Posted via mobile
03 January 2025
02 January 2025
Ecch (Tweet) of the Day
For people now claiming the Terrorist was being controlled by MK Ultra - MK Ultra was deemed a failure in the 1960's and promptly discontinued and cancelled after less than favorable results and usually killed most of those it was tested on. Take off your tinfoil hats for once. pic.twitter.com/qBSKtAwlIA
— Elon Musk's Conscience (PARODY) (@FelisConscience) January 2, 2025
I did not know that I needed this.
Too Much Free Time
I'm OK with people doing DOOM mods, the Vuvuzela mod is prize, but creating a CAPTCHA which requires you to play Doom on Nightmare difficulty is a bridge too far:
People have been complaining for a while that passing a CAPTCHA is too difficult, but developer and tech CEO Guillermo Rauch has made one of the hardest yet: a fully playable CAPTCHA based on the classic PC game Doom.
It's been a long-running joke that developers will make Doom run on absolutely anything, so it's not much of a surprise that it's now running inside something that resembles a CAPTCHA.
The app essentially amounts to a small Doom level that is playable with keyboard controls (arrow keys to move, space bar to shoot) within a CAPTCHA-like presentation. You must kill three enemies to pass the test.
The level reflects Doom's Nightmare difficulty, and it is much harder than needed to be an effective CAPTCHA—especially since you can't strafe to avoid enemy fire. It took me several tries to cheese a victory, and the Hacker News thread about this app is filled with people noting how difficult it is and sharing strategies.
I have a grudging admiration of this, but imagine if the effort was applied to something like remediating anthropogenic climate change.
Headline of the Day
Congress Has the Opportunity to Do the Funniest Thing Ever
—The American Prospect on the prospect of a fight over the election of the Speaker might postpone the certification of the Eloctoral Vote count
What can I say, but, "Pass the fucking popcorn."
Let those of us in journalism give a word of thanks to the House Republican caucus for making the early days of January in odd-numbered years more interesting. Tomorrow kicks off the 119th Congress, and in the House it must start with a Speaker election. For roughly all of American history, this election was a staid and indeed invisible affair. But starting in 2023, a fractious Republican caucus has made this a suddenly interesting contest, full of uncertainty and intrigue. And if it’s not taken care of by Monday, there’s an outside chance we could see an enormously entertaining outcome: Republicans pulling off a self-imposed January 6th revolt.
In the 118th Congress, Rep. Mike Johnson (R-LA) was the eventual benefactor of Freedom Caucus disenchantment with former Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA). But the way Johnson bungled the year-end spending bill has escalated already-existing grumbling with his leadership.Johnson was already challenged in the last Congress with a motion to vacate the chair last May, after he successfully steered additional funding to Ukraine. That motion was swiftly tabled, with Democrats pitching in to save Johnson’s job. But the Speaker did lose 11 Republican votes, and among them are some of the prime candidates to abandon Johnson on tomorrow’s Speaker vote.
………
One problem for Republicans is that they only have three days to get the Speaker in place before January 6, when the presidential electors are confirmed by Congress, rolls around. The typical scenario for the House is that they must select a Speaker first, and only move forward afterward. Members-elect aren’t even sworn in as members of the House until there’s a Speaker.
………
But the looming election certification will certainly concentrate GOP minds and raise the pressure to get a Speaker through already. Hard-liners may be checking parliamentary procedure rule books out of the library right now. The big question is: If the House cannot get it together to choose a Speaker before January 6, can the electoral votes be counted?
The answer is a qualified yes, with the proviso that it’s never really been done before. The House could elect a temporary Speaker just for the election certification, who would step down after an actual Speaker was selected. A version of this was done when the now-retired Rep. Patrick McHenry (R-NC) was put in place temporarily in 2023 after McCarthy was ousted. The House clerk, who will essentially be in charge when business begins on January 3, could also be granted the power to swear in members and carry out the election certification.
I don't expect any of the scenarios to happen, but I hope dream for a week or so of Republicans stepping on their own dicks.
It's Thursday ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Initial unemployment claims fell this week, beating estimates, with continuing claims falling sharply.
The number of Americans filing new applications for unemployment benefits dropped to an eight-month low last week, pointing to low layoffs at the end of 2024 and consistent with a healthy labor market.
The report from the Labor Department on Thursday added to a recent raft of upbeat economic data, including consumer spending, in reinforcing the Federal Reserve's projections for fewer interest rate cuts this year. Labor market resilience is keeping the economic expansion on track.
