Raise your hand if you are old enough to remember the heyday of these terms:
LIHOP ("Let it happen on purpose") – suggests that key individuals within the government had at least some foreknowledge of the attacks and deliberately ignored it or actively weakened United States' defenses to ensure the hijacked flights were not intercepted. Similar allegations were made about Pearl Harbor. MIHOP ("Make/Made it happen on purpose") – that key individuals within the government planned the attacks and collaborated with, or framed, al-Qaeda in carrying them out. There is a range of opinions about how this might have been achieved.
Those were the leading contenders in the conspiracy theories surrounding the events of 9/11. Now the terms return in discussions of the White House Correspondents' Dinner shooting. I've heard various suggestions that the event was staged, and have read strong denials. Today I found this on Facebook: If it's true that the police had been notified and that the shooter was on a watch list, then his being able to check into a D.C. hotel begins looking suspicious.
The depiction of the tornado in the 1939 film was intense and remarkably well-executed, even by modern standards. I found a relevant Instagram post (which I don't know how to embed) that describes the basic technology used. The tornado isalso discussed at some length in an article at the Oz Museum. English majors and other wordsmiths will appreciate this aspect:
“Cyclone” is the word L. Frank Baum chose to describe the Kansas storm in his story, although he clearly meant “tornado.” Shortly after THE WIZARD OF OZ book first appeared in 1900, Professor Willis L. Moore, then Chief of the United States Weather Bureau, wrote Baum’s publishers to urge them to correct the inaccurate usage. He received a response from Frank K. Reilly of The George M. Hill Company, offering that the change would be made in the next edition. This, however, was never done, and any who purchase a copy of THE WIZARD OF OZ reprinting Baum’s original language will find that “cyclone” remains, again and again – as colloquial and as factually incorrect as ever. (MGM got around the issue in the movie by having Bert Lahr exclaim, in idiomatic fright, “It’s a twister! It’s a twister!” Later on, however, the screenwriters were loyal to Baum, and Judy Garland’s Dorothy explains to Toto, “We must be up inside the cyclone!”)
The article goes on to discuss the various static artistic depictions of the tornado in different publications of The Wizard of Oz, including this one - - in which the tornado is still present in Munchkinland. The Oz Museum article is nicely illustrated, but for explication of the movie technique, see the Instagram account.
This image of Icelandic horses at play in Germany was one of the Photos of the Week at The Atlantic. It got me wondering whether horses' manes provided evolutionary advantages that might have led to selection pressures affecting their size. I'm not a "horse person," so there is a fuckton of stuff I didn't know, nicely summarized at the relevant Wikipedia page.
A curiosity posted in the whatisthisthing subreddit by someone who saw it while visiting an open house. Informed discussion thread at the link indicates that this is in fact a "radiator thing" (properly termed "hydronic heater") in a "fin tube" style, and similar in intended function to a baseboard heater. I agree with this comment that it looks like an amateur hack:
That's not going to do much to heat the space because a slant fin radiator is meant to move air by convection. The normal installation is down low near the floor, not up high. Also usually below a window. They work by heating the cool air that's coming off the window and falling down on them.
And I find it curious that traversing the same room is what appears to be a hot water pipe wrapped to prevent heat escaping into the basement.
"Meghan McCain bleated out, “I don’t want to hear one more fucking criticism of Trump’s new ballroom at the White House,” which — briefly — seemed likely to be the most vacuous comment of the evening. Even by Meghan’s increasingly wooly standards, using the shooting at the DC Hilton as a pretext for building the $400 million ballroom seemed like a non-sequitur.
But it was quickly followed by what I am sure was a completely spontaneous and not at all coordinated flood of almost identical comments from the MAGA toady gallery, which didn’t feel the need to change the wording or the message. One does not have to be a member of the august punditocracy to note that MAGA reacted this way because MAGA was told to react this way..."
