Author: Mark Alexander

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Resonance

The Erechtheion (or Erechtheum) is an ancient Greek temple constructed on the acropolis of Athens between 421 and 406 BCE in the Golden Age of the city in order to house the ancient wooden cult statue of Athena and generally glorify the great city at the height of its power and influence. The Erechtheion has suffered a troubled history of misuse and neglect, but with its prominent position above the city and porch of six Caryatids, it remains one of the most distinctive buildings from antiquity.

Much like temples of  Ramesses II at Abu Simbel in Egypt, the Erechtheion has resonated with me from the moment I first saw pictures of it in sixth grade.

Abu Simbel

When I stumbled across an article documenting the modern day relocation of the Abu Simbel temples in an issue of National Geographic in the late sixties, I repeatedly asked my mom when we’d been there. Of course, she replied that we’d never been to Egypt, yet I distinctly remembered having been in that place at some point.

I have no such “I’ve been there” feeling regarding the Erechtheion, but I am in absolute awe of the beauty of the building, and like I wrote, it just resonates.

Proof of past lives? Maybe, but probably not, because the one thing I do believe is that if reincarnation is real, considering the vastness of the universe and the billions of undoubtedly inhabited worlds out there, it doesn’t make any sense whatsoever to be forced to live out multiple lives on this single rock we currently call home. That would imply there’s something inherently special about this planet—and human beings themselves—that I feel entirely unwarranted as it puts us back as the medieval “center of the universe” thing.

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Science!

Take a good look: this is the black hole at the center of our galaxy.

In the inset image, gas in the glowing orange ring surrounds the black hole’s event horizon, a boundary from which nothing can escape. The ring is created by light bending in the intense gravity around Sagittarius A*, which has a mass some four million times greater than our Sun. This groundbreaking image of Sagittarius A* was taken by the Event Horizon Telescope team with data from telescopes around the world. After the EHT’s iconic image of M87*, released in 2019, this is only the second time a supermassive black hole has been directly observed with its shadow.

The wider look at the space around Sagittarius A* includes data contributed by several NASA missions. The orange specks and purple tendrils were captured in infrared light by the Hubble Space Telescope, and the blue clouds represent data from our orbiting Chandra X-ray Observatory.

Fall in to the whole story: https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/chandra/images/sagittarius-a-nasa-telescopes-support-event-horizon-telescope-in-studying-milky-ways.html

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Moron.

Who paid for this asswipe’s law degree? Because it’s obvious they wasted their money.

Insurrectionist and all around asshole, Josh Hawley introduced a bill on Tuesday that aims to revoke Disney’s copyrights.

So much for the love affair between big business and the Republikkkans.

Hawley’s bill would seek to retroactively limit Disney’s copyrights, effectively stripping the company of much of its intellectual property

Yeah like Coke or any other company would allow that shit to stand.

Hilarious!

If Congress were to go back to a 56-year maximum, it would violate the treaty of the Berne Convention (international treaty on copyrights) potentially incurring monetary penalties or trade sanctions.

So like DeathSantis, this dumb ass move would actually cost American tax payers shitloads of money.

Moron.

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I Have Reached The Point In My Life…

…that if something doesn’t hold my interest or fire my curiosity, it’s just not saved in short or long term memory.

Case in point, my organization is rolling out new enterprise software called Tanium to replace Microsoft’s aging but well-known SCCM. This was sprung on us about two months ago with a required day-long online training session that was lead by a guy who was as engaging as watching paint dry. After experiencing cascading technical issues with the lab portion of the training I said fuck it and logged off…yet still somehow got a passing grade and a silly certificate of completion.

Well, a couple weeks ago we got notice from the idiots spearheading this transition (Can we still use that word? I mean I’m not in Florida, so it should be okay, right?) that based on feedback from the first training there would be an additional mandatory in-depth day-long training that required a prerequisite two-hour long online training session before you’d be allowed to attend.

As much as I would’ve liked to skip the whole fucking thing, I was in no mood for the whining I’d hear from on high if I did that, so I blocked out two hours this morning to complete this prerequisite online training.

And this is where my no-interest-no-retention comes into play. First off, nothing about this new software is going to impact my day-to-day duties in any way, so I already had no reason to fully engage with this to begin with. High-level query and reporting on the state of our network or individual workstations is not something I—or in fact, anyone on my team—does. All that shit falls under the purview of main ITS. The only thing I can possibly imagine having to use this for (and again, the chances that I would actually do this) is for the biannual equipment inventory. And even then, that is a physical, touch-every-machine process so why my organization has chosen to implement this new system—and requiring that everyone from the tech gods to the tech grunts learn it is totally beyond me.

It took me three tries to pass the assessment at the end. Because I had no fucks to give. And to be perfectly honest, after the second try I gave up and cheated. The quiz did not provide immediate feedback for each question missed, but did provide the ability to go back and see the correct answers to the questions once you failed. I took screenshots of those, saved them, and when I took the quiz the final time, I referred to the screenshots and managed to pass.

And I am more convinced than ever that the only reason this piece of crap software was purchased is because the sales presentation involved copious amounts of cocaine and hookers in private hotel rooms.

I am SO ready to retire.

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Some Observations

    • Knowing only one language is like having only one eye.  You can still see everything, but you miss out on the depth.
    • Some people, it is said, see retirement as the end of a meaningful life.  I see it as the end of a meaningless life.  No more spending eight hours a day doing things so inane and irritating that they literally need to pay me to do them.  Retirement is the time to bloom.  Most jobs wilt you.
    • Gangster “leaders” always underestimate the strength and resolve of democracies.  The Kaiser did, Hitler did, Tojo did, Saddam Hussein did, and now Putin is doing it.  They never seem to learn.
    • Toddlers (of whatever chronological age) go on the internet to show how performatively cynical they can be.  Adults grapple with the detail and complexity of difficult problems in the real world.
    • There is money to be made by telling people what they want to hear, and what stupid people want to hear is that smart people actually aren’t so smart after all.  That’s why, for example, the junk media so often report new scientific discoveries as showing that “scientists were wrong about such-and-such”, even though usually the new discovery fits into existing theories quite well.
    • If somebody uses words like “sheeple” or “herd” to refer to those who disagree with him, he’s probably in some kind of cult.
    • People who claim to not care about good manners have probably never had to deal with somebody who’s really rude.  That gets tiresome fast.
    • Saying “it’s a republic, not a democracy” is like saying “it’s a beagle, not a dog”.  A republic is a type of democracy, and the only type workable for a really large population.  Every democracy in the world today is a republic (well, some are technically constitutional monarchies, but they function as republics, with elected representatives holding power).  People who use this slogan aren’t basing it on some clear distinction between the two — they’re just rationalizing a claim that they should get their way even if they don’t win majority support.
    • Angry people are usually easy to manipulate.  That’s why would-be manipulators try to keep their audience in a state of constant outrage.
    • Better my own road to Hell than someone else’s road to Heaven.

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