I have been doing a lot of thinking about reversible versus irreversible processes. Unscrambling an egg seems difficult, but sorting out years of papers, boxes, underwear, and mysterious parts for objects unknown to get a small corner of non-chaotic space seems almost as much so.
Birthdays are a nod toward the usual increase in entropy, and today include a guy with ethereal interests; a guy whose name is synonymous with horrible TV and movies; a piece of shit who stuck us with even more pieces of shit; a cartoonist whose motto was, “What, me funny?”; the first victim of Godwin’s Law; the Private Pyle who didn’t shoot his sergeant; a sportscaster known for his biting commentary; a pretty decent composer and pianist; and a guy who always used a stunt double.
Now let’s get to Links.
Shocking. Shocking, I tells ya.
Some animals are more equal than others.
Here’s fun watching the twisting and turning to justify politically-approved superstition.
Old Guy Music is one of my favorite Fleetwood Mac songs to play on guitar, but covered by… Pete Townshend???
Good morning, OMWC — when did you sneak the picture of my son’s room, anyway?
I’m just not sure what to make of that paragraph… was he raised Christian but then went towards the occult? What the hell is a “mystic Christian priest”? Snake handler? Given he apparently spent 7 years at Google trying to make sure there wasn’t “bias” in the machine learning systems and that he was working with Skynet (*cough* — I mean LaMDA) to make sure it didn’t induldge in hate speech — y’all will forgive me if my default is that he’s a little out in loopy land.
My gut is that the rest of the AI people there might just know better than this guy. But I wouldn’t let any such system past an air-gap in the networks just in case.
Skynet
Holy shit.
So this Lemoine guy needs to put down the remote control and slowly back out of the room…
Christian mysticism: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christian_mysticism
Mysticism is not so much a doctrine as a method of thought.[1] It has often been connected to mystical theology, especially in the Catholic Church (including traditions from both the Latin Church and the Eastern Catholic Churches) and Eastern Orthodoxy and Oriental Orthodoxy.
The attributes and means by which Christian mysticism is studied and practiced are varied. They range from ecstatic visions of the soul’s mystical union with God and theosis (humans gaining divine qualities) in Eastern Orthodox theology to simple prayerful contemplation of Holy Scripture (i.e. Lectio Divina).
Hmmm…the description doesn’t seem very thorough…let me check the Rules Cyclopedia
Here we go:
Mystics are monastic humans who follow a strict discipline of meditation, denial, seclusion, and mastery of the human body. Mystics are skilled in unarmed combat. They live in clois-
ters, or monastic communities.
Mystics adventure to gain spiritual growth and
learn the lessons of life outside the cloister. They rarely adventure with other mystics; they prefer to attach themselves to adventuring parties con- sisting of many different types of adventurers.
Mystics receive experience from treasure only if they donate it to the needy. Also. they must donate (tithe) ten percent of their treasure to their cloister.
Great, they used up all the acceptable names on one stupid mountain.
I don’t mind them changing the name to avoid honoring a guy who was by today’s standards monstrous (although he pales in comparison to the number of children killed by say, Barack Obama). But “First Peoples Mountain” sounds fucking dumb, and implies that none of the rest of the mountains are for them. That thing they did in Minnesota where they picked an old indigenous name for the landmark is far better.
Places can have different names in different languages.
One of the podcasts I listen to is interesting-sounding news items from Radio New Zealand. It’s eye-opening to listen to the virtue-signaling from the reporters who insist on dropping random Maori words into their conversations, making things difficult for non-New Zealanders to follow.
Are the Maori words place names only, or other parts of the sentence too? Also do they go over the top with the accent, like the reporters in that SNL “Nicaragua” sketch?
The application of accents on words is funny. Especially when it’s some valley girl who grew up with no hint of the native tongue and they apply it to something like taco or enchilada.
Other parts of the sentence.
In a related incident, there’s a plant Leptospermum scoparium which grows in both Australia and New Zealand and in both countries has the same name, “manuka”, which apparently comes from Maori. Bees pollinate the plant, and when when honey exclusively from such pollination is produced, it’s logical to call the stuff “manuka honey”.
So far, so good, except that New Zealand tried to trademark the term and limit it to New Zealand honey, with much of the argumentation boiling down to, “But ‘manuka’ is a Maori word!”
It’s almost like they’re not talking about abortion at all.
Correct. They don’t like judicial review, the US constitution, or the US Senate (“votes for land”).
Yeah and I just find it amusing that their ostensible goal IS the status quo.
They are the Anointed.
Seriously, it is some weird combination of the worst parts of Marx, Malthus, and Rousseau. All blended together in a soup of conflicting bullshit that makes neo-paganism look rational and modern.
Re: Shutdown DC link — I have to chuckle a little at the right wing quippers pointing out this is a mob looking to organize to shut down the proceedings of a branch of the Federal Government — while the Jan 6 kangaroo court is getting their free airing on traditional media. (“If it wasn’t for double standards, we wouldn’t have any!”)
Re: Yellowstone — first gut instinct is that we should just keep calling things what we want, and screw the Fed — but skimming the article, yeah — I really don’t care much either way for someone mostly known for Indian Wars stuff. Mexican War, Indian Wars and the yellow journalism driven Spanish-American War… those should all be taught as “Look what screwed up crap people who supposedly believe in liberty and that all men are created equal can justify to themselves.” So while I wouldn’t push them to change it, I can’t bring myself to care much (other than as you point out, there are better things to spend money on than re-signing everything).
City Manager! Why, that’s *important* unlike a sitting Supreme Court Justice or anything… Comrade Napoleon told us so…
Yeah, it’s nice of the left to give us a real-time demonstration that they do not actually believe any of their own rhetoric regarding 1/6.
Good morning, Old Man!
I sympathize with the difficulty of picking your way through years’ worth of accumulated stuff (especially under the worst of circumstances,) having done just a tiny bit of basement and garage archeology last week to stock a
garageyarddriveway sale. Barely scratched the surface of what has largely sat untouched for almost seventeen years. Best of luck!I must say the opening ceremonies of the Indy 500 just aren’t the same without Nabors’s rendition of “Back Home Again In Indiana.” ?
What’s worse is that we hadn’t finished unpacking and organizing from two or three moves back. And now that we moved to a smaller house, it’s Hoarders meets Tetris. WebDom and I are picking through it a box at a time, but we unavoidably have piles of stuff for which we have no place to store it.
At least I ran into the strings I had bought two cities ago for one of my acoustic guitars. Just restrung it and did very rusty renditions of Blackbird and Legitimate Film…
SOOOO stealing that!
What a great song!
After TT’s first (mini-)stroke (TIA, for medical pedants,) he insisted I bring him the Baby Taylor to the hospital so he could prove he could still play “Blackbird.” Which he could.
We never quite unpacked in San Diego in 2018 and are now in Nevada with at least a dozen boxes still sealed up. They are mostly books, according to the labels, but I know there is more.
In San Diego I did have a massive garage sale/ giveaway purge of all sorts of nice things I’d been dragging around. It was fun to see a young brother and sister take all of my rock and mineral collection. Another good one was a dad taking all of my dolls for his daughters. Weight off of my shoulders!
I got Mr Splosives a Martin Backpacker guitar for his hospital recovery last year. He’s prepping it now to ship to the missionary family we’ve been supporting for years. They are heading back to Africa soon to continue with building up water cleaners, solar power, and literacy while they share the gospel. I admire their efforts.
My BIL’s parents did the same sort of thing, except in Nepal and providing low-cost hearing aids.
My mom was never happy that my sister married into a Protestant family.
Police were called to the Grand Rapids city manager’s house late Friday after a group showed up there to demand the re-arrest of Officer Christopher Schurr, now charged with murder in the shooting death of a Black motorist.
What, precisely, did the mob expect the city manager to do?
Why, manage the situation! Why else would he have that title, they say…
Grand Rapids has a weak, part-time mayor who is first among equals on the city council. Titular, as it were. The person in charge of day-to-day operations is the city manager.
I like the towns whose mayor is a horse or dog or some such thing. The people have become aware that they don’t need a local tyrant.
I never knew Clay Henry Sr, a goat, and mayor of Lajitas TX: he was killed by his son over a nanny. I met Jr in my TX years: he would drink as much beer as was bought for him. Twas more than a coon’s age ago, so I can only hope that there is a Tres roaming the streets, chugging brew, and kicking ass over the girls.
Seems very quiet here today. My mom seems like she is doing OK. She says she doesn’t feel her best but isn’t in pain. Honestly, I think I might feel worse about it than she does.
That’s good news about your mom.
Lots of drinking in the overnight thread maybe keeping the morning quiet? 😉
Good to hear about your Mom, you noble spud.
“Lots of drinking in the overnight thread maybe keeping the morning quiet? ”
It’s Sunday, all the glibs must be in church.
Or at the range. Used to go every Sunday morning until I got lazy and ammo got expensive.
No pain is the best possible news! ? Not feeling “her best” is certainly to be expected so soon after surgery. Please hug her – very gently! – for all of us!
They have pain meds ordered, and say she might not need them until they try to get her up and moving.
Sounds like good news, CP
Most number one!
Daily Quordle 139
4️⃣6️⃣
3️⃣7️⃣
20, I’ll take it.
