BitWrench

Product Placement

plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose Originally shared by Semicentenary Project La Chinoise https://buff.ly/2vMel7d

Advent Season Originally shared by Christopher Butler It's here.... #halloweenwhiteboard2017

#WordlessWednesday #wordlessonwednesday

More Signs Of The End Times The search for Colors and Flavors Not Found In Nature™ continues unabated. Wikipedia says: "Jolly ranchers are amorphous solids, meaning their molecular arrangements have no specific pattern." Yum. #NotRightFoods

(Don't) Wade In The Water Look over yonder, what did I see? God's gonna trouble the water... Do you know where your Dawn is? Dawn, like Visine, gets the red out... Originally shared by Damn interesting https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2017/08/fire-ants-flooding-hurricane-harvey/538365/?single_page=true

A Period Of Readjustment Southern history is a mess, ain't it? http://cwmemory.com/2006/02/14/who-were-the-readjusters/ http://www.harpweek.com/09Cartoon/BrowseByDateCartoon.asp?Month=April&Date=2 http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/the-confederate-general-who-was-erased-from-history_us_599b3747e4b06a788a2af43e

Who'll Stop The Rain? When Bertha, then Fran, hit NC in 1996, it made most of Eastern NC an impassable quagmire. Hurricane force wind and torrential rain made it as far east as Raleigh, NC, which is also the upper part of the Neuse River Basin. Eastern NC was already underwater. There was nowhere for the water to go. Among other problems, there was not sufficiently detailed hydrographic mapping of Eastern NC to be able to predict what all that water would do. They still don't, but they got a good start on it, before the Austerity folks cut the funding. Unlike Houston, little of this was compounded by hardening terrain with human structures. In NC, the primary sin of developers is building things on the fragile beaches and barrier islands for the storm surges to knock down. And they did succeed in getting the legislature to enact laws against inciting worry about coastal topography changes (HB 819 in 2012). The secondary one is to allow the operation of giant hog farms an...

Getting To The Point Cara Evangelista, if you want to start fistfights amongst the fogies, you need to start a rollicking argument about the merits of various brands of pencils. http://astorpost.net/opinion/2014/1/6/ticonderoga-takes-the-throne https://pencilgrinder.wordpress.com/2008/04/07/the-mirado-black-warrior-a-step-in-some-direction-part-i/

Take Note Another concession to the tyranny of Shinier, Tinier, New Things. Besides showing signs of many decades of (ab)use, it was getting harder and harder to get plain paper rolls of the correct size for Ye Olde Kitchen Grocery List Maker . So we broke down and got a Thoroughly Modern Upgrade. Branded with German Purity, which is a bit Ick, but Made in China, so properly Mongrelized. We'll see if I can adjust.

Spill The Wine With a musical soundtrack, because Languedoc/Occitania is where the Troubadours hailed from. Eric Burdon & War-Spill The Wine: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3i0DMbCKnAg Originally shared by Damn interesting https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/25/business/french-wine-trade-war.html

Emergency Preparedness Know your Zap Code. http://www.wfaa.com/weather/rockport-mayor-pro-tem-those-who-dont-evacuate-should-mark-social-security-number-on-their-arm/467378851

Handbrake: Video Conversion Tool Put down that cocktail! Full disclosure: I used to be a TV guy. Tiny parts of the evening news and PM magazine were my fault. But nothing like this. TV, people, was the Internets of the 1980s. https://www.vox.com/identities/2017/8/26/16202436/700-club-terry-heaton-pat-robertson-trump

Salting Nannie There seem to be a lot of ghosts in the South. Or maybe we just have the kind of people who notice them more. I'm pretty sure that we're not the only place on earth with sad histories to tell. This story bears mentioning because of Julian Carr. A lot of things and places are named after him, because he was wealthy, and fond of self-aggrandizement. For example, he was known as "General", despite holding no higher than a private's rank serving in the 3rd NC Cavalry. http://america.aljazeera.com/articles/2015/6/26/in-the-south-a-confederate-on-every-corner.html There also isn't much question that Julian Carr was racist, although you'll rarely find that mentioned in most generic history texts. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julian_Carr_(industrialist) http://www.ncpedia.org/biography/carr-julian-shakespeare I'm not sure how much it's going to improve things to remove every named thing or memorial that was associated with slavery, racis...

