Draw what conclusions you will:
People who hate the smell of sweaty feet could be more xenophobic
Karolinska Institute finds people with a sensitive nose for disgusting smells are more likely to have negative attitudes towards migrants
Apr 122023
Apr 112023
The Grim Truth: The War on Guns Is Lost
The author of this New Republic piece seems close to tears that:
- Millions of Americans are exercising their basic rights
- The Supreme Court recognizes their basic rights
- Americans keep voting for enough politicians who understand the Constitution to keep the tyrants somewhat at bay.
This is one of those cases where reference to “liberal tears” is wholly legitimate. The author sees the idea of Americans being allowed to own standard firearms as a horrible tragedy, a failure of the police state she would prefer we lived in. The only hope she seems to have is in a “National Divorce.”
However, chances are quite good that the despair is performative. Take a look at the listing of the other New Republic pieces written by this author; they are all leftist black pills. Republicans either live rent free in her head, or she’s paying the rent by ginning up fear of Republicans.
Shrug.
Apr 082023
So there I am minding my own business when a text message comes in from my dad. Nothing unusual there. But the message is long, rambling, kinda stream-of-consciousness, seemingly part of a conversation I wasn’t a part of. I have received messages meant for other people before, but the format of the message, and the length of it, were quite unlike my dad’s normal type of messages. So I send him a “WTF” response. A few minutes later, clarification: the phone *listened* to my dad as he held a conversation with someone else, transcribed both sides of the conversation into a single kinda gibberishy paragraph, and then decided to send that transcript to me.
At no point in the process was my dad clued in to this; the phone did it itself.
So… who else gets these transcripts? The NSA? FBI? IRS? The Russians? And as seems most likely, the Chinese?
Something to keep in mind: if your phone, or Alexa, Siri, HAL, or any other modern device *can* hear you, it *does* hear you. And sometimes it does stuff with what it hears.
Now pardon me while I wrap my cell phone in a few layers of tinfoil.
Apr 072023
“I Knead You” Song by “Chevy,” animation by Amelia Bothe. Anyone who’s ever had kittens will catch all the feels from this one.
Apr 062023
National Weather Service confirms a tornado touched down a few blocks from here. It was puny as such things go… EF-1, winds of 95 miles per hour. But it did raise a ruckus.
Destructive Winds, Very Large Hail & Tornadoes: April 4-5th, 2023
| Date | 04/04/2023 |
| Time (Local) | 09:41 AM – 09:43 AM |
| EF Rating | EF-1 |
| Est. Peak Winds | 95 mph |
| Path Length | 1.6 miles |
| Max Width | 150 yards |
| Injuries/Deaths | 0 |
| Summary:
A brief tornado touched down in Rock Island, Illinois. The tornado knocked over and snapped large trees and produced minor damage to several roofs. Widespread damaging straight line winds up to 90 mph also caused significant damage across the city. |
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Apr 062023
In Colorado Springs:
Former D20 student accused of planning attacks on three campuses
“D20” here is “district 20.” The new trend isn’t “19-year-old tries to shoot up a middle school and some churches.” Guess what it is.
Go on, guess.
Here’s a subtle hint:
William Whitworth who identifies as “Lilly” has been charged with felony criminal attempt to commit murder …
Did you spot it?
That’s right: the mass shooter was arrested *before* the mass shooting.
Nothing else here is noteworthy. Nothing.
NOTHING.
Apr 062023
A healthy, sane society would see bystanders reacting with outrage when someone shoplifts thousands of dollars of non-essentials. But we live in a society where madness is celebrated, and thus we get this:
Apr 052023
As I’ve previously mentioned, something holding back my return to cyanotyping is a sudden lack of availability of the transparent film required. Without that I can’t print off new negatives. Early on in this protracted process I managed to get a few prints from a local print shop; these prints were made at a distant affiliate and shipped in. But later efforts to get more printed not only failed, the local print shop *lied* to me about what was going on. This pissed me off, of course and now they are on my Do Not Do Business With list.
Another local print ship has been attempting for some months to procure a roll of the stuff. I will have to buy the whole roll, hundreds of dollars of it, because there are not other customers. Well, yesterday, just before the storm came in and took out electricity and communications, I received and email letting me know that, at long last, the roll had arrived. Woo! This morning, with the return of electricity and comms, I sent them a followup email asking if they were ready to proceed with printing new cyanotype-transparencies.
Answer: the storm took *them* out, they are still without power, and there were hints that equipment might have been damaged.
Sigh.
Well, at least there’s some measure of forward progress.
Apr 052023
Storms took out my power this morning. I drove around and looked at the damage…. it was quite extensive. I figured it would be days before power came back, but it was restored a little while ago. My neighborhood saw little actual damage, but just a block away big trees were yanked out at the roots. The derecho a a few years ago did not do this sort of damage, so I wonder if small tornadoes came through.
Apr 042023
You Didn’t Finish Watching the Lord of the Rings TV Show
…the premiere of Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power TV series had 25 million global viewers on the day it premiered. That’s quite a lot! But as it turns out, by the time the first season ended, a shocking number of those viewers as had already given up. In a new examination of Amazon Studios, the Hollywood Reporter mentions that only 37 percent of Rings of Power’s U.S. viewers stuck around through the Prime Video series’ eighth episode.
Yes, I’m surprised. I’m surprised that a full 37% stuck around to the end of that garbage show. I imagine most that did did so, like me, out of pure spite. And to see just how disrespectful the writers/showrunners would be to the source material. Answer: All. All the disrespect. Every last bit.