Tag: Weird

Seriously, Reality Outstrips My Wildest Hallucinations

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At the confirmation hearing for David Bernhardt, Trump’s nominee to replace the fabulously corrupt Ryan Zinke as Secretary of the Interior, a protester donned a “Creature from the Black Lagoon” mask:

A protester dressed as a “swamp creature” was escorted out of a confirmation hearing for Interior Secretary nominee David Bernhardt Thursday morning.

The protester remained seated for two hours before being escorted out of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee hearing.

A protester dressed as a “swamp creature” was escorted out of a confirmation hearing for Interior Secretary nominee David Bernhardt Thursday morning. The protester remained seated for two hours before being escorted out of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee hearing.

Bernhardt, a former oil and gas industry lobbyist, reportedly helped block the release of a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service study outlining the effects of pesticides on endangered species while working as a deputy Interior secretary under Ryan Zinke, according to The New York Times.

An Interior Department spokesman told the Times that Bernhardt’s actions had been “governed solely by legitimate concerns regarding the legal sufficiency and policy.”

Seriously weird:

This Sh%$ Is Getting REALLY Old

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A man named Volodymyr Zelensky is currently leading the polls to be the next President of the Ukraine.

Some guy with an unpronounceable name running for President in a former Soviet Republic would normally not be worth of a comment, except for the fact that he is a comedian who plays the Ukrainian President on TV:

A comedian who plays Ukraine’s president on TV is running for president in the country and led in two polls conducted earlier this month.

 Volodymyr Zelensky, 41, stars in “Servant of the People,” a TV show where he plays a history teacher who is elected president of Ukraine after his anti-corruption rant goes viral, NBC News reported.

 Zelensky, who has no political experience, had the largest share of support among respondents in a poll conducted earlier this month by Ukraine’s Razumkov Center, the Interfax-Ukraine news agency said. The country’s presidential election is set for March 31.
………

Zelensky, also a lawyer and businessman, has a unique approach to campaigning. NBC News said he doesn’t hold rallies but sells tickets to comedy gigs in which he parodies his competition and shares “behind-the-scenes campaign videos” on Facebook and YouTube.

If he is elected president, Zelensky will face ongoing tensions with Russia, which annexed Crimea in 2014, as well as a crumbling economy and widespread corruption, NBC News reported. Zelensky has also said he would speak directly with Russian President Vladimir Putin about the war in eastern Ukraine.

Enough already.

At the rate this is going, I expect an animated TV character to become the President of Belgium.

I’m Not Sure That This Is Even News, and That Is Alarming

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Boys and Their Toys

Some whack-doodle Alt-Right Coast Guard officer accumulated an arsenal, and was planning to target Democratic politicians and journalists.

This is disturbing because it is neither unexpected nor particularly unusual.

To quote David Warner (Jack the Ripper) from the 1979 movie Time After Time, “Ninety years ago I was a freak. Today I’m an amateur.”

A white supremacist Coast Guard lieutenant is accused of stockpiling weapons, compiling a hit list of Democratic senators and left-leaning journalists, and preparing for a massacre.

Prosecutors in Maryland called Christopher Paul Hasson a “domestic terrorist” in a Tuesday court filing, first reported by George Washington University’s Seamus Hughes, that argued for Hasson’s detention ahead of trial on firearms and controlled substance charges.

What law enforcement discovered during a Feb. 15 arrest and search led prosecutors to tell a federal court that Hasson “intends to murder innocent civilians on a scale rarely seen in this country.” They included references to an anti-abortion bomber; a white supremacist Islamophobic mass murderer in Norway; his stated desire to “kill almost every last person on the earth” through biological weapons; and the discovery of 15 guns in his Silver Spring, Maryland basement.

