1
This is such a doze of real life. In comparison, my right front parking sensor's bracket is broken. Someone must've swiped it at a parking or something.
Posted by: Pete Zaitcev at Mon Nov 29 23:33:00 2021 (LZ7Bg)
2
I think I commented when you used that image around this time in a previous year how awesome it is, and just how much fodder is in there for a story. I should really try my hand at writing a short story based on that, it would be good practice.
Great to hear you're back to work and managing to hang in there. I'm pretty sure I couldn't do the work you describe right now myself, and I have no excuse!
Posted by: David at Tue Nov 30 00:44:35 2021 (t/97R)
3
@David I was just glad to find out who drew it and credit the artist.
Posted by: The Brickmuppet at Fri Dec 3 17:32:06 2021 (5iiQK)
Yay! Kudos to the jury, who were under obscene pressure and in genuine fear while they did due diligence with their deliberations..and nevertheless held fast.
1
Twelve ordinary people, picked at random and fed lies by their government, still did a better job at reaching the truth than the nation's self-appointed elites.
Infinitely better.
Posted by: Pixy Misa at Sat Nov 20 00:22:04 2021 (PiXy!)
2
I hope he goes after everyone who defamed him, right up to Dementia Joe (although I suspect the courts won't let him sue Joe.)
Posted by: Rick C at Sat Nov 20 11:36:02 2021 (Z0GF0)
3
I was very happy (understatement) to hear he was found not guilty. I'm looking forward to the defamation suits.
In unrelated news, I had to look up the source for that one gif above, and have been listening to Brown Eyed Girls and other K-Pop all day now. Not sure whether to thank you or not...
Posted by: David at Sat Nov 20 19:04:54 2021 (t/97R)
1
Actually... A few years back, I went to a health expo at the local hospital. They had a trainer machine for microsurgery, with little controls and two little manipulators. The task was to try to tie a tiny knot.
Well, most of the people were old ladies and did not get very far, and I could not even figure out how to start. But a young boy sat down and zwip, knot tied.
And that is when the surgeon explaining the machine took the kid and his grandma aside, and started explaining how he might have a future in microsurgery....
Posted by: Suburbanbanshee at Sat Nov 13 22:03:31 2021 (sF8WE)
Simping Mishaps and Sodabags
My re-acclimation to bachelordom continues, with my home about 30% in order now, though the airing out of the house has been delayed by 2 days of rain and 40 degree weather. I have borrowed a tote box from work and have been filling it with books to practice lifting it, in preparation to my return to work Monday. I still can't run and talking is difficult but I'm otherwise fully functional.
Because of the rain , after my workout I spent the day scrolling through news sites, science and technology channels...and watching V-tubers. Because of deep character flaws on my part, I decided to 'gift 3 subs' to one of them. That is, gift 3 subscriptions randomly to the chat community. This digital equivalent to throwing change into the can of a street musician would be worthy of no note had I not committed some inexplicably act of PEBCAK which resulted in the Twitch page thanking me for gifting 31 subs to some wolf girl from Sweden.
"AAAUUUUGGHHH!"
I'm still not clear how I hit the 1.
That was the most ignominious loss of $154.69 that I've suffered in some time.
However the day was not a total loss.
Recognizing that staying inside is no protection from misfortune or my own idiocy, I went to the drugstore.
You see, today I had finally gotten my prescriptions transferred to the local drugstore, which was a surprisingly complex process that has taken 2 days. After that, being in possession of a coupon, I decided to go to KFC to get a bucket of chicken. This will last me several days and provide some respite from the kippers and miso soup I'm eating until I reenter the workforce on Monday. I don't drink much soda, especially post-stroke, but I decided to get a 2 liter bottle to go with the bird meat fried in hot grease & to add some variety to the unsweetened tea and water that I'm drinking, but mostly because it was on the coupon.
Again, none of this would be worthy of comment had they not informed me that they had no 2 liter bottles to sell.
Instead, they had the"half gallon bag of soda".
Wat?
Why?
