I guess ‘Real Socialism’ is sort of like Zeno’s Paradox — no matter how many times they try, how many millions of corpses they pile up in mass graves, they can never quite reach it.
Agreed. Most of the people (like me) who see it as sarcasm as she wrote it know of her overall history, and therefore have a different reading of it than someone like you who doesn’t.
Always remember, you’re writing for the person who is not familiar. Otherwise, those who ARE acquainted with your style and don’t like your opinions will suddenly start acting like shocked newbies and take everything in the worst literal way possible. It’s thoroughly dishonest.
That tactic is where the saying about Trump supporters taking him seriously but not literally while his enemies take him literally but not seriously comes from. Always write so that your intentions are clear.
Question for the ‘fat acceptance activist’: When you fly, do you pay for all 3 seats you take up? Or the extra jet fuel needed to haul your fat ass across the sky? :-P
Hey, maybe if we tell them how much extra fuel they use, that might get through to them? “Save the planet! Lose weight!”
Here’s a hint: If you struggle to squeeze into a door big enough to haul a refrigerator through, the door is not the problem.
They choose not to believe what Islam says (and ignore what it does). Or they are like the “historian” K@ren @rmstrong, who claimed that it was the Byzantine Empire’s influence that inspired the demand for women to be swathed in layers upon layers. (Same ones who, when pressed, reply that a nun’s habit is the same as a burka, completely identical.)
I have literally seen a meme that lines up all sorts of attire such as nun’s habit next the burka and whine that the burka is singled out — as if there were stories about nuns being forced back into burning convents for not wearing a burka.
Fun fact: Stargate used the “get back to Earth plot” for two series. One was Stargate Infinity, a kids’ cartoon where a team had hop from planet to planet to get back home. The other was Stargate Universe, a live-action show set on a ship traveling on autopilot through another galaxy, with a Stargate the passengers can’t control. Neither one did very well.
The first season of Stargate Atlantis as well, although in that one they went knowing full well that it might be a one-way trip, so it wasn’t like they were obsessed with getting home. And they figured out how to travel between Atlantis and Earth by the second season anyway.
Incidentally, “Not being obsessed with getting home” was a thread I always thought Voyager should have considered further. These people, or at least 60% of them or so, are Starfleet Officers, who presumably joined up to explore the universe. Why wouldn’t at least some of them say, “We’re in an entirely new part of the galaxy? We’ll get to spend our entire careers exploring in, then arrive home just in time for the triumphant retirement party? Yee haw! Let’s get started.”
Forgot about that plot point. I really liked SGA, although I didn’t catch all of it. One of the season finales was the first time I sat up and went, “Wait, they can do good CGI in TV shows?” And I still get a chuckle out of the fact that I was a Jason Momoa fan before he landed any of his big roles.
SG:U was robbed. At the urging of SyFy they went for a total tone change from all the other Stargate shows to make it more Galactica-reboot-ish, so it had to build its own audience, and then SyFy got distracted in doing stuff like Sharknado instead of actual Sci Fi (honoring their name change), so they didn’t get a third season.
Some blame goes to the writers, since it was pretty darned slow getting started, and there were a lot of diversion from the main mystery box of figuring out the ship, but there were really well written episodes as well – I thought the one where use of the gate dumped the away team into a time offset loop was really well done, especially for a more complex concept with its spooky jump-scare horror-flick overtones, plus the use of fpv drone footage to tell much of the story.
I think it deserved one more season, but then SyFy cancelled Farscape too, in spite of good ratings, so cancelling SG:U was in character.
I only saw the premiere and maybe one or two episodes after that. It seemed fine, but the cast didn’t hook me like SG1 or SGA. If I ever go back and do a Stargate deep dive, I’ll have to give it an honest shot.
Really big ensemble was an SG:U problem too – again, Galactica-reboot-ish. The thing I liked is they all were flawed, and not in a “my flaw is I am too perfect” way.
Smart ones do. Doing archaeology, you’re constantly out in the sticks, with minimal support, and the cops are at best an hour or two away, and that’s IF you even have cell signal (which is often unreliable or absent, where you’re digging).
Archaeologists are Westerners, by and large. And, the local grok goes, Westerners are usually loaded. Heck yes we carry a piece. We’re not frakkin stupid.
