May 15, 2020
Important PSA
It is reported that spambots are hacking
YouTube accounts via the comments section by asking "Wanna be friends?". Hambly, with permission, pasted the original
Evanz111 video on the end of his which goes into depth on the matter.
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February 28, 2020
Chinese Sends Expeditionary Forces To Assist Pakistan Against Invaders (UPDATED)
UPDATE: Noting some skepticism about this story our crackerjak team of fact checkers and damage control specialists was going to update the post, however, the AP has "helpfully" replaced the article at the below hyperlink with a completely different one Titled :
Questions raised about of China anti-locust ‘duck army’
Which notes that the proposal is not, in fact an official one.
China is dispatching 100,000 ducks to Pakistan to assist with repelling an invasion of locusts.
Things are getting serious in Asia.
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January 16, 2020
The Oddness Gets Odder
One of the The Brickmuppet's First Class Team of Drone Experts brings us news of the weird from the land of the big sky.
Way out west, there's been a
spate of U.F.O. sightings
since late last year...
Well, not really.
WHAT they are is not at all unidentified.
They are Radio Controlled drones. However, these are flying in what are described as
large formations and have attracted the attention of the authorities, to such an extent that 9 days ago the newly formed Colorado drone task force instituted
a search for a hypothetical command vehicle.
This was rescinded 3 days later but the drones continue to fly in formations...at night, one
nearly colliding with an air ambulance.
The government has announced almost simultaneously that they
haven't been able to confirm the drones exist and that the FAA
needs new and intrusive powers to monitor every drone in the country to deal with this burgeoning threat*.
More recently on the heels of those two government assessments, the
drones continue
to be reported, In some cases, the drones are being described as
being as big as cars, which, if true** means that this is a much more impressive phenomenon and potentially worrying give the numbers involved and the formation flying.
Here at Brickmuppet Blog, the running theory has been that this was a
combination of kids being kids, ranchers patrolling their property, and
business doing their business in a way that hasn't been a thing until the last decade or so. When a bunch of reports of unexpected new things flying are combined this could have resulted in peoples perfectly reasonable pattern spotting tendencies resulting in alarm. In this case the"perpetrators" are all blissfully unaware of the pandemonium that they're causing. However, the large numbers of reports of drone
formations mean that there may well be something more substantive going on**.
Other possibilities besides mass hysteria include some small company testing out new drone rigs, (a big company like Amazon would have someone who watched the news and would have filed the proper FAA paperwork). The large number of such sightings indicate that if they are all
connected (not at all certain) that there is an extensive
training/testing program going on. It could be a secret Air-Force or Army program. It could be something as benign ad a
bunch of students trying to practice a drone aerobatics demonstration. On the more sinister side of the spectrum there could be
criminal activity such as drug running (though that is unlikely to involve formation flying) or terrorists testing out formation flying and ground attack methods in anticipation of an upcoming attack. Al-Qaeda and ISIS have
both used drones to
attack civilian and military targets, but this is an awful lot of testing and training in plain sight with no civilian deaths to show for it.
At this point (assuming the press reports and video footage are in proper context...a big assumption nowadays) it looks like there's SOMETHING going on here. It's just unclear what.
*
Hat tip Pete, I had not seen this anywhere else
**
some skepticism is warranted : the devices are being observed at night, and this report of the being car sized is from The Sun.
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Posted by: Wonderduck at Fri Jan 17 00:47:56 2020 (cTMj+)
2
One of the news outlets compiled a map of sightings, and it made it clear that they moved gradually to the east. In the week since NYT ran its article, the drones crossed all of Nebraska and came to Omaha. I presume that they started at the Rockies and scanned the plains in a wide band. Probably compiled a reference map for some satellites, or something of that nature.
Posted by: Pete Zaitcev at Fri Jan 17 00:52:25 2020 (LZ7Bg)
3
the drones crossed all of Nebraska and came to Omaha
Given that the were first noticed in Wyoming, names that come to mind are Cheyenne Mountain, Peterson, Warren, and Air Combat Command in Offut near Omaha. No one would have noticed anything near Malmstrom or Minot. If they show up near Whitman, get ready to duck and cover.
