"Not often a dude ruins your face, skull-stomps your sanity, grabs your future baby mama, and personally sees to four of your five shittiest moments. Let's just say... it's beginning to look a lot like Christmas." - Deadpool
"--Is that, Lebowski on the left, there?
--Yeah, of course, Mr. Lebowski on the left
--So he's, uh, crip....uh, uh, uh, a handicap, maybe, guy
--Mr. Lebowski is disabled, yes."
—TBL
"If government leaders hesitated to embark on the adventure of military conflict, they were not deterred by fear of being stamped as criminals. Rather, after the experiences of the Franco-Prussian War and the Russo-Japanese War they saw lurking behind each war the danger of revolution." — Felix Gilbert, The End of the European Era The series, as a non-historian, I find to be a useful reference, although the prose is execrable and mannered, at least in Gilbert's volume cit supr. Nonetheless, it's appropriate to remember some facts today.
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Reason: removed errant asterisk
"In the sequel, we're gonna have Cable. Amazing character. Bionic arm, time travel. We have no idea who we're gonna cast yet but it could be anybody. We just need a big guy with a flat top. Could be Mel Gibson, Dolph Lundgren, Keira Knightley - she's got range, who knows? Anyway, big secret, ssshhhh. Oh, and don't leave your garbage all lying around. It's a total dick move. Go. Chicka-chickahhhh." - Deadpool
"To address information-intensive tasks such as the dynamic re-planning of a military mission or the on-going assessment of threats to the operations of a large corporation we need to be able to (1) make sense of incoming data, whether in the form of sensor feeds, database records, or natural language texts; (2) reconcile these data with stored knowledge; and (3) respond accordingly." — Barry Smith, Erik Thomsen, "Ontology-based fusion of sensor data and natural language," in Applied Ontology 13 (4), 2018, p. 296.
"Inherent vice in a maritime insurance policy is anything that you can't avoid. Eggs break, chocolate melts, glass shatters, and Doc wondered what that meant when it applied to ex-old ladies." - Inherent Vice
"Ideally, intel reports would be interpreted and reasoned over in near real time, with inference results implying a threat to a planned mission being sent to the appropriate
mission planners for immediate inclusion in updated mission plans. Currently, however, there are simply too many generated reports to allow rapid processing by human analysts." —Smith, Thomsen, op. cit., p. 298
"Ideally, intel reports would be interpreted and reasoned over in near real time, with inference results implying a threat to a planned mission being sent to the appropriate
mission planners for immediate inclusion in updated mission plans. Currently, however, there are simply too many generated reports to allow rapid processing by human analysts." —Smith, Thomsen, op. cit., p. 298
"Well, mornin', Sam, like a bad-luck planet in today's horoscope, here's the old hippie-hating mad dog himself in the flesh: Det. Lt. Christian F. "Bigfoot" Bjornsen. SAG member, John Wayne walk, flat-top of Flintstone proportions and that evil little shit-twinkle in his eye that says 'civil rights violations.'" - Inherent Vice
"Alright, alright, which one of you fucking pricks stole all the candy canes? Ah. nice. Nice kids. Where'd you get them from, a fucking jail? Fucking reform school brats: get the fuck out of here." —
That fucking white motherfucker with his fat fucking self Santy Claus. Fuck you, and fuck the fucking Christmas, which it even isn't, you bunch of fucking people who don't know it isn't the fucking season yet. Shit motherfuckers.
Oh. That was two quotes, I guess. Second, unattributed.
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Doc Sportello: "Is that a swastika on that man's face?"
Dr. Threeply: "No, it isn't. That's an ancient Hindu symbol meaning 'all is well.' It brings good fortune, luck and well-being."
"Deploying psychology, not the maximizing calculus of economic rationality (money), allowed Apple to turn hiring and wages into managerial props. The sense of higher calling and flattery doesn’t stop with the hiring process, of course. Make it through the gauntlet and you are 'clapped in' by existing workers: given a standing ovation as if receiving a prize."
—J. Bunning, "Claps and cheers: Apple stores' carefully managed drama," The Guardian, 4-dec-2018.
