UTMC

Getting trolled by a racist on youtube, and, well ... fighting dirty.
It's in the comments of a video about quick and efficient manhole cover replacement, of all things. I commented that I live in Germany and had seen the process from the promo video in action, right under my window.
Then this ensued: and Today, the fascists got elected into parliament here in Germany. After years of wailing about how "them up there don't care 'bout us!", 13% of the people here didn't just vote for racists, but for racists who quite openly want to dismantle our social-safety institutions, labor rights, basically everything that the left had to fight decades to establish. I hate this country.
But I'm also not in a good mood. So I reported turdburglar's first comment as hate speech, and the second one as harassment. I notice I can now no longer see them, so I dunno whether he'll be able to see my reply. Meh, omelets and bacon.

EDIT: Dirtbag returns. And justifies his racist bs with how my "national predecessors" were the nazis. And I respond.

Omelettes and Bacon sounds like a delicious change of pace!

only 13% ? you should rejoice, you're probably one of the most resistant country, the rest of us are about 30%, and I don't even want to talk about some other country that we used to look up to.

xtian wrote:only 13% ? you should rejoice, you're probably one of the most resistant country, the rest of us are about 30%, and I don't even want to talk about some other country that we used to look up to.

It's not "only 13%". There are a large number of fascist fucks who will vote the dominant CDU, or the hyper-capitalist FDP. Not because they have and humanist ideals, or even just a sense of shame. But because they figure they can get more done by shifting the conservative spectrum further to the right.
And it already IS quite far to the right, by and large. Merkel's refugee policy was a totally out-of-character change of pace. Perhaps because she does have a human heart in that dead shell of a body. Or because she wanted a big, conspicuous fig-leaf to hider her other policies behind, and to make Germany look nice and cuddly and soften up foreign diplomats who might still be wary of Germany.
We have a lot of people who didn't vote AfD because they know. The CDU will, eventually, to most of the stuff the AfD wants to do, but with less fanfare.
We got "only" 13% because the dominant party is already skewed towards the right and moving further a long every day.

I keep forgetting that you are germanically sarcasm-proof. of course I agree with you that this is a serious phase in europe's history. Still, a lot of people vote for the far right, not because they are hate driven fascists, but because they are misinformed scared simple people economically precarious, or greedy. We saw in belguim (the secretary for immigration and integration is member of a nazi based flemish separatist party, beat that !) and france, that the far right extremist political attitude can be diluted in the exercise of politics, by their intrinsic refusal to do any compromise, so either they don't achieve to do anything, or they compromise to become another soft bellied party, their electors begin to reject them, or they explode into intern disagreements. Or so I dearly hope, anyway and we still need to fight them.

Getting called a nazi for calling out a racist. See above.

Regarding the return of fascism to Europe. The single most effective tool AGAINST fascism is wealth, it's economic security. Yeah, a few rich people a fascist. Actually, quite a few. That's the whole point of fascism, serving the rich.
But the mass of the population. When they are doing well, they don't need easy scapegoats and bogeymen, the right wing populists can't get at them.
I just had a discussion with another lefty yesterday. Which went from my statement "Go vote! Know that Merkel wants you to think that besides her party, there's only the fascists. Fear what she feels about anyone who knows that."
In German, obviously, quite short and in and off itself quite populist in formulation, just so that it'd a) fit within the limit for the colorful FB background, and b) people who WOULD be vulnerable to the fascist lies can understand it.
Which erupted into the traditional lefty discussion, based on the rule that "I have the longer answer, so I am more right".
Which is what annoys me.
The left, including and specifically The Left, the last major party on that end of the spectrum, appeals to rationality. To the left hemisphere, as it were, with election slogans etc. that are morally and ethically sound. Stuff that, if you ask people about it, will get you "Yeah, I guess that's right ..." while maybe making them feel a little self conscious for not having been on side to begin with.
The fascists, meanwhile, don't just have easy scapegoats and bogeymen on a scale that most people can comprehend (ie someone can comprehend that some other joe schmoe is "leeching welfare", while understanding billion euro tax avoidance and backdoor subsidies is difficult even for many otherwise quite intelligent people), they also have simple electioneering, where not a lot of abstract thought is required.