High Speed, Low Drag To Hell In A Handbasket... Originally shared by **** https://twitter.com/steve_vladeck/status/901235604415021057

One For The Annals Of Improbable Research http://www.gocomics.com/tomthedancingbug/2017/08/25 NIST has an uncertainty machine. This theme of this year’s Ig Nobel Prize ceremony is UNCERTAINTY. Make of these two facts what you will. http://www.improbable.com/2017/08/22/the-uncertainty-machine/ h/t to Kam-Yung Soh for the NIST uncertainty machine. http://www.gocomics.com/tomthedancingbug/2017/08/25

I Know You Are, But What Am I? An entertaining read, but what does it say about his political opponents, to be defeated by a man so wretched, and so incompetent, except in the art of gambling in exercises of pretension with Other People's Money? Originally shared by Anne-Marie Clark This is one of the best articles I've seen describing Trump's personality, by a male sportswriter who pulls absolutely no punches. This guy nails what makes Trump tick. "It is not quite fair to say that Donald Trump lacks core beliefs, but to the extent that we can take apart these beliefs they amount to Give Donald Trump Your Money and Donald Trump Should Really Be on Television More. The only comprehensible throughline to his politics is that everything Trump says is something he’s said previously, with additional very’s and more-and-more’s appended over time; his worldview amounts to the sum of the dumb shit he saw on the cover of the New York Post in 1985, subjected to a few decades of ...

Draining The Swamp As Kipling noted, the Jungle always wins. Originally shared by **** There's no reason for worry, though. The latter—the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration—oversees the National Hurricane Center and the National Weather Service, which provide hurricane forecasts and warnings ahead of a storm. There can't be hurricanes if we can't see them coming. And even if one does slip through, the Federal Emergency Management Agency won't have anyone demanding that we "respond" or "help with relief efforts." It'll be like it never happened. http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/news/a55434/hurricane-season-no-fema-director-noaa/

Citizen Of The World An amusing misconception. The better condition, that he now finds threatened, was based on largesse and military might, not magical cooperation. The largesse, it should be marked, came as much from taking advantage of others in the world, as it did from personal sacrifice. And the military might was developed to assert the power of individual national goals first, even if it did eventually work in concert with others. The First World is increasingly worried about insurgents, both within, and without. Insurgencies are born from inequality and injustice. Quick, cite an example where foreign military intervention won against an insurgency. I'll wait. https://fabiusmaximus.com/2010/06/30/18747/ https://www.theguardian.com/books/2017/aug/25/reformation-2017-philippe-sands-passport

Machine Learning Part 2 Originally shared by Kam-Yung Soh Yes, this could work. ;-) https://xkcd.com/1881/

Machine Learning Part 1 http://www.gocomics.com/arloandjanis/2017/08/25

#WordlessWednesday #wordlessonwednesday

Burning Down The House Originally shared by Damn interesting https://www.citylab.com/equity/2017/08/grenfell-was-no-ordinary-accident/536907/

Thank You Note We had some friends that were going to be south of Columbia, SC, for the eclipse, but we weren't sure we'd be able to make it that far, between schedule restrictions and traffic. Looking on a NASA map, I noticed that Winnsboro was within the total eclipse path. I've never been there, but I had a musical connection to the place, by the songs mentioned in an earlier post. Google turned up this page: http://kristenlthompson.com/eclipse2017/ Turns out, Davidson College had assembled an expedition to Winnsboro in 1900, to view a previous eclipse, and Kristen L. Thompson, with the Davidson College Physics Department, and the Fairfield County Museum of Winnsboro teamed up to host a series of events culminating with an Eclipse Celebration at Garden Street Park Ballfield. To top it off, they had 2700 pairs of genuwine NASA eclipse glasses to give away. And we had not been able to find any of the pesky things locally. Traffic was awful, and we made it to the park wit...