Has Kentucky Fried Chicken been bought out by Canadians?
Without the Mountain Dew Bottle's green tint, this just looks like a KFC branded bag of piss. This does not strike me as appetizing. Who the hell thought this was a good idea? And while one half of a gallon is slightly less than 2 liters...this ain't nearly a half gallon. And it's in a fricking BAG! Why? What is happening to the world?
In other news. I've got cable and high speed internet again, so does anybody have any shows to recommend?
1
Hmmm, from the current season? I just finished the first 5 episodes of "Sekai Saikou no Ansatsusha, Isekai Kizoku ni Tensei suru" (World's greatest Assassin gets reincarnated as an aristocrat).The first episode was a cool actioner, but the rest is the kind of Isekai where the MC is reborn with his memories, and grows up with everything going according to plan. What the title doesn't reveal is the aristocratic family he's born into is a house of Assassins and healers, and the Goddess wants him to kill the world's hero. The animation is fairly good, and the tone swings from light to really dark in spots, so it's a bit on the mature side.
Posted by: Mauser at Sat Nov 6 03:55:02 2021 (Ix1l6)
Voting Day Observations
As some of you know, I live in the Commonwealth of Virginia, the current elections in which, is, at the moment, the focus of a great deal of attention from national pundits as it is assumed to be a bellweather.
As they are constitutionally mandated to happen every other odd numbered year, Virginia's elections are not just 'off year' elections, they are double secret off-year elections.
Turnout tends to be even lower than the turnout in non-presidential federal elections we have on alternating even numbered years.
I've been voting since 1988, and I have NEVER seen a line at the polls stretching out into the rain on an off year, let alone a state election. That was the case this afternoon.
I was pleased to see that the dems had not removed all the Republican election signs from outside the polling place as is their habit. It IS possible that they were simply replaced, by Republican poll-workers but there was no pile of Republican election signs at the usual spot in my neighborhood.
To my surprise, Deanna Stanton, the Republican Candidate for the local house of delegates seat was just outside the "no campaigning line" actively greeting people in the parking lot and handing out sample ballots...which helped in identifying who to vote for for school board as school board elections and candidate positions are notoriously opaque and their party affiliation is , by law, not listed on the ballot.
In this blue district she has a snowballs chance in a blast furnace, but it was nice to see a Republican with pluck and verve making a go of it.
Despite much hyperventilation , and McCaullif's odious nature, I'm not optimistic.
Democrats are like tonail fungus in that when you get them in control of your government they are almost impossible to get rid of. They put in place laws district borders and pollworkers to ensure their perpetuation. They also have undeniable appeal to a segment of the electorate:
Enthusiasm is certainly very high in this blue city.
Still, it's good to see people care enough to vote in one of these off-year elections.
I'm not very optimistic, but in a couple of hours we'll know.
UPDATE: It's been a couple of hours...we know nothing. Mcauliffe did not concede and instead noted that they had lots of votes to count, before walking off the stage with a Cheshire Cat grin on his face. In most definitely unrelated news, Fairfax, the most populous county in the state announced that they have had "difficulties" and won't know anything for a while. Youngkin has a comfortable lead that will soon be firm enough to establish how many votes will be needed to be found in Fairfax to catch up.
Neither is particularly anxious to make such a call, so I'm cautiously optimistic. I'm tired so I'm going to bed, and hope I'm not disappointed when I wake up.
UPDATE: McAuliffe conceded! Bill Clinton's bag-man and bundler, the guy who set Virginia on a path that has seen it circling the drain for the last 8 years, has finally thrown in the towel. There is a chance, however slim, of turning this around.
1
Ace has the flaming skull up. Looking good at this point.
Posted by: Pixy Misa at Tue Nov 2 20:45:37 2021 (PiXy!)
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I am surprised that the Dems actually seem to care about being seen stealing elections this year, given they did not give a damn last year.
