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Nope.  We're doomed.

It is against my religion to tell people they're going to be okay when they're fucked.

The moving finger writes,
And having writ, moves on.
Now we are all sons of bitches.

Sound off nerds, who's not dead yet?

I am alive, but only on the outside.  There is no inside, and never was.

Now me, I am all for abortion on demand. Tbh with you, there's a damn fine case to be made for it being compulsory for a lot of folk.

Your fascist tendencies are showing.

Compulsory abortion, like forced sterilization, belongs under the umbrella of eugenics.  Prohibiting abortions for those belonging to the superior breed of human is morally indistinguishable from mandating abortions for those you've decided are inferior.

I wouldn't be particularly surprised if you subscribe to the notion that criminality is inherited.

I'm not surprised, but I am horrified.

That is not the light at the end of the tunnel.

No, that's just daylight reflecting off the company president's buttocks, as he moons us while he prances off to exercise his stock options.

Sally:  "Seriously.  Also, I don't think this CAN be weaponized."

Oh, she is adorable.

I hadn't heard the term before yesterday, but evidently "sun-wheel" is a reference to the swastika, and it's a nazi dog-whistle.

I've been watching cryptocurrency for the last couple years, doing a bit of research, and I've frankly fallen in love with it.

But time rolled on, and after a while hanging out with various crypto-currency-skeptic communities, I finally became tired of it.  I'd learned what I could, and crucified my share of True Believers, but I wasn't having a good time anymore.  The pattern was just repeating with minor variations.

And then I disconnected from those skeptic groups, and cryptocurrency abruptly vanished from my radar.  Unexpectedly, it had far less of a share of the public consciousness than even I believed.  Months go by without encountering even a mention of it.  I have no idea if bitcoin's price is $10, or $10 million.  It doesn't matter.

First I ignore you, then I laugh at you, then you lose, and I go back to ignoring you again.

An adaptation of "Between the Sheets".


1 oz. Cointreau
1 oz. brandy (St. Remy VSOP)
1/2 oz. dark rum (Gosling's Black Seal)
1/2 oz. Dry Curaçao
1/4 oz. fresh lemon juice

Stir with ice cubes and strain.

Woo!  I love these threads.

In my guise as "unknown new guy" I suggested doing an autopsy on the Hentai Death Machine.  I was shouted down, and over the next two days, they slew two more manikins.

Their debug culture definitely needs improvement.  "Take it apart and see if anything looks wrong" should have been their first reaction.  Well, maybe second, after "check the cables".

This wildfire season, I got myself an outdoor air quality sensor.  For smoke wafting from 100s of km away, the most interesting metric is PM2.5 (particulate matter under 2.5 micrometers in diameter).

As you'd expect, when the air is blue, and everyone's coughing and their eyes are burning, the reported PM2.5 is pretty high (100+ µg/m³).  And when the PM2.5 is down to 3 or 4 µg/m³, the air is very clear.

But then one's expectations fall apart.  Humidity doesn't actually improve the air quality--it just ameliorates the worst of the symptoms.  Rain generally doesn't settle the particulate matter out of the air.  And, horrifyingly, there's a wide range of unhealthy values that are not detectable to humans.

The WHO's guidelines are that the concentration should not exceed 5 on a yearly average, and shouldn't exceed a daily average of 15 for more than a few days a year.

Outside, right now, the air seems fresh and clear....and the sensor is reporting 29 µg/m³.  The air I breathe is shortening my life, and I can't do a damn thing about it.

At least I can be a maggot clinging onto its corpse.

Blessed are the maggots; but the fungi shall inherit the earth.  Therefore seek thou to become as the mushroom, which bringeth forth life out of decay.

A corpse...should be left well alone.

[Day 1.]

Mom saw something in the garden.  Big, she says, with a flat tail.  She's worried it's a rat.  It's not.  It's a ground-squirrel.  Fucking colonists.

