#Tucson model

[douglasfur365]

Sionna, 2024

Sometimes I do this. I design this whole shoot that takes advantage of colors, or wardrobe, or the way I chose the backdrop in the setting, and then the first image I share really doesn’t show any of that. I just remember developing this image and immediately being drawn to it. So no, you can’t see the yellow of the lemons, or the green stems of the gladiolus. I perfectly hid the edges of backdrop which I purposely often shot this day. I loved the contrast of the black, the way everything feels, cool, soft, and gentle. But right in the center of this image is that powerful right arm, almost like Sionna is flexing.

[jillyjesson]

Modeling one of my Jilly Design Sets at the Tucson Folk Festival on a gorgeous Tucson day 🌞🌻🌵💃

📷 Dean Heffelman

Art By Jilly, Moksha Design ©

www.JillyJesson.art

Shop my gallery: https://cowgirlmoksha.etsy.com/listing/1717235518

#tucson #arizona #arizonaliving #JillyJesson #jillyjessonfineart #wildflowers #contemporaryartist #style #spring #tucsonfolkfestival #originalstyle #paintedfabric #cowgirl #paintingfabric #model #newfashion

[picturesat11]

1929 Duesenberg Model J Arlington Sedan

[mostlysignssomeportents]

The US Copyright Office frees the McFlurry

I'll be in TUCSON, AZ from November 8-10: I'm the GUEST OF HONOR at the TUSCON SCIENCE FICTION CONVENTION.

I have spent a quarter century obsessed with the weirdest corner of the weirdest section of the worst internet law on the US statute books: Section 1201 of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, the 1998 law that makes it a felony to help someone change how their own computer works so it serves them, rather than a distant corporation.

Under DMCA 1201, giving someone a tool to "bypass an access control for a copyrighted work" is a felony punishable by a 5-year prison sentence and a $500k fine – for a first offense. This law can refer to access controls for traditional copyrighted works, like movies. Under DMCA 1201, if you help someone with photosensitive epilepsy add a plug-in to the Netflix player in their browser that blocks strobing pictures that can trigger seizures, you're a felon:

https://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-html-media/2017Jul/0005.html

But software is a copyrighted work, and everything from printer cartridges to car-engine parts have software in them. If the manufacturer puts an "access control" on that software, they can send their customers (and competitors) to prison for passing around tools to help them fix their cars or use third-party ink.

Now, even though the DMCA is a copyright law (that's what the "C" in DMCA stands for, after all); and even though blocking video strobes, using third party ink, and fixing your car are not copyright violations, the DMCA can still send you to prison, for a long-ass time for doing these things, provided the manufacturer designs their product so that using it the way that suits you best involves getting around an "access control."

As you might expect, this is quite a tempting proposition for any manufacturer hoping to enshittify their products, because they know you can't legally disenshittify them. These access controls have metastasized into every kind of device imaginable.

Garage-door openers:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/11/09/lead-me-not-into-temptation/#chamberlain

Refrigerators:

https://pluralistic.net/2020/06/12/digital-feudalism/#filtergate

Dishwashers:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/05/03/cassette-rewinder/#disher-bob

Treadmills:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/06/22/vapescreen/#jane-get-me-off-this-crazy-thing

Tractors:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/04/23/reputation-laundry/#deere-john

Cars:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/07/28/edison-not-tesla/#demon-haunted-world

Printers:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/08/07/inky-wretches/#epson-salty

And even printer paper:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/02/16/unauthorized-paper/#dymo-550

DMCA 1201 is the brainchild of Bruce Lehmann, Bill Clinton's Copyright Czar, who was repeatedly warned that cancerous proliferation this was the foreseeable, inevitable outcome of his pet policy. As a sop to his critics, Lehman added a largely ornamental safety valve to his law, ordering the US Copyright Office to invite submissions every three years petitioning for "use exemptions" to the blanket ban on circumventing access-controls.

I call this "ornamental" because if the Copyright Office thinks that, say, it should be legal for you to bypass an access control to use third-party ink in your printer, or a third-party app store in your phone, all they can do under DMCA 1201 is grant you the right to use a circumvention tool. But they can't give you the right to acquire that tool.

