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-UE
Comments
Those omegas are just the beginning, it would seem. This is what I got when I pasted that into TextEdit and used the find-and-replace tool to remove all the actual letters of the English alphabet:
^^ I have no idea, but I think spammers trying to sell hemorrhoid medicine have a tendency to do that, based on my spam-catcher thingy. The random omegas aren't always at the beginning of a word, though. For example, "overωhelmed".
^ I can't tell. Is that supposed to mean something?
It's a code. You have to figure it out to enter a secret society of hacker-cryptographers.
...Come to think of it, that's not a bad premise for a cyberpunk novel...
I haven't done one of these update things in a while. First the good, economic news:
* PIB growth for the second trimester was 2.6%. Dubious figures aren't new but now they're specially so, and with all the scarcity going on, palpably false. August's inflation was 3%, so about 33% for Jan-Aug and about 45% for Aug-Aug, according to official sources (see dubious figures above).
* Conoco's litigation against PDVSA over expropriated/robbed stuff (exprobbed) ages ago has been decided in Conoco's favour, unsurprisingly. The amount for compensation is expected to be decided in six months to two years, but it's going to be a fair chunk. The more and earlier, the better. Also there's a whole tsunami of pending litigations. The bad thing is that if they take long this could affect future non-red governments.
* There's going to be another currency distribution system, this time involving swap exchange thing (already done and dismantled back in 2010). It's already expected to fail like the others.
* There are rumors about the socialists negotiating one of those International Monetary Fund aid things. If it's true, I don't think I can put in perspective just how low this'd mean they've fallen and just how reluctant the red ideologists would be to this (which is a good reason to think it's false).
Now the bad news:
* Hair robbing is now a thing.
* There was a countrywide blackout recently. It took a couple hours for the electric service to start coming back circuit by circuit. It took about 11 hours for it to come back home. As is socialism's standard proceedure, they blame this on sabotage.
* Nicol-ass has been trying to get permission to enact Enabling Laws (i.e. without passing through the National Assembly) so as to enact laws to fight corruption, of course, obviously. The reds currently have 98 deputees, exactly one less than they need to do so. There's been a Clue-style speculation thing going on on which deputee is going to be bribed (again) and become "Deputee 99", as well as exactly what are the Enabling Laws going to be for (persecuting the opposition is kind of a given, but it could also be to change some stuff necessary to fix the economy, or internal purging (since Diosdado as much to lose in this and he controls their deputees, it's also possible that it's just a bluff to make MUD deputees look like corrupts).
* See that candy-coloured land in the east? It's a zone contested for over a century. Negotiations about it had already been undone by socialeftists earlier, or something, I'm not aware of the details, but whatever, the point is that now the Guyanese government is granting a concession to drill in waters such that the tacit approval they're getting from the left's treason would serve them as argument for claiming the land and an important chunk of not-very-contested waters. The Navy is pissed about this.
* Venezuela is no longer under the Interamerican Court for Human Rights. Not that socialeftists care about these things either way.
* The socialists are apparently going to make a "Newscast of Truth", done on forced simulcast twice per day.
I walked past what I think was a 9/11 truther earlier today at a subway station.
I'm actually a little surprised that this hasn't happened to you already...
Meanwhile, Newsmax sinks to new lows:
Rehosted for those who can't see the original picture:
So since we talk about politics: a boutique chain had to remove Che Guevara T-shirts after a series of protests. On the other hand, a prosecutor (I don't know how the law works at your ends of the wire, I'm translating literally the title of the guy who decides whom the police goes after) from a certain local city decided he won't prosecute swastika grafitti, because, clearly, it is just some Hindu promoting his religion.
Sorta got pushed into asking a girl out earlier this week. Basically we were set up by mutual friends and I have no idea exactly how much of it is genuine interest or how much is our friends pushing her into it. Whatever - I'll pay for dinner and the movie and try to have a nice time. She seems like a cool girl.
Hmmm. A professor with whom I had a couple of lectures has just died. Bit of a pity, they might have been not the most fascinating, but he would often show us some fun sample, and you could ask him for help when there was some issue to fix. Set up the experiment for me when I was one hand short for the task.
Remember what I said about the reds negotiating an International Monetary Fund aid thing? According to El Nuevo Herald, it's true, so I'm starting to believe it. I guess I'll explain why this is a big deal.
After 14 years of massive public spending, extensive state projects, currency and price controls, and miscelaneous populist policies, financed through an oil boom and indebtment, and resulting in widespread corruption, clientelism, scarcity, inflation, uncompetitive industries, rock bottom foreign reserves and overall things sucking, the IMF's drastic austerity measures became necessary, specially since the president extended the situation for long enough to not lose too much popularity in time for presidential elections. And that's how presidents Carlos Andrés Pérez (during his first term), Luis Herrera Campins and Jaime "The bank tricked me!" Lusinchi ruined our economy. Since XXIst Century Socialism is all the past's disgraces condensed, the Galactic Commander did the exact same thing but more so.
