Adaptive Curmudgeon

Count on Israel to continue being awesome:

“an Israeli firm has designed a device that produces clean drinking water from ambient air”

Water from ambient air? I call that a win!

Obviously this is something we can all understand. We all know there’s ambient water in the air. We call it humidity and it’s why everyone avoids Galveston in August. There are ways to harvest it. If you’re something of a windowlicker you can gather water on a cold but humid summer morning. We call it dew and anyone who’s slept under the stars knows about it. If you’re in a tighter spot and you’re motivated you can go after water inside respiring foliage. Everyone with a lick of sense has heard of a solar water still:

This is a similar technology (though not the same… so don’t attack me in the comments!). The biggest limitation is that the solar water still (above) is something I associate with gathering a few ounces of water from a pile of foliage where it’s reasonably humid. Someday it might keep me alive but it’s not going to fill my coffee pot. (Without coffee are we truly alive?)

Science fiction is rife with similar ideas. Here’s a fish based Kevin Costner proving that in the future people will be idiots. They’re so fucking dumb they can float on an ocean under the bright sun and fail to master solar powered desalinization.

This little pussy was supposed to be fixing the water collection technology when he started playing with droids and hanging out with some desert hippie.

“Luke! Quit playing grab ass with the droids and hike your skinny ass over to that evaporator. We need it fixed before the next farm bill check comes in.”

Israel, of course, is cooler than all that. They went with the “there’s water dripping off this air conditioner and it gives me an idea” path. They seem to be on the cusp of something workable. The article is talking about 300watts (which is is peanuts) and I wish them all the luck in the world.

Also, because they have balls of titanium, they went for it and mounted it on a tank!

 Why am I reminded of the Fremen?

Hat Tip to Maggies Farm.

P.S. Wait a few years until the technology is proven and it starts improving lives. Then then cue the enviroweenies for their protest that harvesting humidity is bad for Gaia in 3. 2. 1…

The technology in our daily lives changes with time. Mostly it gets better (i.e. better cancer treatments, micro-brewed beer, and all sorts of awesome shit on the internet). Sometimes it gets worse (nearly mandatory automatic transmissions in American cars, those fucking CFL lights that never work, and the internet is spying on me).

One must adjust as well as they can; hoping to postpone the inevitable. Sooner or later I’ll wind up yelling at kids to get off the lawn and wishing I knew how to operate whatever is currently used as a phone but I intend to put that time as far into the future as I can. (After all I’m an Adaptable Curmudgeon.)

In this time, with current technology, I place greater trust in a video than I do some talking head on a news show. Maybe this is a generational thing? To me, the idea of believing what Walter Cronkite said on the TV because he’s Walter Cronkite and because he’s on TV is madness. It wasn’t to my elders. Skepticism must be learned and it must be calibrated to the environment.

Which brings us to video. We all know it can or will be hacked in the near future. Like this:

None of us are immune to believing a video of a politician saying something. Why? I have no idea. As a kid I saw videos of Godzilla stomping all over Tokyo. My kid has seen far more convincing videos of 200′ tall monsters fighting Thor in the middle of New York City. Why we’d think a video of Trump or Nanci Pelosi is more trustworthy than one of Thor sucker punching a flying alien is a bit of a mystery in human nature.

We will have to learn to be cautious; and we certainly will. I foresee a few unfortunate witch hunts as we get the hang of it but that is the nature of life. Don’t worry though. This has happened before. I present a few photos from 1920 that were totally true and believable… in 1920:

It’s not that people in 1920 were primitive screwheads and gullible nitwits, it’s that photography was still in it’s infancy and… OK there’s a certain amount of gullible involved. But don’t be surprised when a video emerges of Trump or Putin saying something radioactive and no amount of contrary evidence sways a populace that buys it hook line and sinker. We’ve all been warned.

Thank you, and stay woke bitches.

[Note: This is Dr. Mingo talking. This post was written entirely by myself and not A.C. Since I forgot the password to post it myself, I had A.C.’s editor (his dog) copy and paste word for word. If the WordPress server says this post was written by A.C. it’s fake news!]

