Posts

Posted on

Kind of Surprising Coming from Home Depot

This has been making the rounds. Is it real?

Maybe I’ve been carrying around the wrong impression of the company all these years. But this obviously is intended for UK associates due to the spelling of the word “colour.” Anyone know if this is also in use in the States?

Posted on

Teh St00pid, It Burns

From Second Nexus:

GOP Senator Proves She Has No Idea What the Constitution Says With Mind-Numbing ‘Abortions’ Tweet

Throughout the Senate Judiciary Committee’s hearings this week to consider Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson’s historic nomination to the Supreme Court of the United States, far-right Senator Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee has interrogated Jackson with some of the hearings’ most incendiary questions.

On the first day of hearings, Blackburn suggested Blackburn’s “personal hidden agenda” was to embed critical race theory into the American legal system. On the second day, Blackburn demanded Jackson define the word “woman” and suggested she was soft on child pornographers. All the while, the Senator heaped praise on Jackson’s family and composure.

On Twitter, Blackburn’s opposition to Jackson’s appointment was even less restrained. The Senator’s timeline has offered a steady stream of quips decrying Jackson’s near-inevitable appointment to the Supreme Court.

One such criticism attempted to discredit the idea that Americans have a right to an abortion, or rather, a right not to bear children.

Blackburn erroneously cited the Constitution.

Blackburn insisted to her followers that “The Constitution grants us rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness — not abortions.”

There’s just one problem: the famous phrase “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” isn’t in the Constitution—the document that forms the basis of government in the United States and the document that created Blackburn’s very position. Those words are from the Declaration of Independence, the letter wherein the 13 original colonies unanimously asserted their rationale for breaking from Britain, citing its disregard for “self-evident” truths that governments must recognize to warrant the consent of the governed.

For many Americans, it’s been a long time since a civics or American history class. But for a Senator on the Senate Judiciary Committee tasked with considering the nomination of a historic Supreme Court appointment?

Social media users thought Blackburn should’ve known better, and they were quick to point out the error.

But it wasn’t just the conflation of documents that sparked reactions, it was the entire premise of Blackburn’s argument.

Today marks the final day of Judge Jackson’s confirmation hearings, after which the Senate Judiciary Committee is expected to advance her nomination to the Senate floor.

Posted on

Putin’s Always Watching

This video is two years old, and even then Russians were sick of the dictator.

YouTube description: “A Russian prankster glued a massive portrait of President Vladimir Putin to the inside of a residential elevator. He then placed a camera in the elevator to record people’s reactions. Some of the reactions were incredulous, others were angry, but all were hilarious.”

Posted on

Scenes From a Road Trip: White Sands

Though White Sands was one of the main destinations on our itinerary, we almost didn’t stop. We’d just come over the Sacramento Mountains where we were alternately fighting rain and snow flurries, and it seemed more storms were heading in our direction from the west—something guaranteed to spoil any photographic hopes we’d had. But not knowing when we’d be this way again, at the last minute we said fuck it, and—deciding to risk the whims of the weather—made the turnoff to the National Park.

I’m so glad we did. Of all the times we’ve visited White Sands, this time I think we got some of the best pictures ever.

Just as I’d done with Anderson when he was new, I wanted some glamor shots of Rabbit in the sands…even though—much like his daddy—he’s no longer new at all.

Click to embiggen

Influencer influencing influences

The picnic enclosures in the park always reminded me of the sand ships from the 1980 production of Ray Bradbury’s The Martian Chronicles (starring Rock Hudson, no less)—even though I know in actuality they look nothing like them.

And that’s all folks! We overnighted in Deming, stopped in Tucson for lunch, and were back home by mid-afternoon! Total miles traveled on our little adventure: 1445.

Posted on

Scenes From a Road Trip: Decay

Another perk of having diverted through Roswell is it gave me an opportunity to rephotograph one of the hundreds of abandoned and decomposing structures along the New Mexico highways that I stopped for in 2000.

This little fixer-upper is located at 33° 20′ 24.4″ N, 105° 4′ 27.98″ W, on the north side of State Route 380/US-70 west of Roswell. 

August 2000
March 2022
August 2000
March 2022

I wanted to recapture this building since when I first stumbled upon it I’d taken most of the photos with a crappy Sony Mavica digital camera (the one that had  the 3-1/2″ floppy drive for storage) and the resolution was abysmal. Even the shots I took with my 35mm film SLR weren’t what I was hoping for. So it was time for a do-over.

Amazing what 22 years of technology—and constant exposure to the elements can do.

August 2000
March 2022

Bonus shots: