Shermann
Shermann's JournalThe Haunting of Hill House
This Netflix series from 2018 was created and directed by Mike Flanagan. It has a total of 10 episodes. The setup is a series of straight horror tropes revolving around a haunted house. Yet, Flanagan's style that combines horror with drama in a nonlinear way makes it a unique, engaging, and unpredictable experience. This is definitely worth checking out if you want something a little different this Halloween.
Kamala and Tim have an opportunity to destroy Trump's staged McDonald's video
Trump suspiciously handed out only bags of burgers and fries to drive-thru customers, but no drinks. Who doesn't order a drink with their combo? One can only assume that these customers all ordered shakes, but the ice cream machine was broken. Trump couldn't fix it. Imagine the disappointment.
Fast forward to Kamala's commercial, which has the duo arriving early at the "same" McDonald's. Handyman Tim sees the problem! He fixes the ice cream machine and Kamala starts her shift on time handing free shakes and ice cream cones to delighted customers!
Microsoft Copilot is incompetent at solving computer issues.
I've tried to use Copilot to save me time resolving minor Windows 10 aggravations. Recently Microsoft added a Copilot application icon to my taskbar. This icon sucked because it wouldn't actually run Copilot and was just a crappy shell around the Edge browser. However, it wasn't immediately obvious how to remove it. Copilot hallucinated about various Copilot taskbar settings that didn't exist and even tried to steer me towards hacking the registry (!) In reality it was just a pinned shortcut that you could unpin like any other.
That's not the interesting part. What's interesting is how this highlights the major shortcomings of AI. So many of these common computer issues have bogus solutions posted and reposted all over the web at places like Reddit and Stack Overflow. A skilled reader can separate the wheat from the chaff, but AI regurgitates low-quality generic solutions like restarting the computer and reinstalling applications. AI can't reason and employs a sophisticated pattern-matching strategy which seems to always get bamboozled by the charlatans.
"In the Tall Grass" went into the weeds
I'm a sucker for these Stephen King film adaptations, but as we know they are a mixed bag. This one is right at five years old and is streaming on Netflix. There seems to be a bit of a parallel with Children of the Corn, but the movie does introduce some new elements. The characters spend a lot of time wandering aimlessly through the grass which gets a bit fatiguing. Their disorientation becomes entirely predictable. There are two structures and a small clearing which provide some relief. The pregnant sister is in distress throughout the movie which is overused as well. The antagonist reveals himself posing as a benign character early in the film, but you are immediately skeptical (he tries to sell it way too hard). There is a child lost in the grass who lures the characters in but denies doing so. There is a time-travel element which is thrown in to amplify the confusion. The rules aren't clearly defined, and it seems to only make the consequences inconsequential. There is a whole army of masked bad guys running around in the field being assholes. This element isn't fully developed, just don't let them grab you, okay? There is a dog who seems to help the plot at one point, but it's another dead end. There are a lot of dead ends in this big open field.
TL;DR summary: skip it.
U.S. drought monitor update
It's interesting to see the enormous impact Helene had in just a few days.
https://droughtmonitor.unl.edu/Maps/CompareTwoWeeks.aspx
The moderate drought in most of the Southeast (and Kentucky) was completely erased. West Virginia got some relief but remains in extreme/exceptional drought. The remnants had little effect on the Northeast.
Domestic energy production from fossil fuels is cleaner than energy generated by solar panels imported from China?
This was a dubious claim Vance made last night and seemed to get away with. The crux of it seems to be the lack of regulations there. "Clean" energy isn't clearly defined, but if you restate the claim in terms of CO2 emissions (including lifecycle) it is demonstrably false. "Clean" energy debates will invariably end with unfalsifiable gaslighting about cobalt slag piles. Don't follow the shiny object.
What if the USSR equipped Cuba with conventional MRBM's in 1962?
This is something I've wondered recently. The R-5 was a single-stage Medium Range Ballistic Missile (MRBM) with a range of 1,200 km (750 mi). Even with a conventional warhead, these could have wreaked havoc on a number of US military bases within reach (the nuclear-tipped version was the R-5M). This would have been the Cuban Revolutionary Armed Forces pulling the trigger, although Moscow would have been enabling them. Would that have still created tension and the potential for war? Is that alternate version of cold war history analogous to the possible scenario today where NATO enables Ukraine to make missile strikes into Russia right from their front porch?
The onset of mass hysteria used to be accompanied by dogs and cats merely living together.
Thanks Vance, you made things weirder than they were in 1984. In a bad way.
What did Trump ask Musk in private?
I'll bet he asked Musk about bringing the P/E ratio of TSLA from over 1000 to 64 in less than four years while raising the stock price.
Musk had to actually deliver a valuable product with some pretty tough competition. I don't believe this is in the cards for DJT. He just has his brand which is in decline and waiting for that knockout blow.
Useful idiots aren't always that useful as president
Laura Loomer has clearly demonstrated this. Trump has been groomed over the years by the likes of Hannity, Carlson, Limbaugh, McCarthy, Bannon, and even Diamond and Silk to be the mouthpiece for the MAGA movement. His celebrity status and anti-politician branding provided a path to the White House in 2016 paved with cynicism and low-information voters.
However, out of nowhere late in the 2024 election came a crackpot floozy to quickly penetrate this circle and exert undue influence over this propped-up simpleton. The well-oiled MAGA machine can't operate efficiently with that sugar in the gas tank now, can it?
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