He looks like somebody stretched out Peter Lorre's face over a too large skull.
Wingnut welfare has always been with us.
Whenever I read or hear about someone like this I always find myself wondering what the hell put the bug up their ass about Jews in particular.
You kind of have to wonder a bit about the kind of mind that comes up with something like the Protocols. Some dickweed actually sat down and banged that bullshit out one word at time. WTF, dude?
Spreading horrible lies to advance a dubious political cause has been a job description in Russia for a very long time.
You kind of have to wonder a bit about the kind of mind that comes up with something like the Protocols.
Unberto Eco took an amusing stab at answering that question.
This guy apparently wrote a book called Jews are looking at you. Did the title alone cause good Aryans to have chills?
A good Aryan is afraid of and smugly superior to all other races and creeds.
8
What does that even mean? Like, Rosemary's Baby-style creepy neighbors? Or skirt tucked in your underwear walking down the street looking?
8: Intriguing mysterious titles are part of the recipe for bestsellers!
I think a better, more scarier title would be, Jews are looking at you with their laser eyes
4 It was the Italians. Shifting the blame for killing God.
Is it National Brotherhood Week yet?
16.1 reminds me of my favorite Sarah Silverman joke.
I Found a Jew in my Refrigerator But I Only Saw Him for a Brief Moment Before He Scampered Off.
Now I'm picturing a young German in 1925 who wants to study poetry at university and being told by his father "Your not going to waste your education like that! I'll only support you at university if you study a practical skill, like demagoguing the Jews."
Sure it's not time for a brief holiday in fabulous London, only six hours away by a large airline that's not party to any dispute?
18: I'm just a Jew, a lonely Jew, at crisper.
22 And Iran has stepped in with an invitation to use its deep water ports for shipping food to Qatar.
22 I should be in NYC in less than 3 weeks but good point.
14.pseud could be a trivia team name, if appropriately Chosen.
"The ban has meant that any ship sailing to and from Qatar will be prevented from calling at major ports in the UAE and Saudi Arabia, which include Jebel Ali, as well as Bahrain."
How does that work? Any ship that has ever or will ever stop in Qatar? Or can they be cleansed of their sin by stopping at a third party port?
Anyway if we were speculating about Trump being able to play 12-dimensional chess, I'd guess he's doing this to disrupt oil and gas markets so that coal becomes more attractive, but really it's just about that gold necklace the Saudis gave him.
They probably have the same rule with ships that go to or from Israel. Or maybe that's just people who have to hide stamps from Israel in their passports.
if we were speculating about Trump being able to play 12-dimensional chess
He plays one-dimensional tic-tac-toe, and still fucks it up.
One dimensional tic tac toe is amusing me. it feels like stoned undergraduate math majors would invent it.
28 Qatar supposedly doesn't have a deep water port, not deep enough for modern container shipping - there was the old one at Mesaieed built in the late 40s early 50s for oil tankers, and then there is the new Hamad port which is supposed to be deepwater and was opened last year, so I'm not really sure.
What it does mean is that most cargo destined for Qatar offloads first at one of the ports in either Abu Dhabi or Dubai for transhipment to Qatar.
I'm sort of amazed I've never seen it played before, it seems like a very natural game in the genre of silly math games like color or country.
Obviously with only three squares it's a very stupid game, but on a long line the second player has to think a moment or they might easily lose. (That is, the second player's drawing strategy is straightforward, but anything other than that strategy loses fast.)
"Have you ever wondered if you have a container terminal or if your container terminal has you?"
32: Why are they building stupid little islands instead of digging out a real port? Or was somebody else building the stupid little islands?
33: Hrm, the indefinite-draw-but-easy-to-screw-up state holds for higher dimensional infinite boards, too, right?
So: play on a long line, but with the rule that the long line is a linearization of the plane (via a spiral, or fractal Z curve, whatever). Also, player 1 has to do half a shot before each move. That should be sufficiently disorienting all around.
Dubai built stupid little islands and a real port. One right next to the other. You dredge the port and build the islands. It's so very Dubai.
35: That was the UAE.
Maybe player 2 should have to do some smaller fraction of a shot, too. Needs playtesting.
Which one built the underwater base for the 1%?
39: Maybe we need Bob back to help us understand the impact of the crisis on Obama's kid's future plans to reside in underwater luxury while we all die.
