Don't Try Walking - It Never Turns Out Well

Do you use an android phone or tablet?
Here's the ultimative (sic) collection of free and open source android apps.
The main way to go about this is to install F-Droid. It's an alternate store for android apps. They're all free and open-source. They don't host shitware and they are very reliable and safe. I think F-Droid is available via the Play Store. The list lists the best of the F-Droid software.

• Ubuntu invites Win 7 users with linux switch guides
• how-to for people who haven't

It's 22 years after the Phoenix Lights.
In 22 years, we have no solution to the case.
Twenty Two years.
If something that large hovered over a city, most would consider it rather important and possibly a threat to national security. No word on that at all.

There was a 1-2 mile craft hovering over the city of Phoenix, with thousands of people as witnesses.

The military bases in the area all claimed they had nothing in the air.
Later on, one base 'remembered' they had planes dropping flares. These were found to be dropping flares over the Barry Goldwater range. These was the official excuse for the Phoenix Lights. The problem here is that flares don't fall in locked manner that looks like an object, over an area that wasn't the Barry Goldwater range. The lights were from the 1-2 mile craft.

In theory, our monitoring technology (radar, etc) should have seen this craft, from the moment it appeared, whether from space (NORAD) or locally. Did they detect it? Are the radar results available via asking or FOIA (Freedom of Information Act)?

Also mentioned was a feeling of calm. No panic, during or after.
It happened twice.


22 years.
That seems like it would be important, as National Security goes.
Assumptions: it was a test of our technology; it was not seen on radar; it was from Elsewhere and they are afraid to release any info.


I wonder if it would have been handled differently had it appeared over Washington, DC.



Dear lefty

• Why do you continue to do this?
• my page hits went from 6 to 30 or 128.
• to get chicks

• David Hogg should marry Greta Thunberg.
• Ultimately the marriage would fail when they realize they're both white, therefore part of the problem.

As bad as the Ring camera privacy debacle is, their app sends your data up the line too. Don't install this crap. WWLD: before you install anything, ask yourself What Would lefty Do?

• Nearly half of Americans didn't go outside to recreate in 2018
• Let's get that good old American spirit going to best this in 2020! We cannot afford to fail on the world stage.

Senator Edward Markey (D-Mass) called on Tesla to adopt "common sense recommendations" in Autopilot driver assist to "guarantee the safety of its technology."  Hopefully "common sense recommendations" aren't the same ones going up against the 2nd Amendment. I think the man is unreasonable, demanding Tesla inform customers that it is self-driving, and to install a driver-monitoring system.

The govt never met anything they couldn't make worse with legislation; usually involving monitoring.

Allow me to state a universal axiom of marketing: sales will go to hell if your product literally drives people into walls.  As everything on Earth somehow relates to Monty Python, there's the sketch about the Whizzo (chocolate) Assortment, where the police come to a confectioner to discuss Crunchy Frog: "But if we take the bones out, it wouldn't be crunchy."

• The Electronic Frontiers Foundation is fighting a law that would make it a felony to encourage illegal aliens to enter or remain in the US. The definition of free speech includes speech with which you disagree. Although I disagree with illegal aliens, it's still free speech. If I don't fight for their free speech, there will be nobody to fight for mine.

The other night we had our single splurge for the week: our favorite restaurant. As you can tell, we spend tons of money on luxuries. While perusing the menu, the waitress came up and said hello. She sounded nice. When I looked up from the menu, I noticed the waitress had a full beard, which is one too many beards for any waitress. I didn't see that coming. After dinner, Mrs lefty said she thought the same thing upon hearing his voice. Great waiter.



Watching tv online is always interesting and frequently surprising. I found a Smithsonian channel, which is a great one to watch. Upon watching, the Smithsonian staff had done wonders with their uniforms. Someone mislabeled the channel: instead of science, it looked like a very intimate Sports Illustrated bikini shoot. Impossibly perfect women, wearing impossible small garments for the viewers' impossible satisfaction. Each was more attractive than the previous one. It actually hurt to watch it, so I went back to looking for science channels.

• Faceyspaces rolls out new privacy tool
• Hopefully it works better than the NSA's

Today I identify as   Wite Out

Wite out was invented by Mike Nesmith's (The Monkees) mother.



Remember when Baltimore was hit badly by ransomware?
Legislators will legislate, and there's no exception here.
Maryland proposed legislation will outlaw the possession of malware and prevent researchers from reporting it.
The stupidity is awe-inspiring.
They're passing a law to stop ransomware. Let's examine this, shall we?
It's months ago and ransomware has infected Baltimore. Backups were non-existent, due to incompetent planning and staff, rendering their data gone.
If this law were in place at this time, how would it have prevented the infection?

• If you use Labcorp or Quest for your bloodwork, check your credit card statement. Labcorp just had its second breach.
• Blithering idiots.