Workers Of The World... A local anti-hero, Tim Sutton, is a little wobbly on his history. "...you can call them slaves if you want to, but I would just call them workers, that they raised a good bit of my family." Hopefully, this remark will lead to a re-examination of his "eligibility": http://blogs.elon.edu/voicesofwelfare/tim-sutton/ This guy has been around for awhile, sad to say. Unfortunately, he's back for another round, no doubt encouraged by the successes of 45: https://mtaylor.blog/2017/02/18/bullying-burgers-and-politically-rude-bs-some-things-never-change/ https://mtaylor.blog/2017/08/22/the-disturbing-disconnect-of-a-county-politician/ via +Jason Allen and Cara Evangelista http://www.thetimesnews.com/news/20170821/actbac-to-commissioners-leave-monument-alone

Carhartt Sobriquet = "Pockets", because I picked up the Yankee habit of wearing bib overalls with a built in apron. I might have a pair or two old enough to have been Union Made in 'Murrica. Originally shared by John Jainschigg In the Spirit of Louise Linton (... wife of Steve Mnuchin, Trump's Treasury Secretary, who apparently tweeted the designers she was wearing as she stepped off a government plane on a trip with her husband to Kentucky to discuss ... I dunno ... crucifying poor people somehow, for sure) ... I'm gonna be tagging my designers from now on. This morning, I'm wearing #TripleEight sk8trboi helmet, kneepads, and other body-armor, because it's unsafe for a 60-year-old to do high-kinetics unicycle tricks without them. Be like me.

Woody Wouldn't He was too busy sending the Marines to Haiti... https://history.state.gov/milestones/1914-1920/haiti via Ray Radlein Originally shared by sunny redcloud Red Fox James , a Blackfoot Indian, rode horseback from state to state seeking approval for a day to honor Indians. On Dec. 14, 1915, he presented the endorsements of 24 state governments at the White House. There is no record, however, of such a national day being proclaimed.

Law And Order Not just a long running TV show... Almost errybody hates Anarchists more than Authoritarians. Originally shared by Rick Wayne (Author) After the murder of Heather Heyer in Charlottesville, many people are asking themselves what they should do if Nazis rally in their city. Should they put their bodies on the line in counterdemonstrations? Some say yes. History says no. Take it from me: I study the original Nazis. Opinion by Laurie Marhoefer, Assistant Professor of History, University of Washington, historian of sexuality, gay rights, transgender, prostitution, and modern Europe. Author of a book on gay rights in Germany in the 1920s and the rise of the Nazis (Sex and the Weimar Republic: German Homosexual Emancipation and the Rise of the Nazis, University of Toronto Press, 2015). http://theconversation.com/how-should-we-protest-neo-nazis-lessons-from-german-history-82645

Milky Way Midnight via Ray Radlein Originally shared by Elena Kitsch The hotel my parents are staying at in NC to watch the eclipse stocked all of the rooms with these

Use It Or (I'll) Lose It Especially apt after spending much of my day in ApocEclipse traffic yesterday. http://jalopnik.com/this-is-how-much-it-costs-every-time-you-use-your-turn-1798154893

A Grand Day Out Plus, cherry cobbler, pecan pie, and ice cream at the Barn Express in Winnsboro, afterward. I am a lucky, lucky man. http://www.gocomics.com/arloandjanis/2017/08/21

Occult Experience

Cheerioscope

Heliocentric View We made to Winnsboro, occultation just visible.

