RastrikerWP

Probably Should Have Checked First

https://www.cnn.com/2022/02/09/us/wisconsin-black-student-athlete-disqualified-blm-swimsuit/index.html

I get where the official that barred her was coming from if the rules say that you can’t have a political statement on your uniform. The Black Lives Matter movement is definately political as they try to lower the number of shootings of black people by white police officers. However, had I been the official, I would have probably asked officials running the meet about it first.

All this could have been avoided had the officials been asked. The YMCA would have told the person who attempted to bar her that her suit was within the rules, and that would have been the end of it. The girl wouldn’t have even known that her suit had been in question.

As for the rules of USA Swimming saying that there’s a policy of no political language on the swim suits, they need to better clarify the rule. In my mind, though I support it, Black Lives Matter IS political and should not be allowed on her suit. What if her suit had said “Make America Great Again”, or Biden’s “Build Back Better”? All three statements kinda have the same power.

I applaud the girl for her support of the matter. But rules are rules. And unfortunately I’m going to have to go with the original official on this one.

Burritos or Bust

Food gets more expensive, the wages stay the same, unemployment benefits stay the same, and your burrito becomes a pipe dream.

I LOVE Chipolte Mexican Grill. When I want a good burrito or taco I’ll make the extra drive to go there rather than settleing for Taco Bell. Don’t get me wrong! I like Taco Bell too. But when I’m CRAVING a good burrito, it’s Chipolte we go.

I can understand why prices are still climbing. It is still going to take a long time for food and supply chain industries to recover from their pandemic shut downs. In the mean times, as consumers, we are going to continue to pay higher prices.

Food items that we were used to having as everyday items may have to take a step back for a while and become more of a treat. The last time I went to the one here in town about a week ago there were only three people in front of me and they got pretty excited when I said that I’d take care of everyone’s bill.

It was a great feeling not only to eat a supurb burrito, but to also quietly sit back knowing I’d made a few peoples lunch a bit special was kinda fun too.

Fusion Power is Here

The core of the JET tokamak machine in the English village of Culham, near Oxford.

This is exciting news in the development of power sources getting away from coal and oil. But five seconds of power sounds more like a band name than a test result.

It is pretty cool to know that we have the ability to generate this kind of power, however, it’s practical use is still a long way off.

One of my questions is: In order to power the world with fusion energy, how many of these things would have to be built?

Congratulations to the team! Keep it up, and we may soon be able to dump the fossil fuels.

What Are Schools For Then?

https://www.cnn.com/2022/02/08/politics/white-house-desantis-florida-bill/index.html

I thought that schools were a place for learning. I guess I was wrong. Schools are not only a place where you learn math, science, English, physics, and etc, it’s a place where you learn about life. In today’s society one of the biggest life lessons that can be taught is about learning about yourself, who you are, and who you want to become.

When I was in school it helped me develope who I was, and who I wanted to become. To say that talking about sexual orientation and gender identities is not appropriate for school age kids I think is a bunch of horse shit. They are most likely learning about it through online sites that have nothing to do with proper education. And they are learning it at younger than ever ages.

This is the age of the internet when a ten year old can type in the word “sex” into a search engine and you get inundated with websites about how to have better sex, sexually explicit images, and things to buy for sex that if I had a ten year old I sure wouldn’t want them to see. Sex education needs to start in about the 4th grade these days.

To deny them an education about what is gay, what is bisexual, what is transgender, and what is someone in drag, is doing nothing but hurting them. Gay, straight, bi, whatever, this is something that needs to be taught so when they are presented with a person who is unlike themselves, or if they are in one of the minorities, they have an understanding of what it’s about.

To many people on the Right still want to banish those in the LBGTQ community to the netherregions. This is simply unacceptable. It only reinforces the position that being LGBTQ is an abnormalty that should be bullied, ridiculed, and shamed, when the exact opposite is true.

These are people who want to live life just like you do in a normal environment. They want to have a good education, get a good job, have a family, and be a decent part of society. Not everyone, not even close, who is gay is going to turn into a child molester and kidnap your kids. We have grown to be a society that assumes that everyone is a potential child molestor. It’s “Guilty Before Proven Innocent”.

Sex education is not something that should be looked at as bad. It is the one thing in life that everyone does, but nobody wants to talk about. My parents didn’t talk to me about sex until well after I’d had plenty of practice. I probably could have tought them a thing or two when it should be the other way around.

