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Hostile Takeover by OmeN2501 |
11 hours ago
Silicon Forest
If the type is too small, Ctrl+ is your friend
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Count Zero by William Gibson |
"The man's life, from Turner's vantage, seemed marked out by a certain inevitability; he was brilliant, a brilliance that had been detected early on, highly motivated, gifted at the kind of blandly ruthless in-company manipulations required by someone who aspired to become a top research scientist."I wasn't even aware that "ruthless in-company manipulations" existed, much less were necessary for a top level job. That might help explain my abysmal career trajectory.
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Gustaaf Adolf Frederik Molengraaff 1860-1942 |
Meanwhile the Boer War still had his attention. One of his ideas was to give each soldier a small tin identity card, which later became practice in armies around the world. - WikipediaJust in case you ever wondered where the idea came from.
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Bushveld Igneous Complex, South Africa Satellite image from ASTER (Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer). Mines, tailings piles, and leach ponds are shown in blue. Deep water is black. Area is 24 by 32 miles centered on 25.6° South, 27.4° East. October 24, 2006. |
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Same area using Google Maps |
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South African Gold Mine I don't think this is one of Lonrho's establishments. |
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Anna Morales (Jessica Chastain) and her husband Abel Morales (Oscar Isaac) |
"What I'm really afraid of is a foreign policy that creates more widows and orphans."That line struck a chord with me, so I 'shared' the video clip. (The line shows up just after 7:50.)
"We have no idea what our foreign policy is in the middle east."I have asked that same question myself a couple of times, but I have never gotten a satisfactory answer. The State Department had a statement, but I found it vague to the point of useless. I just looked for it and couldn't find it. Crawled off into some deep dark hole. Afraid of the light, no doubt.
"Boiler plate" originally referred to the sheet steel used to make boilers.
The analogy between the curved steel used to make water boilers and curved metal used to print prepared text was based both on the curved shape of the plate and to the fact that it had been prepared elsewhere before being incorporated into a downstream producer’s finished product. . . .
In the field of printing, the term dates back to the early 1900s. From the 1890s onwards, printing plates of text for widespread reproduction such as advertisements or syndicated columns were cast or stamped in steel (instead of the much softer and less durable lead alloys used otherwise) ready for the printing press and distributed to newspapers around the United States. By analogy, they came to be known as 'boilerplates'. Until the 1950s, thousands of newspapers received and used this kind of boilerplate from the nation's largest supplier, the Western Newspaper Union. - Wikipedia
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FBI agent Kate Macer (Emily Blunt), her partner Reggie Wayne (Daniel Kaluuya) in a tunnel under the US-Mexico border. |
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Léa Seydoux as Madeleine Swann |
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Orient Desert Express |
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May 29, 1925. Central High Rifle Team, Washington D. C. Rumor has it the rifles are Winchester Model 52 |
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Arctic Glass Igloos Rovaniemi, Finland |
Close to the Arctic Circle, next to SnowHotel you will find the tranquillity of the glass igloos. Staying overnight in a glass igloo feels like sleeping in the open, but inside the igloo it is just as warm and cosy as a hotel. The igloo village is set in an opening surrounded by pine trees, sufficiently far away from the city lights, making ideal conditions for watching the Northern Lights and enjoying starry skies. Have a good night’s sleep as the Aurora Alarm searches the skies for you: once the Aurora Alarm has woken you up, all you need to do is open your eyes, look at the night sky and enjoy the sight from the comfort of your bed. - Arctic SnowHotel and Glass Igloos
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Bert Williams, a black man, in blackface. Whaaaa? |
"It's no disgrace to be coloured. But it is awfully inconvenient." - Bert WilliamsJust read two articles about a couple of black people who were harassed by the police for being in their own homes. Article 1 here. Article 2 here. This line was in the 2nd one.
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Source: U.S. Department of Interior |
"Rhenium is a very rare metal and is commonly found as a trace metal in Molybdenum and copper ores. Its concentration is something less than 5 parts per billion. To put some perspective on it, Gold is estimated to be .005 parts per million." - www.rheniumsource.comI'm pretty sure 5 parts per billion is the same as .005 parts per million. (Divide each pair and compare the results).
"Capacity for the production of Re has increased in the world, particular after the price escalation in 2008. It was speculation that the market was going to continue to grow but investors were caught of guard with the finicky nature of demand in aerospace."
