Archive for the ‘Bagatelle’ Category

Bagatelle (#9)

Thursday, December 20th, 2018

Throwaway post instead of content. My five favorite Christmas songs:

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Bagatelle (#8)

Tuesday, October 9th, 2018

The second most amusing thing I read yesterday:

…while our engineering teams have put a lot of effort and dedication into building Google+ over the years, it has not achieved broad consumer or developer adoption, and has seen limited user interaction with apps. The consumer version of Google+ currently has low usage and engagement: 90 percent of Google+ user sessions are less than five seconds.

“less than five seconds”. As a friend of mine put it, that’s “Oops, I clicked on the wrong link. (close)”

(If that’s second, what was the most amusing thing? The MLB RICO story, of course.)

Today I learned…

Wednesday, May 2nd, 2018

..the Hebrew for “Hold my beer”.

Bagatelle (#7)

Tuesday, April 17th, 2018

Southwest Airlines is having a bad day.

…passengers cried, screamed, vomited, and sent goodbye texts to their families during the attempted landing.

Crying, screaming, vomiting, and texting? Sounds like every Southwest flight I’ve ever been on.

This, on the other hand, sounds more serious: an uncontained engine failure that sent shrapnel into the aircraft and possibly into the passenger cabin? I thought post-Sioux City the FAA had gotten a lot harder on manufacturers about that sort of thing. RoadRich, care to comment?

Edited to add: reports are now stating that at least one person is dead.

Facebook admits it does track non-users, for their own good

“Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.”
–C.S. Lewis

Typically a retailer may return unsold merchandise to the manufacturer. But in this case, Dick’s Sporting Goods has decided to destroy them.
“We are in the process of destroying all firearms and accessories that are no longer for sale as a result of our February 28th policy change,” a spokeswoman told the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. “We are destroying the firearms in accordance with federal guidelines and regulations.”

A few points:

1. Why does Dick’s still have modern sporting rifles in stock, five years after they announced they were going to stop selling them?

(That actually has an answer: Dick’s apparently fudged the truth, and has been selling modern sporting rifles at their “specialty Field and Stream stores”.)

2. If I were a Dick’s stockholder, I would be seriously peeved at the management for destroying inventory of a perfectly legal product to make a political point.

3. If I were a Dick’s stockholder, I’d also be seeking a sweeping change of management right about now.

There are many beautiful words in the English language.

Tuesday, February 20th, 2018

Here are four of them:

permanently enjoined from enforcing“.

Can’t afford it…

Friday, February 9th, 2018

but I want it anyway.

Mostly so I have a place to ride my pony. No, that’s not a euphemism. Actually, the whole reason I posted this is so I could embed a song I used to sing on my way out of Four Letter Computer Corporation on Friday afternoon. (Have I mentioned this previously?)

I love that line, “Kemosabi, kiss my ass, I’ve bought a boat, I’m going out to sea.”

(Hattip on Boaty McBoatface to Morlock Publishing.)

I have to say it…

Friday, February 9th, 2018

The Jaffer Drug Trafficking Organization, the San Antonio-based drug ring that Wesa was part of, distributed over 40,000 pounds of K2 to cities in Texas as well as cities in Missouri and Oklahoma, officials said.

20 tons of K2. Why, that’s a veritable mountain of K2.

Tweet of the day.

Thursday, February 8th, 2018

That Manhattan bullshit. When I am made God Emperor over All Creation, the use of tomatoes or a tomato based broth in clam chowder will be outlawed. A first offense will land you in the stocks, and people will be encouraged to throw rotten tomatoes at you. A second offense will result in public execution by being force fed stuffies.

History repeats itself…

Thursday, January 25th, 2018

…first as tragedy, second as farce.

Cray Cray.

Thursday, January 18th, 2018

When I was younger, I desperately wanted a desktop Cray.

Moore’s Law and all that (stuff), but this really brings home how much things have changed in (mumble mumble) years:

Bagatelle (#5).

Tuesday, June 20th, 2017

Could it be…SATAN?!

No. Actually, it wasn’t Satan at all. It was mass hysteria and a doctor who made a mistake.

I’ll throw this in just for fun: if you are a “dancer” who performs “in paint, latex, wax, gel, foam, film and coatings”, are you a nude dancer in the eyes of the law?

And why does it matter? Because clubs with “fully nude” dancers have to collect a state-mandated $5 entry fee.

…n January 2017 the comptroller amended its rules to include clubs that employ latex and paint-covered dancers as sexually oriented businesses.

Bagatelle (#4).

Wednesday, March 29th, 2017

If you told me I could only take one Talking Heads album to the desert island with me…it would be Stop Making Sense.

If, however, you said that it had to be a studio album, Remain In Light would be a good choice.

The thing that sort of surprises me is: he was able to hit 92 on MoPac. Then again, I can’t really tell what time of day it was, and traffic does thin out a little around the Braker Lane exit…

Apropos of nothing in particular, this post from Tam, in particular the last paragraph.