May 30, 2022
Remember Those Who Gave All To Defend Our Rights When Being Asked To Forfeit Those Rights
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May 26, 2022
An Important Correction!
On May 23 of 2022 this blog stated that this years flu vaccine was lacking in efficacy.
Upon receiving further information, it now appears that this is NOT, at least to the best of our knowledge actually the case.
Do not be dissuaded from your flu shot gentle readers!
It was the Moderna COVID19 vaccine and boosters that didn't work on my mutant weeb ass.
THE SUSPENSE IS OVER! I finally have the 'Rona!
I've been visited by Cronachan and contracted the Pinko-Pox, Chi-Com Cough, Whuhan-Bat-Soup-Death-Plague, Xi Syndrome, The Fauci Fever, The Bolshevik Bug, The Maoist Malady, Winnie the Flu, The 2020 Gain of Function Award!
"I feel like poop."
BUT, I'm, well...I'm off work for another week. Hopefully, I'll be able to do something besides cough and hurt for some of that time.
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Get well soon Brickmuppet!
My sister-in-law just had it but made a quick recovery, hope you do too.
Posted by: Pixy Misa at Thu May 26 23:18:28 2022 (PiXy!)
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Get well soon. I would say "Wrap up warm," but you might be better off toasting in your normal indoors weather, since it is almost summer. Stay hydrated.
Posted by: Suburbanbanshee at Fri May 27 12:34:52 2022 (cHUaN)
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May 23, 2022
Decadence
Rudyard has a good overview of the phenomenon.
It's a much better take than several of my history professors, who would angrily declare that "countries don't fall do to decadence" and seem to feel that expressing concern about decadence is a warning sign of being a NAZI .
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The Flu Shot Didn't Work This Year
OK.
All I know is that MY flu shot didn't work this year.
"Suck!"
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There's normal flu going around, and a nasty stomach bug that makes people think they're getting knifed (but pretty harmless other than extreme pain - coworker had it), and bronchitis/laryngitis (probably viral - I had it).
Maybe a norovirus too, but nobody I know has gotten it; so it might be an old strain.
Get well soon.
Posted by: Suburbanbanshee at Tue May 24 08:28:33 2022 (sF8WE)
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10 Weeks
A U.N. study of the upcoming food shortage has determined that there is currently about a 10 weeks supply of grain on the planet.
I knew this was coming, and had heard about rationing being set up in places like Spain and Egypt but I honestly thought we'd have 'till September or October.
Posted by: The Brickmuppet at
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Among other factors not include...Just how much grain supply that are either sitting on the fields waiting to be harvested, or sitting in the holds of bulk freighters enroute to their destination ports, were not counted so a group of lazy UN analysts could wake-up that morning in their 4 star hotel and realized that they had a report due later that afternoon?
Posted by: cxt217 at Mon May 23 16:23:53 2022 (MuaLM)
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Yesterday, today, and tomorrow are the minor Rogation Days, when every parish was supposed to go around the boundaries driving out demons, praying for the crops, and praying against various possible disasters. (And having nice drinks afterward.)
You also got to carry a cool dragon banner or Snapdragon float/puppet, symbolizing the Devil trying to stop you. On the third Rogation Day, the dragon banner or float got moved to the end of the procession in disgrace, symbolizing Christ's defeat of the Devil. And then the next day was Ascension Thursday, with feasting.
Rogation Days are celebrated in some rural parishes in the US, often with help from pickup trucks for the procession.
I think the last few years have made people more interested in praying against disasters.
Posted by: Suburbanbanshee at Tue May 24 08:36:30 2022 (sF8WE)
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Theoretically, I should be skeptical of world grain supply estimates, even if I didn't already suspect that the bureaucracy in question was full of knaves and morons.
The larger the aggregation, the more we should suspect estimates not usually made. Routine estimates are sometimes eventually adjusted so that the methodology actually produces useful results, but just as easily Goodheart's law makes them worse.
In practice, estimating use rate of food is partly a population estimate, and there are reasons to think population estimates may be wildly high.
I dunno what will happen. I would be a bit surprised if the globalist number diddlers have a correct idea.
Posted by: PatBuckman at Tue May 24 16:08:45 2022 (r9O5h)
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May 22, 2022
Strange New Worlds
The new Star Trek series has premiered.
After the middle fingers to the fans that were Star Treks Picard and Discovery, faith is weak.
Nevertheless, the pilot episode was run on YouTube last week and, being a trekkie of some 40 years, I watched it.
I do NOT immediately despise this show.
It looks good. The pilot was decently written and it felt in many ways like a decent Next Generation episode. There was a lot of extraneous drama and plot contrivances shoehorned into the pilot but the episode did not actually suffer for it.
