November 30, 2019

Pixiv Just Sold Pawoo



Here's a quick Google Translate of relevant portion of the notice I got in my Pawoo account.

Pixiv Co., Ltd. (Head office: Shibuya-ku, Tokyo, Representative Director: Shingo Kunieda) has a Mastodon instance "Pawoo" operated on December 2, 2019. Crossgate Corporation (Funabashi City, Chiba Prefecture, Russell Co., Ltd. (Chiyoda-ku, Tokyo, Representative Director: Tatsuya Yonekawa) took over the operation.  With the transfer, the operating company of "Pawoo” will be changed to Crossgate Co., Ltd. and Russell Co., Ltd. from December 2, 2019. "Pawoo” will continue to be operated as an independent site by Crossgate Inc. and Russell Inc. You can continue to use your current account.  We thank you for your continued patronage of "Pawoo” at our company, and even after the operating company has been changed to Crossgate Co., Ltd. and Russell Co., Ltd., we will continue to show off "Pawoo” as before. Thank you very much.


I have no idea what, if anything, that bodes for Pixiv (or Pawoo) or anything about Crossgate incorporated or Russell incorporated, the two (!?) companies that will be running Pawoo from now on.

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November 29, 2019

Adventures in Steam Engineering and Their Applicability to the Precautionary Principle.

So. I put a piece of leftover chicken in the microwave this afternoon for 45 seconds as I have done many, many times before. At about 30 seconds there was a loud explosion as the as the flesh of the chicken bird evenly dispersed itself around the interior of my microwave.

It's all clean now but golly, I haven't had a microwave mishap like that since that time when I was a kid...with the egg.

So perhaps the takeaway here is that moisture can flash to steam in unpredictable ways. However, if  we were to err on the side of caution and assume that chickens of any age have the potential to interact catastrophically with radiation, then this has implications!



"We'll have to take iguanas to mars instead!"

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November 28, 2019

Things to Be Thankful For

Dev just showed up in Discord chat.

The Blizzard Police(tm) did not get him.

The Gearbox Goons did not get him.

A polar bear did not get him.

So all my theories were wrong.

(Rumor is his internet is out. Or more properly oout.)



Actual footage of Komomo Niji by Saru.

Komomo Niji, the Chinese voice of Girls Frontline's UMP9 was in ">Australia when the Chinese Govt found out about her old tweets.


Art's a repost by Galibo who now seems to be setting up a Booth page.

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Isekai no Kanshasai: Thanksgiving in Another World

Thanksgiving is a quintessentially American holiday, but it wouldn't be isekai without anachronisms, so here we go.

  Some adventuring party giving thanks for a successful dungeon crawl by RFF


Thankful bunny mummy is by Romana


Muzzle, Spring and Trigger-Chan; the Trigger Mascots, brazenly appropriating our cultures is by Sasamori Tomoe


Meanwhile, in the real world...




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November 27, 2019

There is So Much There That is so Very Admirable, and There is so Very Little Hope

Lech Walesa is going to Hong Kong. There's an interview of him last week by Marc Thiessen and Danielle Pletka here.

The people of Hong Kong have shown indefatigable courage in their tenacious attempt to preserve their most precious freedoms. Vast swaths of their population have participated in peaceful protests and voted in the face of intimidation and terror. They risked everything physical and have stood their ground in the face of tyranny despite an assurance that if they loose this they will be sent to the most brutal of gulags.

The people of Hong Kong are putting everything on the line for the most precious freedoms in a fight based on principles that they can likely not win, against a system that is institutionally dedicated to violating those freedoms.


We can offer the Hong Kongers little beyond prayers and support. However, part of that support is to withdraw it from those who continue to Kow-Tow to their tormentors. This cancer will not stay in the Pearl River Estuary. It is already here and metastasizing.

Here in America and much of the west, our captains of industry and media have been implacably relentless in their  pursuit of Chinese markets and investment, eagerly sacrificing our most precious freedoms for vast quantities of Yuan and an assurance that they will be spared any inconvenience. Those among them for whom the merciless obliteration of Muslims serves to blow ever so lightly upon the dying embers of their conscience, smother those uncomfortable sparks by reminding themselves that its being done to those they hate as well.

Here, despite institutional safeguards that are the envy of much of the world, and when preservation of our rights still requires no physical risk and just the modicum of courage required to risk one's social circle, our creative and administrative classes are  working overtime to bypass those safeguards to get those pesky rights out of their hair.

