Happy St Weaseltine’s, y’all
Old hands will remember this is sweasel.com’s blogaversary. The 15th, in fact. It started out as a blog about the process of immigrating to the UK and afterwards – I’ll be perfectly honest with you – I didn’t know how to stop.
Thanks for commenting, lurking, paddling in the Dead Pool – I was going to say trolling, but we haven’t had a good troll in years – hanging out and generally making this place a bright spot in a weasel’s life.
p.s. Oh, yes – Uncle B and I have been married thirteen years today, too.
February 14, 2022 — 6:37 pm
Comments: 30
Once you try alternator belt, you never go back to acorns
Several people sent me links to this article in the WJS yesterday (it’s paywalled, but I somehow have the intact version in a tab). To be more accurate, they sent me links to a tweet thread discussing the article.
Funny thing, it was published in 2019. Twitter works like that sometimes. People bring up old articles and other people don’t notice they’re years old and a pointless shit-storm ensues.
But that’s not the case here; it’s just a discussion of an interesting article. I could swear I read it back in the day, but I think it came up in a French nature program.
That’s not a weasel, of course. It’s a marten. Specifically, a stone marten. And they really do eat cars. No-one knows why.
Weasel damage is the fourth most frequent cause for non-collision auto insurance claims in Germany. Last year, drivers here filed 198,000 claims for weasel-inflicted damage, a 42% increase since 2005. And that probably underestimates the carnage.
Reports go back to the Seventies.
Karl Kugelschafter, now 64, interviewed hundreds of victims, locked up luxury cars in cages and watched as the weasels ripped them to shreds. “They go absolutely insane and tear everything apart,” said Mr. Kugelschafter, who today is better known as the inventor of a groundbreaking method of counting bats.
The most common solution is a sort of electric weasel fence (Weidenzaunprinzip – ‘pasture fence principle’). There’s also aerosol cans of weasel repellant (one is named Marderschreck – ‘Scourge of the Weasel’).
I salute you, Herr Kugelschafter. You and your marvellous bat-counting methodology. And thanks to @Cristiona and @quetzlovercoatl on Twitter for this trip down memory lane.
Have a good weekend, all!
February 11, 2022 — 8:37 pm
Comments: 12
Balls, you say?
On my way into work, I go over an unremarkable steel bridge. This morning, perched on the bridge’s railing, were two small white spheres like the ones in the picture. Surreal.
So I looked around and found a man in a Highways Agency van and gave him my best “what gives?” face. He held up a contraption on a tripod and said, “do you know what this is?” A theodolite, I guessed.
Not exactly. It was a 3D laser scanner and he was scanning the bridge. He had no idea why; probably for some maintenance purpose.
The spheres are a reference point. The way he explained it, the spheres can be seen from a long way off. The software knows to look for a white sphere, knows they are spheres and so can calculate the exact center as a precise reference point.
His ones were magnetic (no tripod), so he could stick them on the bridge where he liked. And very odd it looked, too. I wish I’d taken a picture, but my phone was in an inner pocket.
This site, owned by a scanning service, explains how to use multiple reference spheres to survey a large building in chunks. In their example, you use six spheres. All six spheres must be visible in each shot, but you can only move three of them at a time between images. In the end, the software can cut together an accurate picture from aligning all the references.
If you want to know more, useful search terms are “Laser Scanner Reference Sphere” or “White Sphere Scanning” (I got a lot of stupid 3D models of spheres before I found the right words).
February 10, 2022 — 8:00 pm
Comments: 10
The doctor will see you now
This is in an abandoned veterinarian’s office and I just realized I’m posting it specifically because I thought Uncle B would find it interesting because we pass by this building whenever we go through Hastings to get to things in the Eastern part of East Sussex.
I am using a multi-billion dollar satellite system to show a thing to my husband sitting six feet away from me on the sofa. What a time to be alive.
But perhaps you, dear reader, will also find it interesting. I notice the building every time we drive past because I thought it looked neat and a little sad, but I didn’t realize it had been abandoned for longer than we’ve lived here.
I’m amazed it hasn’t been thoroughly looted. Hastings is not the most savory of towns.
The building is a last little intact surviving bit of Ore Place, a 16th or 17th C building that was sometimes a religious building and sometimes a private home. I’m guessing this bit is from the rebuilding in 1874 for the wonderfully named Dowager Lady Elphinstone.
.
