Clown World

 art, Crazy, dumbassery, Forward!, Hmm..., humor, politics, youtube, ಠ_ಠ  No Responses »
Apr 112019
 

So yesterday I blathered on about how trolls successfully used online SJW outrage culture to basically assassinate the “OK” hand sign by making the far left believe that it’s a white power symbol. I assumed that after that success, the same people would move on to try the same thing with another symbol or icon.

This is what I get for missing staff meetings: the process is already underway. This time: clowns are racist.

Short form: a couple months back 4chan began the process by whipping up “Honkler,” a modified Pepe the frog meme with a clown nose and a rainbow fro wig. Coupled with a clown  emoji and a globe emoji (thus “clown world”), this is used to show agreement with the idea that the world is so screwed up, so bizarre, so absurd that the only rational response is to just laugh as it all burns down. And, of course, racism, because *everything* is racism these days. The later videos down below show the history and “meaning” of Honk Honkler, but the one directly below amuses me to no friggen’ end. Absolute absurdism can be amusing, but when it’s basically a reaction to the sort of Lovecratian cosmic horror that the world seems to be drifting towards… well, that’s just *awesome.*

As far as it being an “alt right” or “white supremacist” meme, this is mostly driven by the outrage industry. In order to make money, they need clicks and donations; and in order to get those nice juicy donations, they need to convince people that they are dong something. And in order to do something, they have to have something to work *against* (part of the basic “perpetual war” tenet of fascism, one suspects). And since there really aren’t that many actual, factual threats coming from the right, the outrage industry grabs desperately at any straw they can find… and the trolls are content to throw straws at them.

For the lulz.

Learn you some stuff about Honkler:

Shorter form: people use outrage to try to make a buck. How dare they.

 


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 Posted by at 5:19 pm

Beresheet has crashed on the moon

 AARRRGH, news, rockets, spacecraft  No Responses »
Apr 112019
 

Israeli Lunar Spacecraft Loses Main Engine, Crashes on Surface of the Moon

It had successfully entered Lunar orbit, and had successfully de-orbited and was heading to the surface, when it “lost” the main engine around ten kilometers up.

While this is indeed unfortunate… if yer gonna crash, being able to say “I crashed ON THE MOON” certainly has a certain ring to it.

 Posted by at 3:21 pm

Assange Arrested

 blather, Hmm..., news, politics, secrets  No Responses »
Apr 112019
 

Julian Assange has spent the last seven years int he Ecuadorian embassy in London, hiding out from numerous nations wishing to arrest him. His man claim of asylum seems to be that he thinks that the US would execute him for publishing secrets provided to him by Bradley Manning. The Ecudarians withdrew asylum, and the British police frogmarched Assange out of the embassy in what can be safely described as a circus. The United States has no “official secrets act,” unlike police states like the United Kingdom. As a consequence, if you come into possession of secret documents through no illegal actions of your own, you should be able to go public with them, especially if the secrets do no encompass things like how to build a nuke or endanger ongoing activities (see: “The Pentagon Papers“).

But note the caveat there: “through no illegal actions of your own.” The US is alleging that Assange didn’t just receive Mannings data out of the blue, but engaged in “conspiracy to commit computer intrusion.” That’s a *whole* different thing.

If you buy a secret document off ebay, you’re in the clear. If you find a secret document in the street or in the trash, you’re in the clear. If someone gives or mails you a secret document, you’re in the clear. However… if you *steal* a  secret document, you’re in trouble. Or if you bribe or blackmail someone with access to give you that document. Or if you aid them in the theft of that document. This should be pretty clear, and the First Amendment has nothing to do with it. Whether or not you are a journalist has nothing to do with it.

I have no idea what the sentencing rules are for “conspiracy to commit computer intrusion.” It would be amusing as hell if he is tried, convicted and sentenced to something like six months.

 Posted by at 11:53 am

I know what this smells like…

 science, science fiction  No Responses »
Apr 112019
 

Researchers develop way to control speed of light, send it backward

Abouraddy and study co-author Esat Kondakci demonstrated they could speed a pulse of light up to 30 times the speed of light, slow it down to half the speed of light, and also make the pulse travel backward.

