The Morning Report — 3/25/24

Good morning, kids. Late on Friday, ISIS or an ISIS offshoot went on a sadistic rampage inside a suburban Moscow concert hall and slaughtered 137 people. Meh, screw the ISIS/ISIS offshoot descriptors and call them for who and what they are: MUSLIMS. And not extremists, either. The cold, hard truth is that those who slaughter "infidels" are doing what is written in the koran and hadith and preached every damned day, not in some isolated cave in Tora Bora, but in every mosque around the world. As has been done for the past 1,500-plus years.

To not recognize that is to be ignorant and in far too may cases willfully so. I've seen a link somewhere in one of the more trustworthy sites which no doubt is going to be a very convenient meme-du-jour that the propaganda house organs of the anti-Putin forces are sure to be pimping, in that Putin himself orchestrated the slaughter of his own citizens as a false flag operation in order to deflect whatever pressure is on him vis a vis Ukraine, thereby giving him cover to take off the gloves as it were, or more likely, to bamboozle us rubes to finally open our eyes and let us take Putin out.

Is that possible? I suppose perhaps that it is. Is it likely? I very much doubt it. But given the players involved and the status of the RISK board, this article certainly caught my eye:

So who really committed the terrorist attack on a Russian theatre full of people last week, killing some 133 people? ISIS has claimed "credit" for the attack with its operatives, supposedly Tajik-speaking Central Asians. Whoever they are, they are small fry, well-trained in ISIS attack techniques, but obviously with someone bigger backing them.

There are plenty of others who may have been, not the least of whom is Vladimir Putin, who has been implicated in other terror attacks done for political purposes in his past. . .

. . . Now a new name emerges, none other than pro-Ukraine warmongering Democrat State Department operative Victoria Nuland, who left office for greener, swampier pastures a few weeks ago.

According to Mark Wauck, writing on his Substack:

In the previous post I referenced Victoria Nuland’s recent claim that “Putin will face some nasty surprises on the battlefield”—that’s the actual direct quote. But she also refers in that exact context to “asymmetric warfare.” In the context of her remarks she’s clearly not referring to bombs and missiles and artillery shells. “Asymmetric” is a very specific word, a word intended to distinguish that type of warfare from “symmetric” warfare: shell for shell, bomb for bomb, missile for missile. The next tweet contains the 24 second clip of Nuland making that statement, in which she touts Ukraine’s “asymmetric warfare” capabilities. Yeah, I thought we just gave the Ukro-Nazis money and munitions? How does Nuland know about the Ukrainian “asymmetric warfare that has been most effective"?

. . . Maybe it's all a coincidence, of course, that she bragged about "nasty things" and "asymmetric warfare." Maybe she meant something else, some different "nasty things." And yes, we should consider that possible because it's natural for people like us to suspect her, given that she is so loathesome. As Eric Hoffer once noted, intense haters are the worst forecasters. Because, actually, there are a lot of potential perpetrators. Knowing which one really did it (or more important, who Putin thinks did it) tells us a lot about whether we can expect retaliation here in the states or not, as well as an escalation of the Ukraine war we are mired in. That's why it's important to know. . .

. . . But the Nuland angle is interesting, too, as she's fanatically pro-Ukraine and anti-Putin, and has engaged in warmongering, coups, and other stunning manipulations in the past, and often bragged about it, too.

We don't know what she is doing now that she is out of office but it seems she's unlikely to be suddenly uninterested in the topic now that she's off the government payroll because for the swamp with all its consultant contracts, that could be irrelevant.

It's worth watching what happens now, because it could draw the U.S. into a deeper conflict with Putin, which seems like the kind of thing she would like. That's the main thing to watch for.

I editorialized on this disgusting Foggy Bottom bottom dweller last week on the occasion of her supposed "retirement"

And as a reminder, besides the color revolution that brought down the legitimately elected and Putin-friendly Ukrainian government back in 2014, and lest we forget helped rig/sabotage the 2020 American election that most certainly would have re-elected Donald Trump, Nuland was up to her thick, lipid-engorged rhinoceros-diameter neck in the bloody attack on our embassy in Benghazi, which was a surreptitious Obama/Hilary/McCain operation to run guns to, wait for it, ISIS in Syria in an effort to help them depose Bashar Assad, who remains tied to the hip to, wait for it, Vladimir Putin.

