Memes that made me laugh 317

 

Gathered from around the Internet over the past week.  Click any image for a larger view.

Sunday morning music

 

Many readers will know of Nightwish, the Finnish symphonic metal group.  It's on hiatus at present, to allow several of its members to focus on solo albums and opportunities.  However, its keyboardist Tuomas Holopainen and multi-instrumentalist Troy Donockley, along with Holopainen's wife Johanna Kurkela, formed a progressive folk band in 2017.  They named it Auri.  The group isn't nearly as well-known in the USA as Nightwish, but it's gained a dedicated following in Europe.

In an interview with Blabbermouth, members described Auri's genesis as follows.

On the origins of AURI:

Tuomas: "2011 was when the seed was planted, so to say. That's when Troy made the first song called 'Aphrodite Rising'. And, that's a whole different story, but already back then, we knew that at some point that the three of us, we needed to be doing music together because the way we think about music and life, everything, it's so connected. It's such a rare thing that we need to come together and see what kind of music we would be able to create between the three of us. But for many years, we had other duties to attend to, with Johanna's solo career, us with NIGHTWISH being really busy with the 'Endless Forms Most Beautiful' album and tour, that we didn't have a chance to realize this dream called AURI until 2017. At some point in 2016, we realized, 'What are you doing next year? Do you have anything in your calendar?' 'Not really, nothing.' 'So, how about we try to do something?' It went a bit topsy-turvy because the first thing we did last March was to take the promotional shots, the photos of the band and of the landscapes for the album booklet. That kind of inspired and even forced us to continue recording the actual album."

On the songwriting process for AURI's debut album:

Troy: "It was quite unusual and extraordinary way to make an album, really. From the first seeds of the project — it's not a project, it's an entity — from the very beginning, because of the commitments we had to Johanna's solo work and me and Tuomas with NIGHTWISH, we just put everything in the freezer. We froze even the idea of it. But, it was still always there and it was still whispering to us and telling us, 'This has to happen.' In all that time, we did nothing towards AURI. Nothing. We just talked about it whenever we met up. We knew it was going to be some kind of experiment. We didn't know how it was going to solidify itself and become real. Once we did that, that strange, we did all the photographs for the album first before there was any album, it really got momentum and became really quite fast, the writing of the music. So we did it all in six months. We've got 11 songs on the record, but we did 10 of them in six months. It was the fastest we've ever worked, but we were just driven and inspired so deeply that the thing just wrote itself."

There's more at the link.

I've chosen one track from each of Auri's three albums (so far) to introduce you to their music.  From their eponymous first album, here's "I Hope Your World Is Kind".

From their second album, "Those We Don't Speak Of", here's "Light And Flood".

And, from their third album, "Candles & Beginnings", here's "The Invisible Gossamer Bridge".

You'll find more of their music on their official YouTube channel.

Peter

Verily, the mind doth boggle...

 

I've been something of a "prepper" for many years, but until last night it had never even crossed my mind to consider this.

The city of Annapolis, Maryland, has released an emergency preparedness guide tailored to the LGBTQ+ community, arguing that members of the community are more likely to be affected by natural disasters.

The Annapolis Office of Emergency Management, led by Kevin Simmons, published a graphic this week outlining its emergency preparedness recommendations for LGBTQ+ residents. The office states that disasters “present unique challenges for the LGBTQ+ community,” claiming that “After a disaster, LGBTQ+ people are almost twice as likely as the overall population to be displaced - and far more likely to face food insecurity, unsanitary conditions, and isolation during recovery.”

Under the recommendation to stay connected, the guide advises residents to establish a support network that can be contacted during emergencies and to identify “safe spaces” where resources may be available. For medical preparedness, the guide recommends speaking with healthcare providers to get an “emergency supply of retroviral and/or hormonal medications.”

The guide’s list of recommended supplies to gather includes standard emergency items as well as things such as “syringes” and “gender-affirming clothing.” It also lists “chest binders,” “wigs,” and “packers,” which are used by trans-identifying biological women to make it appear as though they have a bulge in their pants. 

“Extreme heat can be challenging for those who rely on gender-affirming clothing,” the guide warned at the bottom. “Stay hydrated and take frequent breaks from chest binders on hot days.”

There's more at the link.

For the life of me, I can't see how LGBTQ+ concerns for preparedness are in any way, shape or form different from everyone else's concerns for the same thing.  Water doesn't ask for your sexual orientation before you drink it:  food, before you eat it:  and a blanket, before you sleep in it.  This appears to be a thoroughly artificial attempt to drag the politically correct cause du jour into an essentially practical field that has nothing whatsoever to do with gender.

