Tab Clearing...

• Watching the Watchmen: A surveillance of Flock cameras in the Bay Area.


• The AI Doomsday Panic is completely out of control.


• The humans who read your ChatGPT sessions.

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Meme Dump!

Okay.

I have long junked on air-conditioned seats in a car as a frippery. Neat to have, but kinda meh.

But after spending a couple late summer days on a range in the bottomlands near the Wabash where the swampass is so bad you’ve nearly got beads of sweat trickling down your ass crack, I’m a believer.

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Automotif DCXXXVI...

Spotted this pristine 1963 Pontiac Grand Prix in Terre Haute yesterday afternoon. It was sporting 421 fender badges and a four on the floor with unmistakable clatter of solid lifters emanating from under the hood. Glorious!

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Meme Dump!

 

Nope.

It's September 11th.

Entirely coincidentally, I'll be in a class this weekend again, as I have been so many years before.

Like I said fifteen years ago, I won't be participating in the performative hair-rending and sackcloth-donning celebrating the tactical victory of our foes. Instead, I'll be getting harder to kill.

You can go virtue signal to your friends how mad you still are, if that's what makes you feel cool.

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Pre-Weekend Memes!

Tab Clearing...

• Like a roving Flock: Garbage trucks in Texas with AI-powered cameras to scrutinize properties in passing and determine which homeowners should get fined.


• Clearview AI is testing an AI tool that would let cops unearth your life online: The forums you post on, who you chat with, where you comment, and what you say...


• Eight F-15s and an A-10 damaged when Iranian missile hits airbase in Jordan. The Eagles only took minor damage but the Warthog lost a wing.

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Meme Dump!

Over the Hump Memes!

Sportsball Man Melts Brain

Apparently Steelers wide receiver DK Metcalf has spent too much time around QB Aaron Rodgers and managed to sandblast his brain smooth in the process.

Metcalf wants to know what is really going on in Antarctica. That is, what’s really going on in Antarctica.

“I think it’s another world,” Metcalf says.

What do you mean, “another world”?

“I think there is another civilization inside of Earth.”

[SNIP]

“You can go to Alaska. You could go to the North Pole,” Metcalf says. “But why not Antarctica? Why can’t you just book a trip to Antarctica?”

Here you go, Mr. Metcalf. I'm sure the fat stacks you make as an NFL player will cover a stateroom.

There's a whole city in Argentina where one of the main sectors of its economy is people flying in to board cruise ships for Antarctica. Look! A whole Wikipedia article on "Antarctic gateway cities"! This information takes ten seconds to find.

How come these "Just asking questions, doing my own research" people never actually ask any questions or do any research? (Or at least any that doesn't confirm their biases.)

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Automotif DCXXXV...

The badges say "SS396" but I think the grille, fenders, and taillights say "1971". I'm not a hundred percent because my Nova-fu is admittedly pretty weak. Obviously this Chevy pocket muscle car is far from stock.

Whatever was under the hood, it had no trouble breathing and definitely sounded down to party.

These were snapped with a Canon EOS R5 and an RF 24-240mm f/3.5-6.3 IS zoom lens, so they can be embiggenated rather a lot.

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Meme Dump!

Labor Day Memes!

Legends of the Fall

Meteorological autumn starts on the first of September. Even though the "dog days of summer" extend into September... and with a streak of 90°-plus days stretching from August 31st to the day before yesterday its been a record stretch of heat this late in the season here in Indianapolis ...the ninth month is also the first of the "brrrrr months".

You know, "Septembrr, Octobrr, Novembrr, Decembrr". On average, by the time the month closes out, overnight temps here will be in the forties.

Actual astronomical autumn begins later in the month, with the autumnal equinox on the 22nd.

But today is Labor Day, the traditional Last Day of Summer here in 'Murrica.