Specific journalists and others appear in Hasson’s search history, the filing claims, including: MSNBC hosts Chris Hayes, Joe Scarborough, and Ari Melber; Sens. Richard Blumenthal—or “blumen jew,” in Hasson’s writing—Tim Kaine, Chuck Schumer, Kamala Harris, Elizabeth Warren, Kirsten Gillibrand and Cory Booker; Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Maxine Waters, Sheila Jackson Lee, and Ilhan Omar; CNN’s Don Lemon, Chris Cuomo, and Van Jones; as well as prominent Democrats Beto O’Rourke and John Podesta, and the Democratic Socialists of America.

I am shocked at the fact that I am completely not shocked.

If this is the new normal, we are f%$#ed.

We Are Living in Bizarro World

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It appears that gentrification in Oakland has dope dealers driving out tech startups.

That’s me watching this and golf clapping after reading these two tweets:

Hearing from tech startups getting priced out of Oakland warehouse space because of soaring demand for indoor hydroponic pot farms.

Yes, because it’s 2019 and everything is nuts *techies are being gentrified out of neighborhoods by drug dealers*

— Chris Anderson (@chr1sa) February 8, 2019

Same thing is happening with industrial space in LA/the valley

— Art Of Coop (@ARTofCOOP) February 9, 2019

Before you think that we have reached maximum weird, note that we are only (checks watch) 21 months from election day.

Stop the world, I want to get off this chicken sh%$ ride.

Sex, Lies, and Text Messages

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Jeff Bezos: “Alexa, send nudes to my secret admirer.”

Alexa: “Got it. Sending nudes to the National Enquirer.”

— Pranay Pathole (@PPathole) February 8, 2019

Best Twitter Take on All of This

It now appears that Jeff Bezos’ Girlfriend’s brother leaked his texts to the National Enquirer.

This is not a surprise. He has frequently been described as an, “Acquaintance of provocative Trump backers Roger Stone and Carter Page.”

It appears that, in the world of the radical right at least, politics trumps filial obligations.

The brother of Jeff Bezos’ mistress, Lauren Sanchez, supplied the couple’s racy texts to the National Enquirer, multiple sources inside AMI, the tabloid’s parent company, told The Daily Beast.

Another source who has been in extensive communication with senior leaders at AMI confirmed that Michael Sanchez first supplied Bezos’ texts to the Enquirer.

………

AMI has previously refused to identify the source of the texts, but a lawyer for the company strongly hinted at Sanchez’s role during a Sunday morning interview on ABC.

“The story was given to the National Enquirer by a reliable source that had given information to the National Enquirer for seven years prior to this story. It was a source that was well known to both Mr. Bezos and Ms. Sanchez,” attorney Elkan Abramowitz told ABC’s George Stephanopoulos.

If only there is some way for both Bezos and Trump to lose.

This is Trippy

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One sees a number of proposals for using distributed electric propulsion for vertical takeoff and landing systems, but this is without a doubt the oddest concept that I’ve seen yet:

A vertical-takeoff-and-landing (VTOL) design with wings that both tilt and fold, providing stable hover and efficient flight, is under development by Boston-area startup PteroDynamics. The company is targeting the military unmanned-aircraft market initially, but has ambitions to develop an air taxi.

In PteroDynamics’ Transwing concept, the wings tilt and fold back along the fuselage, and the aircraft acts like a multicopter in vertical flight. To transition to forward flight, the wings rotate into horizontal position, allowing the Transwing to fly like a conventional aeroplane.

“Our vehicle is completely unique,” says CEO Matthew Graczyk. “It’s 100% fixed wing in horizontal flight and 100% rotary wing in vertical flight, with no compromises.” Unlike a tiltwing, the Transwing can transition between vertical and forward flight with no stall range, he says. The aircraft can have a long wing for cruise efficiency, but folds into a compact size for VTOL.

………

PteroDynamics has flown a 12-ft.-span model, but has not yet attempted transition between vertical and horizontal flight and does not know how well the design scales. “We did get lucky with the prototype,” says Petrov. “What will happen at 40-ft. or 400-ft. span we don’t know, but as we understand how it works we see no fundamental reason it will not scale.”

