People have been amusing themselves on X by comparing it to existing and fictional structures. The very first one I saw was one of the latter, and the similar structure was something associated with evil. Unfortunately, I can’t remember what it was…
Years ago I joked that the Obama library would be a solid block of concrete with no openings and all his documents sealed inside. I did not expect to be this prophetic.
More seriously, in a different context I might not have very much of a problem with the looks of the tower. It is a little functional concept for high winds, but if those are a problem flatter might be better. Mathematically, it would be interesting to understand how well it could work as a sub-terrain bunker.
The whole concept of the Obama complex speaks to the Obama ambitions.
Anyway, on one of the buildings, the structural engineering contractor had a dispute with the concrete contractor. Concrete contractor accused the structural engineering contractor of racism in a lawsuit following those complaints.
Of course Trump is paying attention to construction gossip, of course he insulted or described Obama, and of course some folks tried to defend Obama’s honor.
They took Bucharest, a town known as, “Little Paris,” for it’s style, and loaded it up with big concrete boxes for apartments. Eyesore. (You could tell when someone had privatized a building because they tried to decorate it).
a) two sides is consistent with some of my patterns
b) the left hand image is from persona 3 (I recognize the characters), but I am not sure about the right side image being from the same game
c) lawyer commericial 1) I find myself musing on trying to building an intellectual with a book shelf backdrop, where the backdrop is fairly obviously inappropriate if you look at it any. 2) Lawyers, and those wide/omnibus volume manga come to mind, for one. But, some of the for dummies books might also have a fairly identifiable spine.
d) raven who is not a lawyer, ha ha
e) KRatman is obviously correct on that point.
f) changing the face of coding. I haven’t heard that this Tea app stuff is down to trying to get women in programming with vibe coding, but modern feminists are a bit of a disgrace with the way that they are acting so needy over an occupation that women did in my grandmother’s day. Being raised by patriarchs, and believing in ‘male dominance’ seems to translate to being willing to do any job you are able to do, and being very interested in getting the stuff you are interested in done. Being raised by feminists and believing in feminism seems to translate to being incompetent and wanting to be handed the status of positions you are unwilling to do the work to skill up in, and/or are too crazy to have people trust your deliverables. Now, there are a lot of ways to be crazy to the point of uselessness.
g) woman with geese – yeah, I kinda find myself wanting to do more ‘this is what they took from us’ memes
h) un international court of justice – I) my bro Andy II) I am a Jacksonian III) I identify as thinking that Jackson did nothing wrong. Even if we suppose that the Georgians fabricated the evidence against the Cherokee, there was clearly going to be a war, and this way we have more extant descendents of the Cherokee, probably. IV) It isn’t an existential problem. The people who say it is existential are the problem, killing them is inside of the magnitude of the changes they demand, and just cutting their budgets and requiring them to get real jobs is super compassionate and peaceful by comparison.
i) So the Biden regime lost more child slaves than survived the trip to Canada, the US, and Mexico or the colonies which became those.
b) I’m pretty sure that the image on the right is also the protagonist (who’s on the left of the left image)
f) That image seems a bit dated, actually. When the tech layoffs started happening a few years ago, people started noticing that a lot of tech companies had employees (often – though not always – women) who would post video online of their typical day in the office, and they were literally doing *nothing* productive. It wasn’t “management making me waste all of my time on useless nonsense” stuff, either. It was along the lines of work was essentially a hang-out spot for several hours, with free amenities and entertainment provided by the company.
I know a guy who went with his Mongolian friends, all of them in correct 13th century Mongol clothing except without weapons, to a travelling art exhibit put on by the Red Chinese.
They had lots of fun, apparently, freaking out the Red Chinese guards.
We went to a Midsummer’s Night Puck Hunt and were requested to dress in appropriate “Victorian Garb” for the occasion. One dear friend’s husband came dressed in a gold Starfleet Officer’s outfit, and spent the evening inquiring, “Is this holodeck 6? I expected Macbeth in the original Klingon.”
T’was a hoot, but only for about a quarter of the attendees, the others looked at their significant others for a possible explanation.
Neil Smith said something similar (probably in “Lever Action”, I’ll have to do some digging) — the idea being that the death penalty should only be applied at the scene of the intended crime, by the hands of the intended victim.
