Nothings Monstered

2019 – 2024 – Repeated denials and discovery stonewalling Through years of communications with the police, the plaintiffs and the court through the investigation and later the discovery process for the lawsuit, Tesla never mentioned that it had all the data that explained how Autopilot saw the crash, which everyone was seeking, sitting on its servers for years. The facts are: Tesla had the data on its servers within minutes of the crash When the police sought the data, Tesla redirected them toward other data When the police sought Tesla’s help in extracting it from the computer, Tesla falsely claimed it was “corrupted” Tesla invented an “auto-delete” feature that didn’t exist to try explain why it couldn’t originally find the data in the computer When the plaintiffs asked for the data, Tesla said that it didn’t exist Tesla only admitted to the existence of the data once presented with forensic evidence that it was created and transfered to its servers.

This whole story is insane. Tesla apparently did everything it could to avoid providing the data it had about its Autopilot crash. This is just a snippet and there's a lot more. electrek.co/2025/08/04/t...

I honestly think there's no way to even begin to predict what election night 2026 looks like, and that means the best way to prepare is to run strong candidates everywhere that there's a plausible case to be made.

The most polite quote I can pull tonight is from a young a doctor who simply said “I plead with any democrat to please stop this moderate nonsense”

At a town hall in PA-10 and I’ve never heard people so angry. Our Rep is the worm Scott Perry who deserves a dump truck of shit on him. But the people here are also furious that the Dem currently running against him is Janelle Stelson — seen as a worthless pawn of the rich.

Monsters trading cards this is Dracula with a black and white image of Bella Lugosi in his most famous role

I'm not sure that this is Boris Karloff or maybe not Boris Karloff in the first two Frankenstein movies they're a whole lot of friends time movies and looking at this makeup I think this is one of the later ones

King Kong seen in a still image and a close-up the big Apes face is not exactly a very convincing has a lot of like gorilla but it is scary

The Wolfman I think of these as being the most canonical monsters of classic movie horror either maybe the mummy should be here instead

The big four

To which the more intelligent type of reformer will do well to answer: “If you don’t see the use of it, I certainly won’t let you clear it away. Go away and think. Then, when you can come back and tell me that you do see the use of it, I may allow you to destroy it.”

Chesterton's fence:

"There exists in such a case a certain institution or law; let us say, for the sake of simplicity, a fence or gate erected across a road. The more modern type of reformer goes gaily up to it and says, “I don’t see the use of this; let us clear it away.” …

So many companies in my specific area of technical expertise are selling egregiously bullshit products to customers who don't know better, and they are almost never called on this due to the massive and ongoing destruction of any form of critical tech media.

It turns out that pretty much no one who makes decisions in tech actually WANTS to be told that the product they're thinking about buying from that nice vendor is actually money-wasting bullshit.

This strikes me as dangerous.

The metrical structure of rap, as I understand it, is defined by the beat of its music. The words go with/against that beat, in a way similar to how traditional verse goes with/against a structure like iambic pentameter. Simple structures made interesting by variation and syncopation.

duration of confederacy: 50 months

time since this got knocked over: 62 months

"Dismantle the moon! Dismantle Mars!"

20 years ago, Charles Stross in Accelerando had a portrait of these aspiring post-human dweebs.

Vacuum is a great insulator, which I would think makes dissipating heat a challenge.

Would Trump really blow up the moon as a distraction from whatever is there about him in the Epstein files? I don’t love that the answer is “maybe”

YouTube video by Ace Records Gil Scott-Heron - Whitey On the Moon (Official Audio)

Also too

A woman with gray hair wearing a keffiyeh holds up a sign reading "ANOTHER JEWISH MOTHER AGAINST GENOCIDE"

The Actual Conspiracy Theory Surrounding Trump and Epstein It’s not what you think it is.

"if you have a 13-year-old daughter, would you be okay with the person who’s running our country doing that to your little girl?"

katemanne.substack.com/p/the-actual...

Alex on twitter writes: "Someone on Twitter writes: "You’re a menswear writer. You don’t know anything about manufacturing in America, or steel mills, or metallurgy, or CNC machining, or how anything is produced from raw material into a finished product in this country or anywhere. Stick to writing about “men’s fashion."" I reply: "i actually had a career in knifemaking before this. the reason why you can't avoid tariffs in knifemaking is because everyone relies on Gobelin machinery. are you aware of this?" Alex replies: "Gobelin machinery? What exactly are you referring to?" I reply: "you Gobelin DEEZ NUTS!"

"stick to menswear"

I'm sure his tax hikes will help, too.

"American capitalism is obviously on the brink of collapse, because nobody I know is a hedge fund analyst."

Does anyone else remember a couple of months ago when a Republican terrorist shot four people killing two of them in an effort to give control of the Minnesota legislature to Republicans?

The ADL's Descent And The Trajectory of Zionism Noah Shachtman's New York Magazine piece doesn't just reveal what the ADL has become, it highlights the contradictions of Zionism as a nativist movement with elite respectability

Not the main thread of this edition of FOREVER WARS, but a grim and honest aside: "Meanwhile, if you live in one of the few places in America that has voted to divest itself from Israel, FEMA said today that it will leave you to die."

An English phrase for doing something pointless / redundant is “to carry coals to Newcastle.” A Greek equivalent (also used in many other languages) is κομίζω γλαύκα εις Αθήνας. It means “to carry owls to Athens.”

The Malay word for an owl is burung hantu, which means “ghost bird.” Irish has several words for an owl, including scréachóg reilige, which means “graveyard screecher,” and cailleach oíche, or “night hag.” But my favourite word for an owl is the Chinese 貓頭鷹. It means “cat-head eagle.”

Today is International Owl Awareness Day and I had a hoot putting together this thread of international owl phrases, starting with this one…

A colloquial way of telling someone to mind their own business in Punjabi is apna ooloo sidha rukh. It means “keep your own owl straight.”

A beautiful expression in Dutch similar to “You can a lead a horse to water but you cannot make it drink” is “Wat baten kaars en bril als de uil niet zien wil?”: what good are a candle and glasses if the owl does not want to see?”

“For one to be free there must be at least two.”
― Zygmunt Bauman

YouTube video by CatsPjamas1 Helen Kane - I Want to be Bad (1929)

"I Want to be Bad" by birthday gal Helen Kane

youtu.be/AXPh5TvoTAc?...

Today is National Coast Guard Day