The researchers were able to develop the technique by using a special device known as a spatial light modulator to mix the space and time properties of light, thereby allowing them to control the velocity of the pulse of light.

Muh-huh.

I could maybe buy that they’ve found a way to make light go faster in a medium such as water or glass. But the claim seems to be that they can make light go 30 times faster in a vacuum.

It’s not clear if this is meant to be a faster pulse of light within the confines of their “spacial light modulator” machine, or if their notion is that they could sen a laser beam to Alpha Centauri in less than two months.

 Posted by at 1:04 am

Sollasina cthulhu

 Hmm..., news, paleo, science, science fiction  No Responses »
Apr 102019
 

I woulda gone for whatever the Latin is of “Elder Things” or maybe “face hugger,” but that’s just me. A new species has been described… the fossil of a 430 million year old sea cucumber-ish critter with more than forty “tentacles.” Not exactly a giant: the tentacles/legs/whatever seemed to reach a maximum length of about 14 mm.

A new ophiocistioid with soft-tissue preservation from the Silurian Herefordshire Lagerstätte, and the evolution of the holothurian body plan

 

 Posted by at 5:58 pm

Using outrage to take over cultural icons

 Crazy, dumbassery, Forward!, Hmm..., politics, wisdom, youtube, ಠ_ಠ  No Responses »
Apr 102019
 

Sane people know that the “OK” hand sign is innocuous. Crazy people are afraid that it’s a white power gesture. And so what happens? The crazy people have made it so that only white supremacists – or at least those *pretending* to be white supremacists in order to troll the normies – can use the “OK” sign.

As Sargon says in the video below, the 4chan project that turned “OK” into a white power symbol was remarkably successful… and instructive for future programs. The thing trolls will do now is to find popular symbols that Progressives are fond of and “corrupt” them into racist symbols, and the progressives will abandon them. Perhaps… Che shirts? The letters “AOC?” Bernie Sanders?

Progressives have certainly done this for their own ends… turning Star Wars and Star Trek into bastardized shallow shadows of their former selves in order to push whackadoodle agenda. Turnabout is fair play.

 Posted by at 5:27 pm

So now we’ve seen a black hole

 awesomeness, Hmm..., news, science  No Responses »
Apr 102019
 

Hurray for humanity. At the same time the lesser, darker sides of our natures are being expressed in superstition and fearmongering, the better STEM majors of our natures are showing us the universe in a detail never before imagined. Gentlemen… behold:

Astronomers Capture First Image of a Black Hole

If you are a little disappointed in the resolution, bear in mind that this is the supermassive (6.5 *billion* solar mass) black hole in the center of the M87 galaxy 55 *million* light years away. The glowing ring is the accretion disk around the hole… a disk of gas and dust spinning around the holes equatorial plane, raised to incandescence from friction and tidal forces. The reason why the disk isn’t uniform around the hole? Actually, it is. But some of the disk is rotating towards us; some rotating away from us. And the rotation speed approaches the speed of light. Consequently, the light from the part of the disk rotating towards us is blue-shifted in frequency and increased in power; the light from the side of the disk rotating away from us is red shifted down in frequency and vastly reduced in apparent power.

This image was captured via radio telescope interferometry, creating a telescope with roughly the effective diameter of the Earth. The scopes ran at a wavelength of 1.3mm, into the microwaves, not visible light.

The central dark region is the “shadow” of the black hole, about 2.5 times the size of the actual event horizon, which is about 40 *billion* kilometers in diameter (something like 267 astronomical units… substantially larger than the solar system). The shadow is a region darkened by the gravity of the hole bending light away from reaching us. So just eyeballing it, if the even horizon is 40 billion km in diameter and the shadow is 2.5 times bigger, and the glowing portion of the accretion disk is 4 or maybe 5 time bigger than that… then the glowing accretion disk is something along the lines of 500 billion km in diameter.

 Posted by at 11:10 am
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