Iqbal Goes to the Circus

Enriched uranium and neptunium 237 were detected at an Ohio middle school, which will be closed for a year.

The child made a nuclear reactor. If you don't want the kids doing great work, don't encourage them.

• A diabetes drug may cause an infection that destroys the genitals.
• "I'd give my penis for well-regulated sugar."

In Florida, they're seeing 88 degrees today. Here it's cold and rainy.
Yesterday it was 94 in Miami. Here it was cold and rainy.
Why the unrelenting gloom and rain on the east coast?




Dear lefty:

• If you hate the weather so much, why don't you move?
• Because Arizona pays me to stay away so their climate doesn't go to hell.

A Texas man blames the West Nile Virus for infecting him, causing him to distribute child porn.

Next up: the West Nile Virus assassinates a public figure and raises taxes.

• Keep an eye on the 'Iran Crisis'. Trump has already suggested a huge armed force to deal with it. The warmongers are winning. 

The US Navy warned that 5g phone service is likely to interfere with weather forecasts. The FCC did the only thing it could do: started auctioning off the 5g frequency spectrum.

UK Snowflakes

England's Jerry Springer, Jeremy Kyle, just had his show shut down. Why? A week after taping, a guest killed himself. The episode was not aired.  It featured a man accused of cheating on his fiance, who took a lie detector test and failed. She left him, he killed himself.

While we here at ThermionicEmissions are sad for this fellow and family, we can't understand why the show needed to be canceled.  Granted, 'free speech' cannot be applied equally to the US and UK, but this is a matter of personal responsibility. Personal responsibility has gone out the window in general, but in the UK, they're more worried about offending someone and 'protecting' people from bad words and antisocial behavior.

We have Jerry Springer. 

I hate Jerry Springer and all the show stands for, but would never insist it be forcibly removed. If he wanted a permanent vacation, though, I'd gladly support him.

Kyle will 'work on other projects' with the network (ITV).

I suggest thinking hard about this to figure out where you fall.

Don't take my word for it.... I'm the guy who would love a tv show featuring people tazing Judge Judy.

• While we're on England, it's illegal to sell certain kitchen knives to people under 18, as well as illegal to carry them. I just saw this on the news.

Hate

Online social sites are under fire for 'hate speech'.

What is hate speech? In the US, there is no hate speech - it's all speech.

Certain snowflaky elements define it as people saying bad things about other people, from anti-LGBTQ to neo nazis. I don't agree with any of these groups (including the snowflakes) but, as an American, I support their right to say it. The precious snowflakes want to limit speech, even in the US. These are the dangerous people.

As a libertarian and American, I know the government cannot make laws moderating speech of private entities: they don't belong there. 

There is a meeting coming up of social media companies in France, asking what can be done about 'hate speech'. It's not their job, but they either want to appear they're doing something, or actually do something. The only problem here is that it's already being applied in a one-sided manner, generally banning the right side, less so the left side. There are constant accusations on both sides. 

Howard Stern had the KKK Guy on his show, as a recurring caller. People were horrified. I think Howard did a great thing, allowing his listeners to hear what this person said and that the KKK is still alive. Plus they got to hear a completely stereotypical southern idiot racist. Keep your enemies in the light, where they can be easily monitored.

Remember: if you silence one group, you are giving approval to silence any group - including yours eventually. You also wind up with a very one-sided echo chamber. Already Faceyspaces, Twitter, Reddit, and Instagram have joined with payment processors like Paypal, in de-platforming right-leaning people and organizations. Of course they have that right, being private entities, but one can't help but notice this is all swinging one way. Eventually the remaining side will start to eat itself, having dug its own grave.

Just because someone says something doesn't mean you have to like it or listen to it.

My Eyebrows Are Giving Me Hell

I was in a mall yesterday and noticed an Eyebrow Design Studio kiosk in the middle of the aisle.

