Barret Blake

WA hiker’s viral video shows overgrown trails, full toilets in national park

Our parks are in survival mode and they need more staff!

just a reminder again that we were told over and over that a 13 year old downloading a Limp Bizkit mp3 was an existential threat to society

A particularly gut wrenching excerpt from this article:

end of an era. AOL is discontinuing its dial-up internet next month

I was at my youngest's marching band preview this afternoon, and the girl behind me in the bleachers made a comment after the band marched into the stadium, down into the endzone, and stopped.

"So, the director just made them march in for no reason?"

And I thought... welcome to marching band

Map of Indiana showing known colonies of armadillos

TIL that armadillos have been infiltrating Indiana for more than a decade, and colonies now inhabit nearly half of the counties in the state.

LEFT: Where our government incarcerates a person who has a tattoo in honor of a family member.

RIGHT: Where our government incarcerates a person who has facilitated and/or engaged in the sexual assault of over a thousand children.

a man in a suit says let them fight in front of a group of soldiers ALT: a man in a suit says let them fight in front of a group of soldiers

I'm curious to see if these first few #NFL preseason games are indicative of how the refs are gonna run this season or if they're just rusty. Because they aren't calling anything at all.

A government-sanctioned "truth arbiter" will soon arrive at CBS. Their role will be to ensure that journalists do not criticize this Administration or express views that conflict with its agenda.

This is a betrayal—not just of journalistic independence, but of the public trust. 🧵

From my blog archives....

My Being Fired/Laid Off Horror Stories

And they learned the same lesson that NASA is learning now. That when the government changed, the space programs get fucked.

🌟 legendary astronaut James Lovell who led two moon missions has died, at age 97.

in 1970 my father, the renowned portrait photographer Cavouk, took this beautiful photograph of Lovell in his Toronto studio.

Damn, you should watch this…

Discovered on July 1 with the NASA-funded ATLAS (Asteroid Terrestrial-impact Last Alert System) survey telescope in Rio Hurtado, Chile, 3I/ATLAS is so designated as the third known interstellar object to pass through our Solar System. It follows 1I/ʻOumuamua in 2017 and the comet 2I/Borisov in 2019. Also known as C/2025 N1, 3I/ATLAS is a comet. A teardrop-shaped cloud of dust, ejected from its icy nucleus warmed by increasing sunlight, is seen in this sharp image from the Hubble Space Telescope captured on July 21. Background stars are streaked in the exposure as Hubble tracked the fastest comet ever recorded on its journey toward the inner solar system. An analysis of the Hubble image indicates the solid nucleus, hidden from direct view, is likely less that 5.6 kilometers in diameter. This comet's interstellar origin is clear from its orbit, determined to be an eccentric, highly hyperbolic orbit that does not loop back around the Sun and will return 3I/ATLAS to interstellar space. Not a threat to planet Earth, the inbound interstellar interloper is now within the Jupiter's orbital distance of the Sun, while its closest approach to the Sun will bring it just inside the orbital distance of Mars.

NASA Picture of the Day

Interstellar Interloper 3I/ATLAS from Hubble

YouTube video by Jeopardy! #TBT: Eddie Timanus Dominates His First Game | JEOPARDY!

Absolute legend of a man

youtube.com/shorts/rdz0q...

Dear Microsoft, why the hell can't we have anything nice?

I don't think Palantir (or anyone working there) is anywhere near that smart.... Yet....

I wish they'd leave him anywhere OTHER than the announcer booth

Advice from LinkedIn that says pausing while speaking can show confidence

#LinkedIn says that pausing while....... speaking......
can show condidence

Or make you sound like William Shatner

Picture of me, in the spotlight

Guess which one is me

#AIFun

JD Vance went kayaking for his birthday. Secret Service had the river level raised Vice President JD Vance’s security detail had an Ohio river’s water level raised last weekend to accommodate a kayaking trip he and his family took for his 41st birthday.

They're altering the fucking river so a piece of shit could go kayaking.

apnews.com/article/vp-v...

After the DOGE purge, reality is setting in. It turns out, workers are actually needed. The FAA just announced plans to hire at least 8,900 air traffic controllers. The National Weather Service is bringing on hundreds of new staff, just months after losing more than 500 people.

One of the all-time historic skyscapes occured in July 1054, when the Crab Supernova blazed into the dawn sky. Chinese court astrologers first saw the Guest Star on the morning of 4 July 1054 next to the star Tianguan (now cataloged as Zeta Tauri). The supernova peaked in late July 1054 a bit brighter than Venus, and was visible in the daytime for 23 days. The Guest Star was so bright that every culture around the world inevitably discovered the supernova independently, although only nine reports survive, including those from China, Japan, and Constantinople. This iPhone picture is from Signal Hill near Tucson on the morning of 26 July 2025, faithfully re-creates the year 1054 Dawn of the Crab, showing the sky as seen by Hohokam peoples. The planet Venus, as a stand-in for the supernova, is close to the position of what is now the Crab Nebula supernova remnant. Step outside on a summer dawn with bright Venus, and ask yourself "What would you have thought in ancient times when suddenly seeing the Dawn of the Crab?"

NASA Picture of the Day

Dawn of the Crab

AI is making engineers .8x as productive as possible.

So I picked up a bunch of the old SSI Gold Box D&D games from HumbleBundle, and launched one of them last night. And what pops up?

"Open the manual to page 4, go to the 3rd paragraph, and type in the 3rd word"

Completely forgot how "copy protection" often worked in the days of MS-DOS games.

This must be the American system of liberty and free enterprise I have heard so much about over the years.

Police State Alert:

The FBI has agreed to hunt down Democratic state lawmakers who legally decided to leave Texas to block a gerrymandering vote, Senator John Cornyn tells the NYT.

No freedom in the Land of the Free.

The fact they're onboarding Grok at all shows they're not being cautious enough

I will never own another iPhone. Ever. Tried it once, because my wife wanted to be able to use Facetime with me. She did it once... So I went back to Windows Phone... until that was abandoned totally, then back to Android.

I, uh... I might be a little angry about it... They say it's bad to repress your emotions too much.... so, uh.... yeah....