I'm old enough to remember when Greg Lake was the front man for King Crimson and I possessed a coveted cassette tape. And, yes, I am old enough to have purchased the vinyl album and most assuredly was drawn to use of a Moog Synthesizer to
juice-up a tune that the rest of the band found uninspiring.
Written by Lake as an acoustic tune on his first
guitar at the age of twelve – it surfaced years later when the group Emerson,
Lake and Palmer needed an additional song on their debut album.
Greg Lake has been gone now for a decade already; thankfully his music persists.
The orioles are making a liar out of me. Watching the news last evening I spotted a juvenile on the feeder just outside on the feeder.
The bird cam is still on the porch and two of the three jelly feeders were empty. Empty feeders do not necessarily imply orioles feed at them as other birds like grape jelly. Nevertheless, I swapped-out the memory card to check on who's been visiting.
And from yesterday afternoon there was an oriole and a house finch and a solo female oriole.
Once upon a time you could count on Republicans to stand for lower taxes. No more. In case you missed it, last Friday, July 24, President Trump imposed new tariffs of 10% to 12.5% on 60 trading partners covering 99% of U.S. imports. In a fit of pique, an additional 50% retaliatory tariff singling-out Canada was imposed as well.
Because the cost of these additional trade taxes are paid by consumers, the Yale Budget Lab now estimates that Mr. Trump's tax increase will cost American households an average of $1,100 per year. That is double what it would have been had the president declined to impose higher taxes replacing the global tariff that expired on Friday.
Notably, this tax increase wipes-out the $300 - $1,000 increase in average tax refund generated as a result of Trump's Big Beautiful Bill.
Five months into the Iran war the national price of gasoline is around $4 a gallon; so there is that additional household budget item. The Strait of Hormuz
remains closed. The Red Sea's Bab el-Mandeb (Gateway of Tears) is now
threatened by the Houthis. U.S. bases throughout the Gulf States remain
vulnerable to attack. And oil is trading close to $100 a barrel.
Naturally, it should come as no surprise that with the imposition of new and higher tariffs, rising energy costs, Iran war supply chain disruptions; businesses are raising prices. Which increases the threat of rising inflation pressures.
In closing this has pushed yields on the 10-year treasury - a major benchmark for setting consumer borrowing costs - above 4.6%. The bond market looks spooked. This impacts commercial loans and pushed the 30-year fixed rate mortgage rate to its highest level of the year, a move that could chill the housing market. Notably, this is higher than where they stood following Mr. Trump's Liberation Day announcement that sent the bond markets into a tailspin.
Admittedly, updates and briefings are incomplete. For instance, unemployment for the month of June was 4.2%, ticking down from 4.3% in May. According to the US Bureau of Labor statistics total unemployed persons stood at roughly 7.09 million, reflecting a stable labor market.
I’ve been checking the bird cam on the porch and for the last several days I haven’t gotten an oriole photo.
Neither of us has spotted any in the yard.
I’ll keep the camera out for a while longer just to be sure; but if my diary is to be believed the orioles have departed. They’re winging their way south already for their wintering grounds in Mexico, Central and South America.
One of the last photos was July 23
They arrived May 7 and left, on or about, July 25.
Last to arrive - first to depart.
Anecdotally, 2026 has been a bumper year for house finches and Monarch butterflies….
The names associated with our full moons are frequently
derived from the names given by the indigenous peoples that inhabited North
America. The tribes used a calendar to
track the seasons by means of the names given to the return of a full
moon.
In
the northern hemisphere the full moon that greets
us today is called the Buck Moon in recognition of the rapidly-growing,
velvet-covered, antlers of the whitetail deer. It will appear at its fullest tonight and tomorrow night. Look for it to rise
in the east after sunset; highest at midnight and setting in the west at dawn.
With the arrival of European settlers two
additional monikers come to mind:the
Meade Moon which coincides the harvest of honey used to ferment this drink and
the Hay Moon as the first cuttings of cattle fodder occur.