Austral Plane Where we're headed, today... Originally shared by Drew McCarthy Winnsboro Blues Frederic Rzewski's Winnsboro Cotton Mill Blues: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uDNy4YuCxdk Also, Frederic Rzewski's The People United Will Never Be Defeated: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Gm7RgdzeWM http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/when-wal-mart-leaves-small-towns-behind/

Sunshine (Go Away Today) https://www.riverfronttimes.com/musicblog/2011/05/19/sunshine-politics-an-interview-with-folk-icon-jonathan-edwards https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ScfUfsUlGro

Word Of Mouth Only good news is, his autobiography doesn't get as much word of mouth advertising as it used to... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nigger:_An_Autobiography_by_Dick_Gregory > Originally shared by Matt McIrvin http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/dick-gregory-dead-stand-up-comedy-legend-civil-rights-activist-was-84-1004479 http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/dick-gregory-dead-stand-up-comedy-legend-civil-rights-activist-was-84-1004479

(Not So) Little Ray Of Sunshine Originally shared by Anne-Marie Clark Boston: "I wanted to make sure that idiot was safe." This guy made sure there was no violence, so 3 white supremacists could pass through and go to their rally. "Let them speak... Their ideas will die in this sunlight." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YOnFYslGlRM

Blind Justice Originally shared by David Brin Danger, danger. The most important civil liberties advance in the 21st Century so far was when the Obama Admin joined multiple courts in declaring a citizen may record the police. I wrote about this in The Transparent Society (1997; see p.160) and how vital it is that we can exercise sousveillance at the level of the street, where power can most-directly affect us. Now: "In a free speech ruling that contradicts six other federal circuit courts, the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals has upheld a district court ruling that says Americans do not have a first amendment right to videotape the police, or any public official, in public." Sure enough, in a deep-red state, this principle is under attack. Only... I blame the good side lawyers! They base their arguments for sousveillance on the First Amendment and sometimes the Fifth... when it is in fact the under-appreciated SIXTH Amendment that most preserves the citizen from true abuse o...

Go To The Dark Side Have your Eclipse, and eat it, too... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g08IP678gdE

Full Spectrum

Originally shared by **** Meanwhile in San Diego.... photo Jon Pinter

"You're Fired!" I'm having a hard time keeping track of who is filling the swamp, and who is draining it. Anybody? Bueller? Originally shared by Anne-Marie Clark ALL the men surrounding Pence in this photo are now gone. https://twitter.com/yashar/status/898590237475000321

All The President's Men And a couple of women... https://twitter.com/matthewjdowd/status/897887853090410497 http://www.patheos.com/blogs/friendlyatheist/2017/08/16/ceos-are-abandoning-donald-trump-but-his-evangelical-advisors-are-staying-put/ https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/aug/18/donald-trump-evangelicals-charlottesville

Grace Notes Communication. Working Together. Matters. https://www.wired.com/story/what-a-border-collie-taught-a-linguist-about-language/

Stay At Home Mom "In conclusion, I really want to say, to encourage all good, sane Americans... to treat these rallies, this weekend, like the opening of a thoughtful movie with two female leads. Don't show up. Let these morons scream into the empty air." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iVvpXZxXWZU

The C-Word Originally shared by Jon Rosenberg Hey everyone! I have a new comic up over at The Nib! It's about condemning nazis. https://thenib.com/condemnation-consternation https://thenib.com/condemnation-consternation

Rude, Crude, and Socially Unacceptable OKCupid CEO Elie Seidma: “OkCupid has zero tolerance for racism. We make a lot of decision every day that are tough. Banning Christopher Cantwell was not one of them.” via Ray Radlein Originally shared by Lauren Weinstein http://gizmodo.com/before-getting-banned-from-okcupid-white-supremacist-c-1797949753

Join The Anti Nazi League via Ray Radlein Originally shared by Peter Strempel 1978: MY ANTI NAZI LEAGUE MARCH Back in the Pleistocene of my youth, unimaginable to at least two generations of youngsters now, for a lack of ubiquitous internet, mobile gadgets, and PCs, I showed up for a massive demonstration organised by the British Anti-Nazi League. Sure, I was as opposed to being beaten up by skinheads and boot boys as the next kid, but I did this because I had Jamaican friends … and there was this girl … My father almost disowned me. ‘Don’t you realise who’s behind this?’ he fulminated. ‘It’s the Soviet Union! You are being used as one of Lenin’s “useful idiots”!’ Even at that time I was not naïve enough to suppose this wasn’t at least partly true. The Anti Nazi League was in fact established by the Socialist Workers’ Party, and enjoyed some funding directly from Moscow. The later 1970s were still a high tide in the Cold War. What my father didn’t understand is that I had no reaso...

