• We have heard, over and over again, how some scum was released back into society to do more evil.

    In my opinion, the worst of these is when a criminal alien is released into society when the authorities know he has a detainer. Why would anybody allow someone who was picked up for a crime to be released to commit more crimes when they can have them removed from the country?

    The answer is partially word games and partially legal games.

    A detainer is a warrant, of sorts. It is a warrant issued by an administrative judge, not a part of the judiciary.

    We have been taught that the police are not allowed to enter your home without a warrant. In some cases, they can’t enter your house, even if they have a warrant.

    Sanctuary cities and states have been using this to allow criminals to roam our streets freely.

    If the locals are doing their jobs correctly, they should do a search for warrants on anybody they arrest. This will pick up both judicial and administrative warrants. If warrants exist, that person should not be released until those warrants are cleared.

    In sanctuary locations, the locals have not been informing ICE when they have a criminal alien in custody.

    This means that ICE needs to look through the records of everyone who is taken into custody, searching for people with warrants. If they find a person with an outstanding warrant, they must pick them up before they are released.

    If there are only administrative warrants, ICE is restricted on what they can do.

    They cannot enter non-public locations to detain a criminal alien.

    They can arrest the criminal alien if they are in a public location. Thus, they could pick them up while they are shopping or driving around. They can detain them at work, if they have permission of the owner to enter the non-public locations, or if the criminal alien encounters them in a public location.

    In other words, a criminal alien can hide at work or home. If they leave the protection of those non-public locations, they can be detained.

    On the other hand, if they have a judicial arrest warrant, they can go into non-public locations to affect the arrest.

    That warrant allows them to enter the home or apartment of the criminal alien, if that alien is legally the homeowner or lessee. They cannot enter a third party’s dwelling with an arrest warrant.

    A judicial arrest warrant allows them the legal authority to enter some non-public areas, such as jails, prisons, and courtrooms.

    In addition, if they can get a search warrant for the criminal alien, that warrant will name the location where they can enter without permission to search for the criminal alien. If they find them, they can then arrest them with an arrest warrant.

    ICE and the rest of the feds are now getting judicial warrants as well as the administrative warrants. This allows them to arrest criminal aliens, regardless of the “sanctuary” status.

    More progress.

            

  • I have heard this song many times. I love Eartha’s voice, and her ability to tell a story.

    This is the first time I’ve seen her singing. Wow.

            

  • I wanted to make a birthday cake for my vegan friend, and that meant no milk, no butter, and no eggs. I decided to search for vegan alternatives, and came up with several awesome looking ones. As a side note, chocolate is easy to make vegan. However, I didn’t have the ingredients for most of the cakes I found. I did what I usually do, however, and I took an existing recipe and re-made it in my own image. That’s right, I am a Food Goddess! This is my lovely sweet treat: Orange Cake

    Ingredients

    • 1-1/2 cups all-purpose flour
    • 1 cup sugar
    • 1 tsp baking soda
    • 1/2 tsp salt
    • 1 tsp white vinegar
    • 5 tbsp canola or vegetable oil
    • 1-1/2 tsp orange extract
    • 1 cup orange juice

    Preheat your oven to 350*F. Line a 9×9″ pan with parchment paper, leaving an inch over each side overhanging, for easy removal.**

    In a large mixing bowl, add your dry ingredients and mix well. Form three depressions in the dry mixture. In one, add the vinegar . In the second, add the orange extract , and in the final one, add the oil. Pour the orange juice over the top and, using a whisk or wooden spoon, mix together until fully combined.

    Transfer your cake batter, which will be quite runny, to the lined baking pan. Bake for 25-30 minutes and then check. It will probably take close to 45 minutes to bake entirely, but you need to start checking every five or ten minutes after the 30 minute mark. Continue to bake until a skewer comes out clean. Remove the cake from the oven and let it cool in the pan for 10 minutes before transferring it to a wire rack to cool completely. If desired, frost the cooled cake.

