Sunday, February 25, 2018

The Good Guy With A Gun Problem

Wasn't even his, but when law enforcement arrives they're going to aim and likely fire at the person with the gun. Because presumably they're the bad guy.

In the time between when police were dispatched and when officers arrived, a handful of churchgoers wrestled Jones to the ground. One of the congregants was able to grab Jones' gun.

Officers entered the building and saw the churchgoer holding the gun and opened fire, according to the Amarillo Police Department. The churchgoer was hospitalized in stable condition.

And, of course, no matter what the laws say, being a brown person with a gun is an execution-without-trial offense.

Afternoon Thread

The darkest timeline continues.

The Penis Hat Brigade

So there's this guy you know who wears a giant penis hat around everywhere. He forms a club for other penis hat wearers. There's a kind of fellowship of the penis hat. They have competitions for who has the best penis hats, the biggest ones, the ones with the most bling, etc. They walk among us, proudly wearing their penis hats, telling each other how cool they look with their penis hats. They hang out in malls and movie theaters, parade up and down their suburban neighborhoods, wearing their giant penis hats, all while the rest of us just point and laugh and laugh and laugh and laugh and laugh because they're a bunch of fucking idiots.

We would laugh if the penis hats didn't kill people, anyway.

Games Kitties Play

Jump over me one way, land on the corner table. Jump over me the other way, land on my laptop. Have to reboot constantly because he keeps pressing key combinations that do weird things that I don't know how to undo.

Sunday Morning

Saturday, February 24, 2018

Finally Some Important Innovation

Good plan.

A patent application published Thursday from the self-driving arm of Google's parent company detailed an elaborate system to prevent motion sickness in its vehicles.

The method involves determining routes that could minimize motion sickness. For example, sensitive passengers would be given a relaxed ride on gentle roads. Those people who are more in a rush could select a faster but slightly rougher trip.

How's About We Get Our Happy On

The Shiff Memo was just released.

Saturday, Saturday

Anyone else get arrested yet today?

What Happened To Our Oakeshottian Burkean Purity?

Trump brings it out more than usual, but we regularly get conservatives lamenting that their movement is filled with racist hucksters, mad because the new kids say the quiet bits a bit too loudly and because they're getting in on their grift.

One doesn't have to rehash the whole modern conservative party from Goldwater to Nixon and onward. Elite conservatives promoted Sarah Palin to be Vice President. OK, maybe this was just a little mistake. Once they did that of course they had pretend they wanted her to win. Fine. Then they (not all of them, but most) spent at least 2 years promoting her as the leader of their movement (it's sort of been memoryholed, but Politico was Sarah Palin Daily from 2009-2011 or so, and not simply because Politico writers were interested in her).



Morning Thread

Reading that Manafort created a paper trail because he didn't know how to convert a PDF file to Word cracked me right up. Put me in such a good mood, I went and got a haircut.

h/t G

Friday, February 23, 2018

Friday Evening

Rock on.

Lock Them Up!

Time to make that our chant.

Afternoon Thread

Out seeing the orchestra because I can do that sometimes.

Friday Crass Commercialism

I've had a Roku for awhile and I'm quite happy with it. I'm no expert on which precise doohickey to get internet video onto your TV is best for your particular wants/needs, but it works as advertised and is simple. Good for travel, too, just bring it with you.



Leaving New York City

OK, I never lived in New York City, but at some point real estate prices hit a point (and my tastes changed) such that I realized I didn't want to live in New York City anymore. In your 20s you can live in flop houses with several roommates, etc..., but most of us don't imagine living that way for the rest of our lives. So, put your time in living like a student with the idea that eventually your income will go up enough that you'll be able to set yourself up long term. Obviously in NYC that doesn't mean the 3000 sq. ft detached home, but it does mean finding a place you can imagine living "the rest of your life."

I don't know what the overall long term trend in the Bay Area is, but prices have certainly hit the point where even if you can afford to go live a few years, unless you're getting techbro VC money, at the moment it's impossible to envision being able to stick around longterm. And it isn't just SF, it's the entire very large area.
Rent a moving truck from Las Vegas to San Jose and you'll pay about $100. In the opposite direction, the same truck will cost you 16 times that, or nearly $2,000.