The left could maybe try and focus their bogeymen and scapegoats, down from banks and abstract "the millionaires" to a few individuals, and instead of the unavoidable lefty debate about who has the purer heart and gets to decide the slogans, hire a few psychologists and advertising people to work out simple campaigns that speak to people.
There is nothing evil about that, I don't think. Not even because "the end justifies the means". Which, usually, it doesn't. But expressing a truth in a way that requires thinking, when it can also be expressed to be understood on a "gut level". Presenting concrete and actual malefactors when they are actually and openly malefacting. What is the moral evil in that?!
But nope. The left has a fetish for not just being the good guys, but for each lefty being gooder than the next lefty. So will rather debate the morality of short and sweet slogans than use those to stop the mass of people from voting fascist.

simpler than that, to vaguely quote GG, the right will just consider your lefty altruist as weakness, because if you were strong enough, you'd have your place in the right cosmogony, oddly enough, where most of their recent electors don't fit (hence the scapegoats) so you'll just never be able to convince them that there's a logical argument for acting like a society rather than for their individual advantage. They want to consider themselves strong and winner, not caring and assisted.

Couldn't sleep, due to pain. Trying to distract myself with my soldering iron and a "build your own oscilloscope" kit. For soldering, ventilation is crucial, so I had opened the window. I thought it had smelt a bit toasty there.

I was fettlin with the electronics kit, which I have probably quite destroyed at this point, when I hear a sirens. The last time I've heard a siren, any real siren, I think in the entire decade, was when I visited my sister and her family, on the day the chemical plant in her town was testing out their warning siren I think.
There used to be a real siren on practically every roof of every public building, part of a nationwide NBC warning system. Regularly tested, ready to warn people of any impending doom, be it nerve gas, bio-weapon attack, nuclear fallout, or an impending nuclear bombing, for that matter. That was an expensive system, though, so most of it had been deactivated after the original cold war had "ended".
Fancy car alarm methinks.
But the siren keeps going on and off, always with rising and falling pitch. And it's coming closer.
That's no car alarm methinks.
Then a voice comes on between sessions of siren song. I can't make out what the guy is saying, bar three words. "Doors and windows".
I didn't need a diagram to work out what he wanted, and closed my windows. While I do that, the fire truck finally comes down my street.
To paraphrase: There's a great big fire! Close doors and windows, and shut off ventilation systems! Check the local radio for updates, or the city disaster-management website

As I was going up and down the stairs to close the windows on each landing, I meet a new neighbor. South-german accent, and seems to be mentally navigating the city based on locations of a specific discount grocery chain.



The local radio is only playing shit 90s pop and the hosts are discussion Hugh Hefner. The city disaster management website announces "no current warnings". Which tells me that there likely won't be warnings before the webmaster clocks in at 8 AM.
Other google results tell me: It's the processing plant of the municipal waste-disposal company. Where they process several types of waste, some of which is turned into electricity. The fire is in a warehouse/storage-facility for "Sperrmüll". Which, as GG has pointed out, might be where they keep their spare mules.
But it's also any waste that won't fit, or isn't fit for, the bin. It may just be old furniture and things. Which'd be bad enough. But it may also be old motor-oil, mercury-vapor-lamps, car-batteries, old electronics, any kinds of aerosol can. Pretty much anything short of medical or industrial waste.
Local radio got to it in the news. Not at the top of the news, no. Headline no. 1 was the food tampering terrorist, followed by some soccer club threatened with relegation. They got to the fire at the end of the traffic news ("no traffic jams reported"). Officially, people are urged to close doors and windows and shut down ventilation because of "noxious smells".

As for the food tampering terrorist. Today, authorities in Freiburg found a few glasses of baby food that had been tampered with, laced with highly toxic glycol compounds. Police are concerned about grocery store in the south of germany and in Austria, eight grocery- and drugstore chains specifically have been targeted. The ministry of public safety, which I was surprised to learn a) has an app, and b) actually exists, has issued a nationwide warning. This makes me think that the guy they caught on store-CCTV and suspect to be the perp may not be it. That they suspect the tampered glasses had been introduced into the supply chain not in the grocery store, but somewhere further up the chain.