And I have this quote saved away:
“No law ever written has stopped any robber, rapist or killer, like cold blue steel in the hands of their last intended victim.” — W. Emerson Wright
A couple of weeks ago (in the wee hours of the morning), our cat was walking along the railing above the stairway into the lower level of our house, in spite of having been disciplined repeatedly when she did that. She fell this time, a drop of a bit less than 10 feet, onto the stair way. Fortunately she came out unscathed, but seems (for now) to have learned to avoid walking along the 1.5 inch wide railing.
The dinosaur fossil dig — that’s almost the exact setup for ‘Boundary’ by Ryk Spoor. They didn’t find a flying saucer, but they did uncover an alien holding a machine gun.
“Dinosaur bones and Awiennns!” Is basically there in Douglas Preston’s ‘Tyrannosaur Canyon’, partly as a piece of the mystery but mostly as setup for sequels, with nanotech in the mix.
Jasper Inn restaurant had really good bacon last time we were there (before the 2023 fires that took SW third of Jasper. Jasper Inn & Suites (including restaurant) survived.
Beware the BLT at de Gaulle airport in France. Undercooked, nah. Out of the fridge and left to sit a few hours. The airplane food was better. (Scare France. Preferred Lufthansa, but…)
For the past near-decade, there has been a frequently-changing billboard in downtown Phoenix that can be described as “Donald Trump not merely dwelling rent-free in the artists’ and funders’ heads, but profiting from the exposure in ways that the billboard creators cannot comprehend.”
That last one is very disturbing indeed. I sure hope we will hear more about it, a LOT more.
Meanwhile, “it has nothing to do with the principals of the organization”. I suppose that’s true. Nor does it have anything to do with the principles of the organization. :-)
The optimistic idea is that some of the kids were being used as drug mules (or for other things smuggled), and thus were taken across the border multiple times.
The basic known unknown with the multiple entries hypothesis is the wastage rate.
The coyote bros are not keeping everyone alive. The border with the southern adversary is pretty thick some places with the hot, dry, and empty. Like how the border with the northern adversary is pretty difficult to traverse some times due to the distances and the cold/possibly dry.
It is one thing if you are coming on roads, heavily traveled roads that pass through gates. The routes to bypass the metaphorical gates can be difficult.
If there were fifty million illegals in US 2023, then perhaps not below a million dead along the way. Our friends the scientists claim that there were seven million dead with covid, and even if we grant official scholarly authority their claims, it is not clear that the illegal traffick in humans across US borders has killed less people than the world death plague.
So if 100k children were trafficked five times each, 50k deaths spread out over five trips is ??? (To pull numbers from thin air, based around 450k.)
Zero chance we are talking people handling processes that are 100% effective.
Anyhow, the most optimistic possible explanation where the child trafficking, rapes, and deaths are concerned for those numbers is utterly terrible record keeping, but if those records include 450k entirely fake entries then more generally the business of the federal government is screwed.
Reliable hearsay is that the blood pressure folks have pulled a fair few dead people, and a fair few raped people, out from the deserts.
If the kids were being used primarily to collect Social Security money and welfare, they might have been taken across the border a lot, with different recorded names and destinations every time.
Someone posted a meme over on X yesterday noting that since the Russians have announced that they’re scrapping the Kuznetzov, the Thai navy now has more operational aircraft carriers that the Russians do, and therefore the Thais have a more powerful navy.
:P
Evidently that set something off. The joke got slammed by an absurd number of posts claiming that carriers are obsolete now and don’t matter, unless you want to invade other countries like the US. And also, because of drones the only warship that matters going forward is the nuclear submarine – which is why the Russians are focusing on those now instead of useless carriers.
lol
For the curious, yes, the Thai navy really does have an aircraft carrier. It’s named the HTMS Chakri Naruebet. However, it was designed to operate Harriers as its fixed-wing complement, and the Thai navy no longer has any of those. So for now, it’s operating purely as a helicopter platform. Though if the Thais continue to keep it around, I could see it being converted to a drone carrier at some point in the future.
Something happened to me this weekend that would make a good meme. I was helping the registration line at a convention and when their phone reception wasn’t good enough to access the registration site, I would tell them to use the event’s public WiFi. One young woman asked me what the password was and I said, “12345, like Spaceballs.” She typed in “12345likespaceballs”. Either I’m getting really old, or we are seriously depriving our youth. Or perhaps embrace the healing power of ‘and’.
According To Hoyt 
SFBS!
LikeLike
Qaplah
Miz Kitty is flopping on my phone. Time to go.