This is an interesting bit of breakfast cereal lore that dates back to the mid 1960s. Post Sugar Sparkled Rice Krinkles and their animated mascot, an Asian boy named So-Hi (because he was ''so high"). I missed-out on this opportunity as this cereal wasn't part of our household line-up; nevertheless, each box included the So-Hi Rickshaw Racer.
For the time it was rather nifty; including easy-to-assemble parts featuring a tiny figure of So-Hi pulling a two-wheeled rickshaw. The kit included some string and a small plastic bucket which functioned as a counterweight. Tie the string to the rickshaw, put a coin in the bucket, hook it over the edge of the kitchen table and let the weight drop. The falling weight would cause So-Hi and his rickshaw to zip across the table at high speed. Fun stuff and you were always one box away from a replacement once it broke.
At the time Madison Avenue didn't have any of today's qualms about cultural tropes like gongs, a broken-English accent, conical hats or rickshaws. So-Hi was intended to be a fun and lighthearted replacement for an unsettling clown mascot dating back to the 1950s; he even had a role as a regular character on Linus the Lionhearted, a Saturday morning cartoon show funded entirely by General Foods (Post) where the characters were literally cereal mascots.
Naturally, this era used cultural characters to foster instant identity. Frito Lay had the Frito Bandito, Pillsbury used Funny Face drink mixes with flavors like Injun Orange and Chinese Cherry. Post had So-Hi.
Post eventually retired So-Hi realizing that Rice Krinkles didn't need the baggage of a clown that creeped-out children or a mascot becoming a textbook example of racial stereotyping. In 1971 they repurposed their puffed-rice operation and launched a licensed and inoffensive mascot; Fruity Pebbles. Fred Flintstone and Barney Rubble became pitchmen for sugary children's breakfast cereal.
This was a popular advertising slogan from the 1970s for cassette recording tapes that Millennials are unlikely to identify-with as they're not going to recognize the marketing campaign. Nevertheless, if you are a baby boomer you already know that the Memorex brand audio recording tapes claimed to offer such an authentic playback experience that the listener would not be able to differentiate a live performance from an audio recording.
I still have a soft-sided case of Memorex mix tapes in my pick-up truck that are the industry's contribution to bootleg music recordings. But I digress.
I'm sharing this anecdote as further evidence that nowadays you cannot expect that everything you see on the interweb or social media is real. It may very well be an AI fake.
For instance this advertisement for the Spacematic Food Spinner 2000, boldly marketed by the Spacematic Corporation as The Futuristic Food Preparation Center for Today's Space Age Family! According to the ad it is an all-in-one tabletop unit that can spin, mix, blend, heat and serve an entire meal visualized thru a See-Through Dome. It comes equipped with a One-Touch Control Panel and a Revolutionary Gyro-Mix Feature that cooks food evenly in individual wedges. All of this George Jetson Family space-age technology is yours for only $19.95 (plus tax).
Pretty cool, eh?
Nope. It's all made-up. It never existed.
This is a clever piece of AI-generated art that perfectly captures the atomic-age aesthetic of the late 1950s or early 1960s.
How to tell?
The text lacks any specific details ordinarily included in a vintage Sears or Montgomery Ward advertisement. The capsule structure behind the tidy nuclear family looks like a spaceship instead of a suburban kitchen. The food in the spinner is indistinct and doesn't include any jello. Finally there's the RetroFuture Vault watermark in the bottom right corner.
It's certainly entertaining; but you won't find one on EBay....
The dollar figures are sketchy as the administration has left out the replacement cost of lost aircraft and the rebuilding of damaged bases; but here's a start. Casualties on our side; 18 dead, 482 wounded and counting. Deaths among the Gulf States, including Iran, and merchant seamen are estimated to number into the thousands.
Excluding aircraft and base losses the war in Iran has officially cost the United States $37.5 billion so far, according to recent testimony by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth. However, intelligence officials and independent analysts estimate the total cost exceeds $100 billion.
