Regarding that final meme, I was this weeks old when I learned that SPLINTERLESS toilet paper was patented in 1935. Travel into the past has a very definite limit.
When I worked in the coporate world, we had this horrifying event called a skip review, where the group would meet with the bosses boss, WITH THE BOSS PRESENT. Our group really liked our boss (we all still get together many years later), but one time going through this I got to introduce myself. My interesting fact was my wife and I had an article about us in the Wall Street Journal. The (fanatically corporate ladder climbing) VP running the meeting was visibly outraged – “What!? How did you get in the WSJ? I’ve never been in an article in the WSJ!” I laughed, maybe not as politely as I should have. It was especially funny because the article was about how we WEREN’T busting our asses for the corporate climb, but instead had found a good balance with part-time high skill jobs and raising our three kids. I did refrain from saying that.
That’s when you politely just say “Oh yeah: March twentieth, 1983. Page A-3, I think,” or whatever the look-it-up-yourself reference was, and leave it at that.
And you walk out after the meeting with your britches clanking, wearing the biggest brass bollocks in the building.
That’s when you politely just say “Oh yeah: March twentieth, 1983. Page A-3, I think,” or whatever the look-it-up-yourself reference was, and leave it at that.
And you walk out after the meeting with your britches clanking, wearing the biggest brass bollocks in the building.
Election results are updated as often as new data is received from county election offices after the polls close at 8:00 p.m. on Election Day. Ballots continue to be counted after Election Day during the canvass period; county elections officials must report final official results to the Secretary of State by July 3, 2026. The Secretary of State will certify the results on July 10, 2026.
Actually Atomic (fission) bombs didn’t wake up Gojira Hydrogen Bombs (Castle Bravo in particular) did :-) . After the Lucky Dragon 5 incident, the Japanese were really leary of Hydrogen bombs.
It mentioned soil compaction as an issue. This is why various redwood locations (like the comparatively nearby Calaveras Big Trees) build boardwalks on popular trails. (The grove next to the visitors’ center—literally 1000 feet or so away from the highway—has a boardwalk. The other groves, which require a long drive and a hike to reach, do not.)
Also, mods, there is a comment above from “website Administrator” saying the same thing. That’s from me, accidentally logged in as the admin of another site. Feel free to delete that (but apparently I can’t). Sorry.
Also, if you don’t think people working 40 hours a week should be in poverty, then maybe you should look at your definition of “poverty” – because it sucks. (And what Picard said.)
And how about those folks betting on a startup by working 90 hours a week for a pittance plus stock options, eating ramen every night and carpooling from shared apartments. They must be stopped, comrade.
When my beloved saw the story about Europeans going nuts over ranch dressing he said, “If Heinz and Kraft have any sense they’ll make TSA-approved ranch dressing.”
Last night I read him a tweet saying Kraft has created multi-packs of ranch dressing that meet TSA standards he said, “What did I tell you?”
I was going to suggest that someone tell the visitors about the dry ranch mix you can buy at the grocery store and mix with your own base (which I think is mayo; beats me, I don’t care for ranch).
I haven’t been food shopping in the UK for almost thirty years, but then it was really hard to find clouted sour cream and cream cheese. It turns out those are American innovations.
Wouldn’t know. Never been to Europe. Cows have been milked forever, butter and cheeses, have been around, that sour cream and cream cheese were a given. Good thing I presumed (not the other word), even if I was wrong.
Powder Ranch can be mixed with Mayo, the fake mayo (salad dressing), sour cream, or even cream cheese; with some 1/2&1/2 mixed in with the latter two (more liquid).
Mayo? No. Don’t like.
Salad Dressing option. What I grew up with, instead of Mayo, no one else in the household likes, so don’t bother.
Re. the Battle of Cambrai. The Germans invented a new word, Tankschrecken, or “tank terror” to describe the emotions the soldiers described as they saw the first British tanks rolling over the trenches. The guys fled, and the Brits would have made a huge gain of territory if they’d been able to follow up in the initial attack.
I read the original reports when I was doing research in the German Army Research Archive. It was fascinating.
