Where Politics Inevitably Leads
I actually heard someone ask today, if, during his jujitsu moment during the debate last night, Ted Cruz had made an Anti-Semetic joke about Bernie sanders.
Because obviously Senator Sanders was the alluded to Mensch-kevik.
OK. In fairness, that's not a completely unwarranted etymology error.
However, if one did not know what the Mensheviks were one may be surprised to lear that one has numerous options other than flinging casual and stupid allegations of anti-semitism about.
One could ask. " Umm...what did he mean by Mensheviks?"
One could think about the context of the word in the sentence and, assuming one knew what a Bolshevik is, conclude that a Menshevik is some other faction...given the sarcasm in the delivery, perhaps not that far removed from the Bolshies.
This exchange got me to thinking what Mensch - Kivak would actually be. Regrettably, I inadvertently pondered Mensch-Kiviak and...and I cannot unsee it no matter how hard I try.
But enough of such unpleasantries; here is a picture that has naught to do with the Russian Revolution or cannibalism.
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I didn't watch the debate but when I heard that quote afterwards I cracked up. That was a nice dig and I bet the moderators didn't even realize the significance.
Posted by: Rick C at Thu Oct 29 11:54:12 2015 (ECH2/)
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<i>Singing</i>: Oh beautiful for munching goats/
Upon our fields of sod,/
For miniskirts and pink blazers/
Seat-ed on rag-top rod!/
A-mer-i-ca, A-mer-i-ca....
I am L. Beau Macaroni, and my green oranges are purple.
Posted by: L. Beau Macaroni at Thu Oct 29 12:31:47 2015 (P2Eio)
Skirting the Very Edge of the Espionage Act
For the engineers and spies in the audience, here is a short video on the critical aspects of missile guidance...
Pique Should Not Be a Default State...for Anyone
Look.
I'm seeing some wailing and gnashing of teeth over one of the President's recent pronouncements. While I think that it is perfectly reasonable to be prepared to experience horror, bewilderment and dread any time he opens his mouth, it is still important to actually listen to what is said since there is always the possibility (however remote) that such reactions will be unwarranted.
For instance, it would seem to me, given the usual complaints from those complaining, that it would be more appropriate to cheer...or at least nod knowingly at the Presidents completely uncharacteristic decision to defer to state and local wishes with regard to federal land management decisions, and the decision itself seems perfectly reasonable.
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Considering the President's motivations, I wouldn't be surprised if he directed the monument to be renamed the Mt. Rushmore Monument at the Lakota name for the mountain. Which isn't really that big of a deal except for all of the politics behind it. It doesn't "fix" or even "help" anything; it's purely a political action, just like with Mt. McKinley.
Less of an issue would be something like Mt. Taylor. It seems that most people know the mountain equally as Taylor or as Turquoise Mountain. If you're able to pronounce Navajo (and even if you can't, for some) you might call it Tsoodzil. If the President wants to rename it, though; he better check in with the Zuni, Hopi and a handful of other American Indian nations that all call the mountain by different names. I notice President Obama didn't check with the Ahtna or Dena'ina to see what name they wanted for the mountain.
Posted by: Ben at Mon Aug 31 17:47:31 2015 (S4UJw)
Posted by: Ben at Fri Aug 14 00:45:27 2015 (DRaH+)
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OK. I vaguely remember that now (Have not seen Dragonball in 25 years) I knew there was SOMETHING to the dance but this does add a whole new dimension to the gag.
Thanks Steven.
Posted by: The Brickmuppet at Fri Aug 14 04:43:53 2015 (ohzj1)
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That idea works so well, I want to hear directly from the Gate creator if its true!
Posted by: Siergen at Fri Aug 14 17:22:31 2015 (4pDXl)
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The fusion only lasts half an hour. There's a different way to do it that's permanent but it involves wearing special magical earrings and Rori isn't wearing any.
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What makes you think they're mobys rather than bog-standard men's rights dudebros? Who aren't exactly what you'd call "conservative", they tend to be "greys" outside of the typical blue/red tribal dividing lines, and politically low-information & ignorant.
