"Once I saw this guy on a bridge about to jump. I said, “Don’t do it!” He said, “Nobody loves me.” I said, “God loves you. Do you believe in God?”

He said, “Yes.” I said, “Are you a Christian or a Jew?” He said, “A Christian.” I said, “Me, too! Protestant or Catholic?” He said, “Protestant.” I said, “Me, too! What franchise?” He said, “Baptist.” I said, “Me, too! Northern Baptist or Southern Baptist?” He said, “Northern Baptist.” I said, “Me, too! Northern Conservative Baptist or Northern Liberal Baptist?”

He said, “Northern Conservative Baptist.” I said, “Me, too! Northern Conservative Baptist Great Lakes Region, or Northern Conservative Baptist Eastern Region?” He said, “Northern Conservative Baptist Great Lakes Region.” I said, “Me, too!”

Northern Conservative Baptist Great Lakes Region Council of 1879, or Northern Conservative Baptist Great Lakes Region Council of 1912?" He said, “Northern Conservative Baptist Great Lakes Region Council of 1912.” I said, “Die, heretic!” And I pushed him over."

–Emo Phillips

Google photos is alarmingly good at object and individual recognition. It’ll probably be used by the droid war killbots to distinguish “robot” from “human with bucket on head.”

Tbilisi or not Tbilisi, that is the question.

Nixon walked so that Reagan could run so that Dubya could do cartwheels so that Trump could shit himself all over the racecourse.

completely different animals, figuratively speaking (and sometimes, literally,

When railroading time comes you can railroad—but not before.

–Robert A. Heinlein, The Door Into Summer

I’m familiar with all of the technology involved, but I’m not sure about the applications you’re describing.

With a Have-A-Heart, the specific goal is live capture and release. There is no killing involved. The animal might be properly freaked out at the experience of being trapped, but that is specifically so as to permit an animal’s live relocation.

With a bolt gun, it’s meant to be used in a slaughterhouse scenario, which is a whole moral discussion of its own, but at bare minimum one wants the animals to be kept as calm as possible until the bolt gun is applied, because stressed out meat tastes worse than calm and placid up until the moment of death.

With hunting, the goal is to kill the target as cleanly as possible, preferably with a single bullet. That’s the Scenario A I’m describing above.

If one were hunting an animal with the intent of killing it, then a trap, followed by a knife or bolt gun, would maximize the terror felt by the animal to be killed. Sure, one may be putting less lead out in the environment, but at the cost of putting the animal through… almost the most appalling experience of death possible, with the admitted exception of a poorly-aimed bullet or arrow, followed by a wounded flight through the woods and slowly bleeding out.

So… if one’s absolute maximum goal is to reduce environmental lead, yes, that is one way to do it, but the moral implications of that method seem pretty rough.

Scenario A: You’re minding your own business, when a bullet passes through your heart/lungs and you’re dead in seconds.

Scenario B: You get caught in a trap and wait for hours for an ape with a knife or a bolt gun to come along and finish the job.

Honestly, if I were an animal, I’d prefer Scenario A.

When the righteous prosper, the city rejoices; when the wicked perish, there are shouts of joy.

Proverbs 11:10

I was gonna say. His entire fucking cabinet was his handlers. Shrub couldn’t have successfully managed a baseball team if he hadn’t been surrounded by more competent people.

Aw, fuck.

Presumably at some point a human being was involved in the decision making process to try and use this image to convey… some kind of message to other human beings, and at least one human being in that process couldn’t be bothered to give the AI slop more than the most cursory glance.

Unless of course one could design a fully-automated system of generating pseudo-scientific clickbait factoid garbage accompanied by AI-generated illustrations, entirely dedicated to producing as much vaguely plausible-seeming garbage as possible, 24 hours a day, just spewing out the opposite of useful knowledge at an unfathomable rate.

But what kind of monster would deploy that weapon on humanity?

Commentary tracks are the underappreciated treasures of physical media. Lord of the Rings gets a lot of deserved praise, but The Matrix has a philosophers commentary track which is awesome, and the 1989 Batman has Tim Burton geeking out over his own movie in a delightful fashion. Also, Jonathan Frakes does a hilarious commentary on Star Trek: First Contact where he sounds simultaneously like a popular high school jock and a gigantic Star Trek dweeb, and I adore him for it.

I worked at a used media store 10+ years ago, and I remember worrying about what would happen when everything was conveniently available on good ol’ reliable Netflix, which at the time seemed like the logical thing that everyone would eventually sign up for, and then what would I do?

Fast forward to today, and streaming has certainly changed the market. Huge TV show box sets are almost impossible to sell, though it’s not a totally dead market. DVDs and Blu-rays sell about as well as they ever did, if not better. Maybe everything is on a service somewhere, but most households aren’t going to sign up for every service, so as a result of all the streaming services fighting like dogs for library rights, there’s almost always someone looking to get a cheap, used, physical copy of a movie they can’t get elsewhere.

If anything, I feel more secure about the future of physical media today than I did ten years ago.

Maybe you just gotta piston pound your balls for yourself, comrade.

I’d replace Dick Dastardly with Boris Badunov and Natasha Nogoodnik, as they would be sent to make sure Russia’s interests are covered.

Swap out Vader for Jabba the Hutt; one violent, disgusting, sexually depraved slug belongs with another.

Burns and Cruella are both just about vile enough to fit into this picture.

Trade Hannibal for Buffalo Bill. He’s about at Trump’s level. Maybe director of Health and Human Services.

I’d trade Joker for Hugo Strange, because despite being an evil psychiatrist, his defining trait seems to be having a poor understanding of the even more psychotic people around him, so he’d be the ostensibly intelligent person in the room who thinks they can manage Trump and get him to do the specifically horrible things they want him to do, and instead he’s just going to shit in their Cheerios and make them eat it on live television.

The F-35 is not just an aircraft. It’s a system of systems. Software updates, mission data files, sustainment logistics, and upgrade pathways are all tightly controlled within an American-led ecosystem.

I heard an interview with the costumer who designed Elvis Presley’s rhinestone-studded jumpsuits. They kept on not paying him, but he was having so much fun that he didn’t really want to stop, so instead of quitting he just kept making each jumpsuit more elaborate and more expensive. “Yes, this new suit requires $15,000 worth of genuine Alsatian rhinestones.” Not exactly win-win, but I’m glad he was having fun and spending a ton of Elvis’ money.