There’s a lot of truth here

 art, wisdom, youtube  No Responses »
Nov 082022
 

The worlds of Design Engineers and Machinists are very different… but they have to meet up at some point, or things don’t get done. I saw a lot of the sort of problems described here back when I was in aerospace; similarly, the worlds of Engineers and Draftsmen were well separated, which was an issue that I found to be insane. When I worked at United Tech in California as a design engineer, people – including my managers –  thought I was some sort of whacko because I, a Design Engineer, actually wanted access to a CAD program so I could draw up the stuff I was designing “That’s what the draftsmen are for!” Insanity.

 

 

That “Men Have Two Types of Fantasies” at the end? Also true.

 

 Posted by at 7:37 pm

Offensive humor

 AARRRGH, blather, dumbassery, Forward!, humor, politics, science, wisdom, youtube, ಠ_ಠ  No Responses »
Nov 012022
 

This guy tells a joke, the short from of which is that learning about science in school is useless, because he didn’t become a scientist. Now it could well be that he doesn’t actually believe that; perhaps a longer video with more context has him redeem himself later. But the basic notion expressed here grates on me more than a lame joke by an unknown standup comic really aught to. It would be better by far for kids to learn about science and math and then have them not go into STEM fields, than to replace science and math with the latest trendy identity politics subjects. Because even if the kids *do* go into the fields of gender studies or LGBTQ studies or racial grievance activism… society is *worse* off. Learning math helps a kid order their mind. Learning science helps a kid learn skepticism. Learning critical race theory helps a kid become a racist monster. Learning about the latest innovation in pronoun-invention helps a kid become schizophrenic and sterile.

 Posted by at 8:20 am

Cats are smarter than you may think

 awesomeness, cats, critters, Hmm..., humor, wisdom, youtube  No Responses »
Oct 092022
 

My late cat Raedthinn also knew how to open doors. He figured it out when I briefly lived in an apartment with door *handles*; he watched me use them, figured out what was going on and would reach up and pull the handle down to open the door. When we got back to door *knobs* he knew how they worked, but he could rarely get enough leverage on them to open doors. But “rarely” isn’t the same as “never.”

If your cat is opening doors when you don’t want him or her to do so, don’t get mad at the cat. Cat’s doing what a cat’s *supposed* to do. Be mad at yourself for being outsmarted by a critter with a brain the size of a walnut.

 Posted by at 11:43 am

The madness of crowds

 Crazy, Gah., Hmm..., wisdom, ಠ_ಠ  No Responses »
Sep 272022
 

A fitness class out for a jog goes by an outdoor cafe… and the people having their lunch think that the class are running *from * something, panic, and take off running with them. On one hand.. ha ha, very funny. On the other hand, this was in Brazil. I’ve seen the videos. The many, many, MANY videos. It’s not insane to keep your head on a swivel in Brazil, and be ready at the drop of a hat to bolt. That whole country seems like Chicago writ large.

 

 Posted by at 10:03 pm

If things don’t look right…

 Hmm..., wisdom  No Responses »
Sep 202022
 

If a blog post hereabouts makes mention of something, something that seems like it aught to be in the post (a link to a book or movie on Amazon, say, or perhaps photos), but the post has a distinct blank spot… it may be that your adblocker is nuking the links or images. Most adblockers should have a way to unblock certain pages or whole websites. Do that, and chances are the blog posts will make sense.

 Posted by at 1:08 pm

Apparently being a man isn’t so great

 books, Crazy, Hmm..., news, politics, wisdom  No Responses »
Sep 082022
 

Nearly two decades ago, a lesbian named Norah Vincent decided to go through a substantial level of effort – working out, makeup, voice training, etc. – to be able to pass as a man. She spent 18 months being a “man,” and wrote a book about her experiences, the summary being “men have it hard too.” This was not exactly a shatteringly surprising conclusion for men, but it seemed to surprise a bunch of women who yammer on about “male privilege” and “patriarchy” and other such things that have never seemed to provide me with so much as a dime. Shrug. Well, she’s back in the news:

Woman Who Pretended To Be A Man Dies By Assisted Suicide After Realizing How Difficult It Was To Be One

To be fair, the story here seems to be missing a lot of details. For, example, *why* exactly she self-deleted. The author seems to conclude that her experiences as a man screwed her up… but that was a decade and a half ago. Given the dearth of details, there could have been a whole laundry list of other problems that cropped up in that time that led to her end. A New York Times article about her is similarly lacking in details.

 Posted by at 11:19 am

The Wisdom of Stallone

 art, awesomeness, history, wisdom, youtube  No Responses »
Aug 272022
 

Sylvester Stallone made a career out of playing “action heroes” who tended to be all muscle and little brain… or at least that’s the stereotype. A lot of his characters and movies *seemed* like that on the surface, but were very different underneath. “Rocky” is often thought of as a boxing movie, but it’s really a love story with some boxing thrown in. “First Blood” is thought of as a simple shoot-em-up, but it’s really a story about how society threw away a whole generation of veterans… that monologue at the end *utterly* makes the movie. And “Demolition Man” seems another simple shoot-em-up with sci-fi trappings, but it’s a reasonably deep commentary on political correctness. And the man, when he had the right material, could *act.*

Stallone himself seems to be a pretty smart guy. This comes across *brilliantly* in this clip from a BBC interview from 1977:

A more complete version of the interview:

 

 Posted by at 1:11 am

Giving yourself away

 Crazy, dumbassery, Hmm..., news, politics, russian empire, wisdom, youtube  No Responses »
Aug 142022
 

There are a *lot* of lessons to be learned from Russias ongoing war. One being: don’t post your location on social media, especially if the enemy *really* wants you dead and has access to long range precision ordnance.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h9yFz7cuT7o

Hmm. This one doesn’t seem to auto-embed.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h9yFz7cuT7o

UPDATE: Huh. The video is now private. This seems to be because the video has been updated:

 

Interestingly, one of the video clips that was removed showed a soldier just walking along… a soldier with a *US* flag patch on his shoulder. Whether that means that was actually irrelevant footage of a US solider somewhere else (Afghanistan?) or a mercenary with a US patch… dunno.

 Posted by at 11:08 pm

Best line I’ve read in a while

 Forward!, Hmm..., I'm from the government, politics, weapons, wisdom  No Responses »
Aug 102022
 

“Quora” allows any goober to ask any goofball question, and anyone can respond. I have no idea when or why Quora decided to send me emails with some of the latest and greatest posts, but a couple times a day, there they are. Anyway, this one popped up today:

I support banning guns in the US. Can pro-gun people provide some reasons why gun control is bad?

There are a bunch of answers of varying levels of wisdom. But one line that jumped out:

So whenever anyone says “I don’t think you should have guns” or “I don’t trust you with guns”, I must ask in turn, what are you planning to do to me that you think I’d shoot you over?

What are you planning to do to me that you think I’d shoot you over?

 Posted by at 8:59 pm
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