Juuuuuuust a little excessive

 AARRRGH, Forward!, I'm from the government, news, politics, youtube, ಠ_ಠ  4 Responses »
Aug 172014
 

Indiana grandmother suffers violent SWAT raid after a neighbor uses her wireless internet

Yikes.

[youtube ZXqbLzHd_oo]

In short, internet smack-talking and lame almost-certainly-nonsensical threats can bring down a massive military response. But not on *you,* on the poor schmoes whose unsecured WiFi you’ve used  to post your nonsense.

So, at least two lessons here:

1) Militarized police…. blah, blah, you’ve heard it before.

2) If you have a WiFi connection in your home and you live close enough to other folks that they could use your signal, make damn sure you have it password protected. Not only will other people riding your WiFi slow your connection down, if they are doing something illegal, *you* may well feel the full force of organized government armed troops. Imagine if your neighbor is using your WiFi to download nekkid photos of the underaged. Or ordering drugs. Or buying illegal weapons. Or trash talking the local police.

Hell, one can easily dream up a conspiracy that a sufficiently irritated police force – or a non-police enemy you might have – could use. Let’s say they don’t like you for… whatever reason. But they don’t have adequate cause to raid your home. But then they find that you have an unsecured WiFi. All that’s now needed is a “burner” phone, some smart phone they can use to get online that won’t be traced back to them. Then they simply sit outside your home and post threats, download illegal stuff, whatever. And then let the appropriate prosecutor know just what a horrible person you are and sit back and wait or them to send in the local special forces to break your doors and windows, terrorize your family, stomp your cat, shoot your dog and, while they’re in there, search your home for whatever they might be able to find.

 Posted by at 4:49 pm

More looting news

 Crazy, dumbassery, news, ಠ_ಠ  2 Responses »
Aug 172014
 

Apparently getting PO’ed at The Man and looting and pillaging is all the rage amongst the cool kids these days.

Protesters attack Liberia quarantine centre

A quarantine centre for suspected Ebola patients in the Liberian capital Monrovia has been attacked and looted by protesters, police say.

…

A senior police officer said blood-stained mattresses, beddings and medical equipment were taken from the centre.

“This is one of the stupidest things I have ever seen in my life”, he said.

stupid-contagious-to-cats

 

 

 Posted by at 11:37 am

Because Big Government is awesome, that’s why

 AARRRGH, blather, Crazy, Forward!, Gah., history, Hmm..., I'm from the government, news, politics, ಠ_ಠ  3 Responses »
Aug 162014
 

After the recent excitement down in Ferguson, MO, where the twin joys of “Lootie McRioterson” and “Officer Powermad” met up to do a little dance, I thought it was time to sit back, relax, and think about all the good that a government can do when it has power and the desire to improve peoples natures.

The US Once Poisoned Alcohol Supplies to Scare People Away From Drinking

Short form: during Prohibition, the FedGuv thought it’s be a smashing idea to denature alcohol with stuff that wasn’t just nasty tasting, but downright toxic. The idea: since booze was illegal, criminals were stealing denatured alcohol (alcohol for industrial use, “denatured” by adding other substances to it that made it nasty to drink) and re-naturing it to sell to drinkers… so, why not denature the booze with something *truly* awful, so the drinkers wouldn’t take the risk? After the first 100 or so deaths, the press noticed and the story went wide; but people being people, they didn’t want to stop drinking their booze. And the government didn’t think that poisoning them was a bad idea, so they kept doing it. Death toll: around 10,000. Many more sickened and blinded.

*Maybe* killing off a few people drinking illegal hootch seemed like a good idea at the time, but keeping the process going after the death toll was hitting the *thousands* seems a bit excessive. One would hope that these lessons would prevent the government from doing something similar today… after all, everybody knows that smoking kills (second hand smoke alone has killed, what, forty or fifty *trillion* babies just in the past five years, plus or minus), and yet smokers continue to puff away.

Another fine story to keep in mind when contemplating the wisdom of arming the po-po with weapons systems adequate to take on Imperial Clonetroopers, or giving them the reigns to the health care system as a whole.

 Posted by at 8:14 pm

Athletes? Or Lovecraftian horrors from another dimension?

 art, Crazy, Hmm..., science  1 Response »
Aug 162014
 

An interesting use of visualization tech. Using standard films and videos, the movements of various athletes were digitized, then used to create abstract renderings. While cool, I can’t help but think of the Hounds of Tindalos during the Nadia Comăneci performance, some sort of shoggoth during Michael Phelps, Yog Sothoth or a Flying Polyp during the “Dream Team.”

[vimeo 100576137]

 Posted by at 7:59 pm

Here’s how you fund a time machine

 art, blather, eBay, history, Hmm..., science fiction  2 Responses »
Aug 162014
 

Find yourself a bank that has been around for decades and that has had safety deposit boxes for all that time. Develop your time machine by spending yourself deeply into debt, using funds obtained from shady loan sharks and mob bosses. Go back to, oh, 1938 and pick up a few things:

Action Comics #1 (June 1938) Superman’s Debut, CGC 9.0 – Perfect White Pages

Put items in the safety deposit box. Come back to the present.  Sell the cheapest item, convert to gold; go *back* to the 1920’s, use gold to buy some Tommyguns, come back to the present, mow down the loan sharks and mob bosses, go *back* to the 1940’s, drop off Tommyguns at the FBI; come back to the present. Enjoy your expensive old-timey goodies debt free. Live in the knowledge that if the FBI retained the tommyguns, there just might maybe be a chance that a ballistic analysis might show that the loan sharks were gunned down with weapons that have been in the FBI lockup for 75 years.

 

Important note: don’t let the FBI know you have a time machine.

 Posted by at 7:06 pm

Oh, boy! Mayhem!

 Forward!, Hmm..., news, photography, ಠ_ಠ  13 Responses »
Aug 152014
 

Mike Brown was the poor, innocent little kid shot by a cop a few days back, starting all the ruckus in Ferguson, MO. Except… hmmm. There are three images worth pondering. In the interests of not showing badly pixelated blood and a dead guy, I’ll just post links to the images rather than the images themselves. But I think this is worth some consideration, at the very least.

Photo 1: Mike Brown, dead in the street.

Photo 2: Brown’s hat, also in the street.

Photo 3: A series of security camera stills from just a few minutes before Brown got shot. Things to compare: the hat, the long shorts, the sandals.

Looks like the same feller. Does it excuse him getting, as at least one story goes, “executed?” Nope. But one wonders what this will do to the narrative.

 Posted by at 8:43 am
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