Columbia
It’s the Internet!
Wonder why so much fraud, scam and political skullduggery seems to be going on these days? Maybe it’s just the same old shyt with me getting older noticing it more? Gaining better perspective on certain things as life goes on would be normal, methinks. I still haven’t changed my long-standing view of one common cyber denominator analogous to meatspace since the (public) Internet’s inception when I started helping build it back in the late 80s: The WIld West.
Law is always playing catch-up. Things need to go wrongly enough first before societal critical mass moves to address the issue legislatively, judicially and operationally. I suspect the real reason behind cyber-enabled white-collar crime is simply that many people are making big bank in the dark web fuckery business with impunity. More to the point, the underworld’s selling illicit drugs and legitimate business interests in the FIRE sector love it, because it’s only all on paper (drive?). Half the time they can literally do it legally with chatboxes and byzantine answering programs effectively insulating them from the customers.
You can lie, cheat and steal all you want and probably get away with it these days – as long as you’re smart enough and behind a keyboard. Hell, get enough of them typing in the same direction, and you can get this fuckwit elected POTUS.
Big Tank Early 2023
Recently added a 2nd smaller canister filter for water polishing. I’ll upgrade those lines to something black so they don’t stick out like a sore thumb one of these days. I’ve been overfeeding them and the growing Loach population seems to stir up quite a bit of detritus. Here’s a little 2-minute vid looking long-ways through. Quick vid from a week later after cleaning the glass.
 |  |  |
Will Boeing Ever be Punished?
It’s like Boeing is ≈ Trump in terms of accountability. They fly 737s full of people into the ground, egregiously ripping off the government time and again, and the Air Force just begs for more. Everybody concerned with the topic understands the criticality of in-flight re-fueling. I guess they just overlooked the part about R&D testing.
Ten years later, ten people stand around shakin’ their head agreeing this shyt doesn’t work right.
Buzzfeed Delivers
This one made me chuckle. What makes the holy-rollers think they have the good/evil market cornered?
Somebody at Buzzfeed has a little too much time on their hands…
Record Low in Denver This Morning
Dropped to -10°F at 2AM today. That makes two strong cold snaps so far this season.
Airport’s looking pretty jacked.
Winter Storm school cancellations in Texas?
Fuck the Pope IV
“When I said it is a sin, I was simply referring to Catholic moral teaching, which says that every sexual act outside of marriage is a sin,” Francis wrote in Spanish, underlining the final phrase.
I imagine if the Pope had his way, sex would be a subscription service you sign up with for a fee, supporting summer bible camp where priests get an exception for priming the minors.
Anti-VAX cult offshoot outcomes.
Here’s where this rant started. Connect the dots.
Wintertime Work Backup
My shyt’s jacked – literally. Took me two hours to get the Bimmer on jackstands yesterday. It popped a fuel leak the other day, so I need to get under it. In the middle of winter with Red Betsy on the lift makes it difficult. She can’t be trusted to start even warm until the carb is sorted, so I’ll be repairing the little grey monster the old fashioned way: On my back on the floor. Might even be easier with the new creeper.
I already know what’s wrong. The cobbed-up water separator plumbing suffered some loosening with the deep freeze over Christmas. Should be interesting to see how that’s doing, under the circumstances. This was the first time I ever had any diesel winterization issues. I forgot to put ClearDiesel and Howes treatment in last fall, so apparently the line froze at least twice in these low temps we’ve had. It’s pretty obvious what’s going on when it fails to start with zero fuel pressure showing post-filter.
It took me a few tries to remember how the jack points work on this car. It won’t go up very far at any one corner, and headroom is limited under the lift. Too cold for my fingers next few days, so we’ll see how it goes later in the week. It’s a chore just getting the bottom covers off.
FDA Punts CBD
“FDA has repeatedly disregarded evidence demonstrating safety that is relevant to CBD at the levels commonly used in supplements and continues to rely heavily on safety concerns related to high dosage Epidiolex to support the agency’s inaction,” Mister said in a statement.
Sounds about right for an agency reeling from the Covid fiasco. I suppose the rationale is if they do nothing, at least they can’t be blamed for a bad outcome. It seemed to work for SARScOv2, so what the fuck.