Posted by: The Brickmuppet at Fri Jan 17 06:58:41 2020 (5iiQK)
4
Start shooting them down and wait for the phone to ring.
Posted by: Pixy Misa at Fri Jan 17 08:24:55 2020 (PiXy!)
5
I had heard about the Colorado ones, not the Wyoming ones, and my first thought as a result was "MJ grow operations doing industrial espionage on other grow operations for some reason." I mean, I suppose it still could be industrial espionage of some sort.
If it were something like a mapping company/USGS testing out new mapping functions, we'd know about it, I think.
I think my money is either on "industrial espionage" or "secret military activity."
It is kind of creepy, though I think "creepy stuff happening that you never really hear the explanation for" is just a thing now.
Posted by: fillyjonk at Fri Jan 17 10:26:38 2020 (o5UlT)
6
This sounds an awful lot like your bog standard drone club/clubs. They do everything from loose formation flying to programmed group aerobatics to long-distance runs like hot air balloon enthusiasts.
Posted by: Ben at Sat Jan 18 09:48:37 2020 (osxtX)
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January 15, 2020
Tachyon Interference?
This new Kyocera is impressive!
I just got a text on my new phone dated January 18.
Update: And I just now figured out how to do a screencap of it too.
Today is the 15th.
The text is reminding me that my voice mail subscription ends tomorrow...which presumably means in 4 days.
I'm getting spam from the future.
Whut?
"Oh I'm sure it's nothing!"
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September 18, 2019
October 24, 2018
These Are Those Crazy Years Heinlein Warned Us About
It's not just Washington, there is crazy all over the country.
In Florida, some middle school girls decided to bring knives to school and were going to cause mischief.
Well that's sad but not completely unhear....
WAIT WHAT?
When asked about motivation, the girls reportedly told police that they were Satan worshipers. According to police, the girls planned to drink their victims’ blood out of the goblet they were found with. They also discussed eating their victims' flesh and leaving body parts at the school's entrance before killing themselves."Killing all of these students was in hopes it would make them worse sinners ensuring that after they committed suicide ... (they) would go to hell so they could be with Satan," the arrest affidavit reads.
They were hiding in the bathroom to pounce on the first and second graders who they were confident they could overpower.
Fortunately they were not the brightest bulbs on the tree so no one was hurt.
Meanwhile, in
Wisconsin, some dude was caught trying to purchase radioactive material to use as a murder weapon. He is a career criminal and politician known to the police as
Segway Boy.
There are those who believe that watching anime and reading comic books has no benefits or applicability to day to day life, but it is really beginning to look like the U.S. has developed a need for at least one Magical Girl and a costumed superhero.
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1
Reality is actually far more nasty. I lost the link, but Sarah Hoyt had an article on PJMedia about how a group of girls attending the same school one of her sons attended, conspired in a determine effort to get the kid in trouble (As in, both 'expelled from school' and 'arrested by the police' all on false charges.) because they thought he looked retarded and unattractive. It also turns out that many, if not most, of the girls were the daughters of teachers and staff at the school district who, at the very least, knowingly condoned and excused their offsprings' behavior. And these girls were known to track the boy down after he transferred out of the school district, as well as go to the Hoyts' home, and try to make his life a living hell.
I firmly believe that along with other crimes, any child charged with criminal conspiracy should be tried as an adult. These children almost certainly will never grow up to become decent adults.
Posted by: cxt217 at Fri Oct 26 19:56:28 2018 (LMsTt)
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May 01, 2017
Dustbury has a Question
How would that even happen? What bizarre sort of circumstances would cause this situation?
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April 27, 2017
Missing The Most Obvious Explanation
A history buff on Reddit asked an art history question, which stumped some historians and led to
further research and a number of theories, none of which confront the most reasonable and simple explanation.