That must be the definition of terror. Tampering with glasses of baby food is a form of attack that pretty much anyone can engage in, doesn't even require knowledge of how to drive. And it's near impossible to avoid, and difficult to protect against. The definition of terrorism, to reach one's goals by terrorizing the public.
It's the second terrorist action in Germany this year. There were a number last year. Mostly mentally deranged people claiming a religious allegiance they had never apparently displayed before.
This year, though, these two attacks. The first, three professionally made bombs as an elaborate attack on the team bus of the Dortmund soccer team. Bad placement of the bombs limited casualties to injuries, letters declaring the bombings to be the doing of the islamic state had been found.
That bomber, who has been detained, was following the same radical ideology that the food tamperer is following.
Greed.
No religion, nor political doctrine, not ethnic or cultural hate, nothing so sophisticated. Just greed, nothing but greed.
The guy with the bombs had taken out every consumer loan he could find and bought "put options" against the stock of that football team, which is a publicly traded concern. The idea being to kill the team, terrorize present and potential investors, to send the stock price into free fall and cash in.
The food tamperer, meanwhile, has anonymously contacted those eight grocery- and drugstore chains, demanding an eight digit sum.
Fucking people.

“Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they aren't after you.”
― Joseph Heller, Catch-22

--Jaeger

Rench wrote:Getting back into proper grooves by cleaning pistons (not going well) and trying to remember how to post pics here rather than FB (going even worse).

-Rench

If you're using The New Black style (aka the normal one that isn't the white mobile style):
See below the field where you enter your text.
Click "Upload attachment" and stuff will appear. Click "Browse". Select the file from your machine and click "okay" or "open" or whatever you'd usually click if you've selected a file to do stuff with.
The filename appears, so you click "Add the file". You can leave it like that and debauch, the image appears at the bottom of your post.
OR you can click where in your text you want the image to appear. Next, click "Place inline" and some stuff will appear where the cursor was in your text. Once you debauch, that's where the image will appear.

We've always been here, you're the one who went over to the dark side (aka fB).

As for me, I just moved. Again. Since GWB's pet recession really dropped the hammer on us in 2011, we have moved exactly 5 fucking times. In six years. I'm worn out, luckily we haven't had to buy boxes since this odyssey started, but we are homeowners again so hopefully its over for a long while.

Bigshankhank wrote:As for me, I just moved. Again. Since GWB's pet recession really dropped the hammer on us in 2011, we have moved exactly 5 fucking times. In six years. I'm worn out, luckily we haven't had to buy boxes since this odyssey started, but we are homeowners again so hopefully its over for a long while.

Good gods. Where you at now? Still Tampa area?

In other news, I'm repressurizing after a secret stealth mission out to the West Coast where I saw some Old-Skool Ootmiks. I can confirm our Dark Poobah and erstwhile Sysop are alive and well, though for those who knew Dan while he was in Baltimore, there really is literally half of him now. (Yes, that really is him there on the left.)

--Jaeger

Jaeger wrote:

Bigshankhank wrote:As for me, I just moved. Again. Since GWB's pet recession really dropped the hammer on us in 2011, we have moved exactly 5 fucking times. In six years. I'm worn out, luckily we haven't had to buy boxes since this odyssey started, but we are homeowners again so hopefully its over for a long while.

Good gods. Where you at now? Still Tampa area?

In other news, I'm repressurizing after a secret stealth mission out to the West Coast where I saw some Old-Skool Ootmiks. I can confirm our Dark Poobah and erstwhile Sysop are alive and well, though for those who knew Dan while he was in Baltimore, there really is literally half of him now. (Yes, that really is him there on the left.)

--Jaeger

Same basic area, little bit north of where I was most recently.

Sadly I never met Dan, good to know the cult still rides.

Bigshankhank wrote:Same basic area, little bit north of where I was most recently.

OK, at least you're not doing another TX-FL run. Moving within a state is a hassle but not wretched. Moving state-to-state can be a bitch.

Bigshankhank wrote:Sadly I never met Dan, good to know the cult still rides.

Well, dunno about "rides" so much... Dan's in the same boat as me (small kids) and I think Joe has lost the itch somewhat (though he still has two Buells sitting in his garage). We all commiserated about getting old and lame.

--Jaeger

Rench wrote:I'm attending a bachelor party in about 10 hrs, where I'll be the most senior member of said party. My mantra going in is "I'm older than i think , but younger than you think." Now imagine Han trying to hot start the Falcon as I try to get my liver online for this shitshow...

