2023 - Notes and Links
Wk 37
Ten degrees at night and most of the windows closed after sundown. Summer is over.
Signs of the times.
America’s fading southern accent.
Home prices in Canada are so stretched that even owners want them to fall. Let us note that the current housing minister and the previous housing minister don’t want them to fall.
Barnacles may help reveal the location of the lost Malaysia Airlines flight MH370
Aside from the fact that they’re all dead, the women of Surrealism have had a banner couple of years.
Guess what happened on a War Thunder forum. Again.
Canada has lost its purpose in foreign relations. It’s time for a review
The US has pumped so much groundwater that it's literally splitting the ground open across the American Southwest
Change will come to Russia - suddenly and in an unknown form.
The Dacha, is a uniquely Russian phenomenon.
Infants' sex affects neural responses to affective touch in early infancy
Rotten Tomatoes celebrated its 25th year of assigning scores to movies based on their aggregate review. Now Vulture writes that Rotten Tomatoes "can make or break" movies, "with implications for how films are perceived, released, marketed, and possibly even green-lit". Unfortunately, the site "is also erratic, reductive, and easily hacked” and the ratings are skewed by industry putting its thumb on the scale.
The demographics of Canada’s electorate. Seniors are used to being pandered to, not because they’re especially hard done by: in the first quarter of this year, Statistics Canada pegged their average household net worth at $1.1 million, 40 per cent of which is real estate. But because they vote.
Why do some orchids look like bees?
A social media user explains how he was using four accounts to push an agenda in the Canadian politics discussion group.
Coming soon, well, eventually, Thunderbolt 5.
Engineers design more powerful RNA vaccines. The new approach could lead to intranasal vaccines for Covid-19 and other respiratory diseases
‘…The next section of the US government filing is titled "Musk's Conduct….” This is a deep dive into the privacy problems that Twitter has failed to manage in accordance with an agreement with the FTC that predates Musk’s take over. Note that the FTC can send people to jail.
We’re in the biplane era of drones. Here’s some hint of what the Americans are working on.
There's a newsletter that will email you a chapter of Dracula on the exact date it occurs on the calendar, from May 3rd to November 7th.
Introducing the 10-hour metric clock.
Some new AI image and content systems to mess with: janitorai or pygmalion.
Stellar Firma is a weekly Science Fiction, Comedy podcast following the misadventures of Stellar Firma Ltd.’s highest-born but lowest-achieving planetary designer Trexel Geistman and his bewildered clone assistant David 7.
On BBC Women’s Hour it is asked - Is it time for a minister for men?
Wooden Overcoats is a comedy about the rivalry of two undertakers competing for business.
Madison on the Air is what happens when a modern-day woman gets zapped back into actual old-time radio scripts. Madison will definitely say the unexpected as she’s surrounded by people from the non-PC era.
When human rights activist Karima Baloch is found drowned off the shores of Toronto, an investigation into her mysterious death leads all the way back to Pakistan, the country she had recently fled. In this six-part series, host Mary Lynk explores the rampant abductions and killings of dissidents in Pakistan.
McLean Stevenson recalls filming his last episode of MASH. Guess what - Henry Blake survived.
Honest Canadian government ads.
Did people used to look older?
The numbers don’t lie - the super-hero movie craze peaked three years ago.
Someone get her a job with a microphone. She’s a natural.
Why do oligarchs choose London for their dirty money?
Star Trek: The Animated Series was a half-hour Saturday morning cartoon that premiered exactly one-half century ago — yesterday. You can watch its opening credits sequence on YouTube — with its strange 1970s version of the theme song. CBS's YouTube channel also offers clips from various episodes. Starting in 1973, it ran for 22 episodes. But the BBC notes it kept Star Trek in people's minds after the original series had been canceled in 1969 and Roddenberry also saw it as an opportunity to keep the fire burning for another series and so demanded total creative control.
The lost art of blocking and the long take: Remembering I, Claudius.
Unintended consequences and correlations
Criminal gangs behind a rise in bombings and shootings in Sweden in recent years are using fake Spotify streams to launder money
Mr Free Speech sues the State of California to keep under wraps how Twitter makes content moderation decisions.
The economy is looking up in Afghanistan.
The artificial intelligence technology behind ChatGPT was built in Iowa—with a lot of water. This was sent in by one of you.
A United Nations report "says that overreliance on remote learning technology during the pandemic led to 'staggering' education inequality around the world," reports the New York Times. The 655-page report from the United Nations' education/culture agency UNESCO findings include: The promise of education technology was overstated; Remote online learning worsened education disparities; Learning was hindered and altered; Regulation and guardrails are needed.
Dumb Criminals
The man who built the biggest tennis match-fixing ring.
Shockingly, the man at the center of a Supreme Court case challenging laws that prohibit domestic abusers from having guns has been involved in a prior shooting incident. Sorry, make that six prior shooting incidents.
When you are about to go on trial for civil fraud in a bench trial, what is your best move? Sue the judge. ‘It is a bold strategy Cotton, let's see how well that works.’
Okay pal: you. Yes you. Jail. Quick march.
