People have had enough and are starting to fight back with mockery. Here are a bunch of underground posters from England (of all places) that cut the heart out of the virus scare.
I like this one, too:
And this one gets to the very heart of people feeling virtuous about the lockdown:
There are a lot more, every bit as good. Bravo to the UK Underground.
What do you call a potato that makes Internet videos?
A Youtuber.
Update (because I can):
How do you tell the difference between an alligator and a crocodile?
You'll see one later and the other in a while.
You don't get much more baroque than "pupil of Pachelbel" baroque. Johann Heinrich Buttstett was one of the last of the great southern German baroque organists, born this day in 1666.
Longtime reader and FOTB (and in meatspace) libertyman sends in this Dad joke:
I just read the police arrested two fellows who had stolen a calendar. They each got six months.
And longtime reader and FOTB (and in meatspace) Longtime reader and FOTB (and in meatspace) Burt sends in this:
What's the name for an occupied airplane bathroom?
Hypotenuse.
The police arrested a dog that was giving birth on the side of the road. She was littering.
Microsoft this week released a preview version of Windows Subsystem for Linux GUI, or WSLg, which provides a way to run Linux applications with graphic interfaces on Windows devices.
...
"You can use this feature to run any GUI application that might only exist in Linux, or to run your own applications or testing in a Linux environment," explained Craig Loewen, program manager for the Windows Developer Platform at Microsoft, in a blog post.
Man, the tech world is getting weird. Eric Raymond had a pretty interesting take on this last year:
Azure makes Microsoft most of its money. The Windows monopoly has become a sideshow, with sales of conventional desktop PCs (the only market it dominates) declining. Accordingly, the return on investment of spending on Windows development is falling. As PC volume sales continue to fall off , it’s inevitably going to stop being a profit center and turn into a drag on the business.
Looked at from the point of view of cold-blooded profit maximization, this means continuing Windows development is a thing Microsoft would prefer not to be doing. Instead, they’d do better putting more capital investment into Azure – which is widely rumored to be running more Linux instances than Windows these days.
Interesting world we live in.
I really need to get back into doing these. So here you go.
RIP, FTP
Mozilla is removing support for downloading files from FTP links. All in all, this is a good thing - we've known that passing unencrypted usernames and passwords across the Intarwebs is A Very Bad Thing Indeed for oh, 30 years or so.
Google: Here's a cool new privacy feature. Everybody: Nah, we're good
Google has a new privacy "solution" that pretty much everybody thinks is designed to rip off users' privacy even more. The Vivaldi team released a statement that really sums up why none of the browsers (other than Chrome) are going to use Google's cunning scheme:
“We will not support the FLoC API and plan to disable it, no matter how it is implemented. It does not protect privacy and it certainly is not beneficial to users, to unwittingly give away their privacy for the financial gain of Google.”
Oft evil will shall evil mar, and all that. Hey Google, don't be evil. (P.S. Don't use Chrome)
SAP attacks under way in the wild
You don't get more buttoned down corporate in the software world than database maker SAP. And they're seeing attacks against their software, as hackers reverse engineer SAP security patches.
2 year old VPN server vulnerability being exploited in the wild
I can't imagine why someone wouldn't install a critical security patch on a critical security device, but it seems that a bunch of folks haven't. Oooooh kaaaaay, then.
SpaceX encrypts telemetry
Well, it looks like they've been encrypting Starship for a couple years, but they are now encrypting Falcon 9 telemetry.
It turns out that there was a Batman, and he lived in the 16th century. He was an author and a parson. What's even better is that he was parson of Newington Butts. This kicked over my giggle box.
Hat tip to I Want A New Left which a bunch of y'all would like.
Spelunking in the archives here, I ran across this excellent article from 2009. I have linked to snips of it before, but the entire article is well worth the 15 minutes to read and digest. Yes, it's a number of years old but what is fascinating is that the objections raised in the article have yet to be addressed. Here's an excerpt:
I have looked at the raw temperature record for the USA (USHCN data) and the Bureau of Meteorology data for Victoria, Australia. Both show fluctuations of temperature with time but zero underlying trend for the last century. By contrast, the official IPCC endorsed data shows a strong underlying upwards trend. When I investigate why the difference, I find that the raw data has been adjusted for several supposed factors and every one of these adjustments created a warming trend. This implies that the claimed warming trend is due to the adjustments, not the raw data. In any less controversial scientific issue, such a result would be viewed with the greatest possible skepticism and would be extremely unlikely to be accepted.
The whole article is pack full of this sort of stuff. Highly recommended.
I got hire as a security guard and my boss told me to watch the office. I'm on season eight and I can't figure out what this has to do with security.
