1
I was reading the linked wiki page, where they have a wonderful panoramic shot of several of those things working a massive strip mine of (lignite!) coal, with what appear to be multiple coal power plants smoking in the distance, and the array of cabling and power boxes to deliver the several megawatts of power just to run the mining, and my thought is "the next German that uses the word "green", "sustainable", or "carbon" in my presence will get slapped."
Unless, of course, this really is just a clever cover for what is really a godzilla fighting intelligent machine eager for blood, in which case there's nothing wrong here.
Posted by: David at Tue Nov 5 20:51:42 2019 (wXI5i)
CELEBRATETODAY IS THE DAY WE ALL CELEBRATE THE WAY WE CAN MAKE OUR ONLINE WRITING LIKE SOCIETIES OUTRAGE, BY PERPETUALLY CRANKING THE INTENSITY OF OUR DISCOURSE UP TO ELEVEN. WE CAN DO THIS BY USING THE CRUISE CONTROL OF COOL, THE QWERTY KEY OF POWER, WHICH ALSO HAPPENS TO BE THE PROPER AND APPROVED WAY OF TYPING ONLINE WEATHER BULLETINS.
In the early 1980s, transit officials in Washington couldn’t figure
out why traffic on the Beltway would grind to a near halt every day
around the exact same time. The usual explanations didn’t fit.
Then
it was discovered that a single driver was to blame. Every day on his
drive to work, this commuter would plant himself in the left lane and
set his cruise control to 55 mph, the posted speed limit, forcing those
behind him to merge right. You can imagine the effects.
It gets better...
To his
credit, this driver came forward in a letter to the editor of the
Washington Post. The man’s name was John O. Nestor. He explained that
the left lane was great; less traffic, less merging — why not ride it
into work every day? Besides, he wrote, "Why should I inconvenience
myself for someone who wants to speed?â€
Fittingly, Nestor was a regulator at the U.S. Food
and Drug Administration. Virtually no drug was worth the risk, according
to Nestor. The FDA transferred him out of the cardio-renal-pulmonary
unit to some bureaucratic backwater because he "had approved no new
chemical entities ... from 1968 to 1972...
So this officious prick caused untold deaths because he stopped ANY
approvals of heart medicine for 4 years. This does not count the deaths
from any accidents he likely caused on the beltway or the people who got
stuck in traffic in an ambulance and died on the way to the ER.
Mr. Nestor wrought all this misery by simply following the rules and
exercising his lawful power over others. His comment about speeders
belied the fact that Nestor was actually a bully. Devoid of empathy, he
derived glee from hurting others with his passive aggressive mischief.
His refusal to approve a single drug for the stated reason of fearing
there might be harm speaks to either profound moral cowardice or fearful
malice.
Jackasses are all around us. But few have had been able to make such a
profound difference by themselves as Mr. Nestor. So today we remember a
truly legendary asshat.
NOTE: The above was originally published in 2013. In order to get reference material for this post I had to search my own blog to find Nestor's name so I just copy-pasted it and fixed the hyperlinks.
It is relevant because I had an unexpectedly intense discussion with a friend this evening about this topic and I could not, for the life of me remember the jackasses name.
It's more relevant to my Virginia readership because in looking it up, to my astonishment, I discovered that...
Actually, they passed it in 2017 to very little fanfare...and even less definition of pokey.
There are good reasons to discourage people from engaging in such despicable behavior...as noted by NPR, and this Canadian, but the Virginia law seems alarmingly vague. Cripes!
Additionally, There are other, less definitive or peer reviewed reasons besides giving a damn about traffic patterns to get out of the way when someone overtaking you flashes their high beams.
Now, let's be clear, when this dreadfully annoying thing occurs, there is a 90-99% chance that the individual coming up behind you is a complete jerk with delusions of autobahn.
But here's the thing.
A few years ago my Dad was pulled over for traveling at...rather excessive speed...in the passing lane, and he had been flashing his high beams to get people out of his way. He explained to the officer that my mom was having a stroke, after some quick checking the officer escorted them to the hospital and no ticket was issued. Mom got there in time. I've known or known of several people in similar straits when they had to determine the minutes it would take to await an ambulance versus the dire need of a loved one. Now there are plenty of reasons why this is, in a macro sense a bad idea. One is after all engaging in a different sort of risky behavior, but cost/risk benefit analysis is less clear cut when dealing with a loved one.
