From a conversation elsewhere...

Part of the problem with social policy here in America is that it is conducted like a South Pacific Cargo Cult. We looked around and saw that the majority of successful people owned their own homes and had college degrees, so we figured that if we grabbed any old slacker and subsidized them a home and a college degree, then they, too, would become successful. It's got cause and effect completely out of whack.

Tab Clearing...

• Good-Bye to All That


• 1842 retreat from Kabul


• German New Guinea

Outside Commentary on the "Abolish MPD" Movement

There's a lot of Big Rock Candy Mountain fantasizing going on with this "abolish the Minneapolis Police Department" idiocy...

Annette Evans of On Her Own noted that this is:

"The drive to feel safe without considering being safe, on a societal scale."

Which is spot on. It's the politico-legal equivalent of keys between your fingers.

Another friend offered an astute observation:

The homogeneity of the Minneapolis government surprised me. The very same individuals who have been selling themselves as extra-full of compassion and antiracism have also been personally and exclusively in charge of the MPD for the last twenty years. And now they are acting as though it's some sort of invasive species they have never seen before and are shocked, shocked I tell you, to suddenly observe it in their midst unbidden.

They can disband the MPD all they want, they still made it themselves.

It's like "My car, with me in the driver's seat, just ran a red light and hit the school bus? Naughty car! I'll just trade that thing in right away!"

Maybe you didn't think this through?

But who will investigate and prosecute hate crimes? https://t.co/XwI5ox7U8Q

— Tamara K. (@TamSlick) June 8, 2020

Plumbing new depths of tone-deafness...

Continuing Reading

Given the events of 2020 so far, with memes seemingly taking a life of their own and animating crowds in the streets for everything from Re-Open protests to the George Floyd marches, Bobbi recommended that I read a book titled Directive 51.

I started it on Wednesday, having finished up The Dogs of War, and as of last night I'm almost done with the second book of the trilogy, Daybreak Zero.

I really wish that dystopian post-apocalyptic SF didn't have such a "TORN FROM TODAY'S HEADLINES!" vibe these days.
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Social Experiment

Jeremiah Ellison, city councilman for Ward 5, tweeted a similar message Thursday, writing, "We are going to dismantle the Minneapolis Police Department. And when we're done, we're not simply gonna glue it back together. We are going to dramatically rethink how we approach public safety and emergency response."

This would have interesting second-order effects. I am looking forward to the flourishing of a vigorous Minneapolis outlaw street racing scene.

Also, every Libertarian in Minneapolis who's ever been told "If you think that would be so great, why not just move to Somalia?" is in danger of dying of irony poisoning.
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Unexpected Literary Subgenre

Via a current piece at DNYUZ, "The Agonizing Question: Is New York City Worth It Anymore?", I was made aware that there's practically an entire subgenre of essays consisting of farewell letters to the Big Apple.

"The literature may be thin when it comes to “See ya, Chicago” or “Later, Los Angeles” odes, but ever since Ms. Didion set the standard 46 years ago, the “Goodbye New York” essay has become a de rigueur career move for aspiring belle-lettrists. It is a theme that has been explored continuously over the years by the likes of Meghan Daum in The New Yorker and Luc Sante in The New York Review of Books.

Lately, the “Goodbye” essay has found renewed life, as a new generation of writers works out its love-hate relationship with the city in public fashion. Recently, opinion-makers like Andrew Sullivan and David Byrne have scribbled much-discussed New York-is-over essays; literary-minded Generation Y writers have bid not-so-fond farewells to the city on blogs like Gawker and The Cut; and a dozen-plus writers, including Dani Shapiro and Maggie Estep, published elegies to their ambivalence toward New York in “Goodbye to All That: Writers on Loving and Leaving New York,” an anthology published last month."

Which makes sense, when you think about it. Gotham is a magnet for writers of every stripe, and deciding to leave it would be the sort of thing about which a writer would feel compelled to write.


(h/t to The Online Photographer)
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The Dreadtone!

There's a pharmaceutical commercial on TV that has a gentle piano soundtrack in the background. Thing is, the first chord on the piano soundtrack is the same note as the opening music NBC uses to announce a breaking news report, so my spinal-cord level reaction on hearing the commercial start from a room away is "Oh, Christ, what's blown up now?"
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Disqualified Opinions

I've had people tell me on Facebook that "the mainstream media is ignoring..." a story that was literally right that second playing on the @TODAYshow before the first commercial break.

Media doesn't come much more mainstream than that, folks. https://t.co/BIHUyjvpMy

— Tamara K. (@TamSlick) June 5, 2020

You can't talk out one side of your mouth about how you proudly never watch the "mainstream media" and then out the other side, claim that the "mainstream media" is ignoring thus-and-such.
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Obsessive Silliness...

Fact.

If y'all see ever see me type "LIKE AND SHARE!", I'm under duress and y'all need to roll the QRF. https://t.co/xQX1nIrDH4

— Tamara K. (@TamSlick) June 6, 2020

Insert comment about "'Viral' is born, not made."
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Hey, I know that dude!

