a powerful scene in Unintended Consequences where two hunters are out deer hunting. They look across the river into the backyard of a politician. They decide that they want to become part of the resistance.  So they line up to take the shot, just as if it was a deer. It was an easy 250-yard shot.

They then just walked out of the woods, another pair of hunters.

How many opportunities will present themselves over the coming months to people who have had the switch flipped?

I pray for all of you to do the right thing. Stay strapped; keep your head on a swivel. Stay away from stupid people. Stay away from stupid places. And don’t be there at stupid times.

 

FBEL – Rumors

So everyone occasionally shares a rumor. Most of us catch onto a good one and speculate among ourselves, making sure everyone we talk to understands IT IS A RUMOR. Rumors are not truth, and I suspect that everyone on Vine of Liberty and most conservatives are quite aware of that fact. Liberals in general and Democrats in particular are less sure of this distinction.

Rumors I have heard this week on social media:

  • Trump is dead.
  • Trump is being defeated in the courts.
  • Trump is giving massive tax cuts to the rich and forcing the poor to pay for everything.
  • Able bodied people dumped off of food stamps and other gov’t funded charities will die.
  • Republicans are racist, homophobic (and/or hate gay people), misogynistic, etc.
  • JK Rawlings is a racist, homophobe, etc.
  • Trans people are dying because of Trump’s rules and laws.
  • Gay people are losing their rights.
  • Trans people are losing their rights.
  • People of any ancestry other than “white” are losing their rights.
  • Women are losing their rights.
  • We’re on track to be in an episode of The Handmaid’s Tale.

I could go on, but I know you’ve heard it all before, too. And I could sit here and refute most of the above without even having to look stuff up, but why bother? Even when I present factual, irrefutable proof that their rumors are actually untrue, they continue to believe.

Most of the rumors I hear are bullshit, and I treat them as such. I just skim onward, ignoring them. There’s simply no point in giving them any traction, and there’s no way to weed them out. They’re teflon, because people on the Left have such strong belief that it’s … well, unbelievable.

And then there’s the recent set of rumors (I refuse to call them facts, but I have no other word to use, so we’re going with “rumors”) that Pew has put out. I’m disappointed in them, by the by. I normally consider their stuff to be not too bad, but this really got me.

They did a survey of Americans, asking what their opinions were on the economy, and a variety of economic factors. Now, even red states have a low view of the current economy in certain areas, because we’re recovering from four years of Liberal spending and waste. That’s to be expected. But the headlines that came out of it was stuff like “Economic failure in sight!” and “Trump’s Economy Problem is Threatening his Entire Agenda.”

The Left is all excited that Trump is apparently disliked by most people. They miss that the polls only polled people who would answer a certain way. The outcome is one of opinion, not fact. Someone a few weeks ago was explaining (mansplaining) to me that the economy was shite, that everything was becoming so expensive that it wasn’t affordable to eat, businesses were failing, and the world was going to sink under massive debt. I looked over at the lowest gas prices I’ve seen in years, and the cost (expensive but affordable) of the sushi dinner I had with my partner last week, and how the price of my groceries has dipped by about a third since Trump came into office. I tried to explain that to the person, but was rebuffed. I don’t understand economics, they said. They’re correct that I’m not great with economics, but I know how to make a budget and I know I’m coming in UNDER budget for most things for the first time in years. So… I guess they don’t understand economics either.

Everything presented by the Left lately is based on opinion. Now the Right does that sometimes too, but most of the time the Right manages to rightly label something as opinion. They don’t put opinion out as if it’s fact. They don’t say the economy is bad because people think it’s bad. That is literally what’s happening right now on the Left. They can’t point to facts to show how bad things are going, so they’re polling people who are “proving septum ring theory” and presenting it as fact. By that, I mean that they’re proving that septum ring theory is correct.

