21:21 21/12/21
That’s what time I set this to auto-post. I’d’ve added 21 seconds, but they don’t actually let me time posts to the second. Also, I don’t know if you noticed, but at 3:59 this afternoon (WBT), it was the Winter Solstice. So the days are getting longer again. Whew!
Today was my last day of work until January 4. I’m’a spend today and tomorrow doing a bit of prep, and then serious laziness ensues. So I asked myself, “what is the laziest possible thing I could do on my blog for the holidays?” And the answer I came up with is reposting old chicken pictures.
This is Chel. Or perhaps her twin brother Rackets. Hard to tell at this age. No, they are no longer with us, either one.
Wait, is this exercise going to make me sad?
Oh, and we probably have a Dead Pool winner, but I have questions. Lavendergirl picks Spanish singer Carlos Marin on the 17th and the poor bastard drops dead on the 19th. Lady, did you hear a rumor he had the coof, or is there something afoot? *squints*
When you encourage dirty tricks, it don’t half make you paranoid.
ExpressoBold discovered the answer: they put Carlos Marin in an induced coma December 7. Which means ventilator. Which means death. The state of modern medicine.
Congrats, Lavendergirl – you win the dick fair and square! We all know what that means, yes? Here. Friday. 6WBT. New Dead Pool!
December 21, 2021 — 9:21 pm
Comments: 7
Thanks bro
Uncle B sent me this. He was particularly pleased there was a badger behind the counter. The one he sent had been shared so many times, though, it was falling to bits, so I set out to find a source copy.
And voilà. The artist is a greeting card illustrator named Bestie, and here he is tweeting this image in 2017 to announce its release in a limited 25th anniversary edition. So I guess it was popular. Huh.
Meanwhile, I’ve answered the most pressing question of the holiday season: cowboy or Viking? Yes, both Red Dead Redemption II and Assassin’s Creed Valhalla were 50% off in the game sales this week.
I chose cowboy. I’m really much more into Vikings and Medieval England, but from what I can tell, the game is about the Viking invasion of England and the English are the bad guys. That seemed a tad…disloyal.
Eh. I’ll pick it up in the Spring sale.
Here comes Christmas! Duck!
December 20, 2021 — 6:49 pm
Comments: 12
Zzzzzzz…
I’m’a level you – I’m slumped in the comfy chair in the other room staring at this screen and I have no intention of moving until Gin O’clock. That ain’t even my cat – I don’t know where I stole that picture from ages ago, but I like it. I think I’ll watch it a while.
December 16, 2021 — 7:55 pm
Comments: 8
That’s not how I pictured him at all
This is Steve Ibsen, creator of the Kitty Cat Dance. You remember the Kitty Cat Dance, don’t you? Somehow, I thought this guy would look…gayer.
Well, here he is telling the story. He created it in 2004 when he was 17 and a poor student and it astonished him when it went viral. Then a stranger claimed it on YouTube and monetized it. Eventually, Ibsen convinced YT he was the real creator, but he never got the money he believes it had generated.
Not really worth a watch. Another person goes viral and is astonished when that has no real world meaning at all.
But wait – he’s auctioning off the Kitty Cat Dance as an NFT. I still can’t get my head around NFTs. It’s like buying your own suit of the Emperor’s New Clothes. Though in Ibsen’s case, he’s actually selling the original hard drive with his working files on, so at least you’re getting something tangible.
You’re welcome for the earworm. Have a good weekend!
December 3, 2021 — 8:29 pm
Comments: 6
What have I done?
I was away from my desk today and I needed to make a note to do something and I pulled out my phone and I was like, “Damn, I cannot be bothered to type this on that teeny screen keyboard with my thumbs.” So I turned on Google Assistant.
It’s like Alexa for your phone, but instead of patching you into the evil Amazon it patches you into the evil Google. Much better. It’s also a really terrific speech-to-text app.
You say “Hey, Google” to wake it up, then “open sticky notes” and “send out a meeting reminder tomorrow” and done. Neat!
Pretty low privacy risk, I thought. I’ll only use it for work stuff and I don’t take my phone everywhere. And then I was poking around the web looking for more fun things I could do with it, and I found this:
Gboard voice API hàs a voice recognition learning processor. The more you use it the better it becomes with that users voice. Unfortunately if you ever clear your cache in Chrome or in Gboard, it takes away some of it’s learned recognized voice commands that has built up in your device memory. But from Googles main CPU that’s connect to your account with recognize voices, it will continue to expand even after you’ve clear your cache on your device because it’s connected to your account. But I’m not sure what Google does with that information if the account is deleted but if I know Google like I think I know Google it will connect the dots if that voice ever gets connected to other account.
And then it occurred to me that from now until the end of time, if I speak in the presence of a Google-enabled device, it will clock who I am and where I am, sure as fingerprints. How could I be so stupid?
But then I thought…Pff! Like they didn’t already have my voice print. And yours and everyone else’s. Yay!
Still, you can ask Google Assistant to tell a Yo Mama joke if you’re feeling blue.
December 2, 2021 — 7:57 pm
Comments: 9
Heh.
Fishermen block the RNLI (Royal National Lifeboat Institution) from putting to sea to rescue illegal immigrants. France has been launching them toward England, to the tune of 29,000 this year, and the RNLI has been picking them up and bringing them ashore. (Whereupon we buy them a fast food meal on the docks and then put them up in a fancy hotel, wish I was kidding but am not).
