• Photograph of riot destruction… We might not have wanted anyone living in a place so combustible anyway.

• Speaking of combustion, could this week get any weirder?

Update on the combusted housing unit. Person in the neighborhood says that they had a waiting list, and that possibly some people will be homeless over the winter. In Minnesota.

https://twitter.com/davereaboi/status/1266207434261004294

Some people are protecting their businesses the best they can.

https://twitter.com/ezralevant/status/1266131437436231681

With all the trouble going on in the world today, it does my heart good to know that natural selection is still at work, preventing reproduction among the unbelievably stupid.

Show business! For old people!

1964 closed-circuit charity gig, said to be the only good film of the Rat Pack near its pinnacle. Your parents, or grandparents, thought it was entertaining.

The kid from television was about to become a bigger celebrity than anyone from film or music; but in this moment, he was obviously intimidated to be on the stage.

The performer who looks best in retrospect is Quincy Jones. His 2001 autobiography is highly recommended… No one's been closer to the beating heart of postwar pop culture. But if you can't make the time, he's still writing fresh chapters.

Um, Patrick, unless there was some major sound editing, if you know what I mean, that blurry video was actually quite misleading and not what it seemed.

Hint: Some recent writer claimed that when Joan of Arc was burned, chances are she died of smoke inhalation first (which could have been arranged by using green wood, which doesn't burn easily). Why was that claim made? Because had she actually burned while alive, she couldn't have stopped herself from screaming bloody murder - but no account of her death mentions that.

This short thread is about a Guardian article.

http://www.refugees.bratfree.com/read.php?2,436375

yurble
May 29, 2020
"Once again, breeders manage to make covid-19 all about them. Nevermind the people who have lost loved ones, {‘We grieve’: the anguish of not seeing a new grandchild amid the pandemic.} Seeing the grandchild is delayed. And this merits the use of the word 'grief'? Good grief."

randomcfchick
May 29, 2020
"Ugh. I hate it when people co-opt grief for their first world problems. You haven't lost anyone, you attention seeking ass. If it's a newborn baby, you should not be hanging around anyway, as it has no immune system. Fuck off."

kittehpeoples
Re: The anguish of having to wait to see a grandchild
May 29, 2020
"Meanwhile, I have a friend whose GF has attended (virtually, because pandemic) EIGHT funerals since JANUARY. Four of them were covid-related. Anybody who thinks they're grieving because they can't hold a baby needs to be slapped with a reality check."
_______________________________

Yurble makes a serious mistake later on, though. In Italy, the death rate among COVID patients is 1 in 7, not 7%. Big difference.

A biomimetic eye with a hemispherical perovskite nanowire array retina is on the way. Give it five years.

Extra bonus points for cranking up the sensor resolution so the owner can see IR, UV, et al.

I'd post a link but the site says no.

Why was that claim made? Because had she actually burned while alive, she couldn't have stopped herself from screaming bloody murder - but no account of her death mentions that. ~ Lenona at May 30, 2020 4:27 PM

Victims for whom the executioner had sympathy were often provided an alternative, and quicker, means of death.

According to Encyclopedia Britannica: "In some cases of burning at the stake, mechanisms were provided to shorten the victim’s suffering. These included attaching a container of gunpowder to the victim, which would explode when heated by the fire and kill the victim instantly, and placing the victim in a noose, often made of chain, so that death occurred by hanging."

According to Medieval Life and Times: "Sometimes the executioner, in order to shorten the sufferings of the condemned, whilst he prepared the pile, placed a large and pointed iron bar amongst the faggots and opposite the stake breast high, so that, directly the fire was lighted, the bar was quickly pushed against the victim, giving a mortal blow to the unfortunate wretch, who would otherwise have been slowly devoured by the flames. Other merciful method designed to reduce the suffering was to place gunpowder in the wood to ensure a quick death. If a condemned person was really fortunate he would be strangled to death before being chained to the stake."

> I'd post a link but

Power through! DESCRIBE the link

Okay if someone can make this happen here ya go:

www DOT ibtimes DOT com FORWARD SLASH

scientists-discover-artificial-eye-hemispherical-retina-outperforms-its-biological-2984649

This is either cool or the next step toward Borgdom. And the blind shall lead us.

Or maybe just the cycloptic at first. Either way, to see in UV/IR would be pretty cool.

No frills link:

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.ibtimes.com/scientists-discover-artificial-eye-hemispherical-retina-outperforms-its-biological-2984649%3famp=1

Thanks, gentlemen.

The march of progress is a wonderful thing, but writers always have to throw in a slice of cheese like "Outperforms Its Biological Counterpart." It's just silly.

There are so many different paths taken for development of eyesight— Frogs and eagles and fruit flies and all the rest have taken enormously different routes to their visual blessings than has humanity, and each path has important contextual strengths… Such as, it's worked for hundreds of thousands or hundreds of millions of years.

(Seven hundred, says the Big G. I had no idea.)

To say 'Now, we've *really* nailed the spec!' is, like, cosmically disproportionate, whatever the achievement.


Gog, send email to cridcomment at gmail. We gotta get this link thing sorted.

Thanks Crid. Dropped you a note just now.