Military gear

Since I had to start using my new laptop, I was going through some folders to try clearing some of the sludge out, and came across this meme:

Although the photo is from years ago, I expect there are plenty of MiGs that are currently in this condition in the vicinity of Ukraine.

 

 

Lost in translation

A friend of mine has one of those Advent calendars where each day you open one small present. She posts them on Facebook, and I love “watching” each day. There have been slippers, gloves, little things that I’m not sure of. But all very entertaining.

She posts these discoveries in Danish. Well, she is Danish, so that seems fair enough. Mostly I can figure out what each thing is because it looks like slippers or gloves and whatnot. But the other day, I clicked on “translate” to see if my guess was right.

Here’s what Bing (Facebook's default translation application) gave me:

In fairness, Google Translate only did marginally better:

So, #webfail

Twitter goes to the movies

One thing about the Twitters is it’s a great place to get silly. Every once in a while someone starts a hashtag dare, and it’s off to the races.

After the Texas Lege banned feminine hygiene products in its hallowed chambers, #ReplaceAWordInAMovieWithTampon trended for a day or two.

You know: Lethal Tampon. A Fistful of Tampons and so on.

Then there was #TitlesWithNachos.

So you had Die Hard with Nachos, Where the Wild Nachos Are, Harry Potter and the Deathly Nachos, No Nachos for Old Men and… Well, you get the idea.

One of my favorites, and therefore my excuse for the Funky Friday post today, is #1letterwrongmovie. Change one letter in a movie title; get a whole new film.

What happened with this one was that the Photoshoppers came out in droves. It wasn’t enough to play with the words; they had to augment the images.

You do not want to be drinking anything while looking at these. Or, if you are, at least aim your nose away from your keyboard.

Nightmare on Elmo Street:

 

Pilates of the Caribbean:

Fat & Furious:

Iron Nan:

And—I can’t decide which wins the prize—Lord of the Wings:

Or Paws:

What do you think?

Google 1, National Geographic 0

Google’s doodle for today honors Rosalind Franklin, the Cambridge-trained scientist and photographer whose photos of DNA strands enabled other researchers to nail down the structure of the basic building block of genetics.

If you click on the doodle, it takes you to a search result page that includes this story from National Geographic. I couldn’t believe that publication refers to Franklin as a “Legendary Female Scientist”.

What the hell? She was a meticulous and dedicated researcher, who died much too young and was subsequently denied Nobel recognition that other DNA explorers (notably Watson and Crick)—who actually used her photos to advance their studies without her knowledge—were granted.

(The Nobel committee doesn’t award prizes posthumously, and Franklin died in 1958, four years before Crick and Watson received theirs.)

I find it nothing short of bizarre that National G would qualify their commentary on Google’s honor by designating her a “female scientist”.

You’d have expected that in the 1950s; not in 2013. Grow the hell up, National Geographic.

Multiple Twitter personality disorder

Okay, I’ve said it before, but the Twitter-dot-com is a strange, strange place.

As I’ve mentioned, I have two Twitter accounts. First is a “professional” one, where I follow people who…well, look—I’m trying to get in with the Agile, SaaS, interesting enterprise software crowd, okay? In general I follow people who are high tech subject matter experts (SMEs) in Big Data, Enterprise Social and specific companies I’m interested in working for. About 98% of my tweets there are to do with Big Data, Enterprise social and specific companies I’m interested in working for. Occasionally I’ll toss in a human-interest comment; but usually that’s directed at a SME or someone working for a company I’m…well, you get the drift.

The other is the one I associate with this blog. The people I follow there are ones I think are going to be just plain interesting—writers, performers, smart-asses, publishers, journalists, whack-jobs; people who’ve tweeted something that gets me thinking, people who make me laugh, people who piss me off. I’m more inclined to reply than to retweet this crowd; which is the opposite of my nothin’-but-SaaS account.

So—with maybe five or six as overlap—two essentially and entirely different subsets of the Twitterverse.

And at no time has this divide been more in evidence than this afternoon, after the Asiana Airlines plane crash at SFO.

My blog account lit up with tweets about the crash—the fragmentary bits sent out by a few passengers on the plane (it was apparently carrying people bound for the Silicon Valley; of course they were taking pix and tweeting even as they were being evacuated), tweeted & retweeted, augmented by dribs and drabs of speculation, until it was a complete tsunami of mixed information and misinformation.