"DAMN the GM! This random encounter table SUCKS!"
Obviously Europe was invaded in the late 13th century by an force of predatory and possibly sentient giant snails that terrorized the local population and were individually a match for even an armored knight.
The Snail of Caerbannog?
As is documented below, these vile beasts would drop on people out of trees.
"Tree-Snail! TREE-SNAI..."
The historians at the linked article have a number of alternative explanations for the art, none of which are supported by the...you know...actual art which clearly show a number of enormous, deadly...
...cat eating...
...snails terrorizing the people of France and Flanders in the 1290s. Furthermore, none of their explanations, would make nearly as awesome a movie or (gruesome late night anime) as the obvious evidence presented by the medieval artists.
This is a production that NEEDS to be made. This little known heroic stand against an implacable enemy could be as consequential to the development of western civilization as Charles Martel at Tours. After all, if Europe had been overrun and its inhabitants eaten by giant snails in the 1290's, history would have taken a very different course.
I doubt any serious historian would disagree with that last sentence.
So we need to find out two things.
1: How did the people of France and Flanders vanquish these beasts?
2: What filmaker can we get to document this? This little known story has the potential to be an unbelievably awesome period piece with monsters and swordsmen and the eras' handful of early cannon that justify spectacular explosions ! It'll be The Beast the Challenged the World meets the Lion in Winter!
WHY is this not being made?
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Posted by: J Greely at Thu Apr 27 20:24:43 2017 (tgyIO)
2
Ah yes, the legendary Snail thread.
The original is here, by the way. Until recently, it was the second-most upvoted question on the AskHistorians subreddit.
It couldn't quite dethrone the important and burning question:
How did the Eagles manage to rescue Frodo and Sam at Mt Doom and still have time to record Hotel California?
Posted by: Wonderduck at Thu Apr 27 21:11:49 2017 (UDOXQ)
3
Weren't the snails around even in Roman times? The legionnaires weren't issued salt as pay - it was part of their munitions!
Posted by: Avatar_exADV at Fri Apr 28 00:13:47 2017 (/lg1c)
4
The important thing to remember about medieval books is that they were not just meant to store and deliver info. They were meant to help you memorize it and store it in your "memory palace." And that was all about using location memory and mental images. The more startling the image, the better. Often images were pictures of bad puns or wordplay. (And often the text was Latin, but the pun or rebus was in the vernacular.)
So if an illuminated book has drawings, they are almost always memory aids. Marginalia are usually designed to draw reader attention to a specific point that most people will want to create an image for. At first, that meant a lot of pointer fingers. But later, you get artists including a helpful memory image for you to use.
The problem is that these images seemed obviously helpful to their creators and users, but they are not so obvious in meaning to us. Also, it is not always clear which bits refer to text memorization, and which bits are just meant to make the image startling and hence memorable. We are left trying to explain jokes that would have seemed very basic to a medieval reader.
The snails are great examples of such memory helps. But the question is why and how they were used. And since they show up in various contexts, clearly they were a thing in medieval pop culture, as well as a memory image.
Posted by: Suburbanbanshee at Fri Apr 28 00:48:25 2017 (S0Svy)
5
The whole "memory palace" thing comes from classical times.
The "ars memoriae" (art of memory) was the process of creating an imaginary place (usually an image of a real and complicated place you knew well, like your house, a cathedral, a local woods, etc.). Then you put memory images, tied to stuff you wanted to remember, into specific areas of your imaginary place. (Thus bringing in the power of location memory, which allows you to remember where thousands of things are.) More advanced users would do stuff like organize whole mental bookcases full of stuff they wanted to remember, organized by topic and such. It was important to go over your mental storage every once in a while, so that you didn't forget your storage or what the images stood for, but many people maintained memory palaces over the course of a lifetime.
This would allow you to do stuff like keep your speech notes in your head, or quote big swatches of the Bible from memory, or organize facts and quotes by topic and keep them in your memory to be able to speak from them at will. (Very helpful in a world where you might only be able to borrow a book once in your life.)