Supporting the higher estimate consider that earlier this week Defense
Secretary Hegseth and General Caine, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of
Staff, appeared before the Senate appropriation Committee seeking $70 billion more to cover costs of the conflict and replenish
depleted weapons stocks.
Sounds like the tip of an iceberg.
Nevertheless, insofar as nobody can put the toothpaste back in the tube and hardly anybody wants to cut the troops off at the knees during wartime I think we're stuck with paying for a conflict of choice begun by one guy. An impulsive choice, likely made against the advice of the Vice President, Secretary of State and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff; but that's a discussion for another day.
What do we have to show for our expenditure of lives and treasure?
The Strait of Hormuz remains closed. The Red Sea's Bab el-Mandeb (Gateway of Tears) is now threatened by the Houthis. U.S. bases throughout the Gulf States remain vulnerable to attack. And oil is trading close to $100 a barrel. Mr. Trump has set in motion a cascade of destabilizing events that have dangerous consequences for global stability, security and the world's economy.
By all outward appearances this has all the elements of an open-ended cluster. Some have suggested this could develop into another costly and grinding conflict that might persist into the next administration. Iran is near certain to obtain a nuke. This is Mr. Trump's Jimmy Carter moment - on steroids. Time will tell how this plays-out.
And not a single MAGA supporter I'm acquainted-with will admit that their guy might have fallen under the thrall of Bibi Netanyahu.
Jiminy Glick is one of comedian Martin Short's most brilliant and chaotic alter egos. He has been described as a satirical masterpiece weaponized against the usual standard of softball celebrity interviews.
Buried in a massive fat suit and outrageous facial prosthetics and sporting signature thick-rimmed glasses, Glick is fictional celebrity journalist from Akron, Ohio. The character is completely uninformed, deeply self-absorbed and utterly unbothered by his own total lack of preparation. All of which is a near-perfect set-up for Short's improvisational comedy skills as he interviews. real-life celebrity guests.
A typical interview is marked by near zero attention span, bizarrely insulting questions, high-pitched outbursts ranging from a breathy lisp to maniacal giggles and constant snacking.
In 2001 Short brought the character to Comedy Central for Primetime Glick interviewing Bill Maher and Steve Martin as his first guests. Over two years and 30 episodes Glick hosted a long list of Saturday Night Live alumni including Dennis Miller, Bill Crystal, Janeane Garofalo, Molly Shannon, Chevy Chase, Jon Lovitz, Chris Elliott and Rob Schneider. In 2003 Glick earned Short an Emmy nomination for Outstanding Individual Performance in a Variety or Music Program.
Primetime Glick wrapped up after three seasons, yet the character kept going. In 2004, MGM released Jiminy Glick in Lalawood, a feature film co-starring Jan Hooks that was mash-up of Glick interviews and murder mystery.
From a recent trip along the trail camera trapline fawns and their mama have been showing-up regularly. Some days you'd think we were running a deer farm or ranch operation.
Little-known factoid. The white spots on a fawn's coat do not show when a trail camera is operating on infrared (IR) mode.
— That is how many cigarettes are sold in China each year, nearly half the global total. Xi Jinping, the country’s president, may have quit smoking years ago. But his government hasn’t done much to help its people join him.
Cigarette sales are falling in most countries. In China, the numbers are going up. Smoking there rose 39 percent from 2003 to 2023, even as it fell 26 percent in the rest of the world. And while younger people are smoking less, older ones are smoking more, in part because it’s an inexpensive habit in China: A pack costs roughly $3.
In contrast, if you want a pack of Marlboro Reds from my local bodega? That’ll be $20.
Joy Dong, who reported on all this from Hong Kong, says it shows how powerful China’s state tobacco company is. It’s a literal monopoly: A single agency both regulates the cigarette industry and makes most of the smokes.
The government’s brand, the China National Tobacco Corporation, generated roughly $244 billion in profit and tax revenue in 2025. That’s about 7 percent of national government revenue and nearly what China says it spends on defense.