LikeLiked by 1 person
In regards to the Saruman one, have you seen the Obama Library?
https://twitchy.com/amy-curtis/2025/07/25/obama-library-design-n2416217
LikeLiked by 1 person
Brutalist architecture, because of course.
Had to destroy something better, and replace it, because of course.
It will inspire only loathing, because of course.
Perfect.
LikeLiked by 1 person
People have been amusing themselves on X by comparing it to existing and fictional structures. The very first one I saw was one of the latter, and the similar structure was something associated with evil. Unfortunately, I can’t remember what it was…
Y_Y
LikeLiked by 1 person
Next: big flaming eye on top that never blinks.
LikeLike
Years ago I joked that the Obama library would be a solid block of concrete with no openings and all his documents sealed inside.
I did not expect to be this prophetic.
LikeLiked by 1 person
It’s like they can’t help themselves.
LikeLike
Surprising how transparent Mr. Ethical is.
More seriously, in a different context I might not have very much of a problem with the looks of the tower. It is a little functional concept for high winds, but if those are a problem flatter might be better. Mathematically, it would be interesting to understand how well it could work as a sub-terrain bunker.
The whole concept of the Obama complex speaks to the Obama ambitions.
Anyway, on one of the buildings, the structural engineering contractor had a dispute with the concrete contractor. Concrete contractor accused the structural engineering contractor of racism in a lawsuit following those complaints.
Of course Trump is paying attention to construction gossip, of course he insulted or described Obama, and of course some folks tried to defend Obama’s honor.
LikeLike
The Nazi’s Flak Towers have more grace and beauty than that assault on the eyes.
Looks like Lovecraftian Modernism. Summons a minecraft Cthulhu when it appears.
LikeLike
That does look like it was designed by communists. :-P
LikeLike
The ugly goes ALL THE WAY DOWN.
LikeLike
Reminds me of a line in ‘Kildar’ by John Ringo, about how the Soviets put up buildings of surpassing ugliness without even trying. :-D
LikeLike
They took Bucharest, a town known as, “Little Paris,” for it’s style, and loaded it up with big concrete boxes for apartments. Eyesore. (You could tell when someone had privatized a building because they tried to decorate it).
LikeLiked by 1 person
a) two sides is consistent with some of my patterns
b) the left hand image is from persona 3 (I recognize the characters), but I am not sure about the right side image being from the same game
c) lawyer commericial 1) I find myself musing on trying to building an intellectual with a book shelf backdrop, where the backdrop is fairly obviously inappropriate if you look at it any. 2) Lawyers, and those wide/omnibus volume manga come to mind, for one. But, some of the for dummies books might also have a fairly identifiable spine.
d) raven who is not a lawyer, ha ha
e) KRatman is obviously correct on that point.
f) changing the face of coding. I haven’t heard that this Tea app stuff is down to trying to get women in programming with vibe coding, but modern feminists are a bit of a disgrace with the way that they are acting so needy over an occupation that women did in my grandmother’s day. Being raised by patriarchs, and believing in ‘male dominance’ seems to translate to being willing to do any job you are able to do, and being very interested in getting the stuff you are interested in done. Being raised by feminists and believing in feminism seems to translate to being incompetent and wanting to be handed the status of positions you are unwilling to do the work to skill up in, and/or are too crazy to have people trust your deliverables. Now, there are a lot of ways to be crazy to the point of uselessness.
g) woman with geese – yeah, I kinda find myself wanting to do more ‘this is what they took from us’ memes
h) un international court of justice – I) my bro Andy II) I am a Jacksonian III) I identify as thinking that Jackson did nothing wrong. Even if we suppose that the Georgians fabricated the evidence against the Cherokee, there was clearly going to be a war, and this way we have more extant descendents of the Cherokee, probably. IV) It isn’t an existential problem. The people who say it is existential are the problem, killing them is inside of the magnitude of the changes they demand, and just cutting their budgets and requiring them to get real jobs is super compassionate and peaceful by comparison.
i) So the Biden regime lost more child slaves than survived the trip to Canada, the US, and Mexico or the colonies which became those.
LikeLike
b) I’m pretty sure that the image on the right is also the protagonist (who’s on the left of the left image)
f) That image seems a bit dated, actually. When the tech layoffs started happening a few years ago, people started noticing that a lot of tech companies had employees (often – though not always – women) who would post video online of their typical day in the office, and they were literally doing *nothing* productive. It wasn’t “management making me waste all of my time on useless nonsense” stuff, either. It was along the lines of work was essentially a hang-out spot for several hours, with free amenities and entertainment provided by the company.