90% or more of high beam flashers are probably asshats, but I am not such a narcissist that I'll take smug satisfaction in the power I wield over the speeder by refusing to get out of their way, because on the off chance that the speeder is in dire straits, to not yield (if safe to do so) might result in a preventable death, and that blood would, (if not legally, morally) be on my hands.
On this. your mileage may certainly vary.
*FULL DISCLOSURE: The word "pokey"does not actually appear anywhere in the aforementioned alarming legislation.
1
No surprise that Ralph Nader hailed the man as a great whistleblower who was protecting the public. And in a just world, Nestor would not have been reinstated, or apologized to - though the FDA's 'apology' is an interesting exercise in 'I'm sorry for you being a jerk.'
Posted by: cxt217 at Sun Oct 6 13:31:32 2019 (LMsTt)
2
Thee's a whole Reddit thread devoted to "Malicious Compliance", the variant on passive aggression where you do EXACTLY what you are told and nothing more, and don't speak up about problems.
Posted by: Mauser at Sun Oct 6 20:47:32 2019 (Ix1l6)
3
Texas highways are pretty reasonable about this. If there's more than one lane, the left lane is for people who are passing other traffic. You don't have to be going the speed limit - it's okay to be going 60 if you are getting around someone who's only going 55. But when you're past that person, get out of d'way! You can get cited (and people do) for obstructing traffic in the passing lane, with no reference at all to the speed you were going.
Posted by: Avatar_exADV at Sun Oct 6 21:42:47 2019 (v29Tn)
4
How I wish they'd enforce that on I-45 between Houston and Dallas. Bad enough that one guy can clog the whole left lane for miles - no one will get back to the right if there's another car/truck way ahead to pass. (Because they know that they won't be let back into the passing lane.)
But when the road widens to six lanes, the jerks spread out and start station-keeping on each other's blind spots, and you can't get past anyone. THAT's when I need my very own Starlight Breaker.
1
I'm sorry, is this the same Brickmuppet who has a thing for lamia?
Posted by: Wonderduck at Tue Sep 17 01:13:02 2019 (+qGjD)
2
Monmusu was a moderate success - obviously the appeal is niche, but the niche is there. Now that they've demonstrated that there's room in the space, other stuff turns up from time to time.
Of the monster girl stuff, the mono-eye stuff is weird, but not TOO weird. Basically human frame, and everyone who's an anime fan has at least some appreciation for big eyes making a girl cute, right?
Posted by: Avatar_exADV at Tue Sep 17 01:19:48 2019 (v29Tn)
4
Aha!
Lansane did a cyclops, actually, he seems to have done a set of illustrations with cyclopses. I support him on Fanbox so...yes this makes complete sense without Pixiv having access to my flash driv.....without weird algorithmic issues.
Posted by: The Brickmuppet at Tue Sep 17 11:07:51 2019 (YUAc9)
1
The Fediverse seems to be lean (possibly heavily) left, and Gab isn't. In particular, Gab won't ban "hate speech".
Posted by: Rick C at Mon Sep 9 09:38:53 2019 (Iwkd4)
2
Torba bans a lot of things at GAB. In particular, he hates anime, and went on a ban spree some time in late 2018. Just like Otts, the founder of Minds, the outcry has made him reconsider his ways. So, instead, he bans one by one. Accounts just disappear overnight. And what's interesting, a number of people are in a complete denial about it's happening. Just like my late MIL, born in 1926, used to say: "Stalin's purges? Western propaganda! Nobody in MY family was purged!"
Of course nowadays we have an Anime group, and Torba appears to tolerate it, as long as anime isn't spreading out too much.
A lot of it is envy. A number of old-timers, personalities, and instance admins cannot stand the realization that proprietary, closed-off GAB grew larger than any Fediverse node: even with a suitable discount for bots, GAB is twice as big as Pawoo, the previously largest instance. They are enraged about normies not giving a rat's tail about distribution, censorship resistance, or free speech. And now GAB is in.
In addition, we have the usual crew of SJWs who thought they owned the network. They are the ones leading the fight to ban GAB at app level and through instance blacklists. I just don't think they are even in the majority of GAB-haters.
Posted by: Pete Zaitcev at Mon Sep 9 12:34:35 2019 (LZ7Bg)
3
Interesting. In any event, what I had heard was that Gab was being deplatformed specifically because of what I mentioned. I don't know if that was the whole story, or just a fig leaf, or what.
Posted by: Rick C at Mon Sep 9 20:14:02 2019 (Iwkd4)
4
GAB joining the Fediverse was primarily in response to getting deplatformed in app stores. Now that GAB supports Fediverse protocols, both back-end (ActivityPub) and front-end (Mastodon), a generic application can be used to access it, so it's harder to shut down. Some feared that in the next round Apple and Google would demand the client app writers to include blacklists for GAB by instance name and/or domain names. However, they made no move in yet. Instead, a popular client application, Tusky, banned GAB in the app, apparently on their own, purely thanks to SJWs leading the development team. Other apps declined to do the same. I heard Fedilab is taking the free speech tack. But I do not use apps to access GAB. I have my own instance that federates with GAB and that's how I interact with Mauser, Clayton, et al.
Posted by: Pete Zaitcev at Mon Sep 9 21:51:18 2019 (LZ7Bg)
5
And I don't use GAB all that hard, so I don't really know how to navigate all the instances and such.
As for Torba and Anime, as far as I know, he just has a hate-on for pornographic Loli art, likening it to kiddie porn. That's kinda hard to argue against, especially in a way that convinces a non-fan.
Posted by: Mauser at Tue Sep 10 19:20:29 2019 (Ix1l6)
6
An equally important question, my dear Brickmuppet, is how bad are Australians that in five days, no one here has stepped in to defend them?
Posted by: L. Beau Macaroni at Sat Sep 14 11:19:50 2019 (fieDC)
7
Not really any worse than Gamer-Gaters apparently.
Posted by: The Brickmuppet at Sat Sep 14 11:29:50 2019 (YUAc9)
Posted by: Wonderduck at Wed Sep 4 23:23:35 2019 (+qGjD)
2
A pretty good interpretation of Wendy's Twitter account. They tried doing "adult, real-life Wendy" using a variety of models in their advertising for several years. Now they've got a hit purely by accident, at least apparently. The Wendy's Twitter account is snarky, aggressive, acerbic, and smug; very much an anime tsun tsun girl. -tan versions of Wendy have been proliferating for a few years.
Wonderduck; unless the BGS video is actually a re-share or re-upload, Yori Yoshi's video predates it by about a month.
Posted by: Wonderduck at Thu Sep 5 16:09:05 2019 (+qGjD)
4
Ah, good point. That is a very good point. I was watching at work with the music turned waaaaaaaaaay down and honestly didn't notice it was different music.
Posted by: Wonderduck at Fri Sep 6 20:21:01 2019 (+qGjD)
6
Tsundere pizza is positively wholesome compared to some of Dominos' other offerings in Japan. Shrimp, corn, and mayo pizza? Potato with mayo? Crab gratin? Garlic shrimp in butter? Octopus ajillo? Hardboiled egg on egg salad with white sauce and bacon? Some of those are going to go yandere on your stomach.
The garlic garlic garlic garlic garlic garlic pizza is not one I'd order if I planned to speak to anyone in the next week...
7
The crab gratin is delicious, at least the version I had at a seafood restaurant in Portland, Oregon many years ago. I've had shrimp pizza a few different places, and found it forgettable at best.
8
"I still get Monster Musume manga showing up under Self-Help Books."
Hm. Well, it could be seen as self-"help" I guess.
Posted by: Rick C at Wed Sep 4 10:07:00 2019 (Iwkd4)
9
Reminds me of how Ace of Spades, during one of the more amusing ONT threads, listed 'cheerleaders' as being essential emergency supplies alongside food, drinking water, and bullets.
Posted by: cxt217 at Wed Sep 4 12:48:33 2019 (LMsTt)
10
Silk is light, a good insulator, and does not melt under high heat. Packs tightly, too. So of course a good pair of socks is great for camping, possibly with a wool pair as the outer layer for hiking or keeping toes warm in the sleeping bag.