But it was totally vibrating with the event.

Meanwhile, back at the Big Data ranch, the SMEs have been spewing out their same auto-tweets of “sage” Big Data/Social advice, along with the usual “inspirational” quote nonsense. Exactly as they do every other minute of every other day. There was a brief spurt of maybe three tweets about the crash for every 100 SME chirps (mostly from the news outlets) and then back to business as usual. Literally.

It’s like there are two different Twitter planets, and I’m caught in some bizarre vortex of Interwebs cognitive dissonance.

Springtime for Hitler & Google

You know, that one clip from the film Downfall has to be the most recycled Academy Award nominee in history. It’s got more incarnations than the inhabitants of a large Tibetan monastery. You know the one: where Hitler is huddled in the Führerbunker deploying non-existent armies in the defense of Berlin while waiting for the Old Gods to smite the Red Army for good and all.

I myself have brought a couple to your attention: the one purporting to have our Adolf going mental at discovering CalTrans is going to close the 405 Freeway in LA, resulting in Carmageddon. He asks the eternal question: how’s he supposed to get to LAX? “Fucking Sepulveda? Please!”

I feel his pain.

And the one where he’s just learned what real defeat is: when your software hosting provider screws the pooch and you take a look at the fine print of your service level agreement (SLA). The thought of Hitler and Goering starting out programming in COBOL is just cherce.

But Third Reich 2.0’s latest installment (that I know of, as of this writing) gives new meaning to the tagline, “Don’t be evil.” It.has our intrepid Nazi receiving the news that Google Reader is shutting down, because the monolith needs to focus on a few products, like Google Glass. 

“Fuck those fucking glasses and the nerd they rode in on.” I’m looking forward to seeing those words on a tee-shirt sometime soon.

¡Daß ist ausgezeichnet!

Men bearing cookies

This came via a FB friend, from the Being Liberal fan page:

I have to say that there is no woman in my acquaintance whose first response to a guy bearing freshly-baked cookies would be, “That’s so gay.” More like:

“Did you bring the milk, too?” Or:

“Butt out, bitch, he’s mine!” Or:

…No—from here on out, I don’t believe I can repeat the likely response in a public forum. There are grandfathers who read this.

Infrastructure matters

A friend of mine who lives in Boston posted this on his FB page; I think it may have been a share from George Takei, but whatever:

& it reminded me of driving around on the borderlands between Fairfax & Loudoun Counties in Virginia, back in the wild days of the mid-90s, before cars had sat-navs & you were lucky to find some roads marked at all, much less with a name.

It occurred to me at the time that this might be some strategy left over from The Woah: in case of another Yankee invasion, while the bluecoats were milling around trying to figure out where the hell they were, the Confederate forces could group in one of the adjoining fields & just start picking off the enemy one by one, working from the back to the front like Sergeant York.

Can’t do that, now, of course—all those country roads are four-lane highways & the fields are filled with townhouses & strip malls.

Still not sure who won that war.

How do I spam thee again?

Well, now I just don’t know what to say. I seem to hold some massive electronic attraction for Russian, uh, sociable-type women:

Is it that we’re almost to Valentine’s Day? Or that somehow all my Google searches and trawling of spas and military history sites has resulted in some meta-profile somewhere that just screams that I’m hankering after Slavic comforts?

I mean--vodka is one thing. This...

Whatever. I’m going to take a shower, now.

Spam in the queue

A slightly different sort of spam in my queue yesterday. Interesting that it’s pretty much identical from two different email addresses:

And:

I’m kind of wondering what the point of this is—variant of the Nigerian 419 scam? What's the deal with being 24 years old? What the hell's a "check assist manager"? 

On the surface, not too different from the come-ons I get from Farmers Insurance agencies in Fremont every time I update my résumé on Monster.

But I’m rather charmed by the name “Ollie Apple”. I’ll have to work that one into a novel or screenplay some time.

Tweeting holiness

Here’s someone you don’t expect to find on Twitter: the Dalai Lama.