Today, the ars memoriae is used mostly by card-counters or people with big memories for names and faces. But it is interesting to play with, because most of us do have a lot of location memory capabilities that are going begging. It is also good for folks with strong visual memory and imaging capabilities, or for developing those abilities a bit more.
Posted by: Suburbanbanshee at Fri Apr 28 09:36:03 2017 (S0Svy)
6
Anyway... the classical authorities and the medieval ones all agreed that freaky images were the easiest to remember. Murder scenes, naked people, naked people doing murder, or crazy ideas that made you laugh -- all good for memory images.
This does not necessarily mean that giant snails did not exist, of course.
Posted by: Suburbanbanshee at Fri Apr 28 10:38:10 2017 (S0Svy)
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April 26, 2017
Possibly the Very Best Story in the History of News.
I initially refrained from posting about
this because it just seemed too good to be true.
Three Islamic State jihadis have reportedly been killed by rampaging wild boars near Iraqi farmland.
I remind you that Muslims consider all members of
Suidae to be singularly unclean, and while eating them is considered a dreadful sin, being eaten BY them is just the Worst. Possible. Death. for a member of ISIS.
We should all take a moment from obsessing about out petty worries and reflect upon this development.
'cause mindfulness can be rewarding.
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You might say they were boared to death.
Posted by: Pixy Misa at Wed Apr 26 20:59:41 2017 (PiXy!)
2
If you were a bad person.
Posted by: Pixy Misa at Wed Apr 26 21:00:06 2017 (PiXy!)
3
(Stolen from elsewhere)
It was our newest Commando Unit:
Squeal Team Six.
Posted by: Mauser at Fri Apr 28 20:41:30 2017 (5Ktpu)
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April 15, 2017
Come for the Beatings, Stay For the Scorpions
I really thought that this story HAD to be a joke.
"Well, snakes would be derivative."
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April 05, 2012
November 17, 2011
January 14, 2011
In Belarus
...fox shoots
YOU!
"The animal fiercely resisted and in the struggle accidentally pulled the trigger with its paw,"
Actual footage of the fox, who does not look contrite.
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December 10, 2010
Cold Crime Scene
Via
The Daily Mail
Police
Chief J.R. Blyth, who was called in to investigate, described the
discovery at the George Washington Hotel in Pittsburgh as 'the most
grisly murder scene in his 35 years in law enforcement'.
Detectives
had spent eight hours of overtime on the investigation before Chief
Blyth realised the blood wasn’t real and that the murder scene was in
fact the leftover set of a horror movie filmed two years ago with Corey
Haim
Forensics....your friend and mine.
Emma Sky is amused.
More importantly, the hotel has not cleaned this room in 2 years.
I'm thinking...."Bedbugs"
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Um...
ew.
(note that's for Corey Haim, not for the unclean room)
Posted by: Wonderduck at Sat Dec 11 02:53:45 2010 (vW/MM)
Posted by: ubu at Sun Dec 19 14:19:35 2010 (GfCSm)
3
I was going to say "my snark has completely failed me and I have no comment." This makes the (truly) accidental blank post rather ironic, don't you think?
Posted by: ubu at Sun Dec 19 14:21:19 2010 (GfCSm)
Posted by: The Brickmuppet at Tue Dec 21 12:12:57 2010 (EJaOX)
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January 08, 2009
January 05, 2009
A Cryptic Message From the Interwebs
I have been told to "Remember the name Matt Smith."
I have no idea.
UPDATE: Oh...
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That is the strangest looking Doctor ever. It's been a long road, and there have been some weird looking ones, but this guy is bizarre.
Posted by: Steven Den Beste at Mon Jan 5 19:38:32 2009 (+rSRq)
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Costumed Crimefighting on the Rise
The London Times
reports that the US is crawling with superheroes.
There are, according to the recently launched World Superhero
Registry, more than 200 men and a few women who are willing to dress up as
comic book heroes and patrol the urban streets in search of, if not
super-villains, then pickpockets and bullies.