Prof. David Yamane of Gun Culture 2.0 is interviewed on the topic of "COVID & Guns".
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War Correspondent

Reuters photographer Lucas Jackson, who was hit by a rubber bullet in Minneapolis on Friday night, had his camera smashed on Saturday by a protester wielding a crowbar pic.twitter.com/TXUjvmwwuO

— Reuters (@Reuters) May 31, 2020

At least with a pro grade camera like a 1DX Mark II, he could have swung back at the dude with the crowbar and jacked him up pretty good.

It's risky business getting out there to get the shot.

Check this out. Rubber bullet fired by #LAPD gashes by camera instead of my face during #GeorgeFloydprotest in LA. pic.twitter.com/aTh46j2DZa

— luis sinco (@luissinco) May 30, 2020

There's a great tradition of photojournalists cameras saving their lives ... Don McCullin's Nikon is probably the most famous pic.twitter.com/Y32y8x4a2D

— Andy Saunders (@mrasaunders) May 30, 2020

Quelle Surprise!

In news that will come as a shock to absolutely nobody with a Netflix account, the Hillsborough County, Florida Sheriff says that the will left by Carole Baskins' vanished husband is faker than pro wrestling.

"They had two experts deem it 100 percent a forgery. But, we knew that...we knew that before," Chronister told 10 Tampa Bay.

According to Chronister, the problem was that the statute of limitations had expired for any crime related to the will.

"The will had already been executed at that point," Chronister told Brightside anchor Rob Finnerty. "But, it certainly cast another shadow of suspicion, by all means."

Overheard in the Office...

Me: (seated in front of computer when brainstorm hits) "Wonderpants!" 

RX: (down the hall, getting ready for work) "That is such an obvious name for underwear that surely it is a thing that already exists. Probably in both 'o' and 'u' spellings." 

Me: "Hang on... Yup, the 'o' spelling is boutique underthings out of Australia and... Ehrmagerd, I got as far as typing 'wunder' in the search bar before Siri suggested 'wunderpus photogenicus', which is the most wonderful name for a critter ever and...whoah! Octopus strangulation!"

More like being a war correspondent than usual...

1992 me rode around downtown Atlanta leaning out the passenger window of a friend's Dodge Daytona Turbo Z with a roll of high-speed Kodak Gold 1600 film in my Canon AE-1 Program.

2020 me thought briefly about grabbing a DSLR, bump helmet, and ballistic goggles before deciding that nah, I don't want none of this.
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Collapse...

"The year after I graduated from high school, Kodak commanded 90% of film sales and 85% of camera sales in the United States. When I was in Photo School, it had 145,000 employees worldwide and was described as "the bluest of the blue chips," blue chip being a term for a dependable investment.
...
Kodak's peak year was 1996, believe it or not."

Kodak, according to Wikipedia, doesn't even have six thousand employees worldwide anymore. And their film business, such as it is these days, is actually a separate British company called "Kodak Alaris", created when the rapid collapse of the film titan and resulting bankruptcy triggered a multibillion dollar claim from the UK Kodak Pension Plan.

Kodak was even at the forefront of digital imaging*, but managed to fumble an early lead because nobody envisioned just how quickly the film market would collapse. Digital was definitely second fiddle to the film cash cow in Rochester, right up until said cash cow abruptly died.


*Remember the clunky lungfish that was the Apple QuickTake 100 back in '94, with its pixellated 640x480 images? That was made by Kodak.
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Book Review

"10 weeks ago a crack mercenary unit was evacuated from Biafra for a war they didn't win. These men promptly scattered back to their homelands or to the Paris underground. Today, still unemployed but looking for a contract, they intend to continue being soldiers of fortune. If you have a coup to launch, if no one else can help, and if you can find them, maybe you can hire the Cliché-Team."

I just finished re-reading Frederick Forsythe's The Dogs of War, which is, along with The Wild Geese, probably the definitive Seventies mercenary novel.

Understand going in that this is a lot more of a novel of intrigue and the mechanics of setting up a mercenary operation than it is an action novel of small unit combat. The actual portions of the story that generate spent brass and what novelists persist in referring to as "cordite" smoke take place in the last dozen pages or so.

The characters in the mercenary outfit are like a group of friends rolled up a party for a Top Secret game back in the day, hence my opening paragraph.

Curt: "Okay, my guy's gonna be German, and he's a smuggler, so I'm putting the most points in Knowledge and Deception." 

Mark: "I'm gonna have a huge dude with massive Strength and Life Level. He'll be a Belgian dude nicknamed 'Tiny' who's, like, a wizard with a bazooka." 

John: "My character's this really high-dexterity wiry little Corsican dude, who's got mob connections and I'm putting all my skill points into knife-fighting. His trademark is carrying a big-ass Bowie knife everywhere that he keeps razor sharp."

Along the way you get a look at buying weapons and equipment legally and illegally, smuggling Schmeissers, forging End User Certificates, and all the stuff that eventually became tropes in novels of the type.

There's plenty of intrigue, the plot steps along nicely, and the outcome is always in doubt. Also, the ending is still one of the more unexpectedly jarring ones I've read.

Recommended reading.
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Holden!

Nikon F5, Ilford HP5