Eyebrow design. I had hoped that 2017 was Year of the Eyebrow and we'd never hear or see anything about it again. My wife, who spends as much time in malls as me, seemed to know all about it. I guess eyebrows are the natural progression from breast implants to push-up bras to blue hair to Brazilian waxes and anal bleaching. It's a weird world, but generally fun to live in.

I know, deep down, that there had to be some sort of Eyebrow Control Station somewhere, so why not the mall?  They were closely located to the perfume wagon with the obnoxious foreign fellow, spraying everyone walking by, then asking if they want to try the perfume (Eau de Skunk toilet water). On the other side was the soda machine. Like antiques and vintage guitars, if you have to ask how much it is, you can't afford it. There were no prices on the soda bottles, but they did have a slot for your debit card. And if you need a debit card to buy a bottle of soda....

Although I suspect the eyebrow place catered strictly to women, I allowed as how my eyebrow control is relegated to genetics. This doesn't stop my coworker from making rude comments about them. As she's female, they're even funnier, regardless of my having to go to the bathroom and cry for a half hour or so, or take some time off. This is a known entity to H/R and you are allowed time to get over this, provided you come back with a psychologist's note.

I spent some time observing this operation, by which I mean staring with my mouth open as I walked by. The Main Eyebrow Design Expert was standing on the customer's lap, studiously doing something in her expert way, involving what looked like an impossibly long string of dental floss.  I don't know about you, but I don't want to make the connection between eyebrows and dental floss any more than eyebrows and what looked like a combination pneumatic jackhammer  and weed whacker. Small wonder the mall businesses change so rapidly between our visits.

We were pretty excited to discover a Cinnabon in the mall. You know Cinnabon, right? Impossibly good cinnamon buns with some white, sugary substance akin to icing all over the top. It's an orgasm for your mouth. Then there's the Mochalotta Chill, which is a chocolate coffee drink; perfect to wash down your bon. New was a variation on the Mochalotta - an icy drink. My head was ready to explode. I decided against a bun because I'm trying to cut down, but my wife took my job and did the Bad Influence Thing, ordering a bun. I had no choice, Your Honor. We ate it at home, with glazed eyes and satiated sighs.

Because it was New Years Day, I checked the mall's website to determine their hours. It said normal hours. Because she's a wife, my wife demanded we call too, as the site was obviously wrong. Do you think women are born with this, or does it come with the wedding band? In any case, the phone agreed with the website's hours, and off we went. The secret here is that we left about 4pm, after a brief 'getting ready period' that went about an hour. I live in terror that if, heaven forbid, there's a fire, she simply won't make it out of the building. Speaking of buildings, the mall closed at 9pm.

Much to the wife's surprise, the humongous mall consisted largely of cell phone and shoe stores. In case you're still trying to guess, it's the shoe stores that caused the most glee, in spite of her cell phone, which has a whole gaggle of gremlins in it, that have messed up her contacts so badly that wrong names and photos come up for the contact, plus it refers to Jim Smith as Jim Jones. Back to the shoe stores, it was a great day for looking at shoes. Up one aisle and down the next. Up the next aisle and down another next aisle. These stores are larger than football stadiums, as if I've ever been in a football stadium.

I think I identified one of my wife's issues as we walked down the aisles:
Got that.
Got that.
Got something similar to that.
Got one almost like that, but in a different color.
Wouldn't wear that if they paid me.
DAMMIT- I knew they wouldn't have that in my size.

Praying for the sweet release of death, I thought we could get out of the store at that point. Proving that thinking positive is a waste of time, she discovered the Closeout section. Did you know that women's shoes go to size 15-16? Why that's ... uhhh... size 27 in men's. Must be like wearing an alligator on both feet. And in about 15 minutes, I'm going to get a nastygram from one of my readers who wears a size 16 due to a congenital deformity and I will have to stop blogging out of shame.

When she decided to try 'just a few on,' I asked if she wanted me to adopt a lisp and play Male Shoe Store Employee. She laughed and said no, as she handed me six boxes to shoes to carry over to the bench to try on. I got to hand her the shoes one by one, then she asked me how they looked. What is the correct answer here - I don't know but I can say with absolute certainty that "the shoes make you look fat" is NOT the correct answer. I discovered that agreeing with her assessment was the safest option. I should have known that because it's generally the correct answer (for dealing with me also). We escaped with only minor damage, yet great savings.

