Big Interest

According to Tiffany Johnson, who would know, TacCon '23 is something like eighty percent sold out in only 24 hours.

Which is wild. Last year it took not quite a month. Back in 2015, I was at a John Murphy class in Virginia with Tiffany in early November and asked her about TacCon tickets and she told me they'd just sold out in October.

Word gets around.

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EEK!

Finally watched the scariest horror movie, for me at least: Free Solo.

The noises I was making as he traversed the Boulder Problem were heard by Bobbi clean across the house.

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Deepfake...

Given the credulity of the average person, the future is going to be super annoying for those who keep grains of salt handy.
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Wow.

“The reason Russia was in Afghanistan was because terrorists were going into Russia. They were right to be there,” he said breaking with the stance taken by past U.S. administrations that the invasion was an illegitimate power play against a neighboring nation. “The problem is, it was a tough fight. And literally they went bankrupt; they went into being called Russia again, as opposed to the Soviet Union. You know, a lot of these places you’re reading about now are no longer part of Russia, because of Afghanistan.”

That's, uh, that's not how that happened, there, Don. The communist government that had taken control of Afghanistan in a coup repeatedly invited the Soviets in to help them in a blossoming civil war. The Soviets kept refusing until the president, Taraki, was murdered and replaced by one of his cabinet ministers. Then Brezhnev launched the invasion.

Jesus, it's like the guy's knowledge of Afghanistan begins and ends with Rambo III. I do not envy Pompeo his job.
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Keep on truckin'.

I'm normally not a big fan of off-road pick 'em ups, but this video is just sick. I've watched it, like, three times already.

"The signal is coming from inside the house!"

Slowly, in the dark of night, the robot orbits your house. Using entirely passive "x-ray vision", without emitting telltale RF beams of its own, it builds a map of the floorplan, the furniture, and where everybody is.

It doesn't need to use an active emitter for its see-through-walls magic, you see, because it's using yours.

It's still right at the edge of SciFi, but only barely.
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Ride to live, live to ride...

I have commuted to work, a hundred miles round trip, on a 600cc sportbike in weather that would have had saner people calling in sick, but my hat's off to this loon.

Shine on, you crazy Ducati Streetfighter-ridin' diamond.
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Oh, no! There goes Tokyo!

What makes this earthquake and tsunami such big TV drama is the sheer amount of as-it's-happening footage.

Usually Mother Nature's special effects extravaganzas occur in backward lands full of howling savages, like Haiti or New Zealand. Japan, however, is a modern, technologically-advanced nation; where New Zealand has far more sheep than people, Japan has something like two or three hundred cameras for every human being: In addition to regular old camera-type-cameras, there are traffic-cams, news cams, phone-cams and, knowing the Japanese and their proclivities for both gadgetry and weirdness, you can probably buy an electric loo with a built-in toiletcam. This Argus-eyed array of lenses means that the airwaves and internets are being deluged with dramatic disaster footage that probably caused Jerry Bruckheimer to hurl a brick through his TV screen in a fit of envious pique.

And if it takes a burning oil refinery being hurled through the wreckage of a nuclear power plant to wash Charlie Sheen off the front page, then at least there's an upside.

Wow.

Your daily dose of Dada.




(H/T to Breda.)

I did not know that.

According to a link provided over at The Old Coot, the world's oldest living person is just down the road in Shelbyville, IN.

Mrs. Parker was born in April of 18 and 93. Think about that for a moment: She was old enough to vote (21 back then) when Archduke Franz Ferdinand got whacked, except she couldn't because the 19th Amendment wouldn't be passed for another six years. She was fifteen when the first radio program was broadcast, and ten when the Wright Brothers flew.

From now on, every time I feel creaky in the mornings, I am going to remind myself that Mrs. Parker was 75 years old when I was born...