Author: Brett L

Happy Thursday everybody. I wish it were Friday. Holy crap these weeks get long. And then I’m traveling for work all of next week. For some reason my wife thinks those are vacations instead of 12-14 hour death slogs punctuated by being in a hotel room. I mean, I stay at the same hotel every time and they take great care of me, but its still a hotel room. I’d rather be home.

There’s an app that will wait on hold for you now. In 2008 or ’09, a friend and I sat in a bar in Tallahassee and tried to figure out a business model for this at the time. Getting people to download an app for $3/month was less feasible then than other things we thought of. And I’m totally not jealous.

A long form article where an ethics professor discovers libertarians are weird. Although, remember these are college libertarians, so they often solve the “trolley problem” by killing the least amount of people, where more mature libertarians think those people endangered by the trolley should get themselves out of the way.

Brexit is happening!

Hey guys. How’s it goin’? I hope you guys end up here eventually instead of just reminiscing in Tonio’s (awesome!) piece below. I’ve just about got my n00bs working independently for a day or two at a time, so that’s awesome. It relieves me to know no one is surfing the internet because I’m not serving work fast enough. No, actually, I don’t care what they are doing. I hope the remote workers are smart enough to nap or fuck off to do something IRL.

Ripped directly from the H&H Universe!

Sometimes I read stories like this and wonder how my childhood would have been described by the 24×7 news cycle. I can’t tell you how many “improvised explosive devices” we created. A lot. The answer is, a lot.

I forget, is this Cuomo supposed to be Fredo or Sonny?

Florida Man, the cops can’t help you get your stolen dope back.

Time for some throwback tunes.

Let’s see. Today my work computer decided it needed to spend an hour and a half “updating” between 10:00am and 11:30am, and then I found where Microsoft has “enhanced the usability” of drop-down in the coming release of Dynamics to the point where my test-users, who are a pretty competent bunch, couldn’t figure out how the hell to use it. I finally found the self-congratulatory announcement where the MS team told us how they fixed a problem none of us had. So now I get to tell users that the process that worked perfectly fine for them is going away. Is it beer-thirty yet?

I just don’t think reminding voters of your weak points is a winning strategy. These people need a red team in their campaigns. Surrounding yourselves with toadies is not the way to win.

I thought my day was bad, then I read about this guy. Dude walked 350 miles from Indiana (through Illinois) to Wisconsin to get arrested for attempted sex with a minor.

Nothing says “high executive function” like facial tattoos.

Oh man, who (besides pretty much everyone here) could have guessed that a review of FISA court abuses would generate a document “as thick as a phonebook”? For millenials, that’s “as tall as an avocado”.

I think I need the theme song today.

Man, what a long week. I feel like I was hit with a sack of hammers. But its recovery time. We have a local concert in the park with my family tonight… which, meh. But the kids will like it. And then tomorrow its the first Red River Shootout in a while that I’ve felt good about as a Texas Ex in a long time. By which I mean, it won’t necessarily be luck if the good guys win. So I’ll start a pot of chili in the morning and day drink. Maybe nap in the afternoon. What are you good people up to?

Umm, ambassadors serve at the pleasure of the president, so… what’s the issue here? Oh right, just another hit piece. Here’s the thing I think people

Knife violence in Manchester! If only the good guys had guns…

I was hoping for sexier cyborgs.

Knife violence in DC! Where a 14 year old girl apparently has managed to elude the DC cops. She’s probably not a good person, but I’m kind of rooting for her.

After yesterday’s SF horror double feature, I bet you’re ready for some nice, boring links. #MeToo.

I think this sentence is about right. The defendant didn’t set out to kill anyone that day, but he certainly provoked a confrontation and then shot a man who did not appear to be engaging him once he was down on his ass. “An armed society is a polite society” needs to go for the gun carriers as much as those who would be dissuaded from being impolite by others carrying.

God, I love humanity.

News to absolutely no one who knows cats.

I’ll admit it. I’m jealous.

Shit it’s been a long week. I wanna be higher than Elvis in this video. But I’ll probably just drink a couple of beers tonight and call it good.

My youngest has been coughing the last couple of nights like a seal barking. Now, rationally, I know there’s nothing dangerous about it — there’s no fluid or labored breathing — still I was up several times to check on him, give him cough medicine, and just generally lay awake in state of helpless alert. Stupid monkey brain.

“This Syria withdrawal is almost as haphazard as our Iraq exit” — paraphrase of the money quote.

PG&E: Hey, you wanted us to be responsible for fires — suck it!

So yesterday, I posited that the $730B in “propsed gains” from “taxing the rich” wouldn’t even cover the deficit. But Holee Fuch.

Man, intersectionality is a bitch.

Space is BIIIG.

So I realized, after I spent all day telling other people what I wanted them to do, that even though I still have plenty of actual do-the-work responsibilities, I’ve basically become management. Not sure whether this is going to end with a bender, and whether that bender is going to end with Drano, but… I’m definitely trying not to turn into a pointy-head. I really don’t love spending all day talking.

To my view, this (and Swissy’s link from earlier today) are just lesser forms of the same millenialist ideology that led the Taliban to blow up the giant stone carvings of Buddha. Lesser degree, because these toads lack imagination and ability compared to the Taliban, but it comes from the same place.

At Heroic Mulatto’s request, I pass along this link for your adolescent snickering.

Cool, now do ULA.

I smell a H&H Extended Universe episode.

Hi guys, I’m back from another business trip. What happened while I was gone? Did I get slut-shamed for liking to alter my conscience? Was it implied that I abuse and/or manufacture and/or distribute drugs? Because there’s no more truth to those rumors than to a SugarFree story.

Take that how you will.

Trump tells House, “I’ll take impeachment seriously right after you do.” Of course, this will be seen as obstruction. Much like telling the government you’ll wait for an actual warrant before allowing them to root through your effects for evidence.

This is true. Deserve’s got nothin’ to do with it. Its just a side-effect of a free market. Can’t have the free market without the rich people.

PSA: Do NOT surprise Florida Man.

Who would have thought a robot’s AI could imitate human cops so perfectly?

Sometimes I think this is what Jesse thinks my life is like.

Hey guys, still busy. Here’s ya links.

Dark matter continues to be like global warming, every explanatory hypothesis gets disproved, but it “must be there” because our math equation that predicts how mass and energy interact has a slot for it.

This is what I expected from the 21st century.

You know the greatest thing about the Trump administration may be the complete emptying of the bag of dirty tricks. Also, I’d like to apologize to anyone from TOS from pre-2014 or so, when I still had some respect for government.

Hey, guys, maybe stop charging Disney prices for an afternoon at the ballpark and more people will show up.