I’m tired, folks. I’m worried about a lot of things. I’m worried about vaccines (because I know most vaccines work and I don’t want to see the baby thrown out with the bath water). I’m worried about the economy (because if Vance doesn’t get in for 2028, the economy is going to circle the drain). I’m worried about books in schools (while I don’t see anyone banning any books, I do wish some books were more readily available in schools and I worry that the Karens of the world will spoil school libraries for everyone). I’m worried about the posting of Christian-only religious materials in public schools (because I’ve long held the opinion that either it’s “everyone gets to” or “NO ONE gets to”). I’m worried about the next generation being able to manage the world (because other than the few successful kids I personally know, all I see out there are slackers who think that working more than 7 hours in a day is some kind of abuse, and they’re damn vocal about it). I’m worried that the ideal of personal success is gone. I’m tired, and I’m worried. The rumors don’t help; they make it worse.

As part of the DHS - United States Department of Homeland Security, the United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is a federal law enforcement agency aimed at preventing cross-border crime and illegal immigration. It aims to uphold  national security and public safety.

LUCE – Immigrant Justice Network of Massachusetts

I read Reddit because there are some useful groups within. Mostly technical. Unfortunately, like most social media, the woke left has taken over large swaths of the site. I recommend CourtListener.com to anybody who is interested in following court cases. I’m acquainted with the leader of the Free Law Project, who runs CourtListener.

In other words, I’ve had multiple personal conversations with him. Even going so far as to talk about Second Amendment issues. He is a “good” person, but he is driven by feelings of conservative evil. They dropped their X account because of Elon’s “Nazi salute” and only use BlueSky for social media announcements.

That is the sort of thing that drives many Reddit groups. A level of TDS and hatred of all that is not lockstep leftist talking points.

When I heard about the Claremont school district (SAU-6) having a budget shortfall of over $5 million, I read some articles. Every article rapidly descended into hate for Republicans, Trump, and anybody to the right of Marx.

These postings were in the New Hampshire sub-reddit. Since I read one article, the algorithm gave me more. Which led the algorithm to recommend r/messachusetts. Which was pure leftist drivel and a constant stream of hate.

The article that led me here was a picture of a new ICE vehicle. Since it was new, there was hate about that. They hated on the fact that the car wasn’t a beater. They hated on the paint job. They hated on money being spent on ICE and not burnt at the stake of “ending homelessness,” “universal healthcare,” “low cost healthcare,” and anything else they could think about—free housing, free transportation, free everything.

About every 10th comment was, “Did you report it to LUCE?”

From context, I knew LUCE had to be a group actively involved with protecting criminals.

And of course they are. “Think you see I.C.E. in your area? Call: 617-xxx-xxxx”. They have operators ready to take calls and texts in English, Spanish, Portuguese, French, Haitian, Creole, Mandarin, “and more to be added!”

Their entire media presence is built around conflating immigrants with criminal aliens. They talk about the evil of Trump and his plans. Of attempting to install fear in the “immigrant” community.

They are absolutely tone-deaf to what we on the right are thinking about dealing with.

Here we see a criminal animal sitting behind an immigrant. The immigrant had a job, was well-liked in the community, and was on her way home from work. She was killed by the criminal animal who had been released multiple times for multiple felonies.

She is an immigrant that we, on the right, support. She seems to have done everything correctly to enter and stay in the United States.

I will say that I had originally written that the animal that murdered Iryna Zarutska was a criminal alien; it turns out that he is just an American born animal.

 

The Intermittent Missive – September 8, 2025

Note from Allyson: We were calling this The Daily Dump, but due to r/l things, JLR doesn’t have the ability to write every day. So we’ll take ’em as we get ’em, because they’re good! Enjoy. 🙂

***

Just things that me go No S*it shirlock or OMFGs

Liberals are still pushing an insane Trump conspiracy theory from before the election by Carlos Garcia, 02 Sep 2025
https://www.theblaze.com/news/liberal-conspiracy-theory-trump-election
(do I hear the echo of ” RUSSIA, RUSSIA, RUSSIA? – jlr)

pathological identity as political praxis – selecting the worst as an emergent property of cowardice – by el gato malo, 02Sep2025
https://boriquagato.substack.com/p/pathological-identity-as-political

Liberal Women and the Destruction of American Civilization By Steve McCann, 02Sep2025
https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2025/09/liberal_women_and_the_destruction_of_american_civilization.html
There is a direct correlation between the accelerated decline of American civilization over the past forty years and the rise of the outsized influence of unenlightened and supercilious liberal women.