I know that sounds confusing, but that's only because it's very, very stupid. How stupid? Well, in 2001, the US Trade Representative arm-twisted the EU into adopting its own version of this law (Article 6 of the EUCD), and in 2003, Norway added the law to its lawbooks. On the eve of that addition, I traveled to Oslo to debate the minister involved:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/10/28/clintons-ghost/#felony-contempt-of-business-model

The minister praised his law, explaining that it gave blind people the right to bypass access controls on ebooks so that they could feed them to screen readers, Braille printers, and other assistive tools. OK, I said, but how do they get the software that jailbreaks their ebooks so they can make use of this exemption? Am I allowed to give them that tool?

No, the minister said, you're not allowed to do that, that would be a crime.

Is the Norwegian government allowed to give them that tool? No. How about a blind rights advocacy group? No, not them either. A university computer science department? Nope. A commercial vendor? Certainly not.

No, the minister explained, under his law, a blind person would be expected to personally reverse engineer a program like Adobe E-Reader, in hopes of discovering a defect that they could exploit by writing a program to extract the ebook text.

Oh, I said. But if a blind person did manage to do this, could they supply that tool to other blind people?

Well, no, the minister said. Each and every blind person must personally – without any help from anyone else – figure out how to reverse-engineer the ebook program, and then individually author their own alternative reader program that worked with the text of their ebooks.

That is what is meant by a use exemption without a tools exemption. It's useless. A sick joke, even.

The US Copyright Office has been valiantly holding exemptions proceedings every three years since the start of this century, and they've granted many sensible exemptions, including ones to benefit people with disabilities, or to let you jailbreak your phone, or let media professors extract video clips from DVDs, and so on. Tens of thousands of person-hours have been flushed into this pointless exercise, generating a long list of things you are now technically allowed to do, but only if you are a reverse-engineering specialist type of computer programmer who can manage the process from beginning to end in total isolation and secrecy.

But there is one kind of use exception the Copyright Office can grant that is potentially game-changing: an exemption for decoding diagnostic codes.

You see, DMCA 1201 has been a critical weapon for the corporate anti-repair movement. By scrambling error codes in cars, tractors, appliances, insulin pumps, phones and other devices, manufacturers can wage war on independent repair, depriving third-party technicians of the diagnostic information they need to figure out how to fix your stuff and keep it going.

This is bad enough in normal times, but during the acute phase of the covid pandemic, hospitals found themselves unable to maintain their ventilators because of access controls. Nearly all ventilators come from a single med-tech monopolist, Medtronic, which charges hospitals hundreds of dollars to dispatch their own repair technicians to fix its products. But when covid ended nearly all travel, Medtronic could no longer provide on-site calls. Thankfully, an anonymous hacker started building homemade (illegal) circumvention devices to let hospital technicians fix the ventilators themselves, improvising housings for them from old clock radios, guitar pedals and whatever else was to hand, then mailing them anonymously to hospitals:

https://pluralistic.net/2020/07/10/flintstone-delano-roosevelt/#medtronic-again

Once a manufacturer monopolizes repair in this way, they can force you to use their official service depots, charging you as much as they'd like; requiring you to use their official, expensive replacement parts; and dictating when your gadget is "too broken to fix," forcing you to buy a new one. That's bad enough when we're talking about refusing to fix a phone so you buy a new one – but imagine having a spinal injury and relying on a $100,000 exoskeleton to get from place to place and prevent muscle wasting, clots, and other immobility-related conditions, only to have the manufacturer decide that the gadget is too old to fix and refusing to give you the technical assistance to replace a watch battery so that you can get around again:

https://www.theverge.com/2024/9/26/24255074/former-jockey-michael-straight-exoskeleton-repair-battery

When the US Copyright Office grants a use exemption for extracting diagnostic codes from a busted device, they empower repair advocates to put that gadget up on a workbench and torture it into giving up those codes. The codes can then be integrated into an unofficial diagnostic tool, one that can make sense of the scrambled, obfuscated error codes that a device sends when it breaks – without having to unscramble them. In other words, only the company that makes the diagnostic tool has to bypass an access control, but the people who use that tool later do not violate DMCA 1201.

This is all relevant this month because the US Copyright Office just released the latest batch of 1201 exemptions, and among them is the right to circumvent access controls "allowing for repair of retail-level food preparation equipment":

https://publicknowledge.org/public-knowledge-ifixit-free-the-mcflurry-win-copyright-office-dmca-exemption-for-ice-cream-machines/

While this covers all kinds of food prep gear, the exemption request – filed by Public Knowledge and Ifixit – was inspired by the bizarre war over the tragically fragile McFlurry machine. These machines – which extrude soft-serve frozen desserts – are notoriously failure-prone, with 5-16% of them broken at any given time. Taylor, the giant kitchen tech company that makes the machines, charges franchisees a fortune to repair them, producing a steady stream of profits for the company.

