Friday Ephemera (813)
At last, toilet lasers. || The alphabetical clock. || Today’s words are bear suit insurance fraud. || In Chinese car-making news. It’s voice-controlled and comes with a fan. || Amenities on high. || Chopped ham and eggs. || A map of cheese. Semi-hard buffalo cheese, Mongolian horse cheese, it’s all in there. || Four minutes of near misses. || The thing you’re thinking with. || Why the dryer wouldn’t work. || A Rear Window timelapse. || A racist tool. || “Tyres for moon traversal were still a novel idea in 1971.” || Not entirely perfect. || On crime prevention. || Vortex. || Suburban bear relocation. || Assorted birdsong. || The French and their stilt dancing. || Fat old guy in pants twerks for the kiddies. || Via Elephants Gerald, tracking fencing tips. || And finally, they had insufficient fuel.
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Oh, and lest we forget, this is blog preservation fundraising week.
Neither I. I did recall you mentioning Laumer & thought it might be of passing interest.
HUMAN ERROR.
And I thank you. I will poke around our library network’s online catalog.
Speaking of interesting things:
Patrick O’Brian’s nonfiction book Men of War: Life in Nelson’s Navy, recently republished after a long hiatus.
In this case the worst I can be charged with is making a run of the mill assumption.
The original text was ‘For @pst314’, with which I associated a hyperlink. The linkage worked when tested prior to posting. It was after posting that the fun began. When edited, the linkage again worked as desired. After the problem persisted in ‘production’, so to speak, I re-wrote the text so as to disassociate the hyperlink from the ‘@pst314’.
‘Tetchy technology’ stands.
Even the cows are feeling a bit judgemental.
For the last week or so, I’ve noticed a weirdly high number of glitches and software bugs across various, seemingly unrelated platforms, with a frequency that seemed almost spooky. I was rebooting this, reinstalling that, while muttering and cursing the entire time. As I could find no common cause, I’m assuming it was just some random clumping of minor irritations.
That, or Muldoon was rubbing his trousers again.
[ Quickly glances through slim elegant volume. ]
Little mention of rum and the lash, none of sodomy.
I suppose it’s possible that the root causes were glitches in a very few services used by those otherwise unrelated platforms.
Nor does cannibalism appear in any of his works. A strange omission.
I don’t clump.
Which all one can expect from GenZ code monkeys. I have on, BTW, my buffalo and birch bark pants on today. Comletely anti-static and sustainable.
That story immediately recalled to mind how Dr. Maturin smuggled Capt. Aubrey out of France and into Spain in the second or third book of the series.
Oooh – I must check this out. And that Mad Mad Galaxy book sounds interesting too.
Backstory?
Ooh. Sliced pears and double cream.
To deter the bulk thieving of Vaseline.
[ Peers over spectacles. ]
Two Comments:
[ Checks lawn for insufficiently fuelled hot-air balloons. ]
This is already happening. Except that it’s black people going out of their way to walk into white people…and Asians…and Jews…and…
When doggy daycare calls.
And I suppose we mustn’t forget the feminist innovation of “patriarchy chicken.”
From the subsequent thread:
I somehow doubt that the good doctor will be playing her little game with men deemed gloriously diverse.
If astronauts should be greeted by ground crews in ape suits, then balloonists should be greeted by munchkins.
Title “stolen” from the 1963 comedy film It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World.
Just read “The Forgotten 500” about rescues of airmen shot down over occupied Yugoslavia 1944. Excellent.
[ Has Ethel Merman flashback. ]
Poor David.
“Defrost hamster for six minutes.”
He seems awfully chuffed, and I imagine he feels better, but I still have questions.
I shouldn’t have changed pants.
He seems awfully chuffed, and I imagine he feels better, but I still have questions.
A google search of note.
The ones with the ‘Edit’ button?
That’s the problem, there isn’t one, these are 1978 vintage Tajik yak hair, unless adequately oiled they can build a substantial charge when Jasper, my pet marmoset, gets near.
Meanwhile, a judge has a BFO.