Color Outside The Lines Originally shared by Anne-Marie Clark "If you have ever had a problem grasping the importance of diversity in tech and its impact on society, watch this video" Person with brown hands can't get auto-dispenser to give soap, until he places WHITE paper towel under it . Click tweet to see the short video (the image below is the tweeter's avatar -- G+ wouldn't display video). https://twitter.com/nke_ise/status/897756900753891328 https://twitter.com/nke_ise/status/897756900753891328

Originally shared by **** RIGHTEOUS RAGE IN THE SKY #racism On April 4, 1968, my father was returning home from a speaking engagement in Grand Junction, Colorado – connecting with a flight from Denver to Philadelphia. His regular flight had been cancelled and he’d been forced to hop a twin-engine puddle-jumper. A volatile storm system had parked itself over the continental divide, a two-mile high Rocky Mountain Ridge bisecting the state on a North/South axis. The pilots were disinclined to make the trip, especially since my father was the only passenger in their 8-seater. Dad, a former British Army Major and paratrooper, was not easily denied. The three of them ascended. It wasn’t long before the pilot and co-pilot regretted their decision. With only mountains below them, and no available place to land, they pressed on into an increasingly violent, turbulent storm – swimming in rain-whipped blackness, tossed about by sudden shifts of wind and terrified as lightning strikes grew closer...

#WordlessWednesday #wordlessonwednesday

Looking Down The Barrel Of A 45 Also, the Importance (but not Impartiality) of Journalism in the Previous Gilded Age: https://cs.stanford.edu/people/eroberts/cs181/projects/2010-11/Journalism/index5534.html?page_id=6 http://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/a-conversation-with-maggie-haberman-trumps-favorite-foe

Compassion Every little bit helps. Can't hardly have too much, actually. Originally shared by Kam-Yung Soh Tales of humpback whales saving other species. Might there be more to it? "“The [humpback whale] bulls love to fight. It’s like Saturday night in the Octagon,” he [Fred Sharpe, a humpback whale researcher] says. “You’ll be in a whale watch boat and all these males will be thrashing on each other. They’re bloodied and so charged up, and the fact that they don’t redirect all that agitation towards the occupants of the boat is remarkable. With a lot of predators, if you got in the middle of that, it would be aimed at you in an instant. Humpbacks are these amazing Buddhist warriors.” Ascribing Buddhist-like qualities to humpbacks seems particularly apt in light of recent revelations about how these large baleen whales use their superpowers for good. Humpbacks, it turns out, deliberately interfere with attacking killer whales to help others in distress. They don’t just defen...

With Great Ignorance Comes Great Confidence The creator of Too Much Coffee Man has created a new book that illustrates 45's tweets. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/comic-riffs/wp/2017/03/21/a-new-yorker-cartoonist-is-creating-a-new-book-that-illustrates-president-trumps-tweets/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/comic-riffs/wp/2017/08/14/one-author-pored-over-trumps-tweets-for-months-these-are-the-conclusions-he-drew/ via Cara Evangelista

Is it Live, Or Is It Memorex? "Sounds live to me!" Nelson Riddle https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1-IvTF0xUxM http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-40922169

Originally shared by Semicentenary Project The Staple Singers - For What It's Worth https://buff.ly/2vT6fhk

Originally shared by **** A Change Is Gonna Come - Bill Frisell https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q9H0NuWeM3E

An Inconvenient Truth The ironic part, of course, is that the Southern Republicans and Democrats have swapped sides on this issue in the interim. Still the problem remains, as Dick Gregory puts it: "For a black man, there's no difference between the North and the South. In the South, they don't mind how close I get, as long as I don't get too big. In the North, they don't mind how big I get, as long as I don't get too close." Originally shared by Kevin Clarke (ksclarke) https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/08/wilmington-massacre/536457/?utm_source=atlgp