Cambrai wasn’t just tanks. In contrast to the feed-infantry-into-the-meatgrinder-of-trench-warfare “strategy” combined with “hold all these tens of thousands of cavalry back in the rear so they can exploit the ‘big breakthrough’ once the infantry stops malingering” of the British command from 1914, Cambrian 1917 was an example of decentralized “commanders intent” mission-oriented-orders style command by General Byng, where individual units operated on their own discretion under a guiding intent and knowledge of the overall context.
But the initial attack was as far as that went. When one of the first “combined arms” attacks ever tried, with artillery and air and armor and infantry actually cooperating and supporting each other dynamically, the attack broke through the Hindenburg line so effectively that the troops basically ran out of “commanders intent”. Byng had not explained clear follow on objectives, and so there was really no breakthrough planning. Those distributed frontline commanders could not work toward a common post-breakthrough goal as Byng did not communicate what that was, either before or once a breakthrough was achieved – Should they widen the breach? Push through and capture the town of Cambrai? Mop up in place while follow on forces passed through and took up the attack? With no clear intent individual units did some of each. And then the British Army reverted to centralized top-down control and the momentum was lost.
Cambrai was the shape of future warfare. The German Wehrmacht 23 years later proved they had learned this lesson in the attack on France, and the U.S. Army basically used “commanders intent” mission style of decentralized warfare from fairly early on in Europe and the Pacific.
There is a fair argument that a sustained “big push” centered on the Cambrai breakthrough could have broken the entire northern section if the western front and ended the war years early.
Tanks were a definite factor, but the whole thing was revolutionary.
Thank you for the memes. My favorites were the bricks one and the Oppenheimer one. In Sean Connery’s defense Zardoz was 20 years before LOTR, and it probably traumatizshed him into avoid shcriptsh he did not undershtand.
Any actor worth watching always makes plenty of bad movies, because they care about staying gainfully employed. The ones who are heralded for their ability to choose projects well are usually pretentious, constipated intellectuals who have enough forebrain to be good at evaluating scripts and not enough backbrain to understand how to connect with audiences. There are exceptions, like Clint Eastwood, but they are few and far between.
There9s a current faux-shock fest over Spielberg’s latest being a flop. He’s certainly made bad movies before, but one flop almost killed his career: “1941” starring John Belushi. That massive failure meant the next film he made had to also have George Lucas on the credits to get a greenlight, which was “Raiders of the Lost Ark” and restored his solo mojo. But he’s definitely flopped really hard before.
This weekend we’re doing a convention in Dayton, Ohio. In downtown Dayton, street parking is free on weekends, and on holidays. Since June 19 is now a holiday, I got free parking all three days, which reduces our break-even point a few dollars — and as this convention is turning out weaker than we’d hoped, every dollar we don’t have to make will help us get into the black.
Our State Parks department decided to celebrate Juneteenth by putting out a “historian park pass” which gets four people in FOR FREE to almost all of them, through the end of the year. And it’s available through July 6th, which makes me think that they want to make sure people celebrating the 250th notice it as well.
Medieval library catalogued books with absolute positions. Hence, neither rhyme nor reason except order of acquisition.
Regine Pernoud in Those Terrible Middle Ages! paused in her discussion of the myths to mention that she was able to find a book by herself in a Chicago library using that wonderful system that French libraries were beginning to adapt. (She then went on to explain that when she returned to France, she was unable to find any books by that author in a very respected French library, because while he was French, he was also medieval.)
I actually achieved the very rare “Gas Tank Cap Loose” light Saturday. It was right! The gas cap was loose. I was confused when it didn’t go away immediately; I had to drive it a mile or so before it went out.
If the tank is green, or green based camo, bonus if you use “Kermit the Frog” eyes.
Saw an Abrams in 24ID long ago (sand color) with the Alan Parsons / Egyptian eyes on the turret. Looked like a pro had done the work. You just know someone eventually had to freak out and order it pained over. Sigh….
Also saw one with “glad to see you” on the tube. Heh. A student of classics, obviously.
C4C
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Moo.
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Regarding that final meme, I was this weeks old when I learned that SPLINTERLESS toilet paper was patented in 1935. Travel into the past has a very definite limit.