But all that is crazy talk, right?! Look, I have no love for Vladimir Putin. He's a thug who most certainly has his opponents in politics and the press taken out should he perceive them as a threat to his hold on power, and an ex-KGB agent who wept at the fall of the Berlin Wall. Ironically, Nuland and her ilk wept as hard if not harder since Ronald Reagan ended the Cold War grift. But now the current grift is to keep America and the west engaged in endless and pointless wars. Only this time, they're insane enough to actually itch for going toe-to-toe with a nuclear armed opponent. The blathering from French president Macron should scare the shit out of you.

It's yet another example of Munchausen's by Progressivism: create the problem in the first place by isolating, alienating and lying to Russia in particular vis a vis the expansion of NATO, force them (right or wrong) into creating another bloody chapter in an ongoing bloody history with its neighbor, cast the blame entirely on them and then agitate for military conflict that has zero strategic significance on our national security, yet becomes the perfect distraction for the domestic policy disasters at home during an election year. The painting of Donald Trump as somehow an ally and/or stooge of Putin is an added bonus, of course.

While all that is happening, as similar foreign policy insanity helped touch off the bloodiest mass slaughter of Jews since the Second World War, Victoria Nuland and her ilk are abandoning Israel, one of our staunchest allies and arguably the nation that as of right now is the absolute moral authority in the world (America rapidly becoming a banana republic/kleptocracy if not one already) because Jews won't deliver Michigan's and Minnesota's electoral college votes on a silver platter.

That brings us to two other stories involving the preternaturally stupid Kamala Harris. How dumb is Harris?

After delivering remarks in the territory’s capital of San Juan, Harris stopped by the neighborhood of Santurce to tour the Goyoco community center and hear from community leaders, Fox News reports. 

A group of protesters holding signs with messages, including “Kamala Harris war criminal,” and calling the United States “genocidal” met the [spurious] vice president outside of the community center, along with a band playing music. Video captured the hilarious moment when Harris went from smiling and clapping along to dropping her hands when a staffer next to her reportedly translated the Spanish lyrics.

“We want to know, Kamala, what did you come here for? We want to know what you think of the colony,” an activist sang, accompanied by percussion instruments. The song also included the lyrics “Long live Free Palestine and Haiti too,” according to Puerto Rican journalist Istra Pacheco.

You can think of it two ways:

Either "Please clap!"

Or, as I do: "Please. Clap."

Syphilis is a hell of a drug, I guess. In any case, you'd think she'd be the first to tell them that she's doing everything she can to help slaughter every Jew in Israel and America. Well, she is:

In a wide-ranging new interview with ABC News, [fake] Vice President Kamala Harris suggested there could be “consequences” for Israel if it moves ahead with a planned invasion of Rafah in its pursuit of Hamas fighters.… [Senior congressional correspondent Rachel] Scott followed up: “Are you ruling out that there would be consequences from the United States?” “I am ruling out nothing,” Harris replied.

The IDF is literally on the verge of destroying or at least seriously neutralizing Hamas, and doing so contra the blood libels with the most incredible (and frankly unwarranted) concern for supposedly "innocent" civilians, who in the main are neither. And yet, the DC junta is demanding they stop. What possible "consequences" is this fool threatening? American troops firing on the IDF in Gaza? Bitch, please. Your red lines are worthless. Then again, red lines against our actual enemies is one thing. Against our allies? Yikes.

Meanwhile, speaking of the good guys, Harris is firing up the base over here. I assume she thinks it's her base but this garbage ought to fire up ours big time:

The bad news is that the Biden [junta] is ramping up its gun confiscation agenda in the form of a whopping $750 million dedicated to establishing so-called “red flag laws” in every state in the Union. The good news is that epically incompetent Vice President Kamala Harris seems to have been put in charge of the push. . . .

Red flag laws are simply designed to allow communities a vehicle through which they can share, and have somewhere to share it, information about the concern about the potential danger or the crying out for help of an individual and then let’s give it to them before tragedy occurs.

