Ha Ha NOOOOOOOOOOO.

 AARRRGH, Crazy, Forward!, Gah., politics, science, ಠ_ಠ  No Responses »
Jan 292023
 

Once again, virtually inevitable technology. And once again, people are dreaming up terrible uses for it. In this case, brain wave monitoring devices to track your mind while on the job to make sure that:

1) Your mind doesn’t wander from the task

2) That you don’t think about other employees

3) That you don’t make plans with other employees for things the company doesn’t want

 

 

 

Any tech like this that can be legally allowed to be mandated by an employer is tech that a government can make legally mandatory for all subjects.

 

 Posted by at 8:56 pm

Workplace… or shopping mall?

 AARRRGH, Crazy, dumbassery, Forward!, politics, Worldwreckers, youtube, ಠ_ಠ  No Responses »
Jan 272023
 

Granted, there are people who actually *work* at shopping malls. But these “tours” of the Google offices in LA really don;t seem like tours of work sites. There are not a whole lot of people in evidence, and the vast majority of those seen doing something are shown relaxing, playing, eating, drinking.

 

I’m sure hiring a large percentage of the workforce to simply tick quota boxes seemed like a good idea to *somebody.*

One might wonder why I’m suddenly yammering on about this. I think it’s because this sort of thing offends me… it’s not that “work” should be an oppressive, dreary existence (been there), but because works should be about The Work. Granted I used to be an aerospace engineer, not a software worker; if Google’s latest update is a little wonky, who cares. If the latest jetliner is a little wonky, people *die.* So industries that actually matter should take themselves seriously. No goofy TikTok dance videos, no on-site clowns or cry-closets. The things that made our society successful have in recent years been not only neglected but denigrated. This has included objectivity, being on time, having a good work ethic, recognition of cause and effect and so on. I see these adult daycare centers as part and parcel of this. The people who work there seem to *not* actually work there. Granted *somebody* has to be doing the job; Price’s Law suggest that the square root of the number of employees are doing half the actual work. Regardless of how true that is, any place where *anything* gets done has to have some people who are actually working. And surrounding hard workers by slackers who are getting paid just as well as them and who are visibly being coddled… that has *got* to be a morale-killer among the productive. And doubtless many of the slackers would have turned into hard workers who would derive great and substantive meaning from being productive… but they’re being indoctrinated into a culture of bland excess and sloth.

 Posted by at 11:27 am

My tenuous, tangential link to the “adult daycare centers”

 aircraft, art, blather, Crazy, Forward!, history, Hmm..., Meh., politics, ಠ_ಠ  No Responses »
Jan 262023
 

Because in present Day, everything has to be All About Me…

 

Several years before I left Utah I was contacted by an aerospace historian/ museum feller about a potential project. It seemed that a big tech company was purchasing an old Hughes Aircraft hangar with the intention of turning it into office space; I was asked if I might be interested in building a large (IIRC, wingspan in excess of twenty feet) replica of the Hughes H4 Hercules “Spruce Goose” to be hung in the  large open space.  My response was something along the lines of “hell yes,” but it didn’t go much further than that original discussion; like a lot of things it just faded away. Still, I’d dug out what plans I had of the Hercules and started dreaming up how I was going to do it… I’d model it in 3D CAD, lay out the internal structure and have ribs and longerons and frames and all cut out of quality plywood, clad probably in *really* good, really thin plywood, sanded baby-ass smooth and painted appropriately. I had discussions with a local wood shop about getting the many, many parts CNC milled. Woulda been a thing of beauty… and something I could have built several of and presumably made bank on. But it was not to be, and in the years since I’ve not given the project a second thought. Until yesterday…

 

So there was this TikTok video by some vapid person yapping about her day of meaningless food consumption and unproductivity at the Google LA office, built into a former Hughes hangar. Lo and behold, on display is a “sculpture” of the Hercules hanging from the ceiling, visible about 8 seconds in:

My old brain fired up and I contacted my acquaintance who had originally presented me with the idea years ago… and, yup, that’s the place, and that sculpture is what they went with rather than my planned subscale replica. More info and a decent photo of it is here:

HistoricHangarBecomesHistory-MakingWorkplace

There are a number of things that jump right out at me. First, the volume of space available in the hangar is vast… and it *seems* like the volume of space actually used for offices and such is *small.* It appears to be horribly inefficiently utilized. And second, here’s the description of the Hercules sculpture:

Comprised of 2,800 individually hung chrome spheres, this perceptual sculpture by Michael Murphy appears to be an amorphous silver cloud until seen from the sole viewpoint where it reveals itself as the “ghost” of the Spruce Goose.

