And so our bought-and-paid-for "Supreme" Court has unanimously said that Americans don't have the fucking freedom to decide for themselves what they can and cannot access on the internet, making a decision for all of us that TikTok can be actually be banned. Turns out that only American companies are allowed to promote misinformation, exploit our personal information, and send our data to China! Anybody else does it and it's a "matter of National Security." Despite some valid concerns, this is some stupid shit right here. Guess TikTok didn't buy off the right politicians...
The entire TikTok fiasco is both straightforward and complex. President Trump is the one who set out to ban it. Then Democrats got into power and President Biden co-signed it, but passed the buck back to Trump as he returns to power. So now Trump is in a position to either save TikTok or sink it thanks to the "Supreme" Court (making Democrats look fucking stupid as usual, regadless of which way he goes). That's the simple version. The complexity comes from all the political shit surrounding the simple version. Take for example Senator Tom Cotton, Republican from Arkansas. He's the guy who torpedoed an extension to TikTok shutting down. He's very aggressive about it. But why? Well, the corrupt asshole has a book coming out called Seven Things You Can't Say About China. Him being able to claim that he's the guy who took a tough stand against China by banning TikTok is great promotion for his book (which I'm assuming is about taking a tough stand against China). This is a total conflict of interest, but that's hardly surprising coming from a politician. And that's just the tip of the iceberg. All those politicians taking money from Facebook have to repay that favor somehow, and what better way than to shut down a huge competitor? It goes on and on. And until we start executing politicians who fuck over American citizens to serve their own lust for money and power, it's going to continue.
And speaking of seriously stupid shit... I have written about the flerfer (flat earther) movement many, many times on Blogography. I just don't get it. We had this shit figured out before the time of Jesus Christ. It's an easily verifiable fact that the earth is a globe. Shoot a rifle or mortar over a long distance. You'll have to adjust for the curvature of the earth and its Coriolis force to hit your target. Or, even easier, just watch a ship disappear over the horizon because it's going behind the curvature of the earth. Or you can do something like this simple two minute experiment where flerfers debunked themselves...
Fast forward to The Final Experiment. A guy flew some flerfers to Antarctica to observe the 24-hour sun, something that's impossible on a flat earth. And something I know is real, BECAUSE I'VE BEEN THERE AND HAVE FUCKING SEEN IT FIRST-HAND! And of course the flerfers are calling the whole "Final Experiment" a lie, which is beyond stupid.
And then today, finally, the video I've been waiting for has finally arrived. Professor Dave weighed in. It's certified gold. ..
Blergh. I was going to write about a few other stupid things... including, but not limited to, Apple "Intelligence," a teacher who left their cocaine in an elementary school bathroom in Vegas, and go off on social media influencers yet again... but stupidity is exhausting enough.
Don't look now but the world isn't ending after all... because an all new Bullet Sunday starts... now...
• AMNK! Oh look. This is my life right here...
And here's Part One...
Yeah. Just like that.
• This Moment! Well this was unanticipated. I had no idea that Able Heart had beautiful feel good tracks like this until it popped up in my feed...
Another artist I need to keep an eye on, it would seem.
• Viral! NEWSFLASH: Crucial Firefighting Plane Grounded In LA Because Of Idiot Drone Operator. Who gives a crap that homes are burning... I want footage to go viral on TikTok!
• SPACE! ELEVATOR! I loathe the AppleTV adaptation of Foundation, but keep coming back to this awesome scene every time I see anything about building a space elevator. It's incredibly well-done...
The trail of destruction as the cable for the space elevator falls acrss the earth is epic.
• Baked! Have I mentioned that I still loathe my new Whirlpool oven? After finally fixing it so it will actually work (the element was not fully seated or something), I run into new things to loathe always. In addition to the control panel layout being shit, my latest consistent source of hate is that YOU CAN'T KEEP THE DOOR OPEN WHEN BROILING! WHO THE FUCK DESIGNS AN OVEN LIKE THIS? You can't look through the window to keep watch, it isn't tall enough. You have to constantly open and close the door to look. This is fucking madness. In all my years of using an oven, including my previous Whirlpool, you could leave the door open to broil. I will never buy another shitty fucking Whirlpool appliance again. What a waste of money for something so frustrating. — Seriously thinking of welding the fucking door sensor permanently shut. But then I'd void my warranty? Lord.
