Except it didn't really go down down. No, it sorta died, so that I could kinda connect to work.
First thing that happened is that my phone started screaming at me, telling me there was a tornado warning. Fungal Vale wasn't running its sirens, but when I listened carefully I could hear the sirens for the next town north of here. Weather report was ambiguous. Finally I decided not to move until the Fungal Vale sirens blew.
They blew, I went.
...was told by boss that I'd have to make up the time spent hiding from the weather. *sigh* Fine.
Anyway, a bit after all that--yesterday was a holiday, I'd taken maybe five calls to that point, so I was playing WoW, and WoW started doing that thing where you can run around the world and not encounter another soul, not player or NPC or anything. Just scenery.
Me: "Uh oh."
And that started an hour-long saga where I could log in to work and connect, and then a call would come in and when I tried to answer it, the computer would just hang at the "Pick-up pending" prompt. Thought it was the connection--it certainly acted like it--but one of my team leads remoted into my computer and rearranged things, and then presto it worked. WTF.
Anyway, ended up calling the time in the basement my "lunch", took no other breaks, and quit at 11 instead of 10:30 to make up for all that.
...all of which turned what should have been a pleasantly idle holiday at work into tedium.
*sigh*
* * *
Are you serious?
Dear white women, you have caused immeasurable pain and damage to Brown and Black women. We are here to sit down with you to candidly explain how you caused this pain and damage.Here's a candid explanation for you, you racist asshat: go fuck yourself.
* * *
Ex-President Tweek is 100% pure class. See here, Jugears: noted communist Bill Ayers ghost-wrote one of your autobiographies, so STFU.
* * *
My thinking is that the Democrats still don't understand who they're dealing with.
The predicate for this mess was the allegation that Trump had "ambushed" them when they went to bleat about an infrastructure bill. It's certainly true that Trump had already put together the (quite professional looking, and not hand-scrawled) sign he displayed just minutes later. But what's also true is that about an hour before walking into that meeting Pelosi accused Trump of a Nixonian cover-up, a clear impeachable offense, in public. To expect that you can call someone a crook on national television and then walk into their office and negotiate like nothing happened is a mark of either insanity or a belief in entitlement akin to a monarch -- not Speaker of the House.Back in 2003, the Democrats could do this sort of thing all day long and George W. Bush would not bat an eye. Just as an example, Bush signed the largest expansion of federal education funding in history, a bill basically written by Teddy Kennedy who--as soon as it was law--got up in front of the press and said (paraphrased), "This is all right, I suppose, but it doesn't do enough!"
The Democrats are used to Republican Presidents who are pussies, who let them say whatever they want without consequence. The last two Republican Presidents--both country-club GOP Presidents, both named Bush--were like that. They thought it projected an image of someone who was above that kind of stuff. Problem is, Ronald Reagan was able to pull that off, but they could not. in any case, Trump is playing an entirely different game, and the Democrats don't understand that--so they get up in front of the press and call Trump and skunk and a reprobate, and then when they meet with him they are shocked that his treatment of them is affected by their treatment of him.
* * *
It is time to admit that We have run out of frontiers here on Earth. And don't give me any of that horseshit about "the oceans are the new frontier!" because there's nothing to see down there and it's dark and cold. Not to mention the fact that diving to a depth of 10,000 feet requires an immense amount of preparation and equipment and is fantastically dangerous even so. People are not going to colonize the ocean floor. Forget it.
* * *
As usual, it turned out to be a hoax. Gay man claims he was beat up. Turns out the gay man was the aggressor: "Video obtained by police allegedly shows him spitting at subway riders when the suspects-turned-victims step in and try to stop him."
Uh huh. Typical. Also typical: "Police don’t plan to file any charges."
* * *
Democrats really don't want that stuff declassified and it is not difficult to figure out why that would be.
They demand that Barr release the unredacted Mueller Report and then immediately freak out that Trump might actually do it, because that's actually what they don't want.