 

It’s a “perceptual sculpture,” only visible correctly from a single vantage point. Basically, it’s not “real” as such, it’s kinda like a hologram made of ball bearings. That’s… interesting, I guess. but I can’t help draw some analogies: What I had suggested was a real, tangible Hercules, visible as such from all aspects and viewpoints. What they went with was smoke and mirrors. What I had believed the place was going to be was a workplace where people got stuff done. What it ended up being was, apparently a holding facility for people who did nothing of value all day.

 

Would have been a nice project though. Oh well.

 Posted by at 8:42 pm

The Narrative did not survive contact with The Reality

 AARRRGH, Crazy, dumbassery, Forward!, Gah., news, politics, ಠ_ಠ  No Responses »
Jan 232023
 

So there was a mass shooting in Monterey Park, California, Saturday, killing ten in a predominantly Asian-ethnic area. This *promptly* led to the usual incredibly predictable takes:

1) Booga booga white supremacy

2) Argle bargle we needs more gun control

Well… whoopsie:

Man found dead after police standoff in Torrance was the Monterey Park shooting suspect, sheriff says

The killer in question was one Huu Can Tran, a Chinese immigrant. Certainly an unusual form of white supremacist. He was also 72, which is unusual for mass murderers.

Additionally, the weapon used has been identified as a Cobray M-11… which is ALREADY ILLEGAL IN CALIFORNIA. Yet this feller seemed to obtain one. For those unfamiliar, the M-11 is a brick of a gun. It’s a one-handed pistol fashioned somewhat after the MAC-series of submachine guns, famous for *really* high rates of fire in full auto… but the M-11 is *semi* auto. It’s unergonomic. It’s heavy. It’s inaccurate. It rusts easily. It’s big. And even though it’s heavy, the recoil is difficult to deal with given the mass of the innards flacking back and forth with each shot. Why would someone own one? Because it’s fun-ish and cool-ish. Is it a weapon good for mass murder? No more so than  the weapons anti-gunners want to give to the people anti-gunners would have kicking in the doors of gun owners. It shoots the same 9mm round as any other boring-ass pistol, and it does so less accurately, less comfortably and less quickly than your standard 9mm Glock. Why is it illegal in California? Because California, that’s why.

Once again: we don;t need more gun control, we need crazy people control.

 Posted by at 10:38 pm

What is it with them and *food*?

 AARRRGH, Crazy, Forward!, Gah., Hmm..., Meh., ಠ_ಠ  No Responses »
Jan 222023
 

Every time one of these narcissistic videos comes out from someone “working” at a tech company, there is *vastly* more time spent yapping on about the food they seem to be constantly consuming than the work they seem to take no interest in. Note that even in the second video, the “oops, I’ve been laid off and entered the world of unemployment,” she shows herself consuming, yammers on about consuming, spends Odin knows how much money (that she isn’t making anymore) on empty calories as a way to feel better.

 

Another of these vapid “day in the life of an adult daycare consumer” videos:

And another:

 

And another:

And yet another:

And oh my god another:

 

I guess I get why they don’t discuss their work. Several explanations come to mind, actually:

1) They assume nobody is interested in it

2) *They* are not interested in it

3) They realize, consciously or not, that if they showed people what they do they’d get laughed at because people would realize their jobs are worthless

4) They’d get laughed at because people would see they’re *bad* at their jobs

 

Fine, great. But still… their days are now described as “I ate something that someone else made, then I ate something else, then I ate another thing I couldn’t hope to explain how or where it came from, then I ate some more.”

 

I fully expect that if I ever got it in my head to do a video about *my* work day, it would be crashingly dull. It’s dull now that I work from home, doing CAD and writing and blueprinting; it woulda been dull when I worked in aerospace and honestly couldn’t actually talk about much of it without getting security in a snit. But it never would have occurred to me to spend a large fraction talking about the PB&J sammich I had, or the can of Great Value chicken noodle soup, or the can of pop from the vending machine, or the handfuls of dry cereal or the Gubmint Cheez.

 

 Posted by at 10:30 pm

Biden: yet more classified documents

 Forward!, Hmm..., news, politics  No Responses »
Jan 222023
 

Note that this was a “voluntary” search, not a “raid.” Which means there had been time and opportunity to dispose of things, and yet the FBI *still* found classified material.

 

FBI searches Biden’s Wilmington home and finds more classified materials

the DOJ “requested that the search not be made public in advance, in accordance with its standard procedures, and we agreed to cooperate.”

 

if only other people had been afforded the same privilege.

