Shit happens, but it particularly sucks when it has a comma in it. And I got to be involved with inadvertently destroying a crucible while testing an induction furnace. We were delighted that we got it working but it didn’t seem to be reaching the desired temperature. Unfortunately, the optical pyrometer reading the temperature was not showing a correct number and the crucible got a fuckload hotter than intended. OK, that’s no big deal… oops, it’s a platinum crucible. $7,300.
So how’s YOUR week?
It’s a good week for birthdays, however, and today’s include a guy with great taste; a guy responsible for most of the bumps and bruises of my youth; a guy who took a mechanical approach; one of the sorta-local guys who orchestrated a fine career; Marge Simpson’s inspiration; a guy that Fauci imagined himself to be; a guy who couldn’t even outlive Abe Vigoda; a guy who symbolized (and was responsible for) everything wrong about baseball; a guy who was most famous for having his ass on TV; a guy with capacious pants; a guy, errr, a gal who spawned the best and worst parts of American culture; the brother who should have died; a leading candidate for Worst Person On Earth; but possibly rivaled by this guy; the original linkster; a woman who parlayed a horse mouth and saggy tits to fame and fortune; and a guy who was doomed from the start.
And speaking of doomed, let’s do Links.
How about the Old Man Plan? Let Israel and Ukraine BUY anything they like from us?
“Dude, I’ve BEEN there.” Team Blue still has one or two sensible people left.
He dead. “Live Updates” seems ironic.
OK, the headline made me giggle a bit.
“I sent pix of my dick. Pls respond.”
Tomb Raider is a big fan of this guy and took me to see him play a gig in Rochester. The Old Man was impressed. You should be as well.
What are you cooking that requires a platinum crucible?
Glasses?
Good news: even if you wreck it, you’ve still got the platinum, which is probably, what, 90% of the cost?
That’s what I was wondering in my total ignorance — isn’t it still there in the dross, can you recast it or something?
I was curios too and poked around:
https://www.sigmaaldrich.com/US/en/product/aldrich/z562092
Looks like scrap value of 24g is about $700, but that 24g crucible is about $2,500.
So, shit.
Or, what the old man wrote below.
That crucible weighed about ten times that…
An old buddy of mine is a mortician. His funeral home has a crematory. In the corner of the crematory is a plastic 5 gallon bucket with various bits of platinum, palladium and titanium in it. We were shooting the shit one day and I idly poked around in the bucket.
“Ken, man, you must have a million dollars worth of metal here.”
Ken: “Yeah, I know. I gotta call the scrap guy. That stuff is the only way I can keep this place open. I make fuck-all on cremations.”
Dont tell OMWC but I did chuckle a bit when I read that.
Why don’t they ever just shoot themselves first, and save everyone else the trouble?
I have a feeling that in this case he was experiencing anixety/pain/rage.
That was not sufficiently treated.
The proper conspiracy theory is that the people who knew and ignored all those signs purposely directed what he was feeling.
With the family-law judge: notoriety?
Schizophrenia, OTOH…
Nihilism does not preclude a giant helping of ‘fuck you all’ rage.
Maybe we should reconsider asylums…
Yep. Won’t happen, but we should.
And if we did, anyone who won’t tow the lion will be the ones locked up.
No, we shouldn’t.
The late William April, probably the world’s foremost expert on spree killers, once described spree killings as ‘…rage-quitting life.’
Just offing yourself doesn’t allow you to show everybody else how angry and miserable you are. If you’re a huge narcissistic piece of shit, you have to share your misery with as many others as possible. Spree killers are angry bratty children throwing tantrums.
a guy that Fauci imagined himself to be;
Happy birthday Josef Mengele!
Fauci. Is he still living?
Only the good die young. See also, Kissinger.
Beau, on a sad note, I broke my BOOSH! mug yesterday.
I am no longer an Xticle.
Oh no!
Xticles mourn 🙁
Ditto Betty White.
What is wrong with Betty White? I have never heard anything bad about her.
