So this is what you get with stupid open carry laws for assault weapons in flyover states:
Man in body armor and armed with rifle sparks panic at Missouri Walmart.
The armed man who walked into a Missouri Walmart store dressed in body armor and fatigues and was detained at gunpoint by an off-duty firefighter is “lucky he’s alive still” considering the situation he created, a police official said.
…The man entered the store with a tactical rifle, a handgun and more than 100 rounds of ammunition, KYTV reported, citing police. He was said to have been stopped by the armed firefighter after leaving through an emergency exit.
Just because you have a gun doesn’t mean you should be allowed to take it shopping with you. And the only people allowed to concealed-carry weapons, in my opinion, are federal agents and police officers. This is going to continue happening, and someone somewhere is going to get killed. This moron is lucky he’s not dead.
Huh. How have I missed Locast all these years? It’s a way to watch local broadcast TV over broadband networks. Apparently the major networks are trying to sue them out of existence, which makes little sense to me in the long run, but for right now it’s a nice way to watch local news (such as it is) in bed on my laptop.
On a related note, our 7-year-old TV doesn’t support Audio Return Channel, which as I understand things means we can’t watch broadcast digital TV on our existing A/V setup. But I have to do some more digging.
And on another related note, looking at that 7-year old TV post, I’d forgotten to revisit Serviio as a media player for all the content on the server in the basement after I switched from the old G5 tower to an Intel box. iTunes can be slow and laggy; apparently there’s a way to get Roku to talk to Serviio. This too requires some more research.
I’ve had my Fuji cameras for over three years now and certain controls still confound me compared to Nikon and Canon. This article goes into how the highlight and shadow tone controls actually work—which is good for things like editing and correcting RAW files in-camera.
I could read articles about the space race in the 1960’s/1970’s for the rest of my life; almost everything about this part of America’s history represents the best of who we are and what we ascribe to. Ars Technica published a great article on the tremendous gamble the Apollo 8 mission was, in the shadow of the Apollo 1 fire and the gains the Soviet space program had been making to that point. Also see the Apollo 11 mission in real time.
News at 11: the President is a racist. Like it wasn’t already obvious. “Go back to where you came from” is the shit racist third-graders yell at other kids on the playground. What’s now painfully obvious is that our president should have to repeat the third grade.
The A/V Club reports that Brian Vaughn and Cliff Chiang’s Paper Girls is set to become the next big Netflix streaming series. This is excellent news, because this series is fucking awesome. I have NO idea how they’re going to pull it off however.
A post on Metafilter the other day took me by surprise. July 3 marked 20 years since Mark Sandman of Morphine died onstage in Italy. The post was valuable because it linked to some documentaries I wasn’t aware of: one about Sandman and one about the band. I need to figure out where I can see the latter because it’s not online anywhere. Stop and listen:
State Fare, the new-ish restaurant downtown that has swallowed most of Main Street, released a themed beer with Jailbreak Brewing Company called Game of Chairs. This is in honor of the 4th of July parade and Catonsville’s tradition of setting out lawn furniture along the parade route in June. The restaurant sucks but Jailbreak makes good beer. They sold out of all of their sixpacks the day it was released, but I might wander down and see if they’ve got any keg beer left they’ll sell in growlers.
After 2 years and $5 million dollars, the original Apollo Mission Control room has been restored to its Apollo 17 configuration, with all new lights, carpet, wallpaper, and refurbished terminals. They’re going to fill the ashtrays with butts and the 3-ring binders with mission materials. This is breathtakingly awesome.
I wish this wasn’t based out of Boston, because I think Jen would be AWESOME at this job:
In this role, you’ll be leading visual design and further developing the Warren campaign’s visual brand on everything from social graphics to larger scale action-oriented products and campaigns, each with the goal of engaging voters with compelling visual storytelling across multiple channels.