Exploring…
The thought popped into my head the other day – I wonder if you can explore Mount Everest on Google Maps? The answer is yes. Although the Google Earth version is even better – it’s got the camps marked.
I was surprised to zoom in and not see evidence of human presence – I gather the camps are like giant garbage dumps. I’ve seen pictures where human beings form giant conga lines to the summit. We won’t even go into the famous bodies that have been there for decades.
I mean, you can see our car in the drive in Google Maps. That should be enough resolution to pick out a tent city.
Anyway, I gather the Nepalese government has been making an effort to clean up some of the trash and corpses in recent years, so good luck with that.
That’s it – just a quickie from me. I’m going to a party tonight! Have a good weekend…
November 15, 2024 — 3:22 pm
Comments: 8
Does that sound familiar?
If you wonder why small-time YouTube channels are now being narrated by David Attenborough or John Goodman, this is why: “You cannot copyright a voice. AI tools replicating a voice cannot be considered a copyright issue, as the original voice is not a copyrighted work.”
That’s the answer from Brave AI, so I can’t actually link to it. It goes on to say you have the right of publicity, which is a different area of IP law. What that means in terms of voice, I think, is that you only get in trouble if you claim the real David Attenborough or John Goodman narrated your videos.
I’d like to preserve my voice. Not that I like the sound of my own recorded voice – hardly anyone does – but I love the idea of my voice hanging around like a bad smell after I’m gone.
My mother got her first computer later in life, duh, but she took to it with great enthusiasm. That’s because she lived way back in the holler and she was lonely. She used the computer to build a circle of friends online. Bunch of frail old people who got together and told each other filthy jokes at night.
Anyhoo, one day when I was home for a visit, I waited until she left the house and re-recorded all the Windows system sounds. When she turned her computer on, it was my voice saying “hello, Mother.” When she turned it off, “goodbye, Mother.” Oh, I got them all. “I’m afraid something went wrong, Mother.” “Are you sure you want to do that, Mother?”
Hoo boy! She learned to undo all that in a hurry.
The image is what you get when you ask Starry AI to show you David Attenborough’s voice. Squinting at it, I think those things on the sides of his head are orphaned glasses earpieces. What those splotchy loopy things on his head are supposed to be, I have no idea. Silly AI.
November 14, 2024 — 5:17 pm
Comments: 6
Huh.
So this guy stepped down Tuesday. Covered up for a child molester (who wasn’t even a priest).
I’ve not been to many CofE services, outside funerals and Christmas services. We had to go twice when they read the banns. It was one of the least spiritual experiences of my life.
We literally sang Kumbaya.
So Uncle B and I have a side bet going. He thinks the next Archbishop of Canterbury will be a woman. I think it will be a black man (this church has seen huge growth in Africa).
What it probably won’t be (again!) is a Christian.
November 13, 2024 — 7:18 pm
Comments: 6
Oh, the humanity!
Uncle B asked me if there was anything special I wanted to eat for Christmas (he’s at the beginning of the annual ordeal that is the Christmas cake). I thought of this. Probably my favorite cake in the whole wide world and I haven’t had it in I don’t know how long.
Did you have this growing up? Nabisco first published the recipe in 1929 as the Chocolate Wafer Icebox Cake. Sorry for the fuzzy picture, but this one looks most like the version my mother always made.
Here’s a recipe, but you don’t really need a recipe. You take one packet of Nabisco Famous Chocolate Wafers and smother them in whipped cream. Leave overnight in the fridge.
I know that doesn’t sound special, but oh my lord! The cream softens the wafers and the wafers stiffen the cream and for someone like me who thinks texture is about the most important component of food, it is a thing other worldly.
I can get specialty American foods like graham crackers or chocolate wafers here, if I’m willing to pay the price. So I went looking and OH MY GOD NABISCO HAS STOPPED MAKING THEM!!!
About a year ago. After 95 years. Nobody knows why. There’s been a petition and a Facebook group (people really love this thing), but so far Nabisco hasn’t responded.
Fortunately, the article about it also includes a recipe for home-made chocolate wafers.
I can get the ingredients for it. But do I have it in me?
November 12, 2024 — 5:28 pm
Comments: 4
They’re stealing the cheese!
Luxury cheese heists are apparently a thing now.
Where’s it going? Russia. Because of sanctions, Russians can’t get decent cheese from abroad and they prefer it over domestic cheese. Or Belarus, which has legal trade with Russia.
Cheese is enormously expensive, and the black market food trade (other kinds of luxury food gets lifted) has much lesser penalties than the drug trade, if your ass gets caught.
There are people with more money than sense out there. Behold, the £6,000 Christmas food hamper!
I ain’t going to lie – I’m still over here bingeing liberal tears videos all day.
p.s. both “binging” and “bingeing” are correct, but binging looks stupid.
p.p.s. image is what happens when you give AI “stolen cheese” as a prompt. Over and over, artguru.ai just gave me pictures of cheese with ‘tarded machine language versions of “stolen cheese” on the label. Cheese itself isn’t bad, but the wedges are all weird.
