Pokemon Go – Bumbling Bees

Last Week in Weird

10 October 2016 by Darien Sumner

This is the end, my only friend

It’s not just the utterly unhinged Hillary Clinton anymore; now we have general Mark Milley, U.S. Army chief of staff, going on record threatening open war against Russia for unspecified "harms:"

The U.S. Army’s chief of staff on Tuesday issued a stern warning to potential threats such as Russia and vowed the service will defeat any foe in ground combat.

"The strategic resolve of our nation, the United States, is being challenged and our alliances tested in ways that we haven’t faced in many, many decades," Army Chief of Staff Gen. Mark Milley told an audience at the Association of the United States Army’s annual meeting in Washington, D.C.

"I want to be clear to those who wish to do us harm… the United States military — despite all of our challenges, despite our [operational] tempo, despite everything we have been doing — we will stop you and we will beat you harder than you have ever been beaten before. Make no mistake about that."

Your humble narrator is compelled to point out that history doesn’t contain a very comprehensive set of examples of Russia being beaten before. At least United States Army chief of staff Milley had the presence of mind to clarify which nation he claims membership in — a point that probably needed repeating at the Association of the United States Army’s meeting in the capital of the United States.

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Last Week in Weird

26 September 2016 by Darien Sumner

Pretty soon you’re talking real money

If you’re anything like me — and you know you are — you stay up nights worrying that the United States just doesn’t spend enough money on its military. America is only just barely spending as much money as the entire rest of the world combined; how can we possibly expect to be kept safe in the face of the overwhelming existential threat of border skirmishes thousands of miles inland on the other side of the ocean? Clearly our wonderful armed forces require a major overhaul, and I’m pleased to report that it’s only projected to cost a trillion dollars to do so. What a relief!

The price tag to rehabilitate the military after about 15 years of war and relentless overseas operations would be about $1 trillion over a decade, according to the Republican-led House Armed Services Committee…

A $1 trillion increase would require obliterating spending limits passed by Congress and doling out an average of an additional $100 billion each year on the military through 2027.

Oh, a trillion dollars spent over ten years would average a hundred billion a year? I had no idea! Since I was educated in the government schools, this kind of complex mathematical operation vastly overwhelms my tiny peanut brain. Thanks for helping, Stars and Stripes!

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Last Week in Weird

22 August 2016 by Darien Sumner

I’m Commander Shepard, and this is my favorite auction on the internet

Last year, Kapersky reported on the existence of a secret, highly sophisticated hacking group they dubbed the Equation Group. The Equation Group was all but confirmed to be a part of the NSA, due to its frequent use of encryption techniques otherwise only observed to be used by the NSA, and was discovered to be responsible for a series of highly advanced hacks that could do things no other known malware could do (such as rewrite hard drive firmware). Clearly, this was evidence that the United States government employed the most terrifying, invincible hackers anywhere in the world!

And then last week the Shadow Brokers announced that they’d stolen the whole suite of hacking tools, and offered to sell it to the highest bidder.

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Last Week in Weird

15 August 2016 by Darien Sumner

Them coincidences keep on comin’

A month ago, a Democratic National Committee staffer called Seth Rich was shot to death in Washington D.C. The police advanced the notion that his killing was part of a robbery, which deranged conspiracy theorist his father refused to believe for no better reason than because absolutely nothing was stolen from the young man, despite the fact that he was carrying cash, credit cards, a cell phone, and a watch, all generally things that robbers display a tendency to rob. The internet picked up the story and ran with it, eventually linking Seth Rich to the DNC e-mail leak that led to the resignation of chairman Debbie Wasserman Schultz and a fairly hefty amount of embarrassment for the Clinton campaign. As snotty media outlets with large onhand supplies of scare quotes explained, though, this was a "crazy conspiracy" and a "fantasy," and as much Donald Trump’s fault as anything he was completely unconnected to could possibly be.

Then last week that crazy Julian Assange stopped just shy of confirming that, yes, Seth Rich was a Wikileaks source:

Our whistleblowers go to significant efforts to get us material, and often very significant risks. There’s a 27-year-old, works for the DNC, shot in the back — murdered — just a few weeks ago, for unknown reasons, as he was walking down the street in Washington…

I’m suggesting that our sources take risks, and they become concerned to see things occurring like that.

