When I ordered my copy of The File [stderr] I decided to do a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request for my FBI and CIA files. [stderr]
Stderr
All the unbuffered error messages
Timothy Garton Ash writes us a book about reviewing the Stasi – the East German secret police – file on himself. [amazon]
There’s some vague stuff in the news about United airlines cockpit door protocol maybe being partially revealed. Short form: don’t worry.
Jean Meslier
We may be asked if atheism can suit the multitude? I reply, that every system which demands discussion is not for the multitude.
When I read some of this stuff, I wind up sitting and scratching my head, missing my lead foil-lined hat. Conspiracy theorists and fake news make it hard to know what’s what, sometimes, and you can’t tell if you’re looking at a story or disinformation to create a story. Or, are you looking at disinformation intended to obscure a story?
Today the news is all a’flutter about the massive malware/extortion attack on hospitals all over the place. The sky is falling!
New Orleans’ statue of Jefferson Davis was finally taken down. And there was great wailing and gnashing of teeth. Davis is more popular with today’s racist fringe than he ever was when he was president of the racist fringe.
Finding weird stuff on Ebay is a hobby of mine, and my friends know me as a person who is good at sourcing the right thing for a project. So I get asked “where can I find X?” for many X. Sometimes I get stared at, like the time a guest mentioned that they wanted to make a kill jar for insect-collecting and I asked “how are those made?” Apparently it’s a jar with a base layer of plaster of paris that you can pour ethyl acetate into, so the vapors release into the jar and kill insects without damaging them much. So I hopped up, went to the kitchen cabinet, and came up with a Weck jar, some hydrocal and a 500ml bottle of anyhdrous ether. What, don’t you have that sort of thing in your kitchen?
It was a lovely spring day in 2000, around May, I think, that I decided to fire up the jeep and drive to work in it for a change. The jeep (I don’t have pictures, unfortunately) was a 1976 CJ-5 with a V-8 engine, a moderate lift, big tires, and steel I-beam front and rear bumpers. I bought it for $2500 off Norm L., who had owned it for a decade or so and wanted to get rid of it because he never drove it. It was a great thing to pull stumps with, or put the wheel locks in, and go 4x4ing around the yard in when the snow got deep. Since it had no top, it just filled with snow in the winter, but you could climb in, sit in the snow, and start right up.
This is just a quick cross-link, I haven’t got much to add, because it’s already weirder than I can make it. [atlas]