When I was a kid, summer vacation generally ran from Memorial Day to Labor Day, a stretch of time that spread out as an endless vista of lightning bugs and camping trips, sleepovers and pool parties, and now it goes by in the blink of an eye.

Happy Lebber's Day!

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Meme Dump!

Overheard in the Office...

It's Saturday morning cartoon time. Bobbi's down the hall where the TV's on...

RX: "Popeye's in 'Goonland'."

Me: "That's why his forearms are so big."

Spiders!

Bobbi writes about the giant orb weaver that's taken up residence in the side yard.

Outdoor spiders are one thing, but this morning I went into the bathroom and a large wolf spider scurried off the wall and scuttled behind the toilet.

Welp.

Reckon I’ll go poop in the back yard.

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Meme Dump!

TGIF Memes!

Tab Clearing...

• How about an all-wheel drive shooting brake with a 496 cubic inch V-8?


• A shirt to confuse AI-powered cameras and keep them from recognizing you as a human. Another William Gibson book come to life!


• Meta wants to replace human low-level maintenance workers in data centers with robots.


• Fake Flock cameras used to honeytrap would-be vandals.

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Meme Dump!

No Nukes

There's a bunch of handwringing, both in social media and the more regular kind of media, about nukes, especially with word getting out that the Pentagon may be looking at revising the U.S. policy on the employment of tactical nukes as battlefield weapons against peer adversaries.

People should calm down, because the biggest barrier to us employing tactical nukes right now is that we more or less don't have any, unless you count some B61 gravity bombs. The US military pretty much got out of the tactical nuke biz after the Cold War.

As the article linked below explains:

"The first part of this equation is to look at what Washington actually has and does not have in its cupboards. The primary observation here is that the overwhelming majority of the US nuclear stockpile comprises strategic rather than tactical weapons. Because Russia retains a wide variety of tactical nuclear weapons designed for a variety of purposes, it is sometimes assumed that the United States has attempted to keep a sort of parity. This is pretty much not the case.

The general situation is that the USA has, since early 1990s, largely abolished its ability to use tactical nuclear weapons. President George Bush Sr. started the process in 1991 and the Clinton administration carried it forward. Over a period of several years, the USA removed many nuclear weapons systems from the inventory, decommissioned and dismantled thousands of warheads, and demolished many delivery systems. The Army and Marine Corps completely got out of the nuclear weapon business, and the Navy got away from all but submarine launched strategic nuclear missiles."

Lots of good detail on what was still in the US stockpile at the end of the Cold War and when it got de-milled. You should click through and read the whole thing.

These are not tactical nukes.

Midweek Meme Dump!

Ominous Sign?

There's gonna be an AI generated Bitcoin "biographical thriller" movie starring Gal Godot?

I better make sure I don’t have any crypto left in any digital sofa cushions because, uh, this has a very “Getting stock tips from the shoeshine boy” vibe.

Meme Dump!

Monday Memes!

Flashback!

Jim Grey just posted about his experiences shooting an old (but new-to-him) Pentax ME 35mm SLR. He mentioned how small and light it is, and that's a fact. The Pentax ME and its successor, the ME Super, are so small and light that they were the main cameras we used when I worked at Sky-Shots back in '91.

Back before the days of RC drones and tiny high-res video cameras, this was the solution to get aerial photos up to two hundred feet from the ground.

Dangling from the bottom of the mini blimp was a film camera on a tilt-and-pan gimbal mount with a small CCTV camera affixed to the eyepiece and a servo to trip the shutter. A cable trailed from the blimp to the control console hung 'round the operator's neck on a padded yoke. The control panel had joysticks, a small black and white screen, and a shutter button.

This flyer was my first experiment in desktop publishing. I guess it was technically my first paid writing gig, too.

Here's 24 year old me with my boss's Pentax in my hands and my own Canon AE-1P over my shoulder, with a press pass doing photography at the 1992 First Union Grand Prix in Atlanta, watching some rookie cyclist named Lance Armstrong win his first big race.