Red flag laws sound reasonable, don’t they, considering how often gun violence is preceded by the perpetrators dropping blatant warning signs of murderous intent (signs which the FBI and DHS then ignore)? But make no mistake – red flag laws, which enable authorities to disarm someone who has been deemed a potential gun violence threat by family members or others in close contact with the “suspect,” will be used to target political enemies of the Biden administration. Under the guise (as usual) of keeping Americans safe, the government will exploit these laws in totalitarian ways.

Own a MAGA hat or a Gadsden flag? The Biden administration sees you as a potential danger. Complain about woke schoolroom indoctrination at school board meetings? The FBI already considers you a domestic terrorist. Post support on social media for the J6 political prisoners? You’re a threat to American “democracy” (i.e. Democrat one-party hegemony). Does anyone doubt that the government will use red flag laws to neuter such “threats”?

Kamala’s second proposal urges state legislatures not only to enact red flag laws but to use federal funding to enforce existing laws to disarm those who might harm themselves or others. The Biden administration says 21 states have enacted red flag laws, but only six have obtained federal funding to implement them. The [junta] wants all 50 states to enact these laws and take advantage of federal funding.

Remember when then-candidate Robert Francis “Beto” O’Rourke said the quiet part out loud during a 2019 presidential debate? “Hell yes, we’re going to take your AR-15, your AK-47,” he declared, accidentally giving away the left’s game. The usual dismissive response from the left to conservative concerns about endangered gun rights is some variation of, “We’re not coming for your precious guns, you right-wing conspiracy nuts!”

. . . The woke Left’s fever dream is to ditch the Second Amendment and then move to disarm these law-abiding citizens altogether – or failing that, to make gun ownership so financially, legally, and socially onerous for the average American that patriotic gun owners who believe in the right and the necessity of bearing arms to resist tyranny become a diminished minority and a de-fanged threat to government control.

This is not conspiracy-mongering; this is commonsense realism. . .

. . . Indeed. On the hopeful side, Kamala botches every crisis she is tasked with managing by puppet President Joe Biden, from the border crisis to protecting abortion rights and now to leading the first-ever federal office of gun violence prevention. She is out of her depth on every single political issue; with luck – and with line-in-the-sand resistance from American patriots – her new mission to clamp down on law-abiding gun owners will come to the same dead end as the others.

One hopes that that's not wish-casting. When it comes to America's enemies, the Democrat-Leftists are incompetent and/or in league with them. When it comes to their enemies, they are all too good at stomping their jackboot on our collective throats.

By the way, I have no idea what Russia's laws are vis a vis citizens possessing firearms, concealed carry etc. But if at least one or more Russians were carrying, perhaps the slaughter might have been mitigated or not have happened at all.

Happy Purim. Eat a hamantaschen.

ABOVE THE FOLD, BREAKING, NOTEWORTHY
• "Mark Wauck lays out some of the things that kind of stand out about the case."
  Was Victoria Nuland Involved in the Moscow Terror Attack?
  
• "Should be required reading in courses on American history."
  John Quincy Adams and His "Essay On Turks"
  
• Victor Davis Hanson: "Our future hinges on how quickly we discard DEI orthodoxy." (It's not the DEI/DIE that needs to be discarded; it's those who are shoving it, and every other insane poison, down our throats that need to be discarded - jjs)
  Will DEI End America—or America End DEI?
  
• "The rampage of John Robichaud, the Boston underworld’s version of Michael Myers."
  Habeas Corpus

Posted by: J.J. Sefton at 07:48 AM | Comments (319) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Daily News Stuff 25 March 2024

Quick one today because I'm a brown paper package tied up with string.

Tech News

• Apple's M4 CPUs could appear as soon as Q1 of next year. (WCCFTech)
  
  Which is not all that soon, come to think of it. By then it will be competing with AMD's Zen 5, Qualcomm's X Elite series, and Intel's Apollo Lake and Lunar Lake ranges.
  
  
  
• That didn't take long: Redict is a fork of Redis that makes it free again. (Redict)
  
  Redis Labs recently changed the license of Redis so that while source code is available it comes with restrictions on use.
  