As being gay, bisexual, and transgender become more common and accepted the world over, it is important to teach our kids what it means so they are not tramatized and have negitive reactions when they are confronted with it. Let’s take back our schools from the fear mongering people who just want the LGBTQ’s to go back in their closets.

The End of Oil

This was a very good video to watch, in my opinion, about the future of oil. Have we reached the peak of oil production, and what’s going to happen when we run out?

I think anyone who says that we will never run out of oil is an idiot. Like anything else on the planet, it is a finite resourse. Sure, there may be enough oil left to fuel the world for the next hundred years, but how about the next hundred?

This is why I think it is so important to develop the renewable energy sourses like wind and solar. When the oil runs out our way of life currently will come to an end. Car will stop driving, airplanes will stop flying, and most importantly, our agriculture will come to a grinding halt.

With so many people on the planet today if agriculture were to come to a stop, humanity would be in peril. There would be unimaginable famine, which would lead to war over food, and the use of nuclear war out of frustration. If we don’t find a way to power the world after the oil is gone, the world will go into a Second Dark Age.

We have relied for so long on a reasourse that was so abundant that nearly everyone takes it for granted now. It’s just always going to be there. The alarm bells have started to ring, unfortunately the world keeps hitting the snooze button. And somewhere down the road the world is going to wake up and realize that it’s overslept and now there’s nothing that can be done.

Not only do we need to find alternate ways to power the world, but we need to also find easier ways to harness that power. There are only so many hydroelectric dams that can be built. Nobody wants to build nuclear power plants. But solar panels you can put on every roof top, and windmills can be placed everywhere.

I think that in the future every home is going to have to be built with solar panels, and existing homes will have to have them installed. Let the home produce it’s own electrical needs. Cars are going to have to electric with the sale of gas powered cars stopped. I think if we can get electric cars to go 300 miles on a single charge that would be a great start. At 65 miles per hour 300 miles equals about five hours of drive time, which is a good amount for a day.

The idiot part then is to be sure that the recharging stations for the cars aren’t powered by gas fuels generators like the ones I’ve seen around the city. That kind of defeats the purpose of the electric car.

Flying is also going to have to take a serious downgrade. I don’t know if I like the thought of an electric airplane yet, but if somehow it could work I’d be game for it. We are going to have to seriously reduce the number of airplanes that fly. Unfortunately this means that air travel will get more expensive and you’re not going to be able to jet around for the weekend.

But look at the trade-off. We either change how we drive, how we fly, and I haven’t even mentioned change how we make products that are produced from oil, or we use the oil until it run out and destroy the world. Which one sounds better to you?

Homeless Camping

https://www.cnn.com/2022/02/05/us/portland-mayor-bans-homeless-encampments/index.html

While I wouldn’t want homeless people to be camping in unsafe area either, I hope that Portland isn’t just kicking them out with nowhere else to go.

It sickens me to think that there are so many people, men, women, and children, that are homeless. It sickens me even more to think that most of society consider them an eyesore and want them out of the way more than they want to help them.

On the other hand, there are great organizations out there that are trying to help the homeless, and give them a safer place to live rather than in tents next to unsafe roads. The video below talks about one of those efforts:

If we could get more orgainizations to help house the homeless like this, the safer the homeless people would be, and less of the eyesore that people don’t like to see.

Most of the homeless people I’ve talked to when I drop off clothing donations, or help out to distribute food every now and then, never intended on being homeless. I don’t think any kid growing up says “I want to be a homeless person”. But things happen in life, and it’s not always preventable.

Maybe they lost their job. Maybe there was a divorce and a person couldn’t afford rent anymore. Maybe they became disabled somehow. The stories of why people became homeless are unique to each person. But in no way should a person be shamed for being homeless.

These people are members of our society. They help our economy, they pay taxes, their kids go to school. Rather than bitch and moan about how they are making an eyesore, or urinating and #2 because there are no open public restrooms, why not try to help them out instead?

Would it be such a hard thing to install a few more porto-potty’s near where they homeless set up tent city’s? I’d rather city one of them every few blocks or so rather than stepping around where someone did #1 or #2 in public.

It’s great that Los Angles is making these tiny house villages, but we have a LONG way to go before we reduce homelessness to zero. And it’s great to see other cities making these villages as well.

I think with the way the economy is going, the rising cost of housing, food, gas, and everything else, and the low below living wage pay, homeless is going to get worse before it gets better. The more programs and locations like this there are though, the better suited society will be do deal with the issue.