Text and image excerpted from the Charles Sykes substack To the Contrary. I'll append Trump's own tweet at 05:46 this morning about his "Militarily Top Secret Ballroom" - - which has been demanded by every President for the last 150 years. For fox ache.
The invitation was addressed from a high school classmate and sent to me personally and not to a group. Note that it requires not just a reply, but the downloading and installation of a program in order to validate the invite. A dangerous scam, which was recently featured in a NYT article about fake invitations:
Phishing scams involve “two distinct paths,” Ms. Tobac added. In one, the recipient is served a link that turns out to be dead, or so it seems. A click activates malware that runs silently as it gleans passwords and other bits of personal information. In all likelihood, this is what happened when Mr. Lantigua clicked on the ersatz invitation link. Another scam offers a working link. Potential victims who click on it are asked to provide a password. Those who take that next step are a boon to hackers. “They have complete control of your email and, in turn, your entire digital life,” Ms. Tobac said. “They can reset your password for your dog’s Instagram account. They can take over your bank account. Change your health insurance.”
Photo taken in the front yard of our post-wartime (1946) government housing in Arlington, Virginia. The address was 3422 A South Utah, which I see on Google maps is still a housing complex (our unit was under the red dot). I'm held by my mom, who had to retire from her career as an American Airlines stewardess when she became pregnant with me. Dad was a Navy lieutenant stationed stateside. Mom's sister Ona, on the right, was in the WAVES. Posted to share with family and as a relief from doomscrolling.
The color is "American flag blue. That’s the color of the industrial-grade pool topping that is going to applied to the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool as part of renovations on the century-old monument."
Here's another photo of the resurfacing, submitted by a frequent reader of TYWKIWDBI Here's how the reflecting pool used to look:
In any case, the discussion thread at the source immediately focused on how this foreshadows the "blue wave" coming in the mid-terms. Addendum: An anonymous reader offers the following information, which may greatly change the interpretation of this event:
Umm.. this part of the approved restoration of the reflecting pool, kicked off in 2010 [Obama administration] and again in 2023. The reflecting pool was built on marshland that had been drained and supplemented with dredged material from the Potomac River. Constructed without an underlying support structure, the pool sat directly on this soft ground. And filled with over 6 million gallons of water it, it started sinking into the ground and leaking. In the 1980s' they poured concrete into the pool to try to stablize the pool. But by 1986 it was losing 500,000 gallons of water per week. Between 2010-2012 they did major repairs, but the repairs havent held. A plan was proposed in 2023 to tear out the reflecting pool and totally replace it for $301 M. However, an alternative plan to coat the bottom of the pool with a standard industrial pool coating to seal it was devised. That is estimated to come out to $2-8 M total, and save up to $1 M in annual costs to repair and refill the reflecting pool. And that's where the blue color comes from -- standard pool bottom sealant color, and picked to reflect the sky since its a reflecting pool.
When I was two years old I fell ill while my family was visiting relatives in the small town of Ada, MN (west of Leech Lake and Itasca, near the ND border). I was hospitalized for four days. Above is the complete hospital bill (I've photoshopped out my mom's name, but the rest is undoctored). How things have changed, not just re pricing, but in terms of the complexity of billing..... Reposted from 2007, because the more I think about this, the staggering change is in the complexity of billing. Addendum: I may have posted this one before as well. It's from 13 years later (1961) for orthopedic surgery at the Mayo Clinic to correct some of my polio deformities: Surgeons fees $375. Three xrays $54. Seven blood tests $29. Grand total $648. Balance due after Blue Cross Blue Shield insurance: $75. How things have changed...
