https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dave_Plummer

David William Plummer (born August 9, 1968) is a Canadian-American programmer and entrepreneur. He created the Task Manager for Windows, the Space Cadet Pinball ports to Windows NT, Zip file support for Windows, HyperCache[2] for the Amiga and many other software products.

2025: The guy that wrote Windows' Task Manager at Microsoft is creating burner accounts to get the OS installed.

Hegseth told senior military leaders that he no longer wants to see “fat generals and admirals” or overweight troops in combat units.

“It’s completely unacceptable to see fat generals and admirals in the halls of the Pentagon leading commands around the country, in the world, it’s a bad look,” Hegseth said.

For people who are actually engaged in combat, okay, but usually generals are not going to be personally engaged in physical combat. If they are, things have probably gone rather wrong on other levels. Like, we're theoretically choosing people at that level based on ability to coordinate and plan, not to look sexy on TV.

The Defense Secretary pointed to his own regimen as an example. “It all starts with physical fitness and appearance,” he said. “If the Secretary of War can do regular, hard PT [physical training], so can every member of our joint force.”

Every time I think the cringe bar cannot go lower, this administration manages it.

"With respect, we cannot support the proposed approach to addressing the issues facing higher education,” the Massachusetts Institute of Technology president wrote in a letter.

https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/WithDueRespect

With Due Respect

"Why is it that whenever someone says 'with all due respect', they really mean 'kiss my ass'?"

— Ashley Williams, Mass Effect 1

Note that this is Jane Goodall (a famous researcher on chimpanzees, who studied a troupe in Africa for some time). Relevant:

https://files.catbox.moe/1h368p.jpg

This sparked a controversy:

https://www.cbr.com/far-side-jane-goodall-gary-larson-feud/

Okay, in August 1987, Larson did a strip where the punchline involved Goodall. The strip drew the following letter to the editor at the Arizona Daily Star...

To the editor:

I was appalled when I saw Gary Larson's "The Far Side" cartoon in the Star Aug. 26. This was of two Larson animals - presumably chimpanzees - in a tree. One, which was evidently supposed to be the female, was picking a long hair from the other's shoulder. The caption read: "Well, well - another blond hair...Conducting a little more 'research' with that Jane Goodall tramp?"

To refer to Dr. Goodall as a tramp is inexcusable - even by a self-described "loony" as Larson. The cartoon was incredibly offensive and in such poor taste that readers might well question the editorial judgment of running such an atrocity in a newspaper that reputes to be supplying the news to persons with a better than average intelligence. The cartoon and its message were absolutely stupid.

Dr. Goodall is a world-renowned scientist who has devoted 28 years of her life to studying chimpanzees in the wild. Her findings have caused the scientific world to redefine the meaning of the word "mankind" with her discoveries that include the erroneous presumption that man was the only primate to make and use tools, a distinction that - until her findings disproved it - been a measure of superiority of human beings over other primates.

With no alignment to any animal welfare group, Dr. Goodall is working very hard to instigate better treatment of chimpanzees in biomedical laboratories. Dr. Goodall has vowed to speak out for those animals that cannot speak for themselves.

"Tramp?" Hardly.

The irresponsibility of the Star in choosing to run such an obscenity is disgusting. In fact, any woman should be insulted by the reference that the female - in this case, a typical Larson eyeglass-wearing animal - would be unaware of what Dr. Goodall's research really is, its seriousness and the assumption that a female only would have the mentality to look for sexual implications.

Sue Engel

Executive Director

The Jane Goodall Institute

Yikes, so I guess Larson really offended Goodall, huh? Well, not so fast...

Goodall hadn't actually seen the strip herself, and when she DID see it, she thought it was funny. She didn't think it was ACTUALLY calling her a tramp (and that's clearly not the implication of the strip). She would later write an introduction to one of Larson's Far Side collections.

Going further, she even licensed the strip for shirts that were sold at The Jane Goodall Institute for years!

EDIT: Ah, I just discovered that someone else just posted this in another post on ![email protected], and I assume that merde --- being merde --- probably posted this image in response, so I'm probably working backwards here, but I'll leave it up.

https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/two-self-professed-religious-leaders-who-used-physical-and-psychological-abuse-coerce

forced labor and money laundering conspiracy

Taylor and Brannon, according to the indictment, compelled their victims to work at their call centers and to work for Taylor as his “armor bearers.” Armor bearers were Taylors’s personal servants who fulfilled Taylor’s demands around the clock. Taylor and Brannon controlled every aspect of the daily living of their victims. Victims slept in the call center facility or in a “ministry” house, and Taylor and Brannon did not permit them to leave without permission. Taylor demanded that his Armor Bearers transport women from ministry houses, airports, and other locations to Taylor’s location and ensured the women transported to Taylor took Plan B emergency contraceptives.