Sent via e-mail
Description: Here’s proof that Allah and the God of the Bible are not the same.
via https://www.chick.com/defaultemail
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If ‘words are violence,’ why won’t the left own theirs? – by Gates Garcia, 02sep2025
https://www.theblaze.com/columns/opinion/if-words-are-violence-why-wont-the-left-own-theirs
When a shooter scrawled ‘Kill Trump’ and fired on a Catholic church, the left didn’t blame extremist political rhetoric — they blamed the rifle. Then they moved on.

Federal Judge Finds Trump Admin’s L.A. National Guard Deployment Violated Posse Comitatus Act
https://redstate.com/smoosieq/2025/09/02/breaking-federal-judge-finds-trump-admins-la-national-guard-deployment-violated-posse-comitatus-act-n2193483
In a 52-page decision, Northern District of California District Court Judge Charles Breyer has rendered his judgment in the case involving the Trump administration’s deployment of the National Guard to Los Angeles in June and found that the administration violated the Posse Comitatus Act.

Illinois Discouraging Its Residents From Getting Real ID? You Already Know the Answer.- by Matt Vespa, September 04, 2025
https://townhall.com/tipsheet/mattvespa/2025/09/04/is-illinois-discouraging-residents-from-getting-real-id-to-protect-illegals-in-chicago-n2662748

The Number of Mass Shooters Identifying as Transgender Since 2020 Is Quite Alarming  -by Matt Vespa, September 03, 2025
https://townhall.com/tipsheet/mattvespa/2025/09/03/the-number-of-mass-shooters-since-2020-identifying-as-transgender-is-quite-alarming-n2662673

Lefties Again Prove There’s NOBODY They Won’t Defend If It Means Being Opposed to Trump – by Doug P., September 03, 2025
https://twitchy.com/dougp/2025/09/03/lefties-again-prove-theres-nobody-they-wont-defend-if-it-means-being-opposed-to-trump-n2418356

British Court: Migrants Officially Supplant Natives in ‘Hierarchy of Rights’ – by Benjamin Bartee,05 Sep 2025
https://armageddonprose.substack.com/p/british-court-migrants-officially
… so-called “asylum seekers” (read: economic migrants) do enjoy superior rights to British people in Britain because… something, something “non-derogable fundamental human rights” as defined by the European Convention on Human Rights.(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Derogability)

Britain’s Descent Towards Civil War is No Accident – by Michael Rainsborough,03 September 2025
https://dailysceptic.org/2025/09/03/britains-descent-towards-civil-war-is-no-accident/

Federal judges criticize Supreme Court for overturning rulings and siding with Trump – By Victor Nava,04 Sep, 2025
https://nypost.com/2025/09/04/us-news/federal-judges-criticize-supreme-court-for-overturning-rulings-and-siding-with-trump/

“Avoid crowds – Get Out of the Cities. – NOW.  A year too soon is better than a day too late” – John Wilder @  https://wilderwealthywise.com/
“God created all men, but Samuel Colt made them equal.” – Unknown
“A Smith & Wesson does more for empowering women than Feminism ever could” – Greg Gutfeld 29 Jul 2017
Don’t Do: stupid sh*t, with stupid people, in stupid places, at stupid times. – paraphrasing John Farnam, firearms instructor
“An armed society is a polite society” – Manners are good when one may have to back up his acts with his life.” ― Robert A. Heinlein
“People sleep peaceably in their bed at night only because rough men stand ready to do violence on their behalf.” – Eric Arthur Blair (AKA – George Orwell)
“If your plan is to come to my house when things get bad, you need a better plan”- like being invited, having a useful skill, bringing food, or ammunition – jlr76380
“On a long enough timeline, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero” – https://www.zerohedge.com/

The Weekly Feast – Lamb Souvlaki

When I was younger and still living at home, my father would take me out once in a while for dinner. Mom didn’t really cook, and we often had take-out, but dad and I had a special bond at that time. We always went for something mom didn’t like. Something garlicky, or with big sausages, or meat that wasn’t “standard” (ie mom ate beef, chicken, pork, and turkey, and not much else). There was a Greek place he’d take me to once in a long while, and there, I learned to love souvlaki. It’s easy to make, delicious, and relatively healthy (depending on how you make it).

