Wow – a lot of criminal behavior in the NRA with fraud and other goodies. And the state of NY has filed a lawsuit to dissolve the NRA. Good.

We need to break the gun culture in this country. And this is a good first step. Look we don’t need guns in nearly every household. Believe me a house contains better weaponry than a gun. And there aren’t roving gangs of criminals anymore. Granted you do have an undercurrent of car thefts using a technique called sliding. But if you’re stupid enough not lock your car when you get gas you kind of deserve to get it stolen.

So one side benefit of replacing the tire is that the monitoring system is now happy on Artemis the car. Well not car little truck aka twuck. Aka crossover.

It struck me the features on modern cars are quite literally astounding. Standards include power windows, power locks, entertainment system, tire pressure monitoring and a dashboard that has no physical connection to the car. I’m happy about that even if the car rev limits when your foot is stomped on the brake.

So six months ago I nailed a curb. Thought I damaged the rim but not, but the tire was shot.

Now when I first got Artemis I had to replace a tire because construction debris punctured one of Artermis wheels. That time it cost me $300 to replace a tire.

This time though I found out I could get the tire itself for less than $100 and it’s just $15 to mount it on the rim and install it on the car.

Who knew the little Trax had P20570R16’s on it. Translated that’s 205mm and 70mm tread width.

Tomorrow I’ll take it to a local garage and have it put on the car.

It just struck me – to wish you all a happy and safe 4th. It’s not quite darkness yet so the cacophony of fireworks hasn’t yet started here.

But it’ been 244 years now since we gave England the boot.

Overall I like this very much. It weighs next to nothing. Has built in speakers, bluetooth, wifi. Only two USB ports but that’s nothing can’t be rectified with a USB hub. Also has an HDMI port too.

I do have to decorate it still. That broad silver cover needs it. I’m thinking RedHat/CentOS stickers, MySWL, Command Prompt. You name it.

As to why I’m not racist. It all goes back to when I was younger and doing a radio show. Met a few listeners and they were astounded that I was a white guy.

Then of course there was a local meat market near me up north. One day one of the guys behind the counter asked me why I came there. I explained good quality meats for reasonable prices. Huh. He asked me why I wasn’t bothered by the fact a lot of people of color shopped there. Why the hell would I be.

Maybe it’s because I know what makes skin different colors and it’s all got to do with resistance to UV light. Plus in my mind the spectrum of human coloration is beautiful. I’ve seen ones that take my breath away.

I guess I never thought to limit myself in my interactions with others of our species. We’re all human. And I guess too I took the lesson to heart never judge a book by the cover.

It’s like what happend the other day I met a neighbor. He was a black guy – but this guy knew the U.S. Constitution. Had I refused to talk to him I’d never have known that. This is the type of thing that irritates me about for example the Greenwood Masacre, or the cops killing unarmed black men with no remorse. It needs to be stopped – and if means getting rid of qualified immunity for police then so be it.

So I bought the book. I had to as I’m curious about the content. I mean I’m white as some would call it. To look at me you see the Italian traits, some Mediterranean traits and the Neanderthal.

I’m not your typical white guy either. I’ve said it in the past the range of human coloration to me is beautiful. But I try to understand the mindset of my fellow humans. It’s the same with how I used voter data to determine roughly 1/3 of the electorate is in more modern terms bat shit crazy. Just reading the foreword of the book and it discusses the social construct of whiteness.

It’s interesting – when I was talking to my neighbor I mentioned put me in the sun for about 15-20 minutes a day in spring/summer and I asked what color he thought I turned. He said red, i told him I turn brown. You can definitely tell I’m not a Lilly white guy.

As I read I’ll post snippets of the book. Should be interesting.

Today marks the 53rd anniversary of Loving v. Virginia. It marks a time when pales asses like myself can be with a person whose color differs from mine.

Perhaps we should all reflect on this. I remember the gsy march on D.C. There was an interracial couple with a sign supporting gay peoples right to marry.

So in closing I wish everyone a Happy Loving Day today.

Well this is interesting. Scientists at UMD have figured out which gene is defective in patients with ALS.

This is interesting to me since it’s either my janked up spine causing my symptoms or ALS which there is a history of it in my family. Now to fix it. The article alludes to this.

To be able to walk normally again, to run, etc. That would be nice.

I finally hit on it. I had once thought disarming police might do it but that theory has been proven incorrect. Instead let’s contact our elected representatives and senators and demand we remove funding from police departments. Only enough police for domestic violence, property crime, murder investigation and that’s pretty much all they need.

I’m most family with police where I used to live. At one point the department was 600 sworn officers. It’s down below 400 now. But it needs to be further reduced. And one other thing we could do is issue the Implicit Bias test to all police. You’d pretty much spot the white supremacists right out with that one. They’d be the first to go.