Then we went to the next shoe store. And the next shoe store. She kept feeling guilty because we had to get to the far end of the mall to visit the guitar store, which was my only stop. The far end of the mall was approximately six nautical miles in the other direction, whether taking a ship, taxi, kids' ride, or heaven forbid, walking. She wanted to get moving out of guilt. Ok, guilt and fairness, as I never get to go places I'd like to visit for one reason or the other. We noticed there were stores that never bothered to open. That's weird.  What is even weirder is that some stores started closing around 6pm. Yet according to the website and phone call, as you remember, the hours were 10-9.

We got the car and drove the six nautical miles, through the frozen tundra and piles of snow that the 30% of precipitation brought us the previous day. As we saw the entrance, Wife said they look like... and I said NO. They are OPEN. They will be OPEN even if I have to use this car to make the store a drive through.

And quick as that, the store was closed. Who knows if it ever opened... certainly not mall management.

Bring the band on down behind me, boys....
For those of you playing along at home, pre-Christmas, we attempted to visit quite a number of guitar stores quite a number of times. We failed each and every time, for reasons no one can understand or articulate.

Due to the most interesting timing, or for the sake of entertainment of some larger agency of which we're completely unaware (some call it God, some call it The Universe, and some call it That Thing That Fucks With Me), anyway... I don't get presents. I don't get them at xmas and I don't get them for my birthday, as something always pops up at the last moment to divert funds from me. Even when I've been assigned a few dollars, something will require it before I get a chance to use it. Last year it was the dog's oncology bills. I try to take it with a grain of salt, even though I greatly prefer sugar. I'd rather have a well dog anyway, even if that doesn't explain why my presents came up missing most times before Marshall got sick. Can you say Obamacare and health expenses in general? I knew you could.

I mention this not for sympathy, but for background information.
As we saw no lights on at the guitar store, I yelled NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!
It's not just one event.. it's a whole compendium of them lately. After a whole mess of crap, it's hard to not take it personally. As if I were important enough in the scheme of things to be someone's entertainment.

I'm feeling kinda like Charlie Brown ("I got a rock").
I asked my dear partner who she was. Without hesitation it was Lucy. Because she's loud and in charge.

Apparently she gets good deals on shoes too.

• If you found yourself spending money at a Forever 21 store last year, you should know they got hacked, via a data stealer on their Point of Sale devices (formerly known as Cash Registers). Reacting with frightening speed, they announced the breach after being infected for 7 months, which they didn't know. How did they uncover the malware? A third party told them.
• Yes, of course their important data is encrypted to prevent theft. Only the encryption "was not always on."    Bzzzt: Crap Alert.
• Customers were notified in November, after 7 months.
• The statements from Forever 21 were all ludicrous and full of imaginary visions and soothing terms. Yes, the malware ran from April to November, but in some locations, it was only running for a few days or several weeks.
• In most cases, the malware was "only" able to collect credit card numbers, expiration dates and internal verification codes, but cardholder names were also compromised in some instances.  Bzzt: this press release was put out by the PR department, not the IT department.
• Oddly enough, in 2008, nearly 99,000 Forever 21 cards may have been compromised in a series of hacks.
• Before you giggle at Forever 21 customers, Brooks Brothers, Buckle, and Eddie Bauer had cyber intrusions in 2016 and 2017.
• Your best and safest option is to disguise yourself as someone else and pay cash for everything you purchase. And purchase everything in second hand stores, just in case; which are less likely to have facial recognition systems.

Parts of the northeast coastal states were confused by weather the other day. Forecasters predicted a snowstorm with 5-8" total accumulation. Because snow was forecast, no one expected it to happen. Everyone was caught with their shovels down.

Fun Stuff happens with a black dog in white snow. When he comes in, he looks like the Abominable Snow Span.