From the article, it sounds like it was just some guys on the shore fishing, not the fleet.
“There was a group of fisherman pulled up, gutting fish on the shore, and as the boat station opened up we heard the fisherman start shouting things like ‘don’t bring any more of those home, we’re full up’, ‘that’s why we stopped our donations’, and that kind of really horrible stuff.”
It won’t help at all, but it gave me a smile. A neighbor of ours recently found an abandoned boat pulled up on the bank of a local creek late at night. I can’t tell you how much this stuff gives an unarmed weasel the willies.
It’s a damn shame about the RNLI. It’s a volunteer organization and they work their guts out, but management went woke several years ago. We used to contribute to our local lifeboat station, until the national organization fired a volunteer because he had a bikini girl on his tea mug. When last seen, they were trying to raise funds to teach overseas muslim girls in burkhas how to swim. Still not kidding.
December 1, 2021 — 8:58 pm
Comments: 6
Graduating degrees of crazy
I’ve been on Twitter rather more than is good for me this past two years, and I’ve followed lots and lots of people I didn’t before. Oh, dear readers, I have followed some doozies. There’s a chemtrails lady and a flat-earther (I honestly haven’t worked out if this person is serious or blowing smoke up my bum). There’s even some nutballs who think the governments are working independently and honestly to do the right thing during a dangerous pandemic.
I haven’t posted much about it because it’s honestly a firehose of crazy and I didn’t want to get any on me. Just for funsies, though, let’s list the COVID-19 theories. I was going to say “in ascending order of lunacy” but couldn’t make up my mind how to rank them.
- Everything is as it seems. There’s a dangerous pandemic and the government is striving, however, imperfectly, to keep us all safe. (pff! madness!)
- There was no virus, it’s all just a power grab. (The staunchest proponent of this one in my circle actually caught the bug and had a rethink).
- Sure, there was a virus, but it turned out it wasn’t that bad politicians have exploited the situation in an unprecedented power grab.
- The virus was created in a lab in Wuhan (with funding from the US) and was accidentally released.
- The virus was created in a lab in Wuhan (with funding from the US) and was deliberately released, order to a) crash the economy or b) reduce surplus population.
- Actually, the vaccine was created to reduce surplus population. It will a) directly kill a significant number or b) wreck immune systems so significant numbers die over the next few years of cancers and other immunity-related illnesses or c) sterilize enough young people to significantly reduce future population.
- This is all just a big money-maker for the pharmaceutical companies and the politicians who love them.
- It’s a giant global conspiracy to smash everything and build back better – i.e. the way the greens (or the authoritarians pretending to be greens) want it. “You will own nothing” etcetera.
- It’s a giant global conspiracy to smash all the economies on earth and rebuild them with a digital currency and central bank in the control of a handful of Bond villains. This theory usually involves forgiving all our debt in return for relinquishing all our property. (See also “you will own nothing…”).
- It’s a conspiracy to smash the middle class and their small businesses and transfer their wealth to billionaires and their giant corporations. (Sadly, this actually happened, conspiracy or not).
- It’s the gateway to a social credit system and complete government control of every aspect of your life.
Did I miss any? I refuse to say which nutty theory, if any, I personally believe. Some of them naturally go together, in sets.
It’s coming to something when the least frightening and mind-blowing idea in the whole list is “greedy drug companies selling billions in unnecessary vaccines.”
The picture, by the way, is from here: a clever take on the old flat earth theory.
November 30, 2021 — 8:12 pm
Comments: 20
Now whadoIdo?
Masks in shops are coming back, as of tomorrow. Shops and public transport, but not in restaurants. Right?
I’ve heard the loonies on Twitter say a “new variant” will crop up right before Christmas, causing a holiday lockdown. Hello, new variant. So far, the loonies are batting 100%.
I’m really torn on this one. I agree that mass civil disobedience is the only way to make the government listen.
But I’m an immigrant. I believe immigrants should make a real effort not to be assholes. You go live in somebody else’s country, you don’t bitch about how they do things.
I have a feeling there’s a lot of ‘not going into shops at all’ in my future.
p.s. Picture is not my work. I tried to find out who made it, but it’s just a Twitter orphan.
November 29, 2021 — 8:13 pm
Comments: 10
Good weekend!
Storm Arwen is apparently beating up the North pretty badly. Down here? Eh. Nothing much. We might see some flurries tomorrow, which would be nice.
Still, we’re tapped out in front of the fire, warm and dry and we ain’t even had leftovers yet. Good luck getting me to move.
Have a good weekend, all!
November 26, 2021 — 8:04 pm
Comments: 11
Look! The shed has a shed…
This is a house listing in Fernhurst. That’s it on the left. I mean, that’s the whole house.
It’s a former telegraph exchange built in 1959. The owner managed to cram in a loft bedroom, a kitchen and livingroom area and a bunk for guests. It’s near the South Downs National Park. It has a garden.
To be honest with you, I’d probably love it. I have a thing for trailers and lofts and other tiny accommodations.
It would have to be *awfully* nice to rate £225,000, though.
November 24, 2021 — 5:23 pm
Comments: 12