Well, maybe that’s not strictly true—why wouldn’t you find him on Twitter? I understand even Pope Benedict XVI is now on the social media platform. Although I’m laying odds that he’s got some cardinal/minion posting the actual, you know, tweets.

Of course, it’s possible that there’s some Buddhist equivalent of a cardinal—an abbot or the like—tweeting for His Holiness of Dharmasala. I mean, I expect that living in the moment would kind of exclude tweeting about it, since nothing says monkey mind like Twitter uploads from your iPhone.

Whatever.

What interested me about the Dalai Lama’s profile is that—as of the day I found it—he had more than six million followers. And he was following no one.

Well—I suppose…whom would you follow if you were he?

On the other hand, His Holiness the Bishop of Rome only has around 1.5 million followers; but he’s following eight people.

Only it turns out that the eight people he’s following are…all himself:

Make of that what you will. And peace out.

Happy, happy

At the moment I can’t recall how I came across this company profile on LinkedIn. Doesn’t matter.

I’m kind of smitten with the idea of working for a company called “Happiest Minds”, with “a mission to create Happiest People and Happiest Customers.”

Even if they appear to specialize in pretty much everything under the sun.

Facebook drama

I’m sure you’ve noticed it on Facebook: someone will post something along the lines of, “I’ve totally HAD it. This is THE END!!!!” or “Men/women are all assholes!!!!!” These may or may not be followed by 17 posts from friends asking “What up???”, and maybe (or maybe not) some elaboration from the originator.

Frankly, in my experience these sorts of posts get lost amongst the “Just checked in to [some place I’ve never heard of] for [pizza/cocktails/burgers/bikini wax]”, “Cutest EVAH cat picz” and multiple variants of various Internet hoaxes—the ones that used to be emailed around.

I mean, let’s face it: there’s a boatload of banality on FB.

But it apparently doesn’t go unnoticed, and someone has taken the time to pull together evidence of Drama Queens on Facebook. I am relieved to note that some of the DQs’ friends are on to their tricks. I especially like the one that starts, “I now understand how it feels to not be able to get over someone”.

Okay, they may not have the charm of Dog Shaming, but they are amusing.

Linking in to the weird

Speaking of questionable solicitations, as I was yesterday, LinkedIn has got somewhat weirder. I think it’s because if you’re in a group with someone, you can send them messages for free (without buying a premium subscription).

The invitation to a security & counter-terrorism group was kind of strange, because I have no bleeding idea what it is about my LinkedIn profile that would lead anyone to think I have experience or even interest in that field. Except that I mention that my research concentration is in military history—but that is kind of a tenuous connection at best.

However, even stranger than me in a terror community is the invitation I got from some chick wanting me to join a group called Working Moms for Healthy Living:

Now, trust me—there is absolutely nothing in my LinkedIn profile that would lead anyone to connect me with working momdom.

& given the choice between counter-terrorism & working mothers, guess which group I’d pick?

Book covers of the damned, chapter 2

As follow-up to my post on book covers from hell, here’s the story of the pissy little “author” who—in addition to having no visual sense or visible taste at all—doesn’t understand copyright law.

This is the little exchange jump-started the Lousy Book Covers site’s global following, proving that Miss Pissy also doesn’t grasp the viral nature of the Internet. Possibly because Internet is multisyllabic.

Bwaaaah!

Book covers of the damned

They say you can’t judge a book by its cover. But they’re so, so wrong. I’m not sure how I came to find this site, but once found, it’s a guilty, addictive pleasure (well, more of a horrid fascination), because it’s all lousy book covers, all the time.

No, no—I mean really, really awful book covers. The titles stink. The graphics range from crude drawings to even cruder Photoshop mashups of images found through a Google search. The fonts are a typographer’s nightmare. The color schemes scream acid trip. Pull all those elements together & you get…well, you get precisely what you see.

A whole lot of them seem to be sci-fi/fantasy. No real surprises there—that’s the genre where if you’re going to self-publish an e-book, either you’ll whack something together on a computer or you’ll find someone on Craig’s List who’ll give you a “design” for $50. But crime (the more lurid, the better) & romance figure heavily in here, too.

The site apparently was just sitting around until one of the, ah, “authors” bitched to the collator about copyright violation (although all the images seem to be linked to their Amazon listings). Which of course sent the thing viral.

