Speaking of Dubstep

Thank you random person going through my archives to remind me of this post! Oh wow, I completely forgot about that Windows XP bootup dubstep song!

This is impressive and also exactly why I don’t like country music

H/T Prof. Mondo

So wow… this blog is 5 years old.

I just realized that I blew right past my 5 year (right? 2014-2009=5 so that seems right) blogoversary, which was on December 4. Also sometime in the past week I went past post #4444, which is kinda neat. Looking back at that first year I think I put a lot more effort into things. Like, writing paragraphs instead of sentences. Goes to show you what a moron I was. Pfft, effort, who likes that stuff? And now that I’ve said that, I guess I’ve got a few paragraphs in me to complain about things.

More and more I simply find myself disinterested in current events. Everything seems to have devolved into name calling, and after really getting into following politics and the news when I first started this thing, now I just find those subjects distasteful and deceitful. I’ll read half of an article from some sort of conservative/libertarian viewpoint until the author just starts blaming the president for whatever the peeve of the day is and I just tune it out and click on the next tab. I’ll look at some website for movie reviews and they’ll start talking about global warming and it just turns me off the whole thing. Politics has seemingly infiltrated anything and everything, and it’s just… shallow. I guess I’ve turned from a “conservative libertarian” to a “there is nothing new under the sun, so just leave me alone” partier. As Borepatch says: “Democrats are not the problem, and Republicans are not the solution.” They’re all finks. I laugh at the politics of both my liberal and my conservative friends when I hang out with them, and how vehement they get. As Prof. Mondo says: “If your politics are bigger than your life, you’re doing one of them wrong.”

Honestly, I don’t even look at most of my gunblogs any more, since it only seems to be a mix of “idiot anti-gunner said something idiotic” and “9mm is the new 45.” I get it guys. I get it. There really is nothing new under the sun…

I guess that’s why I’m spending most of my internety time these days on miniature wargaming and aquarium forums. Always something new to learn and none of it is political. Don’t expect me to go away though! As long as my stupidphone can take pictures and run a WordPress app there will always be random sunsets and food, and as long as youtube keeps shooting crazy videos at me you’ll be the first (or at least, second) ones to get hit by the shrapnel.

Quote of the Ed

“All I have to do now is get through a 5-hour day without descending into super-villainy. Good luck, me!”

–Ed Hering, Atomic Fungus and Nerd Herder extraordinaire

Ed, though I don’t work retail, I know where you’re coming from–it’s a constant struggle.

That would have helped

My middle school could have used this advice.

Quote of the “Scout Rifle”

“[…]I had a conversation in which I joked that the ideal real-world general purpose rifle was a Glock 19 – that is, after all, all the modern man is ever likely to need to survive in the concrete jungles of the American coastal megalopoleis, and heartland waystation-towns alike. The irony of the Scout Rifle is that it’s a late 20th century weapon designed for the 19th; a sort of modernist homage to the romance the post-war generations have had with Brand’s Old West, Kipling’s India, and Conrad’s Africa.”

–Nathaniel F, from The Firearm Blog

I can’t find any fault in that line of explanation, but that doesn’t stop me from being a romantic about the desire for a scout rifle anyway!

Good read

“It’s not the west, by and large, that has lost civilizational confidence. What it has lost are elites that are on its side. Anywhere, in any country, you find the people quite sure they’re better than any other people in the world. This is stupid, wrongheaded and absolutely right.”

Sarah Hoyt brings a very good article, with quite a few good comments to with it.

A quote

“He may be the smartest president ever, but a president who doesn’t know how to negotiate with his opponents is like a carpenter who doesn’t know how to use a hammer.”

–BG by way of The Czar of Muscovy

Question of the Day

“…are all the ‘droids equally malfunctioning?”

I think LSP has the best explanation for the insanity in our biggest smartest strongest fastest et cetera-est leaders I’ve heard yet.

Cool!

Robert Zimmerman links to a NASA page about lunar lava tubes and pits.

Imagine having an almost ready made lunar base, well insulated from the extreme temperature fluctuations on the surface…

Space…

Ed has a post talking about that it’s been 45 years since Apollo 11 launched, as of yesterday. I attempted to leave a comment there, but since Livejournal occasionally goes insane about comments, I’m not sure I got it through, so I’ll just leave this here:

The alt text is especially poignant, reading: “The universe is probably littered with the one-planet graves of cultures which made the sensible economic decision that there’s no good reason to go into space–each discovered, studied, and remembered by the ones who made the irrational decision.”

That sums up everything for me.

So I’ve gotten into a bit of blogging funk here, reading too many books to bother turning on the computer much. But have you seen this? Because you should see it.

IPCC

I saw the latest XKCD and went “pffft, oh Randal, you may be a smart guy and an internet celebrity, but you’re pretty darn stupid for trusting government statistics,” and then I went on with my day. Borepatch of course decided to actually do the legwork.

Smart. Real Smart.

Uh, guys? Guys? You’re not even trying that hard.