LOL Whut?
Civic mindedness is all well and good but something is wrong with this picture...
“This is a more serious business than it looks,” said Citizen Prime, whose
$4,000 (£2,700) costume disguises an Arizona businessman and father of a
toddler who thinks his cape, mask and stun-gun are cool.
Prime patrols some of the most dangerous streets in Phoenix but, like most
Reals, is reluctant to speak about the villains he has dispatched with a
blow from his martial arts-honed forearm. He does admit helping a motorist
change a flat tyre.
“Kids love the costume, so I seek to keep them out of the gangs today rather
than take them on tomorrow,” said Prime who, at 41, regards himself as on
the mature wing of the Real community.
What is wrong you ask? OK fine let me spell it out...
$4000.00 for a costume?
In these tough economic times one who is trying to set a good example for the youth of today must be frugal.
So...go basic...
All you need is a mask, some sort of costume...say a ninja suit with a logo, a stun gun, some twist-cuffs and maybe
night vision goggles. You can get the basic kit for a hundred fifty bucks and look damned snazzy if you're friends with a cosplayer who is inclined to enable your wacky civic minded shenanigans.
Assuming you get decent body armor add
2-500 dollars and if you have decent first aid training a
hunters first aid kit with trauma pads (in case you happen upon an injured person) is going to be around 60 or 70 dollars.
One should be able to put something pretty impressive for under a thousand bucks.
What, exactly,
did 4 grand buy?
Citizen Prime may have overspent, or he may have gimmicks we don't know about...like a defibrillator a
bat winch or a Vespa-Prime or something. Also gortex is expensive and he may have body armor more comprehensively distributed which would add up quick. Regardless, Phoenix may be a teensy bit safer tonight...It is certainly more colorful.
For those of you concerned about whether there is a costumed crimefighter deficit in your area, there is the
World Superhero Registery.
Note that despite the Times articles implication that this is a strictly American thing, there seem to be several in the UK at least.
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There IS a reason I'm called "Wonderduck", but it has nothing to do with being a superhero.
Posted by: Wonderduck at Mon Jan 5 18:50:38 2009 (Hrqgp)
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December 21, 2008
December 04, 2008
Multitudinous Mammaries Mysteriously Missing
A large shipment of inflatable boobs has gone missing en route to Australia.
They must be located in 2 days or they will miss their deadline.
No.Really.
Character in pic is Yotsuba Kiowai from Yotsuba&! 404 shop was shamelessly nicked from 4-chan.
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July 26, 2008
And I Just Ate Too....
A pig with a monkeys face has been born in China.
Now a deformed farm animal is not normally news but the picture was disturbing enough to make me shiver...thus it warrants discussion about this stories implications.
The way I see it there are 5 possibilities here...
1: It is a bizzare but random mutation, the snout and jaw, shortened enough to give the piglets face an almost human face and the Brickmuppet nightmares.
2: As above, but not quite as random, having been triggered by the appalling pollution levels in parts of China.
3: This was an in vitro fertilized pig and due to incompetence at a government facility this farmers sow was accidentally impregnated with one of those human animal hybrids that Leon Kass gets the vapors over. This is possibly part of a program to grow transplantable organs or to make Chinese pigs taste even more like pork.
4: Its a pod pig.... the Body Snatchers are in China. Head for the hills. Trust no one.
5: It's a
pig thing...you wouldn't understand...but you should react as in #4.
Scenarios 1&2 can be safely dismissed in the interest of fearmongering and hysteria. #3 is disturbing in a Soylent Green / Clonus Horror sort of way but points (tangentially) to the distant possibility of catgirls being developmentally just around the corner. Scenarios 4&5 pretty much just suck and have no silver lining that I can see....
Anyway, discuss....
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Pretty simple, really.
EVERYBODY PANIC!
(Cue animation.)
Posted by: UtahMan at Mon Jul 28 12:22:31 2008 (XvWju)
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