Southern Man "We thought Neil was shooting all the ducks in order to kill one or two," said Ronnie Van Zant. Neil Young himself admitted that his words were "accusatory and condescending". Yet, here we are, in 2017, seeing white supremacist torch bearers on the campus of UVA. I've got kin and friends up there, trying to battle white supremacy, trying to out shout hate with love. Maybe you'll join me in in praying for them all. Awfulness needs to be fought and resisted, but I'd surely hate anyone on either side to come to harm. Neil Young-Southern Man: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kVRxdPWV3RM

Control Groups Science better Watch It. http://catandgirl.com/32-americans/

Downed By A Doughnut Felled By A Fritter. Culled By A Cruller. Murdered By A Maple Frosted. Sunk By A Sour Cream Cake. Blown Away By A Boston Creme. Crushed By A Cinnamon. Vanquished By A Vanilla Frosted With Sprinkles. Jettisoned By A Jelly. Doomed By A Double Chocolate. https://www.toledoblade.com/Medical/2017/08/10/Felled-by-a-fritter-A-reporter-s-story.html

Too Damn Hot Fiery cover of a Jon Cleary tune... Originally shared by **** https://soundcloud.com/theunderachieversband/too-damn-hot-live?utm_source=soundcloud&utm_campaign=share&utm_medium=googleplus

Not Draining The Swamp http://www.nola.com/opinions/index.ssf/2017/08/a_flood_of_lies_and_deception.html

One Thin Dime Originally shared by Randy Culler from Jim Eanes: It was back in the Spring of 1969.....Glen Campbell, who had the number one TV show in the country and a string of hit records, had finished his sold-out concert at a huge coliseum in Tidewater Virginia, been whisked off the stage, into a car and Frank Mull drove us out the back doors and down the street before the band finished the last notes of the last song.... Frank dropped Glen and me at the back door of the hotel so we could go up the back way to his suite and avoid the large crowd gathered in the lobby awaiting Glen's return from the concert....just inside the door was a candy machine....Glen stopped, looked at me kind of sadly and said 'I sure would like to have a candy bar but I don't have any money'. Glen was young then and built like a prize fighter and his stage costume had been designed to fit tightly to show off his build....so it had no pockets. I handed him a dime, he got his candy bar, we g...

RAW Information I blame the Playboy Forum. Also, Drugs. “Reality is what you can get away with.” Robert Anton Wilson. Originally shared by Rick Wayne (Author) Disinformation has a bad rap these days, but there was a time it was a weapon of the counterculture. It seems almost quaint now. Wilson and one of the authors of the Principia Discordia, Kerry Thornley, “decided that the world was becoming too authoritarian, too tight, too closed, too controlled”. They wanted to bring chaos back into society to shake things up, and “the way to do that was to spread disinformation. To disseminate misinformation through all portals. And they decided they would do that initially by telling stories about the Illuminati.” At the time, Wilson worked for the men’s magazine Playboy. He and Thornley started sending in fake letters from readers talking about this secret, elite organisation called the Illuminati. Then they would send in more letters – to contradict the letters they had just written. http:/...

I've Got The World On A String Ol' Blue Eyes: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kxOtOsLSczY Originally shared by giacomo bencistà Victoria Nelson, The Secret Life of Puppets , Harvard University Press, 2003. «… In a tour of Western culture that is at once exhilarating and alarming, Nelson shows us the distorted forms in which the spiritual resurfaced in high art but also, strikingly, in the mass culture of puppets, horror-fantasy literature, and cyborgs: from the works of Kleist, Poe, Musil, and Lovecraft to Philip K. Dick and virtual reality simulations…» ☞ http://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674012448

Wheel Turnin' 'Round and 'Round Steely Dan-Do It Again: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gMWBHpd4WiI Originally shared by The Bitchy Pundit Sigh. I'm pretty sure there's going to be a new panel with Barry from 2020 added to this.