The bed was very comfortable, thank you.
February 9, 2022 — 8:25 pm
Comments: 15
I am intimidated by the new bed
The new bed arrived while I was at work today. Uncle B had to face the Horrors That Lay Under the Bed all by hisself. He phoned me up in an agony of embarrassment at the sheer quantity of old tissues, dust bunnies, dead batteries, reading glasses and a pair of my panties that were under there when the workmen lifted the old bed out.
Let the record show, it was not a pair of panties. It was one of these. I got it to keep my face warm riding my bike but soon discovered that I flip right the fuck out if you put a mask over my mouth and nose.
Oh, yes…the last two years have been fun for me.
But I digress. The new bed is hand made by elderly English hobgoblins. It has 1,476 springs hand stitched into muslin pockets and filled with horsehair, English wool and faery farts. Some of those statistics are even true.
They had Visprings in the luxury suites on the Titanic. Is that a recommendation? I guess it is. They obviously can’t be used as personal flotation devices, though.
We didn’t get one of the super fancy ones, which Uncle B tells me cost in the tens of thousands of pounds and are the province of movie stars, oil sheiks and royalty.
No indeed. It was dear enough, though.
You can read their origin story here.
I had a lie-down on it earlier and the whole bed went whizzing across the room on tiny casters. Whee!
I’m’on have to be on the right side of a couple of gins to face this.
February 8, 2022 — 8:31 pm
Comments: 7
Huh. There was a mirror under there.
Huzzah! We have bought a new bed. I AM VERY EXCITED ABOUT THIS. A decent mattress is flippin’ expensive and my old bones hurt. It arrives tomorrow.
Which means I did a deep dive bedroom clean over the weekend. Hoo boy! I own the Museum of T-shirts. Also, hoodies. What is a woman my age doing with so many t-shirts and hoodies?
Answer: wearing them. I defiantly threw out all my business clothes when I moved across the sea and decided it was nought but jeans for this little weasel, forever.
I draw the line at baseball caps. Nothing says “outpatient psych clinic” like an old woman in a baseball cap.
The best things, though, are old notes. I write myself notes all day (because I have a crap memory) and squirrel them away in my pockets as I go. If I don’t toss them soon after, they become cryptic within days. You know, crap memory.
My favorite so far: “skeleton heater”
February 7, 2022 — 7:38 pm
Comments: 15
Dead Pool Round 151: Spring is right around the corner
See? I did remember. Mostly because I actually set this up yesterday on a timer.
LavenderGirl nabs another dick with Louie Anderson (I do believe LavenderGirl is employing steve’s gambit). Somebody linked to this the day he died: five minutes of Louie Anderson riffing on an alarm going off in the audience.
An observation: during the whole two years of pandemic and lockdown, there was not an appreciable increase in the number of Dead Pool winners. But in the last six months or so, it’s heated up. I draw no conclusions. Well, I do, but I don’t share.
Are we ready?
0. Rule Zero (AKA Steve’s Rule): your pick has to be living when picked. Also, nobody whose execution date is circled on the calendar. Also, please don’t kill anybody. Plus (Pupster’s Rule) no picking someone who’s only famous for being the oldest person alive.
1. Pick a celebrity. Any celebrity — though I reserve the right to nix picks I never heard of (I don’t generally follow the Dead Pool threads carefully, so if you’re unsure of your pick, call it to my attention).
2. We start from scratch every time. No matter who you had last time, or who you may have called between rounds, you have to turn up on this very thread and stake your claim.
3. Poaching and other dirty tricks positively encouraged.
4. Your first choice sticks. Don’t just blurt something out, m’kay? Also, make sure you have a correct spelling of your choice somewhere in your comment. These threads get longish and I use search to figure out if we have a winner.
5. It’s up to you to search the thread and make sure your choice is unique. I’m waayyyy too lazy to catch the dupes. Popular picks go fast.
6. The pool stays open until somebody on the list dies. Feel free to jump in any time. Noobs, strangers, drive-bys and one-comment-wonders — all are welcome.
7. If you want your fabulous prize, you have to entrust me with a mailing address. If you’ve won before, send me your address again. I don’t keep good records.
8. The new DeadPool will begin 6pm WBT (Weasel’s Blog Time) the Friday after the last round is concluded.
The winner, if the winner chooses to entrust me with a mailing address, will receive an Official Certificate of Dick Winning and a small original drawing on paper suffused with elephant shit particles. Because I’m fresh out of fairy shit particles.