As the wing rotates aft it has more dihedral and sweep and the angle of attack never exceeds 20 deg., while propeller wash helps prevent flow separation. “A tiltwing goes past 45 deg. into wing stall and the wing becomes an obstacle to forward flight,” Petrov says. Transwing “can stall, but mildly. We tufted the wing and video shows the airflow does separate, but not badly. Mostly the flow stays attached.”

Petrov describes the tilt/fold articulation as similar to the wing-fold mechanism on Grumman carrier-based aircraft such as the Avenger and Hellcat, except that Transwing folds leading edge up. The hinge mechanism will carry high loads, but reinforcement of the wing at the fold “should not penalize the aircraft too much, perhaps 5% of maximum takeoff weight,” he says.

I can’t wait for a full size test.

Tardis, Meet Turdis

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The residents of Biggin Hill, which is perhaps the the most English place name in the UK, are upset because the local transit agency has installed a massive outside rest room for its bus drivers:

Residents on a quiet residential road have complained after transport planners installed an 11-ft lavatory block for bus drivers outside their homes.

On Tuesday Transport for London (TfL) installed the lavatory block – dubbed the “Turdis” by angry residents – on a street in Biggin Hill, on the border of South London and Kent, amid claims that homeowners on the road were not consulted.

Local councillor Julian Bennington said that furious residents smashed its windows within hours of its installation earlier this week and that its lock is already broken.

He said: “People are very angry – it’s literally outside their houses.

“It’s a monstrosity dumped here – the size of it and everything else – in the middle of what is a residential area.

“We knew nothing about it as local councillors and the council didn’t either. Residents have now been asking about why they weren’t consulted.”

I don’t want to make fun of this situation, but a, “Turdis in Biggin Hill,” is simply too much to ignore.

Who’s an Antifa Icon Again?

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Liberté, Egalité, Gritté!


At his day job


My favorite non political Gritty meme

It appears that the Philadelphia Flyers mascot Gritty has become an icon of the left:

Last week, a headline on neo-Nazi site the Daily Stormer read like something from an alternate universe: “Alt-Right Icon Gritty Seeks to Follow Adolf Hitler’s Footsteps and Become Time’s 2018 Man Of The Year”. It was at least the third piece the site has posted in the last month proclaiming Gritty – the googly-eyed, giant, orange, hockey-playing monster mascot for the NHL’s Philadelphia Flyers – as a symbol of the far right.

As it happens, the Daily Stormer is playing catch-up, in reality trying to re-appropriate Gritty as a symbol – to take him away from their ideological opponents on the left. Because, you see, Gritty was already a partisan. Gritty, this smiling muppety nightmare on skates, is antifa.

………

When Gritty was unveiled in September, the immediate reaction was horror and revulsion (including from this very publication). But within hours, the tide began to turn, thanks largely to Gritty’s early Twitter activity – particularly when he told cross-state rivals the Pittsburgh Penguins to “Sleep with one eye open tonight, bird” – as well as his instant visual meme-ability. The gigantic face, the wide mouth set in a permanently crazed smile, and the massive swirling eyeballs made Gritty a grotesque underdog in a social media world of aesthetic perfection. He is hideous, yes, but one cannot help love him for it – recalling for many hockey fans the historically rough-and-tumble Flyers, or, for others, the city of Philadelphia itself and its famously aggressive sports fans. His entrance to the Flyers’ first home game of the season further solidified his status as a sympathetic destructive force: he came in on a wrecking ball.

Then, very quickly, Gritty’s relationship to hockey, or sports, fell by the wayside. Into the mix, another underdog cause attached itself to Gritty: the political left.

A few days after Gritty first appeared, Jacobin magazine, a socialist publication, tweeted simply: “Gritty is a worker.” Whether it was this tweet which sparked what has come since, or whether Jacobin caught on very early to Gritty’s leftist memeification is difficult to ascertain, but in the weeks since, Gritty’s image has been used by anti-fascist protesters, anti-Trump protesters, and in countless left-wing memes.

I am amused, and completely flummoxed.