Looking that up again and had forgotten about that thread getting around to Bongwater's Folk Song which is of course relevant always.
maybe you'd like to get politically active so you disrupt a Presidential press conference by shoving a 5 pound week old stalk of broccoli between those thin lying lizard lips
There's a variant called ultimate tic-tac-toe that's a lot of fun.
Alright, the game is one dimensional tic-tac-toe. I'll take the first challenger, but I get to play X:
|___|___|___|___|___|___|_X_|___|___|
One dimensional tic-tac-toe is passe. The cool kids are playing zero dimensional tic-tac-toe.
Four dimensional tic-tac-toe would be interesting. X's and O's would last only for a certain number of moves before they expire and the space becomes clear again. But how many moves?
42: And what is Ann Magnuson up to these days? Not really sure but she just got inducted into the West Virginia Music Hall of Fame with a pretty eclectic class. Also inducted:
Hasil Adkins: "Primitive" rockabilly singer who was an inspiration for The Cramps. "I didn't try to be primitive, I just had bad microphones. No More Hot Dogs.
On April 15, 2005, Adkins was deliberately run over in his front yard by a teenager on an ATV.Ten days later, on April 26, Adkins was found dead in his home, two days before his 68th birthday.
Frank Hutchison: Slide guitarist.
The Morris Brothers: Old-timey music festivals. "Sorry no Country and western, Bluegrass, or Electric Inst on program."
Fred "Sonic" Smith: MC5 and married to Patti Smith.
Michael W. Smith: Contemporary Christian.
Every breath you take
Every move you make
Every bond you break
Every step you take
I'll be watching you
Every single day
Every word you say
Every game you play
Every night you stay
I'll be watching you
I had to puzzle for a minute about whether you were all talking about tic-tac-toe on a line that's long or on the long line.
Apparently I fail at typing links on an iPad.
The "long line" in the sense of the set of all countable ordinals?
1. I got in a conversation with a guy in the library who was clearly a little mentally ill - delusions of single-handedly saving the US by a project he was in the middle of, which would get millions of people on board and then show up in DC and they'd have to go along with the plan.
The funny thing is, he was completely lucid and correct about the problems of politics and society, so it was a genuinely pleasant conversation. His solution was to pass a constitutional amendment where everyone voted on issues instead of politicians. The details about how to get from here to there were where the mental illness became apparent.
He claims to have written many books under the pseud "Will of the People" which is an incredibly un-track-down-able pseud.
He was a nice guy who did not seem homeless, and I wish him the best.
THEN we saw a big snake, walking from the library to the public pool. He crossed our path immediately in front of us. He was very thick and maybe six feet long. WATER MOCCASIN. Jammies says ratsnake.
Oh look, Russia might be behind the whole blowup and Trump was an even bigger sucker you'd expect*. It sure seems obvious that the statement was planned to cause exactly the effect it had- "Mr Trump, you are a poopyhead and your other allies around here are poopyheads and their enemies Iran and Israel are the bestest oh and Germany says you suck too please attack them also, signed Totally the head of Qatar whatever his I mean my name his." I mean, at this point Russia could post something to twitter from a fake account of some head of state telling Trump he has a small dick and Trump would start a war the next day.
*Obligatory DeLong "even accounting for how big a sucker you expect him to be."
56: Holy shit! The Russians are playing 11 dimensional chess while Trump is playing tic-tac-toe.
The internet was won for today with this headline: Trump Is Not Playing Ten-Dimensional Chess; He's Not Even Playing Checkers; He's Barely Playing Peekaboo
He's playing Rock, Paper. The White House staff doesn't trust him with scissors.
From now on I am going with the presumption that everyone not in my direct line of sight is a Russian hacker. Do svidaniya, gopniki!
I just kicked my son's butt in four dimensional tick-tack-toe. Turns out that taking the center square on a bad first move, because that's the first square to become empty.
Also it only actually has three dimensions: time is included, but depth is missing.
This is exactly what happens when irresponsible parties are convinced that no one will reign them in. We've seen it before. Multiple times. Stay safe, Barry.
Austria hardly wanted more from Serbia.
56, 63 Yeah, as I said in the earlier thread I mostly blame Trump for this. There are serious differences among the parties but it should never have gotten this far. A competent president and administration would have tamped this shit down.
Thank you very much for the information you shared, it's all I've been looking for
Austria hardly wanted more from Serbia.
Well, Serbia had been funding dangerous terrorists so, uh....
Come to think of it, that doesn't really bode well.
Plus, I bet everybody is really grumpy from all the not eating.
What is up with the trump fils hairlines??? Have they gone in for preemptive transplants or ??? bizarre.
