pers and TV carry useful ads for grocery stores, but the reporters aren't involved.
4. Where is poison? Reporters have specifically inverted this purpose. They warn us LOUDLY of fake poisons to stir up a war, or to squash one industry and boost another. They never warn us of real toxins, because the reporters are the real toxins.
5. Where are my friends, and what are they doing? TV offers us a complex and addictive array of fictional friends, ruining our expectations for real friends.
6. Where are my enemies? Reporters have specifically inverted this purpose. They warn us LOUDLY of fake enemies to stir up a war, or to squash one tribe and enrich another. They never warn us of real enemies, because the reporters are the real enemies.
7. Entertainment: We get to see plenty of failures, but we're NOT ALLOWED to learn from them. Any attempt to draw ACCURATE conclusions from stories about crime is forbidden. Sports give us plenty of crashes and failures and injuries, but the whole process is carefully scripted to avoid any useful lessons. When we see a Tesla crash, we're not allowed to conclude that Teslas are bad. Instead we are required to BUY THE DIP.
= = = = =
Concluding: The press has never been free, so we can't thank anyone. In earlier eras the press occasionally performed the DUTY of community senses, but not now. There is no excuse and no defense for the "right" of "press freedom".
= = = = =
Semi-relevant sidenote... When discussing the universal sense of Entertainment, I linked to the Everett TweakerCam as a good example of watching interesting stuff. This morning there's nothing interesting happening on the ground, so the cam focused on something closer to the cam itself.
Seagull doing what intelligent critters do! Watching the world go by, hoping to see trouble or failure or disaster. Something to laugh at, something to learn from.
Does watching a watcher count as entertainment? Of course. Most of Youtube is reactions to reactions to reactions. Watcherwatcherwatching.
Inadequate paranoia as alwaysLatest ZH disaster porn is booms and trumpets. The rapture visionaries have been focusing on this for a while because of the biblical significance of trumpets.
Most of the booms are clearly supersonic meteors. The booms were reported almost simultaneously in towns along a line. No mystery there. Others could be small earthquakes. We're certainly in a period of strong seismic activity, similar to 1812.
The trumpet sounds are less obvious. Metal blades scraping on rock or pavement can generate those sounds. There was an epidemic of trumpets around here a few years ago, which was quickly traced to an overenthusiastic snowplow working late at night in several parking lots.
Listening to some of the clips, these aren't snowplows. Could be rock scraping on rock as a prelude to an earthquake, or could be a loud radio or outdoor concert passing through an 'acoustic channel' formed by inversions. In other words, it's either rock-n-rock or rock-n-roll.
Several of the clips feature two notes separated by a major fifth, which heightens the trumpet or bugle effect. I can't think of an easy explanation for this! Reminds me of the Pascagoula singing fish.
ZH says the reports are credible enough that the FBI is "investigating" the source.
NO, YOU FOOLS. The Bureau of Instigation doesn't investigate. The Bureau of Instigation instigates. FBI is looking into the PEOPLE WHO ARE REPORTING the booms. Most likely the Bureau of Instigation started the rumors, but even if the rumors started independently, this is a great opportunity to capture some "terrorists" and create some new "terrorists".
¶ 11:55 PM
Stupidity reaches new depths again
Stupidest robot idea ever. It's MANUALLY operated by the dude inside. It's not a robot at all, it's just an absurdly inefficient and ineffective hydraulic crawler. Supposedly it will be able to go 15 mph over rough terrain, which matches the ability of a plain old human running on plain old legs.
We already had better and smarter robots than this one 200 fucking years ago.
This "invention" really belongs in a d