A FAFO list - add your own

Random Fun
1784

Not to add to the paranoia, but but if you want to foil the security cameras, you’re going to need IR blocking hardware. Regular sunglasses won’t even foil your iPhone…

This is because your iPhone, as well as most security cameras all have an infra red viewing mode so they can function in low\no light conditions. This feature punches it right through your traditional non-IR blocking sunglasses.

Why, you may ask… Facial recognition software uses nodal points to determine who it’s looking at. It needs a minimum number of these to satisfy the algorithm and complete “recognition”.

These nodal points (also known as fiducial points) are:

  • Eye corners (inner and outer)
  • Eye pupils
  • Nose tip and nostril configuration
  • Mouth corners and lip contours
  • Eyebrow endpoints
  • Chin
  • Ears\Earlobes

I went back and looked it up. Kolari Shades makes the best glasses for this purpose. They’ll set you back somewhere between $250.00-$350.00US, but they will block 90–99% of infrared light and 100% of UV light. Reflectables will get you closer to $200.00US and will block around 95% of IR light.

As far as the rest of your head, you have three options. IR light emitting, reflecting and absorbing. Your call, but the IR emitting variations are not as effective, either in cost or effectiveness compared to the absorbing and reflecting variations. Balaklavas are very effective, but suspicious to human eyes. Hoodies are the stealthiest in general.

The bright spot, no pun intended, is that IR facial recognition software does not react or respond when it finds itself blocked. It just fails to identify without triggering an alert.

Ni Dieu ni maître

2 Likes
1785

Probably not, at least not fully. But we are herd animals and if enough of your peers are insensitive assholes – nay, reveling in their assholery – then it tends to normalize it for you. I suspect it isn’t so much that their parents didn’t model better behavior, as that they failed to instill in them the WHY of civil behaviors, and inoculate them against the things that erode and corrupt it. Also once you’re at a fairly high level of governance, and as in this regime, probably promoted in way over your qualifications or abilities, it’s easy to get drunk on power. You’re finally the cool kid instead of the dweeb you always were.

1786

Thanks for this. My wife is relatively photophobic and has worn sunglasses outdoors even on cloudy days her whole life. Her whole “look” involves Ray-Bans, lol. She’s currently getting a new pair, so I might see if it’s feasible to get the IR-opaque variety for her.

1787

Glad I could be of assistance. I spent 2 years on a contract to install security cameras and network infrastructure for the WI DOC. It was very illuminating…pun intended

1 Like
1788

trump has now threatened out loud to use the insurrection act. All part of the plan to prevent the elections this year. Saw this coming a year ago.

5 Likes
1789

“We cannot have free government without elections; and if the rebellion could force us to forego or postpone a national election, it might fairly claim to have already conquered and ruined us.”

Lincoln said that when asked if the 1864 Presidential election would take place during the American Civil War. Something much more akin to an insurrection that what we see today.

Character is.

2 Likes
1790

From Jeff Tiedrich’s newsletter:

| | |550x116.30824372759857 | |
|:—:|:—:|:—:expressionless:

Revenue from the oil sales is currently being held in bank accounts controlled by the US government, as indicated in Friday’s order, according to the administration official. The main account, according to a second senior administration official, is located in Qatar.
1791

And that buys you approximately 87,873,462 TRUMP tokens… Makes you fucking proud to be an American…

1792

We’re no longer a country. We’re a fucking mafia outfit.

1793

NATO is now deploying soldiers to Greenland, to try to discourage Trump’s ambitions.

1 Like
1794

““I don’t think troops in Europe impact the president’s decision-making process, nor does it impact his goal of the acquisition of Greenland at all,” White House spokesperson Karoline Leavitt said.”’

Of course it doesn’t. The rest of the world now receives U.S. messages and not the other way around.

I think European troops in Greenland, even for exercises, signals that there’s no question Europe, at the very least, now views the U.S. as a belligerent nation.

1795

All of them (except the French) Arctic trained special forces. As there are I suspect already SAS/SBS units operating there along with Canadian Arctic Special Forces, all of whom have trained extensively with each other, a few US commanders will be counselling the Hedgepig to ignore any commands from the Orange Miller Mouthpiece.

They will need a replaceable logistics force 4 x the usual to contain the losses that these specialist troops will inflict on the hapless US forces. And considering that US morale is reportedly in the low 20’s and many of their Special Forces have trained with and were trained by the best of the best (Canadian and Brits) who will know their strengths and weaknesses…I wont take bets the US doing well.
They will win of course by sheer weight of metal but it will cost them very heavily.

Not just in lives and military supplies; but loss of all their bases in Europe and a few in other places we are not meant to know about. Intelligence will stop entirely feeding to the US leaving them blind and exposed worldwide.

The problem the world is facing is that an addled, incontinent, demented, toddler wants a legacy, and Vought, Thiel, Musk, Hedgepig and that unspeakable turd MIller are pushing ordinary Americans in front of the guns to protect a peadophile ring.

2 Likes
1796

Another likely outcome of attacking Greenland is a big sell-off of US bonds and the resulting implosion of the US economy.

I have taken the decision to move some of our retirement savings from high yield savings accounts in internet banks to traditional institutions local to us, on the theory that having a physical throat to choke (well alright, a relationship with an actual banker) might help a little bit if the system gets wobbly, plus, if anything like the large scale deliberate Internet outage in Iran is any indicator, it may be impossible to deal with remote banks at times.