"She came along the alley and up the back steps the way she always used to. Doc hadn't seen her for over a year. Nobody had. Back then it was always sandals, bottom half of a flower-print bikini, faded Country Joe & the Fish T-shirt. Tonight she was all in flatland gear, hair a lot shorter than he remembered, looking just like she swore she'd never look." - Inherent Vice
"We kept hearing this 'pop.' It's because the 1/8-inch cable was jumping out of the jack because the bass was too bangin'. A friend of our agent's at the same time was like, 'You should use an audio interface." — interview, "SassyBlack: Cathartic and Spiritual," Tape Op: The Creative Music Recording Magazine, (128), Dec/Jan 2018/2019
"Was it possible that at every gathering, concert, peace rally, love-in, be-in, freak-in, here up north, back east, wherever, some dark crews had been busy all along reclaiming the music, the resistance to power, the sexual desire from epic to everyday? All they could sweep up for the ancient forces of greed and fear? 'Gee,' he thought... 'I don't know.'" - Inherent Vice
"Oddly enough, I conducted many of my tests using an ADK computer running Windows 7 (64 bit) over AES, which is not technically supported, but does work — like really works." — G. Haines, review of Apogee Digital 2x6 I/O Module, in Tape Op: The Creative Music Recording Magazine, no. 128, Dec/Jan 2018/19, p. 56
"[N]ot for a beginning level statistics class. Not even close. Very little information that actually teaches how to master the problems in the book. Plus, the problems look like they are something that NASA would have on a math test." — a reviewer from Amazon for Schaum's Outline of Statistics
Not trying to make fun of the reviewer, I just ordered a few Schaum's Outlines and thought this was a fun review. FTR (i) Schaum's Outline of Advanced Mathematics for Engineers and Scientists [haven't seen before -- looks like a grab bag of just basic stuff for UGs, probably fun to flip through] (ii) Schaum's Outline of Graph Theory [includes background to well-known algorithms used in CS, supposedly] (iii) Schaum's Outline of Theory and Problems of Combinatorics [well-known material, but I obviously need to keep practicing as my "baseball problem/solution" proved] (iv) Schaum's Outline of Group Theory [I've used this before, but I need some review on vector spaces, and some more structure than the "prove this random thing" I'm used to] and the (v) Stats outline [again, review: I can never remember how to work out covariance and shit, so this will be a little refresher]. I've read through or seen most of these before, or at least much of the material, but eyestrain is getting bad reading on computer screens and I'd like to stay "current" on some classic topics while doing warehouse work, so, that's it.
I take that back — I totally was trying to make fun of the reviewer. It's hilarious, IMHO. NASA indeed. But it's an entertaining review, at least, to me.
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"On principle he tried to spend as little time around [LAPD HQ] as possible. All this strange alternative cop history and cop politics, cop dynasties, cop heroes and evildoers, saintly cops and psycho cops, cops too stupid to live and cops too smart for their own good, insulated by secret loyalties and codes of silence from the world they'd all been given the control." - Inherent Vice
"Suppose you’re the proud owner of a mango farm. You’re looking for a mango seller who can sell your mangoes. Are you connected to a mango seller on Facebook? Well, you can search through your friends." — Aditya Bhargava, Grokking Algorithms
"If it's a quiet night out at the beach and your ex-old lady suddenly out of nowhere shows up with a story about her current billionaire-developer boyfriend, and his wife, and her boyfriend, and a plot to kidnap the billionaire and throw him in a loony bin... maybe you should just look the other way. But if you're Doc, it may all start to get a little peculiar after that...." - Inherent Vice
"Let me tell ya something about Jerry Lee Lewis, ladies and gentlemen: I am a rock and rollin', country-and-western, rhythm and blues-singin' motherfucker!" —allegedly said by JLL before beginning his set at the Grand Ole Opry, according to some idiot from some rag reported in Wikipedia
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"More than once I’ve been asked, “Steve, why do you bother learning all those old tunes that have nothing to do with what’s happening now? And how do you even remember all of them?” The answer to the first question is that in jazz, you just never know what tune’s going to be called by who, or when, and sometimes it isn’t even called, somebody just starts playing it. So you have to be ready, and that involves learning some tunes by doing some listening to records, some research. It’s ironic, but the more preparation you’ve done, the more coolly “spontaneous” you can seem." — the bassist Steve Wallace
"Coy's band, The Boards, were currently renting a place in Topanga Canyon from a bass player-turned-record company executive, which trendwatchers took as further evidence of the end of Hollywood, if not the world, as they had known it." - Inherent Vice
"Doc ran through all the things he hadn't asked Shasta. Like how much she'd come to depend on Wolfmann's guaranteed level of ease and power? And least askable of all, how passionately did she really feel about old Mickey? Doc knew the likely reply, 'I love him,' what else? With the unspoken footnote that the word these days was being 'way too overused." - Inherent Vice
"—What's your name, honey?