Reprint from the pages of "Hoard's Dairyman" magazine issued to
influence public opinion in Wisconsin where the sale of colored
margarine was prohibited by law
Once upon a time margarine was illegal in Wisconsin.
That’s right. For over 70 years, Wisconsin banned the production and
sale of buttery-yellow oleomargarine and we were the last state in the
nation to uphold oleo bans. As a child my dad and his brother would periodically team-up and make a run across the Illinois border where there was a thriving business selling cases of margarine to Wisconsinites who would drive back over the border with trunk loads of bootleg oleo.
59 years ago on July 1, 1967, the sale and production of yellow oleomargarine was finally legalized in Wisconsin.
Oleo was seen as a substitute for butter and gained popularity during
the butter shortage of WWII. Dairy distributors didn’t like this
imitation-butter one bit, which led to Wisconsin upholding oleo bans
for more than seven decades.
Nevertheless, Wisconsin
state law still strictly regulates butter and margarine in restaurants
and it is a criminal offense to substitute margarine for butter unless a
customer specifically requests it.
The law on the books is Wisconsin Statute 97.18(4), which explicitly states:
"The serving of colored oleomargarine or margarine at a public eating place as a substitute for table butter is prohibited unless it is ordered by the customer."
The mid-term elections are a little more than three months away and hardly a day goes by that there isn't a claim by the White House of the recent special elections being stolen, how millions of illegal immigrants are routinely voting and how Democrats are scheming to steal the mid-term elections. These baseless claims nearly always include a reminder of how the 2020 elections were rigged.
None of this is surprising as polling isn't looking very good for the GOP's chances of retaining the House; and as the president's approval rating continues to fall; now even retaining a GOP majority in the Senate is at some small risk of peril. Naturally, Republicans will do whatever is necessary to retain power in the representative branch of government.
In light of the foregoing someone should read to the president the 2022 Report: Lost Not Stolen; composed by eight conservative Republicans including a couple of former GOP senators, three former appellate judges, a former Republican solicitor general and a couple of Republican election law specialists. They examined all 187 counts in the 64 court challenges filed by Trump and his supporters. What did they find?
Twenty of those cases were dismissed on their merits before being heard and an additional fourteen were voluntarily withdrawn by Trump and his supporters before being heard. Of the thirty that were heard on their merits, Trump prevailed in only one, Pennsylvania, involving far too few votes to change the election outcome. In Arizona, the most exhaustively scrutinized state, a private firm specifically chosen by Trump's team confirmed the president's loss finding 261 fewer Trump votes and an additional 99 votes for Biden.
Even the Heritage Foundation's database undermines Donald Trump's claims of election fraud. But don't take my word for it; click on Wisconsin and you will learn of exactly 68 proven cases of election malfeasance from 1982 through 2025. It happens; but blessedly in small amounts insufficient to swing a national election.
Yet, here we are. We began with Trump's demands that Red States engage in partisan redistricting (gerrymandering) including proposed legislation like the Save Act; all intended to make voting more onerous for those less likely to support a Republican candidate.
The show of force by ICE and CBP agents terrorizing blue neighborhoods in dozens of cities may have been a dress rehearsal for their eventual presence at polling places. Seizing ballots in Georgia from the previous presidential election provides context for extending the baseless narrative claiming widespread voter fraud.
Is it a real stretch that Trump's threat to nationalize elections in fifteen states may come to pass? Certainly the potential consequences of masked federal agents confronting voters at polling places is dire. Voters may recall the killing of Alex Pretti, Renee Nicole Goode and Ruben Martinez without consequence for the triggermen. In the last few weeks an ICE agent shot and killed a Columbian man in Maine and a Mexican citizen in Houston, Texas. If enough fear is generated it is possible that it might suppress voter turnout in key Democratic precincts.
If all else fails; inciting violence, as was done on January 6, 2021 and recently in Minneapolis could be used as an excuse for the imposition of martial law and suspension of the mid-term elections altogether. Trump's blanket pardon of the January 6 rioters and on-again, off-again, promise to reward them from a $1.8 billion taxpayer-funded slush fund laid down the marker; he has got you covered.
