feet to the fire

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Finally what looks to be a real interview. Confronting the man with the facts. Exposing his blatant falsehoods for what they are.

Of course most people will get hung up on the frenetic paper shuffling that comes along with the strange defense attempts.

cloud is hard

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Canon has a cloud service. Today I found out:

Some of the original photo and video data files have been lost. We have confirmed that the still image thumbnails of the affected files have not been affected.

http://image.canon/

Also new to me is that canon is a top level domain.

Just because big vendors don’t loose any data does not mean that this never gonna be the case. Even if people run on good infra strucure there might be issues on levels above it. In both directions:

  • having not enough copies of your data (as in zero, or 1 which will lead to zero)
  • having too many copies of your data (as in security not being the way should be)

1420 tons of potatoes

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According to Audibles Chapter 7 of Gareth Russell’s excellent “The Ship of Dreams” there were 1420 tons the ‘tuberous crop’ on the ship with the well known fate. Funny how nobody during the production realized that this amount would make for a very big pantry, vast appetite and rather long journey …

The Rembrandt that didn’t want to move

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Last week Sotheby’s auctioned a Rembrandt self portrait. It did not go as intended. 1632 there were no batteries, and they would not last that long in the frame. Of his 600 paintings around 40 had the subject of ‘moi’, but as Oliver Barker points out, only 3 of those are in private collections, and therefor – unless weird things happen – the only ones on the market. This particular one shows the painter at the age of 26. 22 years younger than its auctioneer.

However: It did not move.

While it sold after rather tedious 395 sounds, it was only 12.6 million pounds that the auction house could get for it for its client.

EDIT:

I was confused, since the number in the NY Times:


was 14.5 and not the 12.6 documented by YouTube. Of course I suspected that Scott Reyburn would be bad at math. Which shows more about my attitudes towards people who actually can write, than to what is going on, and how that relates to how little I actually know: The number that the auctioneer says is what the seller receives. The buyer however has to pay a premium to the auction house as well. Which at this price explains the added 15%.

»China could have totally stopped it«

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The man presiding over the US of A can be heard saying in Summer 2020. Is it so? In theory yes. Every outbreak, regardless of where, can be easiest mitigated at its source. The size of a well connected immunologically naïve population will impact the speed of distribution of any communicable disease. Not good for the Middle Kingdom. But could have China stopped it? That is very doubtful. In January there was already a vast pool of infected people. China put a lock down on more than 20 million people in January 23rd.

Months later the man in the US will still say, that Covid 19 is just like the flu and will blow over by summer.

While it is not clear what China could have done to eradicate the virus, it is very clear what the US could have done to stop what happens to it now: So far, it has four times the per capita death rate of Germany. While both took an economic hit of similar proportions in Q2.

The President not acting in January and Februar in terms of testing was a deadly mistake. Interpreting the motivations of a crazy person has its logical perils. I think that testing was not high on his priorities for a while since having no cases would make him look good.

300 vs 400

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How a hypothetical battle between Leonidas’ 300 and Astors 400 would end would entirely depend on how much prep time would be allowed.

Things did change during those 2372 years that lie between both enumerations. Just a couple of hours of shopping would flip the direction of the to be expected massacre.

Blocksite

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On Sundays I switch on the wonderful “Blocksite” extension.

For news, twitter, reddit, feedbin, instagram I have the system show me the results of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random instead.

Image is from the font called Sunday. No affiliation, just google image search nudging me along …

threat level

On March 12 2002 the Department of Homeland Security started a system to communicate the threat level of Terrorism with a color codes. Until it got replaced 2011 its state got changed 8 times.

During these 3326 days a total of 4 people fell victim in the US to the actions of Islamic Terrorists. Unless I have overlooked something at this comprehensive list these seem to be

Observations with a sample size of 3 are inherently pointless, so it is not worth pointing out, that these 3 incidents fell into the times when the thread level was as its lowest levels.

It is worth to observer that the daily death count from Islamic Terrorism in the USA during this period was 0.0012.

Covid 19 was more than a million times deadlier during most days last week.

KTLA, I don’t really believe you:

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GDRP became law in 2016. Its implementation date was 2 years ago. It is easy.

in bad taste

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sorry for the victims, all 7 of them

Still: was too good to let is pass by.

An apt illustration of the Republican reign that started 2016.