I had a low-information left-leaning friend throw this one at me yesterday afternoon, so it's making the rounds on both sides of the divide, and definitely being used against conservatives, but then, most "men's rights" dudebro nonsense gets used that way so, sigh, oh, well.
That quote is pretty much the nut graf of Hayek's philosophy, and the properly educated should be able to identify it... the left-leaning friend approved of the sentiment despite not knowing anything about Hayek more than whatever he remembered from what I talked about in his presence back when I was reading The Fatal Conceit a few years ago.
Posted by: Mitch H. at Wed Aug 12 09:39:45 2015 (jwKxK)
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i have no problem with the notion that DBs might drop a bit on this, dropping a bit from time to time is in their nature, but 5 out of 5 is straining credulity given that the facebook page is all about free markets. Again, people who read those sorts blogs are much more likely than the general public to know who F.J.Hayek was.
Now, let me be clear that the notion that every malignant asshat tangentially aligned with the right is a false flag operation is its own kind of stupid. This is a manifestation of the no true Scotsman fallacy and that can lead to its own stupidity and counterproductive outcomes. If one thinks that these people are all Mobys because no one one knows holds those conclusions then one is having a Pauline Kael moment.
However, the fact remains that this species of paranoia is caused by the fact that false flag/concern troll/ Moby/ type stuff DOES go on. It's a basic Alinskyite tactic and ignoring it is not the path to wisdom either.
Posted by: The Brickmuppet at Wed Aug 12 13:37:09 2015 (ohzj1)
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My reaction was simpler: "who honestly believes that Salma Hayek talks like that?"
-j
Posted by: J Greely at Wed Aug 12 15:02:52 2015 (fpXGN)
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I would consider the first two comments, or at least the first one, a bit different from the last three, because they don't attack her (bitch, bigot) with the same bile.
The first comment is almost reasonable, if you didn't know the joke.
Posted by: Rick C at Wed Aug 12 19:30:10 2015 (FvJAK)
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I had no idea who Friedrich A Hayek was, and other than reading the opening paragraph of his wikipedia page, I still don't.
For some reason, I don't feel much of a lack... and I'm far from being a "dudebro", other than being a sports fan.
Posted by: Wonderduck at Thu Aug 13 00:45:20 2015 (jGQR+)
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I had no idea who Selma Hayek was. F.H. I knew from my economics classes. My comparative economics professor thought very highly of him (granted, that was basically a class of why communism sucked and why the suck was unavoidable, heh.)
Posted by: Avatar_exADV at Thu Aug 13 11:23:02 2015 (qxzj1)
Hmmm...I guess duckbro doesn't have the same connotations.
Posted by: The Brickmuppet at Fri Aug 14 04:47:52 2015 (ohzj1)
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If you want a TL;DR version of Hayek and his relevance to popular topics...before "Epic Rap Battles of History" was a big thing (I think) the YouTube channel "EconStories" did Fear the Boom and Bust: A Hayek vs. Keynes Rap Anthem and Fight of the Century: Keynes vs. Hayek Round 2.
They're pretty awesome.
Posted by: Ben at Fri Aug 14 17:20:33 2015 (DRaH+)
Post Title Goes In This Field: Remember, Post Titles Should Be Short, Only Two Or Three Words And Be Humorous If Appropriate And Possible, However, Above All They Should Be Relevant To The Topic Of The Associated Post. For Frack's Sake Don't Write A Whole Friccking Paragraph.AND DON'T FORGET THE POST TITLE! Thank You.Management.
Compounding these problems is the fact that Microsoft can't count. This is either the thirteenth or the seventeenth edition of Windows depending on how one counts. Neither of those numbers is equal to 10.
It get's worse. As we all remember, following the new numbering system adopted after Vista, the last edition was Eight which means that in REALITY, we're discussing...
All of Microsoft's desperate obfuscations cannot save them from mockery by anonymous Touhou fans.
Back when I was working, when I was a senior engineer, I used to do a lot of interviewing. Coming up with reasonable questions is a pain, and one I used was "What is the most useless error message you've ever seen?"
My own answer was "Syntax error", a common error message from early compilers. Someone did better though: it was an error message from the first PC BIOS: "Keyboard not found. Press F1 to continue."
