The battle never ends.
Put the blasters away and let’s see some friendly engagement.
Pharyngula
Evolution, development, and random biological ejaculations from a godless liberal
The battle never ends.
Put the blasters away and let’s see some friendly engagement.
I know everyone is talking about the Signal chat where a bunch of warmongers stupidly invited the editor of The Atlantic to join in, but I have to tell you that these things are always insecure, and I have some personal experience with that.
Remember when the Expelled movie was a topic of conversation? They were doing all these press tours and radio interviews touting that stupid movie, and one of their events was a conference call in which the various people involved (Ben Stein, Mark Mathis, etc.) were calling in to promote the movie, and invited people to call in and listen to their propaganda. Well, I was involved, unfortunately, and I called in to hear what they were going to say, but accidentally found out how to join in, not just to listen, but to speak. I ‘hacked’ their system and crashed the event!
Some of you know that the producers of Expelled had a conference call this afternoon…a carefully controlled, closed environment in which they would spout their nonsense and only take questions by email. I listened to it for a while, and yeah, it was the usual run-around. However, I dialed in a few minutes early, and got to listen to a tiresome five minutes of Leslie and Paul chatting away, during which time they mentioned the secret code (DUNH DUNH DUNNNNH!) for the two way calls. I know. Sloppy, unprofessional, and stupid, but that’s the way they work.
So … I redialed. (DUNH DUNH DUNNNNH!)
Then I listened along quietly until I could take no more.
There were links about this, and even a recording of what I said in response to their nonsense, but it’s all dead links now, I’m sad to say.
Don’t trust the tech to protect your conversations! You never know when some nefarious rascal might eavesdrop.
I arrived at my office door this morning, and what do I see?
I didn’t do it.
I’m going to have to scoop them up and bring them inside before the custodians dispose of them.
Not us. We have to welcome spring with something more … elaborate.
Not visible: the three guys with shovels and wrenches deep in the hole.
Things you don’t like to come home to: a backhoe parked on the grass and an 8 foot deep trench dug in the yard.
We noticed with the spring thaw that we were building a lovely swamp in the yard — we had a constant leak from the water main feeding our house. The only way to deal with it was to bring in the heavy equipment, excavate the pipe, and replace the leaky broken bit. I think I’m going waterless tonight, but they think it will be fixed tomorrow morning.
AI spills the beans. An alternative to humanity is being developed from mouse stock.
You should feel guilty if you put out mouse traps and squish those mega-brains.
This is how I start my morning? Make sure you’ve got a clear path to the toilet before you click on play.
The good news: it’s not an earworm. As soon as it stopped, I figured out that there’s nothing memorable or interesting about the “song”.
For those who care, I’ve switched my Mastodon server. I’m now @pzmyers@freethought.online.
HJ Hornbeck set this up for us a few years ago, but I didn’t bother to move at the time, but now I’ve made the shift. This server has been open for business for a while now, and is currently kind of empty (it’s me and HJ), but if anyone else is looking for a Mastodon instance to try out, come on over.
You may not be interested, but I passed my physical exam. Blood pressure is perfect, cholesterol levels are so low the doctor has cut my statin dosage in half, I’ve apparently got the healthy body of a 67 year old.
I even got a perfect score on the cognitive test, which means I’m at least as smart as Donald Trump. My annual performance review is coming up this month, I’m planning to tell the university that my doctor said I was cognitively flawless, so gimme a raise. At the very least, I’m going to brag to everyone that I remembered “apple, penny, table” for a whole couple of minutes. Like I’m doing right here.
I also got a couple of vaccines, one for tetanus, another for pneumonia. My immune system is now mighty.
Today is the day for my annual physical exam, and I’m about to get my veins tapped and my body poked and get informed about my bad habits and told about my imminent doom. It’s going to take a while. Then I have to rush back for multiple appointments with students and to teach a couple of classes.
So today is filmstrip day! Is anyone else old enough to remember when the teacher was hung over and just wheeled in the machine that would show a series of still images with voiceover so they could retreat into a back corner and close their eyes for a while?
That might be the same people who remember who Al Gore was.