In addition I have increased the amount of cash I keep in my office safe by 50% in case we need something to live off of during an unscheduled bank holiday.

I can’t believe I even have to think of this kind of stuff, but … here we are.

1 Like
1797

If we don’t learn from history we are not going to improve our chances of survival…Leaving the cities if Trumpf declares martial law is a great idea, which we all know is the project 'plan" , looks like the apocalypse hoarders are going to come into their own very soon in the US.

Whose side will the 2nd amendment cowboys choose? Mad Max…you are home.

1798

Easier said than done for most people.

I think we’d actually be safer in some respects in New York City where the police force is controlled by a social democrat and is so massive and well equipped that I think ICE would struggle to overwhelm their numbers like they are in Minneapolis where the ratio of ICE to police is about 5 or 6 to 1 and even more if you consider how much better armed ICE is.

Gov. Walz is marshalling the Minnesota national guard but I suspect as soon as he deploys them Trump will federalize them via the Insurrection Act.

Even with their massive infusion of cash, ICE can only hire so fast and I hear they are having trouble getting volunteers to go to Minneapolis. In any event, this is a big country and they can’t be everywhere at once. Yet anyway.

1799

ICE is a contingent of Proud Boys, Patriot Bros and other gutless right wing dreamers. They are excellent at intimidating and using violence against the defenceless and isolated. Faced with an armed civilian police they will melt, faced with a determined opposition they will run.

The problem is how much of the National Guard would accept federalisation and act against unarmed citizens?

Lets disregard the regular forces for the moment as I think they are already hopelessly divided and will largely stay on the sidelines. .

1800

A former military guy I know thinks there’s a fundamental problem that in the case of deploying, say, the Minnesota National Guard against Minnesotans, there might be a lot of resistance to that. On the other hand a state like Texas would happily send their Guard to Minnesota, and it’s likely their Guard would be relatively bigoted. I guess we’ll find out.

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1801

Or perhaps a nation, with a very belligerent President as commander in chief. And unless my ears deceived me this morning, one with a Nobel peace prize? Albeit second hand from the recipient, wtaf is going on…

1 Like
1802

I don’t know what’s more concerning, Trump or that all those preppers may have been right all along…

Indonesia is the only country in the world where a president and vice president must be physically and mentally capable of fulfilling their duties prior to assuming office. It’s been in their constitution since 1945. They flushed it out in Law #7 in 2017. I wonder how much witnessing the first Trump administration had in that move…

America, the country that spends over $2500.00\year per person on defense has nothing like this. Nothing at all, to be precise. We seem perfectly content to let any asshole drooling in his oatmeal assume office.

One bright spot is that bullies, when confronted with a physical threat, will typically retreat. Trump is performative. Nothing he does is burdened by strategy, reality or at the least…a plan.

Trump is a solipsist. Actually, he is the poster child for solipsism. As per Webster:

": a theory holding that the self can know nothing but its own modifications and that the self is the only existent thing
also : extreme egocentrism"

In other words, in his mind, he is the Sun King, the center of his universe and the rest of us are just here to provide attention. Good, bad or indifferent it makes no difference to him.

If Trump were your father or grandfather the recommendation from physicians or social workers would likely be a memory care unit. He is clearly a danger to himself or others, which is typically when the right to self determination is terminated. Republicans feel just fine with letting Granddad Freeman piss in the pool.

Trump is a sick man. Anyone who’s had to deal with an aging parent will see it. I went through this with my mother a few years ago. They think they’re fine, but all the faculties were clearly missing. I remember mentioning to the social worker that I felt I had become the parent and she the child.

What she said to me has never left. “With your own children, you have an expectation they will improve one day to become self-sufficient. With elderly parents, that expectation is a trap. They will never improve.”

Yeah, it seems she was wise beyond her years…

Trump will never improve or change. He will continue on this path until his children, Republicans, God or the space aliens put a stop to it. Guess where the smart money is?

1 Like
1803

Trump is a figurehead and totem that gives Republicans access to power – something they crave so much that they’re willing to debase themselves for it. Some of his insanity is threatening that power, but on balance so far, they seem to think he’s a useful figurehead.

I cannot rightly apprehend where the red line, if any, is for the Republicans. I suppose it’s individual. Some of them are peeling off and quitting, or starting to push back. The ones that are quitting are just reading the room and decided to get a head start on the one year legal moratorium on becoming a lobbyist after they quit. It’s not a principled stance, it is just distancing themselves (they hope) from prosecution and slotting themselves in for more chicanery down the road.

Marjorie Taylor Greene’s another one. She quit just a couple of days after she became eligible for retirement benefits. She’s planning to run for office (GA governor, IIRC) positioned as the anti-trump, allegedly “principled” candidate. She has gone on a half-assed apology tour toward that end, but there’s no reason to believe anything has actually changed. That will be the case for the majority of the rats jumping ship.

But at this point Trump has a problem. He may lose his majority in the house even before the midterms, so canceling the midterms will only stanch the bleeding. I think he’s going to have to suspend / dissolve Congress as well. He has almost done that effectively already, with the assistance of MAGA Mike. The house has barely been in session during the past year.

I thought this would happen with a bunch of machine gun fire on the house floor, like in The Handmaid’s Tale, but it looks like democracy is ending with a whimper rather than a bang.