February 4, 2022 — 6:00 pm
Comments: 77
Yep, we’re that desperate
We don’t watch a whole lot of TV, just an hour or so at the end of the day. When we’re stuck for something to watch, our go-to has been the Seventies British cop show The Sweeney which we have recorded. We’re coming to the end of that, so we’ve switched over to the late Seventies and Minder, which stars one of the guys from The Sweeney.
It’ll do. I’m not necessarily recommending it. In the States, when I had access to Hulu, I used to burn up stuff like Emergency! and Adam-12.
Not great theater, but these old programs are a perfect time capsule. What people wore, what buildings looked like. Attitudes. I remember some of it, I’d forgotten a lot of it. It makes me feel odd, having those old braincells tickled.
Seventies London isn’t part of my store of memories, of course, but that’s interesting, too. Dude ask for tuppence for the pay phone last night!
Uncle B records stuff ahead of time when it’s available on various online channels. Being something of a completionist, he was frustrated to find Season 2 Episode 2 was not available anywhere. So I headed to Wikipedia to find an episode guide.
Terry guards an antique shop owned by Alex, a friend of Arthur, after two men demand protection money. He isn’t keen on the job as he has to share a flat with Jim, a gay man, Alex’s partner. He soon discovers that the story of the protection racket is a fabrication, that Alex is also gay, and that his ex-wife Gloria set up the ‘accident’ that has put Alex in hospital.
Ah. Of course.
I’m guessing gay isn’t presented as an unalloyed virtue. The ep is available on YouTube. The sound is glitched on the very first scene in the bar, though, if you care to watch.
The internet being what it is, you won’t be surprised to learn that minder.org exists to break the show down into its constituent atoms.
New Dead Pool tomorrow. I won’t forget. Pinky swear!
February 3, 2022 — 7:56 pm
Comments: 13
Happy Candlemas. Groundhog Day. Whatevers.
Ew, more blob people.
I joined Goodreads today against my will, or at least my better judgement. I’m having a terrible time keeping track of my Kindle books – which ones I’ve read, which ones I’m waiting to read, like that – and the Kindle app sucks for that.
I have a terrible backlog. I buy a couple of books a month (have I recommended Bookbub?) and I don’t read them because social media has ruined my attention span.
I thought maybe Goodreads could help me keep track of all the books I’m not reading.
See, Amazon owns Goodreads, so you can grab everything you’ve bought through Amazon and plop it into your Goodreads collection. Well, one by one, but it’s better than any other Kindle book organizer I’ve found. But I get the impression the whole point is sharing your library and your book reviews with other people, and that is something I do not care to do.
Maybe because my library is mostly lurid True Crime and gruesome doctor books. If I’m ever suspected of murder, I’m stuffed.
Anyhoo – happy Candlemas. It’s one of the oldest feasts in the Christian calendar; it commemorates baby Jesus being presented at the temple for the first time. We observe it because Christian cultures who don’t take their decorations down on Twelfth Night do it on Candlemas. Not because we’re Christian, but because we am lazy.
Actually, the tree came down some time ago, but I did have to fish a string of lights from around the front door.
What did Punxatawny Phil see today?
February 2, 2022 — 8:35 pm
Comments: 11
Gong hei fat choy, y’all!
‘Tis the Year of the Tiger again. This blog is so old, it’s cycling back through the Chinese Zodiac a second time. I hoped there was an old graphic I could steal, but Chinese New Year was on a Sunday in 2010. But hey, I found this neat screen shot from one of the Far Cry games. That’ll do.
Oddly enough, though we still have the godawfullest months February and March stretching out before us, it really does feel like Spring this week. The sun is shining, the birds are shouting insults at each other from the treetops, and Uncle B has his nose in a seed catalogue.
A big thanks to bds and technochitlin, respectively, for telling me a tweet of mine made both Ace and Instapundit. Woohoo!
Only, erm…mine was a stupid Boomer take and Mickey Kaus had the genuinely interesting (and terrifying) observation:
I’ve thought a lot about this since he tweeted it a couple of days ago. If he’s right – and it’s a take horribly congruent with Critical Race Theory – it’s yet another example of a mindset so alien and incomprehensible to me that we might as well be different species.
That legit scares me.
February 1, 2022 — 7:15 pm
Comments: 7