Ace did have a screen capture of a Usual Suspect, using the CNN exit poll, saying how 'only' 30% of Hispanics voting GOP is a good thing for the Democrats. I guess it is objectively true (It is, after all, proving that Hispanics are not overwhelming supporting the GOP.) but it should be very ominous to the Usual Suspects.
Posted by: cxt217 at Tue Nov 2 22:53:58 2021 (MuaLM)
After 2020, hindisght suggests that the Dems were cheating a /lot/. AS in, much more than you would expect from putting together the pieces around Segregation, additionally drawing conclusions about the consent decree, and considering the reputations of the big machine cities.
Old Dem logic seems to be that refusing to accept any losses queers the grift.
New Dem logic appeared very much to be a communist type 'we have the thousand year reich now, time to start murdering, and stop worrying about elections'.
Is this remnant old Dems, with enough pull now to try to return to the old con?
Not important?
A ruse to lull us for some other end game?
Waiting for Friday despite the concession?
The Dem in this race appears to be disciplined enough and loyal to the aprty enough to follow orders to accept a loss.
Maybe he simply doesn't have enough pull to wrangle what was wrangled for last time. Maybe last time was foreign influence, and said influence doesn't see this as worth caring about.
Biden is clearly someone Obama sees as a proxy. Is Virginia internal politics against the Clinton faction? Internal politics /inside/ the Clinton faction?
The basic issue, current regime is a gamble, and seems to have a lot of delusional thinking, and threats it cannot easily deliver on or bluffs. And the bluffs are important internally, if only to keep people not deeply implicated in the gamble from deciding the stakes are too rich and trying to defect.
Failing this steal would be a sign of weakness, and could be the straw that breaks the camel's back. Of course, so could spendign too much to 'win' this one. The effers have got themselves into a game where they cannot calculate the failure point of things, and at the same time they are deeply convinced that they have a reliable predictive theory, and that it shows them winning.
So, I really dunno what just happened.
Posted by: PatBuckman at Wed Nov 3 23:05:12 2021 (r9O5h)
4
Maybe we are seeing the effects of the Democrat Party/White House civil war - with at least five sides fully engaged - spilling out into real world effects. Although, that would support the 'Don't care that people know they are cheating anymore, no matter the scale" argument, so...
Posted by: cxt217 at Thu Nov 4 22:28:51 2021 (MuaLM)
Technology Ahead of It's Time
Many of you are familiar with Steve1989's YouTube channel. He collects and reviews survival rations and emergency kits, mostly military from various eras.
Steve's notoriety comes from the fact that, being a Florida-Man, he tries to eat the old ration kits if possible, and his deadpan commentary combined with childlike enthusiasm means hilarity frequently ensues. This is particularly true in the pre-1970s ration kits where at least some components are usually inedibly rancid resulting in his transcendental joy when he finds something like a partially edible K-Rat from 1943.
However that is not nearly as impressive as the video I blundered into today. Last year, he opened a U.S. survival ration from 1906. It consisted of three sets of vitamin fortified mystery beef, and three sets of chocolate.
While grim, the ration was completely edible after 114 years and held up MUCH better than much more recent rations. While the newer C-rats and MREs are no doubt vastly better for morale, the shelf life of the 1906 ration is unbeatable. This ration was a much more basic bit of sustenance, intended for in-extremis situations, and can be eaten cold or as a stew in one's mess kit. It is actually more advanced in some ways than the WW2 ration kits. The packaging involved is pretty sophisticated and elegant even by today's standards, and it actually has slightly more calories than a modern MRE in about 2/3 to half the volume.
On the debit side, it's...pemmican and chocolate, kinda grim, with no other menu options.
But it is not intended to be a general purpose meal, one had other options for that, like mobile canteens, rather this was intended for forced marches and traveling light for a few days.
And at least this one kept more than a century. It would be nice, in these interesting times, if these were still being produced. They are much more compact than the modern alternatives that are (dubiously) advertised as lasting a fifth as long.
It should be noted that this is a slightly more advanced and mechanically refined version of a British emergency ration from the 1890s, which inspired it. That one did not hold up quite as well, but even it was partially edible after 121 years.
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