Soothing Bunnywabbit.

Perhaps when you see the headline, your first thought is What the Hell is a "Nuclear-powered cruise missile"?

Every decade or two I resolve anew to try and like Russians. It never works out.

Frickin' Chinese aren't getting any prettier, either.

Street violence in our nation's urban centers.

Transamerica Pyramid is for sale.

…Which might encourage you to study up on modern damping systems.

Every decade or two I resolve anew to try and like Russians. It never works out. ~ Crid at August 19, 2019 4:19 AM

Just finished watching Chernobyl on a free HBO weekend and, in the wake of that, am not inclined to trust the Russians with anything nuclear.

By the way, if you want to show someone the problems inherent in socialism, show them that miniseries, especially the first episode in which the elder council member tells the council the best way to help the people is to keep them ignorant.

That or The Lives of Others.

"Transamerica Pyramid is for sale."

My home: North Beach. My office: Transamerica Pyramid.

My horror: watching insurance guys from around the country arrive for meetings and realizing there are places where bad teeth, a comb-over, polyester disco shirt and plaid jacket are considered a good compliment to Sans-a-Belt slacks, zippered ankle boots and a Rolex. *shudder*

Still, not the best afternoon.

Mexican-named white guy, Beto O'Rourke, repeats the lie that the country was "founded" on racism.

And he wants to be president?

Didn't the Dickless Cheese Weasels open for The Who in '85?

First off Facebook is a garbage website run by idiots.

Second, scumbags have learned to weaponize Facebook’s lax stupidity. They simply find someone they don’t like, and then report their posts. Nobody with a brain ever checks to see if the complaint is legit or not, so they just block the bully’s target. It’s a wonderful tool for dickless cheese weasels to feel powerful.

...

That pic right there demonstrates exactly what’s going to happen with Red Flag laws. Only with a SWAT team shooting your dog.

http://monsterhunternation.com/2019/08/16/banned-again-facebook-gets-even-dumber-part-iii-the-saga-continues/

The Palestinian Authority banned members of the Palestinian Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender and Queer (LGBTQ) community from carrying out any activities in the West Bank.

The ban came after the grassroots group Al-Qaws for Sexual & Gender Diversity in Palestinian Society (Arabic for “the bow”), which engages and supports Palestinians who identify as LGBTQ, was planning to hold a gathering for its members in Nablus at the end of the month. The group operates both in the West Bank and among Arab-Israelis.

Earlier this month, Al-Qaws held an event in Nablus about sexual and gender diversity in Palestinian society. The PA police, however, learned about the event only days after it was held.

https://www.jpost.com/Middle-East/PA-bans-LGBT-activities-in-West-Bank-598980

Maybe the city of San Fran can turn the Transamerica Pyramid into a homeless shelter?

Triggered by beer

Yuge if true.

https://www.dailywire.com/news/50768/journalist-claims-medics-told-her-heather-heyer-amanda-prestigiacomo

That didn't take long.

Dannette Giltz began having pain in her abdomen that felt like kidney stones – a health problem she had previously. She also has two other children, so she would know the difference. Yet on August 10, Giltz went to the hospital for kidney stone pain and was instead told she was in labor. She then proceeded to give birth to triplets within the span of four minutes.

https://www.dailywire.com/news/50768/journalist-claims-medics-told-her-heather-heyer-amanda-prestigiacomo

Yon from Hong Kong.

https://pjmedia.com/instapundit/339410/

Triggered by beer ~ Gog_Magog_Carpet_Reclaimers at August 19, 2019 11:38 AM

And yet nothing on the skimpy bathing suit named after their homeland.

Methinks this is about how much money can be extorted from the brewery.

You nap, rouse, thence to web browse…

And will never, ever retrace the path which brought you to awareness of this craft, which has been floating out their since you were three, since the Bay of Pigs, since Connery was Bond.

We spent a half-million dollars for a long lifetime of fantastic research utility... And no one knows about it. Not many would care. A quotidian American miracle. (A apologize for the sentence fragment, but fuck everything.)

The United States is the best. All other nations are but as gift shops, distinguished only in the relative cleanliness and convenience of their rest rooms.

Vids.

Sugar and spike and everything nice. Can’t say eating precious metals are on the top of my bucket list.

https://www.foodbeast.com/news/worlds-most-expensive-doughnut/

> My home: North Beach. My office:
> Transamerica Pyramid.

In spasms of abject envy, I hate you now. You must never look me in the eye again.

Seriously, what are you doing on the internet? You live in NORTH BEACH, and work in the TRANSAMERICA PYRAMID. Every day is Christmas, right?

> Triggered by beer.