Given all the other actions of the Trump administration I cannot conceive of anything that would be a surprise. Consider this plot line:
Donald Trump is obsessed with convincing his supporters he won the 2020 election. His hold on power is all about the appearance of winning. Control over elections is dispersed among thousands of elections officials across the country making cancellation exceedingly difficult. Plenty of commentators have declared America's decentralized election system a strength. The implication being that Trump cannot take over all elections across the country. But that's not something he needs to do. What he needs to do is tamper with elections in just a handful of places. America's decentralized system may make that a lot easier as procedures aren't standardized nationwide and elections aren't monitored by an established, professional commission. Tampering with a few local elections, often managed by volunteers, seems a lot easier under the circumstances.
Consequently, this has more to do with election subversion not cancellation. The goal is simple; keep the elections going without unseating those already in power.
In January the president repeated his threat to prosecute election officials who oversaw the 2020 election. As a follow-on the FBI raided the election office for Fulton County, Georgia and seized election ballots and records. Was this a dry run or a dress rehearsal? You pick.
At the same time, federal officials have collected voter data from eleven states that have agreed to turn-over their voter registration lists. Predictably, we will hear that there are hordes of previously unrevealed noncitizens on the voter roles. Accordingly, during his confirmation hearing to head-up the Department of Homeland Security, Senator Markwayne Mullin said this about deploying ICE to polling locations: "The only reason why my officers would be there is if there was a specific threat for them to be there; not for intimidation."
That tune has changed; in the first week of June in a Senate hearing Mullin refused to explicitly commit to abiding by all federal court orders. In his testimony before the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Homeland Security, Mullin stated that the courts are politicized and therefore judges use their benches for political opinions instead of the rule of law. Does Mullin believe he can therefore ignore a federal court order?
With the appointment in April of Todd Blanche as acting Attorney General and housing official Bill Pulte to lead the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) Trump now has three loyal enforcers in Mullin, Blanche and Pulte to deliver on orders from the White House. ODNI has drawn scrutiny for an expanded role in election security and my spider sense is tingling.
I've come around to thinking that Trump usually gets around to doing just about everything he says he'll do; eventually. The President, administration appointees and his supporters often tell you exactly what they will do. They are very good at saying the quiet part out loud. So, if Steve Bannon says ICE will be at the polls; perhaps we should believe him.
Trump might use ICE and CBP, his now loyal militia, on November 4th to seize mail-in ballots in key competitive districts. This will stop or delay the certification of those new Democrat Representative and Senators. He will tie it up in the courts for months by claiming foreign interference with mail-in ballots. Whatever it takes to delay the seating of a Democratic Congress.
Most Congressional elections are noncompetitive with completely predictable winners. Of the 435 seats in the House only about 40 will be seriously contested. Who controls the House will therefore depend completely on those 40 or so elections. For that reason the Trump administration has no need to control every election in the country - it simply has to put its thumb on the scale in about 40 House elections.
The Senate is similarly noncompetitive; but in a few swing states the strategy to distort the election requires manipulating the vote in a few precincts that are likely to determine who wins. Again, election interference doesn't have to be widespread. It can focus on just a few key precincts and districts.
Neither Russia, China or Iran has yet to cancel an election. For these nations the institutions and elections persist; only the results are fudged to to keep authoritarian incumbents in place. Having "won" the election they are subsequently legitimized.
In the absence of Truth, Justice and the American Way I have to conjure-up a bizarrely unthinkable scheme that makes me sound like a garden variety conspiracy kook; yet, given the current cast of characters is entirely plausible.
Meanwhile, in a preview of the fall strategy to cast doubt on election
outcomes the president gave a televised 26-minute address Thursday evening. He promised proof of election tampering; the follow-on documents offered no evidence that such vulnerabilities were being exploited nor anything we haven't heard-about before and previously debunked. On Friday morning even Fox News was mute on the subject.