    ** I used a round springform baking pan, fully lined with no-stick-sprayed parchment paper. You do have to allow the cake to cool completely before removing the parchment paper, but it works very well. I used a 9 inch diameter pan that was about 1-1/2 inches deep.

    I had frosting for this cake. We didn’t use it. We literally ate hunks of it with our hands. It was moist, sweet but not unbearably, and delicious. I would recommend removing 2 tbsp of orange juice from the cup, if you plan to frost the cake. It was so moist, if I had tried to frost it, it would have fallen apart despite having good crumb.

            

  • Justice Sotomayor used to be the least talented Justice on the Supreme Court. Ketanji Brown Jackson said, “Hold my beer!” and took that title.

    During the oral arguments, Sotomayor asked:

    So, when a new president orders that because there’s so much gun violence going on in the country and he comes in and he says, I have the right to take away the guns from everyone, then people — and he sends out the military to seize everyone’s guns — we and the courts have to sit back and wait until every named plaintiff gets — or every plaintiff whose gun is taken comes into court?
    — Transcript 24A884, Justice Sotomayor

    When a case is opened, the plaintiffs can make a motion for a temporary restraining order. This is another name for an injunction. A TRO should last no more than a couple of weeks, should maintain the status quo and should not grant final outcomes. Sorry for the poor English.

    Thus, a TRO might stay an execution. This is the current status, so no change, maintaining the status quo. This is within the normal understanding of a TRO.

    The TRO should not release the prisoner. That is a final outcome. That might be what the plaintiff is requesting, to be set free. That is what the final judgment would or would not grant.

    In some cases, the plaintiff can be ordered to provide a bond before the TRO is issued. For example, the plaintiffs want the state to payout $2 billion as part of the TRO. They can be ordered to post a $2 billion bond before the defendants are required to pay out the $2 billion.

    By the end of the TRO, the arguments for and against a preliminary injunction should be fully briefed. If there are any oral arguments to be made, those will have also been made.

    The judge will then issue a preliminary injunction/stay as the TRO lapses, or will not issue the preliminary injunction/stay, which means the TRO lapses and nothing takes it place.

    In general, TROs and Preliminary Injunctions are only granted to the parties of the case. The judge can issue a TRO blocking the execution of prisoner A, but unless prisoner B is also a party to the suit, the TRO does not apply to them.

    If the case is a class action suit, once the class is granted, then orders of the court apply to the entire class. If the parties are an organization, the injunctions might apply to all members of the organization.

    So what happens in Sotomayor’s hypothetical if there are no universal injunctions?

    First, I don’t believe that we are going to have a situation where there are no universal injunctions. I believe that Sotomayor is correct, we need to preserve that capability for the judiciary.

    What I believe would actually happen is that a true universal TRO would be issued. This would have a limited lift time.

    Blocking the deportation of TdA for two weeks is a pain, but not unbearable. Blocking the deportation of TdA for the duration of a drawn out court case is unacceptable.

    Blocking the confiscation of guns for two weeks for everybody is just as bearable.

    This would give the inferior court time to certify the class, if such was needed, and to do a proper evaluation of the request for a preliminary injunction.

    As the Supreme Court said in A.A.R.P v. Trump, the inferior courts MUST answer the merits question of the Winter factors. They cannot side step this.

    In the case of TdA, the government will win on the merits. They have been granted the authority to remove criminal aliens from the United States by the Constitution and Congress. The most that might be justified is the process might require enough time for an attorney to become involved.

    In the case of a gun confiscation, the plain text of the Second Amendment would be implicated. There is no way around that. There is no regulation in this Nation’s history of arms regulation that is analogous to an outright gun confiscation. The People are likely to win on the merits. Having a Constitutionally Protected right violated is unrepairable harm. The balance of equities lies with The People who have been harmed. Being denied your rights outweighs any state harm. The public has no interest in upholding an Unconstitutional Law or Regulation.

    For the Circuit courts that would suddenly find that the Right to Keep and Bear Arms only applies to Nerf guns would cause a nearly instant circuit split, which would get appealed to the Supreme Court.