For those familiar with Trek lore the Pilot is a first contact story that deals with the origins of "General Order One". The episode takes place immediately after the finale of Star Trek: Discovery and is still cleaning up the mess that show left. Enterprise is getting repaired and Captain Pike is on sabbatical. He's contemplating a vision of his future he received towards the end of STD, which he was given so that the misandric, feminist writers of that atrocity could have the sadistic satisfaction of having a strong male lead scream like a 9 year old girl dropped into a pit of tarantulas. Suffice it to say that plot point left a mark. However, notwithstanding the legit trauma itself, Pike's concern's about the matter are quite professional and rational.
Meanwhile, Number One receives information that a warp signature has been detected from a quarantined system a few hours flight time from Earth. Starfleet is still trying to put itself back together after the events of the previous series, and doesn't have any first contact teams in the core of the Federation at the moment (They stay on the frontier). Eager to give her crew a First Contact Award, Number one asks for and gets permission to take a few off duty Enterprise Crew on a mothballed, but barely functional Hermes class scout to pop into the newly star-fairing system and say "Hi!".
Things do not go as planned, and what should have been an easy day away from the shipyard on fun collateral duty becomes an interstellar incident with far reaching influences upon subsequent events.
It was not a GREAT episode, but it was a quite solid one. It actually has something useful to say about bureaucratic overreaction, which is not a lesson I expected from a Star Trek show in current year.
The pilot has been pulled from YouTube, but there are several trailers, this one giving a good overview of the cast, which I rather like a lot.
Well, except for La'an, who's surname looks to be a crime against canon and who appears to be a parody of a Mary Sue in a Star Trek fanfic. OTOH, if you're gonna do a Mary Sue, this is the place to do it and the actress (who looks to be quite good) seems to lean into it with considerable gusto.
Aside that the cast looks GREAT and, unlike Discovery, the (possible) Mary Sue is not the lead, and to be fair, actually looks to have real potential, this being quite explicitly an ensemble cast.
So I am cautiously optimistic.
On the other hand, I have memories of
another pilot, not so long ago that looked to have quite a lot of potential.
That optimism was misplaced.
So a decent pilot is not going to get me to subscribe to CBS-All Access.
I'll wait.
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Posted by: StargazerA5 at Mon May 23 06:06:11 2022 (53Aon)
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Messing around with Vulcan reproduction is high on the no-no scale. Theodore Sturgeon was a better writer, storyteller, and mythmaker on his worst day than most people on their best.
And more to the point, everybody knows that Spock was catnip to fan ladies, and the lore was a big part of that.
But the Bad Robot movies had already contradicted Vulcan reproductive lore, although most people ignored that; so this was just more of the same.
Shrug. I gave up on new ST a long time ago. If I hear enough good things, I'll watch it. But I don't think they want me to watch it.
Posted by: Suburbanbanshee at Mon May 23 14:53:12 2022 (sF8WE)
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It is a shame that the IP holders have not produced any more Star Trek after Enterprise.
Like Star Gate and Star Gate Atlantis, and the three Star Wars movies, there are a lot of sci fi IPs that just suddenly stop, inexplicably, when it should have still been possible for them to make a lot of money by putting new material on the screen.
Doctor Who, in particular, is surprising by the way that it just stops. They had done all that effort to make a series that they could continue through at least a dozen main actors, and stopped with around half that, never touching the property again for thirty or forty years.
It is a disgrace to sit on that IP, and to not use it to produce more excellent material, comparable to the original stuff.
At least we have Galaxy Quest.
Posted by: PatBuckman at Tue May 24 16:17:57 2022 (r9O5h)
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Remedial Groundskeeping.
Banality is below the fold.
As compensation here is
TokyoGenso's take on what the Tokyo Big Sight would look like if the groundskeeper had a stroke:
more...
Posted by: The Brickmuppet at
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Don't talk yourself down. You did a freaking huge job there, even for the totally ablebodied. Your house shrubbery must have some kind of druid blessing on it.
Posted by: Suburbanbanshee at Mon May 23 14:45:07 2022 (sF8WE)
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May 10, 2022
Status of Streaming
Well, there continue to be technical issues.
The channel has broadcast several short test streams. However, there are multiple issues. One is that APPLE seems to be blocking most of the best png-tuber programs. Currently, the channel is using
Fugi-Tech's REACTIVE, which is an excellent tool for collaborations but less versatile for general streaming. There are other issues too that mostly seem to revolve around Mac compatibility...
The net result is that progress is much slower than anticipated. And the short test streams are truly demoralizing studies of the intersection of scuff and cringe.
My speech has still not fully recovered from the stroke so this horror show can be cynically passed off as a sort of therapy. (IRL I used to be a both an actor and a DJ believe it or not.)