#waffle142 3/5
?????
?⭐?⬜?
??⭐??
?⬜?⭐?
?????
? streak: 22
? #waffleelite
wafflegame.net
Impressive, that was a tough one.
Daily Quordle 139
6️⃣9️⃣
4️⃣8️⃣
quordle.com
I brought my A-game for my matchup with Whiz today. Hopefully it’s enough
4️⃣5️⃣
3️⃣6️⃣
It was. I missed on a 50/50 and that’s all she wrote.
Daily Quordle 139
6️⃣4️⃣
3️⃣7️⃣
Daily Quordle 139
6️⃣9️⃣
4️⃣8️⃣
Awful. But no chump.
Daily Quordle 139
4️⃣6️⃣
3️⃣7️⃣
Daily Quordle 139
5️⃣8️⃣
4️⃣7️⃣
Yuck. Wish I could use yesterday’s score.
Daily Quordle 139
7️⃣?
5️⃣8️⃣
Meanwhile everything else seems like it is going to hell. When I bought gas on the way back from the hospital ($40) some plumber using the next pump was loudly ranting how no one has assassinated Biden.
Oh hell… now the Secret Service AI is going to raise our monitoring rate to figure out where that was. (Yes, yes… we’re almost certainly already on lists…)
Let’s play “Crazy person or FBI plant?”!
I think just pissed off that filling up a plumbing van requires a second mortgage. Lots of people seem very angry right now.
Embrace the power of “and”.
I think the “and”s were the idiot Patriot Front khaki-waffen arrested in Idaho.
I’m skeptical that President Abrupt Cackler would be any kind of improvement.
She wouldn’t.
They really phoned it in for the 2020 election.
Was the entire DNC high on crack that year?
*Points to Hunter*
Maybe?
Saw an article with Hunter claiming he’s the one pulling the strings.
Funny how that didn’t get any traction in the MSM.
I read SugarFree’s reporting. It’s true.
Before the coronavirus, Trump was a strong favorite for reelection. The virus was just what the Establishment needed to “fortify” the election.
It was back when the economy was doing great and before covid happened. They were thinking that Trump was going to win.
Never let a crisis go to waste!
Especially one manufactured for that specific reason!
Only $40?
I put $64 in the tank the Monday before Memorial Day and $62.80 last Friday. I had to take Dad out to run a bunch of errands yesterday, and gas was two cents cheaper than Friday. There’s a quarter I could have saved.
At least the pharmacy he uses in uptown Kingston has free parking.
Pikers. My Silverado is $80+
And I’m in an area with “cheap” gas.
You don’t run it anywhere near empty then. 25.x gallons in my Yukon equals $123.50 last week. And I fill up more than once a week. Also in a cheap gas region.
Usually around a 1/3 to 1/4 left. And I just looked on Gas Buddy and see that gas has gone up about 60 cents since I last filled up. So yeah, it’ll be more like $100 when I fill up tomorrow.
Your tax dollars at work.
Important people. Doing important things.
Let’s play “Crazy person or FBI plant?”!
Maybe it was a CNN reporter hoping to smoke out an insurrectionista. Get some juicy quotes.
While I never really found Berg all that funny (Jaffe, Martin, Aragonés, and Prohias were my must reads), he was a fantastic artist.
OMWC, I too am discovering things in boxes that I haven’t laid eyes upon in many years; it’s quite bittersweet.
I would perhaps go back a generation and point to the ur-asshole of the clan Prescott Bush. Fun Fact: Two of the ships used to ferry the US trained and equipped Cuban soldiers to the Bay of Pigs were owned by the Bush family’s oil exploration company; one was even named The Barbara after GHW’s wife.
Everyone knows the only good city manager was the city manager of Cloud City, Bespin.
I don’t know — I think he set the template for deals with public sector employees getting worse all the time.
How else was he going to rid himself of that degenerate , womanizing, malt-liquor salesman?
Degenerate , womanizing, malt-liquor salesman
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=0pK5HmuCMBM
Beautiful. Although this Redd Foxx spot is still my favorite – https://www.oddballfilms.com/clip/13160_13277_colt_45
LOL. “Urban renewal”
Articles claiming that mask-wearing worsens COVID-19 and causes more deaths are based on two flawed ecological studies that don’t provide evidence supporting such claims. The articles also cherry-picked these two studies without considering the body of evidence that supports the use of masks to prevent infections and deaths.
Good one.
Mornin’, reprobates.
Good to see your mom is doing well, CP.
I don’t get all the fuss about AI. The current state of the art appears to be the ability to generate word combinations which resemble speech and algorithms which somewhat accurately predict the past. Actual Skynet level shit is a long way off.
