While I'm hardly a motorcycle aficionado, I like looking at them and enjoy videos about them, too. I must say that, while some of the older British bikes are mechanically and electrically challenging (hey, I had a 1966 Triumph 500cc twin and that thing found ways to break that still mystify me), they were about the best-looking motorcycles anywhere. Vincents, BSAs, Ariels, Triumphs (mine was beautiful, I've got to say), and Nortons were all really great-looking bikes. So, hats off to those wacky Brits, they had wonderful style when it came to motorcycles.

These Flock surveillance cameras are popping up in our county here in Maryland. If I don't want these cameras tracking and recording where and when I drive, I have to figure out where the cameras are and see what route or routes can be taken to stay away from this relentless watching of everybody's driving habits.

So far, I have been able to do this using my own eyeballs to see where the cameras are, but then I also looked on a "Flock camera location map" (wonderful!) and was really surprised at how many there are now around here.

I have nothing to hide and even when there's a cop car behind me, I don't really care. But one woman from St. Johns County, FL, where St. Augustine is, said at a hearing that she barely goes out and yet her car has been recorded 154 times and 11 of those times, the report she got showed her license plate on cars that were not hers!

I'm not sure what can be done about this, but I'm getting older now and this is the first time in my whole life that I felt surveillance by the police or state is being wildly overdone and it is scary. That I have to think about my route every time I go out in my car is kind of unbelievable to me.

PS The woman who spoke at a hearing in FL also said that police only keep surveillance records for 30 days but Flock keeps them forever.

"COVID-19 ‘Is Not Done With Us’: Pharmacist Urges Continued Vaccination Ahead of Seasonal Peaks"

Jeff Goad, PharmD, MPH: "One of my favorite sayings is that a lot of individuals may be done with COVID, but COVID is not done with us. So, we still need to be aware that every year we see about two peaks of this disease, and the COVID-19 vaccines that are available are still very effective at keeping you out of the hospital and keeping you from dying from this disease."

Source: https://www.pharmacytimes.com/view/covid-19-is-not-done-with-us-pharmacist-urges-continued-vaccination-ahead-of-seasonal-peaks

Archive: https://archive.li/MOZOO

Do you still use Twitter, even if you're not active?

Solar power IS nuclear power. It's just the reactor is really really far away.

"Unalived."

"Devitalize."

The first term above was used in talking about the fatal attack by a great white shark on a young marine biologist scuba diving off the Australian coast. I've never heard that term before. I had to replay the video report to make sure what I was hearing.

The second was used in our county's guide to dealing with spotted lanternflies, an invasive species. After devitalizing the insect, you should put it in a baggie and report it to the county, it says. Again, a term that is utterly new to me.

There's a radio station in Owens Dry Lake, CA that broadcasts sounds made by winds off the dry lake blowing over wires in a tower near the lake. It can be heard on metabolicstudio.org/Sonic-Division and click on Satellite Radio. It is eerie yet hypnotic. Now and then, for some reason, I feel a strong urge to listen to it. It can be somewhat calming. PS It could be alien signals but I think wind blowing over metal wires makes more sense.

This is how the end looks like. The last piece of the Triglav glacier in Slovenia, pictured on 2 October, 2026

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2026/oct/27/slovenia-mourns-loss-glacier-highest-peak-scorching-summer

I'm up here in Churchill with Polar Bears International (https://polarbearsinternational.org/) keeping a close eye on the start of the freeze-up this year. No ice yet, and climate change is pushing this later and later into the season. This means polar bears have to spend more time on land before they can return to the sea ice to hunt seals.

After reading and hearing about 47 being upset at Obama's jab about the overdecorating with gold filigree of the White House, I felt like what should really be talked about is how 47 started, for no reason at all, a war with Iran that got more than 120 schoolgirls and their teachers killed when 2 Tomahawk missiles were fired into their school.

47 should be pulled out of the White House and put in jail for that. He's a murderer.

After a string of seven or eight days of utterly brilliant, cool, and clear weather around the Chesapeake, it's now starting to cloud up. It's a bit unsettling even though it had to happen sooner or later. But the last week or more was simply astonishing. Day after day of beautiful blue skies, bright sun, and dry, pleasant air.

Back about forty years ago, when I started living here, you could look (east, in my case) on a late October afternoon and if there were any clouds at all, you could see this lovely yellow sky. This was light coming off all the trees turning color. I don't see this anymore and have not for some years now. I guess too many trees have been cut down.

In reading and thinking about anarchy, it is noteworthy to hear about people who want more and more to have "local control" when it comes to businesses and services where they live. There's an article in today's NY Times about how large "private equity" firms buy up small businesses and then try to turn them into money-making operations by raising prices and fees and getting rid of employees who, often, have been around a long time and know quite a bit about how that small business is run well.

The more people are "pushed around" by those who come into their towns and lives with "big money" or by "government" that also tries to steal their money while degrading services, the more they are going to want to get away from all that and keep it local.

Oh, my...

https://www.nhtsa.gov/laws-regulations/standing-general-order-crash-reporting#83381

Phillips O'Brien is a superb writer on war and politics and the bald-faced grifting going on right now. He wrote this today:

"As I called it in February 2025, the USA is being run by an organized crime-like syndicate, and is selling off US secrets, capabilities and influence in the most grotesque and open ways."

When I read this, I asked myself, "Crime-like?" It is an outright criminal organization. As Benito Mussolini once said, "Sure, I'm a criminal. So what? What are you going to do about it?"

Yesterday, another fellow and I were playing tennis. I had my cellphone in an outer pocket of my tennis bag and the bag was hung on the fence right near the folding chair I sit in at breaks in the tennis. While talking to my fellow player, I said something about a city in Virginia. Later that night, while on my PC, I was rather startled to see an ad for condos in that exact city which is quite far away and not somewhere I'd even think of living in. But things like this have happened before and it is rather an uneasy feeling that your phone and PC are like spy microphones or "bugs" listening to and watching you even when you've forgotten they're nearby or turned on.

I'm going to have to wrap up my cellphone and stow it deep inside the tennis bag from now on. I didn't know it could "hear" that well.

Now and then I think about what one guy said in a video about what is now Europe back about 45-50,000 years ago. He said it seems that at that time, there were only about 1000 humans in that whole area. Right, one thousand people in all of what is now Europe. He said everywhere you would go would have no one there! I know there are still places today where there are few if any people, but to picture all of Europe being empty of people is really shocking.

A small band of people is walking through a forest for days and there is not one single other person in there. Only animals. Wow.

"No Borders, No Nations"
Seen in Nicosia, Cyprus

We cannot help but believe that were every law, every title deed, every court, and every police officer or soldier abolished tomorrow with one sweep, we would be better off than now.
-- Lucy Parsons

#anarchism #quote #bot

Andddd global temperatures are soaring to new daily record highs again!

Graphic from https://zacklabe.com/climate-change-indicators/

How Bronze Age villagers in Spain resisted the El Argar state, and what it shows about power in Europe and the Mediterranean

Around 2200 BCE, a society called El Argar took shape in southeastern Spain. Over the next 450 years, El Argar grew from a core of roughly 2,100 square miles to about 13,100 square miles. Researchers wanted to know how the people living to the north dealt with such a neighbor...

More info: https://archaeologymag.com/2026/10/bronze-age-villagers-resisted-the-el-argar-state/

Follow @archaeology

#archaeology #ElArgar #bronzeage