1 Stuff like this is why Putin wins the propaganda war.

2 Stuff like this is why cockroaches look forward to the future.

3 It's amazing the number of headlines with "Obama" in them that fuel nightmares.  I've taken to eating Welsh Rarebit before bed just to get a little relief.

1 This is another one that calls for a rocket launcher.

2 (Wikipedia check)

OK, so those giant jaws don't have the musculature behind them to hurt a human.  Too little leverage.

That's a male, though.  The females have short jaws that don't have that problem.  So, face-sized insects that bite hard enough to draw blood.

I'll just stay here in Minnesota where our winters keep the crazy insects to a manageable size.  Yellowjackets are bad enough.

3

Something gawdawful like this really should have been from Australia. Everything else is.

4 If we can't get rocket launchers, can we at least get that 40-foot-tall guy from the snake post and give him a big flyswatter?

5 It blows my mind that this thing can fly. And if I saw one coming, I'd want a tennis racket (which I don't own one of).

6 Nnnnnnnope!

7 In retrospect, my last comment didn't go far enough.  Let me rectify that situation now.

1 That looks like it's going to be stunningly good.

2 Not sure about this one.

3 It will be interesting to watch how this does, because the director (Hiromasa Yonebayashi) is only 41, and the question for years has been what will happen to Ghibli once Miyazaki and Takahata are gone.  And it certainly looks the part.

4

Studio Ghibli just announced they are shutting down their film studio. I wonder if they'll finish this film before they do?

5 I just finished reading the announcement, and yes, they are going to finish this one.

6 Actually, it turns out they already did.

1 A pistol seems like an inadequate weapon against that ant. I think he'd be better off with an anti-tank missile, don't you?

2 "They ain't so bad if'n ya shoot'em in the antenner!"

3 Check out YouTube for the fine times that can be had with a Fire Ant hill and a crucible of molten aluminum.

On July 21st 1919 this all came to an end when, shortly after takeoff from Grant Park, Wingfoot Air Express caught fire directly over the Chicago Loop. The crew and passengers attempted to use their parachutes, but only the captain and mechanic survived as the dirigible exploded, fouling the other chutes in the collapsing rigging or setting them afire. 

1 An airfield was built outside of town...

...which is now known as Chicago Midway International Airport.  The more you know!

1 Are you thinking maybe the snake stopped for a photo op on the way out the door?

A dark age does not come about because a society simply can't do something they did before. That can happen because of a setback, changing conditions or hard times. Rather, a dark age is when the members of a society no longer believe that the society's great accomplishments could have possibly been achieved by mortals. 

1 I'm too young to remember the sixties, but I'm told by reliable sources that there was no shortage of idiots; they just didn't have internet access.

As a wise man once said, the stupid you will always have with you.

2 Have you heard that Dark Ages were much better than Roman Empire for a common European? The caloric intake went up, for one. The lovers of the powerful state shed the tears for the fall of Rome, naturally, and they weaved all sorts of myth about the awful Dark Ages, but I'm not sure which one was actually darker. Rome was an awful society.

3 That sidebar is a wonderful source of names to write down in This Book

1 I thought the Thing duplicated only the physical aspects of a person, and not the minds and thoughts of the person.  No matter what it looked like, its thoughts were far from noble...

1 Also, this:
 

2 Also also, this:


Yes, that's who you think it is playing Sir Isaac.

3 And this:


That first one has gone totally viral.

4 Also, also, also this:

1

The spammers don't care about your readers. They only care about the googlebot. This is one form of SEO.

Ironically, it doesn't work. Google got wise to it a long time ago, and now it actually reduces their page-rank. But the SEO-service companies don't tell their customers that, for obvious reasons.

2 Precisely, Spammers don't advertise their OWN product, the spam IS their product.  They get people to pay them for "Internet Marketing" and this is what they get.

I once contacted a company that I was getting e-Mail spam from, and they were horrified and promptly apologized and said they were firing that marketing company.

3 Seriously though, turn on the registered users only option, at least until the spambots drop you from their list as not working.  And I notice that they concentrate on certain old posts (probably because they have a list of links as input), I wouldn't hurt to lock those particular posts.

4 I did not even bother with enabling mandatory registration. Locking alone works great. I can't see why Ken is so obstinent about permitting comments on very old posts. Perhaps there were valuable comments.

5 He's probably just busy and hasn't gotten around to it yet.

I have a couple of weeks off work starting Monday to catch up on stuff, and I'll be putting an autolock option in place first thing.

6 I locked everything over 90 days old.  That should help - almost all of the spam was on posts from last year.

1 Poser Pro plus YouTube = eBook conversion software plus Amazon.

The gatekeepers have been circumvented, and those who are committed to impressing the gatekeepers are feeling very threatened.

2 Sorry, but I do not consider these attempts at second-guessing very successful.

3 As for the "venom" directed at this show, I think there have always been people who "hate" something that they could easily avoid (just ask my dad about any sci-fi).  Before the Internet, they had to actually leave their house and go somewhere else to vent at fans of their "hated" activity.  But now, thanks to the miracle of modern technology, they can find fans to annoy with only a few mouse clicks.

