“People want to de-legitimize my American-ness, and then April 15 rolls around and suddenly I’m American.” – Roxane Gay
Stderr
All the unbuffered error messages
“People want to de-legitimize my American-ness, and then April 15 rolls around and suddenly I’m American.” – Roxane Gay
Our president knows things about uranium! So do I!
“We had Hillary Clinton give Russia 20 percent of the uranium in our country. You know what uranium is, right? It’s a thing called nuclear weapons and other things. Like lots of things are done with uranium, including some bad things” – Donald Trump
Most bombs nowadays are plutonium, but that’s a little detail. Nuclear weapons-making, though, is something that beggars my imagination when it comes to complexity, which is why I’ve always been interested in it. These are a few random factoids that stick in my mind from a lifetime of collecting random factoids…
A little salad with a sort of miso/ginger dressing is a typical Japanese restaurant amuse bouche. I liked it so much that, a few years ago, I decided to come up with my own version.
One of the hard parts about putting my opinion out here in a blog is that I have to turn over all my ideas and attitudes and look at them more carefully. I’ve done that, regarding computer security stuff, for around 25 years, and I like to think I’ve dislodged most of the B.S. But, when you start publishing your opinions about art, music, food, F-35s, military glory, and good scent oils to put in soap – it gets harder. Because I’ve suddenly moved into this weird grey zone where I know I’m writing about my opinion but I don’t want to take the attitude: “well this here is my opinion and if you don’t like it, F you.” Because that’s not how to have an opinion. To have an opinion you have to actually think about why you have that opinion, and then you can decide whether it’s defensible or not.
Does anyone still believe that it’s “just metadata” that the NSA is collecting and sharing with the FBI?
Michael Flynn doesn’t.
As the police and intelligence agencies continue to collect more and more information, it’s all OK because they’re good custodians of that information: they keep it secure where hackers can’t get at it and publish it, and you need clearances to get at it.
Yeah, right.
Is this the right room for an argument?
I’m going to try something here that I consider daunting: as a side effect of this module, I will attempt to offer a refutation of two important paradoxes/arguments that bedevil philosophers and skeptics. Not one, but two! In the interest of Argument Clinic, however, I am willing to fail in the attempt even though it may leave me covered with shame and ripped to pieces by The Commentariat(tm)
In fencing, a destroying parry is one in which the defender’s blade kills the momentum of the attacker’s blade, leaving them in a known position for a riposte.
The diversity and wonderfulness of performing arts and music makes me so happy! I almost turned my “Sunday Night” posting in a huge list of diverse artists, but I thought it would be better to stick with just 2, and keep it focused on the story telling honky tonk side of things.
Jean Meslier
Men persuade themselves that religion is the most serious affair in the world for them, while it is the very thing which they least examine for themselves.
Johnny Vector suggested Bruce Cockburn’s “If I had a rocket launcher” and I am now quite the fan. First off, the sentiments really resonate with me: there are a lot of people in the world I wouldn’t hesitate to inhume if I they had the misfortune to step in front of my big-ass truck. I cried more over the deer I hit than I’d cry over Dick Cheney, for example, and I was mostly upset about that I had to write off my Toyota Tundra. I’d cheerfully trade a truck for some of these guys…
If I had a rocket launcher!!!!