• I didn't notice for a while, but we're having a serious Gravity Day in the house. Everything my wife picked up, threw itself at the floor, taking a few other things with it. When she left the kitchen, a loaf of bread did a water slide to the floor. Then some dressing left a shelf, taking a bag of cereal with it. 
• I didn't notice this happening until she made a few loud remarks on the subject. Then my vitamins fell off their perch. Then a few other things took a header off a table.
• There is no cure for gravity (that sounds deep, doesn't it?). You just have to wait til it falls off.

Speaking of snow, the forecast calls for a high of 42 degrees late this week. With that kind of weather, I need to make sure my body is bikini-ready. Meanwhile, it will be really weird, slipping on ice in June.

So.. speaking of snow, we're on our way out of the house to do a few errands and get some barbecue. OOPS, it's 4am and the wife starts talking to me as if I'm awake and waiting for her missive: "Well, so much for barbecue - we're getting rain, sleet, and more snow." I have suggested that we hold a telethon to purchase a climate. This time it's even weirder... the South is getting it too.

Speaking of snow and sleet, the PANIC has started. Schools are letting out early today and some are already closed tomorrow. This alone should indicate we'll get no precipitation at all. The stores are no doubt jammed so badly that you can't get down an aisle. This is to be expected, as it's Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) here. Bloody idiots.

Now we face a different problem... we haven't shopped in a while and are actually out of SODA. The plan was to go today. Now if we go today, we'll run into the Bloody Idiots and we won't find bread or milk in the city. If they'd stop being idiots, our life would be much easier, but that simply ain't gonna happen. If we stand too close to the idiots, people might think we ARE idiots. It's almost, but not quite, worth it to stay home, without soda.

• Speaking of staying home, I've probably mentioned that I'm working on my agoraphobia certificate. That's the disorder where you don't leave the house. I don't get out much at all, except the odd trip for barbecue or to visit a guitar store (that will invariably be closed or not have a thing for me). Psychologically I've come up with Coincident Agoraphobia, where it just looks like agoraphobia, but I can leave whenever I like, and Stupophobia, where I don't leave the house because of the idiots on the other side of the door.
• Thanks for tuning into another fascinating episode of Dr lefty, Amateur Psychologist (and part-time Gynecologist).

So this Intel chip Spectre and Meltdown vulnerabilities have been found to brick some PCs with AMD chips, sometimes completely screwing up the pc because there's no back-out point set. And if your antivirus company hasn't set a particular bit (or you have an illegal copy), you won't get any future Microsoft updates. This is going to get worse, both due to future discoveries, and the solutions that introduce different problems. Fortunately you have my bright, sunny outlook on the subject.

• Did you know that the border of the US extends 100 miles from the coast? Customs and Border Patrol can stop you, in spite of the 4th Amendment, which is obviously dead in this case. The government has legalized a brief search for immigration status, but not an invasive search (which happens anyway). If you're a victim, contact the ACLU. This is the kind of thing it is necessary to know and strongly protest. Why is it there? 9-11 was a tremendous excuse for expansion of infrastructure.
• If you're in New York City or Philadelphia, you're on the border, so watch out.

Everybody PANIC !

or - Institutionally reinforced stupidity, incompetence, and massive fail


Once again, forecasters have called for snow in Philly.
And once again, the denizens of the area do not disappoint.

It's been a few days since we got word there will be a major storm up the east coast at the end of the week. The Forecasting Folks are saying that since all the methods of forecasting show snow, it's a certainty. Forecasts go up to two feet in places.

So the wife calls me at work, asking if I could pick up a few things for dinner.
You know what's coming, right?

I figured that since I work early, I could get to the store before the dinner rush started.
The joke, as we know by now, was on me.
I should have known by the extreme lack of parking spots, forcing me to leave the car in the next shopping center. By the time I made it to Giant, there were four carts left. Uh-oh.

