Tom Hanks delivers the commencement address for Harvard's class of 2023.
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Things change.
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No, Google's AI is not sentient. Happy the elephant may be sentient, but a court says she's not a person. As one of the X-Men once remarked, "Stinks to be sentient, sometimes, don't it?"
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Cloned crayfish accidentally created in an aquarium are conquering the world. Let's just hope the marbled crayfish never sets its sights on humanity. If they do, we may never be able to stop them.
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How zoology got female animals all wrong. Female animals are just as promiscuous, competitive, aggressive and dynamic as their male counterparts and play an equal role in driving evolutionary change...
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Tom might have problems explaining this: Mother and teenage son create 'first time sex starter kit'.
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Coffee brands with the worst ingredients. As long as they have caffeine, I'm ok.
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A three-hour long solar flare erupted from the sun. Impressive video; fortunately, it only caused isolated radio blackouts.
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Wingnuts helpfully threaten to kill police after arrests of neo-Nazis who planned pride event riot.
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Over 100m Americans urged to stay indoors over extreme heat and humidity. Heat wave expected to settle over states from Gulf coast to Great Lakes and east to Carolinas with 100°F temperatures in some cities.
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No, Marjorie Taylor Greene, transgender people aren't causing the tampon shortage. ...the real issue can be traced back to an increase in the cost of cotton and plastic used to produce tampons. These materials, also used for masks and other medical supplies, have been in particularly high demand since the pandemic. The conflict between Russia and Ukraine has added another challenging layer to the problem, as both countries are key exporters of the materials.
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Miscellany:
Birthdays:
- 1909 - Burl Ives, American actor and singer (d. 1995) (Video)
- 1919 - Gene Barry, American actor (d. 2009) (Video)
- 1925 - Pierre Salinger, American journalist and politician, 11th White House Press Secretary (d. 2004)
- 1928 - Ernesto "Che" Guevara, Argentinian-Cuban physician, author, guerrilla leader and politician (d. 1967)
- 1931 - Marla Gibbs, American actress and comedian
- 1931 - Junior Walker, American saxophonist (d. 1995) (Video)
- 1946 - Donald Trump, American businessman, television personality and 45th President of the United States
- 1961 - Boy George, English singer-songwriter and producer (Video)
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On this date in:
- 1775 - American Revolutionary War: the Continental Army was established by the Continental Congress, marking the birth of the United States Armed Forces.
- 1777 - The Second Continental Congress passed the Flag Act of 1777 adopting the Stars and Stripes as the Flag of the United States.
- 1822 - Charles Babbage proposed a difference engine in a paper to the Royal Astronomical Society.
- 1900 - Hawaii became a United States territory.
- 1949 - Albert II, a rhesus monkey, rode a V-2 rocket to an altitude of 134 km (83 mi), thereby becoming the first mammal and first monkey in space.
- 1951 - UNIVAC I was dedicated by the U.S. Census Bureau.
- 1954 - U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower signed a bill into law that placed the words "under God" into the United States Pledge of Allegiance.
- 1959 - Disneyland Monorail System, the first daily operating monorail system in the Western Hemisphere, opens to the public in Anaheim, California.
Today is:
Army's Birthday, Call Your Doctor Day, Family History Day, Flag Day, International Bath Day, National Bourbon Day, National Strawberry Shortcake Day, Observed annually on June 14th, Own Your Share of America Day, Pause for the Pledge Day, Pop Goes The Weasel Day, World Blood Donor Day, and World Pet Memorial Day
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Comments, tweets and observations:
If you don't think Donald Trump will end up in prison, remember, nobody
thought he would end up in the White House either.
-Middle Age Riot
If Trump was arrested, and led away in cuffs, and it was televised by
the US Gov't., live on Pay Per View, it's possible we could eliminate
the National Debt.
-Duty to Warn
Categories: AI, Animals, Artificial Intelligence, Climate change, Coffee, Heat Wave, Marjorie Taylor Greene, Mehmet Oz, Neo Nazis, Rudy Giuliani, Sentience, Sex, Solar flares, Tampons, Tom Hanks, Weather
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Signs of the Apocalypse, #913. Game over, man. It has begun...
(Another link if video is missing.)
Signs of the Apocalypse, #914. Almost as scary- you don't need to be Douglas Trumbull or Jim Cameron to pull this off. Just about anyone can do this with easily obtainable software.
New grand jury seated for next stage of Trump investigation. Nope. Not gonna get excited. Been burned before...
Even worse: Arizona's Secretary of State 'stripped' of duties after criticizing election audit.
Republicans worried blind worship of Trump overriding traditional values like blind worship of Reagan. (The Onion)
Trumpland: QAnon crowd convinced UFOs are a diversion from voter fraud. "They want you talking about aliens because they don’t want you talking about Maricopa," Newsmax White House correspondent Emerald Robinson tweeted. You know things are bad when the story about the UFOs is true.
Social media heavyweights wooed for Pfizer smear campaign. Social media influencers in France with hundreds of thousands of followers say a mysterious advertising agency offered to pay them if they agreed to smear Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine with negative fake stories.
