Interesting Bumper Stickers and Related Signs

An occasional series on interesting bumper stickers and related signs I've seen lately. Hopefully not too many repeats. Trying to go lighter on the politics and heavier on the cats.

The Champion of the Universe

He has all the trophies!

 

Stun Gun!

Every now and then, Trumpers and other ne'er-do-wells intrude at our protest at Howe and Arden. In this portion of a video, three interlopers provoke us (two in a red car with Hammer-Down-SS plates and a third who menaces us with a stun gun).

 

Bandage Change On Jasper’s Splint Today

 

Our Bad - You Get Your Job Back

AI lacks an important trait, "gut instinct," and so Ford is hiring back some quality-control engineers:

Ford says that over the past three years, it has hired 350 veteran "gray beard" engineers, many of whom are former employees, to help train younger staff and reprogram the AI tools that simply were not performing the way Ford had hoped.

The move reincorporates humans into the auto giant's process at a time when many other companies are pivoting away from human involvement. 

“Artificial intelligence is a fantastic tool, but it’s only as good as the information you use to train it,” Charles Poon, Ford’s vice president of vehicle hardware engineering, told reporters last week via Bloomberg. “Over prior years, we didn’t pay as much attention as we should have to the experience of our most knowledgeable engineers that have been with us through many product cycles.”

Gambling Will Soon Infest Facebook

I'm getting worried about Meta's evident decision to gamify Facebook, Messenger, Instagram, and every other platform it controls. 

Prediction markets like Kalshi and Polymarket make gambling really easy to do online, but the bets can be opaque, poorly-defined, and they are sometimes laughably easy to manipulate. 

I particularly liked that fellow who recently brought a hair dryer to Charles de Gaulle Airport in Paris, in order to apply heat on a weather-service thermometer recording the temperature there, so he could win a bet. 

In addition, once money changes hands, there's no way to reverse judgements even if the game is later found to be fraudulent. The hair-dryer guy skated because there's no law for this situation. Money changed hands: he won, it's over! 

The rules matter in gambling. Lax rules, lax definitions, and an international market subject to no one's law means you'll get fraud everywhere. 

You get better treatment in a real casino in the event of error. You actually get your money back! 

Do you think you'll ever get your money back from that lousy bet you placed on Facebook? Dream on! 

Just another reason why we need to back away from Meta, and think about going elsewhere for social media. Save the gambling for real casinos, which are more honest and subject to regulation:

As prediction markets surge in popularity, CEO Mark Zuckerberg is reportedly calling for his company to consider partnering with Polymarket and Kalshi, two of the biggest platforms, while he develops a similar in-house app, Arena. According to a Friday report by the New York Times, Zuckerberg wants to design Arena to specifically target 18 to 34-year-olds.

Meta also hopes to implement parts of Arena into Facebook and its messaging app, Messenger, attaching betting options to group chats, news feeds, and videos. 

“We believe that prediction markets are one of the more interesting new content types,” Ime Archibong, a senior Meta official leading Arena’s development, reportedly said in an internal company post last month. “The social conversation is the payoff as people aim to show off how good they are at predicting things to their friends.”

Fix 50 Finishing?

If they actually finish this Highway 50 project I will be disoriented. So many things to miss: the blinding lights at night, the inexplicable repetitive construction noise, the surprise traffic jams even at midnight, and trying to relearn every week which lanes are open and which are closed. 

I'm interested if they'll finally open up the seep holes on the underside of highway deck, allowing bats to finally reclaim their favorite homes. Six long homeless years for the critters. And what will happen with Sacramento's homeless humans? They used to gather in large numbers under the highway deck too. A reprise?

Sacramento’s Fix 50 project, a six-year construction effort to rehabilitate a 14-mile stretch of Highway 50, is entering its final phase and is expected to be completed by the end of September, according to Caltrans.

Mass Deportations Crush Job Opportunities For Whites

Mass deportations of undocumented workers kill job opportunities for remaining white workers, due to workplace disruption and lower demand. 

In other words, if you fire all the foreign-born pizza-delivery workers, no pizza-delivery jobs will open up, because fewer people will be ordering pizzas in the first place.

California saw a 3.1% drop in private-sector employment the week immediately after the Trump administration stepped up its immigration raids in the state, according to a new analysis of U.S. Census data. 

UC Merced researchers said the steep drop is second only to the unemployment surge the state experienced during the onset of the coronavirus pandemic in 2020, and greater than the immediate decline during the Great Recession in 2007 and 2008.

This appears to be the first analysis of the data from the Census Bureau’s Current Population Survey from the time when federal agents’ focus on the state became clear in early June, when a raid at a garment factory in downtown Los Angeles preceded weeks of sweeps and unrest.

Big Drone

This morning, I was pushing Jasper in his stroller around the neighborhood, thinking antifa thoughts and wondering where I can get green algae, when I heard a noise above. It was a large drone, passing northward, about 200 feet directly overhead. I tried to shield my thoughts from this interloper. “Wow, that’s a large drone,” I thought. “It looks large enough to carry an open tray of kitty litter. If so encumbered, I hope it reaches its destination without incident.” 

A few minutes later, the drone returned, this time heading southward. I hid under the tree canopy and masked my antifa thoughts to the tune of Daddy Yankee’s “Gasolina.” Large drones to add to the surveillance. It’s like Ukraine, but kinder and gentler.

Memorial Service For Shirley Gumpy - June 24, 2026

Life Pointe Church in Woodland. It was nice to see Cindy, Missy, and Megan (who flew out from Tennessee).  I don't think I've seen Megan in more than 25 years.  We used to all dance at Sally Forment's Woodland Dance Academy, c. 1993-2005.