Much has been written and said about sleep, most of it wrong.
Ever since I was a little monster (I'm a bigger monster now), I tried to find out how sleep worked. It generally worked wonderfully - I hit the pillow and slept til I got up. Then I noticed that I always woke up tired, regardless of how much sleep I got. I asked friends, family, doctors, and pr0n stars; all had different answers, none seemed correct.

Now that I'm married, the search goes on, interestingly enough, with a woman who has the mother of all sleep disorders. Neither of us can figure it out. Because of her sleep disorder, I developed the ability to sleep through a small nuclear detonation, a 44lb dog standing on my chest and circling around, a 23lb dog licking my face and and stealing the covers, and various sentient entities jumping into and falling out of the bed. We both seem to come up with the same conclusion: the less we sleep, the easier we get up and the better we feel. Naturally this is counter to everything we've been told.

If I get 7 hours, I'm tired. If I get 5 hours, I'm ok. On the weekend I can get between 6 and a lot more hours of sleep, and the more I get, the more tired I am. Sometimes it's all I can do to get from the bed to the couch, then I'm ready for my first nap of the day.

We also noticed that at no point do we feel like getting up when the alarm goes off. This is a universal truth. After all this Science, I discovered one truth/trick that is 100% effective, regardless of how much sleep you get: waking up to discover you're a few hours late for work gets you right up out of bed, with no time to be tired (or yawn). It even puts off the need for coffee, for a good few minutes or so.

• The Great Surveillance Society continues its march to 1984: 40 colleges using phone apps to track students.
• In 10 years, surveillance will start in kindergarden, with chips implanted in the kids' heads.

SJW Stirrings

"Please only fill out this survey if you identify as a Person of color," it read. Answers "will be used to inform our white colleagues about privilege and microaggression."   - Pete Buttigieg campaign staff


Yale will eliminate a beloved introductory art class for being too white, male, western.

A loyal reader suggested we can't make this stuff up. The people who do throw darts at subjects and string them together to come up with new stuff.


Reminder that private messages of support is another form of white supremacy.  -  @sairasameerarao

Beating a Dead Politician

Whenever people see a ufo (unidentified - no idea what it is), out comes the Official Denial Squad; usually Seth Shostak (SETI), James Oberg from NASA, and if it's really big, Michael Shermer, head of Skeptic magazine. Although we have no idea what it was (hence unidentified), they already know what it was and that there was a stupidly normal explanation.

One of my favorite Official Denial Squad excuses as to why other species could not be visiting is that their planet would be so far away, they'd never get here. Call me stupid (you wouldn't be the first) but I'd think any civilization that's been around longer than us has some sort of more advanced drive and/or make use of wormholes (which we know about and have not denied).

I am not putting forth an opinion, rather discussing the need for serious investigation. Auto-Denial is not science or investigation.  The old Project Blue Book standby, swamp gas, no longer works to dismiss a sighting.

Let me remind you about the Phoenix Lights, seen by thousands, if not more. The weak denial claimed it was a flare drop (after the claim there were no military aircraft in the vicinity that day). This was a humongous object that hovered and flew slowly, over the 5th largest city in the US. It happened a few years earlier too. If it's ours, there would be simple denial. If it's not... what kind of panic ensued? These things are tracked by NORAD before they get to the US. Rest assured someone knew they were there, whatever they are.

Stephenville, Texas observed a huge craft and had many people reporting it.  Radar returns were obtained. The item of most import to me was that it flew over the Bush ranch before Stephenville. To say this was a no-fly zone is somewhat obvious. Yet was anything said? No. Were there F-15s scrambled? Not that we know. Do our craft hover? Not that we know of. They're also not a mile long, as was reported in Arizona. We are not going to know about very new military tech, so there's that.  Again, not a conclusion, just an appeal for sense.

By merely typing the above, I called into the universe the following action:

Nasa admits ‘tiny super-intelligent’ aliens may have ALREADY visited Earth – and says some UFO sightings ‘cannot be explained or denied’

Something's up.
Nah, the assertions in the article don't seem groundbreaking. He states that not all ufo sightings can be explained. Even the debunkers admit that a certain small percentage can't be explained. Still, worth a read.

I also called into the universe a science-y program called NASA's Unexplained Files last night. Remember the instances of red rain (not the Peter Gabriel song)? The most recent account is from India. Scientists studied the rain and couldn't determine what it was. Finally an Indian scientist (named Godfrey, I think) discovered it was made up of cells that were alive. Electron microscopy showed the cells to be without DNA, which is part of every living thing on earth. Theories were put forth and disproved until someone remembered there was a small asteroid strike shortly before the rain. Scientist got hold of a piece of asteroid and some red rain from the same field and discovered that the cells most likely hitched a ride inside the asteroid (and were obviously extremely hearty). We may have alien life. The cells reproduced rapidly and were not healthy for humans to touch. Interesting to ponder, no?





