What criteria is there for deciding which data is stored in a data center?  Who decides?

Lots of articles about Artificial Intelligence, how big digital data centers use frightening amounts of electricity and water, etc.  

It seems to me that some digital data is more worthy of "saving" than others.  Pictures of yesterday's bbq sandwich isn't worth preserving for posterity.

I don't use "the cloud".  I don't use my phone or computer for important/large financial transactions.  OK, I'm a Luddite!

But I think my question deserves an answer.  If society's resources will be threatened by data centers, how is the decision made about which data should be preserved?

edit:  If Alpo already asked this, I apologize; I missed it!

Today there's one that says that the defense for the guy that murdered Charlie Kirk is saying that he should not get the death penalty because he only hit who he was aiming at.

That's interesting. Instead of just spraying and praying and shooting 10 or 15 innocent bystanders, he actually aimed and only hit the person he was trying to hit. So we should not execute him because he only murdered the person he was intending to murder.

"   

To this point in Jeanne’s life there is no evidence to suggest that she had done anything to promote rebellions or disobedience. That now changed. Her husband’s arrest had infuriated her. The summons to attend court on charges of a treasonable nature were ignored, leading to her being found in default in June of 1343. Then, in August 1343, Oliver de Clissons was publicly executed. His head was placed on a pike for all to see, and his body desecrated then dangled from a wall.

Jeanne quickly decided on her response to the execution of her husband. Much of the commonly told story is legend rather than proven fact, but the basic known facts are below.

Jeanne de Clisson’s Revenge

Jeanne took her children to see their father’s remains being displayed. Legend has it that she made them all swear that they would seek revenge for his unjust murder. What is known is that Jeanne was soon active in Brittany. The estates of Oliver and herself had been confiscated by the French crown, so the parts of their lands that had answered to France were no longer accessible to the Countess. She sold off her material wealth, her jewellery and suchlike to raise funds for the revenge that she had in mind.

Raising a band of 400 men, she attacked and captured several castles. In each one she and her raiding party butchered almost everybody. they left just one or two alive to tell the tale of what they had seen. Now allied with the Montfort cause, Jeanne continued raiding. The claimant to the Duchy had nominally granted Jeanne lands and the French soldiers there were targetted. Castles at Touffou and  Château-Thébaud were annihilated. Soon, the French were in fear of Jeanne de Clissons and they began rallying forces to track her down and put an end to her destructive campaign."

And that was just the appetizer!

From FB:

"It would appear that Lt. Col. William Hays lost his hat and wanted to prevent another occurrence. Y’all seeing this the same way I do? 

This is one of three photos showing a group of Horse artillery officers, some of whom you have heard of! "

<quote>

The G150 is a rifle specifically assembled by and for the Swiss P-26 organization: a very secretive stay-behind group intended to fight foreign occupiers of Switzerland. It was one of a series of such organizations that began with a concern during World War Two the Germany might invade, and continued during the Cold War with the threat of Soviet occupation in the aftermath of nuclear war.

The P-26 group specifically was formed in 1981, and disbanded in 1991 under a cloud of controversy over its political leanings. P-26 was armed with an assortment of weapons ideal for guerrilla warfare, including P210 pistols and suppressed MP5 submachine guns.

The G150 rifle was intended to be a very quiet rifle for destroying enemy materiel like radar systems, fuel tanks, parked aircraft, and the like. About 250 were made using commercial JP Sauer actions, SIG 540 like pistol grips and folding stocks, and very large two-part suppressors. They were chambered for the .41 Remington Magnum revolver cartridge, loaded with a 408-grain subsonic bullet. The scopes were adjustable from 4-6 power (yes, 4-6: it;s a weird choice) and had BDC elevation turrets adjustable out to 200 meters.

Only three G150 rifles are known today, although the remainder may still be in some deep military storage in Switzerland.

<end quote>

It’s celebrated every year on August 13 to recognize left-handed people and the unique challenges and advantages of being left-handed. 🖐️

So, Happy Left-Handers Day! 😄

This first one I've posted before.

After about five minutes a question came to mind: does this jackass have any purpose other than making the same  bunch of stupid facial expressions again and again, and again, ad infinitum?

I’d like to have a list of those who filed complaints! I would do my level best to never deal with any of them again!!

Reckon we’d better watch what we post from other sources from now on!

TRIPLE BITE MY BACKSIDE GRUMP!!

Before setting off, drivers checked their fuel level manually using a literal wooden stick. You had to open the front trunk, unscrew the gas cap on top of the tank, and dip the dowel inside. Gas stations frequently handed out these wooden dipsticks as promotional items, branded with their logos and etched with markings for liters or gallons.

The real ingenuity, however, happened on the road. The Beetle’s fuel tank featured a dual-pickup system controlled by a petcock valve—a small lever located near the driver’s right foot, just above the floorboards on the firewall. The normal setting, marked "Main," drew fuel from a pipe that sat about two inches above the bottom of the gas tank.

