Bag of Randomness for Thursday, October 5, 2017

  • I think there are only two pictures of the Las Vegas killer that the news have been displaying. Both of them are somewhat out of focus and he looks a bit wasted. I’m surprised there are better pictures of him in the age we live in with camera phones and such.
  • One of the more touching stories I heard of the massacre was a woman running for cover but stopped to render aid to a victim. She knew there wasn’t going to be any hope for the victim, but didn’t want him to die alone.
  • I received an email from a legal representative yesterday requesting I take down something I posted about back in February 2013. I complied.
  • Within the next ten years, dashcams will be a standard feature on all new automobiles.
  • Man, time flies. Next week will mark the ten year anniversary of when Greg “The Hammer” Williams was fired from The TICKET. I only know that because of this article about Corby.
  • Why Christian conservatives supported Trump — and why they might regret it –  “Because I’m a Christian, I’m able to say that Christian people can be idiots.”
    • When I first saw this article I thought it wasn’t going to be very substantive; however, I found it to be pretty insightful. It’s an interview with a conservative Christian author who didn’t vote for Trump but understands why many Christians did.
  • Sometimes I asked friends questions they may feel are odd. Stuff like, “How often do you call your parents?” Since mine are no longer living and I’m still relatively young, I wonder how often I would call my parents. In college, I always called home Sundays at 8:45 PM to catch up on things.
  • Google has an interesting new product, Google Clips. I think it’s one part neat and one part creepy, and at $249, very pricey. Here’s a WIRED article about it.
    • Google Clips is a camera, but it only has some of those parts. There’s no display. There’s a shutter button, but it’s completely optional to use. Instead, it takes pictures for you, using machine learning to recognize and learn faces and look for interesting moments to record.
    • Here’s how it works: you turn it on by twisting the lens, then you set it down and forget about it. Clips then watches everything it sees in its 130-degree field of view and records little seven-second moving images of stuff it finds interesting. It learns faces over time and tries to take more photos of those people and fewer photos of strangers. It can also recognize pets.
  • How Dictionary Editors Find Meaning in the Age of Internet SpeakIs it the modern lexicographer’s job to protect the English language, or to document it?
  • Women who escaped Edmonton prison arrested at escape room
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3 Responses to Bag of Randomness for Thursday, October 5, 2017

  1. John Mackovic says:

    – I try to call my parents once a week, usually on Sunday evenings too. But it has gotten much harder to find time as the kids get older and I get more busy with their stuff. I don't think it's an odd question.
    – Corby preps for the show? Really?
    – I can't wait for the "Jake Kemps of the world" to take over the Hardline.
    – You need to ask the Liberally Lean guy to fight the take down notice for you, pro-bono. It will make for great material for both blogs.

    • df of ll says:

      Actually, Bu Bear got one of those notices from Dairy Queen for having the red lips in his logo. He didn't change it.

  2. Ben W. says:

    I tend to text my dad a couple of times a week, but sometimes it goes a week or more. My relationship with my mom is a bit more complex, but I still call her once every 2-3 weeks or so. Like John said, with kids and so much going on, it is something that's not really organic – I have to deliberately make time to do it.

    For the rest of my days, I will never understand how evangelicals have so embraced Trump. As someone who is now an outsider but with a background in fundamentalist Christianity, this seems the height of hypocrisy and thirst for reclaiming "power" over the secular.

    Of course, I don't understand the rabid nationalism and jingoism of evangelicals, either. I think in many churches the Holy Trinity has become the Holy Quaternity: Father, Son, Holy Spirit, and Holy USA. (Holy 'Murica?) I can't predict the future, but at a time when church attendance is on the decline, spiritual leaders giving full-throated support to a politician who is, at best, morally compromised seems like a poor decision that has potentially crippling long-term effects on the size and influence of the church. Of course, most historians would probably tell you that Christianity–like all world religions–has an expiration date anyway.

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