Ingredients for lamb souvlaki:

  • 1.5 to 2 lbs lamb shoulder, boneless, cubed
  • 1 medium red onion, cut in half circles
  • olive oil (for drizzling)
  • juice of one lemon
  • souvlaki seasoning: oregano, thyme, and rosemary, garlic, paprika, cumin
  • salt and pepper to taste

Your lamb should be boneless, though technically you could rub a whole shoulder with the bone in and cook it that way. Trust me and get boneless butterflied leg of lamb. It’s expensive, and entirely worth it. Aldi has it for a reasonable amount. Your cubes should be about an inch across, and all close to the same size so they cook right.

You can buy Aldi brand or other brand souvlaki seasoning, and just sub it in for the dried herbs mentioned above. You want to be heavy handed, which is why I didn’t put amounts in. For 1.5 lbs of lamb, I use about a quarter cup of spice, and I mix all of the souvlaki seasonings mentioned above “about equally.” Salt and pepper I add at the end, and I tend to go lighter (the mixes may have salt and pepper in them, so check before adding those). You want to dump the seasoning on the cubed lamb and slivered half circles of red onion, add in a drizzle of the olive oil and the lemon juice, then get in with both hands and squish it around. Coat everything fairly evenly, but not so thickly that it’s like sawdust. Cover with plastic wrap and stick your meat in the fridge for a minimum of 1 hour, and a maximum of 8.

Make yourself some tzatziki while the meat is marinating.

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chaotic mess of network cables all tangled together

Even the simple things are hard

The battle is real, at least in my head.

My physical network is almost fully configured. Each data closet will have an 8-port fiber switch and a 2+4 port RJ45 switch. There is a fiber from the 8-port to router1 and another fiber from the 2+4 to router2. Router1 is cross connected to Router2.

This provides limited redundancy, but I have the ports in the right places to make seamless upgrades. I have one more 8-port switch to install and one more 2+4 switch to install, and all the switches will be installed.

This leaves redundancy. I will be running armored OM4 cables via separate routes from the current cables. Each data closet switch will be connected to 3 other switches. Router1 and two other data closets. When this is completed, it will mean that I will have a ring for the closets reaching back to a star node in the center.

The switches will still be a point of failure, but those are easy replacements.

If a link goes down, either by losing the fiber or the ports or the transceivers, OSPF will automatically route traffic around the down link. The next upgrade will be to put a second switch in each closet and connect the second port up on each NIC to that second switch.

The two switches will be cross-connected but will feed one direction of the star. Once this is completed, losing a switch will just cause a routing reconfiguration, and packets will keep on moving.

A side effect of this will be that there will be more bandwidth between closets. Currently, all nodes can dump at 10 gigabits to the location switch. The switch has a 160-gigabit backbone, so if the traffic stays in the closet, there is no bottleneck. If the traffic is sent to a different data closet, there is a 10-gigabit bottleneck.

Once the ring is in place, We will have a total of 30 gigabits leaving each closet.  This might make a huge difference.

That is the simple stuff.

The simpler stuff for me, is getting my OVN network to network correctly.

The gist, I create a logical switch and connect my VMs to it. Each VM creates an interface on the OVS internal bridge. All good. I then create a logical router. This router is attached to the logical switch. From the VM I can ping the VM, the router interface.

I then create another logical switch with a localnet port. We add the router to this switch as well. This gives the router two ports with different IP addresses.

From the VM I can ping the VM’s IP, the router’s IP on the VM network, and the router’s IP on the localnet.

What I can’t do is get the ovn-controller to create the patch in the OVS to move traffic from the localnet port to the physical netwrok.

I don’t understand why, and it is upsetting me.

Time to start the OVN network configuration process over again.

 

Internet Famous

It couldn’t have happened to a more deserving person. The story:

At a Phillies game, the batter hit a home run to the center field grandstands. A gaggle of people were there attempting to catch or get the ball. A father picked the ball up off the ground, took it over to his son, and placed it in his son’s glove.

Standard feel good moment at baseball games. The sort of thing that leaves a lasting memory for a young man.

Except these aren’t normal times.

