I saw “Arrival” thursday night, and I loved it. Some spoilers may follow:
Stderr
All the unbuffered error messages
I saw “Arrival” thursday night, and I loved it. Some spoilers may follow:
The book “Stalin’s Spy: Richard Sorge and the Tokyo Spy Ring” is worth reading for those of you who are interested in spy-craft. He has nothing to do with the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor and therefore everything to do with the American’s failure to listen to their signals intelligence analysts who had cracked the Japanese PURPLE code system and were desperately trying to warn the state department that something was coming over the horizon.
I first heard this during a filksing at Balticon in 1980. There was a local group called “Clam Chowder” that used to perform twice a night at the con; it’s where I learned the words to “The Band Played Waltzing Matilda” – a song which had a lot to do with turning me anti-war.
Every December 7, the US’ ultranationalists make a point of beating the war-drums and waving the bloody shirts. “We must never be surprised again!” they argue. [Read more…]
Over at warisboring (one of my favorite blogs) there’s an article about the drone pilot who is collecting so much footage of the police brutality at Standing Stones Camp.
If so: why? Unless everyone’s been born yesterday, they ought to realize that – now that those are marketing channels – there are marketing sleaze coming along to “astroturf” people’s follower lists and “maximize” their “potential” base.
Jean Meslier
“Never,” says Pascal, “do we do evil so thoroughly and so willingly as when we do it through a false principle of conscience.”
The “Internet of Things” is mostly dumb things. I particularly dislike voice-activated things (because then you inevitably wind up with loud morons in the seat behind you on an airplane telling their cell phone “Hang up, please.”)
Adam Curtis’ video “Bitter Lake” has an interesting little aside about some unexpected effects of geo-engineering in Helmand Province, Afghanistan. It raised the water table, which raised salinity closer to the surface of farmlands, which had the result of killing certain crops, but not others.
Since I spend a lot of time on airplanes and sitting in airports, I listen to a variety of podcasts (they work at 10,000 feet!) including the “Stuff You Missed in History Class” podcast.
They did an episode on the Dakota War of 1862, and it’s really really depressing – especially given what’s going on right now at the noDAPL protests/Standing Rock.
White America is at it again, clearing the indigenous peoples from their lands. As I write this, the governor of North Dakota has ordered an “emergency evacuation” because you know, it’s getting cold, and all the protesters had better go where it’s warm so the bulldozers can get back to work in spite of, you know, the cold.