dangerousmeta!, the original new mexican miscellany, offering eclectic linkage since 1999.

New site URL: dangerousmeta.rocks

A Squarespace site. Tired of wrangling CMSs, for now. Besides, I want to play with their Developer features, and this is a good time. Plus all their social integration is pretty well ironed out, plug and play.

So, all future posts will be at: dangerousmeta.rocks.

I will be putting RSS buttons in the footer, but for now there’s a post detailing where they *should* be.

Adieu, DM! Long live, DM!

Looks like the EE1 install is finally at saturation.

I’m looking into starting a new blog presence elsewhere, leaving this up (but no commenting, etc.) until I pull usable backups. New domain coming soon (I have to leave dangerousmeta.com pointed here, otherwise the whole thing breaks). Stay tuned. Just the birthday present I needed! A busted weblog!

SF New Mexican: Ominous GOP mailer draws criticism.

Sick and twisted. I cannot condemn this in strong enough terms.

A question for regulars.

How often do you delve in my archives? I ask the question, because they score well in searches, but are not exactly lively. I’m tempted to move it all to a PDF ... which would free me to start afresh in another CMS, clean-slate. PDF would be searchable, of course. And mostly text, so it’d be small [well, smaller than other options]. Just thinkering out loud again.

PVC: Shure SM58 microphone celebrates its 50th anniversary.

How many I’ve wired up over the years. Huzzah!

New Scientist: Strange signals from 234 stars could be ET - or human error.

Makes me think of the original “Journey to the Center of the Earth”. Professor Lindenbrook (James Mason) taps on a wall, thinking he’s communicating with a fellow prisoner. Instead it’s Gertrud the duck.

New Republic: The Most Important WikiLeaks Revelation Isn’t About Hillary Clinton.

“If the 2008 Podesta emails are any indication, the next four years of public policy are being hashed out right now, behind closed doors. And if liberals want to have an impact on that process, waiting until after the election will be too late.”

Road/Show: Hoonicorn V2 is American exceptionalism in car form.

Gotta be kidding. My eyes.

WaPo (10/11): Donna Brazile to Clinton camp - Sometimes ‘I get the questions in advance’

This is blowing up today in conservative circles, days late. It may be nothing, but the implications stink. Brazile’s statement is a classic of redirection. You’d think one person would belly up to the bar and say, unequivocally, “Yes, I emailed that. Here’s my copy. But ...” Noone’s come straight out to show intentional manipulation, either. Where’s the line-by-line comparisons with and without alterations? Just saying. You can claim ‘we need to check these’ ... I know my email. I have it right here. I can tell you in minutes if I sent something, and if it’s been changed. I expect better from politicians, who have whole phalanxes of staff handling this stuff.

Field and Stream redesigns.

Is it me, or is it soulless? There’s no personality here. It’s like Foundation or Bootstrap “out of the box”.

The Millions: On Whimsy, Trump, and ‘Bloom County’.

“It’s not just that Bloom County was prescient in seeing his trajectory. Nor is it just that it sussed out the void in his soul. No, what’s so frightening to see now, 30 years after Trump’s turn as Bill the Cat’s brain, is just how precisely it pegged why he shouldn’t have power.”

FishbowlNY: Publishers Are Happy With Google AMP.

Faster wins.

Italian Ways: Fiat 1500 6C Barchetta, born from the wind.

Somehow, that front end looks a little bovine to me. Surely a design standout, but not to my taste. I’d put my head above the windscreen and start ‘mooing’.

DYT: Why Did A Millionaire Winch An F1 Car Up An Apartment Block?

To hang it from his ceiling. Upside-down. Butofcourse!

PS Mag: The Sad Silver Lining to the Trump Campaign’s Implosion.

“Despite the historic prevalence of sex scandals in American politics, no longer will misogyny exist as a minor indiscretion among the highest echelons of political and economic power. Women make up more than half of the electorate and have voted at higher rates than men for years; now, they’re flexing their political muscle beyond the ballot box.”

Vox: A GOP strategist explains why the Republican Party is about to break in two.

“I think what you’re gonna see is [Trump campaign CEO and Breitbart News chief] Steve Bannon monetizing 30 percent of the electorate into a UKIP-style movement and a billion-dollar media business.” Yep.

