Strange Daze

Truth, Justice, And The American Way –  Superman has a smile on his face. He knows what he’s headed toward, and he knows he will succeed. A hero is eternally optimistic about his mission because nihilism is a spiral of irrationality in which creates a self-fulfilling prophecy of doom and failure. A Superman would never succumb to such downward spirals.

Notice how the background then drapes the American flag around him. The American dream of pursuit of property for us and our posterity is then amplified as the flag takes us down to what appears to be an all-American family standing at the forefront behind Superman, ready to give him backup and cheer him on into victory.

The father stands at the front, the rational man proudly wearing the letter “A”, a reference to the Law of Identity. He’s also holding a book in his hand, learning and using reason to better himself. A man and father must stand before his family in rationality to lead them and guide them toward what is right. The family will then stand with him.

Behind the family, stands more of society — including a large skyscraper. Civilization hangs in the balance behind the Superman who pushes forward and overcomes darkness, behind the family who maintains rationality and reason.

This is beautiful. It’s inspiring. This is what comics should be. We need heroes, not anti-heroes. We need truth, justice, and the American way.

Bentley Blower Car Zero, 2020. Bentley Mulliner have completed the first prototype for the Blower Continuation Series. Car Zero, the first “new” Blower Bentley in 90 years. A further 12 customer cars will be built, all have already been sold (but at what price?).

So Elon Musk announces his move to Texas and now Oracle has announced they are moving their HQ from California to Austin. California is quickly going to run out of other people’s money… A Large Regular: Flotsam and Jetsam

Brave New World speaks in the language of a kindergarten teacher.
Part of society’s feminization. pic.twitter.com/SmpysbZ6hJ

— HappyAcres (@HappyHectares) December 10, 2020

Ink-Stained Wretches: The Battle for the Soul of Digital Freedom Taking Place Inside Your Printer   Since the turn of this century, the company’s changed its name to HP and its focus to sleazy ways to part unhappy printer owners from their money. Printer companies have long excelled at this dishonorable practice, but HP is truly an innovator, the industry-leading Darth Vader of sleaze, always ready to strong-arm you into a “deal” and then alter it later to tilt things even further to its advantage.

The company’s just beat its own record, converting its “Free ink for life” plan into a “Pay us $0.99 every month for the rest of your life or your printer stops working” plan.

I’m sorry but this –THIS — is just silly. .950 JDJ – Largest Center-Fire Rifle Ever Made. This gun is larger than a .50 cal and larger than the famed T-Rex The round is .95 inches in diameter, and weighs a staggering 3600 grains (8 ounces, half a pound). The bullet has a muzzle velocity of 2,200 feet per second, and generates 38,685 lbs/ft of energy. It also generates a recoil impulse of 200 lbs/ft, or about 13 times the recoil energy of a .308 Winchester. This recoil is FAR beyond the capability of most humans to tolerate, and can in fact cause severe or even fatal injuries. To compensate for this, the rifles are typically fired from a lead sled type shooting rest. The rifle costs about $17,000 by itself, and each round costs nearly $80.

Secrets Costco doesn’t want you to know   When you think of how many people are jammed into the food court at any given time, you would assume that Costco is selling a whole lot of hot dogs. But would you guess that they sell over 100 million in a year? Well, they do, and according to The Motley Fool, the warehouse store actually sold 128 million in 2015, which happens to be about four times as many hot dogs as all the major league ballparks combined sold in the same year.

Why Do We Even Listen to New Music? |   Most people have all the songs they could ever need by the time they turn 30.

The real Lord of the Flies: what happened when six boys were shipwrecked for 15 months    The kids agreed to work in teams of two, drawing up a strict roster for garden, kitchen, and guard duty. Sometimes they quarreled, but whenever that happened they solved it by imposing a time-out. Their days began and ended with song and prayer. Kolo fashioned a makeshift guitar from a piece of driftwood, half a coconut shell, and six steel wires salvaged from their wrecked boat – an instrument Peter has kept all these years – and played it to help lift their spirits.