Karen took offense because the ball had touched her fingers. In her mind this made the ball hers.  She came over to the family—father, son, and mother—and got in Dad’s face, screaming at him that the ball was hers. Dad argues for a moment, then takes the ball from his son to give to the lady to make her go away.

This was on the big screen and broadcast on NBC. She was instantly Internet Famous.

The team saw what happened, and a rep came over to give the kid a different home run ball and some other stuff. After the game, the family was invited to meet the players in person, where the son was able to get his home run ball signed.

Nice outcome.

How famous is she?

Well, she got booed out of the stadium. Other fans berated her. And the Internet did its thing.

She has been identified by name. My unconfirmed information is that she is a teacher. Again, unconfirmed, her Facebook feed and the school’s Facebook feeds have exploded with people expressing their displeasure with her attitude and behavior.

Maybe she will be a little less self-entitled in the future?

Yes and No road signs with arrows, decision making concept. 3D rendering isolated on white background

Saying No

Ally posted about the difficulty in saying no. I read her article and found that it didn’t really hit home with me.

Not because it was written badly. It was well written. But it just didn’t connect. I know I am good at saying no.

In a resource limited situation, hard decisions need to be made. Some of those decisions will be life or death in nature. We need to think about those today. If you can convince yourself that you are capable of saying “no” in those situations, then you are a stronger person than I am.

To help prepare myself, I run different situations to decide what I am willing to do, what I must do, and what I can’t do.

Let’s take a simple one: a couple that knows you but whom you don’t know stops at the red line and places their newborn child there. They yell up to you, “Please save our child!” before turning and walking away, in tears.

They aren’t asking for help for themselves. They know you will say “no.” Instead they have left an innocent at your doorstep.

You have the following choices:

  • Do nothing until the baby dies of exposure or is killed by something.
  • Take the child into your care, reducing the supplies your people are depending on, adding a drain on your people’s resources.
  • You kill the baby outright.

What do you do? Is it an easy choice? It isn’t easy for me to choose. I also have to deal with my family. How will they respond? How will I say “no” to them.

An even simpler example of this is personal. I have been saying “no” to pets since before I got married to my current wife. I have allergies that are not helped by animal fur. So they ask for a dog; I say no. They ask for a cat. I say no. They get a rabbit and have it in the house before I can say “no.”

How do I say “No” now that the animal is in the house? That was 5 rabbits ago. Three of them passed after expensive vet bills. My kid is at college, my wife attempts to care for one of the rabbits, and Ally cares for the other. Regardless, it didn’t matter that I said “no”; they just ignored me.

Will you be able to kill that baby when your spouse is in tears begging you to bring the innocent child into your care?

Here is a different one. You are out on a scavange hunt. You have taken one of your neighbor’s kids with you. You have been working with this family to the joint benefit of both groups.

During the hunt, the kid is badly injured. He is unlikely to survive his injuries. You have limited choices:

  • Do you put yourself at risk to drag/carry the kid back to home base, knowing he might die in the process or bring the raiders down upon you?
  • Do you leave him there to die?
  • Do you leave him there, book it for home base, and hope you get back to him before he dies?
  • Do you use your medical gear to make him comfortable, knowing that gear is never going to be replaced?
  • Do you kill him to put him out of his misery?

Now compound this with having the neighbor with you. He is begging you to save his kid, to do risky things, to use your resources to save his kid. Can you still say “no”?

How about this one? Your kid is injured. They are dying. There is nothing you can do to save them; the most you can do is extend their life, and in doing so, use irreplaceable supplies, and they will be in pain the entire time.

Are you willing to kill your child? Are you willing to let them suffer? Are you willing to kill your group in six months for another day with your child?

I know that I don’t want to make that decision. I know that my wife would hate me if I didn’t do everything in my power to save my child, damn the costs.

If you think you can say “no,” then I don’t think you have thought about the hard choices. I agree with you; you are good at saying no. You are likely better prepared to say no than most people. Now stretch yourself and find scenarios where it would be difficult to say no. Scenarios where saying no is the right choice, but you will be hated by your loved ones for making that choice.

Then look me in the eye and say, “I can say “no.”” without having that niggling feeling in the back of your head that maybe there will come a time when you wont.