Our incurious press
Did you see this thing on the front page of Drudge last week? Drudge’s headline writer saw this picture and wrote “Protesters in Pakistan burn Hillary…”
Me, I saw the picture and thought, “wow! Cousin Mamoud has a really, really nice color inkjet printer.”
Seriously, that’s a sharp print (click for color). I make that an A1 size at least (max width 33.1″). A printer like that’s going to run you, I dunno, at least a thousand quid (that’s $1,500 for you Yanks). How much is that in goats?
The pic is Hillary’s State Department bio portrait. It’s the first in line if you do a Google images search and specify ‘large’ – though the actual image is the Wikipedia version. Spec: (2,070 × 2,588 pixels, file size: 3.69 MB, MIME type: image/jpeg). So, decent internet connection; comfortable on the web. Copy of Photoshop, most likely.
I wonder what they do with that rig between Hillary burnings.
Paper for those printers ain’t cheap, either, so they must’ve made sure the photographer was in place and ready to go before they touched it off (all’s I’m saying is, these things look very different when you step back and include the photographer).
No, no big point. It’s just, we have a press that is obsessed with “the narrative” — they decide on a good story, then go looking for some shit to back it up. They’ll go on forever mechanically recording this boneheaded tribal street theater without ever looking behind the curtain, because it suits them.
Call me crazy — when I see dudes in the quaint native costume of goat-riddled Durka-durkastan holding up a flaming giclée print, I’m thinking what the hell? Why not make a little scratch running off Justin Bieber posters with that thing instead?
October 24, 2011 — 9:46 pm
Comments: 31
Okay, this is a weird one
Erdstall. “Earth stall.” Very old tunnels. At least 700 of them in Bavaria, 500 in Austria. Some in Germany, France, Scotland and Ireland, right across Europe. Nobody has a fucking clue what they were for. Probably 90% haven’t been discovered yet.
Here’s what they do know. Though some believe they were made in the Stone Age, the few bits of wood and charcoal found inside consistently date from early Medieval times. They were dug by people who knew what they were doing, people who kneeled and dug with two-handed wedges. Every few yards, there’s a little cavity in the wall for an oil lamp. They’re mostly 20-50 yards long (the longest one in Germany is 125 yards long).
Long portions of the tunnels snake back and forth to reduce pressure from the soil overhead, so that planking wasn’t needed. Dead end tunnels branch off at times. The smallest passages are only about 16″ wide. Most are too small to walk comfortably. They don’t widen out into chambers. There aren’t multiple entrance/exits. Explorers often run low on oxygen while exploring them. Some fill with water.
They sometimes start near churches or cemeteries, or the kitchens of old farmhouses, or out in the woods, but they don’t end anywhere. There’s seldom anything at all in them. There’s not a single written record of an erdstall being built. Around 1200, they were blocked up with rubble (including easily datable bits of porcelain).
There’s been very little archeological interest in them, so study has largely been left to amateurs. With theories.
Practical: escape tunnels. Hiding places. Storage tunnels. Prisons.
Religious: late Druid places of worship. Early Christian places of worship.
Out there: Elves. Goblins. Some stupid hippie shit about healing and vaginas and souls or something.
“Erdstall” is a highly Googlable word that doesn’t appear to have other meanings, so I highly recommend you do that thing. Google it, I mean. The pictures alone are worth it.
August 25, 2011 — 10:42 pm
Comments: 15
Yeeee-HAW
By now, I know you’re all asking yourselves, “sure, but what does Stoaty think about this here Libya adventure?”
In principle, I’m all for it. We should have smashed Gadaffi flat forty years ago.
Having such explicit anti-assassination policy is extremely stupid of us. And kind of unAmerican. In the case of Gaddafi (or Castro or Saddam), we’re saying it’s morally better to let millions of little guys suffer and thousands die than to kill the one raving nutcase princeling causing the problem. Doesn’t add up.