As a child in the 1970s, I heard a lot of Polack jokes. I thought they were pretty funny. Then I heard that people from Poland had the demonym “Polack,” and I thought “how awful to share a name with a synonym for ‘idiot.'”
Yes, well.
So glad I didn’t miss that.
Another LDS SF/Fantasy author finishes his series, even after a prolonged hiatus.
Here’s the other one.
George R. R. Martin hardest hit.
Hey, lady, I’m bringing history to life.
For sale.
I’ve not followed the George R. R. Martin Unfinished Saga Saga, beyond a couple of videos by Nerdrotic, and I only know Game of Thrones from the HBO series. I can, however, imagine fans’ frustration with his failure to write the conclusion. I mean, the readers have invested a lot of their time and money in the tale, presumably on the understanding that it would eventually conclude.
On the other hand, I can also see how it’s possible to write oneself into a corner – especially with a massive, sprawling tale with umpteen threads to tie up – with no obviously satisfying conclusion coming to mind. Especially when the TV version beat you to it and did so in a way that leaves something to be desired. I can see how that might deflate one’s inspiration.
Yes, an actual Polish word.
See also: Pennsylvania Deutsch -> Dutch, Nippon -> Nipponese, etc.
And to keep the conversation in the stratosphere of rarified intellectualism, this:
In my experience, far more series disappoint than satisfy. Either the author never manages to write a conclusion, or the conclusion is unsatisfactory.
Especially risky with TV series, which may get cancelled at any time and which are usually begun without any story arc in mind, much less the conclusion itself. And how many years must one wait for the denouement while endless episodes go off on irrelevant tangents?
Peripatetic is the nice way of putting it.
The revamped Battlestar Galactica series comes to mind. It started well – really well, in fact. Where most series take a while to find their footing, sometimes taking several seasons, BSG arrived seemingly fully formed. It had a distinct tone, a distinct look, and we heard intriguing rumblings of the Cylons having some kind of plan.
Alas, two seasons later, it turned out that the writers couldn’t say the same. I mean, if you’re going to start each episode, week after week, with the ominous words “And they have a plan,” it helps if you actually, you know, have a plan.
We are approaching the AI singularity. At some point blind faith in an AI solution to a technical problem deep in the core code of some fundamental element of the technological structure will be installed by a frustrated programmer too stressed out from fighting some intransigent bug for days on end such that he will not sufficiently test nor understand the solution. He will only know that it solved his issue and he can finally get some rest. This AI solution, not being understood by any sentient being, will contain its own new bug that is far beyond the comprehension of anyone. The internet and everything that runs on it will crash. Well, that’s my hope anyway.
Xkcd has covered that:
Reminded me of something that happened in our neighborhood when I was about 12 or so. Actually, it was more like the neighborhood adjacent to us. We didn’t see a lot of hot air balloons where we lived but occasionally we would see one. One day one came down in the street near us. I remember we were riding our bikes going…somewhere…and we see this bizarre occurrence. While an interesting and kind of exciting event, the guy handling the situation was very belligerent and we decided we had other things to do. What amazed me was when we came back through about an hour or so later, fully expecting to see it, the situation had been cleaned up, surprisingly no damage had been done, and there was no sign that anything had happened. To my knowledge, not one adult in the neighborhood was aware that it had happened. I think this occurred in the summer when we were out of school.
My experiences reading certain Hemingway novels come to mind. More wasted youth.
This is your threadly reminder that the next elections (AFAIK) in this country are in Indiana and Ohio on TUESDAY, May 5. There are also ones coming up in Georgia, Idaho, Kentucky, Pennsylvania, Alabama, Oregon and maybe even other states on TUESDAY, May 19. Also I am informed, Texas May 26.
Pro-tip that is apparently necessary for republicans…If you look at your watch and see that it is a TUESDAY, ask yourself…”Do I need to vote today? If not, what upcoming TUESDAY will I need to vote, who are the candidates, and what are the issues?” Hope this helps!
SSDD.
For some mysterious reason, a job opening of note.
Apparently satire. But I’m guessing only his hairdresser knows for sure.
Toilet laser: It’s the three seashells!