Golden Girls….what always stuck with me was the rumor that the set of that show off-camera was one endless fuck-fest. Nuthin’ wrong with that if it’s your thing.
Now I need some brain bleach. *desperately tries to erase images of Bea Arthur fucking*
It was a joke.
I got it.
and today’s include a guy with great taste;
I thought he was less filling.
a guy who symbolized (and was responsible for) everything wrong about baseball;
Happy birthday Abner Doubleday!
(Or maybe Ken Burns)
A penny for you, Old Guy.
And, of course, did they find him dead right after they found him alive?
Morning, GT.
How’s the calligraphy? Evidently I need to practice more.
Good morning, TO’G! I…haven’t started doing any calligraphy yet. 😞 Maybe that’s what the family members will get for Christmas…
The first headline I saw was a masterpiece of ambiguity. Something like: The Maine shooter has been located, and police say he is deceased.
a guy with capacious pants;
Happy birthday MC Hammer!
“We’re not going to abandon them, but we have a responsibility, a stewardship responsibility, over the precious treasure of the American people and we have to make sure that the White House is providing the people with some accountability for the dollars”
“More money for Ukraine? Where’s my cut?”
God, I hate the term Treasure when used like that. It isn’t treasure, it wasn’t found in a dragons cave, heck it isn’t even savings that have been squired away. It is fiat currency, and spending it is just messing with the economy, you know, actual productivity.
Morons.
How does one mend a broken crucible?
“It wasn’t me, it was the pyrometer that done it”
Duct tape.
Serious answer: we gather it all up and send it to a company that remelts it and makes a new crucible- after taking a fee plus 1% of the platinum. So the overall cost is more like $2,000. Which is still a comma price.
Question answered then, thank you.
Lesson learned. Use two thermometers when testing new equipment to account for measurement issues.
Ask Arthur Miller in to consult?
But what if I don’t need overpriced dance lessons?
That chick is the queen of sociopathy. Holy crap.
SO what you’re saying is “would not”?
Yeah, there is a lot of that going around.
I played https://squaredle.com/xp 10/28:
*21/21 words (+2 bonus words)
🎯 Perfect accuracy
I played https://squaredle.com 10/28:
*42/42 words (+4 bonus words)
🎯 Perfect accuracy
🔥 Solve streak: 70
I appreciated https://squaredle.com 10/28 after yesterday’s bitch:
42/42 words (+8 bonus words)
🎯 In the top 19% by accuracy
🔥 Solve streak: 41
Filbert isn’t in the list, even though it’s a perfectly cromulent word.
Wait a second. Damn thing is claiming I swiped on “FILMBERT”. This isn’t word-finding; it’s “can you swipe within tolerances”.
I played https://squaredle.com 10/28:
42/42 words (+11 bonus words)
📖 In the top 23% by bonus words
I played https://squaredle.com/xp 10/28:
*21/21 words (+5 bonus words)
📖 In the top 34% by bonus words
Sandy Berger or Sonny Barger – YOU BE THE JUDGE!
old man music is good today.
“…capacious pants…” – There is a giant dick joke dying to get out….giant dick, not giant joke.
“…his ass on TV…” – I remember when naked boobs on the screen were a big deal. Over time they became mandatory for any R rated. Then they became somewhat passe. The Mrs. was watching ‘Robot Apocalypse’ yesterday. Two seconds in I thought “If they aren’t going to show any boobs in this I am not gonna waste my time”. That was when I realized an excellent rating system for movies is boob-worthiness. If the movie sucks you need to show boobs to keep eyes on the screen. There is an inverse relationship between good visual storytelling and the need for nude bodies. High boob-worthiness means the movie stinks.
Perhaps we should adopt this system for the movie articles. That would bolster our family friendly rating.
I don’t know man… La double vie de Véronique was pretty good on both fronts. Maybe have to have an exception for foreign films?
A great movie by one of the greatest directors of all time.
His TV series DEKALOG is possibly the best thing ever filmed.
I think the eighties explored this theory in great detail.