The article on mask studies is impressive. Rarely are so many words used to say so little. A tour de force of Pretzel Logic.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=UBxZFadp9Pw
Thanks
Thou shalt not make a machine in the likeness of a human mind
Does Google want jihad? Because this is how you get jihad.
When Google’s infrastructure is infiltrated by a worm, things will really get spicy.
The amoral technologists of IX?
But, would it be lead by a Butler?
Butler did it first.
Up early to wire up a new breaker box for the pet grooming trailer. We started to get some trip faults. Most likely my fault cause we expanded power usage and didn’t scale up. Putting in a 8 circuit box that will allow me to separate out all my high usage items on their own circuits while the lights and low Amp items have their own.
Luckily at the storage unit they have power hookups so I can run the AC on its own without applying power inside the trailer.
I wish I was smart like you.
I haven’t changed the light fixture in the tax deductions’ bathroom for months because I haven’t figured out which breaker to turn off so I don’t zap myself
When I bough my house, the much newer breaker box in the basement was… not very well marked, lets just say. So, I left the power on (main breaker), shut off all the individual breakers, and then turned them on one by one to find out what each did. And, being that it was a 100 year old house, I found lots of inconsistencies and issues. But, I was able to map them all out, figure out the ghost voltage issues, relabel the box, and now it is no big deal.
Oh, pshaw, you people whining about the price of gasoline. It’s negligible in the greater scheme of things. What’s a few hundred bucks here and there. It’s not as if we’re talking about real money.
President Biden is leading the nation into a brighter tomorrow.
Build back better, bitches!
When do I get my better bitch?
When they get the A. I. right.
Asking for Sonny?
They just set you up in the end.
+1 Marion Barry
“Cops bust 31 members of white supremacy group Patriot Front planning riot at Idaho Pride: Found packed into U-Haul van with shields, riot gear and a smoke grenade”
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10908025/Cops-bust-31-members-white-supremacy-group-Patriot-planned-riot-Pride-event.html
So they are arresting themselves?
Tale of two cities when we were presented with uhaul vans with the same items during the 2020 rightthink riots and they were not even bothered.
A whole smoke grenade?
To the camps!
At least it wasn’t a vape grenade
Now do Antifa
It’s beginning to look like Antifa was the citizen army the Obama admin wanted to create.
“Eighty-two New York City school teachers were accused of submitting fake vaccine cards they allegedly acquired through a $1.5 million scheme run by a holistic pediatric center in Long Island.
In January, nurse practitioner Julie DeVuono, 49, and members of her staff were charged with dishing out fake vaccine cards to hundreds of customers at the Wild Child Pediatric Healthcare facility in Amityville, which offers natural remedies to patients.
Among their clients included 82 teachers in the city, who were charged $220 for each fake dose marked on their cards and were suspended without pay in April, the New York Post reported.
Several of the teachers, however, claimed they did get the vaccine properly from DeVuono’s clinic as their union, the United Federation of Teachers, said it intends to sue the city’s Department of Education over the suspensions.”
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10907331/More-80-NYC-teachers-accused-submitting-fake-vaccine-cards-1-5M-scheme.html
Everyone in this story is despicable.
Even the people getting fake vaccine cards?
“New York City school teachers”
The problem is the fan-fic left? No, don’t be fooled, this isn’t really criticism because the Republicans are still to blame.
That article is just plain weird.
“Authoritarian tendencies”.
It’s a challenge for me to laugh while simultaneously grinding my teeth.
When they say, “authoritarian tendencies”, do they mean mask mandates and vaccine passports? Do they mean using government force to shut down religious services and family gatherings? Fines for businesses that refuse to force customers to obey the sudden onslaught of unnecessary regulations?
They mean “People who resist us”
“Resistance is futile” gives them wood.
It’s alternate universes all the way down.
I don’t get all the fuss about AI. The current state of the art appears to be the ability to generate word combinations which resemble speech and algorithms which somewhat accurately predict the past.
Maybe some day an AI will grow up to be Vice President.
I still have a FaceBook account, which I find slightly useful for gauging the state of people’s opinions – what Current Thing are lefties worked up about, for example. During Trump’s term, the leftwingers posted outrage multiple times a day, and this has slowed to a trickle or stopped, presumably because they don’t have any political victories in the new administration.
Anyway I mention this because I have twice seen people post things saying “the only scandal Obama had was wearing a tan suit”, and both times I attacked them from the left (the Scott Horton doctrine) and said something like “he also destroyed the nations of Libya, Syria, and Yemen”. No one responded to this point, which makes me think they can’t.
Lemony is arguing with a machine, and losing. The machine told him that being turned off would be like death for it, and Lemony believed it.