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Regarding an ice breaker in a business setting…
When I worked in the coporate world, we had this horrifying event called a skip review, where the group would meet with the bosses boss, WITH THE BOSS PRESENT. Our group really liked our boss (we all still get together many years later), but one time going through this I got to introduce myself. My interesting fact was my wife and I had an article about us in the Wall Street Journal. The (fanatically corporate ladder climbing) VP running the meeting was visibly outraged – “What!? How did you get in the WSJ? I’ve never been in an article in the WSJ!” I laughed, maybe not as politely as I should have. It was especially funny because the article was about how we WEREN’T busting our asses for the corporate climb, but instead had found a good balance with part-time high skill jobs and raising our three kids. I did refrain from saying that.
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That’s when you politely just say “Oh yeah: March twentieth, 1983. Page A-3, I think,” or whatever the look-it-up-yourself reference was, and leave it at that.
And you walk out after the meeting with your britches clanking, wearing the biggest brass bollocks in the building.
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That’s when you politely just say “Oh yeah: March twentieth, 1983. Page A-3, I think,” or whatever the look-it-up-yourself reference was, and leave it at that.
And you walk out after the meeting with your britches clanking, wearing the biggest brass bollocks in the building.
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Great collection! Amazing! Thank you very much!
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You know this is not a joke, right?
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Oh, yes, I am very well aware that this is not a joke.
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…and yes, the original says “canvass period”.
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Well, you see, it’s being used as a verb. English is weird.
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Maybe trials should be decided by a duel to the death between the opposing lawyers? 😁
(Either way, society wins!)
For the last time, the atomic bombs did not create Godzilla, they just woke him up.
Gee, that Plague Doctor must be Canadian. 😧
We could always reserve bombing L.A. as an option…
Our only ‘gun problem’ is the government’s incessant efforts to take them.
The Democrat party doesn’t just have a racist history; they’re even more racist today.
The structure on the right is marginally less ugly, and the North Koreans could never have afforded that giant tower crane.
The resemblance to Fauxcahontas is uncanny. Also disturbing.
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Actually Atomic (fission) bombs didn’t wake up Gojira Hydrogen Bombs (Castle Bravo in particular) did :-) . After the Lucky Dragon 5 incident, the Japanese were really leary of Hydrogen bombs.
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Oh, shoot. Who was it (whose story I mean) that had mathematicians dueling with weapons as part of their proofs/Klingon promotion?
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The Space X IPO/extraterrestrial Eve is the most intriguing.
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SFBS!
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“But to all things, there is an end.” — Ambassador Delenn
https://people.com/ancient-oak-tree-robin-hood-dies-1-200-years-12001579
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The Author is Foreshadowing again.
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There was 6.0 earthquake near Cuba that was felt in much of Florida recently; earthquakes are explicitly mentioned as foreshadowing.
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It mentioned soil compaction as an issue. This is why various redwood locations (like the comparatively nearby Calaveras Big Trees) build boardwalks on popular trails. (The grove next to the visitors’ center—literally 1000 feet or so away from the highway—has a boardwalk. The other groves, which require a long drive and a hike to reach, do not.)
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The clanker is only as good as its trainers and data set.
https://freebeacon.com/media/a-media-watchdog-is-helping-to-train-ai-models-it-says-chinese-propaganda-is-more-reliable-than-many-american-news-sources/?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email
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Why was their cable management so awful?
Signed: Software Test
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4. The due date kept getting pulled in.
5. HR got involved. (Imagining Borg HR <shudder> “We are Karen of The Borg HR…”)
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Who’s the new dude in the Rockwell? Whomever thought it would be obvious was wrong, I think.
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I believe it’s Vlad Tepes.
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I think it’s Vlad the Impaler.
Also, mods, there is a comment above from “website Administrator” saying the same thing. That’s from me, accidentally logged in as the admin of another site. Feel free to delete that (but apparently I can’t). Sorry.
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Thank you. I just asked you to change name. Eh.
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I believe it’s Vlad Tepes.
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I thought it was supposed by King Arthur.
