Graceful

Wow, they tear it up! They’re all so great musically.

Grace’s (the band leader and warrior princess-haired lead guitarist) style reminds me a lot of Samantha Fish, but more formal. That’s not a bad thing at all. There’s just a little classical influence there, like Eddie Van Halen had, but in a different genre. She’s amazing. Glad I found her.

That’s a really cool old Gibson SG Grace has. Must’ve cost a pretty penny. I think those usually sell in good condition for around $20K.

Social Media and News Fact Sheet.

The Bleeding Edge of Battle (Part I).

The Bleeding Edge of Battle (Part II)

Microsoft lets Copilot Studio use a computer on its own. Aww hell no.

Darwin’s Children Drew All Over the On The Origin of Species Manuscript.

14 reasons why Trump’s tariffs won’t bring manufacturing back.

How Colleges Are Trying to Save Themselves. Arguarbly the stupidest thing the Trump admin is now doing is destroying the university system. Though there are so many moronic things, there’s really no way to tell.

Enemy Bat

I was not exaggerating at all when I said that we have enemies of the United States in charge of the nation. And no, I don’t mean “enemies” like the MAGA doofuses screech about, which to them just means brown people, gay people, anyone who believes science is real, etc. I mean actual Putin and China.

This is insane.

Riser

I have a tool that tracks prices on Amazon over time. It embeds a graph right on the page for me so it’s very easy to see. Any imported item you can observe the price rise as tariff expectations occur and then tariffs actually hit:

This is just a decorative item, but this huge price increase is and will be affecting everything else as well. Since January, the product has increased from $120 to more than $180. That happening across most of the economy is going to be very bad for everyone.

Survey Says

Recall going back into Windows.

People in the comments are puzzled about what this undesirable product is for and why it’s being pushed so hard. But it’s not difficult to figure out. Recall is all about employee surveillance. Of course that is not being touted as its purpose yet. It’d never gain acceptance if Microsoft came right out and said that and they’d be foolish to do so.

MBA types, though, are drooling at thought of something like this existing, and that’s built right into the OS so it’s much harder to disable, get around, or fool.

They love it. And that’s who and what it’s for and why Microsoft is shoving it down our throats so hard.

Animoot

That is amazing, but every one of those frames is hand-painted. That scene is 94 seconds long, so that’d be 2,253 frames. 2,253 frames x 30 mins animation etc. per frame = 67,590 minutes. Which is 1,127 hours or just under 47 days.

In other words, that scene alone would’ve taken just under 47 days of animator time to produce1. There’s no way CGI would take that long. A comparable scene with CGI would take a day or two of animator time. Big, big difference.

  1. Of course, multiple animators worked on it. The actual scene probably took a week or so to make once filming and editing was complete.

What or Why

The more I mess about with Docker and Kubernetes and the tooling associated with it, the more it reminds me of playing around with OSes in the 1980s: Everything is manual. Nothing is settled and predictable. It’s not easy to tell what’s happening or why. The networking and security are poor while the performance is atrocious.

Why anyone thought this was better I haven’t a clue. Seems like mass delusion to me as we retreat into abysmal performance and unpredictable behavior.

U.S. weapons from Afghan war give Pakistani militants a deadly advantage.

25 years on, Patrick Bateman’s unsettling morning routine is normal. Not so much the routine, as the ethos.

The People Are Resisting While the Elites Are Surrendering.

What the best ads of the 2000s reveal about American culture.

What is Entropy?

You say you want a revolution. Well, you know, we all see you’re full of shit.

Investors Haven’t Been This Bearish in 30 Years, BofA Poll Shows.

Trump will destroy a world economy that has us at the apex and only getting stronger. It is idiocy not seen since the Civil War at least.

The Planetary Politics of Everyday Life. Forging an effective ecological transition requires improving people’s daily lives. Fuck degrowthers.

The Strange Packard Bell Corner Computer from 1995.