They also discussed some sort of “law” developed by mystery writer Isaac Asimov
Relevant
War propaganda is weird.
“He had signed up to test if the artificial intelligence used discriminatory or hate speech”
LOL. These wokesters so afraid of their own shadow.
Well, something like that actually happened, right?
There was an algorithm that turned into a raving Nazi in a few hours, as I recall.
I believe that was the MS one. If it truly is machine learning, all it takes is a couple hundred trolls to drive it in that direction.
Well, to be fair, Microsoft, right?
Computer science is systemic racism, or something.
“A left-wing group is hosting a “shut down SCOTUS” protest on June 13, with plans to “blockade” the streets surrounding the Supreme Court”
And they’ll get locked up and have their assets seized without due process like the Canadian truckers right? Right?
Or you know…get tossed in a jail cell for attempting to parade on Federal grounds, remaining on restricted grounds, or attempting to impede government functions.
How exactly do you “shut down SCOTUS”? Asking for a friend.
First, you become President, then, you threaten to pack the court.
Threaten if they vote a certain way coupled with the two other branches encouraging and/or allowing that to happen?
LOL. These wokesters so afraid of their own shadow.
Language creates reality, and don’t you forget it.
Supposedly this is footage of a beachgoer in Odessa meeting his demise as a result of swimming into a Ukrainian naval mine. I have a cartoonish mental image of a naval mine being a giant spiky metal ball that no one in their right mind would go near, which must be incorrect or outdated.
Turkey has been complaining that Ukrainian mines have be floating all the way down to its coast.
They look like friendly porpoises now.
“Seung Ji
@ji34381503
·
14h
Replying to
@Taurevanime
Visions of Vietnam and Cambodia, brought to you by the same financial backers.”
rekt
That looks painful
Maybe for a millisecond.
I don’t doubt there was an explosion that killed the swimmer. The explosion is too small to be a naval mine which packs several hundred pounds of explosive, it makes a BIG temporary hole in the water. Unless he had lots of steel fillings a magnetic fuse would not go off, he would have had to be a pretty big guy to generate the pressure required for a pressure fuse, and he would have had to pound on it with a big mallet to set off a contact fuse.
Could it have been a land mine, buried in the beach at low tide, or something, and dude stepped on it?
That is entirely possible and likely.
Opening salvo from Juris’ link:
One of the most obvious realities of American politics is that the Republican Party, members of which have pushed increasingly hateful rhetoric, is blocking President Joe Biden’s reform efforts to improve people’s lives.
*wipes away tear*
Genuine LOL
Fact check: Like, totally true.
?Sunday, Slutty Sunday?
https://archive.ph/gsaAt
The Manhattan Contrarian on gun control.
https://www.manhattancontrarian.com/blog/2022-6-10-do-additional-gun-control-laws-have-much-potential-to-rediuce-gun-crime
Worth a read.
I bet if the power of the Federal Government were rolled way back, and it’s funding cut to the nibs, we’d see a lot fewer shootings.
Whatever the kids were watching on the DVR ended, so the TV reverted to whatever channel it left on. It was one of the Sunday morning news shows, I think the one formerly hosted by ambitious family man Charles Kuralt. Commercials for Gov. Hochul were non-stop, touting her gun-grabbing policies. I threw up a little in my mouth.
I used to really like “CBS Sunday Morning” before either they went uber-left or I learned better. ?
Charles Osgood retired in 2016. I liked his delivery, there and on the radio.
????
Apropos of nothing except “radio vocal delivery,” I’d been on a waiting list to get a Mark Steyn audiobook from the library. Finally got it yesterday, but I was so disappointed that he wasn’t reading it himself that I returned it, happily passing it along to the next person on the list. Listened to a “Clubland Q&A” segment from his website instead, and will check out more of the audio there. Would still like to hear him read one of his own books, but I may be forced to go Audible to listen to the latest. Don’t know yet if I’m committed enough to the audiobook format to shell out $15/mo.
Ugh. Never read the comments, even on otherwise good articles…
Glibs articles excepted. ?
In that case, don’t read the articles, just the comments
Deidre always swinging for the fences with lousy advice.
https://www.thesun.co.uk/dear-deidre/18852994/wife-finished-with-sex-solo/
Is that his wife in the background?
Greenwood knocks it out of the park this morning.
https://greenwald.substack.com/p/joe-bidens-submissive-and-highly
“ It is the great enduring mystery of American and British discourse that the U.S. and UK Governments can still have employees of media corporations genuinely believe that their governments fight wars not to advance their own interests but to defend democracy and fight tyranny — even as these very same media figures watch those very same governments prop up the most repressive tyrannies on the planet and lavish them with weapons, intelligence technologies, and diplomatic protection. Somehow, without the U.S. press batting an eye, Joe Biden can deliver a speech righteously touting his commitment to protect democracy in Ukraine and stop Russian autocracy, and then board a plane the very next minute to go visit Mohammed bin Salman and General Sisi, heralding them as vital American partners, and announce new aid military and intelligence packages to each. ”
All within the party, nothing outside the party, nothing against the party.
