2022 - Wk 12 - Notes and Links
Wk 12
Afghanistan’s last finance minister, now a DC uber driver, ponders what went wrong.
MP joins in “shame on you” chant and then…
Spanish driver who ate hash cakes claims diplomatic immunity from a country he makes up on the spot.
One view of the dysfunctional situation; operationally the Kremlin wants to minimize the threat from its army. This has a long term impact upon its efficiency.
Let’s not focus on the negative. Most of the kids came back from the field trip.
You know that thing that is really obvious?
Gardening took off as a result of the pandemic. Let’s see if it persists.
If you make a Stasi surveillance system in the US and are told to dismantle it, you would, right? Right?
When Life Gives You Lemons, Call a 5th Grader.
What it’s all about.
If you want to understand Russia’s grabbing of Crimea and Eastern Ukraine, take a look at this map.
Ukraine had support from Shell to start drilling in Eastern Ukraine before Russia postured for war and made them pull out. It is not that Russia needs the oil and gas. True, Russia has loads of its own natural gas and oil but they need Ukraine to not have it, because Ukraine already have the fuel lines to EU countries that was previously used by Russia. If Ukraine became a gas and oil giant, nobody in Europe would buy from Russia, no matter how much Russia had available. Oh, guess who has a new energy trade deal with China.
Also, the eastern part of Ukraine has loads of hard coal reserves? Why mention it in the era of green energy? Guess what China burns for power?
When women first have sex, they are 8x less likely to have an orgasm than men, but women who had one want more sex years later — and don't differ from men in their desire for it.
The happiest nations on Earth have what in common?
Researchers examining one of the most-used cancer research datasets have found genomic data disparities among racial groups. They found that, for black patients, the genomic sequencing is lower quality, resulting in less-complete data, and under detection of some cancer variants and mutations, reflecting that minorities are underrepresented in DNA databases.
Even completely arbitrary group membership has a surprisingly strong influence on human behaviour
A terrible anti piracy company wants people to stop writing about how terrible they are.
This is a real coup. It's an apparatus to scramble and block, for one, the surveillance capabilities of the AWACS aircraft and similar equipment. If you know HOW they block it, you can adapt to it and cancel out the blocking abilities, making this specific item entirely useless. This falls only a little bit short of finding the damn Enigma machine intact and operational in WW2.
The equinox is upon us. Here’s what you need to know to impress your friends.
Colonel Beauregard, help me to the fainting couch. I am shocked by this news that homeopathy may not have any evidence supporting its efficacy!
Not new but interesting: the wife of Robin Williams contributed an essay to a neurology journal about her husband’s brain disease.
Browser extension claims to be able to spot fake dating profile photos with 99.9 per cent accuracy.
A privately owned collection of more than 500 pieces of retro computer and technology history has been destroyed by a Russian bomb in the city of Mariupol.
I effed up. Last week’s resources section had a malformed link to a web site that strips out all of the blather and life stories from recipe web pages. The correct URL is https://www.justtherecipe.com. On to this week’s resources.
AlternativeTo allows you to find alternatives to software, categorized by popularity, platform and whether it is free, open source or paid.
Download video from YouTube, Facebook and other places.
Historian Margaret MacMillan discusses the challenge Russian President Vladimir Putin poses to international order — and the terrible choice facing NATO.
Wanna learn about German history? Try the History of the Germans podcast.
In the music world, it's widely accepted that antique Stradivarius instruments are unsurpassed in quality and tone. But what happens when professional violinists take a blind test comparing a Stradivarius to a modern instrument?
Women's pockets weren't always a complete disgrace according to a fashion historian.
Jimmy Hoffa is more of less a punchline these days. Here he is being interviewed by Dick Cavett
How did Vito Corleone know it was Barzini all along?
Of the 50 Tennessee counties with the highest COVID death rates, half are within 40 miles of a hospital that has recently closed. Nearly all were rural.
Having public media is a sign of what in a democracy?
General Harry C Trexler was a conservationist who donated 900 acres to the Boy Scouts, the Boy Scout are going to sell the land to pay for guess what?
Dumb Criminals
Call off the search, everyone. We’ve found the dumbest man alive.
What’s one thing you should never Tweet? Take a guess.
If you're planning to call in sick, don't leave your hit list detailing the mass shooting you're planning at your workplace in plain view on your desk. The photo looks like you’d expect.
Strange Headlines
Woman sues over delivery of chocolate penis that has no redeeming qualities. I know some women who’d beg to differ.
A GOP politician reminds us what’s after abortion in the US.
It’s where the pick up trucks accumulate so, this sort of makes sense.
One blog writer wonders what happened to all of the pre-invasion bribe money that was supposed to weaken Ukraine?