If victims disobeyed an order or failed to reach his monetary goals, Taylor and Brannon punished the victims with public humiliation, additional work, food and shelter restrictions, psychological abuse, forced repentance, sleep deprivation, physical assaults, and threats of divine judgment in the form of sickness, accidents, and eternal damnation.

KOGGC/JMMI received millions of dollars in donations each year through its call centers. Taylor and Brannon used much of the money to purchase luxury properties, luxury vehicles, and sporting equipment such as a boat, jet skis, and ATVs. In total, Taylor received approximately $50 million in donations since 2014.

https://www.houstonchronicle.com/news/houston-texas/religion/article/houston-ministry-investigation-21083278.php

Recent court filings show Kingdom of God Global Church leader David E. Taylor suspected federal agents would raid his properties, and he believed he was a “general” leading the “end time army.” Taylor was accused of expecting his workers to wage war against anyone seeking to interfere with his mission.

​​“I am just telling you, you kill them on contact if they come in here with that foolishness, you understand? They need to die,” Taylor told his workers, according to court documents.

I mean, as long as that was what God wanted, I guess it all seems pretty reasonable.

I mean, yelling at UPS seems kind of unreasonable. Trump put the new system into place without a lead time for getting shippers to set up a system to handle all this, and I saw plenty of parties saying that this was going to lead to chaos. Sure enough...

I remember reading some articles about people waiting for their Framework Desktop machines shipped via Fedex getting frustrated at them being held up in customs too.

Probably a really great illustration as to why we shouldn't permit this to be used domestically with pure Executive Branch discretion.

The Church Committee pulled domestic surveillance out of the CIA baliwick for similar reasons.

Sounds like something to go on the list of things that need some future restrictions to be imposed.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buffalo_buffalo_Buffalo_buffalo_buffalo_buffalo_Buffalo_buffalo

"Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo" is a grammatically correct sentence in English that is often presented as an example of how homonyms and homophones can be used to create complicated linguistic constructs through lexical ambiguity. It has been discussed in literature in various forms since 1967, when it appeared in Dmitri Borgmann's Beyond Language: Adventures in Word and Thought.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lion-Eating_Poet_in_the_Stone_Den

"Lion-Eating Poet in the Stone Den" is a short narrative poem written in Literary Chinese, composed of around 92 to 94 characters (depending on the specific version) in which every word is pronounced shi ([ʂɻ̩]) when read in modern Standard Chinese, with only the tones differing.[1]

"Shī Shì shí shī shǐ"
Shíshì shīshì Shī Shì, shì shī, shì shí shí shī.
Shì shíshí shì shì shì shī.
Shí shí, shì shí shī shì shì.
Shì shí, shì Shī Shì shì shì.
Shì shì shì shí shī, shì shǐ shì, shǐ shì shí shī shìshì.
Shì shí shì shí shī shī, shì shíshì.
Shíshì shī, Shì shǐ shì shì shíshì.
Shíshì shì, Shì shǐ shì shí shì shí shī.
Shí shí, shǐ shí shì shí shī shī, shí shí shí shī shī.
Shì shì shì shì.

"Lion-Eating Poet in the Stone Den"
In a stone den was a poet called Shi Shi, who was a lion addict, and had resolved to eat ten lions.
He often went to the market to look for lions.
At ten o’clock, ten lions had just arrived at the market.
At that time, Shi had just arrived at the market.
He saw those ten lions, and using his trusty arrows, caused the ten lions to die.
He brought the corpses of the ten lions to the stone den.
The stone den was damp. He asked his servants to wipe it.
After the stone den was wiped, he tried to eat those ten lions.
When he ate, he realized that these ten lions were in fact ten stone lion corpses.
Try to explain this matter.

The QAnon shaman would also print a one-ounce gold coin, valued at $40 trillion, to pay off the country’s debts.

QAnon shaman sues Trump for $40 trillion

This is a man with a lot of enthusiasm for $40 trillion.

In the lengthy complaint, Chansley states that he is the “true” American president and that America should only have two laws: the Bill of Rights and the original U.S. Constitution.

In QAnon shaman dude's defense, if you figure that Trump is in the business of saying outrageous stuff as President to keep people focused on whatever he's saying rather than actual policy, this guy sounds like he might be better at it.