Germany gives greenlight to driverless vehicles on public roads. Germany has adopted legislation that will allow driverless vehicles on public roads by 2022, laying out a path for companies to deploy robotaxis and delivery services in the country at scale. While autonomous testing is currently permitted in Germany, this would allow operations of driverless vehicles without a human safety operator behind the wheel.
Missed opportunity: Tom Hanks, a life-long Star Trek fan, almost played Zefram Cochrane in "Star Trek: First Contact."
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KGB's daily agglomeration of stuff I find interesting:
Among other things, today is National Blueberry Cheesecake Day, National Cherry Dessert Day, National Paper Airplane Day, National Senior Health & Fitness Day, Sally Ride Day, World Dracula Day, World Lindy Hop Day, World Product Day, and World Redhead Day.
Samuel E. Wright, voice of Sebastian the crab in The Little Mermaid, dead at 74. (Video)
Events:
1647 - Alse
Young was the first person executed as a witch in the American
colonies
1805 - Lewis
and Clark see the Rocky
Mountains for the first time.
1828 - Mysterious feral child Kaspar
Hauser is discovered wandering the streets of Nuremberg
1868 – The
Impeachment of Andrew Johnson ended with his acquittal by one vote.
1896
– Charles
Dow published the first edition of the Dow
Jones Industrial Average.
1897 – Dracula
by Bram
Stoker was published in London.
1927 – The last Ford
Model T rolled off the assembly line after a production run of
15,007,003 vehicles.
1967 – The
Beatles' Sgt.
Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band was released in the UK. (Video)
1975
- Glen
Campbell's Rhinestone
Cowboy single was released. (Video)
1978
- first
legal gambling casino opened in Atlantic City.
Birthdays
Isadora Duncan (b. Angela Isadora Duncan, May 26, 1877 – September 14, 1927)Al Jolson (b. Asa Yoelson, c. 1885 – October 23, 1950)
John Wayne (b. Marion Robert Morrison, May 26, 1907 – June 11, 1979)
Jay Silverheels (b. Harold Jay Smith, May 26, 1912 – March 5, 1980)
Peter Cushing (May 26, 1913 – August 11, 1994)
Peggy Lee (b. Norma Deloris Egstrom, May 26, 1920 – January 21, 2002)
James Arness (b. James King Aurness, May 26, 1923 – June 3, 2011)
Miles Davis (b. Miles Dewey Davis III, May 26, 1926 – September 28, 1991)
Dr. Jack Kevorkian (b. Murad Jacob Kevorkian May 26, 1928 – June 3, 2011)
Stevie Nicks (b. Stephanie Lynn "Stevie" Nicks, May 26, 1948)
Pam Grier (b. Pamela Suzette Grier, May 26, 1949)
Sally Ride (May 26, 1951 – July 23, 2012)
Bobcat Goldthwait (b. Robert Francis "Bobcat" Goldthwait, May 26, 1962
Lenny Kravitz (b. Leonard Albert Kravitz, May 26, 1964)
Helena Bonham Carter (b. May 26, 1966)
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We're taking an extended Memorial Day holiday and will resume on Tuesday, June 1.
Categories: Arizona, Cartoons, Covid-19, Deep Fakes, Donald Trump, Jim Carrey, Republicans, Ronald Reagan, Signs of the Apocalypse, Star Trek, The Big Lie, Tom Hanks
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"I hurt, I'm sleepy, and I'm never going to trust you again.
Pixie was spayed, had a deciduous tooth and a molar removed, and had an umbilical hernia repaired today. We dropped her off at the vet at 8:30 am and picked her up about 2:30pm.
The tech said everything went without a hitch. Perhaps, but that look in Pixie's eyes haunts me. I think I've lost her trust.
When we took her to the vet this morning, my wife stayed in the car. So the person who handed her over to the strangers who performed these atrocities to her person was me. When we rescued her from her torturers, Mom got a whimper and a tail wag. Me: nada.
Pixie's still rather out of it. She's been mostly asleep all day, and just had a little bit of chicken and some water. I'm downstairs working in my office; she's upstairs sleeping in her dog bed with her blanket and her stuffed bunny, with Mom sleeping just a few feet away.
Dogs are nothing if not forgiving and conduits of unconditional love, so I'm sure Pixie and I will be as right as rain in a few days. Still, that look...
On the plus side, just a day after her flea treatment Pumpkin the 19 year old cat is back to her imperious yet affectionate self, tapping me on the leg when she wants fed and climbing on me whenever I lie on the couch, becoming her soft, warm piece of human furniture.
I didn't sleep last night, worrying about Pix, and I have to work late tonight to catch up on everything I didn't do yesterday. Life goes on.
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If you have a chance, watch the Tom Hanks movie A Hologram For The King. It's about a divorced, self-doubting, desperate American salesman who has to put on a demo for the king of Saudi Arabia. As someone who's had to do demos in a non-English speaking country under adverse conditions, I could really identify with Hanks' character.
A relatively small film, it cost $30 million but grossed only $4.7 million in the US, where it played for 11 weeks. Its widest release was just 523 theaters. It has the dubious distinction of being the lowest grossing film to feature Tom Hanks in top billing since 1986's Every Time We Say Goodbye, which ran in only 83 theaters and grossed only $278,000.
Categories: Cats, Dogs, KGB, Tom Hanks
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