Gangs in LA are now wearing informs so they are easier to spot.
Trump supporters are pushing to prohibit machine counting of ballots in future elections around the country, which election officials say could make vote-counting slower, more expensive and — perhaps most importantly — less accurate.
I am shocked. Okay, not that shocked.
This week’s nincompoop is from Minnesota
Look I don’t mean to blame the victim but if robbers steal your gun, don’t chase them. It’s gone, man.
Messages about women’s self-esteem are now so ubiquitous that their value has been placed beyond debate.
Need a fix of daily art history?
Photographs of Ukraine’s many forms of ethnic dress.
The rear projection style of shooting car scenes in old movies came to an end when Orson Wells decided it had to.
Photos of women and children who have escaped from Ukraine to Poland. Also, from the same web site, photographs of people today in Kiev.
I wonder if the woman that killed my brother ever thinks of him,
My (28M) brother (22M) was killed by a careless driver a few years ago. He was on his motorcycle and she merged into him in the express lane. He wasn’t speeding, and she wasn’t drunk. He was in her blind spot as she was got off that exit, flew across two lanes and hit him in the express lane. I’ll spare you guys the details, other than she served no jail time; she’s a school teacher.
I can’t say I have the emotional space to hate her. My relationship with my brother was a toxic, traumatic one, and we hadn’t communicated in any way for over 5 years when he died. The last time we were together we both sort of mutually agreed it was the last time we’d see each other, and we each went our ways. That being said, I think of him with sadness, and regret. More often I think of the woman who killed him. In the way I check my blind spots obsessively, just in case I somehow missed someone on the road. I wonder if she does the same.
Does she think about him? Has she struggled because of this? I feel it just, if she has. Her car had to have blind spot detection based off the year and model. Does she lay at night in bed wondering the same things I do? Did she ask what he looked like, in life, before she killed him? Does she see his face sometimes? I’ve never seen hers. I don’t want to. My initial response at the time of his death was compassion for this person who surely didn’t mean to end another person’s life. Yet that doesn’t make her any less guilty, in my mind.
I don’t hate her. I just wonder if she thinks about him. I grieve my brother, and pay respect to his memory, in my own ways. Sometimes I wonder if wherever she may be, she does the same.
The short answer is no. The long answer is nooooooooooo. The middle answer is noooo.
I’m disturbed by this new approach of calming analyzing things rather than jumping straight to incredulous outrage and baseless assumptions, and i’m sure it’ll never catch on.
Sharks definitely swim faster than me. However, I can run faster. I guess in a triathlon it would come down to the cycling.
The only path back to my room is blocked by cute but incredibly angry sea lions.
Ukraine is going through Russian staff officers like Darth Vader.
This has a “I just found out I’m 1/128th Native American” vibe.
Ben Stiller is now the same age that Robert De Niro was in Meet the Parents. When will we get the next instalment in the series where Greg Focker is now the parent that gets to scrutinize someone his kid is dating?
The smaller the area, the lower the crime, the more bored the police get.
It is perfectly possible to be extremely intelligent and still be an idiot - in fact in my personal experience it's almost a natural tendency for the highly intelligent with a limited life experience to overestimate the power of intelligence in general (and their own, specifically) and underestimate both others' intelligence and one's own levels of subconsciously-driven self-deceit: the nutty professor stereotype of one immensely capable in one very specific area and inept at pretty much all else didn't came to be in a vacuum.
How can I convert my Miata for off-roading?
Gary Kasparov thinks Putin is a fantastic tactician but a bad strategist. This fits the bill.
It probably could be summarized in a set of partial differential equations that would fit in a tweet, but that's a bit painful even for me.
He wants to salt Ukraine so that nothing seeds there. So that the EU wont grow there... NATO wont sprout there
You can tell everyone you've almost had a threesome because, if there were two of you, you were technically 66.67٪ of the way there, and that's pretty close. Sort of.
Wife told me God talked to her and I think I ruined the moment
Russia is a petrostate terrified of NATO.
A spa hotel? It’s like a normal hotel, only in reception there’s a picture of a pebble.
Life seems to be much more interesting when you are stupid enough to believe anything you read from Facebook memes.
This is the air guitar of medical professionalsi.
I had a blast in the scouts when I was a kid. Of course, I didn't get buggered.
I think if they reboot the Dukes of Hazard they should be cyclists as it’s more environmentally sound.
I am so tired on such a molecular level.
Two dim stars from the Big Dipper served as an ancient eye test. If you had lived in the time of the early Romans and could see them, you would have been eligible to be an archer in the Roman army.
I always think of Meryl Streep as the Catherine O’Hara of drama.
It's LIKE a Sputnik moment, if Sputnik had crashed through the Kremlin ceiling and killed Khrushchev's dog.