"A stable job market will squelch the Fed's appetite for cutting rates aggressively amid nagging services inflation," said Jeffrey Roach, chief economist at LPL Financial.
Initial claims for state unemployment benefits dropped 9,000 to a seasonally adjusted 211,000 for the week ended Dec. 28, the lowest level since April. Economists polled by Reuters had forecast 222,000 claims for the latest week.………
The four-week moving average of claims, which strips out seasonal fluctuations from the data, fell 3,500 to 223,250.
………
The labor market is being underpinned by very low levels of layoffs, but employers are hesitant to add more workers after a hiring spree during the recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic.
As a result, some workers who have lost their jobs are experiencing long bouts of joblessness, with the median duration of unemployment approaching a three-year high in November.
The number of people receiving benefits after an initial week of aid, a proxy for hiring, decreased 52,000 to a seasonally adjusted 1.844 million during the week ending Dec. 21, the claims report showed.showed.
I'm not sure what this means, or even if this means anything.
This report covers the Christmas holiday, and if anything is happening, I cannot see it.
01 January 2025
Today in Domestic Terrorism
First, and most prominently, a man driving a truck literally flying the ISIS (Daesh) flag, drove into a crowd, killing at least 15 people.
A New Orleans Police Department vehicle was blocking Bourbon Street in place of barriers that were down for repairs early Wednesday when a Texas man drove a pickup truck around it and onto the sidewalk, police said.
The suspect, 42-year-old Shamsud-Din Jabbar, then sped down New Orleans' most famous street, killing and injuring people in an attack the FBI has labeled as terrorism.
"We had patrol cars out there as a hard target," said New Orleans Police Superintendent Anne Kirkpatrick at an afternoon news conference. "This particular terrorist drove around onto the sidewalk and got around the hard target."
Kirkpatrick and Mayor LaToya Cantrell acknowledged that security barriers installed years ago to prevent terrorist attacks along Bourbon Street were being replaced when Jabbar, flying an ISIS flag from his tailgate, mowed down dozens of people. Fifteen were confirmed dead as of Wednesday evening. At least 30 more were injured, many of them severely, officials said.
Bollards don't cover sidewalks
Bollards don't cover sidewalks
The removable stainless-steel bollards are designed to be securely locked at each crosswalk along Bourbon Street between Canal and St. Ann streets, according to Cantrell's administration. They do not cover city sidewalks. The alleged attack occurred near the intersection of Bourbon and Iberville streets.
………
Kirkpatrick and Mayor LaToya Cantrell acknowledged that security barriers installed years ago to prevent terrorist attacks along Bourbon Street were being replaced when Jabbar, flying an ISIS flag from his tailgate, mowed down dozens of people. Fifteen were confirmed dead as of Wednesday evening. At least 30 more were injured, many of them severely, officials said.
(emphasis mine)
This was not security, it was security theater.
Even if the Bollards had been operational, it would not have stopped him, because he was driving on the sidewalks.
Meanwhile, in Las Vegas, a Cybertruck loaded with fireworks and a pressurized gas tank exploded in front of a Trump Casino, and there are concerns that this was related to the New Orleans attack:
Officials are looking into the possible connection between the Las Vegas explosion of a Tesla Cybertruck and an attack that left 15 dead in New Orleans, President Joe Biden said in a Wednesday evening address to the nation.
One person was killed and seven suffered minor injuries when a Tesla Cybertruck exploded Wednesday morning in front of the entrance to Trump International, Sheriff Kevin McMahill said at a news conference.
The person who died was in the Cybertruck, and McMahill said it was unclear if it was a man or a woman.
According to Jeremy Schwartz, acting special agent in charge for the FBI’s Las Vegas office, authorities also are trying to determine whether the explosion was an act of terrorism but believe it was an “isolated incident.”
Finally, an FBI raid uncovered an enormous hoarde of home made explosives when raiding a farm for illegal sawed-off weapons.
A Virginia man was arrested this month with what federal prosecutors described in court papers on Monday as the largest cache of “finished explosive devices” ever found in the F.B.I.’s history.
The man, Brad Spafford, was taken into custody at a farm outside Norfolk on Dec. 17 on the basis of a single-count criminal complaint accusing him of illegally possessing an unregistered short-barrel rifle. When investigators searched his 20-acre property, in Isle of Wight County, they found in a detached garage more than 150 explosive devices — mostly pipe bombs, some of them labeled “lethal,” prosecutors said.