But I do believe that your picture, if genuine, has topped them all.
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Microsoft Basic on the TRS-80 Model 1 Level 1 had only three error messages: What?, How?, and Sorry.
But that machine had 4K each of ROM and RAM, so they had an excuse. Not so much these days.
Posted by: Pixy Misa at Wed Aug 5 02:16:13 2015 (PiXy!)
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Hrm. Wikipedia says that Level 1 Basic was Tiny Basic plus changes by Radio Shack themselves, not Microsoft. Microsoft wrote Level 2 Basic for them later.
Posted by: Pixy Misa at Wed Aug 5 02:28:40 2015 (PiXy!)
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I think those old PS/1 Keyboards were hot-pluggable, so that error message made a certain amount of sense. Plug in the Keyboard and press F1.
It does come in handy to still have wired keyboards and mice around. When I was rebuilding Himawari (Avoid Seagate drives) many things, even my BIOS could read my wireless USB Keyboard. Except the screen at the beginning of CHKDSK. Unless I wanted to sit through ANOTHER 8 hours while it failed, I have to have a keyboard I could plug in to kit a key to abort. (Likewise, an early version of the Seagate utility on a bootable CD couldn't read the wireless mouse.)
Posted by: Mauser at Wed Aug 5 05:12:45 2015 (TJ7ih)
I do so mostly because I am a very bad man, but also because watching this will kill sufficient brain cells that it might distract one from any pain one might be experiencing.
Warning: May also cause psoriasis.
Via Moe Lane, who's write up, while technically accurate, did not prepare me for the epic dreadfulness of this thing.
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That's just...wow.
The kid with the maroon cap looks just like Jay from the Clerks movies.
This is going to stink on ice.
Posted by: RickC at Fri Jul 24 20:27:18 2015 (FvJAK)
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I didn't watch the video, and I don't need to--I could feel myself getting stupider just reading Moe Lane's description.
Studio Ghibli seems to be having somesuccess lately adapting British children's novels into movies. If the Walt Disney Company has run out of ideas to the point that they're making crap like Descendants, maybe they should steal that page from Studio Ghibli's playbook.
Posted by: Peter the Not-so-Great at Sat Jul 25 20:02:44 2015 (dzzLh)
The skull of the film director F. W. Murnau — best known for "Nosferatu,†his 1922 Expressionist take on Bram Stoker’s "Dracula†— has been stolen from a cemetery outside of Berlin.
Not currently a suspect.
On the bright side, this could easily be parlayed into the basis for a sequel to that awesome John Malcovich movie.
How Many Nuclear Bombs WOULD it Take
...to effectively knock most of the world back into the 7th century?
Well, to physically devastate the planet through blast and heat would take thousands upon thousands of bombs, probably more than existed at the height of the cold war.
However, all we have to do is bring down the thing that (philosophical advances notwithstanding) makes the modern world modern...our technology.
One could go a long way to doing that with an Electro Magnetic Pulse. There are a few ways to get these, but we're talking about nukes, so one can obtain the effect by detonating a nuclear weapon at high altitude. The sweet spot seems to be an area with a lower limit between 18 and 31 miles up (depending on latitude and other factors) and an upper limit around 300 miles into space. The effects are caused by interaction with the earth's atmosphere and magnetic field and extends to the visible horizon. The effects radii for various altitudes can be seen here...
The actual effects are fairly consistent throughout the area with a horseshoe shaped area containing a zone of very high effects and a small area just north (or south in the southern hemisphere) of ground zero with minimal effects.
Most of the area has between 50 and 80% of the maximum intensity of effects. The effects can be...impressive.
The electromagnetic pulse (EMP) fused all of the 570-kilometer monitored overhead telephone line with measured currents of 1500 to 3400 amperes during the 22 October 1962 test. The monitored telephone line was divided into sub-lines of 40 to 80 kilometres (25 to 50 mi) in length, separated by repeaters. Each sub-line was protected by fuses and by gas-filled overvoltage protectors. The EMP from the 22 October (K-3) nuclear test caused all of the fuses to blow and all of the overvoltage protectors to fire in all of the sub-lines of the 570 km (350 mi) telephone line.The EMP from the same test caused the destruction of the Karaganda power plant, and shut down 1,000 km (620 mi) of shallow-buried power cables between Astana (then called Aqmola) and Almaty.