I can, however, assure you that if, in a crisis, people come to me demanding that I give them a bottle of lesbian-safe water, or gay-safe guacamole, or bisexual beans, or ... well, you get the idea ... I'm likely to be very rude to them, and anything but sympathetic.

Ye Gods and little fishes . . .

Peter

Yet again, a command economy is derailed by human greed

 

We've seen innumerable examples, from local, state and national governments all over the world, that human greed and malfeasance can undo any amount of good that might otherwise be achieved.  It looks like a fundamental element of the human condition.

It seems that the latest country to discover (yet again) the truth of that statement is China.

In late May Chinese leaders travelled to the Zhoushan National Oil Reserve and discovered the nation’s strategic oil reserves weren’t there. For over a year, the disruption of oil supplies from Venezuela and Iran had left Chinese oil reserves reduced. Despite that, government documents indicated that China still had 1.2 billion tons of oil reserves. That’s equivalent to 8,756,117,022 barrels.

China’s strategic oil reserve, to the surprise of the government officials who went to verify the reserves in May, was instead composed of water, sludge, various debris and overflow from nearby sewer lines.

. . .

What happened to Chinese oil? It was soon discovered that corrupt government officials and oil reserve personnel had sold the oil and pocketed the proceeds. The local buyers were often operators of small, locally owned refineries that turned the oil into commercial products that were sold throughout China. Most of these oil criminals then fled, often leaving China for sanctuary states that would welcome any affluent Chinese and their new wealth. The only winners were a few conniving Chinese and the Americans, who continued to dominate the global energy system.

. . .

The theft of China’s strategic oil reserves is only the latest of several recent awful discoveries of massive corruption impeding the ambition of its leader, President Xi, to conquer Taiwan. The last one concerned military corruption in building equipment to invade Taiwan, and was discovered in 2023. Missile fuel tanks were found to be filled with water, missile silo lids could not be opened, and the protective concrete missile silos themselves were so defective they might as well have been made of wood. The air force and navy lacked sufficient spare parts for even a week of operations against Taiwan and many aircraft and naval vessels were outright inoperable. This postponed the earliest possible date for the invasion of Taiwan from 2025 to 2027.

The non-existence of China’s strategic oil reserve will probably have the same effect ... There are at least major possibilities that a Chinese invasion of Taiwan has been postponed for another two years, to 2029, and perhaps indefinitely due to further discoveries of calamitous-scale corruption.

There's more at the link.

I've been unable to confirm this article from Strategy Page through independent sources.  Other reports at about the same time don't mention missing oil reserves - only that the reserves exist.  Is the situation as bad as Strategy Page believes?  I'm not sure . . . but the history of corruption in government enterprises that has come out of China over the past few decades would suggest that there's no smoke without fire.

If true, this might help to explain why China has not been extremely vocal in its reaction to developments spearheaded by the USA in Venezuela and Iran.  If it didn't have the reserves to allow it relative independence of action, that would certainly put a crimp in China's style.

Will we ever know the truth?  I suspect it'll be carefully censored and filed away.

Peter

More adventures in the medical world, and some light relief

 

You'll recall my adventures with medical bureaucracy last month.  My pain management specialist very kindly agreed to prescribe another myelogram for me.  The first appointment was canceled on the morning of the procedure by the hospital, because they "had the wrong paperwork" and couldn't proceed without correction.  Turns out the problem was one single word that had not been inserted into the relevant form:  and without that one single word, everything ground to a halt.  At any rate, the missing word was duly provided, and a new appointment was made.  This morning it's off I go to the hospital again for another lumbar puncture, a CT scan, and sundry X-rays.  Hopefully this will be enough to persuade the medical bureaucracy to let me proceed to the next step.

(Why is it that medical bureaucrats and departments can't talk to each other?  I've already electronically checked in to the hospital, and provided my co-payment, and confirmed date and time.  Despite that, I received no less than five e-mails, text messages and phone calls, all reminding me to be at the hospital on time, and do all the pre-procedure processing I've already done.  Do these people have nothing better to do but to waste their patients' time with all this duplication of effort?  And what does it add to our costs as patients to have to pay for it all?)

I'm thoroughly frustrated with the hospital before I even show up there.  To cheer me up, and spare you from listening to my complaints, here's some light relief from Stephan Pastis.  Click the image to be taken to a larger version at the "Pearls Before Swine" Web page.

And, to compare and contrast two of our largest states:

There.  A midweek humor break to relax me before getting poked, prodded and photographed, inside and out.

Peter