+ 1 Skinemax.
The sender was not actually named Mia. It was Sakoya Blackwood, the mastermind of an elaborate blackmail scheme that would land her in jail. Five months after sending her first text, she was indicted by prosecutors in the Southern District of New York, who charged her with extortion and cyberstalking. She pleaded guilty this summer, and earlier this month, Aron confirmed a Semafor report that he was the unnamed CEO in the case.
Her name isn’t even Trump. How did they find the time?
This took a bit of initiative. With Trump you dont have to bother doing anything. You just pull anything out of your ass and put it on display.
Hence the need for big pants.
Biden grateful Maine residents are safe “after spending excruciating days hiding in their homes”
Que?
You know what keeps me safe?
My guns. That’s what keeps me safe.
Outside of a couple of college towns, I suspect most Mainers were not cowering at home.
Bates College is in Lewiston and they did the cringe and cower routine to the max. I assume the locals just remembered to carry.
“Americans should not have to live like this,” he said in the statement. “I once again call on Republicans in Congress to fulfill their obligation to keep the American people safe. Until that day comes, I will continue to do everything in my power to end this gun violence epidemic. The Lewiston community – and all Americans – deserve nothing less.”
“Would it make you feel any better if they was all pushed outta windows?”
Evil never rests.
Christ, what an asshole.
I’m taking a full point for guessing “Bruce Jenner”.
NYT opinion headline:
“Stephen King on mass shootings: we’re out of things to say”
Good. STFU.
Seconded.
I knew he would chime on from his neck of the woods.
You know, I’m pretty sure some of his characters have used guns to save themselves; I’ll take him seriously when he rewrites those stories to use magic fairy dust instead.
OMWC i was at a blind syrah tasting. Romanian rhone australian US chile… I liked the french the best, but your american syrah did no much impress me even though it was by far the most expensive in the lineup
IMO, the only good American Syrah is from Edmunds St John. That’s a pretty small percentage…
– Jeff Cohn Cellars Rockpile Haley Syrah – California 2014
Digging holes with a spade is hard work if you are not used to it and i fear i did it for no benefit. Still… The weather is still weird for late october 25C and sunny. No real rain in 4 months the earth is dry and this did not help the digging.
https://photos.app.goo.gl/wqeJ7hESQoyXovna9
Don’t forget to cover the body in lime.
Oh haha. I moved some fir trees that were growing next to this concrete wall to another spot and because of the wall and hard dirt i think i cut too much of the roots and am not sure they will live. My mother had these thuja trees for years which suddenly died, though it was all over the neighborhood so maybe bome disease amd the fir trees were moved to cover the gaps
Anyhoo had some grilled pork belly for lunch after i was done and am on my 4th beer of the day.
It’s raining hard here, two days now. Soccer match canceled. Need to make breakfast.
There is a party tonight. I would rather stay in.
It helps if you use a shovel, but having a black man do it works too if you are in management.
Tits bouncing in hot on Silicone Saturday.
https://archive.ph/qeaef
Just read a local article about what sounds like a domestic dispute turned bad. A guy killed a woman by burning her alive. Then tried to butcher the body. Thank God guns weren’t used. That could have been traumatic otherwise.
10 bucks says that none of the victims of the Maine shooting were armed themselves.
It would have been worse if they were
In Brandon we trust
President Joe Biden will deploy numerous federal agencies to monitor the risks of artificial intelligence and develop new uses for the technology while attempting to protect workers, according to a draft executive order obtained by POLITICO.
The order, expected to be issued as soon as Monday, would streamline high-skilled immigration, create a raft of new government offices and task forces and pave the way for the use of more AI in nearly every facet of life touched by the federal government, from health care to education, trade to housing, and more.
At the same time, the Oct. 23 draft order calls for extensive new checks on the technology, directing agencies to set standards to ensure data privacy and cybersecurity, prevent discrimination, enforce fairness and also closely monitor the competitive landscape of a fast-growing industry. The draft order was verified by multiple people who have seen or been consulted on draft copies of the document.