When the fuel level dropped below the top of that main pipe, the engine would suddenly starve for gas and begin to sputter. This was the driver’s cue. Without panicking, the driver had to quickly reach down—or deftly use the toe of their shoe—and flip the lever 180 degrees to the "Reserve" position. This switched the fuel intake to a secondary pipe at the very bottom of the tank, unlocking the remaining 1.3 gallons (about 5 liters) of fuel. The sputtering engine would catch and roar back to life, buying the driver roughly 30 to 40 miles to find the nearest gas station.

Volkswagen eventually added mechanical gas gauges to standard Beetles in 1962, phasing out the manual reserve system. Until then, the system functioned flawlessly, provided the driver remembered one crucial rule: resetting the lever after a fill-up. If you forgot and left the lever pointing to "Reserve," the car drew from the bottom of the tank the entire time. The next time the engine sputtered on the highway, reaching down to flip the lever wouldn't save you—it just meant the tank was completely, hopelessly empty.

He won the "no-bell" prize.

Never tried this before so I'm checking my catalog of experts.

Thanks

Remember Ponch, on CHiPs? And how long his hair was? Could an airman get away with a haircut like that in 85?

The Blackbird. Are the tires pneumatic?

The hero / little boy / robot is stealing an SR51, and my first wonder was how in the hell he got that close to the hanger where it was. Then I wondered why, when he fired it up, the jet engines didn't blow the back of the hanger off.

But as he is taxiing away from the hanger, and there are dozens of armed APes watching, I wondered why nobody took a shot at the tires. If somebody was stealing my airplane and they were taxiing away at the great speed of 5 mph?, I'd shoot out the tires.

And that would just be a little old 40, 50,000 dollar civilian aircraft. Not a multi-million, possibly multi-billion dollar Air Force surveillance plane.

The only reason I could think of - the only legitimate, "not IT'S IN THE SCRIPT" reason - that they wouldn't shoot at the tires is that the plane had solid tires, and shooting at them would do no good.

I want to see if I can write a short story.

(Try no to laugh -- me, brief? -- well, miracles do happen!)

When I wrote Willamina's original tale, she reached out of the screen, seized me by the shirt collar, jerked me up short and glared those pale eyes into mine and hissed, "WRITE!" -- and of course the only correct reply to a lady is to lift the skypiece and say "Yes, ma'am!"

I honestly don't know where these sawed off tales will be -- past, present or future -- good Lord, you have ridden patiently with me clear to the Red Planet, we have trotted across the deck of a carrier as a pale eyed Kentucky fiddler took off in a Super Stallion and did things with that flying truck that should only be tried in a fighter jet, and we've gone well back to the past, clear back to not long after the American Revolution.

So -- fair warning -- we'll likely be wandering some.

When the noon freight hit me this morning, it was of course in Firelands, but it was in the hospital lobby, and there were a couple boys there named Emil and Gottleib, sons of Sheriff Linn Keller:  ten years old they are, and ... well, I'll let you look 'em over yourself.

Here they are.

THE SHERIFF'S TWINS

The punch caught Linn's right cheekbone coming in and it shook the man to his boot heels.

Something bright detonated in the lean-waisted, pale-eyed Sheriff's field of vision and his left arm spun up to block the follow up punch he knew was coming, he bent a little and drove a haymaker just under the other guy's wish bone, an uppercut delivered with all the muscle that throwing hay bales, scraping barns and other affairs of bein' Sheriff had given him, and he punched his good right fist into the man's guts hard enough to bring him off the ground feeling like that upward bound ballistic missile started just above the belly button and came to final rest a half inch beneath his Adam's apple.

A stainless-steel bedpan spun past the Sheriff's left ear like an insane, gleaming Frisbee and the pale eyed lawman turned, left arm up and hand bladed, he drew his left knee back to his belt buckle and drove a kick into an advancing belly and doubled the would-be attacker, knocking him back against the receptionist's desk hard enough to crack it loose from its bolted down foundations.

Dr. John Greenlees shoved through the double doors with an immaculate white coat unbuttoned and flowing open in the wind of his passing, wearing a shirt and tie and a professionally irritated expression:  the man was a gifted surgeon and he was not going to risk his hands in a punch, but he had a handful of laser sighted .44 revolver, and when this quiet man roared "ENOUGH!" and nobody paid him the least bit of attention, he hauled back the hammer and turned loose 240 grains of handloaded lead slug that knocked a spall out of the cement beam overhead half the size of a man's fist and brought everything to a fast stop.

The glass double doors hauled open and half a dozen lawmen swarmed in, looking around, two in the lead with shotguns cocked, locked and ready to rock, and the Sheriff straightened, glared at them with hard and pale eyes, and put the back of his hand gingerly to his swelling right cheek bone.