The loathsome Quisling was less despicable than these recreants, at least his country was conquered first.






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November 23, 2019

Lamarckism, Big Data, Arrogance and the Path to Perdition

While conducting a search for "leaked Google memo" (as one does) I blundered into this video, which is allegedly an internal video that is, allegedly, required viewing among senior management.



As for the provenance, after uploading it to Bitchute, I successfully tracked it down to an article at The Verge which was published 19 months ago, so this is not breaking news, but it is really creepy.

Only eight minutes long, it starts off with a explanation of the sort of proto-evolutionary theories of a Frenchman named Lamarck, the mention of whom, if you are not in a history of science class, is generally a sign that things are about to go terribly pear shaped, because Lamark's theories are better known under the name Lysenkoism.

The video name drops a few other very smart people and at the 4 minute mark the video gets to subtly and then not so subtly creepy until by the end it looks like a manifesto of a supervillian organization or a cult.

It isn't just the business aspect of big data, (which is worrisome enough given  the context of how a 3d printer is used here), it's the fact that the ideas put forth and the goals are profoundly anti individualistic and diametrically opposed to free speech.

Anyway.

Watch the whole thing.
But not before bed...because this is high octane nightmare fuel.

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A Bad Week For Musk

First his rocket goes all 'splody and then this happens...



In fairness, it probably would stop almost any handgun round aside from those in the same class as .45/70, heck, a ball bearing of that size would crack, but not penetrate a lot of armored glass. Still, unlike the rocket, which was being intentionally pushed to it's limits in a test,  this was an inconceivably ill-thought out demo that has distracted from what ought to have been a very impressive roll-out. Also, couldn't they have come up with a better name than CyberTruck.

Unforced errors aside, the claimed stats for this thing are quite impressive, 500 miles on a charge is beyond respectable for any EV.  The body, unlike the glass, performed in the dent test against the sledgehammer quite well, and the fact that it's made out of STAINLESS STEEL is important and potentially game changing for a pickup. 



 Coverage of this unveiling has universally seemed to dismiss the notion that anyone in the current pickup truck market would be interested in this thing. This is not necessarily true and seems to be more a reflection of how the media views people who own pickup trucks than any insight into their needs.

To be sure there will be and should be some healthy skepticism, but this angry, shiny trapezoid is in the price range of an F-150 and handily bests it in most areas, at least on paper. A 7 US ton towing capacity and 16 inches of clearance are vastly superior stats to other pickups in the price range.This model has a crew cab and its bed (or "vault"because...Tesla) is advertised as 6.5 feet long which is 18inches too short for standard pieces of plywood with the tailgate closed. It's much closer than most crew cab trucks are in this regard though and there looks to be more than enough room with the tailgate down, so a stowable bed extender, perhaps in what appear to be 2 compartments in the very thick sides of the bed would potentially make this a really solid and desirable work truck for any tradesman, farmer, or contractor, especially given that sledgehammer-proof stainless steel body. However, one of the reasons that material is so important is that pickup trucks often go fording and mucking and I'm not sure that I trust an electric vehicle to handle water well or to be safe to stand next to when it's driving through high salt or brackish water. This drive train and power pack need to be demonstrated to be safe and durable in water.

Hopefully Musk will check with his engineers first and not electrocute himself in the process.

If that is done with no shocking revelations then this odd looking but theoretically capable and competitively priced truck has the potential to make impressive inroads into the massive U.S. truck and crossover market despite its Syd Mead styling.




I must confess I actually like the styling.



I had never considered what would happen if a DeLorean had sex with a CitiCar. Now I know.

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November 22, 2019

Bitchute Question

Has anybody else lost all of their subscriptions?

Just asking.

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November 21, 2019

And Now, For A Truly Earth-Shaking Development

Don, he of the Zoological Practical Scooper has, after 7 years, finally been proven wrong about something.

Long ago he wrote this...

Joshiraku — Nobody is ever likely to license this.


Now he notes this. Yes. Joshiraku has been licensed and is for sale.

He has thoughts on the show, several other shows, and the translations thereof, but you'll have to go there to see them.

The Rakugo girls have thoughts on the matter...


"Ha!"

Yes ladies. Mock the poor man's error, dance upon his failure, but know that in time your celebration will surely taste like ashes. You see, the takeaway from all this, is that today, November 21,2019, Lord Don of Shuffly, usually such a reliable gauge what gems might be found in the vast proof of Sturgeon's law that is the current anime industry, was wrong about something in a review of his.