If you read the books of the people doing research in Eastern Africa they all hired local armed groups to keep the other armed groups away. They’re a little fuzzier on if they themselves were armed.
Also on that one in typo snark (yes, I realize, pot and kettle) I like how the original Galactica folks had the Cylons perusing them the entire way. Being under constant scrutiny can certainly be wearing…
Makes me think of the Assyrian tablets between a merchant and his entrepreneurial wife, who made fine textiles. She’d give him what amounted to a shopping list, while he was out selling her (and others, I assume) product.
Mind you, modern heads would explode when they read the one asking him to buy her another slave for the workshop, on about the same level as asking for a load of wool.
Good Morning, Mister Smith. Vladimir Ilyich Lenin is the current Chairman of the Council of People’s Commissars of the Soviet Union. It has come to our attention that Lenin and President Friedrich Ebert of Germany are in final negotiations for an alliance for a Communist takeover of Germany as a prelude to Russian control of the entire European continent. Such an occurrence would be catastrophic for the United States, if not the entire world. You mission, should you choose to accept it, is to assassinate Lenin before he can conclude that agreement with Ebert. As usual, if you, or any member of your IM force are killed or captured, the Secretary will disavow any knowledge of your actions. Good luck, John. This paper will self-destruct in 5 seconds.
On the brakes thing: Supposedly Ettore Bugatti’s answer to complaints that his fast expensive cars had poor brakes was “but signore, my cars are meant to GO, not to STOP!”
On failed parachutes: we like to say that falling doesn’t hurt, the sudden stop at the end does.
Jack Lucas won a Medal of Honor as a marine in ‘45. In ‘61 he joined the army and the 82nd Airborne, where he survived both of his parachutes malfunctioning.
There was a WW2 British bomber tail gunner that bailed out at 15,000 feet without a parachute (the other choice was burning to death). He landed in heavy snow on a steep hill slope and survived (injured). He had a hard time convincing his German “rescuers” that he hadn’t used a parachute and not a spy who had hidden it.
On the birds discussing something intense… Note that there are three birds there. The one on the right with gray plumage is obviously a female. Somewhat disheveled, true, but still. The one in the middle has bright plumage, as birds do, it’s probably male. The bird on the left also has dull plumage and is probably the yellow bird’s mate.
So we have a married guy. His girlfriend is reading him out. Probably didn’t know he was already married and just found out. The one wing pointing to the right is in reference to some sin he committed months ago and he’s already forgotten. Wife is clueless and thinking they’re going to be late for dinner.
For it seems that his mistress has just met his wife,
And together they’ve gone out to hunt up a knife,
To murder the lady he slept with.
(Baron in the SCA, his wife couldn’t make it to many events. So he went with his friend, Tony.
Wife goes to events and discovers “Tony,” is short for, “Antonia.” Wife says, “You’re Tony?” Tony replies, “Didn’t he tell you?” Wife and Tony start talking. Meanwhile the Baron is drowning his sorrows since both women aren’t speaking to him, gets roaring drunk and a predatory slut manages to get him into her tent, where he passes out cold. Hence the last line.)
It’s the wrong breed of dog, but it looked for a minute as though someone talked to our neurotic boarder (Our son’s bull/water dog cross). Pulling the ball out of his slimy jaws -after you catch up to him – is icky.
In my college 2.0 effort, the local community college was on an early recycling kick. They had bins everywher makred “white paper” and “colored paper”.
Of -course- I applied graffitti!
“We shall overcome!”
“End segregation!”
“Have we learned nothing from the 1960s?”
“I have a dream!”
“Paper of Color!” “Honkypaper”
Etc, etc, etc.
-Finally- they changed the signs no-ink / inked
“Wheres that tat?”
(grin)
..
I was also the helpful fellow who warned the art department head that the storeroom for the pottery materials contained 10 20 and 50 pound cannisters of powdered stuff that could be readily combined to make serious mil-grade mayhem. Unsecured and on same shelf. Also craploads of solvents overflowed from the “painting” closet. Not in a flammables cabinet.
It was a “national news” level incident waiting for one crackpot-radical or sneak-smoker to touch it all off.