    In addition, it would be physically difficult to confiscate all guns.

            

  • I wasn’t expecting this opinion this quickly. The Supreme Court heard oral arguments on the 15th, they issued their opinion on the 16th. It is only 24 pages long.

    This case has many concurrent issues running through it. It is important to focus on what the opinion actually does, how it does it, and what the legal issues the Court is attempting to resolve.

    What the holding is, what it means

    The Supreme Court has issued an injunction stopping the deportation of TdA terrorists while the Fifth Circuit Court issues a new opinion. This injunction stands until the Supreme Court issues their opinion in this case after being fully briefed and oral arguments given, OR if the Court denies certiorari, OR neither party appeals from the Fifth Circuit Court.

    This Supreme Court Order vacates and remands the case back to the Fifth Circuit with specific instructions:

    … (1) all the normal preliminary injunction factors, including likelihood of success on the merits, as to the named plaintiffs’ underlying habeas claims that the AEA does not authorize their removal pursuant to the President’s March 14, 2025, Proclamation, and (2) the issue of what notice is due, as to the putative class’s due process claims against summary removal. …

    I hope you realize what a slap in the face the highlighted section is to the inferior courts. The inferior courts are well aware of the Winter factors. They are well aware of the order in which the factors should be evaluated.

    This line is written to all inferior courts. It is a blunt warning that the inferior courts should apply the Winter factors, correctly, to any injunction (or stay) being granted.

    The second part is the Supreme Court punting. They want somebody else to do the heavy lifting on “what notifications need to be given to afford a terrorist due process?”

    The J.G.G. plaintiffs are claiming it is 30 days. The state has argued that 24 hours is more than enough. The Fifth is likely to come down with something closer to the state’s standing.

    Another part of this, is that there is a question of “adequate notification.” The plaintiffs want the notifications to be in English and Spanish. The state provided the notifications in English only. Since these people are in the United States, it seems reasonable to ask that they figure out how to read an English document or get a translation.

    And, as one pundit on X put it, the government should give notification to every criminal alien they currently have detained, and any new ones they pick up, a notification of deportation. This will start that clock running and whatever time is finally determined, the state will be that much closer to the time limit.

    Finally, this injunction is not going to keep any of these criminal aliens in the United States.

    If you are in our country illegally, you can be deported. That is a full stop. If you are a criminal alien, you can be deported.

    Trump declared TdA to be Alien Enemies, then used the Alien Enemies Act to deport them.

    He did not need to use the AEA!

    All the focus on the AEA is a distraction. The Trump administration could load all those terrorists on to planes tomorrow morning as criminal aliens and ship them down to CECOT with no issues. As long as they don’t use the AEA for the source of authority.

    What wasn’t addressed

    The Solicitor General in oral arguments and in the briefings advanced the argument that universal injunctions are bad. That these rogue, inferior court judges do not have the authority to block the executive with nationwide injunctions.

    This opinion does not address universal injunctions.

    When Democrats are in office and a court issues a universal injunction, Sotomayer, Kegan, and Jackson Brown are in full agreement with the rest of the court that universal injunctions are wrong.

    When Republicans are in office and a court issues a universal injunction, Sotomayer, Kegan, and Brown believe that universal injunctions are great.

    Legal Games

    This case should not be in front of the Supreme Court. It is here because of games played by the plaintiffs (bad guys).

    The D.C. District court, having had their hands slapped, were on warning not to take cases outside their jurisdiction. This meant the case was filed in Texas, where the terrorists are housed, pending deportation.

    The lawyers for the plaintiffs opened the case, then called the judge and demanded action. The transcript of that call was entered into the record by the judge. He was not happy.

    The call was an ex parte communication. This is in violation of the Code of Conduct for Federal Judges, Canon 3(A)(4)) and Fed. Rule Civ. Proc. 65(b)(1).

    Regardless, the judge in the case was working on the complex issues involved in this case.