Image edited for size, color, brightness, and contrast from a garish photo at the whatisgthisthing subreddit. The discussion thread is reasonably focused and includes an explanation of termionology:
"They’re called Dutchmen, they’re shaped like footballs to cover long knots or splits.... That’s not a Dutchman. Dutchmen are also called bow ties because that’s what they are shaped like. This is a biscuit.... No. It’s a Dutchman. A Dutchman can be any shape and is used to hide blemishes. A bow tie is a Dutchman key and is used either for decoration or to stop cracking. This may be the same shape as a biscuit but it’s not a biscuit because of how it’s used. Biscuits are for joining wood... Can confirm, I work maintenance at a fulfillment center and if a conveyor belt suffers damage one of the options is to cut out the damaged section across its entire width and then lace in a length of new belt to fill the gap. We commonly do 8 ft Dutchmans to allow the entirely of the patch to be inside the pulleys of the main drive and still have both lacing visible and accessible, should the lacing fail then the Dutchman isn't all wadded up in the drive..."
And as to why one would cut knots our of plywood:
"Knots in wood are much more dense than the stringy, normal wood. When they make plywood, they layer thin strips (plys) of wood together and glue them to one another like a wood-and-glue sandwich. The problem arises when there is a dense, brittle knot on either of the two exposed plys on the plywood sheet. Shaving a slice of a dense knot gives you a super brittle portion that often ends up crumbling out in crumbs. Think of it like having a sheet of paper with a small section of equally as thin glass embedded into the paper. You can bend the paper portion, cut the paper portion easily with scissors, but the little glass portion has different properties. It's more dense, but you can't bend it or stress it or else it will shatter."
Hat tips to the commenters. More at the link. I know this is TMI, but I'm desperately trying to keep my mind off that clusterfuck of the U.S./Israel/Iran war ruining the world economy. Addendum: As I continued on this topic, I found an entire Wikipedia page on Dutchmen. Evidently the term is used regarding replacement/repair material in a wide array of otherwise unrelated professions: woodworking, masonry, shipbuilding, railroading, theater, boilermaking. The etymology and connection to the Netherlands remains unexplained in what I've read (maybe it's an allusion to putting a finger in a leaking dike).
A link to this video was sent to me this morning by a reader in response to my post yesterday about an online extortion attempt. I've only watched part of it so far, but I think it's worth reposting, especially in light of recent information regarding Anthropic and its Mythos AI model.
Here's the text of an email I found today in my spam folder:
Call was lost, as usual.Ok. I don't have much time, so let's get straight to the point.I want to make you an offer that you can refuse, but only once. Here's what I have:Your complete personal information: full name, date of birth, home address.Your social security number and driver's license details.All your email account login credentials, including this account.Other login details and your private messages.A multitude of files found on your devices.Access to your bank accounts.The details of your credit cards: number, expiry date, and cvv. I have compiled this entire package into a single folder. I can and intend to do two things with it. It is up to you to decide which one: I will send this entire package to darknet markets, where other criminals will buy it.It is unknown how they will use this information. They may purchase something illegal in your name, or they may not, but you will definitely not like it. Or you can buy it from me for a small fee of 600 usd.Changing the entire package of documents and data is very expensive, very time-consuming, and unsafe. I already know that you have just read this text. Do not try to ignore this. I only accept payment in bitcoins at the exchange rate at the time of transfer.Transfer money here: [redacted for posting] After payment, I will delete the folder containing your data, and you can continue living as before or, if you don't trust me, take your time changing all your data. It's more profitable for me if you pay me. It's easier and better for everyone. This is a unique offer. Take advantage of it. I will wait for 1 day.
The "from" address was one of my own email addresses.
This was the Astronomy Photo of the Day, showing a time-lapse image of the sky as seen in the Southern Hemisphere, looking toward the south celestial pole. Discussion at the link.
Copied from Facebook. I hope I or a reader can find reliable documentation online. Just realized it gives new meaning to the old phrase "you can't step into the same river twice" previously meaning the river changes. But now it also means "the you changes..."
Credit Chris Clarke for finding this old Gary Larsen premonitory cartoon and posting it on Facebook. Addendum: I can't resist adding this "dad joke" I also found on Facebook. I'll see myself out...
Found by reader smittypap, who posted the link in a comment at my previous post about art cars. Another example of people having fun. No war posts today.