My attention is drawn to a burrow in the neighbour's garden box; a squirrel pops up its head and peeps at me.  The neighbour has covered some of her plants with plastic bottles, to protect them.  Another neighbour--a "handyman"--apparently suggests pouring vinegar down the hole.  What an idiot.

Rat traps are too small for squirrels, so I make a trip to Cabela's, and buy a #0 Victor Longspring.  It doesn't come with instructions.  It doesn't need them.

Outside, behind the garage, there's a group of little ones playing.  Four of them.  They're adorable, almost unbearably cute.  I feel bad about what's going to happen.  But it's them or me.

Day 1.

I set the trap near the back of the garage, with peanut butter on the trigger, and a couple almonds within the trap, for good measure.

One of the little ones dies of a broken neck.  They're not so cute when they're dead; the rodent teeth and squinty eyes make them look more rat-like.

Reset.

Within half an hour, another is dead.  An adult, this time.  Fractured skull.

A couple hours pass, with no further activity.  Have they smartened up?  But no--there's a little face looking at me from a gap below the neighbour's fence.  I move the trap there.

Reset.

The third squirrel, another juvenile, survives--at first.   It's caught by a leg, desperately trying to get away; but, this trap comes with a chain for a reason.  The chain is staked firmly to the ground.

I don't want to do this.  I didn't sign up for this.  I like squirrels.  But.

I get a crowbar from the garage, and pull on the trap chain with my free hand, dragging the squirrel out from under the fence.

It doesn't die with the first hit.

I hit it again, twice...and then stop.  I really want it to be dead, to be done with this, but I don't want squirrel guts splattered everywhere, either.

It stops moving.  The corpse is disposed of; the blood is washed from the crowbar.

A crowbar isn't naturally a great weapon, regardless of what the videogames might make you think, I reflect.  Or maybe killing with a blunt instrument is a skill I just don't have yet.

Yet?

I feel sick.  I'll get over it.

Day 2.

I set the trap by the fence again.  The trap goes off almost immediately...and I see a squirrel escaping.  Drat.

Reset.

The trap snaps again...but it's just a mouse this time.  A Victor #0 is not a suitable trap for capturing mice.  It's almost been bisected, but it's still quivering.  A squirrel peeps out from under the fence, watching.  Bastard.

I chuck the mouse in the back alley.  The corvids can deal with it.

Reset.

I'm going back to check the trap again, when there's a sudden flurry of activity.  Please, not another survivor, I think to myself.  But the activity soon ceases.  This one is caught by the head.  It's still breathing erratically, but...not for very long.  I hear its final breath, sort of a hiss.

Reset.

I've seen one adult, and four pups, and killed four squirrels so far.  There's probably only one left.  Is it smart enough to leave?

No.

No, it's not.

This one survives, too; again, caught by a leg.  This time, I get an axe.  Mom tells me to use the blunt end---but as I approach, the squirrel curls into the trap frame, so I can't hit it without damaging the trap.

After a brief conference, Mom brings me a wide-mouth glass jar, one that she uses to clean paint brushes in.  I lift the trapped squirrel up via the trap-chain, lower it into the jar, and then fill the jar with rainwater.

It takes the squirrel a long time to drown.  Even after a few minutes, it's still twitching sporadically, and I don't want anyone getting bitten, so I wait.

Eventually, it stops.

I've killed five squirrels in two days.  I am not a natural killer.  But the nausea will pass.

Reset.

 

That was beautiful.

My employer launched an internal-use AI chat bot, to some fanfare.  In practice, it just repeats email sent from the IT department's ticket system, and fails miserably as a search engine.  ELIZA was smarter.

A co-worker, as an experiment, decided to use the chat-bot to accomplish one of the example tasks it was supposed to be able to help with:  Request a new mouse from IT.

There was confusion, and hilarity, and an point when he was told his mouse was ready for pickup at the head office on the other side of the country.  He finally got his mouse over a month later.