Strange Headlines
This Italian bank accepts parmesan as collateral.
Britain is turning into South Africa.
20-Year-Old Dies Of 'Fried Rice Syndrome' After Eating Leftover Pasta.
Couple livid after sitting next to farting dog on 13-hour flight.
After failing his driving test 12 times, man finds his doppelgänger to take the test on his behalf.
A Tepid Dystopia
How not to build a navy ship.
Vice’s hard-nosed coverage of Saudi Arabia changed after investment deals with the repressive kingdom. A deleted documentary is not completely gone, however, and you can watch it here.
"I somewhat regret insinuating that we should crush poor people under my heel in order for me to make more money." That wasn't his exact apology, but that's the gist.
Google hid evidence by training workers to avoid words monopolists use, DOJ says.
This week’s nincompoop is Seattle Police Officers Guild's president Dan Auderer.
One of his constables ran over and killed a grad student. So this compassionate person’s natural reaction was….
Weird Wiki
The history of the electric piano. The earliest models were made from aviation parts.
I’ll never think of the Dave Matthews Band quite the same way again.
The War
India: sorry the Rupees we’re buying your oil with aren’t worth much. Can we interest you in a long-term investment?
Ukrainian snipers deploy to the field with a “whole golf bag” of different rifles.
Nationalism is an irregular verb?
Russia is training its troops to use the T-55 again.
Russia modifies regulations so it can send the desperately ill, deaf, schizoprenic and intellectually handicapped to war.
Rod Serling’s daughter: “What I vividly recall is my dad having nightmares, and in the morning I would ask him what happened, and he would say he dreamed the Japanese were coming at him. So it was always present, and clearly . . . he got it off his chest in his writing."
The novel Misery was about a writer being held hostage written at the time when Stephen King was trying to wean himself off cocaine.
The rise of the synthesizer - How the 1980s got its sound.
Our friendship survived bad dates, illness, marriage, and fights. Why can’t it survive your baby?
Discussion: What was ruined because of 9/11?
Does anyone remember the series Fantasy Island? Ricardo Montalbán would claim in interviews that he had a definite opinion in mind regarding the mystery of Mr. Roarke, and how he accomplished his fantasies, but he would never publicly state what it was. Years after the series was off the air, in an interview with the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences, Montalbán revealed he imagined Roarke as a somewhat prideful angel and that Fantasy Island was Purgatory.
Rewrite your CV to fit in keywords and context that match the job description in the ad for which you are applying.
HR staff in most companies have a Job description on their screens and when they talk to you on the phone, they want to hear the same words they are seeing. So change your vocabulary to retrofit what they want to hear.
Reword your success in IT to make it sound like you know how systems are built and what it takes to deliver product solutions with high availability.
Reword your experience in customer experience to say that you practice customer/user/ empathy and understand the pain points of your product's users/victims.
When you send a cover letter or if you’re talking to a recruiter early on, make sure they think of you as a problem solver. Showcase how you helped the company go from X to Y.
Never let the recruiter feel that you don’t know anything. Say you know it all so that they feel confident to push your application further.
Showcase yourself as a smooth talker and someone who fits within the company. Let them know you’re a good culture fit.
Ask questions about the role clearly and to-the-point so that HR understands you’re a good communicator.
When they ask you why shift from a super technical role to a product, have an answer ready that showcases how the product team will benefit from your skillset.
Always place customers first and revolve your solutions and ideas around creating solutions and building better quality experiences for them. Talk about data. Keep some important statistics handy. Convince the HR team that you’re a structured problem solver and you know where to get your data from.
PROOF, that in 1983 I won that game of hide-and-seek. You see this Debbie Smith, I won, you bitch.
My father-in-law drives bodies to the crematory and got pulled over last week for not wearing a seat belt. Cop asked him what was in the back of the van and he said "have a look". Cop opens the door. Sees the bodies and closes it and says "get out of here" and walks back to his car.
I once called my Wii U gay and one of my friends said "Wii Us can't be gay because they don't have gender." A couple of months ago, he came up with a formula proving that Wii Us are, in fact, gay.
A relative of mine was killed while serving in the Union Army during the US Civil War. He survived multiple battles only to be trampled by a pig while in camp.
That feeling when you’re about to ask to change positions because you’re exhausted and your back is about to give out…and then she says “Faster! Don’t stop!” It’s a strange mix of horror, despair, and sheer fucking will.
What happened to the good ‘ole days when you could be a worthless piece of moldy excrement and not have to worry about it being recorded?
Does anyone else play the “bionic” sound effect in their head when lifting heavy items?
My gf won't let me play the drums of liberation on her boobs. It is all I ever wanted. Should I dump her?
I’m willing to separate my pets, but I refuse to misgender them.
Every single knife I own is as dull as a dildo. How on Earth do people keep their knives sharp?
We’re talking about the next generation of fish and chips technologies.
Well with Tetanus this anti-jab problem will take care of itself rather quickly. Quick question: How emotionally attached are you to your mum?
My daughter says she can be anything she wants. Except an Astronaut. Because space is too dark.
Misogynists have nothing to do with massages. Jesus Christ.