I take a little artistic license here in writing this but honestly the description is not far off from true events.  I have honestly never seen before or could have imagined the events described herein.

Hunting with the Curmudgeon is an experience. On our first hunt many years ago, we were in the Rocky Mountains to hunt Elk and Mule Deer.  It was a colder than normal winter and we opted to rent a small cabin near our hunting unit.  The first morning, at the butt crack of dawn, my alarm goes off.  My heart instantly started pounding and the blood was coursing through my body.  The excitement of the first morning of opening day was upon us.  I jumped out bed, hit the deck and looked over to where AC was sleeping.

“AC.  Let’s go.  The sun’ll be in a up in a couple hours.  We got to get out in the field!”

“Eeoooowwmaaathhhppt!” is all I heard.

Over the next five minutes I heard a string of grunts, grumbles, and other sounds that surely have meaning but predate language.  These noises slowly built in to a crescendo spewing forth from the mass of bed linens that hid the Curmudgeon.  Without warning it jumped out of bed and landed on its feet.  Butt naked I might add. (Authors Note:  I didn’t get that piece of information about the Curmudgeons choice of nocturnal wardrobe until…well…it was too late. I think it is part of his hunting ritual.) It just stood, there a primate in all its glory or as Charlton Heston put it, a “Goddamn Dirty Ape!”  It uttered one word, loud enough to be heard across camp.

“KAAAAAWWWW—FFFEEEEEEEE!!!!”

Jesus Christ! Standing there was a deranged Ben Gunn with a seriously bad attitude screaming “Coffee”.  I immediately grabbed my backpack, rushed outside, and with the skill of a combat medic under fire, swiftly assembled my camp cook stove, and perched the coffee pot on the burner in record time.  Muffled screams came forth from the cabin for the next five minutes repeating that all too familiar word.

While the coffee pot perked away, this gave me some time to hypothesize what may be going on inside the head of AC and what biochemical reactions were taking place.  I imagine it is something like this.  I have found that AC mostly runs on coffee, more specifically caffeine which explains his penchant for Death Wish Coffee.  Throughout the day the AC maintains a BCC (blood caffeine content) of about 0.15.  This is normal operating level.  In the evening the BCC drops to about 0.08. When this happens and dependent the presence of high end bourbon, it enters sleep mode. In the morning when the BCC drops too low, say about 0.03 to 0.05, two rogue neurons fire off deep within the reptile brain.  These binary switches allow a speech center to formulate one and only one, 2-syllable word.  Can you guess what that word is?

I rushed inside and handed AC a cup of the blackest night.  He went at his first cup about the way my dog eats food.  It doesn’t matter if the coffee burns his tongue.  Who cares?  The nerves in his tongue haven’t even turned on yet.  AC with his first cup of the day coffee is like Gollum crouching in the corner of the room clutching his “Precious.”

To paint a more metaphorical picture of AC’s relationship with coffee, I think Deatklok says it best:

Whenever Larry Correia (Monster Hunter Nation) does a fisking you should drop everything and read it. He’s a master of the art. It’s ballet, a tank driving over an inflated ego, a rainbow, and Christmas… all in one.

Some background:

A witless pseudo-intellectual text fluffer for the New Yorker (but I repeat myself) wrote a whiny screed about a new fast food restaurant that just opened in Manhattan: Chick-fil-A’s Creepy Infiltration of New York City. When some fool is appalled that Manhattanites have a different opinion about chicken sandwiches than his official one true path, you’re looking at an unteachable bubble dwelling pinhead. When he calls it infiltration you know the ensuing story will be a hive mind cognitive dissonance tantrum. One that’s equal parts a good laugh for us normals and also little embarrassing to us. When somebody commits that dense a verbal failure to paper it’s just a little unnerving to see it out in the open. Like maybe the writer needs handlers, or should get laid.

Luckily Correia is ready to do it justice. Go there now.

You’re still here? Why? Correia is the good writer, not me. Here are some quotes to nudge you his way:

Overwrought New Yorker Author: If the restaurant is a megachurch,

Larry Correia: It’s really not even vaguely close.