• Spring Break! NEWSFLASH: 2 bodies found in the wheel well of a JetBlue plane in Fort Lauderdale, airline says. WTF? So... let's think this through. You stow away in a wheel well where the landing gear goes after takeoff. Assuming you can avoid getting crushed by it, you'll then reach a cruising altitude of 40,000 feet where it's freezing cold and you can't get oxygen?!? I just... what could the motivation be for something like this? "Screw New York weather, I'm going to Ft. Lauderdale!" or something? I dunno. Maybe if they didn't have someplace warm to ride out the winter this would seem like a good idea... but if this "keeps happening" it seems as though there should be some kind of sensor to tell the cockpit if there is a presence in the wheel well.
Until next Sunday, assuming the earth is still here.
This morning I woke up to scour the news to find out what's happening with the L.A. fires. It's a depressing necessity because closing my eyes to it isn't going to make it go away.
The only thing worse than the actual news are some disgusting "Christians" enamoured with the idea that the fires are "God's punishment" for Hollywood. Because isn't that the way it always goes? If disaster strikes a largely Conservative area, everything gets blamed on anybody except the people living there. It's the gays. It's abortion. It's Obama. However... the minute disaster strikes a largely Progressive area, it's because God hates them and they deserve His wrath. How "Christians" think that this kind of idiotic "logic" makes it okay for them to promote hate against people they don't like... IN GOD'S NAME... is absolutely wild. Just further evidence that many "Christians" today are Christians in name only, and have no real interest in living a life that honors Christ. Compassion and mercy have gone right out the window.
But anyway...
I watched a lot of footage from the fires. But the one that hit me hardest was a video that Hallmark actor Cameron Mathison shot of his destroyed home. This looks like something out of a post-apocalyptic video game instead of reality, and it's a very sobering watch...
Yeah. Children are being murdered around the globe, but God is spending His time burning down Cameron Mathison's house. Get the fuck out of here.
As I mentioned yesterday, a few flat earthers who were not afraid to risk being proven wrong were flown to Antarctica so they could see that the sun doesn't set but instead circles around you. After two days of the sun going around them, they were indeed proven wrong.
To the shock of absolutely nobody with an analytical thought in their head...
But, hey. Even if you don't trust those globist shills, you can totally trust me! I experienced polar day first-hand. Of course I wasn't as close to the South Pole as the team is, so the sun was lower on the horizon for me than it was for them... but I was in Antarctica and I did see the sun circle around me without fully setting. So, yeah. Welcome to nighttime in the Antarctic Circle (which is even more amazing when there's clouds out like this...
Photo by ME... TAKEN IN ANTARCTICA!
The views in Antarctica are incredible.
Though they're even prettier when the sky is clear...
Photo by ME... TAKEN IN ANTARCTICA!
There's one flerfer who said that the team wouldn't even be able to get to Antarctica because people with guns would stop them and keep them from approaching. To what end? No fucking clue. But they got called from Antarctica by MCToon to hilarious effect...
And... I'm dead.
But of course the diehard flerfers lose their dipshit cult following if they admit that all possible evidence tells us the earth is a globe, so now they're all coming up with every wacky excuse they can think of to explain why what people see is not what's really happening.
Christ.
I'd probably feel better about this shit if people could just admit that they don't know how anything works and are too lazy to learn about it. But nope! You've got a subset of humanity that would rather twist logic in a pretzel than admit they're just being ignorant.
Though the whole "flat earth" deal needs a hell of a lot more than a pretzel given how insane it is.
There's a lot that I could say about current events.
But I think that this TikTok from Pastor Paul Drees is the closest to how I am feeling about things, so it's probably best that I just go with it instead of trying to dance around what I'd like to say... what I should probably say... or something I might immediately regret if I say...
@pastorpauldrees hey don't hurt other people. Also I understand the irony of posting this video while I'm recoving from an illness. #progressivechristianity #pastorpauldrees #lutheran #elca #progressiveclergy ♬ original sound - Pastor Paul Drees
"Health care" in these United States is utterly fucking horrendous.
You've got an entire industry whose entire point is to take money out of the system. It serves absolutely no other purpose.
If all the money that the American people paid into "health" insurance only for insurance companies to FUCK THEM OVER was instead put into actual health care, we'd be paying less for far, far more.
