UPDATE: With tonight's breaking news in the Zimmerman trial, here's a link for the Seminole Country/Sanford Police scanner to listen for any riots in the making. Stay safe morons.

OK morons, for your Caturday night entertainment, I present to you a pop quiz. It's very easy. As long as you aren't a LIV. The News IQ Quiz. Sadly, I only got 12 out of 13 correct.

Oh, I saw Pacific Rim today and loved it. It's exactly what it is supposed to be. A giant monster versus giant robot fight fest. The sound system at the theater rocked. I could literally feel the punches and my seat shook when the big beasties and robots walked about. A perfect summer movie. Was it Lawrence of Arabia? No. Did it have some plot holes? Yes. In the end did I care? Nope. more...

Posted by: CDR M at 06:54 PM | Comments (936)
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The NBA's Baron Davis claims to have been abducted by aliens.. After reading the story I have no doubt that something has been messing with his brain.

Have you ever encountered a UFO?

Open thread.

Posted by: Open Blogger at 10:22 AM | Comments (244)
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Urban Outfitters halts prescription-themed products. (CNN link).

And here is the letter signed by the Attorneys General of 22 states asking Urban Outfitters to cease selling these dangerous products. Is your state AG among the signatories?

I don't know about the rest of you, but I sleep better at night knowing that I'm protected against nefarious gag merchandise.

Posted by: Open Blogger at 08:05 AM | Comments (342)
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Texas HB2 passed the Senate last night. Saint Wendy must've forgotten to wear her magical pink shoes or something.

Now we get to watch none of the opponents' dire predictions come to pass.

Posted by: andy at 04:03 AM | Comments (550)
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Kind of terrible, given the circumstances.

The station claims the NTSB "confirmed" the fake names (which include "Ho Lee Fuk"). The NTSB says they did no such thing.

So, how did this happen?

Here's a better question: How stupid are people in the media? Do they have no awareness at all? Does no one recognize "Ho Lee Fuk" as an unlikely name?

What if I called them and said one of the pilots was named "Baa Baa Booey Tooya'all?" Still make it to the air?

UPDATE [DrewM.]: So much FAIL

NTSB release: "a summer intern acted outside the scope of his authority when he erroneously confirmed the names of the flight crew..." #ktvu

— Tim Nelson (@timnelsonPDX) July 13, 2013

The intern only confirmed the names, he/she didn't give KTVU the names. Some idiot got those names and called the NTSB. The kid was probably being sarcastic ("yeah, sure that's their names') and the idiots at the station ran it. more...

Posted by: Ace at 03:27 PM | Comments (517)
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Nice.

The Texas Department of Public Safety has been confiscating items that pro-abortion protesters sought to smuggle into the senate hall as they work to pass HB 5.

During these inspections, DPS officers have thus far discovered one jar suspected to contain urine, 18 jars suspected to contain feces, and three bottles suspected to contain paint. All of these items – as well as significant quantities of feminine hygiene products, glitter and confetti possessed by individuals – were required to be discarded.

Posted by: Ace at 02:05 PM | Comments (355)
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Meet the New Tech, same as the Old Tech.

It said the FSO believed it was necessary to expand the use of typewriters after American Edward Snowden reportedly used a simple flash drive to reveal the extent of the US governmentÂ’s phone and internet surveillance programmes.

“After the scandal with the spread of classified documents WikiLeaks, revelations of Edward Snowden, reports of tapping Dmitry Medvedev during his visit to the G20 summit in London, it has been decided to expand the practice of creating paper documents,” a FSO source told the newspaper.

I wrote what I think is an interesting sci-fi speculation about this at Breitbart, but I had a glass of wine at lunch, so frankly I think everything is interesting right now, especially cookies.

The Impermanence of Electrons: "Lickmuffin" writes (and you should always listen to a guy called "Lickmuffin"):

ve often thought that people would return to paper for archival purposes, but for a different reason. When historians -- assuming that the culture that replaces us has historians -- look back at this time, there will be a huge honkin' gap. There will be a two or three generation stretch where there are no everyday records -- no family photos, no journals, few legal records -- because at some point all of the digital stuff was lost. And not necessarily lost catastrophically during a solar flare or SMOD event -- it was just misplaced and wiped, or the technologies went obsolete and the media could not be read.

Got a shock the other day when I found an old cell phone in our kitchen junk drawer. Battery long dead, I dug around in another junk drawer to look for a charger that might power the thing. Sure enough, there were photos of my kids on there that I had forgotten about. They were retrieved in this case, but they could also have been shredded when I recycled the phone.

I think there's a market for high quality archival storage materials and techniques for even common and personal items. I've thought about a start-up doing such stuff, but, like, Obamacare. So f@ck it.

Second look at Quipu?

Posted by: Ace at 01:20 PM | Comments (221)
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Not only were ratings poor -- no boost for seizing the interest of the online community -- but they were poor even compared to the usual SyFy Schlock Shark movie (Two Headed Shark Attack, Sharktopus, Megashark, Snow Shark, Sand Shark, Megashark vs. Giant Squid, etc. )

Two conclusions:

First, and this is rather obvious, and yet still worth noting because people tend to forget it: the people who care about "What's going on on Twitter" are the people who are on Twitter, who are a small percent of the population. And this applies to blogs as well.

They don't "reach" into general America. How could they? If America cared enough about Twitter to worry about what's going on on Twitter they'd be on Twitter, but they don't so they're not.

Second: This is the most optimistic thing I've heard in a month. America doesn't give a shit what people are saying on Twitter? Well thank goodness. At least we still have that.

And let's throw in a third: Everything about Sharknado was a joke, including, most of all, the people (like me) breathlessly treating it as if it were the Super Bowl. And in-jokes are fun and all, but only for the people in the joke; most aren't in on the joke, others could be in on the joke but choose not to be, and some are in on the joke but aren't going to bother to waste two hours of their lives on awful schlock just to be fully in on the joke.

It occurred to me ten minutes into Sharknado: Why am I watching this? Now that I've done the joke blog posts promoting Sharknado, do I really have to follow through on watching it? Joke is 90% completed if I skip that part, right? I'd still get an A- on the Sharknado test, right?

Posted by: Ace at 12:26 PM | Comments (435)
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The jury has the Zimmerman case. The waiting is underway.

Heartache....Sharknado a ratings disaster. Say it ain't so!

On the upside, there will be a Sharknado 2 but to better connect with it's core audience of Twitter users it will be shot and released as a series of approximately 700 Vine videos.

Posted by: DrewM at 11:50 AM | Comments (307)
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Very interesting bit of history that the mythmakers of Hollywood have, strangely enough, avoided exploring.

The book comes out in October. Or, as Hollywood knows it, Oktober.

[H]ere's the arguable game-changer: Urwand unearthed evidence that suggests the studios were not merely self-censoring in an effort to keep their shareholders, audiences, and industry and government monitors happy. Rather, he says, the studios began working in detailed coordination with Nazi officials, putting profits above principles.

Largely through the Third Reich's vice consul in Los Angeles, Georg Gyssling, the Nazi-Hollywood relationship gave Hitler and his propaganda minister, Joseph Goebbels, effectual power over what films got made, what scenes got cut, which stars and filmmakers were blacklisted, and which Jewish studio employees in Germany were fired. The Germans demanded say not just over American films shown in Germany but over those shown anywhere. Nazi emissaries visited theaters worldwide to report back on whether promised scene cuts had in fact been carried out. If not, the officials scolded the studios and threatened to close German production and distribution markets to them. The studios, year after year, would promptly grovel and comply.

Posted by: Ace at 09:48 AM | Comments (383)
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