Pandemic Villains: Robinhood –    It’s the perfect mousetrap, among other things because of its name. “That’s the other thing,” says Brewster. “They call it Robin Hood.” Instead of stealing from the rich and giving to the poor, the American version takes in the young and sells them to computer-powered hedge funds; this Robin Hood is the house that always wins. If there’s a more brilliant metaphor for capitalism in the Covid age, it’s hard to imagine.

If people are different enough to have “their own culture” then they’re different enough to support themselves and not depend on another culture for handouts. That’s my rule.

— HappyAcres (@HappyHectares) December 8, 2020

Who’s watching whom? The featured image of the Moon through a gap in a wall of rock may appear like a giant eye looking back at you. Although in late October it took only a single exposure to capture this visual double, it also took a lot of planning. The photographic goal was achieved by precise timing — needed for a nearly full moon to appear through the eye-shaped arch, by precise locating — needed for the angular size of the Moon to fit iconically inside the rock arch, and by good luck — needed for a clear sky and for the entire scheme to work. The seemingly coincidental juxtaposition was actually engineered with the help of three smartphone apps. The pictured sandstone arch, carved by erosion, is millions of years old and just one of the thousands of natural rock arches that have been found in Arches National Park near Moab, Utah, USA. Contrastingly, the pictured Moon can be found up in the sky from just about anywhere on Earth, about half the time.

For me, self-identification was a con    I can’t just upload a new face or different secondary sex characteristics when the old set no longer feels quite ‘me’. Just as our inner sense of selfhood is both consolidated but also constrained by the willingness of loved ones to recognize it, so our ability to apply the digital style of selfhood in ‘meatspace’ is limited by the stubborn refusal of our bodies to behave like a slate we can wipe clean and over-write at will with new selves.

I may have dreamed, as Sebastian, of being able to reincarnate as a new, unblemished me when the old one didn’t suit. But as has become apparent with age, I will always be pursued by the fraying, beleaguered traces of old selves: childhood scars, stretch marks, a C-section scar, the piercings I no longer wear.

More wine and cheese may help reduce cognitive decline, fight Alzheimer’s disease – Study Finds  Getting healthier every day, am I.

Today’s Reminder of:

In the summer of 1913, Hitler, Stalin, Trotsky, Tito, Freud, Franz Ferdinand and Lenin were all regulars in Vienna’s Café Central  (Remember, you only have ONE bullet. Choose wisely, grasshopper.)         

WindowSwap    In which endless windows on the world of the world can be seen. You can even enter your own window on the world, but don’t ask me to look through it.

bookofjoe: The tallest palm trees in the world – that’s a horse at the foot of the palm.

Word Around the Net: GOODBYE MY FRIENDS  [A brilliant but little known blogger hangs it up.] Principles of the constitution, reason, truth, logic, and so on were not just unknown but people simply did not want to know them, because they clashed with a preferred version of reality.  And to make matters more difficult, the people who were of this mindset controlled media, government, education, entertainment, culture, law, and the rest of society.

Iowa church buys and forgives $5M in medical debt ahead of holidays |  “We asked them how much money it would take to forgive all the medical debt in Polk County,” Bothwell said. “They responded, ‘With what you have, you could forgive debt in all of Iowa.'” According to Bothwell, the nonprofit told her roughly $8,000 could buy $5 million worth of medical debt in Iowa.

The YouTube Ban Is Un-American, Wrong, and Will Backfire  by Matt Taibbi Start with the headline: Supporting the 2020 U.S. Election. YouTube in its company blog can’t even say, “Banning Election Conspiracy Theories.” They have to employ the Orwellian language of politicians — Healthy Forests, Clear Skies, “Supported” Elections — because Google and YouTube are now political actors, who can’t speak plainly any more than a drunk can walk in a straight line.

daily timewaster brings you Ghost Elk