I’ve been amazed at all the tasteless christmas molded plastic landfill-in-waiting that are being deployed in the war on christmas. The “war on christmas” is the concerted attempt by people to make christmas look cheesy, silly, and degenerate, right? Or did I miss the “war on christmas” strategy meeting?
Caine posted a link to the hipster crèche, which is definitely a fine piece of work. It reminded me that it’s time to post my own offering…
It’s hunting season up here in Pennsylvania. Usually that means hordes of brutal dipshits wandering around with guns, looking for a place to park and shoot something. Sometimes we get Serious Hunters from Maryland or Virginia, who come up and rent a cabin for a couple of days of serious serious stuff killing. I know they’re serious because I sometimes talk to them, and they find it important for me to understand that they are not stereotypically sitting around their cabins drinking beer, shooting eachother accidentally, and telling jokes about girl cooties and how brutally their wives treat them.
Working in tech as long as I have, I tend to take pre-announcements of “great new thing coming soon” as suspicious. But prerelease teasers are a way of telling what research is being done, and/or is ready to come to market eventually. And a lot of research is being targeted at the police state, because that’s where the money is…
Jean Meslier
When we complain about the violence and evils which generally religion causes upon earth, we are answered at once, that these excesses are not due to religion, but that they are the sad effect of men’s passions. I would ask, however, what unchained these passions? It is evidently religion; it is a zeal which renders inhuman, and which serves to cover the greatest infamy.
I recently posted a bit about voice editing and voice fakery – my immediate reaction was “uh oh” but I’ve got some personal perspective on the topic. I’ve been a photographer since about 1992 (when I started getting serious about it) and a photoshop user since version 1. Fakery? It’s all fake.
Content warning: War, Death, Violent imagery.
The other day I posted about the Iraqi army advance on Mosul, and observed that one of the vehicles in the picture appeared to be a US-made M-1 Abrams main battle tank.
I didn’t think that, at $5 million apiece, and still being fairly high-tech, the US would let gear like that out into the wild. TL;DR: I hadn’t realized how badly the warmongers in Washington have been screwing up.
Voltaire by Houdon
A serious geometrician once spoke to us thus: Is there nothing in literature mode dangerous than sophist rheotoricians?
This time when I renewed my vehicle registration for one of my trucks, I didn’t get the registration sticker.
SAS named one of their fleet after a favorite of mine!
Humans depend on speech a great deal: to authenticate, to communicate, to give orders. And, of course, the police state relies heavily on converting voice to data for analysis. Video below the fold: