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Pat

The more self-doubt someone has, the more objective is their view of reality.

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Pat

Retro SciFi Film of the Week…

Waterworld (1995)

Over a quarter of a century ago, this climate-change movie was way ahead of its time. When it was first released, many critics panned this wonderful film simply because the oil industry controlled so much of the economy and the media at the time. If it was released today it’d get glowing reviews.

It was an expensive movie to make because of all the underwater scenes, which required highly specialized cameras and gear to films. The special effects were also top notch. And those elaborate sets must have cost a fortune. Today it would be much easier to produce.

It’s kind of campy and the premise (that the entire Earth is covered with water due to climate change) is complete nonsense, but it’s still fun to watch.

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Pat

The magazine for the Automobile Club of America (AAA) this month is featuring the Galápagos Islands, for anyone who may want to drive there to observe the islands’ unique wildlife.

ace.aaa.com/publications/trave

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Pat


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NASA’s asteroid-hunter spacecraft misses Didymos…

DART, the spacecraft mission designed to test whether we can defend ourselves against asteroids crashing into the Earth, has missed the asteroid Didymos. Didymos is the larger of two asteroids of a binary minor planet system discovered in 1996.

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= A statement that is logically or literally true (or partly true), but seems to imply something that isn’t true or is just plain weird. (for rhetoric, logic or propaganda studies… or just for fun)

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Pat

What's is the best way to do an infinite loop in BASH?

Here are some ways to do an infinite loop in BASH, using the no-op builtin (:) inside the loop…

while :;do :;done

while [[ hellnotfrozen ]];do :;done

for ((0;;));do :;done

for ((;;));do :;done

until [[ ! hellnotfrozen ]];do :;done

until [ ! hellnotfrozen ];do :;done

The first “while” loop is the most compact in terms of characters to type, and it doesn’t require the shift key like the “for” loops do – to type the “(())”.

The first “until” loop and the last "while" loop use the BASH compound command for conditional expressions and are more verbose, but they're self-commenting and much more readable and comprehensible. The "until" loop is the fastest executing (using my crude benchmark tests).

The second “until” loop uses the builtin BASH “test” command instead of the compound command, but it executes much more slowly than any of the others.

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Pat

Why should you never, ever shoot a video with your phone in vertical format?

Because people don't look like this:

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Pat

Top Story: A trans teacher with prosthetic breasts.

It must be getting close to election time, because the incumbents are bringing out the big guns to try to distract the electorate from the fact that they just killed more than a million Americans.

Yeah, we’re still in this f*cking pandemic – more than 22 Uvalde shootings number of people dying from the virus -- every day -- but news media won’t even mention it.

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Pat

Hey website developers...

If you use a dark theme, make sure you also change the color for links and tags to something other than dark blue. It's imposible to read.

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Pat

#

Retro SciFi Film of the Week…

Loss of Sensation (1935)

This movie and Metropolis (1927) were heavily influenced by the 1920 Czech play U.R.U., which introduced the word “robot” to science fiction and the English-speaking world. (“Robota” in Czech means “corvée”, serf labor or unpaid labor.)

Recently, a lot of authors have been writing about the post-scarcity economy, but this film examined the concept back in 1935. These filmmakers were likely influenced by Marx, thinking that productivity was a bad thing because it means less work (and fewer workers) are required to produce what we need. Most writers today envision a more utopian outcome from a post-scarcity world in their stories.

The film is in the public domain. Here’s a link...
commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.

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Pat

All this monarch-worshiping by news media from democratic countries is disgusting.

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Pat

Star Parker is so anti-abortion, that she wants a law to prohibit people from swipping left on Tinder.


(image: cropped, CC-BY-CA-2.0, Gage Skidmore, Fickr)

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Pat

Monday morning poll...

1 person · Sep 22, 2022, 09:39
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Pat

Retro SciFi of the Week…

Splash (1984)

A creature comes out of the sea and reeks havoc.

(image: fair use image from the film)

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Pat

This is 100% false. First physicians in nearly every country take an oath not to harm patients. Second, vegans often abstain from eating animals for ethical reasons and presumably the fictional vegan doctor here is motivated for that reason, and since humans are animals, she would not inflict harm on any animal, including her human patient.

(It’s true that a person could be vegan for religious reasons and refuse to do certain things under religious freedom, but again, letting someone die would contradict those religious beliefs.)

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Pat

The truth is...

The King of England from 1714 to 1727, George I, could not speak English.

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= A statement that is logically or literally true (or partly true), but seems to imply something that isn’t true or is just plain weird. (for rhetoric, logic or propaganda studies… or just for fun)

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Pat

Dislexia sucks...

especially when you confuse hominids,
you no, when too works sound the same
butt may bee spelled differently.

Or they R different all together,
butt close enuf two confuse and confound.
Like then and than – those dam vowels.

Butt eye think I finally mastered
all those “there”s, there are a lot them, you no.
There, their, they’re, there’s, theirs.
Thar, I think I got it.
Oops, mist again.

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Pat

"...it’s a much better film THAN you’d expect."

"Than", not "then".

(Use "than" for comparison of grammatical objects that differ from one another, or to set aside something that is different. Use "then" to indicate temporal order -- that which comes next after something else.)

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Pat

Retro SciFi of the Week…

Epoch (2001)

This is an independently produced film which I assume was done on a low budget, but as with last week’s film, it’s a much better film then you’d expect. It was released around the time of the 9/11 attacks, so there wasn’t much room available to create a lot buzz for it. Even so, when it aired on the SciFi Channel (SYFY) in November 2001, it drew the largest audience of any film on the channel to that date.

The movie is about an artifact that suddenly appears in Agua Dulce.

(image: fair use low-res movie poster)

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Pat

vanityfair.com/style/2022/02/q

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Pat

Those two who are doing this, US District Judge Reed O’Connor in Fort Worth and attorney Jonathan Mitchell, better hope that they never find themselves under the knife of a gay surgeon who, based on this precedent, could proceed as his conscience directed him.

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