Even assuming these were maximum effects and most areas would receive 30-80% of this effect this messes everything up.
Back to the question at hand. How many bombs would it take for a not entirely rational government to apply those effects to the entire world?
Well, using the 1470 mile radius of the affected area we get an area of 6,788,670 square miles. The earth has a total surface area of 196,939,900 square miles (rounded after conversion from km) and 196,939,900 / 6,788,670 = 29.010 so one would need less than 29 of these to send the whole Earth back into the dark ages (less because the nefarious individuals doing his would not need to hit most of the 70% of the surface area that's oceans, Antarctica, or themselves.
Now a small crazy country that wants to do this and had the capability to make 25 bombs a year and a transportable ballistic missile, and a modest merchant marine might discreetly disperse these missiles to where they could be simultaneously launched for global coverage... like so...
Iranian Shabab 4? missiles and their TELs on small container shiip.
Now to what end would they do this?
Well a conquering, convert or die army is kind of like a zombie apocalypse, with fast, tool-using, gun shooting zombies (except they don't often bite) and we've seen some of what can happen when a group like that moves into an area that's demoralized and destabilized...
Of course if this outfit ever encounters a proper modern military, they'll get curb-stomped.
Note though that if you have the same goal and can demoralize and destabilize the entire world, by say, knocking a good chunk of it back to the 7th century, even if only for a few years...well., these people have a sense of history...
Imagine this transpiring while the whole world is knocked on their behinds by a power failure, starving and desperate, and assume to that kept aside a few nukes for military bases and tactical usage.
That would probably be quite a powerful motive for those who consider modernity itself to be an abomination.
Is this likely? Would it work?....probably not.
But, if you're crazy enough to roll the dice with nukes you're crazy enough to try really crazy crap especially since the EMP doesn't require particularly challenging targeting capability and could conceivably do far more damage than the same nuke could via blast and heat.
Anyway, I was surprised that you could do it with 20-30 midsize nukes.
UPDATE: Corrected some typos, fixed a hyperling and. umm, removed the picture of Mum-Ra.
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Fiber optic cables are immune to EMP, so there's that, at least.
Posted by: Pixy Misa at Tue Jun 23 23:09:29 2015 (PiXy!)
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I can imagine the telephone lines can't handle that kind of induced current, but I'm not so sure about power lines.
But I think part of the voltage induction is related to them being long segments of conductor. being able to induct damaging current in handheld electronics might not be so easy, there's not enough distance to induce much of an electrical gradient.
The big problem with trying to knock ISIS back to the stone age is that's their goal.
Posted by: Mauser at Wed Jun 24 05:36:19 2015 (TJ7ih)
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I do wonder about that.
I keep hearing about how vulnerable integrated circuits are in comparison to vacuum tubes/valves but is that really so? Don't we at least have better surge protection than we used to? (though that would only be of limited effect against what the Russians described at Kasputin Yar). Is a modern semi-conductor really more likely to suffer an induction induced overload than the Cathode & anode in a tube?
(Obviously integrated circuits are a good thing, my i-Mac would be se size of the U.S. national mall or larger and have frequent bit errors if it was tube based)
Posted by: The Brickmuppet at Wed Jun 24 10:30:50 2015 (ohzj1)
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Mauser is right, it's about the length of the wires. An EMP that would induce tens of kilovolts in a long run of telephone or power lines would be barely measurable on a circuit board and not even that within an integrated circuit. Integrated circuits are vulnerable to direct radiation, but then, so are people. Anything that kills your iMac will be bad news for you too...
The vulnerable things are the electricity grid and local telephone / internet services. The big worry is the grid; if a lot of large transformers are damaged, it could take years to replace them all.
Posted by: Pixy Misa at Wed Jun 24 12:37:51 2015 (PiXy!)