A paranoid cynic might suppose that ‘motive remains unknown’ means that it was a known wolf Democrat/Ante-Fa terror soldier, affiliated with the FBI and/or USAID, and formally employed at a university, and on a grant that pretty much says ‘we want terror soldiers’.
A more conventionally sane analysis is that “Dude. It is how early in the morning? Shooter dead, and no indications of commo means that they are communicating the most critical details first, and nobody knows squat beyond that at this point.”
Which is to say that my thinking is not my best, but at least I have second thoughts. And, as much hours of sleep as I did get (weather/minor health issues), may be an improvement.
Reference the Chief O’Brian meme: I’m hardly the first to bring it up, but is the good Chief the only enlisted man in Starfleet? Also, why would you need a senior NCO or an officer to operate the transporter? That sounds like something an ordinary sailor would learn in A-school.
“Wrath of Khan” seemed to show a realistic enlisted / officer ratio in most of the Enterprise non-bridge scenes, most notably in the shots where the Enterprise is setting General Quarters prior to the nebula battle.
Staffing/manning Starfleet is an analysis that calls for more than one “maybe the writers are just innumerate?”
Oaky, everyone is an officer sorta works as a theory of maintenance, automation, and how much staff a warship /needs/. It’d definitely be fine if Starfleet were a merchant cargo line, but the writers are not paid for their engineering chops and autistic fixations on the US navy.
but, Starfleet has how many vessels, crewed in what numbers, everyone goes to San Francisco, and the academy is depicted as being approximately how large?
Officering an interstellar warfleet from a single school on a single planet has some logistic considerations, and I am not sure many of the shows do an adequate job of establishing that there is enough commerical traffic.
Sane answer is more officer schools, and more enlisted training, spread across different worlds, plus commercial carriers, and so forth.
But, I have a mad vision of an overbuilt academy in the form of a megapolis. Imagine an interstellar empire that does tertiary training for all the bureaucrats at a single cyberpunk flaming dumpster fire. (Now, I find myself not beleiving it. One, I don’t think it would equip people for functioning in the outlying regions. Two, once transients become too much of the population, stuff probably suffers. Three, schlepping people around is expensive. The pressure against passing people because of politics, and logistics considerations, versus pressure to actually make shipping people so far worth the effort. It would mainly only make sense for a situation where the city was built over a Great Old One, who needs to be around the bureaucrats to brainwash them. Still, that is an empire that either does not exert influence well, or gets overthrown.)
Starfleet had twelve constitution class heavy cruisers, and impled tha they were the top ships of the Fleet.
The US has service academies backed by ROTC at numerous colleges. Perhaps Starfleet either had one huge academy for 10k-20k cadets, or had spacer ROTC on various planets. the latter would make sense politically
The Lensman universe apparently recruited the Patrolmen from each planet, skimmed off the cream for training as potential officers/SNCOs at Earth GPHQ, and then skimmed the cream of that group as potential Lensmen. There’s also hints that there were additional versions of that for other species that needed non-human environments, and ships were built to accommodate. If anyone had to operate in a hostile environment, then environment suits and special quarters were provided.
At least regional academies, as Children of the Lens states there are uncountable billions of Lensmen from billions of planets in the two galaxies. (The Vortex Blaster also tells us and indeterminate number of planets do not produce Lensmen at all).
With regards to archeologists carrying firearms, I remember the 1938 British mystery thriller film directed by Alfred Hitchcock, TheLadyVanishes, where, towards the end of the movie, the train gets stopped somewhere in the European countryside and is attacked by supposed soldiers. Once the passengers realize that their attackers are not soldiers, they all produce handguns from their carry-on luggage and proceed to shoot back! Wouldn’t happen today, in the modern EU, more’s the pity!
Should have marked the article. Or it has been deleted. (Can’t find it via google.) There was a post on X or Instagram of one of the 3 in the legislature competing for being the biggest idiot/stupid (okay, enough of that) … Anyway, the post was decrying that Trump ordered border patrol to release alligators, crocodiles, and pythons/anaconda/etc, in the Rio Grande in Texas and New Mexico, to kill illegal border incursions.
My response: Blink. Silent “Don’t know if the invasive snakes are a problem like Florida, but wouldn’t surprise me. The Rio Grande is natural habitat for either crocodiles or alligators (don’t know which, doesn’t matter, one or the other or both).”