  Redict takes the last unrestricted version and keeps it unrestricted, meaning that the original Redis is basically dead.
  
  
  
• Emergent abilities in LLMs - where as an LLM grows it suddenly gains new abilities - are nothing but a measurement error. (Quanta)
  
  LLMs don't know how to do arithmetic. The more data you shove into them, the better they become at guessing, that's all.
  
  If you test them and give anything less than 100% a failing grade, the ability to do arithmetic suddenly appears out of nowhere. But the same thing would happen if you did that with children.
  
  
  
• The Chinese government has banned the Chines government from using Intel and AMD CPUs. (WCCFTech)
  
  Their loss.
  
  It does serve to give the Chinese CPU makers a guaranteed market for their products, which are not great but are basically adequate.
  
  
  
• As part of an investigation, the FBI posted videos publicly to YouTube, sent the links to the suspects, and then demanded Google hand over all details of the accounts of anyone who watched the videos. (Mashable)
  
  The judge not only allowed it, but required Google to keep silent about it.
  
  This is what warrant canaries are for. Unfortunately those are as dead as the passenger pigeon.

Disclaimer: Where is Haruhi Suzumiya when her world needs her?

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 04:04 AM | Comments (108) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Sunday Overnight Open Thread (3/24/24) Not Feeling Kinder & Gentler Edition

*****

The Quotes of The Day

Quote I

'I think an expression that we all know—don’t pee in your Cheerios—well, (the mayor) kind of peed in his Cheerios right there, and definitely I’m not going to do anything to benefit that community,' Kathy Cargill, the wife of James R. Cargill II, the patriarch of the fourth-richest family in the US

Quote II

“We want to thank all of the fans for their friendship and love for the statue,” Nippon Professional Baseball's Hanshin Tigers tean statement

Quote III

Everything eventually ends, but not all things must end in failure. In the West we have a choice to uphold our moral vantage point, or let it crumble away. But in doing so we should recognise that every lowering of standards to appease extremist Arabs and Muslims is racism dressed up as compassion and disdain masquerading as kindness. It is moral confusion and it is dangerous — suicidally so.
Ayaan Hirsi Ali

*****

What drew me to be a Cob. Here are just a few of the reasons: Funny, witty, insightful and honest comments. And it is time for:

The Comments of The Week

Posted by: Misanthropic Humanitarian at 10:03 PM | Comments (332) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Gun Thread: Third Edition of March Edition!

Howdy, Y'all! Welcome to the wondrously fabulous Gun Thread! As always, I want to thank all of our regulars for being here week in and week out, and also offer a bigly Gun Thread welcome to any newcomers who may be joining us tonight. Howdy and thank you for stopping by! I hope you find our wacky conversation on the subject of guns 'n shooting both enjoyable and informative. You are always welcome to lurk in the shadows of shame, but I'd like to invite you to jump into the conversation, say howdy, and tell us what kind of shooting you like to do!

Holy Shitballs! How in the ever-loving Hell did it get to be the third edition of March?

With that, step into the dojo and let's get to the gun stuff below, shall we?

Posted by: Weasel at 07:00 PM | Comments (381) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Food Thread: Ego? In The Kitchen?

Well...hell.

No, that's not a product of the vast kitchens at Chez Dildo. That's my niece's challah, and it was excellent! And I'm jealous. Especially because she is new to the whole baking game! And that means I have to start baking challah! Yes, I have an ego when it comes to that sort of thing.

Posted by: CBD at 04:00 PM | Comments (231) | Trackbacks (Suck)

First-World Problems...

Looks normal...right? That's the bit holder on a drill-driver I used to loosen the bolt assembly screw on a Savage rifle. The damned thing is tightened at the factory to a ridiculous degree, and it's impossible to remove by hand. 1/4" hex in the bit holder and zip...zip...zip. Nice and easy, and I can now clean the bolt assembly easily.

Except...The bit holder won't come out! That collar slides up and down just fine...locking and unlocking the holder, but it is jammed so tight that I cannot remove it. Those streaks on the bit holder are from the teeth of my vice!

Yes, we'll just have to sell the house and move.