Are you liking things that I don't like? Why are you doing such things?
Jump out and throw a fit on the ground like you’re a mildly inconvenienced soccer player.
Someone had barfed in the street and the sparrows were picking through it for breakfast.
At quick glance I misread your user name as thirteen testicles
Should you hire a first time assassin?
Russian general who told troops the war would be over quickly was killed in Ukraine. He was not entirely wrong, it did end quickly for him
“I’m such a good lover because I practice a lot on my own.” —Woody Allen
What a bitch. I hope she has an Onlyfans with no subscribers
Kid Rock looks like Dr. Phil playing Stevie Nicks.
I tried dancing with this girl. She said she doesn’t like Asian men. I told her I was Latino, she danced with me. Im not Latino.
I hate it, this is the worst thing I've read today well done.
Dutch publisher announces that it is pulling an investigative book identifying who most likely betrayed Anne Frank to her death. My money is still on whichever mechanic had last access to her plane.
The queen still has two more years until she's reigned longer than Louis XIV. She's not gonna let the French win this one. Though Louis XIV is actually considered a Canadian monarch, because we were New France at the time so technically he is our longest reigning monarch as well. She is already the longest reigning effective monarch. Louis was not doing much work when he was coronated at age five.
Why in period dramas do women never have armpit or leg hair?
I've always wanted to go to Switzerland to see what the army does with those wee red knives.
My baseless theory is a lot of the authoritarian noise has been because of Putin funneling lots of cash to the movements around the world. I hope this mess will cut the funding and we will start to see shifts in the zeitgeist to a better world.
Whenever I wear something expensive it looks stolen.
My husband and I have never considered divorce ... murder sometimes, but never divorce.
Yea, gotta love when there's articles that essentially post what people have been asking for, and what is needed, like it's a horrible idea that would destroy the world.
Never trust a man, who when left alone with a tea cosey... Doesn't try it on.
Kids in back seats cause accidents, accidents in back seats cause kids.
My wife has passed. Sometimes I can literally smell her. I know it's just a memory of a smell, but I swear she is around and I just can't reach her. She's reminding me to be happy.
Question: What specifically distinguishes citizens arrest from kidnapping?
I'm sure some therapists have so much work experience, they've learned how to spot a narc within a family dynamic. But it's not something I’d bet on. Narcissists are very good at what they do.
There's propaganda from both sides, you can continue to support a side while recognising that and realizing it's not as simple as all the footage of well-treated prisoners and one sided combat would have you think.
Has it officially become acceptable again for males to show off their thighs?
I think the Drone Industry is going to be in a bit of tizzy after this, Turkey's TB-2's are about a million a pop comared to $32 Mil 140 Mil and 232 Mil for the US models. Now, America’s single use Switchblade" drones that Biden recently sent to Ukraine might turn heads because they are only $6,000/ea, if they work as advertised
Why do grocery stores / super markets often have fans at the exits that blast you with air as you walk out? It’s called an air curtain and it essentially acts as a door. Keeps the cold air inside and the bugs out.
I wonder what the dog has named me?
Kim Jong Un is like the neighbor who puts up threatening edgelord signs like "trespassers will be used for target practice," but keeps to himself in his homemade bunker eating prepper food from the Infowars website.
What if God came down one day and just said "It's pronounced 'Jod'" then left.
Does anyone work in a field with social work and horticulture?
The fact that you are trying to lose weight is a personal insult to me.
Childhood is idolizing Batman. Adolescence is when The Joker starts to makes sense. Adulthood is realizing Commissioner Gordon doesn’t get paid enough to deal with them.
Established Universe.
My children have discovered their grandfather’s Redd Foxx albums.
Cheap price to pay to destroy Russia's army and not lose a single American life. Also we spent 2 Trillion in Afghanistan and all we got with dead people and a failed state.
I so love to sing, but it sounds like several dragons being slowly strangled. My daughter once cried because I wouldn’t stop singing.
This made me physically ill and angry at the same time.
I plan on inheriting. I strongly recommend others do the same.
Nobody has ever "learned from a mistake of the past" from a statue in a town centre. Especially given that, y'know, those statues were almost always put there in celebration of that thing we now consider mistakes.
In Britain they call it a "lift" but Americans call it an "elevator”. I guess we're just raised differently
I’ve managed to go my entire life without getting upset in a fast food restaurant; am I doing it wrong?
Our system works well because there's no friction between the head of government and the head of state. I think a lot of Canadians (and Americans, for that matter) don't value this arrangement highly enough. An elected head of state might view themselves as another locus of decision-making power. And that's how you might get something along the lines of the 1975 Australian constitutional crisis.
Good way to spot chuds propagating fake news / disinformation: When they give unverified opinions and then tell YOU to do the research.