LikeLike
The best part of waking up
is memes with my first cup.
LikeLike
Sweet, Ming soldiers!
Complicates matters indeed….
That… was definitely an interesting happening, divorce or otherwise….
LikeLiked by 1 person
I know a guy who went with his Mongolian friends, all of them in correct 13th century Mongol clothing except without weapons, to a travelling art exhibit put on by the Red Chinese.
They had lots of fun, apparently, freaking out the Red Chinese guards.
LikeLiked by 2 people
*Cackles* Awesome!
LikeLike
We went to a Midsummer’s Night Puck Hunt and were requested to dress in appropriate “Victorian Garb” for the occasion. One dear friend’s husband came dressed in a gold Starfleet Officer’s outfit, and spent the evening inquiring, “Is this holodeck 6? I expected Macbeth in the original Klingon.”
T’was a hoot, but only for about a quarter of the attendees, the others looked at their significant others for a possible explanation.
LikeLiked by 2 people
*Grins*
LikeLike
C4C
LikeLike
Weird card, yep, that’s me.
The Reconquista, yes. Very yes.
I may have laughed too hard at the speed bumps.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Okay, cross the Ren Faire off the list. We’re going to the SCA instead!
LikeLike
LikeLike
On our way to Pennsic even as I type.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Good luck!
LikeLike
LikeLike
LikeLike
Ouch.
Pessimist is wrong.
Optimist: “President Trump is showing the way! His apprentices will carry on!”
LikeLiked by 1 person
This. So much.
LikeLike
Without going into details….
That moment, when the would be predator realizes that it is he that is prey, too late. Far, far, too late.
Priceless.
LikeLike
Neil Smith said something similar (probably in “Lever Action”, I’ll have to do some digging) — the idea being that the death penalty should only be applied at the scene of the intended crime, by the hands of the intended victim.
And I have this quote saved away:
“No law ever written has stopped any robber, rapist or killer, like cold blue steel in the hands of their last intended victim.” — W. Emerson Wright
LikeLike
LikeLike
LikeLiked by 1 person
A couple of weeks ago (in the wee hours of the morning), our cat was walking along the railing above the stairway into the lower level of our house, in spite of having been disciplined repeatedly when she did that. She fell this time, a drop of a bit less than 10 feet, onto the stair way. Fortunately she came out unscathed, but seems (for now) to have learned to avoid walking along the 1.5 inch wide railing.
LikeLike
The dinosaur fossil dig — that’s almost the exact setup for ‘Boundary’ by Ryk Spoor. They didn’t find a flying saucer, but they did uncover an alien holding a machine gun.
LikeLike
You beat me to it!
LikeLike
Or Terry Pratchett’s “Strata”. And Neil Smith did something similar in his graphic novel “Roswell, Texas” (a lot of fun, that one!)
LikeLike
“Dinosaur bones and Awiennns!” Is basically there in Douglas Preston’s ‘Tyrannosaur Canyon’, partly as a piece of the mystery but mostly as setup for sequels, with nanotech in the mix.
LikeLike
Laughed out loud in the Waffle House over Death and the claw machine.
LikeLike
Clankers! I *needed* a new slur for my Cyborgs to get pissed about!
LikeLiked by 1 person
Girl Genius has called them ‘clanks’ for years.
LikeLike
in addition to Toasters?
LikeLike
Is that a relatively clean OGLAF strip? The raven needs an AI assistant to be imaginarily prepared – seems that’s what many ‘real’ lawyers do.
A tariff for living in their heads – good plan!
And Belgium as a ‘sleeping policeman’; very nice.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Speedometer meme made me lol.
Whippersnapper Zoomers will never get it.
Ask for Jenny, you little zoomers.
LikeLike
I got it! I got it!
LikeLiked by 1 person
I had to read that one a couple times, then went, “Wait… wow it’s been a while since I’ve heard that.”
LikeLiked by 1 person
I was thinking Jenny’s car must be really reliable to accumulate that many miles.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Prolly not a Fiat.
LikeLike
I was incredulous until I saw the decimal point.
LikeLike
Even with the decimal point, it’s truly impressive.
LikeLike
My 2001 Nissan Frontier won’t roll over until 10 million miles. Working on it…..
LikeLike
I took me a while–never caught the song, but had heard about it. (Insert Get Off My Lawn comment here.) :)
LikeLiked by 1 person
Re “We Could Have Been Canada”, don’t forget the choice of real bacon, instead of that undercooked ham slice stuff they do in the great white north.