Nothing outside the State.
It’s like owning two homes and renting one out as an investment.
https://www.dailystar.co.uk/love-sex/my-fella-only-uses-1-31067050
The order, anticipated for months, represents the most significant single effort to impose national order on a technology that has shocked many people with its rapid growth, most notably the human-like capabilities of the latest and most powerful generative AI models. Congress has scrambled to put legislation together to tackle the risks and potential of AI, but Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer cautioned this week that no broad AI bill was likely to be introduced until next year.
The White House will issue sprawling directives to over a dozen agencies targeting their handling of artificial intelligence systems, according to the 111-page draft. Most will have between 90 to 240 days to fulfill the requirements of the executive order, in the lead-up to next year’s presidential election. The order will also appoint a White House AI Council to coordinate the federal government’s AI activities, chaired by the White House Deputy Chief of Staff for Policy and staffed with representatives from every major agency.
More phoney baloney jobs; that’s what this country needs.
Also free university education so you have qualified people for those jobs
Wait till he finds out how racist and inequitable AI is.
I hope the AI Council will at least give us more Vince and Larry.
AI has already anticipated this move.
https://twitter.com/TransMaoist/status/1717908017868402759
You’d think all these murderous types flying their Palestinian flags are not doing the Palestinian any favors – in fact, it’s almost like they don’t actually give a shit about Palestinians.
Wild GoPro Video Of A Surfer Getting Obliterated By a Breaching Humpback Whale And Being Dragged 20 Feet Underwater
https://www.barstoolsports.com/blog/3491147/wild-go-pro-video-of-a-surfer-getting-obliterated-by-a-breaching-humpback-whale-and-getting-dragged-20-feet-underwater
With job disruptions one of the most widely shared social concerns about the rise of AI, the executive order sends numerous strong rhetorical signals that the Biden administration wants agencies to put worker and labor-union concerns in the center of their decisions about AI-related policies.
Of course they do.
“ Feast your eyes on Uranus’ glowing edges. ”
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=U7UBy1usnrg
Are you shitting me? I am not clicking that.
Mysterious circumstances
Autopsies have confirmed that two bodies found in a wooded area off a rural road in northern Vermont are those of two missing Massachusetts men who were shot to death, Vermont State Police said Thursday.
Police found the bodies of 21-year-olds Jahim Solomon, of Pittsfield, and Eric White, of Chicopee, on Wednesday in a wooded area in Eden. Autopsies performed Thursday determined that Solomon died of multiple gunshot wounds to the head and White died of a single gunshot wound to the head, police said.
——-
Police haven’t released any information about what the two were doing in Vermont or possible motives for their murders, reports CBS Burlington, Vt. affiliate WCAX-TV.
But state police said Saturday that Solomon and White disappeared under “suspicious circumstances” while traveling through several communities.
They were probably selling magazine subscriptions.
Don’t fuck with Richard.
I…. what?
https://www.thesun.co.uk/fabulous/24520586/22-children-surrogacy-kristina-ozturk/
Don’t not stick it in crazy.
I was expecting another one of The Sun’s trademark multiple vagina stories.
Dad went to jail to get awat from her.
First snow this morning. Supposed to get 6 inches (thats what she said) this weekend.
Good for you. It’s going to stay warm here for the foreseeable future.
Grand swiss, lazy weekend edition.
Standings thru rnd 3: https://chess-results.com/tnr793016.aspx?lan=1&art=1&rd=3&flag=30
Round 4 pairings: https://chess-results.com/tnr793016.aspx?lan=1&art=2&rd=4&flag=30
“We’re not going to abandon them, but we have a responsibility, a stewardship responsibility, over the precious treasure of the American people and we have to make sure that the White House is providing the people with some accountability for the dollars,” he added.
Which means the new Speaker will send US dollars off to the Black Holes of Ukraine and the Middle.
This week’s Powerline fun.
RE: Gaza.