    After the judge filed his remonstration of the plaintiffs’ lawyers, the plaintiffs filed a motion for a TRO.

    They demanded the judge respond within 42 minutes, or they were going to appeal the case. 133 minutes after filling the motion, they filed an appeal to the Fifth Circuit.

    The Supreme Court majority, seven justices, felt that the plaintiffs were right in appealing. Thomas and Alito dissented.

    The case was moving rapidly, the judge was responding to the motions being filed. The important aspect of the judge’s response was he had given the state 24 hours to respond.

    The plaintiffs knew this before they filed. The judge had pre-emptively told the state they had 24 hours to respond.

    The plaintiffs didn’t like this. They felt that the judge should issue the injunction as if he were a robed, rogue D.C. district court activist, litigating from the bench. This Texas judge wasn’t a slave to the leftist agenda. He was doing his job correctly.

    Conclusion

    If Thomas and Alito are on one side of the argument, and you are on the other side, you are wrong. Having been there myself, I know of what I speak.

    Alito and Thomas are superb at what they do. Trust them.

    Final Thoughts

    The Supreme Court majority was making judgments about what the inferior courts should have done with 20/20 hindsight. There are things in the record now that were not there when the lower courts issued their orders and opinions. Thomas and Alito point this out and tell the majority to follow proper procedures.

            

  • We often talk about government interference. We are forced to talk about race, constantly.

    Just as most gun control laws are racist in nature, designed to disarm blacks so that racist assholes could murder them, marriage license serve a similar purpose.

    What is a marriage license?

    In short, it is the government’s permission to perform a religious or secular ceremony declaring somebody to be your partner.

    It is also a legally binding contract. At the moment you sign that contract, you have agreed to a set of laws, enforced by threat of force, on how you separate, what it costs to separate, and who will decide the access you will have to your children.

    Many entities recognize that license as granting you special privileges and services.

    In other words, that license is what your spouse uses to get on your insurance or for you to get on theirs. It sets the rules for custody and property. It details death benefits.

    All of this in an implied contract.

    Having signed that contract three times, I know what the contract implies.

    How did marriage license come to be?

    Before the War of Northern Aggression, the southern states had laws against blacks and whites marrying. It wasn’t allowed.

    That didn’t mean that white men weren’t dipping their wick when they wanted. It didn’t mean there weren’t mixed race babies.

    This didn’t bother them. If it popped out of a slave, it was a slave that would be a slave until emancipated or death. If its skin color was too dark, it was a slave until emancipated or death. Racist as hell.

    I’m sure there were some “bucks” that were servicing white women, but that wasn’t acknowledged at all.

    After the unCivil War, many of those racist laws were struck down. The rules against mixed marriages went away as they were rules for slaves, not laws.

    So laws were passed. These laws were designed to work around certain federal restrictions on racist behavior.

    The gist? To be legally married, you need to have a license from the government, granting you permission.

    The requirements to get that license weren’t relevant enough, so we’ll just do that later.

    Blood Tests

    Ostensibly, the marriage license protected against inbreeding, transfer of STDs, and mixing of blood.

    You know, that thing that got the German’s in so much hot water in the 1938-1945 time frame. Mixing races with a government designated inferior race.

    The reason Los Vegas became a marriage destination wasn’t the Gambling, Food, and Shows. It was because there were no blood tests and no waiting.

    You and your bride-to-be could fly into Vegas in the morning, be married by noon. Be broke by 5pm. Be on a plane back home by 7pm. Arriving with your beautiful wife to an empty airport.

    But we need records!

    Absolutely, we need records. Does the government require a record of your marriage? Not really.

    But we want to stop people from marrying somebody else while still married!

    What business is it of yours how many spouses a person has?

    Well, we don’t want people defrauding insurance companies!

    Sure. But is the least intrusive method?

    The fact is, that before those racist laws came into existence, and the government took over record keeping, births, deaths, and marriages were recorded. They were recorded in the family bible and at the church where you married.