They found more pipe bombs in a bedroom inside Mr. Spafford’s house, loosely stuffed in a backpack that bore a patch shaped like a hand grenade and a logo reading “#NoLivesMatter,” prosecutors said.
The slogan had the same name as a nihilistic, far-right ideology that largely exists on encrypted online messaging apps like Telegram. There was no other evidence that Mr. Spafford adhered to such beliefs.
Yeah, that last sentence seems to be whistling in the dark.
………Let me rephrase myself, "Yeah, that last sentence seems to be irresponsible and reckless whistling in the dark."
According to the court papers, which were reported earlier by the website Court Watch, the investigation into Mr. Spafford began last year, after a neighbor reached out to the authorities. Mr. Spafford had lost three fingers on his right hand while working with a homemade explosive device, the neighbor said, and he was stockpiling weapons and homemade ammunition.
The neighbor reported that Mr. Spafford had told him that he and his friends were “preparing for something” that he “would not be able to do alone,” the court papers said.
The neighbor also told investigators that Mr. Spafford sometimes used photographs of President Biden for target practice at a local shooting range and believed that “political assassinations should be brought back.” After the attempt on President-elect Donald J. Trump’s life in Pennsylvania in July, the papers said, Mr. Spafford told his neighbor that he “hoped the shooter doesn’t miss Kamala,” an apparent reference to Vice President Kamala Harris.
Then again, what would one expect from what Atrios calls, "That Fucking Newspaper."
The New Orleans case, and the Virginia case both seem to be people involved in right wing terrorism, with the former hearkening back to 8th century Basra, and the former yearning for the height of the Klan in the 1920s.
As to whatever happened in Vegas,it's not clear yet.
All I can do is to quote Bette Davis in All About Eve, "Fasten your seat belts, it's going to be a bumpy night."
The year is not off to a good start.
(On Update)
Both the New Orleans and Las Vegas vehicles were rented through the Turo app, which allows people to peer-to-peer car sharing, which might be a connection.
It Was as true...as Turnips Is. It Was as true...as Taxes Is. And Nothing’s Truer than Them
Ken Klipperstein notes, "Doesn't this pair of headlines capture 2024 perfectly?"
Yes it does.
It also paints a picture of a nation that is in decline and fetishises cruelty.
Homelessness in America has risen by 18 percent overall, according to the latest annual data released Friday by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Hardest hit were families with children, which experienced a staggering 39 percent increase in homelessness(!). Incredibly, in a press release accompanying the new data, the Biden administration says that it “has been tackling the nation’s homelessness crisis with the urgency it requires,” downplaying the data as not current enough.
As 2024 draws to a close, a major theme of this past couple years seems to be American anger. From the schadenfreude over the billionaire passengers on board the doomed Titan submersible, to Trump’s reelection, and most recently the backlash against health insurers following the murder of UnitedHealthcare’s CEO, Americans seem to be yelling at the top of their lungs that they hate the management. Yet the confusion in elite quarters over what these people could possibly be so angry about persists, even as the warnings get louder and louder. On the rare occasion that a prominent elected official actually hears these warnings and tries to explain it to their peers in Washington, they are punished for it.
This is not sustainable, and if something cannot go on forever, it will stop.
Fuck, Yeah! It's, "Say Fuck January!
But No C-Word
You know, unlike the other 11 months of the year, I don't obscure expletives with with various typographical symbols, "Sh%$," "F%$#," and so forth.
The reason is obvious for anyone who has a modicum awareness of recent history. If you don't, well, your dose of Fukitol® is TOO STRONG. (I miss the elegant simplicity of Netscape's elegant and widely loathed blink tag.)
Contact your doctor of pharmacist.
I am profane by nature, and eleven months of the year, I will obscure this with various typographical symbols, "Sh%$," "F%$#," and so forth.
Ever since the fucking January 6, 2021 insurrection, an event that I thought gave me fucking license to actually say things like shit and fuck, I have reserved January for actual swearing.
While I am sure my reader(s) delicate fucking sensibilities might be triggered by this, so consider this a fucking warning.
I will be fucking swearing all this fucking month, though I will, as always, not use the C-word. That has always crossed a line for me.
Why did I pick January?
First it is a tradition from the 2021 insurrection, and second, given that January is a time for reviewing the previous year, it is difficult to say, "2024 was fucked up and shit," without actually saying, "Fuck" and, "Shit."
As to why have such a month at all? It is because I need this month, because everything is fucked up and shit.