As bad as the one who stated “Trump arranged to be born on the anniversary of the Army!” (Silent, quite: “Um, okaaaaay then.”)
TX has always had alligators in the Rio Grande. and all along the Gulf Coast, although the higher concentrations are as you get towards Louisiana. Pythons and Piranha? not so much. It does have various water moccasins in it though.
I know Rio Grande is native territory for alligator types. What wasn’t sure of has the release of pet snakes the same problem as Florida. Did not know about the water moccasins. OTOH my attitude about snakes in general are “no thank you”. Generally they just startle me. I leave them alone. They leave me alone. Not Tj, the cat, think our local snakes are toys, especially the baby snakes. Sigh. Keeping him from packing them inside is a chore. Why I don’t take him out for supervised outdoor time myself. I let hubby and son deal with the removal of snake from cat duties.
According To Hoyt 
No mini corn dog Mondays? Torches and pitchforks! Send them Milton Friedman, Thomas Sowell, and Rand Paul. He’ll do fine.
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The real comedy gold is looking at the replies from the people who took MKH seriously…. and dug up her personal history to go after her.
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OK, so which one is MKH? There are sooo many left-wing idiots around, I can’t keep up. :-P
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Mary Katharine Ham, the one who was “excited” to see “real socialism” show up.
Spoiler alert: She may have not been serious about that. ;-)
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Oh.
I guess ‘Real Socialism’ is sort of like Zeno’s Paradox — no matter how many times they try, how many millions of corpses they pile up in mass graves, they can never quite reach it.
But still they Believe. “This Time For Sure!!”
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Also: If somebody says something that stupid, I’m going to presume they mean it. I see no benefit to presuming they don’t.
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Agreed. Most of the people (like me) who see it as sarcasm as she wrote it know of her overall history, and therefore have a different reading of it than someone like you who doesn’t.
Always remember, you’re writing for the person who is not familiar. Otherwise, those who ARE acquainted with your style and don’t like your opinions will suddenly start acting like shocked newbies and take everything in the worst literal way possible. It’s thoroughly dishonest.
That tactic is where the saying about Trump supporters taking him seriously but not literally while his enemies take him literally but not seriously comes from. Always write so that your intentions are clear.
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She was one of those officially right Republican affiliated activists/media sorts.
Her late husband was connected to the Democrats, and they had two daughters.
Reasonably competent at twitter trolling, but did not seem to make it the priority of her life.
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Husband sitting outside: I bet one of them has heard this song:
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Need more coffee. 🍵🍵🍵🍵🍵🍵🍵🍵🍵🍵🍵🍵🍵🍵
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The Cincinnati one makes me wonder which chicken place.
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SFBS!
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Question for the ‘fat acceptance activist’: When you fly, do you pay for all 3 seats you take up? Or the extra jet fuel needed to haul your fat ass across the sky? :-P
Hey, maybe if we tell them how much extra fuel they use, that might get through to them? “Save the planet! Lose weight!”
Here’s a hint: If you struggle to squeeze into a door big enough to haul a refrigerator through, the door is not the problem.
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I keep picturing a video technician trying so hard not to giggle whilst setting things up thus, lest some of the gear be microphonic.
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Ea-nasir’s fault again – can’t stop snickering….
I don’t get the keffiyehs bit either. Can’t any of them listen to what Islam actually says?
Ooo… anti-Mao movies, hm….
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They choose not to believe what Islam says (and ignore what it does). Or they are like the “historian” K@ren @rmstrong, who claimed that it was the Byzantine Empire’s influence that inspired the demand for women to be swathed in layers upon layers. (Same ones who, when pressed, reply that a nun’s habit is the same as a burka, completely identical.)
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*Headdesks* Probably with no knowledge whatsoever that a nun’s outfit used to be “proper married womens’ clothes”….
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I have literally seen a meme that lines up all sorts of attire such as nun’s habit next the burka and whine that the burka is singled out — as if there were stories about nuns being forced back into burning convents for not wearing a burka.
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I’m curious how many nuns were killed by their own families for not wearing one.
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Nod.
