You thought maybe the TSA was the fedgov’s worst example of idiotic “security”? Hey, at least the TSA puts on an impressive pretense. OTOH, it appears that the Office of Personnel Management actually gave root access for all those now-hacked personnel files to contractors in Argentina and … yes, here it comes: China. How Orange is the New Black misrepresents women’s federal prisons. Yes, but it’s a good show. And the memoir it’s based on is even better. More lesbian sex in the Netflix version, but the horror of petty people in power comes across even more strongly in the…
Category: Computers & Technology
Yes, Schadenfreude is so ignoble. But: Former N.J. police chief gets a SWAT visit. Over a “personnel issue.” (H/T DB) And since David Codrea doesn’t seem to be doing them at the moment: here’s another “only one” for ya. Tragic one. Who hires creeps like this? Oh, any old PD looking for a good intimidator. Geronimo: birth of a resolute leader. Paul Bonneau finds a use for the U.S. Constitution after all. Oh, Texas! You are making some interesting moves. Yes, you are. Why is the media ignoring a “cyber Pearl Harbor”? The disposable life of a confidential informant. Only…
Hastert may be a criminal. But other feds are worse. (Never mind that Hastert and his ilk made them worse.) I admit it. Maeve Binchy, the mega-selling Irish author of simple domestic tales, is one of my guilty girly pleasures. Binchy died in 2012 of heart problems. While looking for something completely unrelated to her health, I stumbled upon this nice article about how she made the best of her initial diagnosis. Inspiring. The fedgov has recently made it 5x more expensive to do. But Americans are again surrendering their citizenship in small but record-setting numbers. (Tip o’ hat to…
Kind of strange. This whole business with the unfixable vehicle has got me feeling absurdly vulnerable. Rationally, this makes no sense. Even with the car business coming on top of the broken ankle (and on top of $500 worth of car repairs in April), it doesn’t put me at any real risk. I’ve got neighbors who’ll pick up my mail or give me a lift to the post office. I’ve got friends who’ll get me to the grocery store. It’s not like I’m going to be stranded in a blizzard by the roadside and get eaten by passing Bengal tigers.…
I’m still thinking of the deer-in-the-headlights stare of the mechanic who told me the Xterra needed a $1,100 computer replacement.
He was so obviously, blatantly just guessing. And so obviously dependent on whatever the diagnostic code said. “P1320? Not the distributor? Not wiring? Then it can only be the ECM. No other possibility.”
Horsefeathers.
“How Baltimore Became Pottersville.” Bovard riffs on the glories of HUD. Why Mozilla’s decision to attempt to push all sites from http to https
Another terrific one from Ken at Popehat. How to spot (and counter) covert advocacy of censorship. I’ve never downloaded anything from a torrent site. I’m against any form of piracy that deprives creators of the rewards they’ve earned. Still … The Pirate Bay has panache. The usual anti-gun and “hate group” suspects band together to promote ballots over bullets. Um, yeah. Good luck with those ballots when you’re being threatened by thug government. The liberation of Dachau and the righteous rage of the liberators. “Oh, my gold!” Yet another company tries to do what egold did. (The poster says BitGold…
Find a hidden treasure at auction. Give it back. You’re a better man than I. It’s a bad idea, but a provocative thought experiment. “What if, just for a change of pace, it was the opponents of free speech whose ideas were deemed hateful?” Though the lede is about investing in the new cannabis industry, the most fascinatingly weird part is about the work being done in laboratories to isolate (then market) product with specific properties. So we know birds came from dinosaurs. Now scientists have taken chicken embryos part of the way back. Honest, I thought it was The…
The courts have been so all over the place on police search issues that it’s hard to say what impact this will have. But the Supremes just declared that cops cannot prolong a routine traffic stop even for a minute without legit cause. Inside the strange and wonderful world of micronations. Emphatically NSFW, but funny: company posts a … unique Craigslist ad for engineers. Bet we’ve all wanted to do this at some time or another. Looks like a must-see documentary (though the characterization of Tasers as “rifles” needs some explanation for sure). Gradeschooler challenges school anti-pot propaganda. His activist…
“Oh crap! More ammo for the ‘ban body armor’ people.” Something on the lighter side from Y.B. ben Avraham. And exactly who here terrorized and abused those free-range kids? Just another example of why people are fleeing the biggest nanny states. Schadenfreude is so very ignoble. Still, it’s a delightful thing to see some of the greatest supporters of Obamacare getting skewered by it. This is one of those things you might have intuitively perceived but never quite believed: we recall better (especially recall concepts better) when we write notes by hand rather than type on a keyboard. Those “racketeering”…