    Those records are still trusted today. Finding a family bible with those records in them is a treasure trove for people doing genealogy.

    There is no record keeping that requires government involvement.

    But what about the children!

    Yep, that’s an important thing. What about the children?

    Bluntly, most people getting married have no idea what the contract they are signing implies. They are likely not even thinking of that.

    It is the same with pre-nuptials. Why are you talking about pre-nuptials when we are about to get married? Don’t you love me? Don’t you trust me?

    The needs of the children need to come first. Notice the word “need”, not “want”. If you separate, you still have a responsibility to your children.

    Property

    Let’s pretend you are wealthy, you’ve got an entire $1000 in your bank account. You get married in California. How much money do you have in your bank account?

    The correct answer is $500. Your spouse now has $500 in your bank account.

    As one cynical lawyer explained it to me, a 50/50 state is where she starts with 50 percent of everything you own, the rest of the divorce is her working to get 50 percent of what you have left.

    An extreme example is during John Denver’s divorce. His wife was going to get 50% of everything he owned. He took a chainsaw to their wedding bed and cut it down the middle, giving 50% to her.

    Of course the judge didn’t see it the same way, but that’s neither here, nor there.

    All of these can be handled by actual, explicit contracts.

    We had a constructed family a few years back. The family owned 125 acres of woodland and farm land as well as a large house, a barn, and a couple of out buildings. One part of the family put up the down payment. My lovely wife and I were putting our salaries into the homestead.

    When the constructed family was destroyed, we needed to split up the household assets.

    I had been stupid, I trusted and didn’t get a good contract.

    The toxic person who destroyed the family had planned it that way. Her husband was responsible for the finances. Every penny she or her husband brought in went to paying down the mortgage. The money my wife and I brought in went to “maintenance” and “living expenses”. And he had records to prove all of that.

    The amount of their down payment plus the total of all of their salaries was about 1/3 of the total contributes my wife and I made.

    That was entirely my fault for failing to have a good contract in place.

    Contracts

    The legal books are awash with contract law. There are lawyers who have spent and will spend their entire career doing contract law, the last courtroom they saw was the mock court in school.

    We know how to write good contracts. We know how to read contracts. We can write a contract that will cover what needs to be covered.

    Do you want your spouse to have survivor benefits? Put it in the contract. Do you want child support to be 50/50? Put it in the contract. Do you want 50% of the first 5 years of your spouse’s income after you put them through school? Put it in the contract.

    Is it challenging to think of all the things that should be in that contract? Yes. Are there people that can do it? YES.

    Conclusion

    Let’s go back to a time when marriage was a religious or secular event, and contracts were contracts.

            

  • We are a rich people, here in America. Even our poorest has enough food (or could if they applied). We just don’t see people in the US starving. It doesn’t happen. There are no swollen bellies here.

    That doesn’t mean people aren’t hungry. As someone who’s lived on food stamps and charity at one point, I can tell you that the pickin’s are slim and you don’t get a lot of veggies. I had to be creative to keep myself and my family fed. But I managed.

    This is an art that too many people just don’t get. I covered it briefly in my last article about food, but it bears repeating. There are too many people in our country who have such a sense of entitlement that they think everyone should have “great food.” While I’m liberal enough to believe that we should be providing just enough food for people to survive on, even if they’re poor, I’m not of the opinion that it should come in the form of filet mignon or lobster tails. If you are poor (when I was poor), you have to learn to budget.

    And therein lies the problem. This generation has a terrible time with budgeting. They can’t seem to budget time, money, credit… and who can blame them, with the various people who’ve been in office over the last couple of decades. “Budget” has not been much in the vocabulary of any of our leaders. It definitely doesn’t seem to be in that of the parents of today’s generation.