"What took you so long?"  Linn muttered.  "Doc, you okay?"

Emil Keller – one of the Sheriff's twins – looked at his brother Gottleib.

When the fight started in the waiting area out front, just inside the big glass doors and around the receptionist's desk, the Sheriff swung around in front of his boys and said "Boys, get in back," and they turned and ran through the heavy wooden double doors, shoving through them in pious defiance of the "NO ADMITTANCE" in red letters across their equator.

There was the general sound of a full-blown, shouting riot, a uniformed policeman came out of an exam room and ran to the sound of battle, and the twin ten-year-old boys ran into the room he'd just run out of.

Gottleib stopped and looked at the man lying on the treatment table.

Emil looked at Gottleib and then at the patient.

The man's eyes were wide and wild, he was shivering, he was sweating, he was looking around as if seeing something darting about the room, something that terrified him.

His manacled wrists were secured to a belly chain, he was belted down, it was evident he was confined and probably under arrest, but the officer assigned to watch him was gone, and now it was just two scared little boys and what was probably a dangerous, if not violent, prisoner.

"Don't let it near me," he hissed between clenched teeth, shaking, struggling:  "DON'T LET IT TOUCH ME!"

Emil went up beside the man, reached up, gripped one of the man's hands:  "My name's Emil," he said, "you're safe here," and the man's head snapped around and he looked at the serious-faced little boy and gave a scream of sheer terror.

"It's all right," Emil said with all the firmness and confidence he could manufacture – he'd heard his pale-eyed Pa say those same words, and in the same way – "you are safe here and I will not let you come to harm."

The man whimpered, looked around, clearly terrified.

"They'll hurt you," he gasped.  "They'll hurt you!"

"They'll not dare," Emil said with all the confidence as if he held a loaded shotgun himself:  he gave the man's hand a reassuring squeeze.  "You're cold.  Let me get you a blanket."

Gottleib looked around the room.

The boys knew hospitals sometimes had warmed blankets – Emil broke an arm falling out of the hay loft once, and they put a warmed blanket on him and he remembered how good it felt – Gottleib was in the room when this happened, and he looked around, pointed.

"There."

The two boys – identical in flannel shirt, blue jeans, polished boots and wide, basket-stamped belts – scampered over to the blanket warmer, opened it, carefully brought out a warmed, fragrant blanket.

They ran over to the prisoner and carefully, quickly, unfolded the blanket over him, ran back, got another.

"They can't hurt you now," Emil said, drawing on a childhood memory of hiding from nightmares by huddling under a blanket:  "you're safe now," and the prisoner relaxed visibly, blinking.

Neither boy really knew what to say and so they said nothing:  one stood on the man's left, the other on his right:  youthful hands gripped his shoulders reassuringly, and when the officer finally came back in, he looked, surprised, at the quiet prisoner, at the two boys, and asked with honest surprise, "What are you two doing in here?"

The janitor squinted at the crater in the cement beam.

"Yeah, I can patch that," he said confidently.  "Gimme a day and you'll never know it was there."

Dr. John Greenlees looked at the Sheriff, frowned.

"You'd better let me look at that."

The Sheriff nodded.  "Yeah," he grunted, dabbed at his nose, frowned at the drop of blood that came away when he brushed an experimental knuckle across the front of his beak.

They went in back and into the first treatment room, the room with the officer, the prisoner, and two boys.

The local paper had the expected article, describing how a fight broke out in the hospital's lobby, how the Sheriff, who was there to interview what turned out to be a poisoning victim, became the first lawman on scene; there was mention of the number of casualties, of the Sheriff's broken cheekbone, of the charges filed:  there was a smaller, separate article on how a college student from out of town ended up in police custody after erratic behavior, and how it was finally determined he'd been slipped some drug cocktail that brought out every paranoid fear he'd known, causing him to be violent and combative, and how this was treated, with no charges against him, and the investigation turned over to the police in the jurisdiction where the chemical assault took place.

The newspaper had no mention of two little boys who helped break the man's paranoia.

Linn patiently endured his wife's attentions as she fussed over his face:  it was bruised, it was going to be spectacularly colored, Doc tended the cracked bone as best as could be done, gave his good professional advice, and turned the Sheriff loose:  as he and his boys left for the office and paperwork, and then home, they passed the janitor up on a ladder plastering the bullet crater full:  it would be ready to paint in a few hours, and Linn knew the man took pride in his work, and you wouldn't be able to tell the difference in twenty-four hours.

Emil and Gottleib waited patiently as their tall, pale-eyed Pa conferred with the police chief and a variety of officers, they stayed to one side and silent as lawmen came and went, as the prosecutor discussed what had transpired, and finally, when the Sheriff stood and stretched, he looked over at his sons and winked and said "Fellas, let me tell you a secret."