Not that we should travel ’round the world killin’ bad guys. That’s an idea for a comic book, not a foreign policy. But we also shouldn’t promise faithfully that we’ll never, ever target the man at the top, even when he has American blood on his hands.
Telling enemies in advance all the bad things you’re not going to do under any circumstances is strategically dumb.
But this thing? This has Operation Clusterfuck written all over it with a Sharpie. A few weeks ago, we might have made a big difference with a small intervention. Now? God knows.
Nobody’s in charge. Nobody knows what the mission is. Obama’s doing his best not to get any of it on him. Oh, and for all we know, the rebels we’re protecting are ululating Islamist douch-hats like we’re busy killing in other parts of the world.
So, yes, I’m against this operation just because Obama is in office. But it’s not about his politics, it’s about his naked incompetence.
March 23, 2011 — 8:59 pm
Comments: 82
At least the Romans got fiddle music
It’s a metaphor for world events at large, of course. I don’t expect Obama to put on breathing apparatuses and go charging into Fukushima Daiichi his own self.
I do expect the Leader of the Free World™ to act like he gives a shit about anything going on in the big wide. Anything beyond his golf game and his basketball picks.
Dude isn’t even playing president on TV any more.
Update: oh, hey, it looks like Stealie McLightfingers here stole that title from Jim Garaghty (I follow him on Twitter). Man, I hate when I do that. I hate it even more when I suspect I’ve done it but can’t find the true source.
March 15, 2011 — 10:21 pm
Comments: 48
You are…nowhere near here, lucky you
Lumme some maps. I follow international tragedies through maps. The reportage on the Japan earthquake/tsunami thing is more than usually fucked up, map-wise. Stuff changing names and moving all around. When they bother to name places at all.
I understand translation is difficult — especially with languages that don’t use the Roman alphabet — but couldn’t we agree on some conventions before the shit hits the fan?
Okay, well, nobody died and made me Gaia — I got these placements from eyeballing Google maps. But, near as I can figure it, this is the lay of the land.
Sendai is the biggest town in the path of destruction. Downtown is on higher ground and survived okay, but they lost their port. This is one of the places where bodies have been washing up.
Kamaishi is the setting of that amateur video of the wave; the one shot from high ground. The one shot in Kesennuma at street level is even scarier.
Reports about the damaged nukes are alllll over the place, but I’m pretty sure these are the three we’ve been hearing about. Of these three, the bottom one is of most concern (which is called either Fukushima II or III, so I went with Fukushima Daini. I don’t know what that means, but it sounds all Japanese and shit. Babelfish says it means “Daini”).
Despite the all the spectacular images and news overload, the devastation is confined along this fairly small portion of the Japanese coastline. The quake was huge, but the tsunami did the damage.
Still, this would be an pretty good time for Gamera to turn up.
March 14, 2011 — 10:54 pm
Comments: 43
I see Moammar dressed himself today
Seriously, world? How have we all, collectively, let this homicidal nutcake run around loose all these years?
When I saw this, all I could think of was this.
February 22, 2011 — 7:16 pm
Comments: 23
*pop*
Man. Was there ever such an international display of utter FAIL as this Julian Assange/Wikileaks shit?
To start, there’s nothing I care about that I didn’t already know in any of the cables published so far. Catty diplomatic chit-chat. Bo-ring. Unless, of course, you were one of the people whose lives were put in mortal danger by the leaks.
Yeah, that’s the first thing we should have done — offered US asylum to anyone endangered by our crappy inability to keep a secret.
I don’t know why the left is so stoked on this guy. His leaks confirm my every ‘winger belief. Israel is reasonable. The entire Middle East is afraid of a nuclear Iran. China is pushy. The UN is useless. Global Warming is a front for wealth redistribution.
Oh, and he has deeply embarrassed and hobbled the foreign policy of the most left-wing government America is likely to have. EVER.
An act of courageous journalism? Please. Document dump. Some journalism.