November 11, 2024 — 6:56 pm
Comments: 11
I’m’a have milk and cookies
A gift from Uncle B. He dared me to take it into work. Nuh-uh. I am so stealth it ain’t funny.
You know, I’m actually kind of worried. Kamala Harris was easily the worst presidential candidate of my lifetime. She was parachuted in three months before election day without winning a single vote. I’ve never known anyone – forget politicians, anyone – with less ability to sit in front of an interviewer and bullshit. You could snag the first person you found on the street and ask them about their hypothetical economic policy and they could probably fart and tapdance for five minutes, credibly.
And oh god that brain melting laugh.
Then there’s Trump. I know a lot of people hate him, but we’ll probably never run a slicker candidate. He’s been performing in front of cameras for decades. He’s got plenty of his own money, so he doesn’t have to crawl to the Chamber of Commerce. He pulled off dozens of gigantic rock-star sized rallies.
Just look at that PR picture up there. It’s so perfect, no wonder loony lefties think he orchestrated the whole thing somehow.
Then there’s the gigantic fuckup at the border that finally got the Hispanics voting Republican.
We will never see an election choice quite this stark again.
And we only won it 47% to 51%.
Don’t think too much about it. Have a good weekend instead.
November 8, 2024 — 6:03 pm
Comments: 14
Just hanging out with my chicken, smoking a cigar
Last time I bought a cigar was about five years ago. It cost the same and I swear it was twice as big.
I walked into work this morning. I do that sometimes when the weather is okay, and when I do, I stop at a little coffee shop for a sit-down espresso. The woman behind the counter said, “you’re American. How do you feel about the election?”
I said, “please don’t worry. Everything will be fine. He’s not the monster they make him out to be.”
And she said, “oh, I know. I listened to JD Vance on Rogan the other day and he sounds like a good man.”
That was unexpected!
Have you enjoyed X as much as I have today? Life doesn’t hand us nearly enough gloating opportunities.
p.s. Why yes, that’s a rake handle propping up the end of the chicken house. You can take the girl out of Tennessee…
November 7, 2024 — 5:47 pm
Comments: 6
AHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!
Her name is Jessica Starr. After her famous scream at the 2017 inauguration, she seems to have dropped off the planet. I’m not the only one to go looking for her, either. The trail is confused by the sad story of a meteorologist of the same name who hanged herself when her lasik surgery went bad.
Oh, man, I am so relieved. I thought for sure we’d be dealing with weeks of court fights and ‘found’ ballots. I told everybody it would be a while before we knew for sure. This is almost a letdown.
I’ll take it! I’ll take it!
November 6, 2024 — 4:31 pm
Comments: 21
I wasn’t looking for that skeleton, I was looking for THIS skeleton
There was a headline in New Scientist about a curious skeleton found in a Roman graveyard in Belgium. It seemed unremarkable, until they tested the bones:
Laid to rest on the right side with tucked-up legs, the remains feature long bones from seven unrelated Stone Age men and women – of varying ages and separated by several centuries – and the skull of a Roman woman who died…
Unfortunately, New Scientist is behind a paywall and that’s where the article cut off. I was sure I could find the same info at an archaeology site, but I have been unsuccessful. In the course of Googling, I ran across yesterday’s skeleton – and lot of others beside. Dear me there are a lot of bones in Europe.
Local councils end up with boxes of the things. They’re required to have an archaeologist on construction sites to collect anything interesting. Bones end up in storage and seldom get revisited. On the rare occasion they are, odd things come to light.
There was one report I read that turned up a similar skeleton made up from the ancient bones of multiple individuals – except all the bones had tiny holes drilled in them. The obvious purpose being to string them together and hang them up.
I doubt it’s ancestor worship, if they couldn’t be bothered to keep the bones of various ancestors separate. To scare the kids on Halloween? And why would you Frankenstein together a skeleton from eight different people and then bury it?
Our ancestors baffle me.
November 5, 2024 — 8:15 pm
Comments: 4
The ancestors were weird
YAVB (yet another vampire burial). This one had a sickle buried over her throat business side down so she’d decapitate herself if she sat up. Spoiler: she didn’t.
Also, she had a padlock around her big toe. There’s a bit of vampire lore I didn’t know.
She was eighteen. She had a wonky front tooth, which might have contributed to her identification as a blood sucker. She also had a tumor under her breast bone that might have caused her to look weird, faint a lot and bleed randomly, which couldn’t have helped her reputation. Probably killed her.
She was found in a Polish graveyard but she was Scandihoovian. This was during a 17th C war between Poland and Sweden, so maybe that had something to do with it. It was also the century of Peak Vampire.
She was in a graveyard with 100 unmarked burials, 30 of which had bodies restrained in some way. This is now called the Field of Vampires, because Sky History is doing a two-part special and it sounds sexy.
I had to take minutes for two meetings today and I’m feeling crispy and put-upon.
November 4, 2024 — 6:18 pm
Comments: 11