I currently aim to be streaming 4 days a week. The new date for the full debut stream (with obligatory power-point) is June 11.
A big thanks to those V-Tubers who have offered advice and support.
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I skimmed a bit of your most recent stream and the minute or so of your voice I heard near the end sounded fine.
Posted by: Rick C at Wed May 11 14:29:04 2022 (6oqhX)
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As fun as streaming or podcasting might be, I already have enough different venues for shouting secrets into a hole in the ground.
Posted by: Mauser at Wed May 11 22:54:50 2022 (gVjvf)
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May 04, 2022
This Could Be Taken a Number of Different Ways.
Reportedly, according to people who claim to both speak Russian and watch Russian TV, the Russian public health establishment has told health care workers to prepare for a cholera epidemic.
The Telegram post that is the basis for this is
here. It's a Ukranian site and the motivation to spin people up over this is obvious.
It's
quite possible that with sewage and water systems smashed by Putin's little war that there
have been a few cases and the Russian health experts are trying to head off the inevitable tragedy. It's also possible Putin has lost the plot and called in some assistance from
Biopreparat.
The latter theory is likely to get all the press as it fits their previous speculation and current narrative perfectly.
Either way, this is the sort of thing that can inflame rage bring this mess to the next level of horror.
Even if this story and the allegedly impending outbreak do NOT result in military escalation, the unspeakable horror of a cholera outbreak amongst refugees cannot be overstated.
Posted by: The Brickmuppet at
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May 03, 2022
Well! I'll Rest Easier
...knowing that the Air Force Research Laboratory is taking the threat of rogue banana boats seriously.
Those banana spiders never had a chance.
Posted by: The Brickmuppet at
02:47 PM
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Well, they got the name right. I mean yeah, they tore a freighter in two with a slow-acting bomb, that'll definitely ruin a nautical day.
Posted by: Wonderduck at Thu May 5 19:33:38 2022 (DB9Lx)
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The real trick to that bomb is they took a GPS guided bomb and added a tracking module to it that lets it figure out where its target is moving to and corrects its course.
Posted by: Mauser at Thu May 5 23:38:28 2022 (gVjvf)
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May 02, 2022
Pandemonium Imminent.
The supreme court looks to have decided to overturn Roe v Wade in the near future, probably.
Despite the hysteria, this decision (that is theoretical and hasn't even been handed down yet) does not outlaw abortion, but puts the question where it belongs, in the state legislatures. I fear a good dead of blood and treasure will be lost in a hysterical overreaction and in an attempt to intimidate the court.
UPDATE: I don't usually spell 'decision' d-e-c-i-o-s-i-o-n. But when I do, I'm generally blogging. Fixed.
Posted by: The Brickmuppet at
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Hopefully they'll throw a book at Amit Jain or whoever. But I don't expect him to get the treatment of J6 protestors.
Posted by: Pete Zaitcev at Tue May 3 20:41:38 2022 (LZ7Bg)
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Status Update:
Not, mind you, the status of entertainment media or overall societal trends. Those can be quite adequately summed up with this image macro...
Rather it's an update on the status of my Walter Mitty lifestyle. If you care to see such banality look below the 'fold'.
more...
Posted by: The Brickmuppet at
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Spring cleaning is so nice. I'm so procrastinating on it. Didn't top-dress my lawn this year at all. Barely made one pass with W+F.
Posted by: Pete Zaitcev at Mon May 2 13:57:05 2022 (LZ7Bg)
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Is your house amenable to a cleaning robot? I got a midrange Roomba last year and found that it's conducive to vacuuming more frequently than I otherwise do, which is nice.
Congrats on your ongoing improvements, too.
Posted by: Rick C at Tue May 3 08:18:04 2022 (6oqhX)
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The Feldenkrais guy has a video on bending over. It turns out that adults do it wrong and make it harder on themselves.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=oh1Y4Q62Q6g
So this video is about remembering how to bend over.
Posted by: Suburbanbanshee at Wed May 4 15:46:13 2022 (sF8WE)
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@ Suburbanbanshee: Thanks! Glad you are still around. How are you doing?
Posted by: The Brickmuppet at Wed May 4 15:55:59 2022 (5iiQK)
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@Rick C: Thanks very much for the offer! Alas, I live in a '70s split level ranch with 4 different sets of stairs. (This is one reason I did a lot of my stroke recovery at my folks house 300 miles away.)
Posted by: The Brickmuppet at Wed May 4 15:59:00 2022 (5iiQK)
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Brickmuppet, glad to see you haven't lost your sense of humor!
Posted by: Rick C at Fri May 6 09:39:08 2022 (6oqhX)
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