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The problem is, you don't need to have much of electric gradient to fry electronics. I met a guy once in a local pilot's club, who described an early EMP weapon they built while working in the Sandia lab. They too two aluminized balloons and tied them to two quartz plates, then smeared the plates with C4 and built a sandwich. They hoisted that contraption at the base and blew it up. When they did it, they fried a bunch of rados in town and knocked a local AM station off the air.
A nuke is going to induce a ton of low-gigahertz and wreck a bunch of Ethernet switches and computers, despite most being in metal cases. Cellphones, too.
Posted by: Pete Zaitcev at Wed Jun 24 15:02:41 2015 (RqRa5)
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That's very peculiar, Pete. So a Nuke isn't necessary for causing EMP? Something THAT low-tech is easily within the reach of ISIS.
And now Fred the Fed is reading....
Posted by: Mauser at Wed Jun 24 19:34:47 2015 (TJ7ih)
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Well you have to have some kind of physical that converts some other energy (such as temperature, or mechanical energy of the shockwave) into the EM radiation. I do not quite understand how nuclear explosion produces its EMP. If it were just the tail of the glow as it cools down, its power would not be that great, I imagine. But its available power is absolutely immense and perhaps there are massive currents in its plasma ball. In contrast, using quartz plates is a more efficient way to generate the electric tension from the shockwave, and balloons were chosen to be effective antennas, so a pound of C4 makes, say, 1/100th EMP of a 100kt nuke while using 1/1,000,000th of energy. It wasn't an imaginative way to generate EMP either. I heard of more intricate designs that, for instance, blow up coils and such. A number was intended to fry satellites for the Soviet anti-SDE program.
Posted by: Pete Zaitcev at Wed Jun 24 19:46:58 2015 (RqRa5)
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Another funny story I heard from that lab is they once were tasked to build a weapon to combat tunnels. So they went and bought a bunch of toy tanks. They used the tank chassis and put some C4, about 1/4 of a pound on it, a detonator, and an electric circuit. The tank would crawl forward, until it hit an obstacle. Then, the curcut made it turn 45 degrees and try to crawl again. If it could not proceed after a 360 degree turn, it blew up. It also blew up after crawling about 100 ft. The idea was to cave tunnels in at a distance from the well that they drilled to lower the tank. You could also lower two or three if you were lucky and the first blew up far enough away.
I thought it could be easier to pump some propane into the tunnel, then ignite it. Unfortunately, the Rodenator didn't exist in the 1970s and the thought didn't occur to those boffins.
Posted by: Pete Zaitcev at Wed Jun 24 19:55:52 2015 (RqRa5)
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Generating a small-scale EMP is easy enough. Anything that generates an electromagnetic field in normal operation can do the trick if you pump a whole lot of energy into it all at once.
Coils are good for this, as Pete mentioned. Wrap a coil around an explosive core, run a current through the coil, and blow it up. Voila, EMP. But the total energy is much much less than a nuclear blast, so the effects fall off sharply with distance (inverse square law).
On a really small scale, you can just set up a working coil, put it on the floor, and stamp it flat. Something that simple will still generate a measurable EMP.
Posted by: Pixy Misa at Wed Jun 24 22:59:31 2015 (PiXy!)
From what little I've read, it sounds like the new CEO of Reddit is so wed to political correctness that she doesn't mind destroying her company in its service.
I wonder why the board of directors hasn't stepped in yet. She's only been CEO for a few months but at the rate she's going the company will be dead within a year.
I just read part of the Metafilter thread about this, and my initial impression was wrong.
Apparently the "hate fat people" group wasn't shut down because of political incorrectness and hate speech. It was shut down because it was being used to promulgate attacks on other uses elsewhere on the site. Their announcement says that hateful subreddits are being permitted to continue as long as the people keep their hate in their own back yard.
I have no idea whether that's the case, but I'm willing to sit back and eat popcorn and watch the carnage.
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It's been over 30 years, but I still remember hearing a Philly newscaster start a story: "The War on Drugs got a much needed shot in the arm today...."
Posted by: Mauser at Mon Jun 8 07:26:44 2015 (TJ7ih)
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The one that drives me crazy is reporters mixing up "silicon" and "silicone"...
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