I had to go nearly three fucking weeks without medication prescribed by my doctor because my "health" insurance company wouldn't fill it without "prior approval." And it's like... my doctor says that I require it. That's all the fucking approval you fucking need. But no. They had to deny the prescription. Then my doctor had to send in paperwork asking for approval. Then the insurance company had to process shit while I waited. Then I'm guessing the CEO of the insurance company had to fly to St. Barts on their private jet for a week to consider if, in fact, they would allow me to have what my doctor says I need. THEN they decided to allow the prescription to be filled.
Two days after my medication was finally in my hands, I got a letter telling me how "pleased" my "health" insurance company was to approve my prescription request.
For the love of God I don't understand how Americans have been continuously conned into thinking that this is the way health care should work. Forget one greedy fuck at a fucking insurance company... the entire country should be in goddamn flames over this bullshit.
And perhaps one day it will be.
Winter is finally here because there was a dusting of snow on the ground when I woke up this morning, but I can't be out rolling around in it... because an all new Bullet Sunday starts... now...
• Betty Gets Stamped! Betty White is getting her own postage stamp in 2025!
I'm happy that they used a photo of her when she was older since that's how most people would recognize her. But they could have done a set of four with Betty through the ages since her career has been so long and varied... just sayin'.
• Happy! I want so badly to see Piece By Piece but the price to buy it is still the in-theater price of $25... so I guess I'm waiting a minute. But, come on, doesn't this Pharrell Williams doc look incredible? Genius, really...
If there's one thing I'm certain of, it's that we need more LEGO documentaries like this.
• On The Bayou! Walt Disney World's Splash Mountain has been re-themed into Tiana's Bayou Adventure for a while now, and at last Disneyland's has been transformed as well...
As I said when I took a look at Orlando's ride, I think this was a bit of a missed opportunity in that they should have told the story of the film Princess and the Frog, but they didn't. So that means beloved characters like Ray (not to mention one of Disney's best villains, Dr. Facilier) are missing. That's a darn shame.
• Bug Reports! I've lost count of the number of times that I've reported a bug to Apple that they never address. Whenever you receive an email with a meeting link and click "ACCEPT" to let the sender know that you'll be there, the message is immediately deleted. And, no, it's not because Apple Mail adds it to your calendar with the meeting link. It's because Apple Mail IS A BRAIN-DEAD PILE OF SHIT AND NOBODY AT APPLE GIVES A FUCK!
It is absolutely abhorrent how Apple never seems to care about people trying to do actual work with their stupid shit. I have been reporting this same bug for fucking years now.
• Cheap Danger! You should probably watch this video. It's a sign of what's going to be coming in other industries. Corporations raking in BILLIONS of dollars yet refusing to pay anything to keep workers and customers safe, because there's no repercussions. And now there will be even less, because the next administration has made it very clear that they're going to continue to put corporations over people...
This is going to cost lives. Not even a question.
• Justice! NEWSFLASH: American livestreamer indicted in South Korea over offensive antics. Oh noes. I sure hope that nothing happens to him while he's doing time for being one of the worst people on the face of the fucking planet. He's been terrorizing and disrespecting people, places, and important things for what seems like forever. The number of heinous things he's done is so long that I'm shocked he hasn't been banned from all of Asia. Maybe it's forthcoming.
And now we return to Winter, already in progress.
In the absence of action there is indifference. Even if people pretend otherwise.
And pretend they do.
I used to go to Orlando 3 or 4 times a year for work, so it was inevitable that I would get caught in a hurricane at some point. And I did twice. Although since Orlando is so far inland, a hurricane there is not the same as it is when you're on the coast. It's heavy rains and strong winds while life goes on (mostly) as usual.
Except when it doesn't.
Your flight might get delayed or canceled (but that's always a possibility... hurricane or no hurricane). Maybe places will close early because they know people likely won't be wanting to go out in the weather. Or maybe plans will have to be changed for one reason or another. But it's rarely something serious.
Except when it is.
For one of the hurricanes I was in town, Walt Disney World actually closed. Which almost never happens because Disney loves money, and shuttering the parks for even a day costs them millions. This past Thursday when Hurricane Milton was battering Florida, I thought to look at the Disney app (which is still on my phone) only to see this...
Walt Disney World is open 365 days a year, so seeing everything closed tells you how serious they were viewing the situation. A quick Google search reveals that Walt Disney World has only been closed 11 times since they opened in 1971, which really drives it home.
You'd think that people would appreciate how Disney is willing to shut down to keep people safe when things get serious, but not everybody feels that way. Some people were livid that Disney would dare ruin their vacation by closing. Never mind that a potentially deadly hurricane was poised to tear through the place, WHAT ABOUT MEEEEE?!?