I Scream, You Scream The worth of a downed Naval Aviator, recovered=10 gallons of ice cream. http://www.battleofsaipan.com/Nstark000101.htm Originally shared by Damn interesting https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2017/08/ice-cream-military/535980/

Coked Up Raccoons and Golden Retrievers in Ball Pits And Popehat is just talking about the FBI... "Mueller knows what he's doing, knows that he's dealing with unusually volatile personalities particularly unsuited to patient inaction, and is probably counting on people to react foolishly, self-destructively, and criminally to startling events like a search warrant." Originally shared by Anne-Marie Clark FBI agents working with Special Counsel Robert Mueller raided the house of Paul Manafort, Trump's campaign manager. Former prosecutor Popehat cheerfully explains how federal search warrants work. https://www.popehat.com/2017/08/09/we-interrupt-this-grand-jury-lawsplainer-for-a-search-warrant-lawsplainer/

Topical In troubled times like these, I must say that I miss Peter Jennings. Oh, well. Here are a couple of quotes from Petah, and some jangle pop to soothe your nerves, from local heroes, the Spongetones, who ain't dead, yet. "Have a sense of humor about life - you will need it." "A couple of weeks is a long time in American politics." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M5VoOTe0CpI

#WordlessWednesday #wordlessonwednesday

Good, Old Fashioned Chicken And Waffles https://twitter.com/DWilliamsTV/status/894940492584058882/photo/1

Assume The Opposite There was a mad scientist who kidnapped three colleagues, an engineer, a physicist, and a mathematician, and locked each of them in separate cells with plenty of canned food and water but no can opener. A month later, returning, the mad scientist went to the engineer's cell and found it long empty. The engineer had constructed a can opener from pocket trash, used aluminum shavings and dried sugar to make an explosive, and escaped. The physicist had worked out the angle necessary to knock the lids off the tin cans by throwing them against the wall. She was developing a good pitching arm and a new quantum theory. The mathematician had stacked the unopened cans into a surprising solution to the kissing problem; his dessicated corpse was propped calmly against a wall, and this was inscribed on the floor in blood: Theorem: If I can't open these cans, I'll die. Proof: assume the opposite... https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/08/08/upshot/what-is-your-opp...

Antipodes https://www.antipodesmap.com/

Critical Significant Characteristic Nutty, Contains Nuts. Many Non-Natural, Non-Organic Ingredients. Overexposure Can Be Hazardous To Your Health. Some Settling Of Contents Has Occurred During Shipping and Handling.

Bad Clams, The Robot Originally shared by Robert Rambusch From the law firm of Horn, Hardart, and Mollusk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QTeJfvjdZBc

Strange Women In Ponds Distributing Swords Clad in the purest shimmering samite, Is no basis for a system of government. Originally shared by giacomo bencistà William Russell Flint (1880-1969), Le Morte d'Arthur Vol. IV by Sir Thomas Malory, 1921. Via: http://thefugitivesaint.tumblr.com/post/163755716823/william-russell-flint-1880-1969-le-morte

The Art Of The Deal Game Theory and Alford Pleas: http://www.repository.law.indiana.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=3215&context=ilj via Kevin Clarke Originally shared by The Atlantic Innocence Is Irrelevant http://trib.al/5nRZSIX http://trib.al/5nRZSIX

The Answer Is Blowing In The Wind Originally shared by **** “Sometimes fate is like a small sandstorm that keeps changing directions. You change direction but the sandstorm chases you. You turn again, but the storm adjusts. Over and over you play this out, like some ominous dance with death just before dawn. Why? Because this storm isn't something that blew in from far away, something that has nothing to do with you. This storm is you. Something inside of you. So all you can do is give in to it, step right inside the storm, closing your eyes and plugging up your ears so the sand doesn't get in, and walk through it, step by step. There's no sun there, no moon, no direction, no sense of time. Just fine white sand swirling up into the sky like pulverized bones. That's the kind of sandstorm you need to imagine." Haruki Murakami. Kafka on the Shore , 2002. Music: Ludovico Einaudi. "Oltremare" ( Divenire , 2006) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=adudqtq2gBw Im...