Illustration may vary.
Posted by: Suburbanbanshee at Wed Sep 4 15:17:40 2019 (sF8WE)
1
Link doesn't work either now. But as for Manwaru Penguindrum.... It's by the same guy who did Revolutionary Girl Utena.
I gave it the "Worst Mind Screw" back in 2012
Posted by: Ubu at Thu Aug 29 18:47:10 2019 (UlsdO)
2
OK the link works for me but the embed still does not.
https://www.bitchute.com/video/PCmCUqlq9tKi/
Posted by: The Brickmuppet at Thu Aug 29 18:50:51 2019 (YUAc9)
Since YouTube is putting so much effort into encouraging their viewers to consider alternative platforms, I'd really be remiss if I didn't note that Brickmuppet Blog's BitChute referral page is here.
Hobby Space News of the commercial space industry A Babe In The Universe Rather Eclectic Cosmology Encyclopedia Astronautica Superb spacecraft resource The Unwanted Blog Scott Lowther blogs about forgotten aerospace projects and sells amazingly informative articles on the same. Also, there are cats. Transterrestrial Musings Commentary on Infinity...and beyond! Colony WorldsSpace colonization news! The Alternate Energy Blog It's a blog about alternate energy (DUH!) Next Big Future Brian Wang: Tracking our progress to the FUTURE. Nuclear Green Charles Barton, who seems to be either a cool curmudgeon, or a rational hippy, talks about energy policy and the terrible environmental consequences of not going nuclear Energy From Thorium Focuses on the merits of thorium cycle nuclear reactors WizBang Current events commentary...with a wiz and a bang The Gates of Vienna Tenaciously studying a very old war The Anchoress insightful blogging, presumably from the catacombs Murdoc Online"Howling Mad Murdoc" has a millblog...golly! EaglespeakMaritime security matters Commander Salamander Fullbore blackshoe blogging! Belmont Club Richard Fernandez blogs on current events BaldilocksUnderstated and interesting blog on current events The Dissident Frogman French bi-lingual current events blog The "Moderate" VoiceI don't think that word means what they think it does....but this lefty blog is a worthy read nonetheless. Meryl Yourish News, Jews and Meryls' Views Classical Values Eric Scheie blogs about the culture war and its incompatibility with our republic. Jerry Pournell: Chaos ManorOne of Science fictions greats blogs on futurism, current events, technology and wisdom A Distant Soil The website of Colleen Dorans' superb fantasy comic, includes a blog focused on the comic industry, creator issues and human rights. John C. Wright The Sci-Fi/ Fantasy writer muses on a wide range of topics. Now Read This! The founder of the UK Comics Creators Guild blogs on comics past and present. The Rambling Rebuilder Charity, relief work, roleplaying games Rats NestThe Art and rantings of Vince Riley Gorilla Daze Allan Harvey, UK based cartoonist and comics historian has a comicophillic blog! Pulpjunkie Tim Driscoll reviews old movies, silents and talkies, classics and clunkers. Suburban Banshee Just like a suburban Leprechaun....but taller, more dangerous and a certified genius. Satharn's Musings Through TimeThe Crazy Catlady of The Barony of Tir Ysgithr アニ・ノート(Ani-Nouto) Thoughtful, curmudgeonly, otakuism that pulls no punches and suffers no fools. Chizumatic Stephen Den Beste analyzes anime...with a microscope, a slide rule and a tricorder. Wonderduck Anime, Formula One Racing, Sad Girls in Snow...Duck Triumphalism Beta Waffle What will likely be the most thoroughly tested waffle evah! Zoopraxiscope Too In this thrilling sequel to Zoopraxiscope, Don, Middle American Man of Mystery, keeps tabs on anime, orchids, and absurdities. Mahou Meido MeganekkoUbu blogs on Anime, computer games and other non-vital interests Twentysided More geekery than you can shake a stick at Shoplifting in the Marketplace of Ideas Sounds like Plaigarism...but isn't Ambient IronyAll Meenuvians Praise the lathe of the maker! Hail Pixy!!
