It was Raid Night (sunday, 9:00pm) for my World of Warcraft raiding guild, and we had a couple of guests along for the quests. Per usual procedure, we were all collected in audio-chat, logged in to WoW, and most of us had a bottle of wine or some beer open, and as the raid continued – as was our wont – we got merry.
In case you don’t know about it, NASA has semi-crowdsourced the Juno explorer’s camera: you can get raw data of Jupiter and join a collective that are trying to help decide where to target.
… Xi and Putin are trying to achieve a political solution to a political problem. I’m terrified that the US will do something stupid because it’s not the power sitting at the head of the Grownup Table. Actually, the US is mysteriously absent from the Grownup Table. Oh, look, over there in the corner, wearing the “dunce” hat, it’s America!
On July 4, 1776, a bunch of would-be oligarchs declared the independence of the American colonies.
In an earlier posting, I set up a general attack on fields of study with an aim to being able to claim that they are “discredited” [stderr] – so that, at some point, we can say “phrenology is bunk” without having to endure a cascade of phreno-apologetics in response.
It’s hard to understand the bizzaro-world where authoritarians live. As a skeptical person, I tend to think about what authority figures say, and question their motives and whether what they’re saying even makes any sense at all.
As I mentioned [stderr]: Fuck his highness Vajiralongkorn of Thailand.
Cardinal Pell has been charged with sex offenses. [bbc]
True Leaders
I know it’s all the fashion, in some circles, to belittle the “mainstream media” for being hard on Donald Trump – but I think the media ought to be more direct and less cautious in its wording.