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Pat

In case you're wondering which US president did the best job in Afghanistan, here’s the most important metric for the loved ones of the soldiers who fought over there…

(The objective of the war was to eliminate Al-Qaeda. Bush started the war, Biden won it.)

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Pat

Patsplaining - ***Spoiler*** 

***Spoiler***

All of the first sentence is true -- Congress passed that law, the IRS plans to hire those personnel, and some of them will be armed.

But the second paragraph is not true. The title, "Assistant Vice Deputy Under-Secretary of Accountant Armaments" is a made-up title. The video actually shows a guy from the Pentagon listing some of the armaments that the US is sending to Ukraine to help them fight against the Russian military, which has invaded their country. The video was cut to exclude the parts where the guy identifies the list as going to Ukraine.

By attaching that video to this toot, it makes it look like the IRS will be using relatively heavy arms, when in fact they most likely will only have light arms, like sidearms, shotguns, rifles, etc. to use for ordinary law enforcement.

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Pat

Also, I'd like to block those accounts.

The only way I can see to block an account is to find something that that user has posting in a thread on qoto and then click on the 3-dot icon. But if the users don't have posts on a qoto thread, how can I block them?

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Pat

Question about using qoto...

There is a toot and I want to see the list of users who have favorited the toot. It indicates that it has "4" favorites, but when I go to the page that displays the list of users, it only shows two names.

Here is the page that shows who favorited it:
qoto.org/web/statuses/10882614

Here's an image of how the page displays the accounts:

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Pat

I just blocked @civmik for posting a racist image. (pic of a black man with the image altered to make his lips appear very large.)

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Pat

Nobody in particular. Just any bad guy who happens to live at Mar-a-lago and might want to be president again so badly that he'd do that.

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Pat

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Hypothetically...

Could a bad guy sell state secrets to our enemies and make enough money to fund a presidential campaign?

1 person · Aug 17, 2022, 18:44
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Pat

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Congress has passed legislation that will fund the hiring of more than 80,000 new IRS personnel. Some of them will be armed.

Here’s a video clip of the Assistant Vice Deputy Under-Secretary of Accountant Armaments describing the weapons that will be provided to the new IRS agents…

(pubic domain video as published by CSPAN)
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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

Retro SciFi of the Week…

Radar Men from the Moon (1952)

Jetpacks have been featured in science fiction since the 1920s. Perhaps most recently in Tomorrowland (2015). The character in this film wears a metal helmet that makes him look kind of like Iron Man, and that 1960s comic book character was likely based on the character from this film. The Iron Man comics character has seen a recent revival on the big screen with Marvel’s film franchise.

This film (Radar Men from the Moon) is full of contemporary references from the 50s -- definitely worth watching if you enjoy studying history through film. It was originally a movie serial, later released as a feature film.

(GIF clip from the film, no audio, fair use.)

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Pat

Paraphrasing and expanding on Rumsfeld…

There are:

Known knowns - things we know we know;

Known unknowns – to say we know there are some things we do not know;

Unknown unknowns - the ones we don't know we don't know;

Unknown knowns – stuff you know, but don’t know that you know it.

And if one looks throughout the history of our country and other free countries, it is the latter two categories that tend to be the difficult ones.

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Pat

qoto.org/@Pat/1085674632707672

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Pat

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Pat

I just blocked skells for using a racial epithet. 15:03

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Pat

Here's another image from the film that shows that this really is a scifi, but it's still mostly just a typical medium-quality, 80s/90s Hollywood movie. (Fair use)

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Pat

(Image: From Timebomb, fair use.)

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Pat

Retro SciFi of the Week…

Timebomb (1991)

Three decades after The Manchurian Candidate, ten years after The Bourne Identity novel, ten years before The Bourne Identity film. Not much scifi in this one, just a typical low budget film of that era. TV movie quality.

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Pat

Can you get monkeypox by spanking the monkey?

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Pat

China has intentionally killed off all of its Paddlefish (Psephurus gladius) causing the extinction of the species.

news.yahoo.com/iconic-chinese-

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Pat


- - -
How to set your hot water heater to the most efficient temperature...

First, turn it down a little bit.

Then wait a few a days to see if anyone complains.

If nobody complains, turn it down a bit more.

Repeat until somebody complains.

That’s the perfect setting.

(Did you know that in the summer, depending on several factors, you may not even need to turn on your hot water heater at all!)

See also:
qoto.org/@Pat/1079487997212634

(Image public domain per upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia)

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Pat

Retro SciFi of the Week…

Brainstorm (1983)

Another “mind” scifi, this came out during the Human-Potential Movement which derived from the Psychedelic Movement of the 1960s. Think of this one as the HPM answer to The Manchurian Candidate (1962) which was about brainwashing techniques used by governments. Each of those movements were likely used as covers by clandestine entities for conducting mind control experiments “in the wild”.

This film came out during the period between the end of the Vietnam War and the fall of the USSR. Prior to Vietnam, the military was well-regarded by people in the US due to our victory in WWII. After Vietnam the national mood was “Spit on the baby killers.” During the 1990s without the Soviets around to sustain the anti-military mood in the US, the reputation of the military was repaired as everybody began chanting, “Support the troops”. So you will see an anti-government / anti-military bias in this film (and many films made during that time).

This film is probably most noted for what happened off camera during production. One of the lead actors, Natalie Wood, died in a boating incident under suspicious circumstances and they almost scrapped the film. They had to rework the film and shoot additional scenes using a look-alike for some shots. You may be able to identify those in the film if you look closely.

Also, as with many films from Hollywood, this one has racial bias. Can you identify the bias in this film?

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