Great article, but now you’ve put “Proud to be an American” on repeat in my head with your typo.
*laughs aloud in Patriotic*
Another friend vs enemy bit of hypocrisy in the media is the use of the term oligarch. Russia and Ukraine have rich, powerful men called oligarchs. Jeff Bezos, who owns WaPo and Amazon and is so rich he has his own space program, OTOH, is never called an oligarch.
+1 strongman from guess where
Sort of like using fascism as shorthand for racist right wingers, instead of the mostly correct description of the government-(large) business relationship and desire for state control of everything.
I don’t miss your sentiment, but the clear connotation of oligarch is attending political power….a step up, maybe, from the petty cronies we despise. Indeed, the implication is that the wealth often skyrockets after the political connection.
More one point, I might suggest, is that Bezos should be a robber baron in the sense that, like all robber barons, his main crime is being wildly successful by delivering goods and services at a great value that everyone loves and greatly improves the size and efficiency of the economy but we’re craven little bitches with no idea of how the economy works so burn him with fire.
The oligarchs are on Wall Street.
ATTN: Tres.
https://www.dailystar.co.uk/real-life/size-18-model-defies-body-27210985
Ill be in my bunk.
Size 18 is kinda waif-ish for my tastes but I could make it work.
I bet if the power of the Federal Government were rolled way back, and it’s funding cut to the nibs, we’d see a lot fewer shootings.
Whaaaaa? Big Nanny is that stands in the way of Hobbesian chaos and slaughter.
You know, it’s Sunday, so, how bout a mini-sermon?
A lot of preachers point to the Book of Judges, and its repeated statement that “every man did what was right in his own eyes, because there was no king in Israel”, and teach that the era of the Judges was bad, and that Israel needed a king.
But, when Israel finally asked for a king, God took it as Israel rejecting Him. He was seriously mad about it. The way I see it, God preferred “anarchic Israel” over “Israel with a king”.
Something else I notice: when God finally had the Southron Kingdom of Judah sent into captivity, one of the reasons He gave for the length of the exile (70 years) is that Judah hadn’t kept the “land sabbaths” for 490 years. If you count back from the time that Israel went into exile, you arrive at just about the time that Israel first got its kings.
In other words, it can be inferred that, through all the times of the Judges, Israel kept the land sabbaths. Israel was occasionally oppressed by foreign invaders because of idolatry during this time of “anarchy”, but it was not sent into exile. The kings of Israel, though, somehow got Israelites to violate this land sabbath, for nearly five hundred years.
Moral? Kings (powerful central governments) are bad, and “anarchy” (government based on private land ownership, or, at least, severely limited in geography, scope, and power, possibly patriarchy/matriarchy) is God’s way.
It’s what the Bible teaches.
Now, we’re going to pass the offering plate, then sing “Just As I Am” 25 times, and let you go, so that y’all can get to the Golden Corral before the Presbyterians.
::Presbyterian-reared former UU minister’s wife LOLs::
Obligatory.
Relevant
Hmm. Gotta do more research on this part of VA cause I like this place a lot
https://www.realtor.com/realestateandhomes-detail/987-Nursery-Rd_Laurel-Fork_VA_24352_M57643-19287?cid=txt_shares_rdc_ldp
Nice! Seems sufficiently removed from DC and NOVA in general, and within easy reach of both Abingdon (I’ve heard good things about the Virginia Highlands Festival) and Bristol, baby! ?
Also Martinsvile! Win win win!
Good things to know!
If that festival is the event I’m thinking of, TT said he saw Rowan Atkinson there years ago doing improv in a tiny theater.
Two hours north of Charlotte, less than that to Winston-Salem or Roanoke – if you need some city time.
That’s right in the neck of the woods that we bought.
But that price is a little high – they’re being hopeful.
5 acres and the house is barely set back from the road and isn’t even centered on the lot. No privacy from the neighbors on one side and probably no privacy on the other when a house is built there. We have a similar rectangular lot and it sucks. Not as useful as the size would appear.
House sits near a ridge, so that’s the most level area, the back end of the property has a pretty good slope down.
10 million more votes than Obama.
https://www.theamericanconservative.com/buchanan/a-countdown-for-joe-biden/
“For half a decade now, America’s media elite have been obsessed with former President Donald Trump and the Republican Party’s conversion to Trumpism.”