Overwrought New Yorker Author: the Cows are its ultimate evangelists.

Larry Correia: Holsteins are known for their devout nature.

Overwrought New Yorker Author: Since their introduction in the mid-nineties—when they began advising Atlanta motorists to “eat mor chikin”—

Larry Correia: That’s New Yorker Speak for “they put up a billboard.”

Larry Correia: I often see people describe rags like the New Yorker as “intellectual”, and then they lament how America is “anti-intellectual.” No. America isn’t anti-intellectual. The problem fucking halfwits assigning themselves a title they don’t deserve. There was nothing intellectual about this. There was no deep thinking. This was some dude having a public hate boner against a chicken restaurant in proxy for his unresolved issues.

And now I think I’m going to go get some chicken for lunch. The spite makes it taste better.

Seriously, you have to read the fisking to appreciate it’s true beauty. The New Yorker guy hyperventilates about everything: the decor, people who eat food they like, that chickens are not cows, that people who are not lefties use the word “community”, that chicken is fried, etc… Correia is there at every terrible utterance by that blithering idiot and smacks him hard with a verbal sledge of awesome.

Go there now.

Folks with excellent hair have begun whining about how terrifying a world without Facebook might be. These people, who are pretty but dumb, are called journalists. Most of them are too clueless to know that Facebook is only 14 years old. They think it was created in Africa and taken to the rest of the world shortly after Australopithecines evolved into anatomically modern humans. As the first social media it was dispersed on flint-napped smartphones. This was right around the time humanity got its start… in 1968.

Facebook and Permanence: Facebook is a big deal right? It can never go away because it’s huge and important right? Hogwash.

Facebook is not permanent. It was founded February 5, 2004. I have underwear older than that!

Social media is not important. It doesn’t power electric grids, ship grain, build roads, irrigate fields, or occupy much of the real world at all. It’s just a flashy attraction that currently amuses the smart monkeys who roam the planet with iPhones and free time.

There’s no there there. No bulldozers or factories. No shipping fleets. No large real estate holdings. It hardly matters in the real world at all. It can be gone in a flash; replaced by the next shiny toy. Remember MySpace? It was the largest social networking site in the world… until Facebook kicked it’s ass. Something will eventually overtake Facebook. The deathblow could be something as minor as the taint of becoming “uncool”!

I’m not saying Facebook is doomed today. I’m saying it’s doomed eventually… and since it only exists due to virtual signaling fashion… it’s probably doomed sooner rather than later.

Facebook can vaporize faster than a boy band or a politician’s spine. When it’s gone, it won’t be missed.

I have seen people who otherwise seem mentally fit flake out at the shocking shocking shocking idea that Facebook has political bias. This newfound concern went supernova when it dawned on them that the Orange Menace (President Trump) used the same technology formerly used by the Anointed One (Former President Obama) and the Unstoppable Force (Is Never Going To Be President Hillary).

Surprise! What one side can do… the other side can do. Watch your back hippies… we have also mastered the secret of fire, literacy, math, hard work, compound interest, and how to run a trot line. Nothing is sacred! The knowledge is out there and people without iPads can use it too! (Also a frighteningly large percentage of us studied STEM and are not nearly as stupid as you’d be comfortable imagining. That’s right, there are people who disagree with you, they know how to use technology, and they’re not idiots. You may need another bong hit before you let the import of it all sink in.)

So Zuckerberg talked to old people in suits while not under oath and drank water like a boss. Most of Portland fled to their favorite vegan/lesbian bookstore; where they spent the afternoon weeping over their iPads at the very thought that the whole fucking world isn’t like their imaginary bubble. Sometimes I feel sad for these folks, other times I want to hit ’em with a hammer. (Possibly a yellow fiberglass handled high capacity assault hammer which is entirely unlike the wood handled mallet envisioned by our colonial Founders; but that’s a discussion for another day.)

