So Spo-Reflections had posted this 4th of July reflection.

It got me to thinking – the paroxysm we’re seeing in society is interesting. A lot of white people see it as them becoming the minority which is actually true. However some like myself see it as an enrichment of the culture. Exposure to ideas, people, foods from different cultures is fascinating.

But i can speak to where the entire world is heading. I can make a few predictions that may or may not bode well for humanity but we need to be flexible and adapt.

The Internal Combustion engine is going to be a museum piece very soon. The price of long range (200 miles or more) electric cars is falling down. Both Chevrolet and Tesla are about to roll out sub $30K cars of that type.

Incumbent electricity providers – they’re also going to be hurt badly. If you’re invested in public utilities I say get the hell out now. Solar and wind along with storage capacity improvements. I mean with the price pew kW of solar dropping like a rock, and Tesla selling a home battery back for a reasonable price the days of the incumbent energy provider are gone. Plus if you can charge your electric car via your solar powered home – the arguments of the idiots who say electric cars produce carbon dioxide by using the commercial power grid. Ha ha!

Manufacturing has already changed – first it was exporting manufacturing capability to  former third world countries like China and India. But robotics are taking over everyplace. Go and watch how car uni-body’s are formed. It starts off as sheet steel, parts get stamped out, racked and then assembled and welded by robots. And it gets even worse – the engine cores are just steel or aluminum billets milled into engine blocks by CNC machines – essentially robots under computer control. And the robotics is moving to other industries – electronics for example – the circuit boards in your computer – all the parts were places on the board by robotics and it was soldered together in a robotic system. Human hands likely assembled gross parts of a desktop or laptop but even that is changing.

3D printing is interesting too. It’s essentially moving manufacturing into the peoples hands. And to date they’ve made metal parts, human bladders, and they’re learning how to do vascularized tissue too.

Artificial intelligence is another thing. IBM has their Watson and Debater products. People may fear an AI but here’s the thing. We’ve all seen prophetic movies like Colossus: The Forbin Project and War Games. But the IBM platforms are about the size of a pizza box. And as long as we don’t let them control their power connections we’re good. But even if they do control the power – they’re small enough to destroy with a large ax.

Medicine is also undergoing dramatic change right now. What with some of the genetically engineered immunotherapy and the regeneration of tissue coming to the forefront we’re about to see human lifespans increase again. Then add that DARPA is working on two projects right now, the first a way to put the metabolism into a twilight state – where you’re neither dead nor alive but metabolic degradation wouldn’t happen. Upshot of this – a soldier need not bleed out in the field. Instead of having minutes to repair damage you get hours. The second project is a robotic surgical pod. At first they say it’ll be a telepresence pod but they fully expect a fully autonomous surgical robot in the very near future.  What happens when this tech is on all rescue squads?

So I believe I had explained how I did it. For those that didn’t watch here’s what I did:

1) Sterilized the jars and lids. I use the dry heat approach for the jars, boiling water for the lids.

2) Made  brine of 2tbsp of salt to one quart of water. Made a gallon of that.

3) Cut up these mini cucumbers – and parted out the dill and garlic. Yes I used fresh dill.

4) Put the cucumbers, garlic, dill and a black tea teabag in the jar.

5) Pour in the brine up to about 1/2″ or so of the rim of the jar.

6) Let the jars with the pickles sit for a few weeks. After about the first week I opened each jar and reached in and agitated the contents. That right there lets a little lacto-bacillus get in the mix and provide the sour component.

What comes out is a nice, very crunchy and tasty dill pickle with the essence of garlic and a slightly sour taste.

I made three jars – already went through one of them.