There is informed discussion scattered through the comments at the oddlysatisfying subreddit post. Huge windows used to be assets re light and maybe heat during an earlier era of industry, but became maintenance liabilities in more modern times. I agree with the top-rated comment at the source: it's like removing a carpet and finding a hardwood floor.
I probably should travel more, because I've never seen an elevator panel like this. The rationale is explained in a lucid and fairly concise comment thread at the whatisit subreddit.
The video is almost two hours long - a thorough documentation of the parade, apparently without any commentary, best approached for casual viewing by clicking along the scrubber bar at the bottom. Here are a couple screencaps: I found the video after reading about the phenomenon in The New York Times:
This was not just a car. It was an art car — a vehicle transformed into a kinetic sculpture, built from imagination and, often, from what others had thrown away. “I can’t drive past trash without pulling over,” said Mr. Polidore, 50, a longtime elementary school art teacher who writes art curricula for the district. “When I’m stuck in that hellacious Houston traffic, I’m scanning the side of the road for any parts of cars that have gotten thrown off in wrecks and I’m grabbing them.”... The rules remain minimal. “Whether it’s been painted, welded, sculpted, dropped, chopped, beaded, smashed, crashed, lit or lifted, art cars come in all shapes, sizes and forms,” read this year’s brochure. “The only rule is that it must roll!” And across the city, in garages, driveways and schoolyards, artists have been working for months to ensure that theirs will. But what might make Houston’s art car parade so special is the fact that many of the artists are children... Over 50 of the cars that roll on Saturday will have been made in Houston classrooms, a striking fact at a time when arts funding in schools continues to shrink... In Houston, where driving is nearly unavoidable, the art car offers a kind of inversion, a reminder that even the most ordinary object can be remade into something strange, expressive and communal. Or, as Ms. Soto put it: “Art cars are chaos. Good chaos.”
A US appeals court on Friday declared a nearly 158-year-old federal ban on home distilling to be unconstitutional, calling it an unnecessary and improper means for Congress to exercise its power to tax. The fifth US circuit court of appeals in New Orleans ruled in favor of the non-profit Hobby Distillers Association and four of its 1,300 members. They argued that people should be free to distill spirits at home, whether as a hobby or for personal consumption including, in one instance, to create an apple-pie-vodka recipe. The ban was part of a law passed during the US’s post-civil war Reconstruction era in July 1868, in part to thwart liquor tax evasion, and subjected violators to up to five years in prison and a $10,000 fine...
More information at the link. Image cropped for size from the original, credit Diana Vyshniakova/Alamy.
Autonomous weapons (aka "killer robots") were the basis for the Terminator movies and uncounted spinoffs and copycats. But the concept is achievable, and the potential consequences are unthinkable:
"A very, very small quadcopter, one inch in diameter can
carry a one- or two-gram shaped charge. You can order them from a drone
manufacturer in China. You can program the code to say: “Here are
thousands of photographs of the kinds of things I want to target.” A
one-gram shaped charge can punch a hole in nine millimeters of steel, so
presumably you can also punch a hole in someone’s head. You can fit
about three million of those in a semi-tractor-trailer. You can drive up
I-95 with three trucks and have 10 million weapons attacking New York
City. They don’t have to be very effective, only 5 or 10% of them have
to find the target.
There will be manufacturers producing millions
of these weapons that people will be able to buy just like you can buy
guns now, except millions of guns don’t matter unless you have a million
soldiers. You need only three guys to write the program and launch
them. So you can just imagine that in many parts of the world humans
will be hunted. They will be cowering underground in shelters and
devising techniques so that they don’t get detected. This is the
ever-present cloud of lethal autonomous weapons.
They could be here in two to three years."
— Stuart Russell, professor of computer science and engineering at the University of California Berkeley
...lethal autonomous weapons systems (LAWS): weapons that have the ability to independently select and engage targets... humans out of the loop — where the human releases the machine to
perform a task and that’s it — no supervision, no recall, no stop
function.