Looks like we're in for a belly-full of belly-aching.
The kids live on the Gulf of Mexico and do not generally have an opportunity for a traditional Wisconsin fish fry. Consequently, daughter asked.
From the frozen fish section of one of the basement freezers i found a package of wild-caught, personally-cleaned, walleye and perch fillets.
Having done this countless times on fishing trips, deer camp and annual family get-togethers, I recommend you move your fish fry outdoors if conditions allow. You can do all your prep beforehand and since everything but the coleslaw is fried once your oil is at temp everything comes together in about 15 minutes.
Franzl Lang (1930-2015) is remembered in popular culture as the Jodlerkönig.
Franzl Lang, the Jodlerkönig - Wikipedia
As the Yodel King he is universally regarded as one of the most technically skilled alpine yodelers in history.
Sporting his signature Bavarian Lederhosen and playing either a guitar or accordion he brought traditional Volksmusik into the mainstream German television and developed a massive following both in Germany and abroad cutting more than forty albums and selling millions of copies worldwide. He secured multiple gold and platinum records.
He taught the complex art of alpine yodeling and published several books on the subject before retiring in the early 2000s.
Here's a night sky opportunity that doesn't require staying up late or dragging yourself out of bed in the wee morning hours.
Look to the west after the sun sets and you will spot a crescent moon along with the planet Venus. If you have a pair of binoculars, use them.
If you have a decent camera, mount it on a tripod because the combination of the very bright Evening Star - Venus - along with the glowing earthshine on the dark side of the moon can make a cool bit of night photography. Use a focal length of between 50mm and 100mm to capture both objects in the same frame. If you can frame them with a silhouette of a tree or dark building, better yet.
If you're using an iPhone or similar handheld device, both a stabilization and timed exposure setting is preferred.
Regardless of your equipment choice a filter app such as Snapseed is useful for adjusting exposures, aperture and additional settings.
Good Luck! And fingers-crossed for clear skies and fewer skeets.
Edit to add: When I place this post in the "can" for publication this morning there was no way to predict that the Canadian and Minnesota wildfires would conspire to cast a pall across the daytime and night skies.
We happen to have plenty of pollinators winging around the joint. Naturally, that is a consequence of creating conditions conducive to supporting them; namely habitat.
Anecdotally, it seems to me the numbers have diminished over the years and have dropped-off from the high water mark of 2019. Don't take my word for it, if you peruse the labels located in the left margin of the blog homepage anything to do with Monarchs or Butterfly Biology is clustered over a handful of years six to nine years ago. Of course it's also possible my taste for insect subject matter has changed too. Nevertheless, my anecdotal observation on the raw numbers seems pretty solid.
Anyway, a few days ago The Missus was potting some plants on the picnic table and spotted this newly-emergent monarch sitting of the driveway beneath the table drying its wrinkly wings. Under ordinary circumstances this moment would pass entirely unobserved.
Likely the first generation born of an earlier migrator.
You can learn more about the generations of Monarch butterflies here. And pay attention to what's going around in the natural world. Situational awareness you know....
New moon is on tap for this evening. As a consequence of the moon sitting between the earth and the sun the side facing us is totally dark. In the absence of any moonlight to clutter the night sky this is the best night of the month to observe the heavens.
Our planet is also entering the Perseid meteor shower. You'll have to wait for the peak of the shower a month from now; nevertheless, earth is entering the outer edge of the debris field left behind by Comet 109P Swift Tuttle. If you're outside this evening observing the night sky there is a good chance you'll catch some meteors streaking across the sky.
Here's a Pro Tip. Get yourself into a comfortable lawn chair and pick a wide part of the sky to stare at. Because this is the Perseids I'm going to look to the northeast and the constellation Cassiopeia. Constellation Perseus is immediately below. Grab a lemonade or a cold adult beverage and allow 10-15 minutes for your eyes to adjust too the darkness. The early Perseids are frequently very fast and bright.
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