Anyhow, Carlos Andrés Pérez was reelected after a campaign against neoliberalism and shit, and despite that, applied the IMF's measures shortly after taking posession. One of these measures was to increase the price of gasoline and thus transport fees, this in turn caused protests which got out of control (perhaps because socialeftists provoked it) and resulted in mass rioting and looting, for which president Pérez declared an exemption status and had the National Guard control the situation by force, resulting in hundreds of dead.
Anyhow, this made him into the most hated president in contemporary history, virtually destroyed his party, caused a political crisis (combined with all the crap from previous years), made increasing gas prices synonym of political suicide (which is why it's almost free nowadays), the IMF's "neoliberal package" became a flagship target for socialeftists to use against rightalism, and was one of the excuses for the birdie to attempt a (failed) military coup against CAP (the main being corruption. Also, military coups and widespread murder are fine when it's for a leftist cause), and then another, and may or may not have influenced in the judgment that destituted him (for fund mismanagement). Throughout the government of Venezuelan history's biggest traitor the institution would be throughly demonized and used as a boogeyman by saying it's what the now-opposition would apply should they win the presidency, so for example last year they bribed a deputee into saying that CAPriles would do just that. Overall it's one of the planet's greatest evils right there with the creolean oligarchy and the Yankee Empire.
Anyhow, apparently the XXIst Century Carlos Andrés Pérez is forced to do just that, implicitly but clearly saying that socialism doesn't work, that CAP was right and by extention, so were the politicians of the era that they scapegoat so much, and that the revolution at its most fundamental level has no reason to exist. Nothing, nothing would be more ideologically devastating than this.
The communists would be so against this. Many of the mafias would lose their businesses, too, so there'd be a hell of a lot of friction inside the government with pragmatists versus mafias and communists, and no mediator (nobody there gives a shit about Nico). There's this smart guy who argues this should end in a transition towards a republic with institutionality and state of rights and shit. I hope he's right, and that it ends with less deadly results than last time.
In a less optimistic note, the report also says Nicolae Madurescu is seeking to justify a state of exemption by scapegoating the economic crisis on the opposition (which he's been doing particularly often recently) to implement all this. I'm actually kind of nervous now.
So is this tl;dr people being haunted by mistakes of past people in office?
Well, those many mistakes were adopted as state policy, deliberately seeking their "negative" effects, so...
Regardless, my point is that this would be an unprecedented low for the reds however one tries to spin it.
One of my favourite commercials
Doublepost but it's my birthday so I'm excused
Happy Talk-Like-A-Pirate Day and Chinese Midautumn Festival Night, everybody.
Happy Birthday, nohay!
most ebin birdei :DDDDD
Congraturation.
Also, how well would a Tumblr about cultural appropriation in the porn industry work, full of gratuitous examples? A crossing of tags that will make jerk-material jockeys and SJWs bump into each other in the most glorious of manners.
I have no idea. Is there such a thing?
We had, I think, a dream thread once but I can't quite find the right one.
So, you know. I've had a certain weird dream. For the rest of the night, I dreamt of looking up that first one as a Masters of Horror episode. That's what I get for spending so much time on the 'Net, I guess.
Blocked nerve makes dominant hand into a claw. Doctor estimates improvement in 2-3 weeks, full recovery should take 3 months max. Blegh.
@InsanityAddict Tell us if you turn into a fookin' prawn.
Boulder
Cobble - large
Cobble - small
Gravel - very Chris
Gravel - Chris
Gravel - medium
Gravel - Fine
Gravel - very Fine
Sand - very Chris
Sand - Chris
Sand - medium
Sand - Fine
Sand - very Fine
Silt
(A joke for people who've studied hydrology and who've seen Symphogear.)
Now that's some newsflash, eh?
The giant hornets things sounds pretty believable. But what kind of bats were involved for the Peru one?
Anyway, I built me an Iron Monger
Build-a-figures seem to occupy this odd little category between simplistic model kits and factory-assembled action figures.
Also, while I'm only familiar with the character due to the first Iron Man movie, this comic-based design is still pretty cool.
Reminds me of that Garfield episode.
Concerning the bats, I've omitted that the deaths were due to rabies carried by vampire bats... now that I think of it, sounds even better this way.
> get five hours of sleep per night for three nights in a row
> on the last night, sleep from 2 AM to 7 AM
> be confused as to what to do when awoken, whether to go back to sleep or to start day
> decide to go back to sleep
> chat on IRC until noon
> finally implement decision to go back to sleep
> sleep for a good 8 hours
> get back all daily spells> realization of being nocturnal
> again
I know that feel, bro.