My kneejerk reaction was "it's not going to do much" too, but I've kind of mulled it over and I'm kind of inclined to feel more charitable towards the Portland stuff.

What did the Trump administration want when it was sending National Guard out? Images of conflict, material that they could use to show that there was some dire threat and dangerous criminality that the administration was handling. They got footage of a frog air-humping and some nude bicyclists that's basically useless for that.

Looking at Fox News's front page, they have:

• Emergency flights diverted from Portland hospital amid 'laser party' threats at ICE facility: report

and

• Portland mayor orders removal of police tape despite federal demand for perimeter at ICE facility, report says

Which I think even the most die-hard MAGA fan is going to have a hard time getting too worked up over.

And it did accomplish some of the goals that a protest in that it helped build make visible that there were people who did object to what was going on.

I'm not sure that it was the absolute, optimal thing to do, but it might have been reasonably-canny.

Have Trump act like Biden did.

George W. Bush was a Republican president and didn't get anything like the flak that Trump does. He also didn't behave like Trump does.

The teenager was later found “alive and well” on September 26.

"Well" other than the self-inflicted gunshot wound, one imagines.

"Net worth", not "wages".

While I’d personally love to see an open color lazer printer more. (Less wasteful and more rugged)

I use a black-and-white laser printer, but if I were going to use a color laser printer, I'd like to have an open color laser printer simply because I'd like to have a printer that isn't dumping printer tracking dots into each image I print.

I kind of feel that on the whole, if the Democrats are going to choose a battlefield, "who can more-effectively misrepresent the other side as communist" may not be the most favorable one.

However, after returning it to the Turo owner and having the suspension damage evaluated by Tesla, the repair job was estimated to be roughly $10,000. I wouldn’t be surprised if there’s a similar situation with this accident.

Hmm. That makes me wonder.

Like, it's hard for me or for Joe Blow to evaluate how effective a car company's self-driving functionality is. Requires expertise, and it's constantly changing. And ideally, I shouldn't be the one to bear cost, if I can't evaluate risk, because then I'm taking on some unknown cost when purchasing the car.

And the car manufacturer isn't in a position to be objective.

But an insurer can do that.

Like, I wonder if it'd be possible to have insurers offer packages that cover cost of accidents that occur while the car is in self-driving mode. That'd make it possible to put a price tag on accidents from self-driving systems.

Canada called me a couple of weeks ago, they want to be part of it

https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/GirlfriendInCanada

Girlfriend in Canada

A convenient way for a character to disabuse the idea that they're either gay, too socially inept for a relationship or simply unlucky in love is to claim that they indeed have a girlfriend — but the other characters have never met her because she lives in Canada. She doesn't visit very often, but when she does they just spend all day in bed. Look, here's her entry in his phone's contact list. No, you can't see a picture.

The idea is that since "she" lives in a different country, and presumably would have to get a passport and go through all that hassle in order to visit her "boyfriend", it's particularly tempting to make her Canadian as a way of discouraging others from asking too many questions.

The tactic could be scaled up.

The notice reads: “Want Coca-Cola Classic? It’s one glass only.

“Based on new government laws, we’ve had to limit Coca-Cola Classic to one glass per customer.

“Still thirsty? Help yourself to any of our low-sugar fizzy Bottomless Soft Drinks.”

Under the new rules, any soft drinks that are low in sugar, for example ‘Zero’ alternative versions of most popular soft drink brands, can be drunk to one’s heart’s content.

I imagine that manufacturers of artificial sweeteners are in for a good time.

Back around 1991 or so, I saw a promotional piece of art in a centerfold in a Nintendo Power magazine, which was a high-resolution and not-cropped version of the artwork that appears on the Secret of Mana title screen. I really liked the image, and wished that I could get a copy. I thought that someone must have scanned the art at some point, but couldn't find it anywhere online. Back around 2023 --- 32 years later --- after repeated, sporadic hunts --- I finally found a high-quality scan, and uploaded it to ![email protected]:

https://lemmy.world/post/18353742

https://lemmy.today/pictrs/image/4f16e6c1-2174-45fa-b9e9-c8ae6e1a3f7d.png

I promptly ran into another Threadiverse user in that thread who had been saying that he had been looking for the same thing for ages.

EDIT: Based on this Reddit post of a lower-quality version, the artist is Hiro Isono.

Others have tried to evade the spirit of the ban, using other digital devices sich as older iPods, or bringing walkie-talkies to school.

I'm not an advocate of smartphone bans, but necessity is the mother of invention, and I suppose that if some kids start cobbling together packet radio solutions to talk with their friends and reach the Internet, it'll probably be an educational experience.