 

 Posted by at 9:49 am

I am neither shocked nor upset

 Crazy, dumbassery, Forward!, Gah., Meh., news, politics, ಠ_ಠ  No Responses »
Jan 202023
 

Los Angeles hit-and-run driver who plowed into mom and baby in stolen car is murdered after light sentence

In August 2021, then-15-year-old Kristopher Baca stole a car, ran into a mother and her baby in a stroller, then drive away and struck a truck. Baca was, at the time, out on parole for *poisoning* a girl’s drink. He was then given a few months in a “diversion camp.”

 

Hmm. He tried to poison one girl, then stole a car, tried to run over a young mother and her baby, then fled the scene… and all he got out of it from the Los Angeles justice system was a few months in camp. Huh. Color me stunned that a couple days ago he got himself gunned down in the street, because he sure sounds like a real winner, a prince among men, an avatar of moral virtue and common sense. He *should* have been locked away for a term of some years after the poisoning, but actually punishing criminals is not something D-cities are really into.

 

The video at the link above is worth watching: there are some genuinely good people on display there, alongside the oxygen thief. The truck driver, in particular… I *hope* that not only did his/her insurance company not screw him/her over, but in fact gave him/her a new truck with roo bars.

 

The video in the link below shows the aftermath. A passenger from the offending car is hopping around (he’s got a pre-broken leg in a cast) while the driver is still in the car and people are gathered around… and one witness is *really* PE’ed. He lays into both the passenger and the driver with threats and profanity and red rage bordering on insanity… and I’m all there for it. I don’t know if the guy is the truck driver, but he is *really* angry… and every last bit of that is deserved. If the same passion had been displayed by the prosecutors after Baca tried to poison someone, he would still be in the graybar hotel and still alive… and that mother and her child wouldn’t have been injured by a jackass in astolen car. But at least he’s dead now, and that’s for the best from all evidence.

 

Guy goes insane after witnessing a hit and run of a baby in a stroller

 Posted by at 11:56 pm

“Velma:” Nah, I’m good

 art, Crazy, Forward!, Gah., Hmm..., humor, news, politics, Worldwreckers, youtube, ಠ_ಠ  No Responses »
Jan 162023
 

I haven’t been a Scooby Doo fan since the seventies, never watched of the many series that have been created since, with the lone exception being the initially remarkably awesome “Scooby Apocalypse” comic books. So the announcement of the “Velma” series bounced right off me. I was unsurprised to hear that it was Current Day Progressive Woke Trash; and there’s enough of that now that even hate watching this thing didn’t seem like a good use of my time or even passably entertaining.

But it seems that it is *so* bad that even the NPCs it’s aimed directly at are having a hard time accepting it. Seems there are some bugs in the code.

‘Velma’ Is So Bad It’s Spawned Psyop Conspiracy Theories

Velma is so bad in fact, that it’s spawning conspiracy theories that creator Mindy Kaling made what is essentially a parody of what the right wing thinks left wing comedy is like. As in, a show that not just recast most roles with new races, but also features loads and loads of “white guys, amiright?” jokes. The idea is that Kaling is a secretly conservative force in media trying to make the left look bad by making a cringey adult cartoon full of “this rich white guy has a small dong” jokes that the right can point at as everything wrong with race-recasted, social justice-influenced media.

Yes, yes… late the hate flow through you, commies weirdos!

 

 Posted by at 11:43 pm

Barrett now belongs to gun-banners

 AARRRGH, Crazy, Forward!, Gah., Hmm..., news, politics, weapons, ಠ_ಠ  No Responses »
Jan 162023
 

This should prove interesting and quite possibly terribly sad: famed manufacturer of .50 caliber rifles Barrett has sold out to an Australian defense contractor, meaning it is now a company run by a government that does not allow it’s subjects to own such things. Will production remain in Tennessee? Will they continue to sell to the US civilian market?

 

All management and staff at the Murfreesboro manufacturing facility in Tennessee have been retained and production will continue as normal. Over time it is expected that manufacturing activities in Murfreesboro will be further expanded.

Uh-oh. If history has taught me anything, an official statement that “all is well” results in “everybody panic.” It may be that this is part of the strategy t make the deal profitable: a *lot* of people are going to believe, and not without cause, that Barretts for the US civvie market are going to dry up, and will therefore panic-buy. This will lead to an infusion of cash pretty quickly. It will then be up to the Aussies, from the same Australia that went full Big Brother the first chance it got when the Commie Cough hit, to decide whether to keep the golden goose alive, or to slaughter it.

 

NIOA acquires US manufacturer Barrett Firearms

 

Barretts are, of course, a particular favorite firearm to hate for the gun grabbers… not because they are actually used in crimes, but because these people are scared of big things they don’t understand (along with little things they don’t understand). Yanking them from the civilian market is something these authoritarian tyrants would love to do. One straightforward way to do it is simply buy the company and stop selling them to peons like us.

 Posted by at 11:10 pm
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