—John
—Well that's an appropriate name.
—Yeah. What you do, was just thinking, seems kind of dangerous, right now. I mean, how do you I'm not the killer?
—You don't seem the killer type. Why? You feeling any urges I should know about?"
—Dark City (1998(
"I had just run into this bathroom stall without checking first, and I already had my finger down my throat to vomit up this big balloon of dope I had just scored, and there Coy sat, gringo digestion, about to take this giant shit. And we both let go at the same time, and there's just vomit and shit all over the place, and I put my head in his lap, and to complicate things, he had this hard-on.... One thing leads to another, and we pretty much started shooting up together on a regular basis." - Inherent Vice
"Many problems of science and engineering, when formulated mathematically, lead to boundary-value problems, i.e., differential equations and associated conditions. Solutions to these can be of great value to the scientist and engineer." —Murray Spiegel, Schaum's Outline Series Theory and Problems of Advanced Mathematics for Engineers &[sic] Scientists
Doc Sportello: "The LAPD's not sure it was an accident."
Crocker Fenway: "And you'd like to know if I did it? What possible motive would I have? Just because the man preyed on an emotionally-vulnerable child, forced her to engage in sexual practices that might appall even a sophisticate like yourself - does that mean I'd have any reason to see his miserable pedophile career come to an end? What a vindictive person you must imagine me."
"People don’t realize, you know, the Civil War, if you think about it, why? People don’t ask that question, but why was there the Civil War? Why could that one not have been worked out?” —somebody!="people"
"Pssst. Doper's ESP, Doc... doper's ESP... ohhhhh, no, Bigfoot, you motherfucker! Okay, Doc, you have what looks to be a 20-kilo inconvenience in your trunk." - Inherent Vice
"Macros are obnoxious, smelly, sheet-hogging bedfellows for several reasons, most of which are related to the fact that they are a glorified text-substitution facility whose effects are applied during preprocessing, before any C++ syntax and semantic rules can even begin to apply." —Herb Sutter, Exceptional C++ Style
"What do you think of farmers? You think they're saints? Hah! They're foxy beasts! They say, 'We've got no rice, we've no wheat. We've got nothing!' But they have! They have everything! Dig under the floors! Or search the barns! You'll find plenty! Beans, salt, rice, sake! Look in the valleys, they've got hidden warehouses! They pose as saints but are full of lies! If they smell a battle, they hunt the defeated! They're nothing but stingy, greedy, blubbering, foxy, and mean! Goddammit all!" - Seven Samurai
"All applicants are carefully screened concerning drug and alcohol involvement. As a minimum, you can expect the recruiter to ask:
a. "Have you ever used drugs?"
b. "Have you been charged with or convicted of a drug or drug related offense?"
c. "Have you ever been psychologically or physically dependent upon any drug or alcohol?"
d. "Have you ever trafficked, sold, or traded in illegal drugs for profit?"
If the answer to the last two questions is "yes," then you can expect to be ineligible for enlistment. If the answer to the first two questions is yes, then you can expect to have to complete a drug abuse screening form, detailing the specific circumstances of your drug usage. The military service will then make a determination as to whether or not your previous drug usage is a bar to service in that particular branch of the military. In most cases, a person who experimented with "non-hard" drugs in the past will be allowed to enlist."