The parks were open the following day (Friday) and no worse for wear, so all those people griping about their "ruined" vacation only lost one day.
When it comes to Milton, it's a miracle that things weren't much worse than they were. They were certainly projected to be. I was seriously wondering if Disney World was going to be trashed or at least seriously damaged. But it wasn't, and Mickey Mouse lives to take our money another day.
I didn't sleep at all last night. I'd try... but then found myself grabbing my phone to see what havoc Hurricane Milton was unleashing on friends I have in Western and Central Florida (where I have many friends, because I used to have work in Orlando).
But what was once a Category 5 Hurricane was downgraded to a Category 4 Hurricane then was downgraded yet again to a Category 3 Hurricane once it made landfall. Apparently it plummeted to a Category 1 by the time it made it to Orlando. Which is not to say that everything is peachy, it's just that it's a lot less worse than it could have been. Definitely less worse than it was projected to be.
So today I got up texting with friends. Those who left Florida are returning. Those who stayed are picking up the pieces. Some were okay but without power. Some were without power and had flooded streets. Others were relatively untouched, and just had to gather up debris.
Florida was very, very lucky.
But not entirely.
Because the entire time after Milton was first announced as having been formed, I had to read the most inane fucking bullshit on social media sites from the tinfoil hat brigade that I've ever seen. Most of it having to do with "The Gubermint" using "Weather Control" to "Create Hurricanes to Attack Red States Ahead of the Election just like they did in North Carolina!"
Jesus Christ.
It's like... come on. These same people don't think Climate Change is real because "man isn't enough of a force to affect the weather" and yet they think President Biden has a weather control device in The White House basement? Or is it the Jews? It's on the same satellite as their giant space laser maybe.
And of course logic goes right out the fucking window.
If this technology existed and presidents have access to it... you just fucking know that President Trump would have used it. He has outright said that he loves the idea of taking revenge on his enemies and couldn't help but use that tech if it existed. And if it was only just now developed (while at the same time having existing for decades... DO YOUR RESURCH!) and Biden is the first president in history to have control of it... why the fuck would he aim a hurricane at the biggest Democrat-held regions of Florida? Tampa, Orlando, and even WOKE DISNEY WORLD were his targets? That's huge Democrat territory! Huge!
And it's always these dipshits throwing out stuff that they don't even understand like CLOUD SEEDING! and HAARP! and 5G! and RADIO WAVES!
Cloud seeding is my favorite conspiracy theory, because it's a "technology" that we're not even sure actually works and, even if it did work, it's just not possible to use it at the scale that would be required. As explained in this post...
From Meteorologist Nick Lilja — October 8 @ 8:25am
Building on my previous post, it's important to recognize the difference between cloud seeding and full-scale climate manipulation.
In my last post, I discussed the manipulation of air parcels and the atmosphere as a whole. It simply can't be done because the energy and work (the physics version of "work," not human effort) required to manipulate the air over something as small as a pot of boiling water is already quite large. Scaling that up to the entire atmosphere is, frankly, not possible, especially when considering other energy factors like solar and oceanic energy, which far exceed anything humans could contribute.
So, attempting to steer or manipulate a storm or hurricane in any particular direction is impossible.
For those suggesting I "Google" cloud seeding, I want to assure you that no one gets through an Earth Science degree or a 15-year career as a meteorologist without encountering such topics. I've read scientific papers and scholarly articles on the subject—no need for Google.
Does cloud seeding happen? Yes.
Does it work? We can't know.
Here's an example to explain why:
A typical cloud might be 2 miles wide and 25,000 feet tall. Some quick math shows that it contains about 2,189,564,415,845.94 cubic feet of air. That’s two trillion, one hundred eighty-nine billion, five hundred sixty-four million, four hundred fifteen thousand, eight hundred forty-five point nine four cubic feet.
Most cloud seeding is done by small airplanes. But let’s think big and use a C-130 cargo plane. A C-130 has about 5,000 cubic feet of potential payload space. That payload is only 0.00000025% of the volume of that cumulus cloud.
Could the C-130’s payload help a single cloud grow slightly taller for a brief period? Perhaps. But we can’t measure the difference it makes because there is no "control" cloud to compare it against.
Sure, it has rained from cloud-seeded clouds before. So let’s assume the cloud only rained because it was seeded. Great, you've nucleated some water vapor around the seeded material. Now you have raindrops forming around those particles.
