Squirrel!

The upper image is pretty heavily cropped and is from much further away than the lower one. By keeping the big Canon EOS-1D Mark IV in front of my face, I was able to get fairly close to the base of the tree. And from there, the EF 70-200mm f/4L IS zoom lens did the rest. The lower photo is un-cropped and should embiggenate nicely. The 1.3x crop factor of the 16MP APS-H sensor in the 1D4 gave a field of view equivalent to a 260mm lens on a full-frame camera.

Memes for Phone-It-In Friday!

Old Fashioned Cop Work

The dude had been pretty careful, using burner phones and credit cards in other names, but in the end it wasn't CSI high tech lab stuff but rather a regular ol' tip on Reddit that got the po-po on his tail. By the time the cops caught up to him, he'd assumed room temperature.

A man suspected of carrying out a pair of deadly attacks — one at Brown University that killed two students and wounded nine more, and another that killed a Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor in his home — was found dead in a storage unit in New Hampshire on Thursday, the authorities said.

The suspect’s death, which the police said was from a self-inflicted gunshot wound, ended a five-day search that began on Brown’s campus in Providence, R.I. The case both captivated and rattled New England as investigators pieced together grainy surveillance footage and feared another burst of violence. The search stretched across state lines and ultimately hinged on witness interviews in Providence — including a Reddit user — along with records from a car-rental agency in Boston and a search warrant in Salem, N.H.

“Nothing can really fully bring closure to the lives that have been shattered over the past week, but this may allow our community to move forward,” Christina H. Paxson, Brown’s president, said at a news conference on Thursday night in Providence.

Dr. Paxson and law enforcement officials identified the suspect as Claudio Manuel Neves Valente, 48, a former Brown student who was briefly enrolled at the university more than two decades ago. His last known address was in Miami.

BuT tHe iNtErNeT sWoRe hE'D yElLeD "aLoHa sNaCkBaR". *rolleyes*

Elsewhere…

• 1970 big block Corvette convertible


• How, why, and when to use your CCW handgun

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Meme Dump!

Midweek Memes!

Automotif DCIV...

If I'm reading the tea leaves right (the position of the side marker lights and lack of headrests) this beautiful Bermuda Blue MGB GT I photographed last autumn is a 1969 model.

Cold Snap

We're off to an unusually snowy start to the winter in Indy, having already gotten over a foot, total, for the season. We also just had an unseasonable cold snap, too. Note that the two are not necessarily connected. It can be extremely cold and not snow, and it can snow rather a lot with a temp in the low thirties, which isn't particularly cold for winter in these parts.

The thing about these arctic dips is that the polar air mass is like Mother Earth's beret. When she pulls it down rakishly low on one side, that means it's hiked way up on the other.

The cold snap is past, though, and we're supposed to be back into the fifties on Thursday. They're calling for warmish weather all next week, too.

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Meme Dump!

Only Two Monday Memedays 'til Christmas!

Indiana is Basketball Country, but...

Between Mendoza being the first Hoosier to win a Heisman and then grandpaw Phil Rivers doing unexpectedly well in his first NFL start in five years on Sunday, there was a lot of football in the air this weekend.

(Oh, I forgot the NFL gets pissy about embedding its vids. Anyway, if you don't feel like clicking through to YouTube, it's Rivers' first TD pass since 2020. He seemed pretty happy.)

What a loss...

The sun went down on Saturday with the news of the shooting at Brown University in Rhode Island and rose on Sunday with reports of an antisemitic terrorist attack in Australia.

Then on Sunday night comes the news from California, where Rob Reiner and his wife had been found stabbed to death in their home in the Brentwood neighborhood of LA. The danger here wasn't a random shooter or an ideological terrorist; no, the suspect in the double homicide is the couple's own adult son.

I immediately thought about 99-year-old Mel Brooks, who has already buried his best friend, Carl Reiner, and now will be attending the funeral of his friend's son, who was practically a nephew to Brooks.

What a legacy Rob Reiner left, though! From his acting role as Mike "Meathead" Stivic in All in the Family to maybe one of the most amazing decade-long streaks in motion picture directing history, starting off with the iconic mockumentary This is Spinal Tap in 1984, followed by...

Tab Clearing...

• The room-size multiplayer arcade game...


• The original Pike car (and also the only one I haven't spotted in the wild.)


• Stop, Shop, and Scroll.

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Meme Dump!

Meme Dump!

Person(s) of the Year

So, as you may have heard, whatever's left of TIME magazine announced their person of the year for 2025, and it was "The Architects of AI".

Fitting that the cover illustration is a half-assed remix of an actual artist's original work and also replaces actual workers who build things with extraction-class plutocrats, to include noted pretengineer Musk.

I'll note that, looking at the artist's other works, the metatext of the TIME cover is making a definite and deliberate statement.

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Friday Memes!

Oh, Mickey, you're so fine...

Disney inked a deal with OpenAI to allow the use of numerous characters from its formidable arsenal of intellectual property (which, remember, includes a lot of Marvel and Star Wars stuff, too) in AI-generated Sora videos.

I'm sure the idea here is that kiddos would make short videos featuring Goofy or Darth Vader and then buy more merch or beg mom and dad for a trip to Orlando. See, while movies and video are not a loss leader for Disney, they aren't the main profit center, either. That's all rolling in from licensing, merch, and their hospitality and amusement park arms.

I predict this arrangement will last about a week, during which time the 'net will be flooded with AI slop vids of Mickey and Minnie piloting the jets into the World Trade Center on 9/11 and Iron Man doing hardcore porn scenes with Belle from Beauty and the Beast.

We'll see. Disney's always been extremely protective of their IP.

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Meme Dump!

In the Middle of the Week, Suddenly Memes!