We’re told that people doing impersonations of other cultures or ethnic groups is “offensive.” But I can’t stop laughing at this:
@jac0b.bann0
Jan 232023
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.
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.
But wait, there’s more! pic.twitter.com/O5hsy9X5VW
— Jack Posobiec 🇺🇸 (@JackPosobiec) January 22, 2023
Another of these vapid “day in the life of an adult daycare consumer” videos:
https://t.co/rgVAosDabl pic.twitter.com/e0ZKr0WVSO
— Mark Granza (@markgranza) January 21, 2023
And another:
3h alles zu lernen was Karl Ess weiß war anstrengend, aber jetzt ernte ich die Früchte meiner Arbeit und fresse den ganzen Tag Avocado Toast pic.twitter.com/TiKDUibLWA
— Angelvergessen (@Angelvergessen1) December 3, 2022
And another:
They really gotta stop making these on TikTok. $META pic.twitter.com/wGurvzu1qa
— TTI (@TikTokInvestors) January 17, 2023
And yet another:
— earlob (@hallofbee) November 23, 2022
And oh my god another:
Does anyone still work? pic.twitter.com/YtF6hy6x9K
— David Sacks (@DavidSacks) August 20, 2022
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.
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.
Jan 222023
A YouTube video discussing the time between the cancellation of Star Trek and The Motion Picture. It would be an era unimaginable to fans of a just-cancelled franchise today: back then, you either saw the showed when it aired, or you didn’t. Until it hit syndication, there was for all intents and purposes no way for someone to see the show. All you had were your memories, the verbal descriptions from others, the occasional magazine article, and a series of novelizations of the episodes. There was no renting an episode on tape at Blockbuster, no buying the DVD, no streaming it online. A few might have access to crappy films.
And yet… when the first Star Trek Convention was held in 1972, the place was swamped, and attendance only grew from there. It was an analog IRL experience unlike anything possible today. On the one hand it was lean, dark times, with limited resources and opportunities; on the other hand, it led to fandoms and communities of a kind impossible today. There is value in rarity, I suppose. People value that which they have to work for.
A post from a few years ago with a Star trek Convention film shot in 1976.
Jan 212023
Virginia boy who shot teacher Abigail Zwerner told another he was going to set her on fire
The *six* year old who shot his teacher a while back seems to have been a real charmer. He had a history of being someone who should have been drop-kicked out of a public school classroom directly into a “facility” of some kind. And of course the bureaucracy was cool with that behavior:
School downplayed warnings about 6-year-old before teacher’s shooting, staffers say
On one occasion, the boy wrote a note telling a teacher he hated her and wanted to light her on fire and watch her die, according to the teacher’s account. Alarmed, the teacher brought the note to the attention of Richneck administrators and was told to drop the matter, according to the account. … On a second occasion, the boy threw furniture and other items in class, prompting students to hide beneath their desks, according to the account. Another time, the teacher alleges in her account, the boy barricaded the doors to a classroom, preventing a teacher and students from leaving.
Yeah, no. Kids such as that do *not* belong in society. Further evidence:
“Our son suffers from an acute disability and was under a care plan at the school that included his mother or father attending school with him and accompanying him to class every day. Additionally, our son has benefitted from an extensive community of care that also includes his grandparents working alongside us and other caregivers to ensure his needs and accommodations are met. The week of the shooting was the first week when we were not in class with him. We will regret our absence on this day for the rest of our lives.”
If the parents have to not only accompany the kid to school but *stay* there with him… school ain’t the place for him.
When I was that kids age, my family had a pet St. Bernard. Great dog, as my faint and vague memory serves, but he started to act like maybe he was sick. In the end, my parents sent him to go “live on a farm.” Perhaps a similar sort of farm can be found for kids like this. Because installing him within classrooms:
1) Endangers teachers
2) Endangers other kids
3) Damages the other kids education
4) Costs excessive resources
5) Doesn’t benefit *anybody* including the monster child in question.
There is no rational or valid reason for putting threats like this in a classroom. If you would not put a rabid racoon in a classroom, why a psychopath?
The stupid, strong
Unteachable monsters are certain to be victorious at last,
And every man of decent blood is on the losing side.
Take as your model the tall women with yellow hair in plaits
Who walked back into burning houses to die with men,
Or him who as the death spear entered into his vitals
Made critical comments on its workmanship and aim.
Jan 212023
Billy the cat spent a good long while in quarantine. He started off with a pretty bad upper respiratory infection, treated with antibiotics; this took more than a week to clear up. He also had ear mites, treated with drops. He only left quarantine and entered gen pop on Wednesday.
Billy is quite aggressively friendly with me, increasingly friendly with other humans. But Banshee, true to form, absolutely loses her mind when she sees him, shrieking, growling, hissing. This has unsettled the other cats; even Buttons, normally absolutely chill, has been spooked. Billy, for his part, hisses at the other cats if they get too close. This will, no doubt, work itself out in time. But the one I really kinda feel bad for is Speedbump: he and Billy are both mostly black cats, most readily discerned by Billys oranger eyes and smaller size. But Banshee seems unable to tell them apart and loses her mind at Speedbump. This upsets him, as he has become reasonably friendly with Banshee.
Here’s Billy helpfully holding down some papers:
Billy has filled out a lot in the weeks I’ve had him. It seems eating on a regular basis appeals to him.
Jan 212023
Filming pistol rounds hitting a steel plate at 250,000 frames per second. Interesting detail: almost all impacts generate a flash. Since the bullets are lead or lead and copper and the steel plate is almost undamaged, it seems the flash is probably air being compressed to incandescence between hammer and anvil rather than superheated bits of metal sparking.
Jan 212023
Below, a twitter thread discussing a recent increase in the appearance of air defense systems in and around Moscow, including Vlad Putin;s digs. The optimistic way of looking at this: every missile placed near Russia is a missile not placed near Ukraine. The pessimistic outlook: you generally don;t go to this kind of bother and expense to take weapons systems *away* from an ongoing conflict unless you have a reason to. It seems the Russians seem to think that the conflict is going to expand to aircraft attacking Moscow. Do they think the Ukrainians are going to do that? Or are they expecting NATO to do that? if so, keep in mind that the excuses being used include “it was a pre-emptive strike against Ukraine because they were going to attack *us.*”
Another possibility is they’re afraid of elements of the Russian Air Force deciding to go a wee bit off mission.
Air defense system spotted near one of Russian dictator Vladimir Putin's residencies in Moscow Oblast. Yesterday, air defense systems started to appear on top of high buildings in the city of Moscow, including the Russian defense ministry. #WhatAirDefenseDoing pic.twitter.com/0sZLUKQLP7
— Euan MacDonald (@Euan_MacDonald) January 20, 2023
I am neither shocked nor upset
Crazy, dumbassery, Forward!, Gah., Meh., news, politics, ಠ_ಠ
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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.