Also, women CHOSE to wear the Nun’s Habit as part of becoming a Nun.
Paul Howard (Drak Bibliophile) *
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Fun fact: Stargate used the “get back to Earth plot” for two series. One was Stargate Infinity, a kids’ cartoon where a team had hop from planet to planet to get back home. The other was Stargate Universe, a live-action show set on a ship traveling on autopilot through another galaxy, with a Stargate the passengers can’t control. Neither one did very well.
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The first season of Stargate Atlantis as well, although in that one they went knowing full well that it might be a one-way trip, so it wasn’t like they were obsessed with getting home. And they figured out how to travel between Atlantis and Earth by the second season anyway.
Incidentally, “Not being obsessed with getting home” was a thread I always thought Voyager should have considered further. These people, or at least 60% of them or so, are Starfleet Officers, who presumably joined up to explore the universe. Why wouldn’t at least some of them say, “We’re in an entirely new part of the galaxy? We’ll get to spend our entire careers exploring in, then arrive home just in time for the triumphant retirement party? Yee haw! Let’s get started.”
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Forgot about that plot point. I really liked SGA, although I didn’t catch all of it. One of the season finales was the first time I sat up and went, “Wait, they can do good CGI in TV shows?” And I still get a chuckle out of the fact that I was a Jason Momoa fan before he landed any of his big roles.
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SG:U was robbed. At the urging of SyFy they went for a total tone change from all the other Stargate shows to make it more Galactica-reboot-ish, so it had to build its own audience, and then SyFy got distracted in doing stuff like Sharknado instead of actual Sci Fi (honoring their name change), so they didn’t get a third season.
Some blame goes to the writers, since it was pretty darned slow getting started, and there were a lot of diversion from the main mystery box of figuring out the ship, but there were really well written episodes as well – I thought the one where use of the gate dumped the away team into a time offset loop was really well done, especially for a more complex concept with its spooky jump-scare horror-flick overtones, plus the use of fpv drone footage to tell much of the story.
I think it deserved one more season, but then SyFy cancelled Farscape too, in spite of good ratings, so cancelling SG:U was in character.
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I only saw the premiere and maybe one or two episodes after that. It seemed fine, but the cast didn’t hook me like SG1 or SGA. If I ever go back and do a Stargate deep dive, I’ll have to give it an honest shot.
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Really big ensemble was an SG:U problem too – again, Galactica-reboot-ish. The thing I liked is they all were flawed, and not in a “my flaw is I am too perfect” way.
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Episode that I referenced was #108 “Time”
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Farscape deserved one more season.
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That’s even how Stargate started out. In the original movie they were stuck on Ra’s planet because one of the symbols had eroded away.
I really liked one exchange in the time-travel-loop episode:
Col. O’Neil: “What kind of an archaeologist carries a gun?”
Daniel Jackson: [Raises hand]
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raises hand
Smart ones do. Doing archaeology, you’re constantly out in the sticks, with minimal support, and the cops are at best an hour or two away, and that’s IF you even have cell signal (which is often unreliable or absent, where you’re digging).
Archaeologists are Westerners, by and large. And, the local grok goes, Westerners are usually loaded. Heck yes we carry a piece. We’re not frakkin stupid.
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“Oh, an archeologist thinks there’s something worth finding?”
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If you read the books of the people doing research in Eastern Africa they all hired local armed groups to keep the other armed groups away. They’re a little fuzzier on if they themselves were armed.
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Just another reason we all like Doctor Jackson….
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Which made it a bit of a wrench when the actor played an apparently insane hit man on Burn Notice.
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It’s brilliant casting, though.
And yes, hit like a gut punch.
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Also on that one in typo snark (yes, I realize, pot and kettle) I like how the original Galactica folks had the Cylons perusing them the entire way. Being under constant scrutiny can certainly be wearing…
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On the birds having an argument: Does anyone know where I can find a large version of that? I think it might be fun to try as an oil painting.
On the drop box: whether its broken or not, you should go in and talk to Cathy. It will do both of you good!
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“Than Wash It” burns.
Not least because of the possibility that I’m missing something and that is the correct and intended spelling.
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no. It’s terrible. But I still giggled, so….
