Memes to Get You Over the Hump!

Incompetence or Malice?

In today's episode of "Government: Incompetent or Malicious?", the FAA announced late yesterday that it would be shutting down El Paso airport and the surrounding airspace below 18,000 feet for ten days due to unspecified national security reasons.

There was no advance warning, nobody seems to know why (as of this writing), and even Biggs Army Airfield at Fort Bliss is affected.

The restriction encompasses a 10-mile area around El Paso, and includes the neighboring community of Santa Teresa, N.M., but does not apply to aircraft flying above 18,000 feet, the F.A.A. notices said. They did not detail the security reasons that prompted the restriction.

The airport issued a travel advisory on social media saying that all flights to and from the airport had been grounded, including commercial, cargo and general aviation. It told travelers to contact their airlines for the latest flight information.

Of course everybody's engaged in wild speculation on social media, but anyone who claims they know anything for sure at this point is talking out their ass.

The only thing I do know for sure that it means is that the airlines are going to be burning cubic yards of money with ELP idled for over a week, and a lot of execs for Fortune 500 companies with offices in El Paso, the 22nd most populous city in the United States, are going to be scrambling to rebook flights via Albuquerque*.

Amazon’s probably not happy either, nor will any manufacturing companies located there who use just-in-time supply chains.

UPDATE: Santa Teresa, NM airport, too. Also, gosh, I hope nobody needs to get airlifted to University Medical Center in El Paso, which is the only Level 1 trauma center in the region, in the next ten days.

UPDATE 2: And now the FAA has lifted the closure.

*I mean, ABQ is a pleasant little airport, but you literally have to traverse the Jornada del Muerto to get there from El Paso.

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Meme Dump!

Moral Panics...

We're in the middle of a couple of moral panics right now and one of them is centered on allowing minors access to social media.

Discord is the latest app to implement age verification requirements to allow full access to the app's functionality.

One problem with this is that different jurisdictions have such different protocols they require app publishers to follow. The UK has one, the EU is fixing to roll out a different one, and the various US states that have passed legislation... I'm not sure how many that is, but I know it's into double digits ...all have their own.

Some require the data collected, usually face scans or ID scans, to be deleted, while others require it to be stored. There are third party providers popping up with varying degrees of legit-ness and sincerity regarding data security. It's all a mess and it's based on something that's about as scientific as the love child of The Salem Witch Trials and Blackboard Jungle.

Add in VPNs and the fact that IP location has an error rate of at least 5% trying to figure out what state a user is in, and this is all just pushing rope uphill for no good reason.

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Monday Memery!

Weirdos.

I see the thought leaders on the Right are yet again rolling a critical failure on their "Can You Just Be Normal For Once In Your Life?" saving throws.

Conventions be damned, I ain't cheering for them.

With Indianapolis being an AFC city, it would be conventional sports fandom to cheer for the AFC team in the Super Bowl if the Colts weren't in it, but... yeah, there's no way I'm cheering for the Pats.

As a kid growing up in Atlanta when the Braves were still in the NL West the joke went "Who are an Atlanta baseball fan's two favorite teams? The Braves and whoever's playing the Dodgers."

So last night's manhandling of New England by the Seahawks was pretty tasty, if vicarious, revenge on our home team's nemesis.

I only caught the second half of the game, which means I watched it devolve from a slightly one-sided 9-0 affair into a 29-13 curb stomping. Seattle fans looked happy about getting sweet vengeance for Super Bowl XLIX.

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Sunday Meme Dump!

Meme Dump!

Overheard in the Office...

RX: "'Archaeologists find evidence of Hannibal's war elephants in Spain'."

Me: "I'm so glad that final consonant turned out to be what it was, because I was braced for 'Archaeologists find evidence of Hannibal's war elephants in space'."

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Gold Medal Memes!

Meme Dump!

Writing Elsewhere...

• People toss "the OODA loop" (aka Boyd's Decision Cycle) around a lot, but what does it mean in the context of personal protection?


• Modifying a Mosin? Why? What do you expect the result to be?

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I like big guns and I cannot lie.

Was HMS Dreadnought revolutionary? Did it trigger a genuine revolution in naval affairs?

For a deep dive into the era, I recommend Massie's Dreadnought and Castles of Steel.

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