What accounts for the difference? The simple laws of supply and demand, says economist Mark J. Perry. With so many people leaving the Bay Area, there are not enough rental trucks to go around. Perry, a University of Michigan professor, published his findings in a new study with public policy think tank American Enterprise Institute (AEI).

CBS News reported recently that operators of a San Jose U-Haul business have trouble getting their rental vans back "because so many are on a one-way ticket out of town." The revelation inspired Perry to compare the costs of U-Haul rentals for trucks leaving San Jose versus those heading into the city.

Comparing moving truck rates isn't a new methodology, and these kinds of points always have a "nobody goes there anymore, it's too crowded" element to them, but while supply and demand logic might work for some things - if there aren't enough people around to be supermarket cashiers, eventually they gotta raise the wages if they want to hire anyone - it doesn't work as well for jobs like teaching which have less flexibility.

The Battle Of Ideas

One maddening thing about The Acceptable Discourse in DC is that there are people who are paid to lie. It is their job to lie. The bothsides view of this is, well, it's everybody's job, so whatever. Still there's a difference between, say, Big Tobacco lying, and The People Who Fight Against Big Tobacco lying. Let's just stipulate that Both Sides lie. But the financial incentive for the latter to lie is... um, I guess if you're a spokesperson your job is to be an effective "advocate" so maybe you earn your salary by lying if necessary?... but there isn't a billion dollar industry behind going after Big Tobacco. The Big Money is not so big.

The incentives to lie are not identical, so even if none of us are pure, having Both Sides coverage of issues, where one side is The Committee On Feeding Your Children More Lead, and the other side is Save Our Children From Lead Poisoning, means you're going to get a bit more dishonesty from the former.

Related: newspapers really don't have to run PR pieces pushed by the lobbying firms of billion dollar companies. It's just information laundering.

To Plead Or Not To Plead

I guess we're leaning "plead" right now.


President Trump’s one-time campaign aide Richard Gates is expected to plead guilty in the special counsel’s criminal case against him, setting up the potential for Gates to become the latest well-informed Trump insider to assist in the investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential contest, according to sources close to the matter.

Apparently Nazis Are Nazis

Much has been a bit a bit disconcerting over the past 18 months or so, but a big one was the degree to which mainstream media figures pretended that self-described Nazis aren't, well, Nazis. Nazi doesn't just mean "person with dodgy views on race" (that's, you know, the conservative movement generally) or even "white nationalist." It means people who explicitly identify with the perpetrators of genocide and see mass extermination as a "solution" to a "problem." It ain't about the sexy uniforms you fucking assholes.


Late last month, ProPublica reported that the California man accused of killing a gay and Jewish University of Pennsylvania student was an avowed neo-Nazi and a member of Atomwaffen Division, one of the country’s most notorious extremist groups.

...

“I love this,” one member wrote of the killing, according to copies of the online chats obtained by ProPublica. Another called Woodward a “one man gay Jew wrecking crew.”

Car Washes Are A Metaphor

Cost (for those who dream of running robot taxis) and convenience (for the rest of us) are the entire point. And yet...



The most cutting-edge cars on the planet require an old-fashioned handwashing.
Car washes have been automated for decades, but companies developing fully autonomous vehicles must rely on a human touch to keep their cars and trucks in working condition.

Thursday, February 22, 2018

Thursday Night

Tomorrow is...

Grand Old Police Blotter

Was wondering if this story was just going to disappear forever.





,..book'em danno,


Walker, an early Greitens supporter, called for him to resign in the days after the allegations surfaced. He renewed those calls Thursday when asked whether the House should pursue impeachment.

“I called for him to step down three weeks ago because I thought this was going to happen. … My understanding was he was led off in handcuffs and that’s not a good sign for our executive of the state of Missouri,” Walker said. “He should resign.”


Legal Troubles