WARNING: Violence
Surveillance videos of the bombing in Nashville are cropping up from all over. I’m able to keep a certain detachment from what’s happening by focusing my interest on the explosion and its effects, and hypothesizing how it was arranged.
It’s very relaxing and satisfying to sit, with some music playing in the background, and shape a piece of silver with a file. There is none of the worry associated with rapid metal removal using a grinder; you really can’t screw things up at this speed.
The Habaki, a small copper or other metal collar that goes between the tang and handle of a Japanese blade, is an essential component for managing the force of impact so that the handle does not split when it’s used.
Would you like to see a glimpse into the kind of embarrassing shit Americans are going to come up with as the climate crisis continues to bite? My prediction is: if you think our response to COVID-19 was lethally stupid, “you ain’t seen nothin’ yet.”
From the charring damage, it looks like a bunch of ammoniun nitrate.
Apparently it appears to have been targeting an AT&T building. Maybe Qanoners going after 5G?
I suppose I could have farted around with the font a bit to make it look pseudo-Greek, but if we just stick with Times New Roman, it might breeze right past, unnoticed.
Usually, I hibernate during the holidays, and use them as an excuse to unplug, not talk to anyone, and pretend that I’m busy.
I have added another book to my recommended reading list [stderr] Nancy Isenberg’s White Trash: The 400-Year Untold History of Class in America. In the last few months, I have gone backward and forward through it, trying to make sense of how the facts it exposes fit with my historical understanding.
If you pay any attention to US history, you know that slavery and racism are one of the supporting institutions that have defined and shaped the United States. You cannot understand the United States without understanding slavery and racism. But, that understanding has always felt incomplete, to me; I knew there was more. Obviously, there are details, but what is the big picture?
This may be a bit scatter-shot; there’s a lot to cover, and I’m going to try to fold in some answers to comments on my previous posting on the topic. [stderr] I also want to predict the future, so I can say “I told you so!” when it happens.
To be frank, cybersecurity pisses me off so much whenever I think about it, that it’s almost painful to write about. But the questions are interesting and worthy of respect.
Some mornings, when your alarm clock fires off, you just roll over and slap the “snooze” button. If you do that long enough, you can get quite good at it; there have been mornings when I hit the “snooze” button 15 or more times in a row, pushing back my wake-up time by as much as 2 hours. I used to know someone who claimed that they could sleep-walk through their morning status meeting, effectively grabbing several extra hours of sleep.