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Meanwhile I’m over here trying to figure out how to wash my stories. They’re not bad, dirty ones, I swear! Okay, sometimes I swear a lot, but still.
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Same, same.
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I agree with Linus 100%. Anything that can be destroyed by the truth should be. Starting with the Democrat party.
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want to have some fun?
ask Grok to tell you about ea-nasir. There is so much more than that one tablet.
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What a way to achieve literary immortality.
Makes me think of the Assyrian tablets between a merchant and his entrepreneurial wife, who made fine textiles. She’d give him what amounted to a shopping list, while he was out selling her (and others, I assume) product.
Mind you, modern heads would explode when they read the one asking him to buy her another slave for the workshop, on about the same level as asking for a load of wool.
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Mission Impossible: 1924
Good Morning, Mister Smith. Vladimir Ilyich Lenin is the current Chairman of the Council of People’s Commissars of the Soviet Union. It has come to our attention that Lenin and President Friedrich Ebert of Germany are in final negotiations for an alliance for a Communist takeover of Germany as a prelude to Russian control of the entire European continent. Such an occurrence would be catastrophic for the United States, if not the entire world. You mission, should you choose to accept it, is to assassinate Lenin before he can conclude that agreement with Ebert. As usual, if you, or any member of your IM force are killed or captured, the Secretary will disavow any knowledge of your actions. Good luck, John. This paper will self-destruct in 5 seconds.
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The first one is my life.
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Re “no intelligence” — I had a cartoon image saved away and managed to track down the original: https://hopenchangecartoons.blogspot.com/2014/09/insight-riot.html
On the brakes thing: Supposedly Ettore Bugatti’s answer to complaints that his fast expensive cars had poor brakes was “but signore, my cars are meant to GO, not to STOP!”
On failed parachutes: we like to say that falling doesn’t hurt, the sudden stop at the end does.
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Jack Lucas won a Medal of Honor as a marine in ‘45. In ‘61 he joined the army and the 82nd Airborne, where he survived both of his parachutes malfunctioning.
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There was a WW2 British bomber tail gunner that bailed out at 15,000 feet without a parachute (the other choice was burning to death). He landed in heavy snow on a steep hill slope and survived (injured). He had a hard time convincing his German “rescuers” that he hadn’t used a parachute and not a spy who had hidden it.
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Until they went out, found the plane, and his parachute remains right where he said they would be.
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Whereas cats will stand at the furniture that the toy went under and meow scream and meow whine very loudly until their staff retrieves the toy.
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On the birds discussing something intense… Note that there are three birds there. The one on the right with gray plumage is obviously a female. Somewhat disheveled, true, but still. The one in the middle has bright plumage, as birds do, it’s probably male. The bird on the left also has dull plumage and is probably the yellow bird’s mate.
So we have a married guy. His girlfriend is reading him out. Probably didn’t know he was already married and just found out. The one wing pointing to the right is in reference to some sin he committed months ago and he’s already forgotten. Wife is clueless and thinking they’re going to be late for dinner.
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The Baron is hiding in fear for his life,
For it seems that his mistress has just met his wife,
And together they’ve gone out to hunt up a knife,
To murder the lady he slept with.
(Baron in the SCA, his wife couldn’t make it to many events. So he went with his friend, Tony.
Wife goes to events and discovers “Tony,” is short for, “Antonia.” Wife says, “You’re Tony?” Tony replies, “Didn’t he tell you?” Wife and Tony start talking. Meanwhile the Baron is drowning his sorrows since both women aren’t speaking to him, gets roaring drunk and a predatory slut manages to get him into her tent, where he passes out cold. Hence the last line.)
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I see the wife reading the riot act to hubby, while the neighborhood snoop collects all the juicy gossip . . .
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The lost story idea memes are NOT FUNNY!!!!!
And yeah, several of the archaeologists I knew carried, in part because of problems with four-footed wildlife.
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And on the pre-revolution unveiled NY women photo:
<Picard voice> There are THREE women! </Picard voice>
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It’s the wrong breed of dog, but it looked for a minute as though someone talked to our neurotic boarder (Our son’s bull/water dog cross). Pulling the ball out of his slimy jaws -after you catch up to him – is icky.
Our son absolutely agrees with the meme.