Connectivity problems earlier brought to mind that an attack on internet connectivity and communications might be a next logical step aimed at isolating Qatar and causing a climate of panic in country. How robust are their mobile and other networks? Alex?
It would be a daring escalation what with Udeid and forward elements of CENTCOM here.
Yes, there are going to be consequences for having elected one of the most gullible people on earth to the U.S. presidency, Jesus fuck. (It must be that basic belief that as long as you're doing the gulling, -- as he clearly is! -- you can't be gulled yourself.)
Barry, yeah, I worry about you. Let us know if we can do anything useful.
3 dimensional tic-tac-toe. I had one of the Qubic things when I was a kid. It was basically impossible for anybody to win unless their opponent was high.
What if instead of three dimensions, you just did two but vertically so pieces could only drop onto others. And instead of three make it harder, you have to connect four of your pieces to win. It would be awesome!
Actually there should be a version of connect 4 where the board rotates every number of moves so the pieces fall into new positions.
You've never played with a frustrated four-year old.
||
I'm a horrible person, but I find this very amusing. Author depicted left.
|>
I didn't realize internment for lads was so popular.
70: There are three submarine cable landing points with a total of six systems in Qatar. Doha (4), Al-Daayan (2), Al-Kheesa (1).
http://submarinecablemap.com/#/landing-point/doha-qatar
Two of those systems mostly reach your new worst friends (Fibre Optic Gulf and Qatar-UAE), the others are more useful. However, a couple of those transit through Fujairah in the UAE. There's an important distinction as to whether the cable branches off to the UAE (they all at least do that) or whether the main line of it lands there (I make it one and possibly two that skip by the UAE, the rest land and might even go overland across the isthmus) - if the first it doesn't much matter, if the second they're in a position to cut you off or, of course, just sit there and intercept all your stuff.
That said, doing anything physical to the ones through Fuj would also screw Dubai, Sharjah, Bahrain, Kuwait, and the KSA Eastern Province. Some of the systems have a ring topology, but that means the other side of the ring lands in Iran and I wouldn't expect them to help out the GCC!
A more Qatar-specific attack would be to trawl up and cut the branches that go into Qatar itself. Submarine cable is quite vulnerable in shallow waters - people destroy them all the time by accident, trawling or anchoring where they shouldn't. So that's definitely a possibility, especially as you could do it deniably. (Who, us sir? We're Taiwanese fishermen. Just look at our nice Taiwanese flag!)
The cable landing station - basically a smallish but high-spec data centre by the beach - is less vulnerable in peacetime but more so in war. You can't just casually screw up your moorings and drift across it, and security precautions are usually quite paranoid. In war, though, it's a very valuable point target whose exact location is no secret.
Repairing a cable break is quick (a matter of hours and less than a million bucks) once a cable ship gets there (between less than a day and less than a fortnight, usually). Rebuilding a landing station would be the work of months at least and probably fifty to a hundred million bucks and maybe much more if it's built into a bigger data centre/carrier hotel.
I mentioned the cables that run around the Gulf between the GCC countries and Iran earlier. Qatar (or Iran) would be in a position to retaliate by chopping those up.
It would be fair to assume CENTCOM is a huge user of all of them. They will have other options - satellites - but losing commercial fibre would be a massive pain in the arse.
War: may affect your access to cats, porn, and Unfogged.
I guess now we know the answer to the protest chant (what is it good for?)
Question: Is Trump's repeated fucking up and gratuitous insulting part of the reason May is falling in the polls? Europe as a hedge against America?
It's open book. You can use your notes.
and Unfogged
Unfogged may remain accessible because it at least has the virtue of being low bandwidth. With the exception of the part of the sidebar that lists every week of archives going all the way back to 1842.
81. It probably doesn't help, but the fact is she's also running he most incompetent campaign I can remember (on the Tory side), and I can remember back to 1964.
78 is very informative. Thanks.
Submarine cable is quite vulnerable in shallow waters
Persian Arabian Gulf waters are notoriously shallow. It's one reason why the southern Arabian coast of the Gulf wasn't mapped accurately till fairly late when the Bombay Marine specially outfitted a few ships for the task with very shallow drafts in 1820 (this was a result of their war against 'piracy' in the region in 1809, best to map the bastards accurately before you need to bombard them again.) And the Persian Gulf waters between Qatar and UAE (or Trucial Coast as it was known back then) were the world's main pearl beds and pearling was the main industry until the Japanese discovered how to culture pearls and the bottom fell out a few decades before major oil field discoveries in the region (the days of hunger those few decades are called). So how shallow are the waters where those cables are? How long can you hold your breath?