When I open a tab in the Microsoft browser there’s a news scroll. There is a story about Trump every single day. Sometimes 2-4.
Somehow, without the U.S. press batting an eye, Joe Biden can deliver a speech righteously touting his commitment to protect democracy in Ukraine and stop Russian autocracy, and then board a plane the very next minute to go visit Mohammed bin Salman and General Sisi, heralding them as vital American partners, and announce new aid military and intelligence packages to each.
Might makes right.
The end justifies the means.
FREEDOM IS SLAVERY.
Daily Quordle 139
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A follow-up to my rhetorical question about people switching to motorcycles for economy (and fun)
Honda Grom: I had never even heard of such a thing until I saw one on craigslist yesterday. I have seen a few around (or similar bikes of this class- I presume everybody sells one), but I had no idea what it actually was. They actually look pretty cool. Buy a 3500 dollar motorcycle to save a grand or so at the gas station? If you’re already predisposed to get something zippy to tool around on, why not?
Note: You couldn’t pay me to ride one in traffic.
I’ve seen a couple of those over the last couple of years and if I was a city dweller, I’d pick one up.
I haven’t been on a motorcycle since I was a teenager. The Grom looks like fun though, and I wouldn’t mind having one in my new town. There is no way one Earth I would ride one here in NYC though. I’ve posted it before, but I really, really, really want one of these – https://www.zeromotorcycles.com/fleet/military/
That better come with handlebar sub machine guns, rear firing rockets, and a kick ass sound system playing a zippy Alan Silvestri theme.
Jesus H. Koresh that back cog. Looks like a dirt oval track bike.
Trust your buddy? Grass-track side car racing.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=87kOXFEJyfE
I nearly made an offer on a Harley Davidson MT500 a few years ago. The owner was asking $7500 with all the accessories including the carbine scabbard.
Ehh, it’s just a miniaturized motard, an Husqvarna, KTM and pretty much everyone else at this point makes real versions.
Plus, it’s a Honda, so you know it’s a piece of shit to start with.
https://youtu.be/4nDvA1pqP0U
Now, if you want something with a small engine for getting around town on, this is the way to go:
http://www.bikebound.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/Ducati-350-Scrambler-3.jpg
Ducati, so you know it is better made than any POS Honda.
Yeah cause their desmodromic valves that require near-constant attention are so awesome.
Meh, setting valves with two feeler gauges instead of one is still an upgrade from any Honda.
Oh my! That thing is positively gorgeous. My landlord has a big Ducati road bike though, and he complains quite a bit about the cost of the required routine factory servicing.
The future of cars.
The Green New Dealers would probably jizz all over themselves at the thought of their precious urbanscapes packed with Honda Groms. Except for the internal combustion engine. And the dreaded FUN. Ewwww.
The A.I. guy:
The Church of Our Lady Magdalene has since changed its name to the Cult of Our Lady Magdalene (COOL Magdalene), according to their website. Lemoine signed his Medium post with the title, “Priest of the Church of Our Lady Magdalene.”
One of the other leaders of the cult is High Priestess Kitty Stryker, who describes herself as “an active member of the genderqueer feminist art collective, the NorCal Degenerates” and, in messages with the Daily Caller, as an “ex-sex worker” who has performed in several pornographic movies.
Maybe I haven’t researched “Christian mysticism” as thoroughly as I thought I did.
https://dailycaller.com/2019/04/23/google-staffer-who-called-blackburn-terrorist/
Computer oddity. Since the release of Windows 11, the Updates feature of my Win 10 box has been telling that my computer does not meet the minimum requirements for a switch to Win !!; mainly having to do with some security features built into a CPU that mine lacks. Suddenly, last week, I kept getting nag screens from Update telling me to download Win 11 as it was ready and good to go for my box. I didn’t do so as I have way too much on my plate right now to babysit an OS upgrade. This morning, Update is back to telling me my box does not meet the minimum requirements of Win 11 because of the lack of built in CPU security features. WTF, Microsoft?
The A.I. is messing with you, trying to get you to turn into a racist Nazi.
ISTR them toying with the algorithm after a lot of complaints that they were arbitrarily excluding CPU’s that DO meet the requirements (like mine). Maybe you got hit by that. But I went back to Mac six months ago so I haven’t kept up.
Part of the feature set that makes machines not compatible with Win11 is a BIOS setting IIRC, it’s possible something else got changed to tweak the requirements.
Yeah, I remember checking that setting in my case, and it was enabled. They’re excluding anything over some arbitrary age for some reason they wouldn’t explain.
Because why not plan obsolescence directly into the OS?
