Bee-based authoritarianism

 AARRRGH, Crazy, critters, Forward!, I'm from the government, news, politics, ಠ_ಠ  No Responses »
Apr 052019
 

There is a lot of evidence of bee-keeping out here in rural Utah. You see a lot of mobile beehives parked around certain farms, the bees pollinating the plants; locally produced honey is available for sale *everywhere.* Heck, the local print shop in Tremonton has a section among the printer paper and envelopes for one brand of locally produced honey products. So bees are important.

But bees are also a pest. You get a beehive in your house, you want it *gone.* There are two approaches to that:

1) Kill it. Either hire someone or wrap yourself in bubblewrap and hose the hive down with Raid; or, if you’re feeling frisky and are none too damn bright, burn it with fire.

2) Call a local beekeeper. They are often looking to expand their “work force,” especially with the collapse in bee populations over the last couple decades. Bee keepers will often come and, for free, remove the hives.

Option #2 is obviously the preferred one. You win… you get rid of the problem for free. The bee keeper wins – they get a new presumably healthy hive for little cost. The bees win…. they ain’t dead. So, who would possibly have a problem with this setup?

Oh, look, it’s a politician.

Bee Removal To Be Illegal In Texas.

Rep. Theresa “Terry” Meza (D.) of Irving, Texas has authored House Bill 4212 that would make the process of bee removal illegal. Unless of course the person removing the bees has undergone 160 hours of both class room and field training in beekeeping and removals. That amounts to over 3 college semester classes worth of training! A normal college class of 3 semester credit hours is around 45-48 contact hours. This nonsense will make almost all bee keeping removal services illegal overnight! If this bill passes, nobody will be able to legally remove and relocate bees after January 1, 2020 until after they go through 160 hours of training and licensing.

There is currently no agency, organization or authority that is set up to train such licensed bee removers in Texas. The legislation would place licensing and training specifics under the authority of the Texas Department of Agriculture.

Additionally, the “licensed” bee remover must obtain $600,000 in liability insurance. If that wasn’t enough, the bee remover must also have $300,000 in workman’s comp before being able to legally remove bees. Oh and you have to pay a yearly licensing fee and whatever fees are associated with your 160 hours of classroom and field training.

Brilliant! Something humans have been doing for thousands of years, now made prohibitively expensive. *Why* these changes are desired does not seem to be in the text of the bill.

https://capitol.texas.gov/tlodocs/86R/billtext/pdf/HB04212I.pdf

 Posted by at 7:51 am

Lights in The Sky

 art, awesomeness, news, photography, Utah  No Responses »
Apr 032019
 

Late last night the power went out during a mild rain shower. Turns out a power pole caught fire and trashed the transformer and such, cutting things off for most of the night. Fortunately the temperature was not an issue and most everybody was asleep, but having a house full of uninterruptible power supplies suddenly all beeping incessantly was  a pain in the keister. But the situation did lead to some interesting sights, straight out of Project Blue Book: a few miles off, a few police vehicles with flashing lights along with a utility truck pointing spotlights up at the pole while the workers fixed it. The lights were reflected not only by the mist in the air, but also the low-hanging clouds.

 Posted by at 12:04 pm

Joker

 Crazy, Hmm..., youtube  No Responses »
Apr 032019
 

When they mess with the origin story of Spock, I become annoyed. But comic book characters are necessarily different: there are dozens of different takes on, say, Batman, and even they though conflict and cannot be reconciled it is in the nature of comic book characters to be constantly re-invented and re-imagined. Sometimes they go too far, of course. Making Batman a poverty-stricken Puerto Rican woman in rural Alabama would not make sense. The “Suicide Squad” Joker really didn’t work for me, while the Jack Nicholson and Heath Ledger versions did.

Joaquin  Phoenix is the next Joker, and this one seems further removed than most. It appears that it will be set in the 1970s, and it appears that Batman will either be nowhere to be found or very, very minor. The Joker here is quite unlike any previously seen. And I gotta say… I’m intrigued. Prior Joker origins have usually had him start off as some sort of crime boss who ends up dumped in a vat of toxic chemicals. This one replaces “toxic chemicals” with “the people of New York in the 1970’s,” which, from what I remember of the 1970’s, is just about right.

 

 

 

 Posted by at 11:05 am

Anti-MAGA whacko: Apparently this *wasn’t* an April Fools gag

 blather, Crazy, dumbassery, Forward!, Gah., news, politics, THIS is why Trump won, ಠ_ಠ  No Responses »
Apr 022019
 

I dislike April Fools day. I dislike hoaxes and practical jokes in general. Of the several reasons for this, one is that it might make you think that a falsehood is true… and that it might make you think a real event was a hoax. Case in point, this incident that hit a crazy persons Facebook on April 1. The story is straight out of a Trump supporters fever dream: an elderly man is wearing a MAGA hat and is set upon by a leftist whackaloon. A bemohawked woman-like creature spots him in a Starbucks and not only screams at him, she photographs him, posts his photos on Facebook and tells her followers to dox him and his children in order to harass and drive him out of her town. This story is *exactly* the sort of thing that sounds like someone would make up in order to make lefties look bad… sort of a reverse Smollet.

But it turns out that it seems to actually have been true.

Crazed Bernie Supporter With Mohawk Attacks Elderly Man Wearing MAGA Hat – Chases Him Out of Starbucks Screaming ‘Get the F*ck Out’

And…

Liberal Verbally Assaults Old Man in a MAGA Hat, Publicly Declares Herself a Hero

The second piece has some fun updates about the self-appointed anti-MAGA “hero,” such as “the internet has doxxed *her,*” and “her employer has fired her like a cheap Saturday Night Special.” She was an accountant for a music store, and they were probably barraged with nastygrams. Most companies have a “do not embarrass us” clause, and this would certainly seem to qualify.

I shudder to imagine just how nutty these replicants will get if Trump wins re-election. This sort of thing will probably help drive technological development… we already have body cams and GoPros and the like, but it seems to me that what the world is calling out for is a simple, affordable multi-camera system that you can wear that will not only record a full 360 degrees around you in high def, but stream that video to a server for storage and public posting, AND will be unobtrusive… preferably invisible to the people around you. Perhaps even a swarm of tiny, inaudible mini-drones that flock around you and capture every conceivable angle. Because if there aren’t already, I’m sure there will soon be a *lot* of people heading out wearing MAGA hats and surrounded by cameras *hoping* to create a disturbance.

 

And apropos of nothing, the self-portrait of the woman running the second-linked blog:

While here is the leftie:

When I was a kid, “conservative woman” could have been a euphemism for “fun-hating assassin of joy.” Now… why is it that conservative women always seem like they’d be a *lot* more fun to hang out with? While a whole lot of left-screaming women seem like spending time with them would be like getting a root canal while sitting buck nekkid on a belt sander.

 Posted by at 8:03 pm
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