Posted by: CBD at 02:00 PM | Comments (180) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Whose Side Are We On? Israel...Or Hamas?

The paradigm of Israeli security changed on October 7th, and the Israeli body politic seems united in its rejection of any accommodation with the bloodthirsty savages of Hamas, the Palestinian Authority, Hezbollah, and by extension...Iran.

Israel spent 75 years making concession after concession to these 7th century animals, and nothing worked. Even the acceptance of a certain low level of terrorist activity -- an insane policy to begin with -- wasn't enough.

It seems Israel has had its fill with the brutal murderers on their borders and is now willing to buck the world and destroy them. Except...America has decided that the destruction of Hamas is too much to bear, because Israel's unbelievable efforts to minimize civilian casualties isn't enough. Apparently, any civilian casualties are too much now!

Netanyahu Tells Blinken That Israel Will Launch Rafah Offensive 'Alone' If US Opposes

Mr. Blinken met with the Israeli leader in Tel Aviv on March 22 and urged Israel not to invade Rafah, saying that such an action “risks wreaking greater havoc.”

“As we’ve said, though, a major military ground operation in Rafah is not the way to do it,” Mr. Blinken said at a press conference in Tel Aviv.

“It risks killing more civilians, it risks wreaking greater havoc with the provision of humanitarian assistance, it risks further isolating Israel around the world and jeopardizing its long-term security and standing.”

Yes; civilians die in wars. That is the nature of conflicts, and it is impossible to prevent. But the extent to which Israel has gone to minimize casualties is almost unbelievable...suffering many more deaths and casualties simply to conduct the most humane campaign against Hamas. But that is unacceptable to the Biden/Obama junta, whose goal seems to be to hamstring Israel and force a ceasefire and eventually a "two state solution," an idea that is laughable in light of recent events.

Even worse, America has partnered with Qatar to manage and finance the absolutely ridiculous pier being built in Gaza. Yup...the same Qatar that has financed Hamas, and is therefore responsible for the worst attack on Jews since the Holocaust.

For better or worse, Israel is the tip of the Western spear in the fight against Islamism's expansionism. To limit Israel's fight against it is to threaten the safety and security of the West. But it seems as though the Biden/Obama junta is not interested in protecting the West (and America), but rather its goal seems to be to embolden Iran and its terrorist proxies. How else can one interpret its actions?

If this sounds like a broken record, that's because it is! Until America and the West admit that we are in an existential battle with Islam, we will continue to dither and vacillate and die, and Islam will continue its march into Western capitals, where their demand is simple...convert, submit, or die.

We've beaten them before, and we can beat them again, but not before we admit that it is a war!

Posted by: CBD at 12:00 PM | Comments (243) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Sunday Morning Book Thread - 03-24-2024 ["Perfessor" Squirrel]

Welcome to the prestigious, internationally acclaimed, stately, and illustrious Sunday Morning Book Thread! The place where all readers are welcome, regardless of whatever guilty pleasure we feel like reading. Here is where we can discuss, argue, bicker, quibble, consider, debate, confabulate, converse, and jaw about our latest fancy in reading material. As always, pants are required, unless you are wearing these pants...(Does it really make less disturbing if the heads are Lego instead of human? Think about it...)

So relax, find yourself a warm kitty (or warm puppy--I won't judge) to curl up in your lap, and dive into a new book. What are YOU reading this fine morning?

Posted by: Open Blogger at 09:00 AM | Comments (291) | Trackbacks (Suck)

EMT 24 Mar 24

Happy Sunday.

Posted by: krakatoa at 05:49 AM | Comments (202) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Daily Tech News 24 March 2024

Top Story

• The global economy runs through a single road in Spruce Pine, North Carolina. (Tom's Hardware)
  
  That road leads to a mine producing the purest quartz in the world, and the factory that processes it. There is no naturally occurring substitute.
  
  The quartz is used to create crucibles which are used to produced silicon wafers, which are in turn sliced and cooked and dice to produce computer chips.
  
