Apr 012022
 

Some good news.

Buddy the cat officially upgraded to stable condition

Still no identification of the two responsible. This is likely due to them being juveniles, what with the judicial system erroneously believing that there’s some fundamental shift that happens when someone magically flips from “child” to “adult.” Even if these people cannot be help to account by the legal system, I would think it advisable for the public to be made aware of who they are so as to keep their pets, children and *jobs* away from them.

Once they are pout of whatever slap-on-the-wrist imprisonment they’ll get, they should be strongly encouraged to travel the world and never come back.

 Posted by at 2:26 am
Mar 312022
 

Bruce Willis *used* to be a Big Movie Star. He used to star in giant films, making buckets of money. But in recent years he’s largely kept himself to low-to-no budget terrible films, usually showing up for only a few minutes of screen time (long enough to end up on the DVD box art as a major selling point). And even then, his acting has been lackluster in the “I don’t give a crap” or “just phoning it in” variety.

Well, I guess now we know why:

Bruce Willis diagnosed with aphasia, ‘stepping away’ from acting, family reveals

Aphasia affects a personas ability to communicate and understand communications. People can start throwing unrelated words into sentences, sometimes gibberish words; and sometimes they lose the ability to communicate entirely. It sounds awful. And it’s the sort of thing that would make an actor… no longer a *good* actor.

Aphasia usually pops up after a stroke or other brain injury, but perhaps it can also sneak up slowly. If that’s the case, perhaps that’s why he’s been in so many films that honestly didn’t demand – or get – much from him. Looking at his IMDB page, he still has a lot of these Z-grade movies in development; the last major films he was in with sizable roles seem to be “Death Wish” from 2018 and “Glass” from 2019. Curiously, the last movie on the list, “Paradise City,” currently in post-production, had a respectable $20 million budget and Willis is the lead.

 Posted by at 11:11 am
Mar 312022
 

There’s a lot stupid about Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. The fact that it happened in the first place, of course. The fact that there are so many people in the west who think Putin is anything but a cheap villain. The use of inadequate weapons. The lack of preparation. The lack of logistics. The failure to dominate the skies first. And on and on and on. But this… this is on a whole new level of mind-boggling stupidity.

Russian Troops Suffer ‘Acute Radiation Sickness’ After Digging Chernobyl Trenches

And…

Workers at Chernobyl site say Russian soldiers drove through the highly-radioactive ‘Red Forest’ with no protective gear

Is the Russian leadership *trying* to destroy the Russian military?

Forty years ago, when Soviet missiles were pointed almost directly at my head, I would have cheered on Soviet soldiers being abused and wasted in this fashion. Now it’s just freakin’ sad.

 Posted by at 10:56 am
Mar 292022
 

Russian trucks try to get the hell out of Dodge. Two of the soldiers get left. Womp womp.

YouTube says this video is age restricted.  Not sure why… no death or destruction on display, just military incompetence or panic. I suppose if I was a Russian truck driver in Ukraine and I found out there was a drone looking down at me, I’d want to unass ASAP too. But, damn, son.

 Posted by at 12:25 pm
Mar 262022
 

It turns out that Russia is littering the countryside of Ukraine with the bodies of dead Russians. One might think that the Ukrainians would be happy about that, but it turns out that there are *so* many dead Russians lying about that once it warms up and thaws, there could be a bit of a stink and the usual nonsense about diseases and such. And the Russians don’t seem to want them back. If I was a Russian citizen, I think I might find this strategy vaguely disturbing and unsatisfying.

The bodies of Russian soldiers are piling up in Ukraine, as Kremlin conceals true toll of war

 

 Posted by at 12:32 am
Mar 252022
 

Great-grandmother charged with second-degree murder after 7-month-old killed in Georgia dog mauling

Lots of “wrong” in this story. but what jumps right out at me: the “great grandmother” here is FIFTY SIX YEARS OLD. mean an average age at spawning of about 18. Certainly not historically or biologically unreasonable… it just seems weird and unwise.

Also what jumps out at me: the great-grandmother was attacked by the dog as well… and the dog wasn’t *her* dog. Important details are left out of the story, such as what the frak happened such that *she* is getting charged with murder for someone else’s dog going buggo on a baby.

 Posted by at 6:54 pm
Mar 252022
 

Well, this makes the future look that much more sunny:

AI suggested 40,000 new possible chemical weapons in just six hours

In short: an AI is used to weed out theoretical medicines because of side effects. That’s great. But the people running it decided “what if we ask it to do the opposite?” and it came up with thousands of innovative new ways to kill people. The AI invented existing nerve agents… and invented some new ones that the predictive modelling says should be *more* toxic than what’s currently on hand.

That’s… greeeeeeeaaaaaaat.

Just wait until the same techniques get used to dream up neato new viruses. Those sci-fi theoretical pathogens that seek out specific genetic markers… hair color, ethnic traits, intelligence, whatever, and kill, stupefy, disable? Yeah… might not be sci-fi for long.

Hurry the frak up, Elon. Humanity might be needing self-sufficient  colonies separated by distances great enough that travel times alone provide a quarantine effect real soon.

 Posted by at 5:41 pm
Mar 252022
 

The two responsible for the mauling of Buddy the cat have turned themselves in:

12-year-old, 17-year-old turn themselves in to authorities following vicious attack on Buddy the cat

Sadly the two have not been identified because they are juveniles, which also means that they will very likely get a slap on the wrist at best. They came in to the SPCA with “a parent.” This probably means they’re brothers. And it raises the question “why not both parents.”

 

Interestingly, if you let the video embedded in the above link play, it cycles through a number of stories, including one about a skunk. Here, some people saw a skunk with a peanut butter jar stuck on its head roaming randomly in a panic; they called animal control who successfully got the jar off its head with nobody getting injured or sprayed. Ta-da. A more opposite sort of story would be hard to immediately invent…here, an animal that, unlike a cat, is generally *disliked*, finds itself in trouble and humans actually give a damn and go to some effort to provide aid to the animal. Granted, it’s not detangling a sharktopus from radioactive razorwire, but still… compared to two monsters taking joy in the destruction of a loved, harmless animal? It’s fricken’ Nobel material.

 

And unrelated to cats and critters, but related to Philadelphia:

Family members identify teen gravely injured after shooting in Wissinoming

The teen is 15, and by “gravely injured” they mean “brain dead, will die in a day or so.” Apparently he was merely a bystander to some sort of altercation that led to shots fired. Police think it might have something to do with an attempted robbery around the corner.

Philadelphia sounds like a nice place to stay the hell away from.

 Posted by at 5:07 pm