    I remember a time, about ten years or so ago, when I was picking up supplies in a bump and dent store. We were tight, and I wanted to make my grocery dollars stretch. I walked past a gentleman with his very young daughter, staring forlornly at the dried beans. I paused, and asked if he had a favorite bean, and he looked at me with tears in his eyes and explained. Seems his wife had left him, and he was trying to work, care for his daughter, and feed her. Money was too tight, and he couldn’t afford meat. He knew beans were a way of getting protein, but he had no idea how to cook them from dry. He’d only ever had canned. I sat and explained to him several really tasty recipes that I thought would go over well with a toddler, and he bought up bags of beans with a grateful thank you over his shoulder. After that, I actually printed out several bean recipes and with the store’s permission, posted them in the beans aisle. They would be picked up every single week. I got a lot of thank yous.

    (more…)

            

  • SCOTUS Watch: Trump v. CASA, Inc, 24A886

    This is a case regarding birthright citizenship. That is not the important part before the Court. What is significant is rogue inferior courts issuing nationwide, or universal injunctions.

    The numbers of universal injunctions is difficult to know, at this instant because there could have been another yesterday, or today.

    Bush had 6 universal injunctions issued against him, 3 by judges appointed by democrats.

    Obama had 12 injunctions issued against him, 7 by judges appointed by republicans.

    Trump 1.0 had 64 injunctions issued against him, 59 by judges appointed by democrats.

    Biden had 14 injunctions issued against him, all 14 by judges appointed by republicans.

    As of May 15, there have been 40 nationwide injunctions issued against Trump. 35 come from the same 5 districts.

    This case is about those nationwide injunctions. I’ll need to spend some time reading the transcript, but my takeaway from the first few pages is that Justice Sotomayor is firmly for universal injunctions.

    My guess, is that she knows that rogue inferior judges live primarily on the left. She doesn’t need to worry about rulings that go against her agenda in the lower court getting nationwide injunctions. Those come mostly from leftist rogue judges.

    Thomas asked the first question. Sotomayor talked over the answer and monopolized the mic to the point that Roberts asked “May I hear the rest of his answer?”

    Hard reading.

    Airplanes are Bribes?

    Something that I have not confirmed, it seems as if the Biden puppet masters were talking to Qatar about getting this plane in 2022.

    The amount of noise in the signal is pretty bad on this one. My best filters suggest that the plane is being given to the US military. Both narratives seem to agree on this.

    One side says that the plane will be taken down to its bones and rebuilt to spec. The other side says we can’t trust Qatar and that they are giving a bribe to Trump in the form of this plane, which they will then blow up while Trump is aboard. The same group says that it is too expensive to accept because it will be stripped to the bones and rebuilt, so we should pay more, wait for the delivery from Boeing.

    At which point the military will strip it down to the bones and …

    One side says that the plane will stay in service. When Trump steps down, the plane will stay as part of the fleet transporting our next president. The other side says that the plane will go to the Trump library, making this a bribe to Trump.

    You can guess which side I’m leaning towards.

    Maryland Man Upgraded to Salvadorian Man

    This case is over in the court of public opinion. We’ve got the left claiming Trump is so dumb that he thought the characters M, S,1, and 3 were tattooed on his hand.

    This has led our smartest, elitist, left representatives to claim “The image was doctored! It doesn’t say MS-13”

    Then argue that the actual tattoos don’t indicate MS-13 because they found an expert who says it doesn’t.

    TdA is About to Go Flying

    It looks like the case of J.G.G. is about done with. The left is still trying to bury Trump with “contempt of court.” The plaintiffs (bad guys) wanted the terrorists to get 30 days to seek representation and to have a chance in court. The case has been enjoined for that period of time. This means the case is moot and the government should be able to ship them out.

    I have read part of a court finding that says that Trump is allowed to continue deporting terrorists.

    Typescript is Winning

    As I learn more of the syntax and tricks, this is getting easier and easier. I finished most of the text editing module yesterday. This makes it possible to edit live blocks on the page.

    I still miss Makefiles.

    Snope

    Has been listed again. It is in conference today. I do not expect to hear anything about it.

    Ocean State Tactical

    It seems I was mistaken, this case is still in an interlocutory state. The fact that it hasn’t been denied cert is very surprising to me.