  It is possible to make the quartz synthetically; we just don't right now because there's an enormous pile of it sitting underground in this one spot. But it would be a few difficult years if anything happened there.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 04:04 AM | Comments (49) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Saturday Overnight Open Thread (3/23/24)

*****

The Saturday Night Joke

A photographer from a well-known national magazine was
assigned to cover Southern California's wildfires. The
magazine wanted pictures of the heroic work the fire fighters
were doing as they battled the blazes.

When the photographer arrived on the scene he realized that
the smoke was so thick that it would seriously impede, or
even make impossible, his obtaining good photographs from
ground-level

He requested permission from his boss to rent a plane and
take photos from the air. His request was approved and via
a cell phone call to the local county airport necessary
arrangements were made. He was told a single-engine plane
would be waiting for him at the airport.

He arrived at the airfield and spotted a plane warming up
outside a hangar. He jumped in with his bag, slammed the
door shut and shouted, "Let's go!"

The pilot taxied out, swung the plane into the wind and
roared down the runway. Within just a minute or two of
his arrival they were in the air.

The photographer requested the pilot to, "Fly over the valley
and make two or three low passes so I can take some pictures
of the fires on the hillsides."

"Why?" asked the pilot.

"Because I'm a photographer for a national magazine," he
responded, "and I need to get some close-up shots."

The pilot was strangely silent for a moment; finally he stammered,
"So, you're telling me you're not the flight instructor?" (H/T Ciampino)

Posted by: Misanthropic Humanitarian at 09:50 PM | Comments (520) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Saturday Evening Movie Thread 03/23/2024 [TheJamesMadison]

Pier Paolo Pasolini

Pier Paolo Pasolini was controversial in Italy before he ever started making movies. Writing poetry from his youth, his first novel, Ragazzi di vita, led to lawsuits for obscenity from the Italian government. He entered the Italian film industry doing things like rewriting dialogue on Federico Fellini's Nights of Cabiria, providing a more realistic and lower-class patois, leaning heavily into "lower" Italian dialects, to the characters of prostitutes who populate the film. His first film as director, Accattone, was partially controversial for its heavy use of those same dialects, something completely lost on non-Italian viewers who rely on subtitles. The rest of the controversy was centered around material considered blasphemous.

His career would last another eleven narrative feature films (he would also direct a handful of documentaries on different subjects, sometimes just compiled footage of his efforts to get movies made), and they ran a real gamut. There's one of the greatest religious films ever made in The Gospel According to Matthew. There's a dual narrative film about the decadence and emptiness of the bourgeois classes contrasted with a tale of a medieval cannibal called Pigsty. There's also a trilogy of films called the Trilogy of Life that are adaptations of works by Boccaccio, Chaucer, and the anonymous author of A Thousand and One Nights. In addition, there are some adaptations of Greek Tragedy in Medea and Oedipus Rex.

Through all of this, Pasolini made these films his own. He would later disown the Trilogy of Life, saying that he was too concerned with financial success of the films than the artistic merit to the point where his own voice had been snuffed out, but I think it's still easy to see that they're decidedly Pasolini films. The ideas are still there, just muted and largely relegated to his selection of which of tales in the large volumes he chose to adapt. The ideas, though, stem from the fact that he was a Marxist atheist homosexual who hated Italy as it was, talked about abandoning his Italian citizenship completely, and only ever seemed to have any affection for the downtrodden masses that he almost never made central figures in his own films. It helped that he understood storytelling and the technical side of filmmaking really well on top of that.

Posted by: Open Blogger at 07:45 PM | Comments (175) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Weekend Hobby, Crafts and General Bodging Thread

Greetings gang. Hope the weekend is going well. Time once again to head for the basement, garage, shop, studio, craft room or wherever it is you can escape for a few hours and lose yourself in something creative, or just make a mess and have fun.

NOTE: This is NOT an open thread. Please limit comments to the subject of this thread only.

What's everyone working on, planning or just dreaming about?

Posted by: J.J. Sefton at 04:27 PM | Comments (132) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Ace of Spades Pet Thread, March 23

* * *

Good afternoon and welcome to the almost world famous Ace of Spades Pet Thread. Thanks for stopping by. Kick back and enjoy the world of animals.

Would you like a treat?

Let's relax a little with the animals and leave the world of politics and current events outside today.