Deep Learning Originally shared by **** "The moral of this fable is murkier than the simplicity a children’s tale demands. At the end of the story, the fear persists. We continue to burn fossil fuels and the gases they make continue to trap heat, warming the air, the land, the shallow seas. The heat is mixed deep into the ocean, a long slow slog to equilibrium. There is no way to stop it. What do I tell my son? A monster awaits in the deep, and someday it will come for you. We know this. We put it there." https://onbeing.org/blog/kate-marvel-we-should-never-have-called-it-earth/

Contra-Chic Originally shared by Robert Rambusch I'll have an Aviation The plane itself is an ex-CIA aircraft, abandoned at San Jose airport after the Reagan administration’s involvement in the Nicaraguan Revolution. It’s also the sister plane to the other C-123 Fairchild purchased by the CIA that was shot down during the Iran-Contra Affair in the 1980s. Remember that bizarre network of arms sales to Iran designed to win release of US hostages held in Lebanon and raise money to fund the Nicaraguan, counter-revolutionary guerilla fighters? Yeah that. http://www.messynessychic.com/2017/08/03/happy-hour-aboard-an-abandoned-us-military-airplane-in-the-costa-rican-jungle/ https://www.thespruce.com/aviation-cocktail-recipe-760055

Letter Of Note Originally shared by NASA When 4th grader and self-proclaimed “Guardian of the Galaxy”, Jack, wrote to us about applying for a job, we replied: http://go.nasa.gov/2ffHGUU

The New Captains Of Industry Except, no industry, and very little real world experience, or common sense. Churning oceans of money with algorithms and privilege. Absolutely no sense of noblesse oblige. Welcome our new overlords. N.B. They don't like other people very much. Originally shared by **** From March, and long-ish, but a terrific read. Worth your time. “Robert Mercer now owns a sizeable share of the United States Presidency.” Potter, a Republican, sees Mercer as emblematic of a major shift in American politics that has occurred since 2010, when the Supreme Court made a controversial ruling in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission. That ruling, and several subsequent ones, removed virtually all limits on how much money corporations and nonprofit groups can spend on federal elections, and how much individuals can give to political-action committees. Since then, power has tilted away from the two main political parties and toward a tiny group of rich mega-donors. ...

Bareboating This might have been an example of "enthusiasm untouched by experience". Dangly bits, including fingers and toes, often suffer indignities on High Performance Sailboats. Even just lolling about. But I'll be sure to bring it up at the next Skipper's Meeting. #NotOurCapnTom https://www.buffalorising.com/2017/07/the-inaugural-world-naked-sailing-day-buffalo-ny/

Sex And Rockets https-// motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/vvbxgm/the-last-of-the-magicians Originally shared by Ray Radlein holy fuck , people, it's a JACK PARSONS TV series I wonder if they'll include the part where L. Ron Hubbard steals $25,000, a yacht, and his Magick Sex Maiden from him? http://www.syfy.com/syfywire/cbs-all-access-orders-strange-angel-about-a-rocket-pioneer-who-dabbles-in-sex-magick?__source=Blastr_True_Anthem_Blastr_Twitter&utm_campaign=trueAnthem:+Trending+Content&utm_content=5982cd7604d3011d96b040b5&utm_medium=trueAnthem&utm_source=twitter

Originally shared by David McKeever

#WordlessWednesday #wordlessonwednesday

Big Hairy Audacious Goal An Exercise in Reading Without Comprehension. Lead by a guy named Drollinger. Yup. Can't make this stuff up. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/answer-sheet/wp/2017/08/01/top-trump-administration-officials-flock-to-weekly-bible-study-classes-at-white-house/

(Un)Due Process Ask not for the equitable tolling... it tolls not for thee... via Ray Radlein Originally shared by Jim Feig U.S. Citizen Who Was Held By ICE For 3 Years Denied Compensation By Appeals Court http://www.npr.org/2017/08/01/540903038/u-s-citizen-held-by-immigration-for-3-years-denied-compensation-by-appeals-court - WTF http://www.npr.org/2017/08/01/540903038/u-s-citizen-held-by-immigration-for-3-years-denied-compensation-by-appeals-court

He Dreams Of Horses http://www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/my-buddy-sam-shepard