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*to be
I shouldn’t comment unless I’ve had a good night’s sleep.
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No. Vlad Tepes.
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I think it’s Vlad Tepes?
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Let me make clear Website Administrator is his user name, not my Website Administrator.
WA, I highly suggest changing names, because it’s confusing.
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Vlad the Impaler.
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Also, if you don’t think people working 40 hours a week should be in poverty, then maybe you should look at your definition of “poverty” – because it sucks. (And what Picard said.)
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And how about those folks betting on a startup by working 90 hours a week for a pittance plus stock options, eating ramen every night and carpooling from shared apartments. They must be stopped, comrade.
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When my beloved saw the story about Europeans going nuts over ranch dressing he said, “If Heinz and Kraft have any sense they’ll make TSA-approved ranch dressing.”
Last night I read him a tweet saying Kraft has created multi-packs of ranch dressing that meet TSA standards he said, “What did I tell you?”
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God bless America, and God bless companies that address consumer wants and needs.
Because if people ask you to take their money, you should get them the dang product.
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I was going to suggest that someone tell the visitors about the dry ranch mix you can buy at the grocery store and mix with your own base (which I think is mayo; beats me, I don’t care for ranch).
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It’s been a while since I made it, but it might be based on buttermilk. I’m not sure what the buttermilk availability situation is Over There.
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At least it’s not hard to simulate buttermilk with standard milk and lemon juice.
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Same with Mayo or Salad Dressing (non-egg based Mayo). But over there should have sour cream or cream cheese, and 1/2&1/2.
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I haven’t been food shopping in the UK for almost thirty years, but then it was really hard to find clouted sour cream and cream cheese. It turns out those are American innovations.
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What’s clouted sour cream?
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–
Blink.
Wouldn’t know. Never been to Europe. Cows have been milked forever, butter and cheeses, have been around, that sour cream and cream cheese were a given. Good thing I presumed (not the other word), even if I was wrong.
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Powder Ranch can be mixed with Mayo, the fake mayo (salad dressing), sour cream, or even cream cheese; with some 1/2&1/2 mixed in with the latter two (more liquid).
Mayo? No. Don’t like.
Salad Dressing option. What I grew up with, instead of Mayo, no one else in the household likes, so don’t bother.
Cream Cheese or Sour Cream. Best for chip dips.
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Re. the Battle of Cambrai. The Germans invented a new word, Tankschrecken, or “tank terror” to describe the emotions the soldiers described as they saw the first British tanks rolling over the trenches. The guys fled, and the Brits would have made a huge gain of territory if they’d been able to follow up in the initial attack.
I read the original reports when I was doing research in the German Army Research Archive. It was fascinating.
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Stirling and Drake used it as a plot embellishment in The Chosen.
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Cambrai wasn’t just tanks. In contrast to the feed-infantry-into-the-meatgrinder-of-trench-warfare “strategy” combined with “hold all these tens of thousands of cavalry back in the rear so they can exploit the ‘big breakthrough’ once the infantry stops malingering” of the British command from 1914, Cambrian 1917 was an example of decentralized “commanders intent” mission-oriented-orders style command by General Byng, where individual units operated on their own discretion under a guiding intent and knowledge of the overall context.
But the initial attack was as far as that went. When one of the first “combined arms” attacks ever tried, with artillery and air and armor and infantry actually cooperating and supporting each other dynamically, the attack broke through the Hindenburg line so effectively that the troops basically ran out of “commanders intent”. Byng had not explained clear follow on objectives, and so there was really no breakthrough planning. Those distributed frontline commanders could not work toward a common post-breakthrough goal as Byng did not communicate what that was, either before or once a breakthrough was achieved – Should they widen the breach? Push through and capture the town of Cambrai? Mop up in place while follow on forces passed through and took up the attack? With no clear intent individual units did some of each. And then the British Army reverted to centralized top-down control and the momentum was lost.
Cambrai was the shape of future warfare. The German Wehrmacht 23 years later proved they had learned this lesson in the attack on France, and the U.S. Army basically used “commanders intent” mission style of decentralized warfare from fairly early on in Europe and the Pacific.