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Uhhh…don’t assume you’re safe in the library. The mobs burned down Uncle Hugo’s. :-(
Just because they don’t read books doesn’t mean they won’t burn them.
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I suspect someone was channeling Chris Rock’s early monologue…..
“Wanna hide ya money? Put it in ya books…. cuz n—— don’t read.”
Chris doesn’t like to be reminded of that one these days.
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🍵
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In my college 2.0 effort, the local community college was on an early recycling kick. They had bins everywher makred “white paper” and “colored paper”.
Of -course- I applied graffitti!
“We shall overcome!”
“End segregation!”
“Have we learned nothing from the 1960s?”
“I have a dream!”
“Paper of Color!” “Honkypaper”
Etc, etc, etc.
-Finally- they changed the signs no-ink / inked
“Wheres that tat?”
(grin)
..
I was also the helpful fellow who warned the art department head that the storeroom for the pottery materials contained 10 20 and 50 pound cannisters of powdered stuff that could be readily combined to make serious mil-grade mayhem. Unsecured and on same shelf. Also craploads of solvents overflowed from the “painting” closet. Not in a flammables cabinet.
It was a “national news” level incident waiting for one crackpot-radical or sneak-smoker to touch it all off.
it got fixed.
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This one gets a “yep””
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So does the dog. And he’s not art.
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A friend had a cat called “Yak”. Big shaggy long-haired OCD groomer.
Usually the “why” was demonstrated before the ask.
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I’m still trying to wrap my head around why the Cylons were perusing the crew of the Battlestar Galactica. 😂
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No meme is a genuine meme without at least one tyop.
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So, she is running a TYOP on us?
(grin)
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off topic:
Some jackass in Idaho is sniping firemen responding to a brush fire. I hope when they find him, they can isolate and contain him.
Then ask the Idaho National Guard to queue up Jose Feliciano an drop some WP mortar rounds on his ass.
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Two dead so far. Apparently firefighters / EMS aren’t allowed to carry.
https://twitchy.com/justmindy/2025/06/29/vip-firefighters-should-be-permitted-to-carry-n2414947
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Even if they were, doesn’t do you any good against a sniper.
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https://redstate.com/bobhoge/2025/06/29/coeur-dalene-shooting-story-takes-tragic-turn-as-2-firefighters-confirmed-dead-number-of-gunmen-unknown-n2191052
A paranoid cynic might suppose that ‘motive remains unknown’ means that it was a known wolf Democrat/Ante-Fa terror soldier, affiliated with the FBI and/or USAID, and formally employed at a university, and on a grant that pretty much says ‘we want terror soldiers’.
A more conventionally sane analysis is that “Dude. It is how early in the morning? Shooter dead, and no indications of commo means that they are communicating the most critical details first, and nobody knows squat beyond that at this point.”
Which is to say that my thinking is not my best, but at least I have second thoughts. And, as much hours of sleep as I did get (weather/minor health issues), may be an improvement.
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Apparently now dead. Hopefully they add the appropriate piping so we can all whizz on the grave.
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And apparently identified.
https://twitchy.com/samj/2025/06/30/idaho-gunman-identified-per-ap-n2414972?utm_source=twdailyamvip&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=nl
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Insinuation might have been trans. 24 hour rule, nobody knows at this point.
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Many (if not all) fortune cookies are made in New Jersey. Just sayin’
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Reference the Chief O’Brian meme: I’m hardly the first to bring it up, but is the good Chief the only enlisted man in Starfleet? Also, why would you need a senior NCO or an officer to operate the transporter? That sounds like something an ordinary sailor would learn in A-school.
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There’s been plenty of comments from Roddenberry (and others) that Starfleet doesn’t have enlisted people.
And of course, Starfleet isn’t a “Real Navy”. [Evil Grin]
Of course, the writers for Star Trek don’t remember what is “established fact” in the Star Trek universe.
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“Wrath of Khan” seemed to show a realistic enlisted / officer ratio in most of the Enterprise non-bridge scenes, most notably in the shots where the Enterprise is setting General Quarters prior to the nebula battle.
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Given who is usually being transported, it’s like having your warrant officer with 25 years service handle the boat / car / piloting today.
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Staffing/manning Starfleet is an analysis that calls for more than one “maybe the writers are just innumerate?”