You see, Philly goes into a MAD PANIC when they hear the word snow. If a quarter of an inch of snow were forecast, schools would close (in fact, schools did close once on the mention of snow - that didn't occur). Food staples would be wrenched from shelves. Snowblowers would go out of stock. Salt would be impossible to find. Girl Scout cookies, if you could find them, would actually cost MORE, if you can imagine it. Parents pull their pets off the streets and throw their kids out. Dash off to the station to get snow tires or chains put on. Making arrangements to watch the kids when school closes. Buying new gloves, because you can't find the ones you used last time. And recalling the words of your parents when you were young - "Don't forget to wear your rubbers."

There are cities that get REAL snow. You know, a foot at a time, then a foot the next day. The streets get cleaned and people go to work, no big deal.  In Philly, no matter how much notice is provided, the cleanup crew never seems to have had enough notice. It's always a surprise.  Then there's not enough salt. Then not enough staff. And in Philly proper, no streets get cleared anyway. Trash isn't collected for two weeks, which is actually an improvement. No able-bodied children exist to shovel, even though they could make a killing (they're inside, watching the Kardashians and taking selfies).

Entering the store, I looked over in horror to discover that every checkout lane had at least six carts in a line. This is in contrast to weekends, when there are only three lanes open (because it's a surprise that people shop on weekends).

The bread section runs half the length of the store. Huge blocks were emptied of their contents. Oddly enough, the aisles were full of food and empty of shoppers. All the people and carts were waiting in line. And by the time I got to the line, with six items, there was barely room for people to get in lines.

I got in the express lane, which is usually expressly closed. Of course the sociopath two carts up had a cart FULL of goodies, because rules and signs do not apply to her. I think they should have shaved her head and thrown her out of the store but apparently the manager does not feel this way. She probably drives a BMW and cuts us off at every light.

Speaking of Giant, the name should ideally not reflect the size of the cashiers. Or the one with the dead animal on his head, who was completely bald last week.


They (whoever They are) tell me to accentuate the positive, so here I go: last year, when I approached the automatic door, it wouldn't open. This year, it does.

WHAT Time Again - Asketh the AntiSports

My esteemed blogging colleague, the Nocturnal Slacker, notes that `it's that time again', in reference to baseball.  I started to answer his post but decided to keep it here at ThermionicEmissions, where no one will see it.

Right you are, Eric, it's that time.

It's definitely politics time.  I barely watch tv and can recite political commercials verbatim, including the schmaltzy Oven Mitt commercial about saving someone's daughter.  One wonders if further commercials will feature the Marvelous Mormon walking on water or some such nonsense.  [side question: do Mormons walk on water?]

But really, it's Sports Time too.  I can tell because the news is so full of news about Dem Fills (the Phillies in English) that it's positively nauseating.  It's not any particular network; they all suck.  When they get through being commercials for Americans Idle or Dancing with the Stars, they become commercials for the sports teams, including the actual places where the teams play.  There was a multi-day story recently, covering the new food at the stadium.

But that's not all, no sir.  You can't even watch the weather without constant reminders that Dem Fills are playing.  Every day on the onscreen calendar there's a little Phillies logo when the team is going to play.  It's not a weather forecast, it's a Phillies Forecast.  They even tell you what the temperature is likely to be for the first pitch.  I am nauseous.   They never mention what the weather will be for the polls, concerts, or much of anything else.  Not that they are capable of accurately forecasting that it will be light during the day, with continuing periods of dark at night.

After all this unending entertainment, we're usually treated to a shot of Dem Fills Fans; the semi-toothless, inebriated masses, complete with unintelligible accents and clad in Full Fills Regalia, yearning to hand over a week's salary for the chance to watch their team lose.  Everyone hates a hopeless optimist.

The only thing I love more than sports is Corporate Welfare, when the city or state kicks in money so the poor owners don't have to build their own stadiums.  Then charge twenty bucks to park.

Lots of our work reps offer us sports tickets.  Not one has ever offered anything interesting.

But that's why I'm the AntiSports.

{NOTE: this blog is unlikely to go viral in Philthydelphia}