Welcome to the social network, honey.

It’s worth it to keep scrolling through the pages until you find Lumberjack in Love. (Okay, if you can’t be bothered, here it is on Amazon. It's the paperback version. Which you can own if you want to pay $4.99 plus tax/shipping. You moron.) Personally, I can’t get past the title. But the, er, graphic is just…

It doesn’t happen often, but I have no words.

Except to say that—even though a lot of these books are available to “borrow” for free on Amazon Kindle, I still wouldn’t spend the electrons on them.

Nocturnal WHAT?

So this commercial for Smirnoff came to my attention by…well, you don’t really need to know that. I don’t believe it’s running in the US; if so I’ve not actually seen it on TV.

However, I find it…interesting. Because I don’t exactly know what it’s telling me. I mean, you’d think that if they wanted me to ingest their product—which is, after all, an alcoholic drink—they would, you know, say so.

Instead, I’m apparently being urged to…paint my body multiple colors, fill a grand piano with ice and throw fruit at fans? And evidently, only at night.

Guilty, guilty pleasure

I think it says something for my job search that when I start typing the URL for a tech jobs-posting board, as soon as I enter “D” into the bar, Firefox auto-completes dog-shaming.com. Only when I add the “I” does Dice.com come up.

I do love Dog-shaming.

&, as a public service, I’m going to share a couple of the pictures from last week that just had me, um, howling:

There’s something about a circle of dachshunds that just cracks me up.

Now, this one: if—as it would seem from the caption card—the dog has done this before, I have to hold the cat at least partly culpable. Honestly—if you know what happens when you get in the shower & the dog’s around, you should make it your business to stay out of the bathroom.

I mean, dog-shaming is one thing. Being shamed by a dog is another entirely.

All the wrong places

Shortly after I posted about the Russian True Love website commercial that penetrated my usual TV fog, I received this lovely invitation:

I know, I know—spammers don’t bother much with CRM systems that might determine that I’m not a particularly receptive target for following up on “messages from ladies”. Not even on a spam “I’m feeling lucky” basis.

I just wonder how many people looking for love actually click on the link?

Social helpfulness

A while ago one of my friends posted this on her Facebook status:

If you can’t read the caption, it claims that Facebook (or its representatives, management, board, employees or something) will “give $1.20 Dollars [sic] on each share!” to the girl in the picture, who is allegedly suffering from cancer.

Despite having been raised in Brooklyn and Connecticut, having worked for several global corporations and having been a social worker in a couple of prisons, my friend has a remarkably naïve grasp of what might or might not be a hoax.

Since she’s created a FB presence, she has reduced the number of emails urging recipients to forward to seven new recipients within 16 minutes of receipt and be prepared for a major wish to be fulfilled, or promising that Bill Gates is using this email to test the effectiveness of [Hotmail, Windows, the whole flipping Internet], so he’s going to give $5 to everyone who forwards it to their entire addressbook.

(I did have to quit sending her the Snopes debunking stories I pulled up because she got sniffy about me being such a party pooper. Well, fair enough—but why you’d expect me not to look that stuff up, I don’t know. Would a Jack Russell Terrier pass up an opportunity to bounce repeatedly off your cocktail party guests’ $3500 Nino Cerruti trouser legs?)

What I don’t get is the total dismemberment of any form of critical thinking from people who post these things. Leaving aside the issue of how a Higher Power keeps track of the number of people to whom you forward an email (or the question of what constitutes “time of receipt”—is it when it appeared in your queue? When you saw it in your queue but didn’t open it because you know what “This really works!!!!” in the title bar means? When you actually opened it? Or when you finished reading 15 screenloads of multi-font text attesting to the veracity of the offer?), why does no one seem to stop to inquire about the logistics of receiving $5 with nothing to go on but an email address?

I’ve learned my lesson with this particular friend—I keep my Snopes to myself and let her feel good that she’s just helped a cancer patient winkle $1.20 out of Internet zillionaires. (But what’s up with $1.20, anyhow? Why not $1.50? Why not $5.00—is Zuckerberg cheaper than Gates?) I myself always clap for Tinkerbelle, so who am I to police the Marche des naïfs?

BTW—if you were in any doubt, this FB thing is a total hoax.