I’m talking here to the folks on the fainting couch over the subject of newly discovered bias. Lets dispense with this shit right now. There’s a portion of the American electorate that is well aware that Facebook actively loathes their very existence. The name of that portion is half. Now the other side knows what it’s like. Welcome the party. Now you’re one of us. You’ve got the Deplorable Cooties and there is no cure! Bwa ha ha ha ha!

Facebook and Politics: Nobody sane thinks Facebook isn’t playing politics. If you think Facebook is not politically biased you’re a fish that can’t see the water in which you swim. Of course, the Facebook feed to the Portlandia vegan barista’s poetry slam is not peppered with articles about how Mitt Romney was a swell fella. But the point is that nobody’s feed was peppered with articles about how Mitt Romney was a swell fella. Not even Mitt Romney got to see that. He never got on Facebook and saw a lot of content that was meaningful to his interests. “Wow, there’s a bunch of information about how I did that stuff for the Olympics! What a happy day!” You won’t find much on Facebook about how cool it is to be fiscally conservative, buy guns, fix your transmission with a wrench, or pay off your student loans. (AND I MEAN PAY OFF EVERY GODDAMN PENNY YOU CHICKENHEARTED WHINERS!) If it were merely an aggregation algorithm there would be gatherings of things familiar to a responsible adult who is not left of Trotsky and wearing a Che Guevara t-shirt.

Facebook is biased. Cut the shit and accept it. Quit pretending. If you’re a Facebook fan who thinks otherwise get your tongue out of Zuckerberg’s ass and come up for air. Live in meatspace a while. It’ll be good for ya’.

Facebook is a business. Viewer’s data is only the interim the product. The purpose of the data is to influence people to buy stuff and vote as instructed. The end product of Facebook is your compliance. That’s what you offer up for sale every time you login, click “like”, post, or view. Increasingly, selling votes is more valuable than selling shit. So that’s where Facebook went. And no, Facebook (or Zuckerberg) didn’t think it over when they started picking sides.

Look at Zuckerbeg… the dude’s a droid. He doesn’t ponder philosophy any more than my dog plays the piano. He’ll follow data and money like the fucking Terminator with nary a thought for what he’s created or become. It’s not his fault. You can either blame the flood for fucking up your basement or you can quit building in a flood plain. The river could do no other that what it does.

Notice he stormed right into the endless minefield of censorship? He thinks it’s totally logical to sort through a bazillion posts and use AI to separate good words from Wrongthink? And who’s going to manage that? Al Gore, the Pope, the Chinese Communist party, somebody’s cat. Are you going to let Zuckerberg build a machine on the assumption that it’ll always be in the hands of angels. What will lefties do if it’s someday be run by the love child of Dick Cheney and Darth Vader. Then what?

Some things are undefinable and most people learn that through experience. What will be his encore? Will he and is magic AI solve logic behind the existence of God, why dogs die young, and how many angels dance on the head of a pin. He stepped on his dick because he doesn’t even consider what he’s doing. Not his fault; it’s ours. We should never trust any information to a guy who thinks he can separate good words from bad words at any level beyond a six year old calling someone a poopyhead.

During presidential election cycles it’s almost laughably impossible to miss Facebook bias. Look at a “Rollin’ Coal” Fanpage and there’s an ad for Hillary Clinton? Really? The algorithms somehow associated “high flow air ducting for maximum earth shattering horsepower” with “I’m with her”? How can something that obtuse possibly derive from anything other than paid insertion? There’s no way simple sorting of likes and dislikes matched a 25,000 pound Warn winch with “she persisted”! Obviously it’s paid content and by definition biased. They paid to bias it. Could it be because those Gaia nuking trucks are at an event in Wisconsin? What if the event was in Texas? Would the article about camshaft upgrades link to Hillary in a state where she already gave up? Of course not! (Unless maybe you’re in Austin?) Does it make me a misogynist to notice this when Hillary is running? Or a racist when Obama was running?

