“We are excited to hear about your new project for the first time, and are eager to work with you to meet your team’s needs. However, we will not be able to give a new external partner admin-level access to our internal bug-tracking database by end of day tomorrow, as requested.”

Safest Car Ever crashes so hard it sends flaming batteries through the windows of nearby houses.

And “Tesla’s Flaming Piñata” is now the name of my next Spinal Tap cover band.

🎶 Little jackboots, little jackboots, …

…Little jackboots, will kick you in the teeth. 🎶

94% of California now has a 10pm curfew (yes, including me). Because viruses spread faster after dark, especially when all non-essential services have already been ordered to close early. The ones that haven’t gone out of business already, anyway.

Estimated impact on Corona-chan pest-toxicity test-positivity: 0.

Estimated impact on constitutional rights: what part of ‘California’ didn’t you understand?

Reminder: Benito Newsom is Nancy Pelosi’s nephew, and tyranny is a family hobby. Also corruption and hypocrisy, but without that, they couldn’t run as Democrats.

🎶 Don’t go around tonight,
or they’ll take away your rights;
There’s a bad man on the rise. 🎶

Related

Costco had signs up again announcing they’re out of stock of commonly-hoarded goods. “Remain calm, all is well”

Unrelated?

My bank just increased my daily ATM withdrawal limit from $300 to $1,000.

Actually Unrelated

After someone updated the all-employee Slack channel with a description that said “Don’t use @here in this channel”, the flood of reactions felt like showing up at a large Zoom-from-home meeting and shouting,

“Alexa, repeat the song!”

And here I thought the recommendation engine had settled down a bit…

Zen and the Art of Republic Maintenance

“​…battling gangs for local charities”

4-Kata

How do you sit?

Burning down the house

Okay, Amazon, ya got me on this one: Toribe Kitchen Sputter:

The box label does (fuzzily) actually say キッチンスパッター, implying a loanword sputter/spatter, and an Amazon Japan search for that string returns a mix of kitchen shears and fire blankets (“sputter sheets”), but a spot check of the shear listings doesn’t include the word スパッ ター anywhere, except for the exact same product.

Which leads me to think that the only reason other shears showed up in the results was because of this product. But why does Toribe call their scissors sputters?

And why does Amazon US include this in the listing?

(recommended because I recently bought a completely different brand of Japanese kitchen shears recently, naturally; scissors are like toaster ovens, apparently, in that you can’t have too many)

Unrelated

The air is rather chewy today. Thanks, Oregon; your forest management is as inept as California’s, although it looks like your fires are a more direct threat to major cities (leading to some suspicion as to how they started).

Of note to me is that the Mt. Hood Resort I spent a week at last year for a Kumihimo conference is in the “be ready to evacuate” zone, and so is the Timberline Lodge, along with a good chunk of Mt. Hood itself.

Since it’s over 90 today and the smoke from the more distant fires is in the air, rather than firing up the oven or range, I ordered a pizza from Round Table, and accidentally failed to de-select the new default contactless delivery:

Claim:

Step 1: Order online and select the Contactless Delivery option during checkout. Please pay with a credit card and tip online to complete your contactless order.

Step 2: Your pizza is removed from our 400+ degree oven, sliced, placed in the box and is never touched.

Step 3: The driver will let you know they have arrived by ringing the doorbell or knocking.

Step 4: The driver will leave your order on a protected barrier, step back to a safe distance and wait for you to pick up your pizza.

Reality:

…
Step 3: The driver places the pizza on the ground in front of the door, ignoring both the side-table of the grill and the large wooden bench, both less than three feet away and in clear view.

Step 4: The driver rings the bell and pounds on the door, then flees before you can walk twenty feet. (seriously, he was already back in his car and putting it in gear)

Step 5: The manager faux-pologizes without any sign of giving a damn.

Uranium Fever

Amazon is producing a Fallout series. If they follow the Bethesda model, it will be set 300 years after the bombs dropped, but the rubble and the people will make it look like it’s only been maybe 20 at most. The plot will involve cleansing the radiation from something that shouldn’t need cleansing, but never mind, because most of the episodes will focus on side quests and crafting, with a heavy dose of Daddy Issues.

Benito Newsom’s Strike Teams

No, seriously. What are the odds he’ll give up this newly-discovered power, ever?

Also, he just re-closed 19 counties for a minimum of three weeks, because fireworks apparently spread viruses now. Or something like that.

Ah, how quickly things change…

“Seriously people, stop obeying mandatory mask orders! And stop leaving the house so you don’t get arrested for disobeying the mandatory mask orders! And don’t buy food at stores that mandate masks! And tell that drug store to remove the giant display of individually-packaged disposable masks! And stop breathing!”

More, please!

19-year-old arsonist and looter facing 5-20 in federal prison. He was caught on video setting fire to a Sake House in Santa Monica. The same video shows him then moving his car about 500 feet and looting a nearby business.

Also Uncle Ben and Mrs. Butterworth. I imagine the last to go will be Colonel Sanders, Chef Boyardee, and the Quaker Oats guy, so I guess white privilege is good for something after all.

(never mind that both Sanders and Boyardee (Boiardi) were real people who really founded the brands that use their name and likeness; facts don’t matter to angry mobs or their appeasers)

Disclaimer: my great-great-great-great-grandmother was named Jemima. Probably not in the syrup business, though.

Update via Insty

Update

Cream Of Wheat guy to be canceled for not staying in his lane. Someone’s probably upset that he’s happy and dressed like a successful professional.