One of the very real problems with attempting to preemptively ban
LAWS is that they kind of already exist. Many countries have defensive
systems with autonomous modes that can select and attack targets without
human intervention — they recognize incoming fire and act to neutralize
it... Meanwhile, offensive systems already exist, too: Take Israel’s Harpy and second-generation Harop,
which enter an area, hunt for enemy radar, and kamikaze into it,
regardless of where they are set up. The Harpy is fully autonomous...
Among the lauded new technologies is swarms — weapons moving in large
formations with one controller somewhere far away on the ground clicking
computer keys. Think hundreds of small drones moving as one, like a
lethal flock of birds...
I worry it will breed way more terrorist activities. You can call
them insurgents, you can call them terrorists, I don’t care, when you
realize that you can’t ever fight the state mano-a-mano anymore, if
people are pissed off, they’ll find a way to vent that frustration, and
they will probably take it out on people who are defenseless.
Much more in the link. Reposted to provide addenda: The source link at Buzzfeed for this old (2017) post has undergone partial linkrot, but I'm going to repost the text as an introduction to this old (2018) video about "slaughterbots" -
It presents seven minutes of gradually increasing horror and is very similar in content to "Hated in the Nation" - my favorite episode of Black Mirror - Posting both because this morning one of my cousins forwarded to me a substack presentation by "Blood in the Machine" entitled "Why the AI backlash has turned violent," which addresses recent physical assaults on various persons associated with AI and public anger against datacenters, including this comment:
"In the short time since I wrote that post, such pointed AI refusal has continued apace. Maine looks set to become the first US state to ban data center development outright. Form letters for refusing AI at work are circulating widely. Public polling of AI sentiment is in the gutter; it’s never been popular, and it’s especially unpopular now. A widely discussed NBC poll found that just 26% of Americans had positive feelings about AI; around half had negative feelings. Gen Z in particular loathes AI: For respondents aged 18-34, AI’s net favorability rating was minus 44."
I have some other offerings to present re AI, but will defer until later and just leave this post up for now.
Just as there is a blueprint for destroying democracy, there is also one for rebuilding it. “Let us now and here highly resolve to resume the country’s interrupted march along the path of real progress, of real justice, of real equality for all of our citizens, great and small,”New York governor Franklin Delano Roosevelt said to the delegates at the Democratic National Convention in 1932 as American democracy struggled to resist fascism. “Out of every crisis, every tribulation, every disaster, mankind rises with some share of greater knowledge, of higher decency, of purer purpose,” FDR said. “Today we shall have come through a period of loose thinking, descending morals, an era of selfishness, among individual men and women and among Nations…. Let us be frank in acknowledgment of the truth that many amongst us have made obeisance to Mammon, that the profits of speculation, the easy road without toil, have lured us from the old barricades. To return to higher standards we must abandon the false prophets and seek new leaders of our own choosing.” “I pledge you, I pledge myself, to a new deal for the American people,” FDR concluded. “Let us all here assembled constitute ourselves prophets of a new order of competence and of courage. This is more than a political campaign; it is a call to arms. Give me your help, not to win votes alone, but to win in this crusade to restore America to its own people.”
At 69 years old, Lady Fatou on Monday became not only the Berlin Zoo's longest-residing tenant but also maintained her title as the oldest gorilla in the world. Born somewhere in West Africa in 1957, she arrived in Europe at the port of Marseilles in 1959 amongst the luggage of a French sailor. According to the Berlin Zoo, the sailor found himself unable to pay his bill at a tavern and gave Fatou to the landlady as payment. From there, she soon ended up in the German capital. Fatou is a western lowland gorilla. In the wild they usually don't live past their 40s, and even in captivity 50 is considered advanced old age. In 1974 she gave birth to Dufte, the first gorilla born at the Berlin Zoo. Although her daughter passed away in 2001, Fatou's granddaugther M'penzi still keeps her company in Berlin. She has at least three great-great-great grandchildren as of 2026.
I had no idea they could live that long. You learn something every day.