Over at Miguel's place (I think it was J.Kb - hey guys, can you get a tag to show who posted what there?) we get a link to ravings at the UK Guardian about a Climate Change Final Solution:
The insane people at The Guardian published an article that sets up the historical precedent for that.
Why Genghis Khan was good for the planet
Laying waste to land scrubbed 700m tonnes of carbon dioxide from the atmosphereHis empire lasted a century and a half and eventually covered nearly a quarter of the earth’s surface. His murderous Mongol armies were responsible for the massacre of as many as 40 million people. Even today, his name remains a byword for brutality and terror. But boy, was Genghis green.
Genghis Khan, in fact, may have been not just the greatest warrior but the greatest eco-warrior of all time, according to a study by the Carnegie Institution’s Department of Global Energy. It has concluded that the 13th-century Mongol leader’s bloody advance, laying waste to vast swaths of territory and wiping out entire civilisations en route, may have scrubbed 700m tonnes of carbon from the atmosphere – roughly the quantity of carbon dioxide generated in a year through global petrol consumption – by allowing previously populated and cultivated land to return to carbon-absorbing forest.
Killing 40 Million people for the planet.
This fiendishly clever plan of theres will indeed lead to a lower population because people like me will put .45 caliber holes in the foreheads of genocidal eco-fascists like the Guardian writers. Think of all the compost!
Sheesh, it's like these people don't ever listen to what they say. If they did, they might think something like "Hmm, am I sounding like a deranged, genocidal fascist? Maybe we should focus on something incremental, like bike paths." Instead, they'll talk themselves into my proposal, above.
And these morons probably think they're the smartest kids on the block.
And to show that this isn't a one-off, a "Black Swan", an oddball proposal - but rather a recurrent theme from the Genocidal Eco Left, here are some other genocidal Save The Planet sooper smaht plans that we've mocked here, dredged from the Borepatch archives:
Save The Planet - Starve The Children
Kill The Children For Mother Gaia
Friday Follies: KillThe Children For Mother Gaia Edition
Cut Health Care To Save Mother Gaia
Global Warming Causes Totalitarianism
Oh, and that last one is a hoot - the link there goes to an article published in the Journal of the American Medical Association. This sort of genocidal eco fascism is entirely mainstream in western medical establishments. It seems that there must be some sort of education plan in action, to make all this easy to get along with. Maybe something like this ...
UPDATE 18 April 2021 11:19: Very good reply posted over at The Silicon Graybeard.
So the news media lies to us on purpose. Here's a news flash: there have been country music songs about liars and cheaters basically since there's been country music. This was perhaps Hank's biggest hit, recorded in his last recording session before his death. It sings the song of crashing media TV ratings and reduced subscribership. See ya, suckas!
Your Cheatin' Heart (Songwriter: Hank Williams, Sr.)
Your cheatin' heart
Will make you weep
You'll cry and cry
And try to sleep
But sleep won't come
The whole night through
Your cheatin' heart will tell on you...
When tears come down
Like falling rain
You'll toss around
And call my name
You'll walk the floor
The way I do
Your cheatin' heart will tell on you...
Your cheatin' heart
Will pine some day
And crave the love
You threw away
The time will come
When you'll be blue
Your cheatin' heart will tell on you...
When tears come down
Like falling rain
You'll toss around
And call my name
You'll walk the floor
The way I do
Your cheatin' heart will tell on you...
... if you do read the newspaper you are misinformed.
Mark Twain's quote is justly famous but is in need of renovation after 130 years. Adam Piggott has a post explaining why:
From The Other McCain, a report that journalists at a press conference in Minnesota wildly objected to the police chief’s use of the word riot to describe the behaviour of certain groups of individuals who had taken to lobbing large chunks of concrete in the general direction of bystanders, police and numerous pieces of private property. The term riot is obviously appropriate and accurate based on the footage of the events. And when you consider that the business of journalism is to report on events using common vocabulary as a communication tool, then the outraged objections of these journalists to correct word usage is particularly illuminating.
The whole post makes the case that journalists are Public Enemy number 1. And so, back to Mr. Twain's comment which we can rewrite as follows:
If you don't follow the media, you are uninformed. If you do follow the media you are both uninformed and misinformed.
I need a new lawn mower. I need one of these:
Getting out after 20 years gives Al Qaeda a propaganda victory, Ms. Cheney?
You know what wouldn't have given them a propaganda victory? Victory victory. Like 16 years ago. Too bad you don't know someone that could have helped pull that off, back then. Prolly shoula been 18+ years ago.
Prolly your Dad shoulda learned the lessons of Korea and Vietnam. I don't even mind all the treasure we spent (well, not much) but the lives and blood and PSTD and lost limbs deserve something better than "My political opponents are big fat poopyheads."