Fresh off the heels of demanding that Attorney General William Barr release a fully-unredacted Mueller report, including grand jury proceedings and all underlying evidence, news organizations are freaking out that Barr might release classified information that will expose the corrupt FBI counterintelligence probe into Donald Trump's presidential campaign.The last thing that the Democrat-media complex wants is for the people to learn just what happened during the last election, because it makes Watergate look like a birthday party.
* * *
Self-styled champions of the people don't like it when reporters talk about how much money they earn.
That's what makes them such passionate agitators for socialism/communism -- they imagine they're buying their own ticket in to that very, very small group which will be permitted to have nice lives under the regime of misery they want for everyone else.That is how it works every time it's tried. They would not advocate it if they thought they would be one of the proles, left starving and freezing in the dark.
* * *
More about Camille Paglia. Students the university which employs her tried to get her fired, but couldn't because tenure. The college president's response approximated "lol fuck you", as it should in these kinds of cases.
* * *
I keep hearing about how well the Chinese can innovate, yet so many of their corporations seem to get caught stealing intellectual property rather than developing their own. "One of these things does not fit."
* * *
This is why new cars all look the same. Washington bureaucrats decide how sharp fender creases can be, how big the front must be, how wide/tall/long, etcetera. All these regulations must be followed, and because everyone must follow them to sell any car in the American marketplace, they all look alike.
I noticed it myself a few weeks ago; I was walking out of a store and realized that I wasn't looking at a bunch of GM cars in a row; that was a Ford, that was a Honda, that was a Hyundai, that was a Chevy, and they all looked alike. I mean it: they all looked so similar the only way I could tell them apart was by looking at the badges.
No wonder I have no interest in buying a new car. Holy shit.
* * *
I am not familiar with the backstory for Biff Tannen or Lorraine what's-her-face. What was Lorraine's maiden name? Seems that if we knew "Lorraine McFly was revealed as being a bit of slut for bad boys in a world that had anti-abortion laws but no birth control pill," we'd know her maiden name?
Anyway--I, too, have always wondered about that. Biff turning into a pussy from one punch didn't make a lot of sense to me, and Back to the Future was so tightly-plotted as a standalone time-travel story it stuck out like a sore thumb. But maybe his "tough guy" image was wrecked when the loser wimp George McFly decked him, and everyone else stood up to him after that, too. Because, "Hell, if George McFly can stand up to this jerk, why can't I?"
As for the punch knocking him out? Tannen was drunk. Even if he was able to take a punch sober, that doesn't mean a good slug couldn't knock him out when he's impaired by drink.
I don't know. I think the analysis of BTTF is flawed, here, but on the other hand the larger point of the post is dead on.
Addendum: I seem to recall that her maiden name was Baines but I would not be able to defend that assertion. End Addendum
* * *
I have to admit, I would laugh my ass off if this happened. That unconstitutional "National Popular Vote Interstate Compact" would deliver all those states to Trump if he won the popular vote in them. Wonder how fast the Democrats would scream about it if that took place?
* * *
A fundamentally different technology might keep Moore's Law going for a while yet. Using graphene-like materials to make logic gates.
* * *
The Green New Deal is meant to destroy our economy, not make it cleaner. Just remember that. The people who champion "decarbonizing" our electrical infrastructure want to eliminate nuclear power, precisely because it is dense and controllable and much less expensive than windmills plus solar plus "storage system".
* * *
These are excellent rules to live by. Cutting toxic people out of your life is difficult, but that's why that ends up being rule #1 on that list.
When you try to do it, those people will accuse you of being the bad guy. They'll accuse you of being angry, or hateful, or uncooperative. If you listen to them, if you let them tell you what to do, you will never get free. And they won't thank you for it; instead it will be more of the same, and any time you deviate they will lambaste you with everything that they (and others!) did for you in the past, and accuse you of being ungrateful, or petty. If you explain why you're doing it, they'll say you're holding a grudge.
But it's not about that, not if you're also following #9. You can forgive someone for being that way while still deciding not to subject yourself to them. The sad part is that there is no way to explain your actions to them in any way they will understand. They don't understand that they're toxic but they sure as hell won't listen to you when you try to help them comprehend.