-Rench

Shitshow?
In Germany, you'd be the "Alterspräsident". For which there is no translation.
You can be the cool dude, above the fray, any word of yours laden with the weight of experience.
... okay, you can, theoretically, anyway.
In practice, meanwhile.
You've got the hot wife, cute kids, nice house. You've got the daredevil job the chicks dig and many of the guys will see with envy (unless it's someone from your work getting married, but in which case you and the other FD guys can gang up and have fun scaring the civilians, I'd guess), you've got a mancave full of motorcycles you actually know how to fix yourself, which most of the guys will see with deep envy. And you can tell tales of adventure, eating up miles by the thousand on a Russian Ride of Regrettably Reduced Reputation Regarding Reliability. Or tales of getting stuck in nowhere, the middle of the Nevada desert, miles and miles from any sign of civilization, with only your best mate and a disembodied spine to keep you company in the majestic scenery and blissful quiet.
And you've got a pair of dogs at home that are big enough to take down a fucking bear, and Mr. Ruger's sample case, for bears when the dogs have already eaten.
With anyone but ootmicks, you should be able to hold court like some modern-day Odin. Bestowing your divine blessing on whoever is the soon-to-end bachelor. Get your Anthony Hopkins on and have fun!

Also, this is as good as any a place to confess my shame.
I've had my phone for almost 3 1/2 years. Recently had to get a new battery and, at some point, will have to get the usb-connector replaced. I have no intention of buying a new one right now, a larger screen would be all that'd appeal, it's making me happy in all other ways. Has done so since day one.
Except for the camera.
I'd take photos and try and arrange some desk-lamp or whatnot to light whatever I was photographing. Cursing that these things don't have a flash.
Yesterday, I was trying to photo some QR-codes for my alarm clock (having to go to the other end of the apartment to switch the alarm off should help me crawl the fuck out of bed ... although my apartment is so fucking small, it's never really far from the inviting bed, though). It didn't specify how the process of registering the code should go, so I tried tapping the screen or pressing the buttons on the outside of the phone.
Suddenly, the picture on my screen and the desk in front of me, actually, are bathed in bright, blinding, bedazzling white light.
I swear. I actually swear. It was the "volume -" button, and I swear I had pressed that many times when taking photos, where either of the volume buttons functions as the shutter-release.
Turns out there was a seriously bright LED there all along. And a "flash" option in the camera.
While I'd try and find an app with a bright background and turn up screen-brightness to maximum so as to make my phone into an impromptu flashlight. I now have an app for that.
As always. RTFM.

This.
No, not that. This!
Oh, for ...

Go post a reply, or a new topic. Use the "Full Editor". Look on your right.

Yeah, yeah, I know.

But I really can't be arsed to make a screenshot right now.

Right now I'm marveling that today is my 12-year anniversary of having joined the UTMC.



--Jaeger

Jaeger wrote:Right now I'm marveling that today is my 12-year anniversary of having joined the UTMC.



--Jaeger

Woohoo! Now, go ride your motorcycle in celebration!

I just want to know if dirty dude drank the bleach or not...

The Good: Not only did I get to ride Athena in anger today, but I got to see the erstwhile Ootmik known as "Beltway"!

The Bad: While the new clutch is lovely, she's hemorrhaging oil at a distressing rate. I think my kludge to fix the crankcase breather isn't working as well as I'd like, and I fear it's going to require some Ebay shopping.

--Jaeger

Rench wrote:WooHoo!!!! They're getting as old as us my friend. Keep her running!!!

Oh yeah, she's not going anywhere. I suspect I may need to find a replacement clutch cover -- not something I want to buy new for a 13-year-old bike.

The other thing I'm finally admitting is that I'm going to need "real" mufflers at some point. The Cherrybombs are an improvement over the last shit cans I had on there, but they're still more obnoxious than I'm comfortable with in what's otherwise a fairly polite neighborhood.

--Jaeger

'been workin' on this for quite a while:
[media]https://youtu.be/EjyrGcL3IC0[/media]

EDIT: I hadn't noticed at the time that the audio level was comically low. So I fixed that. Unfortunately, that means a whole new video to the youtubes. But once it's done converticating, it should appear here.

DerGolgo wrote:'been workin' on this for quite a while:

[media]https://youtu.be/u9VnkSfwQ4o?t=15m58s[/media]

DerG, this is really going to require an avatar change. (Hopefully a gif of ~16:00-16:04 -- see time-marked quoted vid above).

--Jaeger