    Question of the week

    What current behavior was not tolerated in your youth?

    Has your tolerance of that behavior grown stronger or less over the last few years?

    Are you suffering from behavior fatigue?

            

  • I admit that I have horrible organizational skills. I use different tools to account for that lack.

    I love me some Kanban and it looks so pretty when I start. And then it gets left behind.

    Git allows me to make cheap commits. It allows cheap branches.

    The development model should be “Create Issue. Create a branch to match issue. Work the issue on the branch. Resolve issue on branch. Merge master to issue branch. Resolve conflicts. Merge the issue branch back to master and delete the issue branch.”

    I have a branch which was “Add MD5 to images”. By the time I was ready to commit, I had almost 40 files that had been modified. I spent about an hour making commits. Moving to different branches to get the changes into the right branches.

    Once that was done, my workflows kicked the commit because of issues. Four hours to create typing stubs and to lint the added code. Painful.

    Why? Because I got the md5 done but was in the middle of using the new code, then a higher priority issue popped which got its branch but which …

    About once every two weeks, I have to spend a day organizing to get things back to reasonable.

    I love working at the Fort at No 4. The current director is wonderful. She is also in over her head and struggling to get everything done that needs to be done.

    This leads to her moving from most important to next most important until there is no organization, no completion.

    Yet, she keeps it all going. I don’t know how she does it.

    Today we had a longish meeting to go over Use Cases for the new website.

    For me, use cases are formalized brainstorming. Every use case is written as

    “As {Actor} I {Want|Need} {something}”

    The something needs to be well-defined, and it must be a single thing. You don’t write, As a web visitor, I want to be able to read the EULA and the Privacy Statement.

    That is two different use cases.

    As we were working our way though one section of use cases, she told me that the process of writing use cases for the website was helping her to organize her job as the director.

    Which is an extra benefit.

    I’m a bit tired right now. I stayed up way too late Tuesday Night, 0300 late. I’m in the making good progress, fighting my way through the tangled web of code.

    Today will be an even better day.

    Now all I need to do is find time to read some more court documents, without taking my blood pressure through the roof.

            

  • I am well and truly confused over the panic that’s currently occurring over the use of tariffs. An acquaintance of mine just posted the following (changed slightly to protect the author, who I didn’t ask before posting this):

    “We have to reconstruct the exterior stairs that were ripped off this house before we moved in, so there is a second exit during an emergency. This requires wood. Which comes from Canada. I also sell books, otherwise known as printed paper. Which comes from China. Tariffs, that’s where my money goes.”

    I had to ask said person, where are they printing their books? The last price hike I had, via Amazon KDP, was a couple or three years ago, and came to a grand total of about four cents on each of my books. I chose to eat the cost; it wasn’t enough to bother the customers. There doesn’t appear to be any kind of price hike going on at KDP for print-on-demand, and while there’s no definitive answer available (as with all things Amazon related), it appears as if about half their paper is recycled (meaning we recycle it and turn it into more paper here in America), and the other half is “sourced from the cheapest domestic available,” which to me means whatever they have on hand but local if it’s not prohibitive. At the very least, it’s not enough to cost me more per book to print.

    Obviously I can’t speak for other companies, but I have to say… if Amazon, the Great Gouger, isn’t raising prices… well, I am going to guess no one else is either.

    When it comes to wood, I can speak a bit more authoritatively. In 2024, about 72% of our wood for building (lumber) came from domestic sources. That means it was sourced here in the good ol’ United States. That’s about to change, because of the tariffs on Canadian imports. The cost of new homes will go up. Currently, that cost is NOT up. And it is entirely possible to buy American lumber for making exterior stairs or other small projects. Does American lumber cost more? For the moment, that’s possible, though I couldn’t find an example of it. Once the tariffs kick in, American lumber will go up slightly in price (because we don’t have the huge forests that Canada does, and so we can’t be cutting down as many trees as they do and have it be sustainable), but it’ll still be less than wood from Canada.

    I just don’t get it.

    (more…)