Dumbass.
I was at the thrift store when I saw an antique radio. The card said "For Sale: $1. Stuck at max volume."
I thought it was a deal you just can't turn down.
(I bet The Silicon Graybeard could fix it, though)
159 years ago (well, last week) this was the view for my Great Great Grandfather (photo credit: The Queen Of The World. Click to enbiggen):
The 7th Iowa was at the center of the line. This is what Great Great Grandfather would have seen looking to his right:
Peaceful today, not so much that day. This was the view the other way:
Then all hell broke loose. After 4 brutal hours, the 7th Iowa was forced back, regrouping at Grant's "Final Line" where they held the southern forces. Barely. Not all of the Union soldiers in the Hornet's Nest fared so well - 2,500 were surrounded and surrendered.
It was quite a feeling walking that ground today. Great Great Grandfather was a Kansas boy back when the war broke out. Kansas wasn't a state then and so he couldn't sign up, so he and his buddies went north to Iowa where they enlisted in 1861. He went all the way through the war - Ft. Donaldson, Shiloh, Atlanta, Savannah, Columbia, Bentonville. He marched in the parade in Washington D.C. and was mustered out.
On the drive back, The Queen Of The World wondered about all the men who died there. None of them have Great Great Grandsons to remember them, because the war took from them everything they had and everything they would ever have. I would quote from Abraham Lincoln's justly famous letter to Mrs. Bixby, but Mr. Lincoln is perhaps uniquely responsible for all those deaths, and that lack of descendents for all those men.
I also wondered on that drive back why I consider Grant to be a sympathetic character. Long time readers know my opinion of Mr. Sherman, but for some reason I can't shake a somewhat favorable impression of Grant. I need to do some pondering on this.
But like I said, it was a thrill to walk in Great Great Grandfather's footsteps on that battlefield.
The past isn't dead. It isn't even past.
- William Faulkner
Tam caught sight of a Citroen 2CV in the wild, which is pretty cool. But it was only one of the very many cool products to come from Andre Citroen's french autoworks, and highlights the importance of culture (both the corporate and national variety).
Let's talk culture. Andre Citroen was a graduate of L'Ecole Polytechnique, France's foremost technical university. It's influence there is sort of like what we would see here if MIT, Stanford, and Cal Tech merged. It's graduates have always been a big deal in France, and Citroen was kind of the poster child for that. He put his company on the map with the Traction Avant, the first unibody car (introduced in 1935). It's gorgeous exterior hides just how revolutionary its design was:
The unibody construction is unremarkable today, but this was 85 years ago. It meant that the car sat lower because there was no chassis platform. This lower center of gravity made the handling better, and the Traction Avant had a reputation as a getaway car beloved of gangsters of the day.
But there were two other innovations: front wheel drive (hence the name: "Traction Avant" means forward traction) and hydro-pneumatic suspension. This last is an alternative to leaf springs:
Here's where culture comes in. Hydropneumatic suspension is very clever, and much superior to springs - so much so that Rolls Royce licensed the design for its Silver Shadow, and it is used today on the British Challenger tank. However, it's complicated, with a lot of parts compared to a spring. This is both very French and precisely what you would expect from a Polytechnique grad. That culture (what The Queen Of The World calls "complicating a cornflake") is why the design remained mostly confined to France.
But here's a story from my young days. A friend's parents had one of Citroen's later models, the DS:
You could drive this on only three wheels - the dealer actually did this and was stopped by a cop who ultimately realized that there was no law against doing this. The car didn't even come with a jack - if you needed to change a tire you just raised the appropriate wheel off the ground using the hydropneumatic suspension.
It was entirely revolutionary, have superior results, and was overly complicated. In short, it was very french, and neatly sums up why those people simultaneously charm and irritate us here.
But there's no way to describe the engineers at Andre Citroen's company as anything other than genius. The 2CV, the Traction Avant, and the DS were revolutionary.
Here is a double helping of Dad Joke in celebration of Easter! If you're lucky you'll have kids (or grandkids) you can tell these to.
Why was the Easter Bunny so upset? He was having a bad hare day.
Why shouldn't you tell a funny joke to an easter egg? Because it might crack up!
