This post reminded me, but I don’t think I’ve ever laughed so hard in a work setting as when my Peruvian co-worker was attempting to say “hippopotamus” and just uttered the most hilarious combination of syllables I’ve ever heard one human emit.
No, we were not laughing at her. She was laughing just as hard as we all were. And she still cannot say “hippopotamus.” But she is getting better.
Cisco is cutting over 4,000 jobs for the second time this year.
Things are rough in the tech world. Glad I’m not having to look for a job right now. Nearly 300,000 people laid off in a year and a half, and even more than that not counted because RTO and other slimy methods were used to do stealth layoffs. So, say, 500K tech jobs lost in that time. That’s a helluva lot.
Sometimes, I wish it were true that “men only think about sex” and that sex is all we care about. Because then I’d probably have a lot more of it.
‘Doing the least obvious thing’: Ukraine embarrasses Putin with surprise assault on southern Russia.
That has been a political and propaganda win for sure. I thought the Russians would beat this attack back much more quickly than they did. So the incursion (as the article says) has been deeply embarrassing for Russia and will increase Ukraine’s support. The longer they can stay in country, the better.
And as I already mentioned it’s causing the loony left (Ian Welsh et al.) to go fucking nuts. And that is beautiful to watch, too.
In what situations do boobs hurt?
When you’re being eaten by a lion or a hippopotamus.
Next question.
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Indeed. Tight, coordinated combined-arms exercises is what the US military really fucking excels at. Ignoring prep time, the US military could completely spank the Russian forces in Ukraine in 6 weeks. It’d be an embarrassing slaughter. All the drones in the world would not change that. A passel of AGM-88 HARMs for a few weeks, a wing or two of A-10s, many more Bradleys and a healthy sprinkling of JDAMs dropped from F/A18s and F-22s and Russia would be routed just by air power alone. (Not that Bradleys are air power, but you get what I mean.)
To the extent that the Russian military looks good, it only seems that way in comparison to a country with 1/4 its population, 1/10 its GDP, nearly no close air support and a severe lack of ammo. The US would absolutely annihilate the Russians without much effort.
I’ve written so much complicated-ass CSS for this site it’s getting to be that I can’t remember what half of the older stuff does. My brain is too big for my brain.
Oof.
It never occurred to me the shooting an entire picture in one room would be a problem. In fact I felt I could turn it into an advantage. One of the most important dramatic elements for me was the sense of entrapment those men must have felt in that room. Immediately a ‘lens-plot’ occurred to me. As the picture unfolded, I wanted the room to seem smaller and smaller. That meant that I would slowly shift to longer lenses as the picture continued. Starting with a normal range (28mm-40mm) we progressed to 50mm, 75mm and 100mm lenses.
In addition, I shot the first third of the movie above eye level. And then, by lowering the camera, shot the second third at eye level and the last third below eye level. In that way, by the end, the ceiling began to appear. Not only were the walls closing in, the ceiling was as well. The sense of increasing claustrophobia did a lot to raise the tension of the last part of the movie.
On the final shot, an exterior that showed the jurors leaving the courtroom, I used a wide angle lens. Wider than any that had been used in the entire picture. I also raised the camera to the highest above eye-level-position. The intention was to literally give us all air, to let us finally breathe, after two increasingly confined hours.
Boris Kaufman, photographer, in Making Movies by Sidney Lumet
Nuclear power: no, yes, maybe, but not like this.
One of the few analyses I’ve seen that is not completely clownish. Gets a few things wrong but nothing that destroys the thesis.
China is able to build a nuclear reactor for under $3 billion, so there’s no reason a nuke in the EU should cost €10 billion-€15 billion+ to construct. Something fishy is going on there, obviously.
Here’s what 45 years of nuclear waste looks like:
In contrast, if you gathered all the waste of a coal plant it’d be a lake two miles around and two miles deep (-ish, this math is not exact). And it would’ve generated more radioactivity in that time (for no purpose at all) than an equivalent nuke plant.
Even though we can easily afford it, it’s still shocking how much a simple dinner for two is out at a mid-range restaurant. It’s more than 2x as much as it was before the pandemic.
The inflation numbers are convenient lies.
I see the Covidians are still banging on about Long Covid and all that other shit. Long Covid is real, but it’s much less impactful to many fewer people than they’d have you believe. Covid is basically just a mild cold for 99.8% of the population now.
But it’s a religion and thus doctrinal beliefs are organized around it. Such is the human condition. As with QAnon, it’s a way for powerless people to take back some measure of control from an indifferent, uncaring world. Sad to see in both cases.
What puzzles me about people like Ian Welsh and many others who worship at the feet of autocrats like Putin and Xi is…do they really think the world would be a better place with totalitarian leaders like that in control? Do they think their own lives would be better?
What in the world is the damn end goal there? Having lived in authoritarian countries (Egypt, China) I can tell you that what they imagine would be some paradisaical existence almost certainly would not be. And I will never, ever understand the obsession with Putin and their worship of him. He’s a petty thug. He’s a weasel. He’s got more delusions of grandeur than Anakin Skywalker. Worshiping Putin is fucking embarrassing.
America is not perfect. But if I had to choose, I’d live here a thousand times out of a thousand versus Russia. I truly do think Ian Welsh and all his Putin-cozying compatriots should emigrate to Russia and sign up for some meat waves being spammed across the front lines in Ukraine. If they are true believers, it’d make sense to show Putin their true level of devotion.
Of course they won’t do that. Because it’s all the middle-age equivalent of being a 15-year-old edgelord. Except even more clownish.
And for anyone who says Ian Welsh is not a Putinoid:
Fuckin’ LOL.
Good for them — though I still think the operation is strategically pointless from a military perspective. Politically, though, it’s been a rousing success. It shows that Putin is weak, Russia is overextended militarily, and that Ukraine can execute a meaningful op if they are not held back by absurd restrictions on their use of force against a brutal occupying enemy.
And not as important but still funny, it makes the Putinoids like Ian Welsh fucking apoplectic. That is a small reward, but a nice one nonetheless.