I Think that I Saw This Dr. Who Episode

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Break Out the Sonic Screwdriver

It appears that the Gell Guards have taken over the White House.

It’s either that, or the person decorating the White House has the creepiest sense of style ever.

Wait ……… This just in ……… It’s the creepiest sense of style ever:

Something old, something new, something borrowed, something filled with the coagulating blood of one’s enemies. The Trump household apparently wasn’t content turning the White House into a dark alternate dimension where all hope dies for just one year—this house of horrors has now become an annual holiday tradition.

The White House has shared an official look at First Lady Melania Trump’s latest holiday decor at the White House. Last year, Mrs. “Be Best” turned the hallways of the presidential residence into a living nightmare straight out of Get Out or Voldemort’s bathroom. Shadowy branches crept over the walls, reaching forth to suck out the souls of anyone who dared trespass the darkened walkway. This year, she’s changing it up a bit with some good old-fashioned blood cones.

Shudder………

I Don’t Get It

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The Canadian curling gold medalist was just ejected from a competition for excessive drunkenness.

Ummmm……What could possibly posses someone do curling sober?

A Canadian curling team that includes an Olympic gold medalist was ejected from a curling event in Alberta on Sunday for being “extremely drunk,” breaking brooms and swearing.

Ryan Fry, Jamie Koe, Chris Schille and DJ Kidby were kicked out of the Red Deer Curling Classic, according to the CBC, and forfeited their final match. The event is part of the World Curling Tour.

There’s Pathetic, and There’s ………

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So clueless that Donald Trump mocks you for being an incompetent despot:

President Trump on Tuesday ramped up his rhetoric against Saudi Arabia over the death of Jamal Khashoggi, calling the kingdom’s efforts to hide the journalist’s killing the “worst cover-up ever.”

“They had a very bad original concept, it was carried out poorly and the cover-up was the worst in the history of cover-ups,” Trump told reporters at the White House. “They had the worst cover-up ever.”

We truly live in Bizarro world.

Are You a Good Witch or a Bad Witch?

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A coven of witches in New York have cast a hex on Brett Kavanaugh, which is weird, but it appears that some of the flying monkey right wing crowd took it seriously enough that they sent the witches death threats.

No, this is not the Onion:

Melissa Madara was not surprised to receive death threats on Friday as her Brooklyn witchcraft store prepared to host a public hexing of newly confirmed U.S. Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh this weekend.

 The planned casting of an anti-Kavanaugh spell, one of the more striking instances of politically disgruntled Americans turning to the supernatural when frustrated by democracy, has drawn backlash from some Christian groups but support from like-minded witch covens.

 “It gives the people who are seeking agency a little bit of chance to have that back,” Madara said. The ritual was scheduled to be livestreamed on Facebook and Instagram at 8 p.m. EDT on Saturday (1200 GMT Sunday).

………

More than 15,000 people who have seen Catland Books promotions on Facebook have expressed interest in attending the event, vastly exceeding the shop’s 60-person capacity.

I honestly have no idea how people who do satire complete with this sh%$.

This is Seriously Cyberpunk, in a Seriously Dystopian Way

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Next year, Amy Winehouse will conduct a worldwide tour, despite having died more than 7 years ago.

Dead celebrities touring as computer generated simulacrums really does sound like something straight out of William Gibson’s darkest visions:

A hologram of Amy Winehouse is set for a worldwide tour in 2019. A projection of the late singer will “perform” digitally remastered arrangements of her songs, backed by a live band, singers and what the production company Base Hologram calls “theatrical stagecraft”.

Winehouse’s father, Mitch, described the endeavour as a dream. “To see her perform again is something special that really can’t be put into words,” he said. “Our daughter’s music touched the lives of millions of people and it means everything that her legacy will continue in this innovative and groundbreaking way.”

Mitch Winehouse said the tour will raise money and awareness for the Amy Winehouse Foundation. The charity educates young people about drug and alcohol misuse, provides support for those at risk and supports the development of disadvantaged young people through music.

The show is expected to last 75 to 110 minutes.

This is profoundly creepy.