Note same thing in Oz and Kiwiland. Couldn’t get real crisp bacon anywhere, at least back around Y2K when I was last there.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Jasper Inn restaurant had really good bacon last time we were there (before the 2023 fires that took SW third of Jasper. Jasper Inn & Suites (including restaurant) survived.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Beware the BLT at de Gaulle airport in France. Undercooked, nah. Out of the fridge and left to sit a few hours. The airplane food was better. (Scare France. Preferred Lufthansa, but…)
LikeLiked by 1 person
For the past near-decade, there has been a frequently-changing billboard in downtown Phoenix that can be described as “Donald Trump not merely dwelling rent-free in the artists’ and funders’ heads, but profiting from the exposure in ways that the billboard creators cannot comprehend.”
LikeLike
LikeLike
https://www.pinterest.com/pin/805511083353994984/
LikeLike
That last one is very disturbing indeed. I sure hope we will hear more about it, a LOT more.
Meanwhile, “it has nothing to do with the principals of the organization”. I suppose that’s true. Nor does it have anything to do with the principles of the organization. :-)
LikeLiked by 1 person
The optimistic idea is that some of the kids were being used as drug mules (or for other things smuggled), and thus were taken across the border multiple times.
But yeah, I don’t know if that is realistic.
LikeLiked by 1 person
The basic known unknown with the multiple entries hypothesis is the wastage rate.
The coyote bros are not keeping everyone alive. The border with the southern adversary is pretty thick some places with the hot, dry, and empty. Like how the border with the northern adversary is pretty difficult to traverse some times due to the distances and the cold/possibly dry.
It is one thing if you are coming on roads, heavily traveled roads that pass through gates. The routes to bypass the metaphorical gates can be difficult.
If there were fifty million illegals in US 2023, then perhaps not below a million dead along the way. Our friends the scientists claim that there were seven million dead with covid, and even if we grant official scholarly authority their claims, it is not clear that the illegal traffick in humans across US borders has killed less people than the world death plague.
So if 100k children were trafficked five times each, 50k deaths spread out over five trips is ??? (To pull numbers from thin air, based around 450k.)
Zero chance we are talking people handling processes that are 100% effective.
Anyhow, the most optimistic possible explanation where the child trafficking, rapes, and deaths are concerned for those numbers is utterly terrible record keeping, but if those records include 450k entirely fake entries then more generally the business of the federal government is screwed.
Reliable hearsay is that the blood pressure folks have pulled a fair few dead people, and a fair few raped people, out from the deserts.
LikeLiked by 1 person
The ‘PARKING’ meme — could have been ‘WANTON PARKING’ and placed right after the ‘Wanton/Wonton’ meme. :-D
LikeLike
If the kids were being used primarily to collect Social Security money and welfare, they might have been taken across the border a lot, with different recorded names and destinations every time.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Not another one! Tom Lehrer died.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Bad week.
LikeLike
Someone posted a meme over on X yesterday noting that since the Russians have announced that they’re scrapping the Kuznetzov, the Thai navy now has more operational aircraft carriers that the Russians do, and therefore the Thais have a more powerful navy.
:P
Evidently that set something off. The joke got slammed by an absurd number of posts claiming that carriers are obsolete now and don’t matter, unless you want to invade other countries like the US. And also, because of drones the only warship that matters going forward is the nuclear submarine – which is why the Russians are focusing on those now instead of useless carriers.
lol
For the curious, yes, the Thai navy really does have an aircraft carrier. It’s named the HTMS Chakri Naruebet. However, it was designed to operate Harriers as its fixed-wing complement, and the Thai navy no longer has any of those. So for now, it’s operating purely as a helicopter platform. Though if the Thais continue to keep it around, I could see it being converted to a drone carrier at some point in the future.
LikeLike
George Washington has surprisingly bad trigger discipline, particularly since he’s carrying “appendix”.
Otherwise I like that meme.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Something happened to me this weekend that would make a good meme. I was helping the registration line at a convention and when their phone reception wasn’t good enough to access the registration site, I would tell them to use the event’s public WiFi. One young woman asked me what the password was and I said, “12345, like Spaceballs.” She typed in “12345likespaceballs”. Either I’m getting really old, or we are seriously depriving our youth. Or perhaps embrace the healing power of ‘and’.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Samurai at the Ren Fair!!!
LikeLike