Linkee-poo made up my mind to make a new start

Apparently all my Russian friends are now my Ukrainian friends. Waves to all my friends.

On building Siri and how to do voice processing. (Grokked from Dan)

NPR's On The Media show on the War on Drugs. We've been bamboozled with hand wavium and political grandstanding.

"It is important to do proper due diligence on these technologies as they come out. It is irresponsible, however, to run around telling people hackers are going to use their selfies to steal their money. Look, if your bank account is about to be emptied by the iPhone 8, it’s not because of Face ID." The Macalope on how every new Apple technology is a disaster. (Grokked from John)

Stormfont goes the way of the Daily Stormer. Not sad to see them go to the dark web (which is where they'll end up). (Grokked from Dan)

Seb Gorka, who either was fired or resigned, has gone on a tear about 5th columnists. "Since his ouster on Friday, Gorka has been on a media blitz of a different type. In interviews with outlets as varied as the BBC and Breitbart News, the former White House aide offered harsher words for the administration than he’s allowed previously, acknowledging that the 'Make America Great Again' platform on which Trump won the presidency is so far unfulfilled." Turns out that "deep state" are people Trump brought in, at least according to a paranoid, racial fanatic.

So now that the climate change chickens have come home to roost, as it were, a lot of Texas representatives are changing their tune on Federal Aid. You know, as compared to Sandy relief bills. Pete Sessions is up with his, "I vwas for the bill before I was against the bill."

"Over the weekend I posted a roundup of scamvangelicals failing to turn Hurricane Harvey away from Texas with the power of their prayers to White Jesus… Bryan Fischer’s prayer: 'We’re gonna take authority over the storm in Jesus’ name. We’re gonna rebuke this storm in Jesus’ name and all the demonic activity that might be behind it. Remember: Satan came to rob, kill, steal, and destroy. His energy could be behind this storm just as his energy may have been behind the storm that threatened the life of Christ and his disciples.'" Hey Bryboy, how'd that work out? (Grokked from Jim Wright)

Californian conservatives are moving to Texas. It's like that Led Zeppelin song, but in reverse. And I get it. Having worked in industries where my political views are in the minority (often of "just me") I get it. But it always makes me smile when these little "goin' Gault" movements show up (because they are mostly on the conservative end of the spectrum). Bless their little snowflake hearts. (Yes, I am completely aware of how mean and condescending that is, but given how many times I've been told to "get over it", well, they can just "get over it")

Charlottesville was supposed to be a "peaceful protest"… "A steady stream of leaked screenshots from the now-defunct chat server used to organize attendees at this month’s deadly 'Unite the Right' rally shows that the white nationalists who descended on Charlottesville, Virginia were well-organized and came with the intention of committing brutal violence." Yeah, not so much.

"A 26-year-old man who claimed he was stabbed after being mistaken for a 'neo-Nazi,' admitted to local Colorado police that he made up the whole story after he accidentally cut himself with a knife, according to The Denver Post and BuzzFeed."

There was this joke at the beginning of the Reagan's Presidency that he thought he was shooting a movie instead of realizing he was president. "President Trump on Monday said he announced his pardon of former Maricopa County, Ariz., Sheriff Joe Arpaio as Hurricane Harvey made landfall in Texas because he 'assumed the ratings would be far higher.'" The current president is going for "ratings." (Grokked from Jim Wright)

"A short time after the event, Trump noted the crowd size again, tweeting: 'Thank you Arizona. Beautiful turnout of 15,000 in Phoenix tonight!'… But according to Bloomberg, Trump was actually very upset by the 'beautiful turnout' — so much so that he’s fired George Gigicos. Or rather, he had top security aide Keith Schiller tell Gigicos that he’ll never manage a Trump rally again, because Trump doesn’t actually like to fire people." There's some waffling on the size of the actual crowd, but I'll note here that according to the fire marshall, the room holds 5,000.