The twins came to their feet and with one voice said "Yes, sir?"

"Cheek bones heal better with ice cream."

"Yes, sir!" came the eager, juvenile-grin reply, and the three of them walked down to the chrome-and-glass drugstore with all the mirrors and polished metalwork, and sat down at a table with a chocolate sundae in front of each of them.

They waited until the Sheriff picked up his spoon, and hesitated when he hesitated.

"Boys," he said seriously, "your Mama would not be happy with us spoilin' our supper."

"No, sir," the boys said, looking sorrowfully at the bounty before them.

"There is a solution."

Hopeful eyes raised to their solemn-faced Pa.

"Since this is for medicinal purposes only," he continued, as solemn as the old judge, "we just don't tell her!"

Three pale-eyed Kellers in well polished boots and blue jeans, snatched up their spoons and happily consumed their chilly treats.

After they'd eaten, the Sheriff listened carefully to his boys' testimony.

It was not so much an interrogation as it was an interested father looking at a situation through the eyes of his sons.

He listened to their description of how they went into the back hall, and how they thought that general knock down drag out brawl might spill through the doors they'd just pushed through, and so they ducked into a room the policeman just came out of – they knew it wouldn't be locked, so they could get in – they described the appearance of the man on the ER gurney, and they gave a clear verbal picture of the terror on his face, how he was looking around at something and telling them how "IT" was going to get him, and how Emil tried to reassure him with touch – something he'd learned from his Pa, though he didn't say as much – and how he'd realized the fellow was cold.

Emil and Gottleib described remembering the warmed blankets and finding the blanket warmer, and how they covered him with one and then another, because Emil remembered how fast his first warmed blanket cooled off, and how this was a comfort to the man.

Linn listened patiently, carefully, to what his sons told him, and then he leaned across the small, cleared, glass-topped drugstore table, and took their hands in his.

"Fellas," he said quietly, looking into one son's eyes, and then the other, "you have done a good thing.  You brought comfort to one who needed comforted."  He squeezed their hands just a little and smiled, remembering at time when his own pale-eyed Mama told him the same thing, under rather different circumstances, but knowing it would be meaningful nonetheless:  "You did a very good thing an I am pretty damned proud of you both!"

It is a powerful thing when a father praises his sons, and Linn knew it was a lesson his sons would remember, and God willing, it would be a thing they would do with their own sons.

https://youtu.be/JIJb0oVcwII?si=0vXR5-LthTzCkhq0

1. You can only post Memes.

2. You can react to the Memes with the Smiley Emoticon Thingies.

3. If you don’t know what a Meme is Duck it or Google it.

4. Any comments that do not include a Meme will result in mocking and persecution. 

^^^ This is a GIF...not a meme ^^^

1) Tom Horn (yes they did one but lets admit it wasn't that great)

2) Johnson County War (same as above but could have been better)

Affectionately dubbed the "Swayback Maru," the veteran warship earned eleven battle stars across the Pacific, but her guns saw their most severe trial during the March 1943 Battle of the Komandorski Islands, a brutal, three-hour daylight surface duel in the icy waters off Alaska. Outnumbered and outgunned by a superior Japanese force, Salt Lake City maintained a crushing rate of fire, pumping over 800 heavy 8-inch shells toward enemy cruisers to protect vulnerable American transports.

The rapid-fire bombardment generated intense internal friction and scorching temperatures, baking the exterior metal and causing the heavy protective paint to blister and flake away, leaving a thick crust of heat scale along the gun tubes of Turret #3. Working in stifling, powder-choked gun chambers while the cruiser endured direct hits and temporary loss of power, her gun crews pushed the main battery beyond its design limits. Photographs of Salt Lake City’s heat-scathed gun barrels captured after the engagement provided a rare, visual record of naval artillery pushed to the absolute breaking point, a testament to a ship and crew that quite literally burned their own steel to hold the line.

https://www.history.navy.mil/our-collections/photography/us-navy-ships/alphabetical-listing/s/uss-salt-lake-city--cl-25--ca-25-.html

What's your favorite carry gun?

Right now, either an S&W Bodyguard 2.0, or a Smith Model 60.  I like the S&W during summer as it's really small and easy to conceal.  I do have a Springfield Hellcat with the "surgeon" for trigger work.  When it comes back, that may become my new favorite.  

How about you?

It has one problem: the blade doesn't present very fast,  The spring is a wire-like piece and I am wondering if anyone can put a bit more bend in it make it open faster.

Suggestions?

bottom of 7th, 85,714

THAT IS GREAT MOVIE!  Winkler plays a man from his mid 20s to maybe 70 and does a very good job.  The acting, scenes,  dialog, and everything else is letter perfect.

I'll probably check it out again for the holidays.  Y'all might enjoy it, too.