But man is freer than all the animals, on account of his free-will, with which he is endowed above all other animals.Easter is a very old holy day, one of the oldest still celebrated. Things don't stick around that long if they don't speak to something deep in the soul. If they don't speak from an upwelling from some mysterious depth of great wisdom. The mystery, and the great strength of Christian doctrine is that it captures the human cycle of growth, middle age, and old age in a view of two gifts: Free Will and Grace.- St. Thomas Aquinas
No Noble Thing can be done without risk.But the other side of the coin is Grace. As the Child must go into the world to find his own place, so must the Man return from his journeys. We watch our children grow, and gain independence. Sometimes that independence causes friction, or worse. Sometimes the young adult becomes cut off from the old, because of careless words or foolish pride.- Michel de Montaigne
[God’s love] is at God’s initiative and choice; it isn’t given out on the basis of my performance. God’s gospel love is not wages that I earn with a model life; it is a gift. It is a gift that I cannot earn; more than that, it is a gift that I do not even deserve. God loves weak, ungodly, sinful enemies. The gift is the opposite of what I deserve. God ought to kill me on the spot. Instead, He sent His Son to die in my place.- David Powlison, Seeing With New Eyes
Originally posted April 24, 2011.
The Shield was another of the Fear's names. According to Laughter, it means he shields the seed of Abraham the way a man starting a fire shields the flame. When Sarah was about to die childless, the Fear gave her a son. When Abraham was about to slaughter the son, the Fear gave him the ram. He is always shielding us like a guttering wick, Laughter said, because the fire he is trying to start with us is a fire that the whole world will live to warm its hands at. It is a fire in the dark that will light the whole world home.- Frederick Buechner, The Son of Laughter
I get lost sometimes, like everybody else,Lose track of my lifelines, lose track of myselfAnd there's all kinds of reasons to be scared and run awayIt's a good time for sad times like heaven couldn't beFarther from the places, that heaven always finds me,If nobody cares, tell me how is it I keep getting saved this wayIt's a sunrise from a lonely nightLike a smile in a stranger's eyesIt's the moments that save my life,nobody knows about like flashlightsthere's just enough hope when it shines,to go one scared step at a timeWhen the world's too dark I find, your flashlight, yeahI'm glad nobody's counting, and Lord I'm glad you don't keep scoreMy prayers are all the same, as the ones I prayed beforeThank you, but forgive me, my rough around the edges heart is yoursAnd the moments where you swear I'm just screaming at the sky,It's the strangest conversation or a friend just stopping byand it's funny when I realize all the places that your miracles can hideIt's a sunrise from a lonely nightLike a smile in a stranger's eyesIt's the moments that save my life,nobody knows about like flashlightsthere's just enough hope when it shines,to go one scared step at a timeWhen the world's too dark I find, your flashlight, yeahLike a sunrise from a lonely nightLike a smile in a stranger's eyesIt's the moments that save my life, nobody knows aboutLike flashlightsand there's just enough hope when it shines, to go one scared step at a timeWhen the world's too dark I find, your flashlightOh, who am I?Dust and water,Touched by the DivineTell me who, who am I?you keep shining on me, shining on me, yeahshining on meIt's the moments that save my life nobody knows aboutIt's like a flashlight(there's just enough hope when it shines)And it's just enough hope when it shines,(to go one scared step at a time) to go one step at a time(when the world's to dark I find your flashlight)When the world's too dark I find your flashlightIt's a sunrise from a lonely nightIt's a smile in a stranger's eyesIt's the moments that save my life nobody knows aboutLike flashlightsIt's just enough hope when it shines, to go one scared step at a timeWhen the world's too dark I find, your flashlight(Like a sunrise from a lonely nightlike a smile in a strangers eyes) who am I(it's the moments that save my life nobody know aboutlike flashlights) oh yeah(it's just enough to hope when it shines,to go one scared step at a timewhen the world too dark I find)you keep shining your light, you keep shining your light, eh ehI'm just finding your flashlight
I just saw some red breasted birds sitting in the sun and selling ice cream. I think they're Baskin Robins.
(via The Queen Of The World)
Don't mess with the Polk County Sheriff's Office. I mean, just don't.
I just read a book about Japanese warriors. It was a little long but I can samurais it for you.
Did you know that this past February is the coldest in US history since 1894? This sure is some Global Warming. Compare and contrast: media coverage of this vs. media coverage of (hypothetical) warmest February in 127 years.
44 climate doomsday predictions that haven't panned out. Related: NYT said that US east coast beaches would all be under water by 2020. "Paper of Record" ... (via)
Quite frankly, this sums up Global Warming prognostication quite well:
I've posted before about the record high temperatures that were seen in 1936. As it turns out, that's only part of the story. 1936 was the year for "Climate Disruption" - and we've had 85 years of more carbon dioxide going into the atmosphere since then but haven't seen such record bad weather. Hmmmm ...
In non-climate dumbness, here's a list of the top 150 intellectuals. Color me unimpressed, although the biggest objection is the use of "intellectual" to apply non-perjoritively in this degraded age. I would have expected Arnold Kling to not put Joe Rogan as high as #1, or Thomas Sowell as low as #71. Hat tip: Chris Lynch who points out the list is silly.