Does anyone else immediately forget what a call was about after clicking "Leave Meeting?" Can't decide if this company has too many pointless meetings or if I need pills.
I told my stepson 20 times do not drive my car! My lease is up, I got a buyer & I will make some good $ off the deal, no accidents, under mileage, no stains on inside and not a scratch on the exterior. He crashed it twice on the same day a mile from the house and 200 yards apart from each crash.
Have you got what it takes to pretend to be a patriot?
Chihuahuas would be terrifying if they were the size of bears.
That would be the free market working as intended, instead of our government consisting of three oligopolies in a trenchcoat.
It's a gastrointestinal closing sale: everything must go.
Freeland spent a good five minutes avoiding saying she’d like to see prices fall when a reporter asked her the question.
There are a variety of audio codecs used for phone calls, and some of them sound better than others. The problem is the ones that sound better use more data, which means the phone company can't serve quite as many customers on the same infrastructure and spectrum. The phone companies generally don't care about the audio quality unless it's so bad it drives people to competitors.
What’s the difference between 9/11 and a cow? You can’t milk a cow for 22 years.
If I had a nickel for every time my heavily pregnant girlfriend has told me that she will physically kill me.
Burt Lancaster tried to kill me three times and he was one of my best friends.
IKEA shouldn’t be allowed to sell flat-pack furniture to couples in this heat. Turns out the fuse for our patience is much shorter than usual.
"Anything but Country" is a valid expression of musical taste.
Have you ever known a fellow British person who was named George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, or Benjamin Franklin?
Finland has the highest per capita number of metal bands, with there being 1 metal band for every 2000 people (and they've famously sent metal bands to Eurovision, like Lordi), so there are lots of untrained people trying to imitate Mikael Akerfeldt or Dan Swanö and fucking up their voices in the process.
I went to a graduation party at a local park and met a very nice British man who was married to a friend of the graduate. We played various park games like volleyball and kickball and drinking and such. This total stranger drank 40 ounces of straight gin while doing so, and during the activities pulled me and a few others aside to tell us he just wanted to avoid his wife's family gathering later that night. He did. He was vomiting under a tree until well after the graduation party ended.
Those assholes have been riding high so long that they think the only thing that can take them down is kryptonite. Of course, they are pea-brained, dickless shitheads.
My sex life is like a Rolls Royce. I don’t have a Rolls Royce.
Why is it every time I see the cybertruck it feels more like a model from an N64-era driving game than an actual product someone is going to release for real?
Imagine having to come up with a new variation of "there is no election on the horizon but we must generate political musical chairs content" for years on end. These are incredibly educated, well-funded writers who have the mental capacity to engage us on so many topics that matter and yet here we are, essentially speculating on which national political leader can take the biggest shit.
I mean, it's obviously not a real company. The parts are fake, the employees are fake, the paperwork is fake. The only thing that's real is the money they got paid. And also the friends we made along the way
It’s like I have sexually outgrown humanity.
I'll admit it, I have a tremendous sex drive. My girlfriend lives 40 miles away.
In Norwegian slang, the word 'Texas' means crazy, illogical, et cetera.
[request] Women with large breasts tastefully teaching JavaScript or other front-end stuff.
That guy would gladly kill you if you ever fucked with his cheese
When I was in prison, I had a cell mate who was doing life and he was incredibly big and mean and violent. So on lockdowns we would play chess but every time he lost he would act like he wanted to kick my ass. So I learned to throw the game right? But here's the thing... he was just smart enough to figure out that I was throwing the game! That got him even angrier. As soon as lockdown was over I moved to a better cell.
I met a guy who claimed when he switched to beer only to curb his drinking, he quickly learned how to drink a six-pack in twenty minutes. Where there's a will there's a way.
Do any Christians refer to god as “Daddy" or is my mother just insane?
Bond’s drinks per-page ratio is one drink every seven pages using the book lengths from the Signet paperbacks.
How would vampires fare during the Spanish Inquisition?
Weaseling out of things is important to learn. It's what separates us from the animals. Except the weasel.
I accidentally found out about the ring so I know he’s going to propose. Need advice - how to mess with his head between now and then?
Torn right hip labrum. Please never trip going UP the stairs.
A lad in school wiped his nose on people, he ended up dating one of the hottest girls in school because she thought he was funny. No justice in the world.
Is public auto cannibalism legal? If not, what can I be charged with for doing it? I’m in California, if that’s relevant
“My first American experience was almost my last because it was with the Weinsteins and Miramax. I have got to tell you, that two horrible things happened in the late nineties, my father was kidnapped and I worked with the Weinsteins. I know which one was worse… the kidnapping made more sense, I knew what they wanted.” - Guillermo del Toro
I'm pretty sure my car won't work if I don't pick my nose while driving.
It's a misconception that Demons speak Latin, changing the language setting to Ancient Aramaic.
Everyone picks their noses. It's just what you do with it afterward that separates us.
Why do women like taking pictures of Starbucks drinks?
Very practical. I’m sure it will bring prosperity to all. Or at least for the contractor.
The mugshot photo makes Trump look like an old pedo who can't decide if he wants to molest the kid or take his bike.