Sad to say… I was right all along. I’ve been saying ever since Israel left Gaza and they elected Hamas that the only way this situation gets resolved is with Gaza razed. Hamas was never going to try and build a functional society and were going to keep pushing until they eventually went too far. No matter the pressure from the “international community (of antisemites)”, Israel actually takes “never again” pretty damn seriously so this was all going to come to an impasse eventually.
Any two-state solution involving Gaza was a complete fantasy from the get-go. West Bank… maybe… though unlikely considering what Israel is going to have to do to Gaza to end Hamas’ threat. There’s going to be much garment rending and floor writhing about the poor pathetic Pali victims being oppressed by the evil, subhuman, white, colonialist JOOZ and PNA will use it as an excuse to grift more sweet victimhood cash from the United Nations (of antisemites).
A problem I see is even those who call for rooting out Hamas are also calling for massive amounts of “rebuild” money. I doubt there will be a true end to Hamas; and that “rebuilding” is just going to feed Hamas or whatever Iran chooses to pop into its place.
I don’t pay enough attention to see that.
I’m still voting for the glass parking lot solution. Gaza can’t cause problems if Gaza is gone. There’s no need to rebuild, just leave it barren.
The world is still going to shit but I dont care.
I am off to get supplies. I am spending the rest of today making prickly pear jelly.
The Day the Delusions Died by Konstantin Kisin
“Kim Kardashian introduces a bra with a raised NIPPLE to make sure a woman is always ‘perky’: ‘No matter how hot it is you will always look cold'”
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-12680961/Kim-Kardashian-introduces-bra-raised-NIPPLE-make-sure-woman-perky-No-matter-hot-look-cold.html
That’s just stupid.
Meals were missed
The share of U.S. households facing hunger is rising at an alarming pace.
Nearly 13% of American households were food insecure in 2022. That means some 17 million families, or 1 in 8 U.S. households, struggled to meet their nutritional needs at some point in the year, according to a new report by the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
The prevalence was “significantly higher” in 2022 than in 2021, when 13.5 million households were food insecure, according to the USDA.
“The results are unacceptable,” USDA Deputy Under Secretary Stacy Dean said.
Food insecurity is even more of a challenge for certain groups.
——-
“There is no excuse for anyone going hungry in America,” said Luis Guardia, president of the Food Research & Action Center. “Congress must act now to make substantial investments in anti-hunger and anti-poverty programs.”
Free lunches for everyone!
Is that like when UCS runs out of cheese?
Probably.
Gotta get the scare numbers up in the land of gluttony and sloth.
I love how they need to keep inventing new buzzwords (food insecurity) because the world keeps getting better.
One day we will get to paradise.
The whole thing just might be a scam.
Pandemic-era aid programs, including the emergency expansion of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP; rental assistance; and direct stimulus payments, led to a record decline in poverty, experts say. At the same time, food insecurity rates fell, too.
“It speaks to the importance of a strong safety net,” Dean said.
$100,000/yr guaranteed universal basic income will end poverty. Let’s just do that.
“Mayor Eric Adams’ new appointee for chair and executive director of the city’s Commission on Racial Equity has a history of spewing antisemitic rhetoric.”
https://nypost.com/2023/10/28/metro/nycs-racial-equity-head-linda-tigani-shared-antisemitic-posts/
Shocking.
She wouldn’t be qualified otherwise.
Totally. Feature, not bug.
Pork chops, salt, pepper, paprika, smoked paprika, and berbere.
😋
Eggs sunny side up, thick bacon, pancakes.
For those of you with TCM, since I know you were talking about noir a day or two ago, tonight’s Noir Alley is a really good movie that I think is technically not noir, but a movie that deserves to be seen anyway: Experiment in Terror, starring Glenn Ford as an FBI agent trying to figure out who the asthmatic stranger threatening Lee Remick over the phone is. Apparently, the finale was filmed at the old Candlestick Park.
Before that this evening are both versions of The Man Who Knew Too Much: the remake at 8:00 PM, and the 1934 original (Peter Lorre’s first English-language role) at 10:15 PM.