Oaky, everyone is an officer sorta works as a theory of maintenance, automation, and how much staff a warship /needs/. It’d definitely be fine if Starfleet were a merchant cargo line, but the writers are not paid for their engineering chops and autistic fixations on the US navy.
but, Starfleet has how many vessels, crewed in what numbers, everyone goes to San Francisco, and the academy is depicted as being approximately how large?
Officering an interstellar warfleet from a single school on a single planet has some logistic considerations, and I am not sure many of the shows do an adequate job of establishing that there is enough commerical traffic.
Sane answer is more officer schools, and more enlisted training, spread across different worlds, plus commercial carriers, and so forth.
But, I have a mad vision of an overbuilt academy in the form of a megapolis. Imagine an interstellar empire that does tertiary training for all the bureaucrats at a single cyberpunk flaming dumpster fire. (Now, I find myself not beleiving it. One, I don’t think it would equip people for functioning in the outlying regions. Two, once transients become too much of the population, stuff probably suffers. Three, schlepping people around is expensive. The pressure against passing people because of politics, and logistics considerations, versus pressure to actually make shipping people so far worth the effort. It would mainly only make sense for a situation where the city was built over a Great Old One, who needs to be around the bureaucrats to brainwash them. Still, that is an empire that either does not exert influence well, or gets overthrown.)
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Starfleet had twelve constitution class heavy cruisers, and impled tha they were the top ships of the Fleet.
The US has service academies backed by ROTC at numerous colleges. Perhaps Starfleet either had one huge academy for 10k-20k cadets, or had spacer ROTC on various planets. the latter would make sense politically
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The Lensman universe apparently recruited the Patrolmen from each planet, skimmed off the cream for training as potential officers/SNCOs at Earth GPHQ, and then skimmed the cream of that group as potential Lensmen. There’s also hints that there were additional versions of that for other species that needed non-human environments, and ships were built to accommodate. If anyone had to operate in a hostile environment, then environment suits and special quarters were provided.
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At least regional academies, as Children of the Lens states there are uncountable billions of Lensmen from billions of planets in the two galaxies. (The Vortex Blaster also tells us and indeterminate number of planets do not produce Lensmen at all).
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With regards to archeologists carrying firearms, I remember the 1938 British mystery thriller film directed by Alfred Hitchcock, The Lady Vanishes, where, towards the end of the movie, the train gets stopped somewhere in the European countryside and is attacked by supposed soldiers. Once the passengers realize that their attackers are not soldiers, they all produce handguns from their carry-on luggage and proceed to shoot back! Wouldn’t happen today, in the modern EU, more’s the pity!
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Should have marked the article. Or it has been deleted. (Can’t find it via google.) There was a post on X or Instagram of one of the 3 in the legislature competing for being the biggest idiot/stupid (okay, enough of that) … Anyway, the post was decrying that Trump ordered border patrol to release alligators, crocodiles, and pythons/anaconda/etc, in the Rio Grande in Texas and New Mexico, to kill illegal border incursions.
My response: Blink. Silent “Don’t know if the invasive snakes are a problem like Florida, but wouldn’t surprise me. The Rio Grande is natural habitat for either crocodiles or alligators (don’t know which, doesn’t matter, one or the other or both).”
As bad as the one who stated “Trump arranged to be born on the anniversary of the Army!” (Silent, quite: “Um, okaaaaay then.”)
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TX has always had alligators in the Rio Grande. and all along the Gulf Coast, although the higher concentrations are as you get towards Louisiana. Pythons and Piranha? not so much. It does have various water moccasins in it though.
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I know Rio Grande is native territory for alligator types. What wasn’t sure of has the release of pet snakes the same problem as Florida. Did not know about the water moccasins. OTOH my attitude about snakes in general are “no thank you”. Generally they just startle me. I leave them alone. They leave me alone. Not Tj, the cat, think our local snakes are toys, especially the baby snakes. Sigh. Keeping him from packing them inside is a chore. Why I don’t take him out for supervised outdoor time myself. I let hubby and son deal with the removal of snake from cat duties.
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While I’m certain that someone has released a python or three in the Rio Grande, it doesn’t seem to have made the headlines in TX that it did in FL.
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