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Last Week in Weird

1 August 2016 by Darien Sumner

Gary Blues

Somebody must have told Gary Johnson that I actually wrote faintly nice things about the Libertarian Party, because he wasted absolutely no time making me regret them. Here he goes making disjointed, rambling remarks to the Washington Examiner’s Tim Carney, in which he states that the federal government should have unlimited power to force people to associate with one another, with, evidently, the single exception that he personally shouldn’t be forced to be a social conservative. You think I’m just trying to make him sound like a fool, but, no, that is pretty much exactly what he says. When Carney asked if the government of New Mexico — Gary’s own home state — should have the power to punish photographers for refusing to cover gay weddings, Gary sputtered out this crazy thing:

Look. Here’s the issue. You’ve narrowly defined this. But if we allow for discrimination — if we pass a law that allows for discrimination on the basis of religion — literally, we’re gonna open up a can of worms when it come stop discrimination of all forms, starting with Muslims… who knows. You’re narrowly looking at a situation where if you broaden that, I just tell you — on the basis of religious freedom, being able to discriminate — something that is currently not allowed — discrimination will exist in places we never dreamed of…

It’s the right message, and I’m sideways with the Libertarian Party on this. My crystal ball is that you are going to get discriminated against by somebody because it’s against their religion. Somehow you have offended their religion because you’ve walked in and you’re denied service. You. (Emphasis original)

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Last Week in Weird

25 July 2016 by Darien Sumner

I ain’t afraid of no jokes

When it comes to trolling, alt-right wunderkind Milo Yiannopoulos — whose name I had to check four times to make sure I spelled correctly — is the very best, like no one ever was. You may recall some months back, when he was mysteriously "unverified" on Twitter, as though suddenly it had become unclear if he was the real deal or perhaps a pod creature or some type of replicant. Well now he’s upped the ante a bit: Yiannopoulos has been officially permanently banned from Twitter. His crime? He irritated Leslie Jones, who is apparently famous, but who I had honestly never heard of until this story broke. Jones was indeed so flustered by Yiannopoulos’ horrible racist harassment campaign that she abandoned Twitter entirely.

The ironic masterstroke, of course, is that Yiannopoulos did not send the tweets that so infuriated Jones. He was, indeed, one of the targets of the tweets, which were sent by an account impersonating Jones. None of this appears to matter to the social justice crowd, who apparently view Jones’ blackness as being higher on the victimhood hierarchy than is Yiannopoulos’ homosexuality. It’s also cute to observe that, just last week, I was pointing out that it’s no longer important for hate crimes to contain any hate or any crime, and now just one short week later it’s not even important if the hate criminal actually did what he’s accused of. But what about Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey’s constant quacking about how Twitter "doesn’t censor?" As Buzzfeed’s bizarrely gleeful summary explains it:

According to the company, Yiannopoulos’s permanent suspension isn’t a matter of speech as much as a matter of behavior — specifically, a violation of Twitter’s rules regarding the targeted abuse of specific users.

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Last Week in Weird

18 July 2016 by Darien Sumner

It’s super effective!

Though this is not explicitly a gaming publication, I have no concern about my readership’s familiarity with Pokémon Go — Nintendo’s augmented-reality monster-catching phenomenon is redefining what it means to be a hit mobile game, having long since drawn a larger user base than previous efforts such as Candy Crush Saga, Twitter, and Google Maps, while bringing in so much revenue that one has to suspect the Bernank himself is giving Nintendo advice on how to print money. Indeed, Pokémon Go has been such a runaway success that New York City assemblyman Felix Ortiz has decided that the game now requires his personal oversight:

"Like any new technology, it has its advantages and disadvantages, and like any new technology, it has to be looked at very, very carefully. Everything comes down to people’s responsibility as well as corporate responsibility," Ortiz said Tuesday. "Every single one of us who might want to play this game have to be very cautious. Who’s sending what, and what is the follow up? Everyone should be cautious to make sure that no intruders will be able to tap into this and have people think they’re going to the park when in reality they’re going to a be targeted by some rapist. People could think they’re going to the bank, but in reality, someone is waiting to take their money."

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