Mashable: The terrifying moment a shark breaks into a cage with a diver inside.

Outfits routinely bait to bring in sharks. Everyone was lucky ... this time. So, want to still sit in a shark cage? NAH.

Slate: How are these two Missouri Democrats surviving in Trumpish Missouri?

Breaking the mold. Don’t miss the ‘background checks’ video in the middle of the article. That’s authenticity. That’s what I’m talking about.

Upgraded to 100GB of Google storage.

My 15GB free gigs were at 94%. Interestingly, speed of email deliveries has immediately gone up (checking frequency is better), as has Gmail website rendering. Just an independent observation. 100GB is ~$2/month.

The Nation: Michelle Obama Just Delivered the Most Powerful Speech of the 2016 Campaign.

It is a shame that this cannot be the first woman President.

NY Times: New Jersey Transit, a Cautionary Tale of Neglect.

“In the 1990s, New Jersey Transit was riding high. Its ridership was increasing, and its trains were new and running on time.” Who comes up with this stuff? Um ... NO. Not new. Not running on time. I stopped commuting in the mid-‘90’s. Overcrowded, miserable. It was better at the turn from ‘80’s to ‘90’s. The tracks were always in terrible shape. The bridges around Newark, an embarrassment. The concrete ties would shatter if the Amtraks went too fast, so they had a speed limit. The wooden ties, you could pull the spikes out with your bare hands. Some had probably been there since the turn of the last century. NJ Transit *always* needed a ‘sugar daddy’. Christie pulled it away, in good Republican fashion, and now you’ve got people dead. This isn’t hard to figure out.

Outside Mag: Obituary - Great Barrier Reef (25 Million BC-2016).

Even this won’t nudge the impenetrable.

ANN: Ancient ‘Kennewick Man’ remains returned to Columbia River tribes.

It’s about time.

BBC: Western contact with China began long before Marco Polo, experts say.

“Other discoveries include new evidence that the First Emperor’s tomb complex is much bigger than first thought and 200 times bigger than Egypt’s Valley of the Kings.” China is wisely taking their time before excavating Qin’s tomb. If historical texts are correct, it is under a dome that models the night sky over China, and his entire empire is rendered in miniature underneath, with rivers and streams flowing of liquid mercury. I hope I’m still around when they finally open it.

SciAm: Long-Forgotten Research Unearths New Mystery About Lyme Disease.

Got Lyme, took the meds, and still have symptoms? Read this, urgently.

DP Review: Ansel Adams’ Arca-Swiss 4x5 View Camera is the first of its kind at auction.

“This view camera collection was used by Ansel Adams from 1964 to 1968, according to the auction house, after which point he gave the camera to his then-assistant Liliane de Cock, who used it as part of her own career. The camera and related accessories were acquired directly from the photographer’s family.” Kinda like buying Michaelangelo’s paintbrushes.

NY Times Book Review: In ‘News of the World,’ Unlikely Companions Bond on a Journey.

“... Kidd loves to cull and aggregate articles, loves the gasps of surprise he hears, loves the power of information. During the hours you spend reading “News of the World,” that power is magically restored.” Sounds worthy. On my list.

The Atlantic: What’s ‘Healthy’? What’s ‘Natural’?

“PepsiCo misleadingly markets Naked Juices as predominantly containing high-value ingredients such as acai berry, blueberries, kale, and mango, when in fact the predominant ingredient in the product line is usually cheap, nutrient-poor apple juice ...” Well, if you remember ‘60’s advertising like I do, then PepsiCo has gone a long way to save us from terrible laxative adverts ... (wink) ...

Editor’s note: This site may disappear at any moment.

I’m afraid my CMS is starting to betray overdue signs of overuse and age. I wake up in the morning, the sidebar is gone. Today, the header was gone. A new “publish story” command seems to return it all to normalcy. But these little errors are piling up. I need to schedule in either an upgrade, or a switchover to another CMS/service [like I have time for this right now]. What form that’ll take, I have no idea. But it’s getting dicey on this end. So if I disappear, it’s not forever ... it’s just a momentary glitch. @dangerousmeta on Twitter to find out what’s going on - if I’m dead in the water, I’ll be using that more frequently.

Autoweek: This is Porsche’s first race car, returned to its prime.

Makes me start singing the theme song from “Casper the Friendly Ghost.”