As for me, I found the show uneven, but still enjoyable.  And you can't argue with the price...

4 Actually, the bit about the venomous criticism was supposed to have a hyperlink to a particular article THAT I CANNOT FIND NOW.  It was going on a tear about how this is hust glorified fanfic and they shouldn't be getting all this attention when they're basically nobodies. I only now realized that I didn't include the hyperlink. 
Alas. 

5 I don't mind RWBY existing in the abstract, but showing it on Crunchy materially impacts my intrerests due to incremental opportunity costs. At least all the K-junk and Live Action stuff they show has own section.

6

7 The idea being that Crunchy only has X resources and spending those resources on RWBY means that there are other shows that they're not showing? Not sure I buy that, for a few reasons:

-It's unlikely Crunchy is spending significant cash to get the rights in the first place.

-Nor is Crunchy primarily limited by physical factors such as storage space; bandwidth sure, but I doubt that RWBY is a major portion of the bandwidth of a service that streams Naruto and several other shounen offerings. And, to the extent that it is, it's directly proportional to the popularity of the show, so if lots of people are watching, that's an argument by itself that people are interested.

-It's perfectly fair to note that RWBY has some flaws. It's got a disjointed narrative, it's got Teen Titans syndrome (where it's taking a more Western kind of story, but throwing in a lot of anime facial cues and takes for humor, even more jarring here because they're not always suited to the 3D rendered medium), and the acting is, well...

I hate to criticize any voice actors because it's bloody goddamned hard to do well. The average US viewer has been exposed to top-quality Hollywood acting and production values, not that I'm saying that everything Hollywood does is top-quality, but if you've seen some Japanese live-action you can appreciate the gap in general production values. With respect to voice acting, we're partly insulated from bad Japanese voice acting because most of us don't speak the language and even a mediocre performance doesn't necessarily set off the "this is poor quality" alarm when it's in Japanese. In English not so much. I suck at voice acting and people who can give a good performance in the booth, and get a good performance out of actors in the booth, have a rare talent; I prefer subtitles for the obvious reasons but can appreciate a good dub.

Let us just say RWBY's acting falls short even with that in mind.

-And yet... it's still a good thing that RWBY is on Crunchy, because it's got its own charm, I happen to enjoy it despite the above, and above all, giving this kind of project some oxygen is a positive development. If RWBY can do well, other teams can emulate them with their own stories (and Rooster Teeth can follow up with a new offering and take advantage of some hard-won experience.)

Think of it like e-books and self-publishing. Yeah, at the beginning many of the projects were mediocre quality, but a few successes gave a lot of people opportunities they simply wouldn't have had before, and while there's a lot of crap, there are quite a few gems to be found here and there.

1 I presume that these are your classmates at university that are "quizzing" you, and I can guess the nature of the "social justice bugaboos" they're quizzing you on.  In my opinion, if they're spurning you over disagreements like this, they weren't really your friends to being with, they're just recruitment officers for The Cause.  You're better off without them.

Besides, we learn to despise those to whom we must lie.

OTOH, some people automatically despise those who disagree with them--and the only lying necessary is when they pat themselves on the back for their tolerance and openmindedness.   (I think it was J Greely who wrote something like, "...and they'll never realize that they're the ugly bigots".) 

2

 I presume that these are your classmates at university that are "quizzing" you,  [/quote]
Sadly no. Of course I get a little bit of that on occasion, but it would not merit comment. I any event, being so close to graduation, I keep the mask firmly fitted while on campus.
No, this warrented comment because these are people I've known for years.
6 months ago my twitter feed began filling up with bile. The culprit was a fellow I've known for 24 years, who is a bit of a hippy but has always been an interesting fellow and a very decent guy. He was someone that In a lot of ways I'd admired because he'd overcome some serious obstacles to raise a family and pursue an education. I hadn't heard from him except in short tweets and E-mail exchanges for about two years. 
The bile in question was rage aimed at MSNBC for firing Martin Bashir as my friend was of the opinion that what Bashir said , that Sarah Palin should be tied down and have someone crap in her mouth, was quite reasonable. Now I am not a fan of the school of thought that saying anything that offends someone is a hate crime...but there are points at which one is no longer engaged in reasoned discourse, and that seems to  not qualify as such.  My friend felt that she should be raped as well and linked approvingly to a Dan Savage piece that suggested that she have nails driven into her during the process so that her screaming in agony would prevent her from closing her mouth . I pointed out that my friend had a daughter, and surely he did not want her to grow up in a world where talking about a woman that way was acceptable. He responded that his daughter was a progressive and so this was not about her and I was a fool and a misogynist for suggesting that it was. I asked if he'd still love his daughter if she came home from college a Tea Partier. He said no he wouldn't...he'd disown her. I made some clumsy analogy to the tragedy of homophobic parents cutting off their gay children and the conversation deteriorated from there cumulating in a multi question quiz, which I failed.
A few weeks ago I was asked to sign a petition by someone I've been on friendly terms with for over 15 years, though like the other one I hadn't seen him IRL in a couple of years. I did not sign the petition which I considered well intentioned but flawed. The fellow was floored and hurt. When I explained my concern he expressed his deep and profound disappointment at discovering I had a diverging opinion....all messages from the mailing list we were both members of stopped shortly thereafter.
I could go on, but won't, the point is that over the last 6 months 3, possibly 4 people I've known for over a decade have decided to do an assessment of my views, found me wanting and cut me off lest they be associated with me. 