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Raketa has made a giant clock for a children's toy store in the Lubyanka |
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Our Generation Ships Will Sink |
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YPJ fighters in Rojava, Syria. Benedetta Argentieri photo. |
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Gilles Lellouche as Franck Vasseur (left) and Vincent Lindon as Simon |
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The Kharyaga field in the Russian far north. Source: Svein Are Enes /Statoil |
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Presumably this is Russian drilling rig in the Arctic Ocean. Page where I found it isn't saying. |
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Bazooka Girl by RUIZBURGOS |
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Saul Alinsky was a writer and community organizer who empowered the poor no matter their race. He strove to give a voice to the voiceless by organizing them into a body capable of massive protests, believing that the poor and disenfranchised would have more power to make their voices heard if they would come together and speak as one. In other words, he added the voices of the poor to our democracy. - Addicting Info dot org |
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Paris, France. On the Boulevard Beaumarchais, there was shock on Friday over a siege at a concert hall. By Stefania Rousselle November 13, 2015. |
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Lebanese army soldiers and security forces gather as Lebanese and Hezbollah flags are erected at the site of the two explosions that occured on Thursday in the southern suburbs of the Lebanese capital Beirut, November 13, 2015. Reuters/Aziz Taher |
My perspective from the other side of the world:Looking around for verification of the Beirut bombing, the only story I found was in the Alaska Dispatch News.
1) Lebanon is one of a dozen countries in the Middle East. It is hard to keep track of which one is which. Lebanon might be special, but who can tell? It's in the Mideast, it's doomed.
2) A big problem, judging from how much it gets mentioned in the media over here, is Israel. Seems like every other country in the Mideast has gone to war against Israel and/or declared that Israel must be destroyed. That attitude pretty much negates any sympathy from any Western country for any Arab country. Whether any of the arguments people bring to bear on this issue have any merit is irrelevant. The issue for us has been decided and if you disagree you are the enemy.
3) Moderate Musselmen need to separate themselves from the Jihadists. When the terrorists call themselves Muslims, and the moderates call themselves Muslims, how can anyone tell them apart? Christianity had its own sectarian conflicts, still do in some places, but you could tell which team a player was on because the teams had different names. Do the terms Protestant and Catholic ring a bell? Moderate Muslims need to develop a separate identity, a different brand, if you like, to differentiate themselves from ISIS. If not, you're all going to be lumped together, and likely suffer the same fate.
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Coolest Pressure Chart Ever |
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NASA's Orion Spacecraft |
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Avid S3 Mixing Console |
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Chlordecone / Kepone 3D by GYassineMrabetTalk |
مصير كل من يبيع نساء الكورد The fate of both sell women chlordeconeOK, that's weird. It's a machine translation so it's not perfect, but you don't get a word like chlordecone because of a typo. That's pretty specific. But what the heck is chlordecone? Turns out it's a really nasty insecticide. It was so bad that "In 1975 Governor Mills Godwin Jr. shut down the James River to fishing for 100 miles, from Richmond to the Chesapeake Bay."
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Mule Skinners attached to 2nd Battalion, 475th Infantry Regiment, Mars Task Force, lead mules through the swift river that impeded their progress to Bhamo, Burma, 1944. |
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Kurdish YPG Fighter - Biji Kurdistan |
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Noam Chomsky |
"I'm glad that Sanders is running. A good way to bring important ideas and facts to people. His candidacy might also press the Dems a little in a progressive direction. In our system of bought elections he has scarcely a chance of getting beyond the primaries, and even if by some miracle he were elected he wouldn't be able to do anything, lacking any congressional representatives, governors, etc. As far as I can see he's a thorn in the side of the Clinton machine, which is not a bad thing."
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Bernie Sanders |
“[I'm] not as pessimistic as Noam....He’s right, we live in an increasingly oligarchic form of society, where billionaires are able to buy elections and candidates, and it is very difficult, not just for Bernie Sanders but for any candidate who represents working families. But I think the situation is not totally hopeless, and I think we do have a shot to win this thing.”Found on Alternet dot org. Do not confuse Noam Chomsky with Depak Chopra, which is something I used to do. I mean they both have sort of weird names. Noam is a pretty clear thinker. Depak peddles bullshit.
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Crown Asphalt Ridge LLC (Sept 2012) |
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Professor Zhang Lin's mountain villa built on top of a Beijing apartment block. |
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Smart Phone Zombies |
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Prineville is small town in Central Oregon about an hour northeast of Bend. Redmond, home of Lancair, is about 20 miles due west. |
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It used to home to Les Schwab Tires, but they moved their headquarters to Bend a few years ago. They still have a tire warehouse there. You can see it near the bottom left corner in the above image. |
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Facebook has a data center there now. They archive all the old cat pictures here. It's near the center top. Airport is to the west (left). |
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Facebook Data Center |
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The gray eggcrate looking things on the gray pavement confused me until I zoomed in. They're solar panels. |
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Inside the data center. ars technica has an article about how they are saving power. |