* * *

Time to relax:

Posted by: K.T. at 03:24 PM | Comments (64) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Gardening, Puttering and Adventure Thread, March 23

Happy Spring! I should have posted the photo above last week, before St. Patrick's Day. The flowers are sort of green. Do you know what it is?

How about the one below?

Posted by: K.T. at 01:30 PM | Comments (99) | Trackbacks (Suck)

So you thought you understood Ireland?

Bunratty Castle
Limerick, Ireland

Update: Or maybe it's the Kilkenny Castle Rose Garden

Don't you love limericks?

There have been some big changes lately in Ireland. Some of them have been sort of predictable. Others have been unexpected. Some of the issues regarding free speech have echoed developments in other parts of the anglosphere (and other parts of the world).

Posted by: K.T. at 11:18 AM | Comments (293) | Trackbacks (Suck)

The Classical Saturday Morning Coffee Break & Prayer Revival

*****

Good morning Horde. Welcome aboard.

Before we get into the Prayer Revival. Just a few housekeeping matters. (Rulz for those of you who live in Oma.

1) This is an open thread, please feel free to lurk, opine and/or bloviate away.
2) Be nice to one another.
3) Running with sharp objects will not gain you any brownie points.
4) Have a nice weekend.

Posted by: Misanthropic Humanitarian at 08:34 AM | Comments (331) | Trackbacks (Suck)

Daily Tech News 23 March 2024

Top Story

• If I'm presented with two resumes for a new hire, one a recent Harvard graduate with a PhD in precisely the field I am hiring for, and the other a community college dropout whose only programming experience is putting together a popular Minecraft modpack, I'm hiring the Minecraft kid.
  
  Just saying.
  
  
  
• A quick and perhaps useful summary of the Apple antitrust case. (Tech Crunch)
  
  The one thing of note is this line describing Apple's response to the suit:

  And in regulating the behaviors that the DOJ claims are monopolistic, Apple's competitive advantage in the market would be diminished and iPhone customers negatively impacted in the process.

  Well, yeah.
  
  Diminishing competitive advantage in the market is the entire point of antitrust actions.
  
  And Apple claiming that following the law would negatively affect its customers has been the company's response to every interaction with regulators for the past decade at least.
  
  It's kind of boring, guys. At least come up with a new lie.
  
  
  
• Meanwhile The Verge barfed up this. (The Verge)
  
  There were some in yesterday's comment section arguing I was favoring the woke fascist idiots at the DOJ over the woke fascist idiots at Apple who at the end of the day at least produce something.
  
  But if you read even a small part of this pile of drivel - and I certainly wouldn't suggest reading more than that - I think we can all agree that the worst of the lot are the journalists reporting on this story.
  
  In this case we're dealing with Sarah Jeong, the journalistic equivalent of Cymothoa exigua.
  
  Don't look that up if you don't want nightmares.
  
  You should probably avoid looking up C. exigua as well.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 04:04 AM | Comments (255) | Trackbacks (Suck)

The ONT is Simple. If It Was Complicated, Everyone Would Understand It

Greetings Horde! How about some of that smart military blog stuff?

These gaudy planes sported the opposite of camouflage. They were purposefully visible. Bomber wings would form up on them before heading on their missions, kinda like the pace car at the Indianapolis 500.

Posted by: WeirdDave at 10:00 PM | Comments (447) | Trackbacks (Suck)

A Crow and His Boy Cafe

Yosemite
The figures at top left provide the scale

Rescuing a drowning abandoned fawn and then raising it.

A male stray dog stayed with his female companion throughout her pregnancy. The female and her puppies got adopted, but the male was left behind in the shelter. But then he was adopted by a very outdoorsy family.

Man vs. Metro.

Wingsuit square dance in a practice area.

Driveway surfin'.

3-D effects in a pedestrian mall.

Nice pictures of mountains in Patagonia here.

Trick horror photography. I like the ghost.

Advertising in an increasingly-competitive attention economy.

The Japanese are building robot Optimus Primes and we can't even bother to bolt the doors on to planes.

Backyard luge course.

Posted by: Disinformation Expert Ace at 07:30 PM | Comments (308) | Trackbacks (Suck)