96 and Still Going

https://www.cnn.com/2022/02/05/uk/queen-elizabeth-ii-platinum-jubilee-accession-day-gbr-intl/index.html

Queen Elizabeth II just made it official that when Prince Charles becomes King, his wife Camilla can be called Queen.

I’m a monarchy historian in any means, but I’ve always thought it odd that if you are married to the Queen, why are you not called King? It just makes sense to me that Charles would become King, and the actual Head of State for the U.K., and his wife would be called Queen, even though she would have no actual power.

The video below is an interesting story about when Charles becomes King. What will his reighn be like? Should the succession skip Charles and go right to William? Or should the monarchy end with the death of QEII?

Bezos and a Bridge

https://www.cnn.com/2022/02/04/business/jeff-bezos-rotterdam-yacht/index.html

If I were the city I’d tell Bezos to go fuck himself and go find a ship builder that doesn’t have to take apart bridges in order to get his boat out to sea.

This is just another example of the uber rich getting what they want just because they have the money to do it. I mean, come on, really? You want the city to dismantle a bridge so you can get your boat out? To me that just sounds like piss poor planning to have it built where you can’t get it out.

I hope the city denies him the request. See what he does then. I’m sure there are plenty of other ship builders in the world where he could have a quality boat build that doesn’t require the removal of city infrastructure to move it to sea.

Just because you have money doesn’t mean that the world has to bow to your wants.

One Guy Takes Down the Internet

https://www.businessinsider.com/lone-hacker-claims-responsibility-for-turning-off-north-koreas-internet-2022-2

Wow! Even if it is North Korea, it is quite spooky to think that one person was able to take down the internet of an entire country.

Think of what would happen if someone was able to take down the entire internet of the United States! I’d say it would throw the country into the Dark Ages, but probably more like the 70s before everyone was using computers and cell phones.

The really bad part would be that it wouldn’t only cripple the economy, it would probabaly destroy it since everything these days is done via internet. Do you think there is a way that financial companies could recover their information if for some reason they couldn’t use the internet anymore? It’s scarey to think about.

How much money is in your wallet if all the ATMs went down and your bank couldn’t use their computer to tell you how much you had in your account? I’ve only got $12 in mine at the moment. So that’s not going to buy much. If the computers went down for good I’d lose nearly $680M. That would be a bit devistating.

Hopefully it will never happen though. But companies really do need to do more to make sure that their information is protected from hackers. There are far too many stories about some company getting hacked and then the information of millions of people getting stolen. But unfortunately no computer system is going to be 100% foolproof. We just have to be diligent in the protection of the information.

$30 Turns Into $10 Million

https://www.cnn.com/style/article/durer-drawing-yard-sale-scli-intl/index.html

This is the reason that going to garage and estate sales, and second hand bookstores is so fun. Sure, the chances of actually finding something that turns out to be worth millions is a rare thing, but it’s still fun to look.

My mom came upon a rarety a few years ago and gave it to me for a present at that years Christmas.

Since I was a little kid I’ve always liked collecting $2 bills when ever I came across them. I had a photo album book that I would put them in to keep them safe. I did a short stint working as a Teller at a bank when a customer came up to my window and wanted to deposit some cash. It was hard to keep from jumping up and down when I saw that the bills he wanted to deposit were actually old Gold and Silver Certificates.

I asked the guy if he was sure he wanted to deposit them because he was only going to get face value for them (I didn’t tell him that part). When he said yes I did as he asked, gave him his receipt, and watched him walk out the door. As soon as he was out the door I quickly had one of the other Tellers withdraw the same amount from my account and I swapped out the bills in the drawer. I now had four $50 Gold Certificates and ten $10 Silver Certificates. Yes, I still have them.

Then my mom kinda had the same thing happen to her while she was shopping around an estate sale. She found this really nice, really ornate, jewelry box and when she opened it up she was stunned to find nearly $7,000 face value of Gold and Silver Certificates. The box itself was marked for sale for only $50.

She took the box up to the lady doing the check out and asked her if the contents of the box were included in the price. She said she was nearly floored when the lady said that the bills WERE included since they weren’t worth anything anymore. She said she made the purchase then got out of there as fast as she could.

Let me tell you! I was blown away that Christmas when I opened the box. I couldn’t believe it that the lady at the sale thought the bills were worthless just because they’re not in curculation anymore. What a dumbass!