There is a fair argument that a sustained “big push” centered on the Cambrai breakthrough could have broken the entire northern section if the western front and ended the war years early.
Tanks were a definite factor, but the whole thing was revolutionary.
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I’ll just leave this here:
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No, no, you should definitely take that with you. We don’t want it. 🤮
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Don’t want it. I do believe she’s a woman, though an unusually….sturdy… one. What seems certain is that she’s the center of her personal universe.
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Thank you for the memes. My favorites were the bricks one and the Oppenheimer one. In Sean Connery’s defense Zardoz was 20 years before LOTR, and it probably traumatizshed him into avoid shcriptsh he did not undershtand.
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My one word answer to, “Did Sean Connery ever make a bad movie?”
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Any actor worth watching always makes plenty of bad movies, because they care about staying gainfully employed. The ones who are heralded for their ability to choose projects well are usually pretentious, constipated intellectuals who have enough forebrain to be good at evaluating scripts and not enough backbrain to understand how to connect with audiences. There are exceptions, like Clint Eastwood, but they are few and far between.
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There9s a current faux-shock fest over Spielberg’s latest being a flop. He’s certainly made bad movies before, but one flop almost killed his career: “1941” starring John Belushi. That massive failure meant the next film he made had to also have George Lucas on the credits to get a greenlight, which was “Raiders of the Lost Ark” and restored his solo mojo. But he’s definitely flopped really hard before.
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Mostly it’s a bummer this time because he’s unlikely to have time for a comeback this go-round. He turns 80 this year.
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Depends on whether that’s a Biden 80 or a Trump 80. 😁
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Good point, but i was more thinking about how his contemporaries Scorsese and Coppola have decidedly not gone out on top.
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I guarantee you that you don’t hate your IT person having to pull up a chair as much as your IT person hates having to pull up a chair.
Especially if there is only one chair.
As annoying as it may be for you, please don’t stand over them, even if you are just curious. You can be curious over to the side a bit.
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I’m celebrating Juneteeth.
This weekend we’re doing a convention in Dayton, Ohio. In downtown Dayton, street parking is free on weekends, and on holidays. Since June 19 is now a holiday, I got free parking all three days, which reduces our break-even point a few dollars — and as this convention is turning out weaker than we’d hoped, every dollar we don’t have to make will help us get into the black.
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Our State Parks department decided to celebrate Juneteenth by putting out a “historian park pass” which gets four people in FOR FREE to almost all of them, through the end of the year. And it’s available through July 6th, which makes me think that they want to make sure people celebrating the 250th notice it as well.
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Vulcan poker. Win!
Just an armchair historian, but, yeah.
Flexible definition of okay. Oh yes.
More guns!
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I was rather fond of the Home Desperate knee DIY rebuild kit. OTOH, $SPOUSE thinks I should wait for a contractor. :)
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I also think you (and Dan) should wait for experts.
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With regards to the Medieval Fantasy Castle Library Dewey Decimal debacle: I completely agree about just how jarring that is!
Everyone knows that proper scholars would be using the Library of Congress system!
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Medieval library catalogued books with absolute positions. Hence, neither rhyme nor reason except order of acquisition.
Regine Pernoud in Those Terrible Middle Ages! paused in her discussion of the myths to mention that she was able to find a book by herself in a Chicago library using that wonderful system that French libraries were beginning to adapt. (She then went on to explain that when she returned to France, she was unable to find any books by that author in a very respected French library, because while he was French, he was also medieval.)
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I actually achieved the very rare “Gas Tank Cap Loose” light Saturday. It was right! The gas cap was loose. I was confused when it didn’t go away immediately; I had to drive it a mile or so before it went out.
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I,showed this to my stepson, who has two kids. It was a video call but it certainly looked like he blushed.
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Tank eyes….
If the tank is green, or green based camo, bonus if you use “Kermit the Frog” eyes.
Saw an Abrams in 24ID long ago (sand color) with the Alan Parsons / Egyptian eyes on the turret. Looked like a pro had done the work. You just know someone eventually had to freak out and order it pained over. Sigh….
Also saw one with “glad to see you” on the tube. Heh. A student of classics, obviously.
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