When doing this, you just have to accept that--in their eyes--you will always be in the wrong. There is nothing to be done about it, and there is no way they will ever see you as being in the right. Accept that as a sad necessity and cut the cord.
* * *
This would probably make a fairly entertaining story, don't you think?
* * *
So, last night I decided I'd watch some anime.
First attempt: Monster Musume. I made myself sit through the first ep of this series even though it pissed me off before the OP even ran. Main character has unexpectedly found himself living with a demihuman girl, a snake-girl, and she half-strangles him in her sleep. At one point she dislocates his shoulder. Snake-girl is in love with protagonist but the law forbids him to have sex with her. (why would you WANT to) He continually makes choices that will continue this situation. Main character is "typical anime doormat guy" and the snake-girl was "stupid love interest" and it was not showing any signs of ever getting any better, so when the ep was over I decided to try something else.
Next up, Urara Meichoro. I was perhaps five minutes into the first ep of that when I said, "No," and stopped watching it. Too irritating by far. Main character comes to town of fortune tellers wanting to be a fortune teller, and she's followed by a bunch of small animals (rabbit, squirrel, etc). These animals pilfer treats from the food vendors along the street, who naturally get angry at main character for sending her pets to steal from them even though she did not do that. Having used up my patience on MM, and having been given no reason whatsoever to care about this girl, I stopped it right there and moved on.
Then, Monthly Girls' Nozaki-kun, a story about a girl who falls in love with a guy at her school, not knowing (yet) that he is actually a very popular shoujo manga artist. This, at least, was entertaining, gave me reasons to care about the characters, and did not rely on cheap, overused tropes to drive the story. I watched two eps of this, and will watch more.
* * *
This past Saturday Mrs. Fungus and I went to a place over in Indiana called "Motea". They serve ramen there (actual Japanese-style ramen) rolled ice cream, and various kinds of tea. They're on the spendy side, though. In Japan, ramen is fast food--cheap and filling--and not really "haute cuisine". Typically 600-900 yen per serving. Here, though, I have not found ramen anywhere under $10, because of course it's considered something special.
I could go there and have a bowl of ramen--just that--and get out of there for maybe $12-15 depending on what I ordered. But if you get anything else, it goes up pretty quickly: two people, an appetizer, and drinks was on the order of $50.
The food was good.
* * *
Chernobyl has one ep left. Last night's ep said the right things about the reactor, "positive void coefficient" and talked about the graphite tips on the control rods. I'm looking forward to the last ep next week.
I don't know what I think of the character Ulana Khomyuk. According to the extra bits they showed, she's a composite of "hundreds" of scientists. They couldn't resist making "brilliant woman who is smarter than all the men" out of the character, of course, and she's all "Let's tell the whole world the complete truth!!!" as if they weren't living under one of the most murderous regimes in the history of the world.
Okay: I grant that it was the Gorbachev years, the time of glasnost and perestroika; but the KGB still arrested and shot people during that time, and for lots less than revealing state secrets on international television.
And she was already arrested by the KGB once, for fuck's sake.
Anyway, it's a sour note in what is otherwise a tour de force. So far the technical aspects have been dead on, 100% right, and the editorializing and the sermonizing I had expected has been completely absent. We'll see how the last episode goes. I'm praying it continues in this vein, simply presenting the facts.
Honestly, if you're anti-nuke, the honest facts of the disaster are pretty scary, especially to someone who doesn't know anything about nuclear power. You don't need to lie about Chernobyl to say, "This happened, and this was the result!" The disaster speaks for itself; it doesn't need embelleshment or hyperbole.
But: something like 15 other reactors of that design in the Soviet Union, and none of them blew up even though it was a pretty bad design. Only this one went, and at that, it went because it was deliberately misoperated. The worst nuclear disaster in the world, ever--and it didn't even kill as many people in 1986 as coal mining did.
* * *
This weekend I need to start buying lumber; that front fence isn't going to fix itself.