79 I can live without the first two (middle one isfairly well cut off here anyway).
Really is Serbia 1914. UAE, Bahrain, Saudi, Egypt vs. Turkey, Qatar, Iran. I guess Russia goes with the latter and US goes with the former?
Further to 86, it will still be remarkable if the Tories fail to win a working majority tomorrow. Just they may not win the sort of landslide that was predicted a few weeks ago. This won't slow May down for an instant. She's already shown that she doesn't give a fuck about minority opinions, even when they're only just a minority.
Endorse 87.1. Very interesting.
I think Russia wins if there is enough of a fuck-up for oil prices to go up.
I fully expect Trump to order an attack on his own base in Qatar.
88. And then there's this, which I didn't necessarily expect, but seems to cut across your assessment.
A lot of people would be pretty happy if this jacked up oil prices. Russia, certainly.
93 If there's truth to the matter that Russia hacked the Qatar News Agency that was the catalyst for the current crisis that might well be why. Wow.
88 Turkish troops on a Turkish base (!?) here. Double wow! Though Oatar's cozy relationship with Erdogan is no secret Turkish troops are a whole other ball of wax.
95. 1 and 90 too. That could be the play here. What a time for us to have a total fucking gullible moron for a president.
3 dimensional tic-tac-toe. I had one of the Qubic things when I was a kid. It was basically impossible for anybody to win unless their opponent was high.
Wait, what? I'm pretty sure I saw an undergrad presentation in the past year or two that a draw is mathematically impossible in 3D tic-tac-toe.
Maybe its different on a 4x4x4 grid vs. 3x3x3?
97: D'oh, you're right. The only choice that P2 has is whether to play on a corner or a side for their first move; regardless, P1 wins on their fifth move. Generally, increasing dimensions while holding everything else equal (size of board, number in a row required to win) gives P1 more freedom.
I think the argument went: there are basically only two ways to have a draw in a traditional 2 dim board. Then it's not hard to see that there is no way to stack three draw-boards without creating a vertical or diagonal winning streak.
59: Good old Rock. Nothing beats rock.
Nothing beats rock.
That's what I tell my kid. He has some bullshit about paper covering rock, but I don't think so. In 1000 years, rock will still be there but paper will be long gone.
100: What surprises me is that you can describe, up to rotation, a complete winning strategy with only two very short games.
I never did understand the logic behind paper beating rock.
Paper covers rock because they're friends, and he's saying, "Peace, brother. Quit being such a brute."
Iranians now blaming KSA for this morning's (ISIS-claimed) terrorist attack.
I can see how you might argue an ISIS attack is ipso facto the KSA's fault but I think they mean it in a more direct way.
The Korean Scouting Association can be brutal.
ISIS attacking the most important ally of the country that is supposed to be their big funder doesn't make a lot of sense to me.
Nor does the president of the United States verbally berating the people that hosts our main base in the area. It's wall-to-wall shitheads. Who knows what sense has to do with it?
ISIS just doesn't make a whole lot of sense, period.
It's sort of like the right-wing militia movement you see in America, except more deadly and less diabetes.
Well, sure, giant shitheads, but one would think they have some strategic sense to have made it this far. But maybe strategy is a secondary consideration to being coked up on pure evil.
59: Good old Rock. Nothing beats rock.
True, if the very tiny paper made by your very tiny hands won't stretch to cover it.
Following the Paul Ryan logic from today's hearings, clearly Trump did nothing wrong wrt Qatar because he didn't really understand the situation, he's new at this.
It's possible he didn't know paying women to pee on you isn't standard behavior.
People from New York City often underestimate how conservative middle America can be about that kind of thing.
OT: What happens if the Tories have a plurality, but don't have a majority even with the Lib Dems? Asking for a friend.
Can all the other groups form a coalition and kick the Tories to the curb? Asking for my fantasies.
Nobody knows according to this because there's no written constitution. There are some possibly useful precedents.
I just sold my car. Not happy about having to spend $400 to bribe the DMV into ignoring the fact that they had lost all record of me purchasing the car to begin with.
On the bright side, you've just learned that it costs only $400 to legitimize a stolen car.
Something to keep in mind if I ever come back here.
Thing big. Don't steal cars. Teach "Spike's Proven Auto Sales Method To Wealth."
"You too can get legitimized ownership of a 2008 Nissan Tiida."