Meme Dump!

Vibe

With the Pacers up three games to one over the New York Knicks in the conference finals, the city has a vibe very reminiscent of Atlanta in 1991. It's been a quarter century since Indianapolis's squeaky roundball team won their conference and went to the championship (and they haven't won a championship since the old ABA days in 1973) so folks are pretty amped up.

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Tab Clearing...

• Could Lockheed-Martin's loss be Saab's gain?


• Entropy is always the safest bet.


• The CIA secretly ran a Star Wars fan site.

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Meme Dump!

Automotif DLXXIX...

Pretty cool modified Jeep Wagoneer. Looks like a 1969 with a rhino grill swap from a pre-'67 Willys and the slotted wheels off... I think an '80 model? I'm far from totally savvy with Jeep nuance. Anyway, it's a pretty groovy ride, and I'm not even all that into trucks.

EDIT: Apparently the wraparound turn signals in the rear went back further than I thought, so this could be an Eighties vintage?

Snapped with a Pentax K20D and 18-135mm f/3.5-5.6 zoom lens.

TurboMonday

The biggest downside to three-day weekends is that it turns Tuesday into turbo Monday, and also that you now have one weekday fewer to get all the shit done you need to get done before Saturday rolls around again.

On the upside, it stayed dry all day yesterday... not a common occurrence for the last couple weeks ...so that gave me a chance to beat the front lawn into submission. That cordless electric mower was money well spent. No futzing around to get the gas mower up and running in the spring, you can mow at odd hours without pissing off the neighbors, and the two batteries are more than enough for the dinky expanse of lawn with which I have to deal.

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Meme Dump...

Memorial Day 2025

Remember.

Multiculturalism

A highlight of the Indy 500 is being in earshot of someone who’s finna learn about the Irish Diaspora by expressing surprise on hearing that driver Pato O’Ward is Mexican.

“Bro, wait’ll you hear about Confederados in Brazil and Japanese Peruvians. The world is way bigger and weirder than you think it is. Did you know that elementary schools in some parts of rural Indiana taught in German up until 1917?”

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It's that time of year here.

It's race day here in Indianapolis which means I'm not going to get my political talking head shows this morning because all the local stations are doing an all-hands evolution to get their slice of the action at the track.

I was going to go to MCF&G on Friday morning to do some chronograph work but remembered at the last minute that I generally avoid that whole side of town this week.

On the other hand, Memorial Day weekend also meant that the Hoosier Model T fans were out doing their little cruise yesterday.

Touring Sedan

Touring Sedan

Station Hack

Runabout

Doctor's Coupe

Station Hack

Doctor's Coupe

Sunday Memes...

Meme Dump!

Three down, one to go...

Yesterday a Nissan Figaro in Pale Aqua drove by while I was eating lunch. I happened to glance outside at the right moment to see it, and went running out there, camera in hand, to get the shot.

That makes three of the Nissan "Pike Cars" that I've spotted in the neighborhood.

The first one was the S-Cargo that I saw parked up at a local auto broker's lot.

A while after that came the Pao. It must be local because I've seen it parked on College Avenue around the lunch hour a few times now.

Now I just need to see a Be-1 and I'll have spotted all four Pike Cars in the wild.

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Automotif DLXXVIII...

The bumpers mark this Jaguar XJ6L as a 1974 model. I spotted it on an overcast and unusually cool Thursday afternoon in late May here in Indianapolis.

It's got the 4.2L DOHC 12V inline six with a pair of Zenith-Stromberg carbs, rated at 186 SAE net horsepower.

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Friday Memes!

Meme Dump!

Automotif DLXXVII...

The Triumph GT6 Mark III is such a good looking little car. I've seen this one before, but when it rolled past on Sunday I couldn't resist snapping it again.

It was snapped with the Canon EOS 40D, so it can be embiggenated nicely.

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Tab Clearing...

• AI hasn't made it any better, but Google search results have been sucky for a while.


• While everyone was busy being reminded by the media that Biden is old, the US lost its last AAA bond rating. At least the BBC noticed that one.


• I'm smelling farm bailout in the near future.

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Memes to Help You Over Hump Day…

Meme Dump!

Smile, You're on Candid Camera!

Surveillance cameras, both private and government-owned, have become nearly ubiquitous in an era when digital video sensors are small and inexpensive, bandwidth is nearly too cheap to meter, and storage is (at least relative to a couple decades ago) effectively unlimited.

It was therefore likely only a matter of time before a municipal police department would be caught red-handed using real-time facial recognition technology to scan the input for the faces of suspects. According to the ACLU and WaPo, New Orleans Police Department had been doing just that for a couple years.

They pinkie-swear that the program has been paused since April, though.

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Automotif DLXXVI...

Sure, it's close to a certainty that this is some manner of kit car or reproduction... but who cares? Even a fake Shelby Cobra is ridiculously good looking. And this one sounded like it wanted to party, too.

Snapped on Saturday with a Sony a700 and 16-80mm f/3.5-4.5 Carl Zeiss Vario-Sonnar T* zoom lens.

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Tab Clearing...

• The prudes are after your porn again.


• The overhead views of that fertility clinic bombing show an extremely linear blast pattern. Whoever built that VBIED knew what they were doing.


• How TeleMessage got hacked so quickly.

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Meme Dump!

Instawrecked

There once was a cute little app made for creative folks who’d noticed that their iPhone had a pretty good camera, actually. 

Meta bought it, tortured it to death over a few years, and has essentially reanimated it as a shambling, ad-heavy TikTok clone, oozing AI slop, but still wearing the old "Instagram" name like a skin suit.

I think my first Instagram post was this shot of Dinky taken at Castle Frostbite. 

I didn't get on Instagram until I got my first iPhone. I can't remember if it was still iPhone-only then or not. My pictures were normal ones: pets, food, fluffy clouds, shit I was doing. They were intended for my friends because I was one of those weirdos who thought that's what social media was for: y'know, being social.

I didn't know it was about trying to game algorithms and rack up followers for big-time influencer bucks. And with Meta at the helm, Instagram was increasingly optimized for that. Now if I were to open the app, I'd probably have to scroll through three or four screens before I saw a still photo from a friend I was following and not a video from someone trying to make money off me. (I thought the whole point of "following" someone on a social media app was so the app would show you new posts when they made them?)

I should probably do like I did with FB and just delete the Instagram app from my phone. I haven't opened it in months, after all.

Wild Weather Last Night

Fortunately the worst of it here in Indiana passed south of us. Multiple tornadoes were reported down Bloomington way, and a tree fell on a car, killing the driver and injuring the other three occupants.

Fortunately here in Indianapolis we just got rain, wind, and a pretty good atmospheric sound & light show, but it's that time of year where you can't help but get apprehensive when the sky turns green.

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Thank God it's Memeday!

Automotif DLXXV...

The 1984 Ford Mustang GT represented the final year of the Malaise Era, with its 302 cubic inch small block V-8 putting out 175 SAE net horsepower.

The next model year would see the output bumped to 210hp, which was the first time a Mustang engine had cracked the 200 horsepower barrier since the 351 Cobra Jet "Q-code" motor of 1973, which put out 266 net ponies and was the swan song of the original Muscle Car Era.

EDIT: This is an ‘83, actually. Anyway…

This one was photographed with a Sony a700 and a 16-80mm f/3.5-4.5 Carl Zeiss Vario-Sonnar T* zoom lens.

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