President Kennedy spoke at Rice University on September 12, 1962, uttering the famous words, in his famous regional accent, "We choose to go to the moon in this decADE and do the other things..."

History speaks reverently about this speech, yet nobody questions what 'the other things' are. It just sits there, a verbal sore thumb, that everyone prefers to forget they heard. I don't blame them - it was bloody JFK. The man has risen to Saint Status. But this is ThermionicEmissions, so we have no choice....

• "We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do a threesome with my brother..."
• "We choose to mount a trip to the moon in this decade and mount Marilyn Monroe..."
• "We choose to go to the moon in this decade, because you never know when your time's up..."
• "We choose to go to the moon in this decade, even if LBJ somehow becomes president [general laughter]..."

Speaking of which, I might not know what I want to be when I grow up, but I know I want to be known by my initials when I die, like JFK, RFK, and LBJ. Also when I'm alive, to be known with a hip middle name, like Stevie Ray Vaughan, and Jimmie Lee Vaughan. Unfortunately I have to change my name, cuz lefty Marshall von Hendrix has no ring of authenticity to it.

• Walmart is getting set to deploy robot floor-moppers. Perhaps because they can't hire employees bright enough to perform this task at $5.50 per hour. Whether it will dress inappropriately or not hasn't been discussed.
• The unforeseen consequence will be insurance rates rising because of old people running their carts into it.

We all knew it was going to happen but we're still surprised it did: The US Military is genetically engineering new life forms to detect submarines. To quote someone or other, "this is some sick shit". The life forms are a cooperative project between Captain Mengele, the military, and Microsoft, so no matter what happens, the NSA and China will have access to it. It will also be the first life form that must be rebooted every week. As technically libertarian as I am, they crossed a boundary.

• I'm a Beth Hart fan. Even critics are Beth Hart fans. You should be a Beth Hart fan too. I don't want to be the one to bring this up, but the lady has a bit of a vibrato problem, like Chrissie Hynde. Don't let that discourage you - give her a listen. Quality..umm... soulful rock (?)

UNIVERSITY YUCKS

San Diego State University is hosting a 'critical look at whiteness' forum.

Some student assertions:

 The Christian cartoon “VeggieTales” is racist because the villains are vegetables of color. The NFL is racist since most players are black and most coaches and owners are white. White women advance white supremacy when they support President Donald Trump.

Immediately following, there will be a 'critical look at blackness' forum.
Some student assertions:  none.. this is the university. They can't find anyone to say anything. Furthermore, the students will firebomb this gathering.

The Christian cartoon "VeggieTales" is racist because not every character is black. The NFL is racist because most of the money goes to the crackers. Black women advance black supremacy when they support Barack Obama.

Please stop.
This was really entertaining when you started. You're now parodies of yourselves.

Again, history will look back on us quizically, with tears in its eyes.

• If only Klinger knew: 27% of the young are too overweight for the military

The fellow(?) who had a Craigslist ad for no strings sex with a housewife, turned out to be a cross-dresser, recorded the 80(!) trysts, and sold them to adult websites. He was just sentenced to a year above the maximum for the crime.  He is very sorry (he got caught) and has had a lot of time to consider his actions (in jail). He is deeply penitent and will return the money to all the men who thought he was a chick (just kidding, he still has the money).

There's just so much going on here... let's start by saying I've never been with a cross-dresser. No, really. She was just a friend. We never played Hide the Salami - I swear. Given that, wouldn't you figure there might be a difference or two between a woman and a man dressing as a woman? Well, first there's the penis. You never find these on women. Well, butt sex is nice and men are stupid, but.... Then there's the facial hair. Sure, some women have facial hair. But it doesn't look like 5:00 shadow facial hair. You don't get rug burn from a blowjob.

Men love breasts. Everybody loves breasts. This guy would be down by two (at very least). Were there copies of Modern Sperm all over the house? Modern Bride? Sports Illustrated (non model issue)? Was there a huge, red Craftsman tool chest in the kitchen? Tampons? A bathroom stuffed so full of cosmetics that he needed another bathroom? Look around, people!

UPDATE: further investigation (I read the words I didn't read the first time) shows that the sex was oral and the 'johns' wore glasses or other eye covering.
(Still... 5:00 shadow)





VACATION

I'm a bit slow. We know this.
I decided to not pay attention to the Kavanaugh/Supreme Court Circus.
To my surprise, the Circus still went on, as did Life in General.
Hey - this is a real Find! Wonder what will happen if I apply this elsewhere...
Particularly soul-sucking is the nonstop barrage of politics on social media. You'd think it would stop after the elections. You were oh so wrong.
So I took a Social Media Vacation, followed by a Social Media Political Vacation. No one is going to change their political views when you argue with them, nor will they change their religious views. Let's just talk about sex and hobbies, ok?

The world continued, without me watching it or participating. I lost nothing. In fact, I felt better. Might work for you too...