The end times; they are well and truly upon us.

 

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Great Discoveries are Sometimes Unacknowledged When They Happen



One of the Brickmuppet's Crack Team of Science Babes takes a moment to tell us that John Michael Godier has a 45 minute interview with  Dr. Patricia Ann Straat, who was in charge of the detect life experiment in the Viking Landers in '75/76.   She and her team thought they'd found life then but after some initial enthusiasm it was declared a false positive and then pretty much ignored after the new NASA leadership took over in '77. She and others have recently pointed out that the experiments alleged to debunk her team's claims were improperly done and she's got a very strong case that Martian life was detected in 1976. 

But wait. There's more!


"New evidence regarding organics and seasonal methane emissions seems to support her conclusions and if these pan out, it'll be important to remember that it was Dr. Straat and her team who first discovered life on Mars, probably before the first people who will first see it under a microscope were born. "



Time will tell but her argument seems compelling. Indeed, its looking more and more like she's right and that the decision to not put any life detecting experiments on the subsequent probes was ill-conceived at best. She has a book on the topic that is, for some reason, not available in the usual places but you can buy it here.

Full Disclosure: "Science Babe" is actually Makise Kurisu from Stein's Gate, but you know that, because you've seen it, unless you haven't in which case you're wrong.

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Well Then

...That's entertaining



   This is why we test these things to destruction. So we don't throw the crew 500 feet in the air and squirt LOX all over them.


"Twue. I think thatsh the besht spin poshible, so I'sh goin' back to muh consolashun beer."

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November 19, 2019

Public Service Announcement

No really.
It's not just more tasteless videos embedded in lieu of content.

SFO has a very good Readers Digest condensed version of the looming calamity with regard to COPPA in this video. He quotes directly from the legislation and it is truly an example of terrifying obliviousness.



The Quartering has a slightly more in depth analysis. Whatever you think of Jeremy, he actually does a good job here of laying this out blow by blow from the perspective of a YouTuber that creates video game content. He delves a bit deeper into the practical implications of this, especially given the recent and current behavior of You Tube.



Note that this appears that this road to perdition is indeed paved with the best of intentions and far more ignorance than malice. The government regulators, somewhat bewildered at the response have had enough of a neuron fire to ask for public input until December 9th.

Go to this link:

Be polite. Be respectful, and explain in small words why this is an incredibly bad way of solving an actual concern. 

In the meantime we're holding auditions for COPPA compliant Science Babes....





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November 18, 2019

So You Mai Have Noticed That Nice Bosoms are Now Disalowed in Media.

What is this supposed to accomplish?
Because I'm pretty sure that what the ongoing deboobification of media is supposed to accomplish is actually quite distinct from what it actually does accomplish.
Behold...


"W..What the actual hell did I just watch?"

On the one hand, it is reassuring that the internet interprets prudishness as damage and works around it.

On the other hand this is actually creepy and disturbing in a number of ways.
One of the creepier and more disturbing ways is that to fight this, the professionally insecure and offended will probably have to insist leading ladies in anime and vidya be amputees.

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Status

There is Banality below the fold. As compensation, here are some first years playing cribbage on a pink Lee.

more...

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Singing the Songs of His Greatness

As mentioned previously Bob Mitchell passed away a week and a half ago. The funeral was Friday and there was a wake Saturday at his shop.

The second floor was packed, and for almost six hours people took turns relating their Bob stories, both hilarious and poingniant. The tale of how he had upended local fandom with a soda concession and a pig roast was particularly amusing. People had come from as far as California and Florida, and there were people who Bob had helped to get off the street, young men who had been on a path to perdition who brought their wives and children to hear about the guy who had set them straight, and men, who as children had been abused and neglected who Bob told of how Bob had saved them from their parents.

Bob's gone, but he's left a bigger and more positive legacy than most will ever achieve.


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November 16, 2019

Raison d'être

A French phrase (word?) that has been directly appropriated by the English language, the meaning of which is apparently unknown to Gab.



Nicked from Vee's channel, the original post having apparently been deleted.


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November 13, 2019

Well. That Explains Everything

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November 10, 2019

Wow

My Hero Academia is not pulling its punches or padding its story.


Well. THAT got intense quick.

This is really well done on several levels.



Go watch this show. It was worth the wait.

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Today, on the Latest Episode of Ascendence of the Bookworm....




more...

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It's Been 44 Years


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