In all reality, it probably doesn’t matter what they say or do in the long run. Worst case scenario, customers will continue sorting trough the morass of scam and fraudulent products on the market. Best case scenario, cost will rise slower without onerous labeling, testing and tracking regulations.
CBD is but one of Cannabis’ many potentially game-changing therapeutics. That’s why they had to use so much Epidiolex™ – they were trying to isolate it. They just got lucky, stumbling on one of who knows(?) how many ways to affect seizures. Idiots. Taken together, both CBD and THC, along with the plethora of minor Cannabanoids, will eventually re-define the pharma industry. And they are terrified. There’s no longer enough afternoon TV marketing slots available for their government-approved scams.
Think We Have Classification Issues?
“US Air Force Awards Contract to Polysentry to Develop AI-enabled Data Classification Platform.”
Apparently we’ve already been doing this for some time. Maybe review the White House contracts for the past few administrations? Alrighty, then. Now imagine doing this shyt while some Fuckwit‘s working with the Russians to get elected POTUS and kill NATO. Good thing they couldn’t keep a lid on the Ukraine shyt.
Fuck Tony Dungy, NBC and FOX
I once admired Tony for his masterful insight gained through decades of wide-ranging NFL experience. This “one oh shyt, just erased a hundred atta-boys” for an NFL talking head-right-wing-religious whack-o.
All these holy rollers want is some feel-good corporeal validation for their irrational spiritual “beliefs.” They don’t give a shyt about anything or anybody but themselves. Unabated disinformation online and in the media everywhere is destroying society. Was it the price for getting into the broadcast booth? Good for you.
Putin’s Gamble
New category combo – Crime and Work. I always tried to avoid it when the rules and laws didn’t quite cover things, but at the end of the day you still have to deal with these people. Vladimir Putin made any number of gross miscalculations in his formula to take Ukraine. Gambling with other people’s lives and money at the mundane, street crime and bank fraud levels is easy. Take it to war, and you’ll have another type of gambler to deal with.
Probably gonna need to shift north here a bit pretty soon. Big bets on the table now. Our guys, shooters or not, go with air cover.
Patriarchal Neo-Fascism
It’s an age-old political ideology recently re-imagined by people in organizations like the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers. Of course they don’t call it that. To them it is Xtian Nationalism or some flavor thereof, including a whole plethora of sub-genres running the gamut from anti-government to homophobia to gun culture to economic elitism all rolled up in misogyny. The GOP took all the worst attributes of U.S. culture and declared a war rational people are now obliged to oppose.
Benedict Dotard is their leader. For now. But there will be others. The evil will to subjugate and oppress society for personal gain is inherent in human nature. History is replete with shining examples of kings, dictators, emperors and priests who managed to get enough naive followers to do their hateful, violent bidding. Not today, not in this country, not here ever.
Join the military if you want to dress up in uniforms and play with guns. Stop pretending and learn something about the monopoly on violence.
Looks Like a Bang-Up 2023 Comin’
“The new year has brought a shocking string of mass killings in the U.S. – six in less than three weeks, accounting for 39 deaths.”
My main concerns with our ongoing sporadic, random civil massacre circumstances are two-fold. To start with, de-sensitization has taken place. The sheer number and frequency of these occurrences now means only the the victims and close acquaintances are being directly affected by this nonsense. So remediation will continue to go largely un-addressed.
The second thing I find particularly disturbing about this whole rotten situation is the typical LE response. Stop repeating the same old “danger to the public” refrain. Maybe even some actual public relations? NOT making announcements about ongoing manhunts is very counter-productive.
The danger posed by a growing number of prospective mass shooters is real and imminent, it’s not going away, and we don’t want any more lies to that effect every time you apprehend a suspect.
Mom’s a Road Warrior Now
Michelle’s halfway through a business trip to head office in Springfield. Me and the menagerie have to do without her for another week, while she gets per-Diem restaurant fare and we fend for ourselves. Waaaaaaah!
JWST Update #20
Just a re-post
Webb telescope peers into the frozen heart of a space cloud.
Late Update: NIRISS offline.
No, the Big Bang theory is not broken.
LATE UPDATE: NASA’s powerful $10 billion space telescope is firing on all cylinders again.
