THURSDAY #2125

NEWSY BITS....

 But not to worry...

That has classic "Famous Last Words" written all over it.
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Well, they call it the Umbrella Revolution for a reason...

They are used to keep pepper spray at bay...some of the time...

But this is China, where they clean up after themselves...

 ...including separating trash by recycling...

And, I guess, they all have cell phones...

 Protestors are using using a P2P mesh network (Firechat) in Hong Kong to coordinate and not get shut down.

And there are so very many of them...

 One can only predict that it will end very nastily...

But remember, unlike most people, the people of Hong Kong were once free....then the lease ran out.

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And the final note on China...

Chinese security forces administer rectal probes to 10,000 pigeons due to be released at the National Day celebration, and each had its anus checked for "dangerous materials".

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 You know exactly how silly I think both of those telepathic techniques are, but what's good for the goose...
But then this...

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Scientists once again are scratching their heads over a mysterious surface feature on the Saturn moon Titan that some are calling a "magic island." The feature -- observed in a large sea on Titan known as Ligeia Mare -- was first spotted in images taken by NASA's Cassini spacecraft in July 2013. Photos snapped of the area over the ensuing months failed to show the feature, but it reappeared in images from a Cassini flyby on August 21, 2014. Between the two sightings, the feature doubled in size from 30 to 60 square miles.

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 Boy did I open a can of worms with my comment about everybody needing to support themselves...

At first blush, the above sounds so noble, but what about the people who didn't want to go back to school to "think"? What about the people who just wanted to sit at home in front of a TV and have Meals on Wheels deliver dinner? And who's going to do the nasty job of peeling his potatoes or changing the tires on the delivery vehicle?
Nope. Still not convinced. If you choose to do nothing, you should get nothing. 
Let's take this to it's extreme and everyone decides to be hermits out in the woods to escape it all. Do you think these people would be required to work? No, of course not...it's called a slow suicide from starvation or hypothermia. In this sense he would have to work for and earn every morsel he/she puts in his mouth.
There is a real misunderstanding of the words "work" and "money". I have mentioned the hypothetical Native Americans who refused to work and wondered if he would be given the fruits of other more industrious tribe-mates so he could sit around idly. Well, in that scenario, the "money" he would earn is sustenance. That kind of a word game I choose not to play.

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Oh, Turkey has joined the fight against the craziest motherfuckers on the planet. I think that's good news.

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Want to lighten the mood while you scroll?

Notice anything unusual about this?

All numbers are 2....even how many men on base! My daughter might remember us sitting in the stands waiting for just such a moment. (let me know if you do)

How to make those decorative fence pieces...

I have toured many factories. I have seen one that took in raw wheat from a train car in one door and within 45 minutes it was turned in to pasta, in a box, on a wrapped pallet. Another took raw cotton in one door and pallet loads of sheets and pillow cases emerged from the door on the other side of the building, and I got to watch every step in the transformation.
I loved witnessing the machinery that the engineers designed to do each task as efficiently as possible, but the machines couldn't do every task...at least not back then.
At the cotton mill (about 700,000 sq. feet) the machines couldn't turn the pillow cases inside out. I stood for long moments watching dozens of young women stand in the same spot and stick both their hands in a case and flip it inside out. They never had to watch what they were doing and each and every one of them were making eye contact with me and I got the strange feeling that the look in their eyes was the same look a caged zoo animal gives you when you just stand there looking at them through the bars.
And the pasta factory was so automated that the huge building only had 9 employees per shift and six of those were there to clean the equipment. Never made eye contact with any of them...they were always too busy.

Had we been born elsewhere...

 You might want to look closely at that image.

One man's roof is another man's front yard. That extraordinary.
Do you remember the enlarged photos glued to the wall like a real mural? I would love to have that enlarged and put on my wall....if I had a wall that wasn't already covered in art.

 Simulation of the impact which formed the moon...

 Other science stuff...

Oh, look, strange towelheads...

Think towelhead is harsh? Well, so is redneck, but I wear it with pride.

Wife told me that her doctor said that the first test for Alzheimer’s is to name ten animals as fast as possible. So I did it, only in alphabetical order…and fast…until I got to N. I didn’t think it fair to use qualifying names like Northern Pike, etc. But then I thought of one because it’s a common crossword puzzle word.

Highlight between brackets [ NEWT ].

(I bet my dear friend, Susan, got that instantly)

I'm sorry, but I have to comment. Who the fuck uses a dark red and a gray font color on a black background? WHY?

 Nakedness makes all photography better...

"One never knows when death may be dealt."

How unusual...

There are shortcuts to happiness.

Drinking is one of them.

This has GOT to be the strangest photo I've seen in a long, long time...

I didn't know that a horse's lower leg is actually its foot bones.

I bought hundreds of these pens and thought I could teach children to do this...

 They could not be taught to do that.

Recreating famous portraits with John Malkovich.

I once had a car that burned. It traveled down the street just like that. The firemen said something about the rubber melting off the wires and shorting the starter.

Russia is more like America than they care to admit...

 And always remember Russia's greatest sex advice...

PS: If one of those was not, in fact, from Russia. I don't care.

The British Isles...

I surely would have gotten to know that person within minutes of the start of the event.

I wonder how many of my foreign viewers will get this joke....

 Let me know if you do.

Cat puns freak meowt.

 One Of My Very Own...

Darlin', my dick didn't care.

When at a company event, always stay one drink behind your boss.

"If marijuana really numbs your emotions, why do I cry every time the pizza guy finally shows up?"

Everything you need to know about America in three signs...

Remember, we all put our bra on one boob at a time.

Nice drawing...

Do you notice in sympathetic angles? How about the most powerful...her left leg and right arm?
Then this close-up...

The problem of teaching your children to share is that they want some of your shit.

In the beginning there was world peace, and the Lord said, "Let there be white people."

One That I Wished Was One Of My Very Own...

I told my wife that she really couldn't still call them "Lean Pockets" if she ate two dozen of them.

I have no idea what that is about.
Does that entrance to the tunnel look big enough for an adult?

If you hated your wife, you would put her keys and stuff in the refrigerator and such to make her think she has Alzheimer’s. If you love your wife, when she finds her keys in the refrigerator you tell her you did it as a joke.

I've always thought that inventing a sailboat mast that would fold down in order to get under bridges was a great invention.

Think about the time this took....

Then there's your little snowflake...

Macbeth became king because some crazy witches told him he would become king and he believed them.
Fucking Shakespeare.