It used to be possible to have friends with wildly different worldviews, but we are becoming so polarized that society is breaking up in an almost tribal fashion. Said tribes don't associate and membership in the tribes is determined by questions that are graded digitally.
How I long for the days of analog.

Even more than the current fusillade of scandals and the stuff happening overseas, this dynamic worries and saddens me. 

3 Hmmm...I have NO idea what happened with the formatting there...odd.

4 These individuals lack real compassion. The real thing has no political filters. Compassionate understanding does not require that you agree with a person's viewpoint, but it can be a starting point for honest dialog. 
I suspect these 'friends' found the self-examination and openness that real compassion requires too strenuous, and have found comfort in conforming to The Narrative. Now that they are well mired in it, for you to say anything that questions that comfort is something only The Enemy would do.
Progressive Fundamentalism. The penultimate comfort of those who have abandoned hope.

5 Sadly no...this warrented comment because these are people I've known for years.

I was mistaken about that; it must be upsetting to have long-time friends turn on you like that.  (I must admit that sort of thing hasn't happened to me yet, at least not to that level of viciousness.)  OTOH, my original opinion hasn't changed--at the end of the day, you're better off without these people in your life.  (Especially that first fellow you mentioned--what a nasty piece of work!  You showed him much more forbearance than I would have if I were in your shoes.)

It used to be possible to have friends with wildly different worldviews, but we are becoming so polarized that society is breaking up in an almost tribal fashion.

If I may express another opinion: that bodes very ill for the future.  I'd wager that, in history, this sort of "us vs. them" mentality has helped start civil wars, or has weakened countries to the point that they become easy prey for invaders.

6

If I may express another opinion:

Wait. What? Express an OPINION?...in the USA? What disgracious heresy is this?

 I'd wager that, in history, this sort of "us vs. them" mentality has helped start civil wars, or has weakened countries to the point that they become easy prey for invaders.

You would win that wager I'm afraid. 

7 As a secondary wager, how much would you like to bet that that is the goal?

8 On the bright side, you have some truly persistent spambots.

9 Indeed! If I can just harness their power then world domination will be in my grasp!

10 As a secondary wager, how much would you like to bet that that is the goal?

That wouldn't surprise me...however, if that is the goal of certain people out there, they may want to think twice.  "Be careful what you wish for, you may get it."

11

In the 50 + years I have been on this earth one word to the wise I recieved early on and stuck with me was that in this life one has in truth only a few "True" friends. Most can be counted on your fingers. All the others you cross paths with in live are really just acquaintances.

1 When I first saw that image I thought it was a photoshop. My second reaction to it was "Jet liners returning to their spawning ground to breed"...

2

"Jet liners returning to their spawning ground to breed"

So that's why Boeing originally built its factory in the Pacific Northwest...

3 I realized immediately what had occurred, but only because a recent issue of Trains magazine had an article on odd rail cargo... submarine reactor vessels, blades for windmills, other trains, buildings, 737 fuselages, that sort of thing.

It's hardly a "fiasco," it's an unfortunate derailment at a bad spot for it.  Insurance, either Boeing's or the railcarrier's, will cover replacement costs. 

4 And only losing three fusilages like this is going to affect their shipment schedules, but not by damned much.

5 "Jet liners returning to their spawning ground to breed"

And they're extra-phallic when they don't have their wings on.

"blades for windmills"

Forget the train derailments... google image search for "windmill blade truck" and tell me those things aren't spooky...

6 Bet you didn't know that jet liners are tri-sexual, did you?

7 "Loggers in Montana are shown harvesting 737 Fuselages. These three will soon be floated down the river to the mill...."

Yeah, we joked a bit about this at work.

That's barely a day's production at the Renton plant. They send 43 737's a month out the door, and that's still not enough.  They're working on pumping it up to 47.

All without the morale-busting levels of mandatory overtime we have to deal with on my line.

8 Actually, this IS a big enough concern, it could disrupt production for about three days.

1 I voted for "bonecrushingly stupid" very quickly.

1 I've recently seen some "pretty-girl-with-big-gun" pictures (both real-person photographs and manga-style drawings) where the people involved actually seem to understand the basics of firearms safety, i.e. the pretty girl keeps her finger off the trigger.  That makes a refreshing change of pace in the world of cheesy, exploitative imagery.

2 Now if only she were holding it correctly. the butt goes against one's shoulder, not the crook of one's elbow. She's gonna hurt herself if she sets it off like that.

3 And then I read the article....

1 I see robot-girl returns.  I wonder if we'll learn more about her manufacture back-story...

2 I'm pretty sure we will. She and her team are seen briefly in the OP.
 (...and she does not look to be happy to be there). I note that it looks like Pyrrha is going toe to toe with one of the big three baddies. Yangs new uniform looks very Matsumoto-ie.