January 29, 2022

Any Yellowstone fans?

I just finished season 1 and am hooked. It's a role Kevin Costner was born to play.

It's fairly absurd, I see it as Montana's answer to Sons of Anarchy. But it is still pretty good.

The NBC Peacock version is the one to watch. It is 4K and TV-MA instead of the watered down CATV/SATV version.

January 17, 2022

Weather.com is shitty now! (website review)

I don't think it happened overnight, but the slow and steady slide towards the sewer has reached an indisputably odiferous point.

Weather.com is a shitty website. Let's start with the Hourly page because, well, that's the only page that matters. This page takes as long to load as porn over a dialup modem (or so a friend informs me...) The hourly forecast doesn't fit on the screen because of this massive ad banner that takes up almost 25% of the vertical space. There are two more ads to the left and right. The total webpage is so tall as to be around 10 screen pages. This is mostly ads, about a dozen in total. There's a popup video because, well, why wouldn't you want to watch a video?

The 79 cookies employed by the website probably don't help with performance either.

The first hour of the hourly tabular data is in 15-minute increments, and the rest is 1-hour increments. This creates a kind of discontinuity that is jarring. There is a link to "Go Premium" which will make it all 15-minute data for a price. I wonder if I can pay the upcharge to make it all 1-hour data? Does anybody really need 15-minute forecast data? Weather.com is struggling to find ways to add value here.

If you missed the "Go Premium" link at the top of the data, there's another conveniently placed at the bottom. And there's one on the website navigation bar.

January 16, 2022

When you hear the Cheers theme, what bar or restaurant do you think of?

This is a rhetorical poll. Stop playing that song, Applebee's. FAIL

January 16, 2022

Did Trump ever commit to a goal with a significant chance of objective failure?

I'm not even concerned with whether the goal was achieved or not. Were there many committals which met this criterion? This is a good question to ask your conservative friend or family member.

Trump did commit to a free border wall, and this campaign promise objectively failed. I'll grant that one. He learned from this mistake and rarely repeated it. He did commit to balancing the budget, but the timeframes were quickly (and conveniently) pushed out well past his second term once in office.

When it came to infrastructure, there was an acceptance by Trump that this was a national priority. However, all we got was "infrastructure week". This amounted to little more than discussions and arm waving with no measurable milestones. Contrast this with Biden's infrastructure plan. This was significant legislation subjected to a final yea or nay vote (unlike Trump's executive actions).

Trump did not enter anything resembling a formal nuclear arms agreement with Kim Jong-un. He merely asserted that they "fell in love".

When it came to health care, we got a promise from Trump that his "great health plan" would be revealed during his second term. Biden, on the other hand, has included significant improvements to health care in his first-term BBB plan. This has bipartisan opposition and is also subject to a final yea or nay vote.

Trump never committed to ending the pandemic. This was thrust upon him, and his response was largely to downplay the threat. He tried to shorten the yardstick used to measure success by taking anti-science positions. Cases are increasing because of the increase in testing, period. Biden, on the other hand, has never tried to hide from the science. The cases are the cases, the deaths are the deaths.

Anthropomorphic climate change is not a reality of physics in the MAGA-verse. In Biden's real world, the US has rejoined the Paris accord which has quantifiable emissions targets.

Are you seeing a pattern here? In the absence of measurable milestones, a politician can merely assert that they are doing a great job on your behalf. I say demand better.

January 15, 2022

They they them they them the left them they the left

That's what Fox News sounds like to me. Don't you pretty much have to be a staunch right-wing partisan to talk like that? If the newscasters and viewers aren't collectively in the "us" group (good) as opposed to the "them" group (bad), it doesn't even make sense.

I prefer a degree of separation between reporters and the politicians being reported on. Hannity had Trump on speed dial as we now know. CNN has its faults but doesn't blur the lines and spew sweeping generalizations like that.

January 8, 2022

Nevermore - Inside Four Walls

January 4, 2022

All January 6 Capitol rioters should be forced to endure this

This video is the police interrogation of Michael Rafferty who abducted, raped, and murdered Tori Stafford with the help of Terri-Lynne McClintic. It's long, but fascinating.

They start with the Good Cop treatment in part 1. The Good Cop just wants to be Rafferty's friend for over an hour. A half hour into part 2, the Bad Cop shows up. The Bad Cop mocks his sorry ass.

I think the Good Cop treatment is somehow more punishing. It's like Chinese water torture with faux friendship. It's relentless. Bullshit excuses wither under this barrage.

There's a Part 3 I haven't seen yet; I've been worn out by 1 and 2.

In Ontario Canada, actions still have consequences! Also, you can easily differentiate between facts and alternative facts there.

January 1, 2022

Omicron is nature's vaccine!

This is according to Dr. Marty Makary on Fox News Business, who characterizes Omicron as "very mild" and a quick path to herd immunity.

Magical thinking?