And they responded with courage, too. I hope they keep it up.

It doesn't even matter if they're sincere...

On the Fifth Column podcast this week, Moynihan recommended this long piece about Babe dot net, the site which published the story about a clumsy date with Aziz Ansari. The piece wasn't very good.

On the other hand, I never cared anyway because it had seemed like a spur on the greater meaning of the #MeToo crisis… (That is to say, I'm too old to have heard of Aziz Ansari: He's not in my generation of teevee funnyboys.)

But there's an interesting line in the New York magazine piece about how the Babe writers were encouraged to emulate tone of the Gawker websites… Which they didn't recognized, because it had folded two years earlier. I realize we're talking about the idiot's idiots of idiot media, but still. It's almost like a college basketball player who's not heard of LeBron James.

The brewers are telling the truth, whatever their motive. People really don't know the name, or tragedy, of Bikini.

I mean, what the actual fuck is going on across the pond.

https://www.infowars.com/mom-of-3-arrested-jailed-for-putting-recycling-in-wrong-color-bag/

My home: North Beach. My office: Transamerica Pyramid. ~ Gog_Magog_Carpet_Reclaimers at August 19, 2019 6:57 AM

Back when I lived in the Bay Area, three short years ago, my work was in North Beach. Nice area. Walked by the Pyramid a few times on my way to BART.

My horror: watching insurance guys from around the country arrive for meetings and realizing there are places where bad teeth, a comb-over, polyester disco shirt and plaid jacket are considered a good compliment to Sans-a-Belt slacks, zippered ankle boots and a Rolex. *shudder* ~ Gog_Magog_Carpet_Reclaimers at August 19, 2019 6:57 AM

Herb Caen used to call that look "the full Cleveland."

> Just finished watching Chernobyl

Read somewhere that the show included enormous, politically-consequential distortions about the disaster. But can't recall what they were because after reading that I figured I'd never watch.

That one guy was good in Mad Men.

> Yon from Hong Kong.

Interesting that Yon sees the Party at risk here... We sure don't see many fissures in Beijing's command.

Do any come to mind? Not just enormous problems which will probably be handled badly, but evidence of simmering resistance?

> My home: North Beach

Do you walk to work? Do you stop at Caffe Trieste for coffee on the way to work?

Because I would totally stop at Caffe Trieste for coffee on the way to work.

Mercy

Sadly I no longer live in San Francisco for a variety of reasons, all of them rational, none of them happy.

The Trieste was a block off-track, but a favorite stop on the morning walk commute (there were several, my god the coffee in that 'hood) - and the incredible Liguria foccacia bakery on the afternoon return. With an early enough start I could stop in Washington Square and join in the Tai Chi group.

That's what I'll choose to remember.

Read somewhere that the show included enormous, politically-consequential distortions about the disaster. ~ Crid at August 19, 2019 5:22 PM

From what I understand and have read, it got a number of things wrong, but a number of things chillingly correct, in ways Western media has never before explored about Soviet reality.

"Herein lies one of the series’ biggest flaws: its failure to accurately portray Soviet relationships of power. There are exceptions, flashes of brilliance that shed light on the bizarre workings of Soviet hierarchies. In the first episode, for example, during an emergency meeting of the Pripyat ispolkom, the town’s governing council, an elder statesman, Zharkov (Donald Sumpter), delivers a chilling, and chillingly accurate, speech, urging his compatriots to “have faith.” “We seal off the city,” Zharkov says. “No one leaves. And cut the phone lines. Contain the spread of misinformation. That is how we keep the people from undermining the fruits of their own labor.” This statement has everything: the bureaucratic indirectness of Soviet speech, the privileging of “fruits of labor” over the people who created them, and, of course, the utter disregard for human life."

AND

"The final episode of “Chernobyl” also contains a scene that encapsulates the Soviet system perfectly. During the trial of three men who have been deemed responsible for the disaster, a member of the Central Committee overrules the judge, who then looks to the prosecutor for direction—and the prosecutor gives that direction with a nod. This is exactly how Soviet courts worked: they did the bidding of the Central Committee, and the prosecutor wielded more power than the judge."

HOWEVER

"Unfortunately, apart from these striking moments, the series often veers between caricature and folly. In Episode 2, for example, the Central Committee member Boris Shcherbina (Stellan Skarsgård) threatens to have Legasov shot if he doesn’t tell him how a nuclear reactor works. There are a lot of people throughout the series who appear to act out of fear of being shot. This is inaccurate: summary executions, or even delayed executions on orders of a single apparatchik, were not a feature of Soviet life after the nineteen-thirties. By and large, Soviet people did what they were told without being threatened with guns or any punishment."

"Similarly repetitive and ridiculous are the many scenes of heroic scientists confronting intransigent bureaucrats by explicitly criticizing the Soviet system of decision-making. In Episode 3, for example, Legasov asks, rhetorically, “Forgive me—maybe I’ve just spent too much time in my lab, or maybe I’m just stupid. Is this really the way it all works? An uninformed, arbitrary decision that will cost who knows how many lives that is made by some apparatchik, some career Party man?” Yes, of course this is the way it works, and, no, he hasn’t been in his lab so long that he didn’t realize that this is how it works. The fact of the matter is, if he didn’t know how it worked, he would never have had a lab."

"Resignation was the defining condition of Soviet life. But resignation is a depressing and untelegenic spectacle. So the creators of “Chernobyl” imagine confrontation where confrontation was unthinkable—and, in doing so, they cross the line from conjuring a fiction to creating a lie."

The character of the Belarus physicist, Khomyuk, is composite of several characters and a complete Hollywood fantasy. She's confrontational to Soviet authorities, knows the truth instantly, and represents a feminist wet-dream - smarter and braver than her male colleagues.

"None of this is possible, and all of it is hackneyed. The problem is not just that Khomyuk is a fiction; it’s that the kind of expert knowledge she represents is a fiction. The Soviet system of propaganda and censorship existed not so much for the purpose of spreading a particular message as for the purpose of making learning impossible, replacing facts with mush, and handing the faceless state a monopoly on defining an ever-shifting reality."

"In the absence of a Chernobyl narrative, the makers of the series have used the outlines of a disaster movie. There are a few terrible men who bring the disaster about, and a few brave and all-knowing ones, who ultimately save Europe from becoming uninhabitable and who tell the world the truth. It is true that Europe survived; it is not true that anyone got to the truth, or told it."

"The Harvard historian Serhii Plokhy’s 2018 book on Chernobyl reconstructs the sequence of events and assigns blame. In effect, Plokhy argues, it was the Soviet system that created Chernobyl and made the explosion inevitable. Glimmers of this understanding appear in the HBO series, too. In the final episode, Legasov, testifying as a witness, tells a Soviet court that the disaster happened because the tips of the control rods were made of graphite, which sped up the reaction, when the control rod was supposed to slow it down. When asked, by the prosecutor, why the reactor was designed this way, Legasov cites the same reason that other safety precautions are ignored and other corners are cut: “It’s cheaper.” He seems to be damning the whole system."

So, the miniseries gets the causes of the disaster correct as well as the gist of the Soviet efforts to cover it up, while the subtleties of Soviet life were juiced up for dramatic effect.

Sadly I no longer live in San Francisco for a variety of reasons, all of them rational, none of them happy. ~ Gog_Magog_Carpet_Reclaimers at August 19, 2019 6:06 PM

Gog, that sums up leaving San Francisco perfectly.

"Interesting that Yon sees the Party at risk here... We sure don't see many fissures in Beijing's command."

I've seen anonymous bitching but no one is brave enough to come out in public. Xi pretty much eliminated all of his competition. He is the king and his word is law in China. That said there are multiple protests going on around China. Their economic growth rate has fallen from ~15%/year to probably 0%. That is causing a lot of strain in the nation. Since the 70s China has had a policy where the government provides prosperity and the people stay out of government. At this point the government isn't upholding it's side of the bargain so people aren't feeling bound to uphold their side as well. Add on the high degree of nepotism and the incompetence that brings the Chinese government is looking rather unstable.

How that plays out is anyone's guess. Does someone assassinate Xi and take his place? Does Xi crush all opposition with brute force again? Given Trump's isolationist views I doubt he will do anything more than a strongly worded letter. Europe doesn't have the military or willpower to do any more than that either. China's neighbors are also no match militarily. So foreign intervention seems unlikely.

Somewhat related, you don't see much in the US news about Argentina. They are heading the same way China has. It looks like back in 17 or 18 they pissed of people at the IMF which lead to the IMF jerking them around on loans. Now they are going to the ballot box and it looks like the hard line communists are going to win. Pretty much all foreign capital has fled the nation. Which lead to a roughly 50% drop in their stock market in one day (linked article was published before the drop had settled so it claims 35%). The new government will have few options to borrow and a great desire to spend. The expected outcome is nationalizing assets and rewarding their friends.

But Trump doesn't have anything to do with Argentina so US news doesn't care.

https://www.cnbc.com/2018/08/30/argentina-crisis-peso-crashes-to-record-low-amid-imf-plea.html

https://www.cnbc.com/2019/08/12/argentina-election-macri-suffers-setback-as-analysts-warn-of-peso-depreciation.html