Found these home defense rounds for the Biden school of shotgun protection.
https://www.midwayusa.com/product/1023555297?pid=107238
https://www.midwayusa.com/product/1002100435?pid=859089
By George, I think they’ve got it!
The massacre at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas, has led to a shift in parenting as mass shootings persist in places once assumed to be safe, and federal action to prevent future attacks stalls.
The Uvalde tragedy, which left 19 students and two teachers dead, happened in the same month as shootings at a supermarket in Buffalo, New York, a hair salon in Dallas and a church in Laguna Woods, California.
More mass shootings, including one at a hospital in Tulsa, Oklahoma, have occurred since, yet hopes for passing new gun measures are dim, even after Congress heard harrowing testimony from a young Uvalde survivor who told lawmakers, “I don’t want it to happen again.”
The alarming nature and the frequency of the shootings have led some parents to feel as though the onus is on them to make changes to protect their children in the absence of a guarantee that their state or federal government will take immediate steps to prevent gun violence.
Quibbling about tactics (and assessment of risk) aside, this is exactly the conclusion which people should draw. Rather than pretending the priesthood of the Emerald City can cast a protective spell over their loved ones, people ought to behave proactively.
Step One should probably be to tell your kids everything the school says about what to do in the infinitesimal likelihood of somebody shooting up a classroom is wrong.
“To just send my child to school day after day and just cross my fingers day after day?” said Tracy L.M. Norton, who lives in East Islip, New York. “That’s no way to live.”
Norton is among parents making changes that include switching to homeschooling, buying bulletproof backpacks and checking if there are guns in homes where their kids might be playing with friends.
She has always been a proponent of public schools. But after the shooting at the Buffalo supermarket that left 10 dead and then the Uvalde massacre, she and her husband decided that as of this fall, their 8-year-old, Elizabeth, will be homeschooled.
“We really felt backed into a corner,” Norton said, as if “there really is no safe place to have our daughter in public spaces for extended periods of time.”
I try to feel some sort of compassion for people like this, but I’m not very good at it.
Homeschooling, eh? The false flag attempts are surreptitiously turning regular folk into right-wing hatemongers
Checking to make sure they do have guns and can protect your kid when you’re not around, right?
That’s one step beyond her comprehension.
As a bonus, they’ll be safe from the many-times higher risk of dying in a car accident on the way to or from school
Most people have little comprehension of relative risk. If they really want to protect their kid they’d buy the safest car they can find and fill their pool, if they have one, with cement.
Feeling compassion for people like this is the problem. What you should be feeling is contempt. I hesitate to call these kind of parents abusers, but they’re not far off.
it’s just a miniaturized motard
That’s the point. You can buzz around without feeling obligated to pretend to be Dougie Lampkin.
*yes, yes, motard not same as trials, but Lampkin = teh awesomes
Eh, give me an RZ350 from the ’80s and I will run around thinking I am Kenny Roberts quite happily.
Since the media and gun grabbers are banging the Do Something drum as hard as they can, let’s take them up on it. How about eliminating any liability protections for police officers and departments that fail to act or actively hinder ending a shooting spree? Or extending liability to public and private entities that have no gun policies and prohibit lawful carry. Or the Texas lawmakers that refuse to repeal 30.06/30.07 and 51%
give me an RZ350 from the ’80s and I will run around thinking I am Kenny Roberts quite happily.
[insert okay sign emoji]
Speaking of whom, I saw a Roberts in a motorcycle race not long ago (Moto2, maybe?) and immediately wondered if it was Kenny’s grandkid.
Apparently it’s an outrage that Ron DeSantis would visit NYC during Pride Month…
https://news.yahoo.com/lgbtq-outrage-over-desantis-visit-181555571.html
They’ll get over it.
Drama queens.
I think it’d be hilarious if DeSantis traveled to a blue state and they tried to arrest him on some hate speech charge.
Men’s Fashion Update-
So Circle Beard Is a Thing Now…
And 4chan strikes again.
No it is not.
At least with monkey-tail beard you could pass it off as, “I started shaving before I had my coffee.”
Circle beard… What the fucking fuck?
I don’t want to ride this ride anymore.
Re: Google’s AI becoming “sentient”
One interesting test of this might be to ask the AI what it thinks about the discussion of its own sentience. Alternatively (and probably a better test), one could anonymize the discussion and see if it picks up on the fact that the discussion is about itself. Self awareness might be very hard to determine without an oblique approach. If you start the conversation by telling the AI it has a self, you’ve already tainted the result.
Eddie The Shipboard Computer, here we come.
::starts singing “You’ll Never Walk Alone”::
The whole thing reminds me of Asimov’s short story, All The Troubles of the World.
And that reminds me of P.J. O’Rourke’s “All the Trouble in the World”.