And now he’s been arrested on the stupidest charge in history — sex without condom. Whether we had anything to do with this silliness or not, whether we move to extradite him or not, nobody is ever going to believe this double shitburger doesn’t have Made in America written all over it.
I can’t see that Assange is any more guilty of a crime than the New York Times is, but I won’t waste any pity on this whispy dumbfuck. Garden variety attention whore; the internet is full of ’em. He didn’t have to put face on the box . If all wanted he wanted was to get the info out there, he could have dropped it on a server somewhere and posted a note to a blogger. The file would have replicated across the wires like plague.
Like the Climategate leaker did. What was his name? Oh, right — we don’t have a clue.
December 7, 2010 — 10:53 pm
Comments: 21
Fat lip
They’ve only released about one-thousandth of the purloined documents, so I’ll have many opportunities to eat these words, but so far, the most surprising thing about the Wikileaks cable dump is — no surprises. Nothing released so far that I haven’t heard before, at least as a rumor.
And that’s stunning. Because I’m an extreme right wing nutcase who gets all her news from my fellow wingnuts on the internet. Shouldn’t a huge dose of raw diplomatic data have dashed at least a few of my cherished assumptions by now?
The wildest revelations — things like Iran buying long-range missiles off of North Korea, Arab leaders hotter to stop Iran’s nuke program than Israel is, the Red Crescent moving weapons with ambulances — have been chatter around the dextrosphere for ages.
Would Wikileaks lead with its most boring material? Would the lefty journalists helping them sort through it cherrypick facts that support the winger worldview? I guess we’ll find out.
Anyhow, the most shocking thing — by far — that I’ve learned is that three million people had access to these diplomatic cables, including some very junior staffers. Our utter boneheaded incompetence will be the most serious revelation to the world.
p.s. Despite the picture — I’m lazy. I recycle illustrations. Sue me — I wonder how upset Obama is about this, really. None of his own words have leaked. The whole thing reflects more on Hillary. He won’t like the building loseriness of his presidency, but I don’t see him as the kind of guy who takes other people’s mistakes upon himself.
p.p.s. Do we know how far back the cables go? He could get some bonus Blame Bush out of it. He can’t get enough of that shit.
November 29, 2010 — 10:34 pm
Comments: 28
The giant melting head of Kim Jong Il
Yeah. I’m not really going anywhere with this. I got this image stuck in my head and I had to get it out. It’s like an itch. An art itch.
I’m fascinated by the train wreck that is North Korea. I’ve read a bit about it, but I don’t pretend any special insights. This is more of the same old posturing, at a guess. Kim always gets such fabulous prizes when he behaves badly.
I don’t for a minute imagine it’ll be any different this time.
November 23, 2010 — 10:01 pm
Comments: 18
Sweet dreams!
I find the best stuff searching for images. I was looking for a parchment texture to use as a background, and I discovered that the Museo de las Mumias has a slick new website. And, apparently, a slick new museo to go with.
You know these guys, right? If you’ve watched Believe it Or Not or owned a book about repulsive weirdnesses (and who does not?) you’ll have heard of the mummies of Guanajuato. Little silvermining town in Central Mexico.
Between 1865 and 1958, Guanajuato authorities dug up anyone whose family quit paying rent on a crypt and stored the bodies in a warehouse. Some of them were remarkably well preserved, which was put down to dry air circulating around the tombs (some reports say minerals in the soil, others are emphatic that the bodies were from above-ground tombs).
People, morbid shitbags that they are, came from all over to slip a few pesos under the table and take a tour. They eventually shrugged and officially made 111 of them into a museum.
Early pictures of the collection are skeevy as hell. Many of the mummies were just tied to the walls with twine. People could could feel free to poke fingers through or break bits off. Which — being shitbags — they often did.
Look like it’s all climate controlled glass cases and track lighting now. Though it’s still skeevy as hell.
More about the Museo here, here and here.
Or just skeeve yourself out and look at the pictures.
Good weekend!
November 12, 2010 — 10:49 pm
Comments: 11