Once the raindrops fall out of the cloud, they take all the seeding material with them. Then what? Do you seed again? And again? And again? Given the size and scope of this process, you can see how entropy (as discussed in my previous post) becomes a massive factor. It takes a lot of work to bring order to this chaos.
And even with all that effort, we still can't effectively measure the impact.
Furthermore, seeding a single cloud is vastly different from trying to seed an entire hurricane. As I mentioned previously, a typical hurricane contains around 78,824,318,970,453,922.64 cubic feet of air. That’s seventy-eight quadrillion, eight hundred twenty-four trillion, three hundred eighteen billion, nine hundred seventy million, four hundred fifty-three thousand, nine hundred twenty-two point six four cubic feet.
Now, the payload of that same C-130 represents about 0.0000000000025% of the volume of the hurricane.
For context, salt makes up about 3.5% of seawater, sodium about 0.2% of soft water, and chlorine about 0.003% of pool water.
A C-130’s cloud-seeding payload represents 0.0000000000025% of the water vapor in a hurricane.
Even if cloud seeding were attempted, given the raindrop formation processes in a hurricane (have you ever noticed how much smaller raindrops are in tropical systems?), the effort would be washed out almost immediately.
And I'm left asking, "then what?", again.
None of this is a feasible solution to an end goal of some sort of control and manipulation of our atmosphere. It simply can't be done with any sort of measurable outcome - good, bad, or otherwise.
But don't go trying to foolishly explain any of this shit to the people throwing out all this stupid bullshit (like infinitely dim Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene who, yet again, has me wondering how she has enough brain power to keep breathing, let alone compose a tweet).
The simple fact is that simple people don't give a shit about truth or facts. All they want is to bite into absolutely anything which fits their ignorant narrative. And then repeat it without any proof or evidence so they can look "smart" (if that's what you want to call it). And if something challenges their views strongly enough they will never concede the point... they'll just move on to the next idiotic talking point they can find (or dream up).
I never take anything off the table. It's always possible that some technology or some new science has been developed that is so incredibly complex and unfathomable that it might as well be magic (because ALIENS!). So could there be some magical technology out there that can control the weather? Sure. But is this weather control drama some massive enterprise with hundreds of people involved who are all able to keep it a secret? That really is nuts. Two people can only truly keep a secret if one of them is dead. But hundreds?!?
And let's be real, if Biden did have access to weather control tech that could create massive hurricanes, and he was willing to use it against American citizens... Mar-A-Lago would be the first target. And needless to say the droughts in The Great Liberal State of California would be a thing of the past.
Come on comspiracy theorists... at least put a little thought into the crazy shit you're peddling.
It's gotten to the point that I don't want to look at my news feed because it's all political bullshit and I'm just too tired to engage with any of it. After skipping past a bunch of stuff that was only guaranteed to enrage me, I stopped at a story headline I didn't understand at first... Keller ISD students with lunch debt of $25 or more to be served alternative meals, district says.
Now, I'm sure that a lot of people would read this story and say "Oh... well it's not like they're letting kids starve, so that's okay! If the freeloader kids don't like what they're being served and can't pay for a full meal like everybody else, they can just starve then!"
But, yeah, I am definitely not one of those people.
Some kid who was born into poverty is going to be even more stigmatized by his peers because he's getting a fucking sandwich instead of a proper meal. And, as God is my witness, I will NEVER understand how Good "Christian" People™ can claim to give a shit about children when they are thrilled to abandon them the minute they leave the womb.
This is fucking disgusting.
Instead of having my taxes go to fucking billionaires who get all the breaks and have all the loopholes to avoid paying a fucking dollar into the infrastructure that they directly benefit from, give my contribution to hungry kids.
Fuck EVERYBODY involved in this reprehensible system who thinks that this is okay.
I'd advocate for a Go-Fund-Me to pick up the slack that this community isn't willing to subsidize... but it's just like these kind of assholes to spend it on a new football field or some such stupid shit instead of writing off children's lunch debt as the money was intended for.
Crap like this makes me as mad as I have ever been. These are KIDS! Do you think they are in any way responsible for their situation? At least try to help them have a fucking childhood before they get beat down by a society who happily vilifies and attacks the poor.
It amazes me that people can be made aware of something atrocious like this in the Year of Our Lord 2024 and say "Fuck those hungry kids!" Because this is precisely what that is.