Sadly, it hasn’t let up. I was looking at an article about sailboat rudders in the Philippines (I have eclectic tastes… don’t judge!) and Facebook decided that was a great time to bitch me about over gun control. Really? Sailboats in another country leads to gun control and I’m not supposed to notice the non sequitur? If they’re trying to hide their bias they aren’t trying that hard.

That’s the funny part. It’s so obvious and it didn’t work. If calling me deplorable didn’t get my vote why would interrupting a fun video of a truck with huge smokestacks churning up a dirt track do better? The only good part was that they were so busy trying to sell me a political view they briefly let up the pressure on that fishing depth finder I looked at in 2008. I looked at it and decided not to buy. Someone somewhere is desperate because they’ve been shoving ads for that stupid depth finder at me for years. If I were an investor I’d short sell any company that dumb. Come to think of it, going short on any company that needs a Facebook push to continue might be a good call? I wonder if Starbucks is trending heavy on Facebook today?

Starbucks is in the news so it’s time to watch Foamy the Squirrel:

This guy testified before Congress; which is how you know it’s 2018. When the press stops screaming Russia, Russia, Russia, to cover a robot being questioned by Octogenarian yahoos who can’t use a spreadsheet, the world is approaching peak stupid. Image is linked to “news” story.

Fake News – Zuckerberg Loses Contact Lens During Senate Hearing Revealing Horrifying Lizard Eye.

Occasionally, people who otherwise walk and talk like actual adults act surprised that Facebook isn’t their best friend and lover. It might be gathering and misusing your personal data. Then they collapse on a fainting couch.

Facebook and Privacy: Is there anyone younger than 80 and with an IQ higher than a houseplant that thinks Facebook doesn’t mine our data? Raise your hands please. Great… you few who raised your hands please exit the rear door to the kiddie play room where we’ve setup some cookies and a Disney movie on constant loop. There will be nap time and a visit from someone named Barney. It’s either a congressman with a gay prostitution ring in his house or a purple dancing dinosaur. I can’t recall which one I booked.

As for the adults, why should we pretend be surprised by Facebook’s data mining? The sky is blue and Facebook wants to know the name of your high school. It’s not doing it because it’s a supporter of your hometown football team. If you value your privacy tell it to fuck off. Are we all clear?

When you look at a blender on e-bay or Amazon and Facebook spends the next 20 days shoving blender related posts in front of your eyes what do you call it? A coincidence? A planet wide sudden surge in blender activity?

Duh! They’re an ad company and Facebook participants are the bovine host to be milked. What’s the news here?

Yes, I know. It’s Starbucks; it’s about damn time. We don’t even have to kick ’em when they’re down. We can just enjoy that they’re being kicked.

Obviously they had it coming; they shove politics up our ass when all we want is a latte. They vent a near lethal dose of pretension whenever a deplorable like me shows up for a Cup of Joe and a wifi link. On the premises I can almost feel the waves of disgust that folks like me aren’t caged and working in the mines where we belong.

I can’t help enjoy the hassles endured but a totally converged SJW ego fest hiding under the skin of a profit making corporate venture. Nor is it surprising that SJWs turned on their own nesting habitat. Reap the wind and all that. It’s rather impressively circular.

That said I can’t help but sympathize with the poor bastard below:

Best Caption: “Your job’s a joke. You’re broke. Your love life’s DOA.”

Just look at him. His day sucks! We’ve all been there. You’re trying to do your job when some shitweasel decides to make “a political statement” about what’s supposed to be a damn breakfast drink. Instead of your core duties you are stuck eating shit while a nitwit with no day job talks smack through a megaphone. Like all worker bees you have to tough it out. Just stand there getting hammered and wondering how long until your shift ends so you can go home and crack a beer to… get hammered. In silent desperation you ponder the bad decisions that put you in this job.

This abused, green striped, human punching bag is having a bad day at the office!

Then again… there’s nothing quite so fun as a caption contest. Someone turned this photo into a great thread of funny captions. It’s worth the visit.

Enjoy.

A.C.

Warning: The link goes to twitchy… whatever the hell “twitchy” means. Probably some wingnut filled social media hive mind, but what the hell? There’s no login and if it’s funny why not link to it?