Random Thursday Morning Thoughts

 That kid is now in his late 20s, and I wonder how the leg is doing. (By the way, the Joe Duty photo link is now dead.) 

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• High winds in Runaway Bay yesterday around 6:00 p.m. 
  

  

  
  
  
  
• Weird visual looking north from Decatur yesterday evening. Almost everything you see is rainfall with the exception of one plume which was a wildfire burning near the LBJ grasslands.
  
  
  
• Make no mistake about it, he's gone. That decision has been made.  
  
  
  
• I've received a special request for a post about a missing good dog out of Runaway Bay.  And it's also a possible abduction. The pooch went missing around 11 a.m. on Monday around the 200 block or Runaway Bay Drive. He's a French Bull Dog, one year old, and fawn in color. $1,000 reward offered.   Hit me up if you know anything.  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
• There was a weird explosion at an 8,000 square foot home in Plano around 9:00 p.m. last night.  It's normally naturally gas related when something like this happens, but no cause has been announced yet. (I think I found the house on Google Streetview.)
  

  
  
  
  
• Just a casual observation, but Wichita Falls seems to have some pretty beaten down infrastructure. 
  
  
  
  
• That big cylinder shaped hunk of metal shutting down I-35 near downtown Dallas yesterday is called an "air plenum."
  
  
  
• Something to think about the next time you find yourself not being able to afford a home  . . .
  
  
  
• The not-so-smart former football coach and current senator from Mississippi must not have read his Republican marching orders. As a result, he sounded reasonable and normal.
  
  
  
• How did they get so mad at each other all of a sudden?
  
  
  
• Unofficial COVID Wise County Update: It seems like lots of people are coming down with it, you probably aren't at risk of ending up in the hospital, but there is a pretty good chance you'll feel so badly that you wish it didn't happen to you.

Random Wednesday Morning Thoughts

Ten years ago I was deep into Jon Krakauer's Under the Banner of Heaven: A Story of Violent Faith. The book was almost 10 years old then, but a mini-series based upon it was just released on Hulu this year. 

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• Traffic backed up on the "lake road" outside of Bridgeport yesterday when a wildfire broke out. The road was later shut down completely for a while. They were still fighting the fire deep into the night. 
  
  
  
• Wichita Falls set a record at 115° yesterday.
• We've now got us a full blown cover-up.   A violent coup occurs on January 6th, and the Secret Service thinks it didn't need to preserve evidence that could implicate the leader of the coup? This is intentional evidence destruction. 
  
  
  
• What makes this comical is that the Secret Service is in the business of recovering electronic evidence. Even the Wise County DA's office routinely turns over phones or computers to that agency to see what they can recover. It's what they do. They probably do more of that than protect a president.
• From Possum Kingdom yesterday.
  
  
  
• In light of Justice Thomas overt threat to overturn the constitutional right to same sex marriage, the House yesterday took measures to make it federal law. The bill, of course, will not pass the Senate.
  
  
  
• Here's how North Texas reps voted.
  
  
  
• A Texas elected prosecutor may have known that a Trump Insurrectionist was hiding out at his family's property. (Fun fact: The prosecutor's predecessor in Kinney County was Todd Durden who used to be the County Attorney in Wise County in the 1990s.)
  
  
  
  
  
  
• And this headline fails to mention that Steven Bannon (assuming he's not in prison), Jack Posobiec (of Pizzagate Hoax fame), and our own Ronny Jackson (assuming he's upright) will also be attending. It's a collection of crazy at the Hilton Anatole in early August. 
  
  
  
• You know that mess that happens when your a/c's overflow condensation line (that typically dumps the water outside the house where you can see it) also gets clogged and then causes the overflow to get dumped onto the ceiling of a room? This kid has invented a way to stop the clog from occurring. I'm interested (but this Star-Telegram story doesn't really explain much about the invention.) It will be entered in a competition set for "Oct. 17-18 at the 3M Innovation Center in St. Paul, Minnesota, for $25,000 and the title of 'America’s Top Young Scientist.'”  
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• Small government Republican?:
  
  
  
• Next on his agenda:
  
  
  
• This was floating around yesterday. Kind of funny. (I would also like to acknowledge that J. Lo and Ben Affleck were married last weekend in the same place that I was. But Britney beat us to it back in the day.)
  
  
  
• Weird travel schedule: The Rangers have a "make-up game" at Miami tomorrow and then have to travel across the country to Oakland for a game on Friday. That was the best scheduling idea?
  
  
  
• Social media fight: Apparently Texas Tech and TCU are going at it on Twitter after TCU's AD said Tech was in a "desert."  Tech is also amped up over a new SuperPAC (my term, from the beginning) which will pay each of their player's $25,000, and a new $200 million stadium.
• Messenger: Above the Fold

Random Tuesday Morning Thoughts

Here is the Update blurb about the motorcycle case. And that is an actual pic from the Messenger that accompanied the story. Yep, trooper dragging a dead goat.  

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• Mineral Wells coming in hottest of all.
  
  
  
• It looks like DFW might be in competition with 1980 and 2011.  Here are the side by side stats through July 18th for each year:
  
  
  
• Within the last two hours, England has set an all time high temperature reading. Home air-conditioning is basically non-existent there. 
  
  
  
  
  
   
• Fires abound. And it may be worse today. 
• Parts around Possum Kingdom lake, including houses, are burning. If you are familiar with it, here's a map showing the general area:
  
  

  

  
  
  
• Near Glen Rose yesterday afternoon.   It has "tripled in size" overnight according to WFAA.
  
  
  
• We even had a fire in Wise County yesterday.
  
  
  
• I missed this in the Uvalde report: Here's the breakdown of the officers at the the school by agency:
  
  
  
• DPS is taking heat: “You got 91 troopers on the scene. You got all the equipment you could possibly want, and you’re listening to the local school cop?” said state Sen. Roland Gutierrez, a Democrat whose district includes Uvalde and who has accused DPS of seeking to minimize its role in the response.
• And DPS responded.
  
  
  
• A Bridgeport rancher was featured in an KXAS/Channel 5 story.
  
  
  
• I'm not sure why Steven Bannon's lawyer, shown below as he arrived for court yesterday, is bringing a shopping bag with him. (Those are bad screengrabs, but they were the best I could pull off.)
  

  

  
  
  
  
• A new Texas Monthly article by Skip Hollandsworth is always reason to celebrate. In the just released issue, he takes on a recently famous Fort Worth cold case of Carla Walker which was solved by DNA and family tree research. 
  
  
  
• Paparazzi stalking Elon Musk on a yacht proved Elon Musk might be as white as he is rich. (More pictures here.)
  
  
  
• Sports news.  College football is wild right now.
  
• I'm about four episodes into Apple TV's Severance. I'm a little iffy on it. So far it's been a 30 minute Black Mirror stretched into four hours.