This sleazy business prompted some ice-cream hackers to found a startup called Kytch, a high-powered automation and diagnostic tool that was hugely popular with McDonald's franchisees (the gadget was partially designed by the legendary hardware hacker Andrew "bunnie" Huang!).

In response, Taylor played dirty, making a less-capable clone of the Kytch, trying to buy Kytch out, and teaming up with McDonald's corporate to bombard franchisees with legal scare-stories about the dangers of using a Kytch to keep their soft-serve flowing, thanks to DMCA 1201:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/04/20/euthanize-rentier-enablers/#cold-war

Kytch isn't the only beneficiary of the new exemption: all kinds of industrial kitchen equipment is covered. In upholding the Right to Repair, the Copyright Office overruled objections of some of its closest historical allies, the Entertainment Software Association, Motion Picture Association, and Recording Industry Association of America, who all sided with Taylor and McDonald's and opposed the exemption:

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2024/10/us-copyright-office-frees-the-mcflurry-allowing-repair-of-ice-cream-machines/

This is literally the only useful kind of DMCA 1201 exemption the Copyright Office can grant, and the fact that they granted it (along with a similar exemption for medical devices) is a welcome bright spot. But make no mistake, the fact that we finally found a narrow way in which DMCA 1201 can be made slightly less stupid does not redeem this outrageous law. It should still be repealed and condemned to the scrapheap of history.

Tor Books as just published two new, free LITTLE BROTHER stories: VIGILANT, about creepy surveillance in distance education; and SPILL, about oil pipelines and indigenous landback.

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/10/28/mcbroken/#my-milkshake-brings-all-the-lawyers-to-the-yard

Image: Cryteria (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:HAL9000.svg

CC BY 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/deed.en

[leasthaunted]

Episode 123: Lights! Phoenix! Action!

Garth has returned from his special assignments, and Cody has returned from Phoenix with a tale to tell. Get out your telescopes and potato cameras, look upwards and through the past to the mid 90's as we explore one of the largest mass UFO sightings in history! And along the way we'll take a ride on a warthog too. 

As always, please come join the episode discussion on the Least Haunted Discord!

Enjoy the images and videos below!

Newspaper article with artists interpretation of eye witness accounts of UFO that flew over Arizona March 13th, 1997.

Flight path of UFO. Starting in Henderson, Nevada and finishing near Tucson, Arizona. A route of approximately 370 miles or 546 Kilometers. This was traveled in 1.25 hours.

At 10:00 pm Mike Crispin looks southward across Phoenix towards "South Mountain" and captures this footage.

Approximate line of sight of Mike Crispin, with his position being the North (top) end of the line.

Arizona Governor Fife Symington III holds a press conference about The Phoenix Lights with an aide dressed as an alien.

The A-10 Thunderbolt II aka "The Warthog" Close Air Support (CAS) jet aircraft. Development began in 1972, and it entered into service in 1977. Headquartered at Davis-Monthan Air Force Base in Tucson, Arizona.

The General Electric GAU-8 Avenger 30mm Gatling Gun.

The Gau-8 Avenger can fire 3,900 30 millimeter depleted uranium rounds a minute. The round on the left is the 30 millimeter round, with the left being the round of a 30.06 rifle for comparison.

The Barry Goldwater Gunnery Range and Training Area.

The LUU2 Illumination Parachute Flare.

Sales Brochure for the flare with selected specs. Note that it is a A-10 Warthog that is shown deploying the flare in official promotional material for the hardware.

A video Analyisis of the Crispin footage that shows what is really going on with the second set of lights seen on March 13th, 1997.

Enhanced image from the video that shows the night time lights superimposed on top of daylight footage from the same exact spot and angle. This proves that the lights were beyond South Mountain, and confirms the official explanation of a LUU2 flare training exercise over the Barry M. Goldwater Gunnery Range.

GARTH'S CORNER!

Comet Hale-Bopp

Alan Hale, Astronomer and one of two discoverers of the comet.

Thomas Bopp (1949-2018), the other discoverer of the comet.

Model of the path of Comet Hale-Bopp, credit for the animations goes to Phoenix7777 posted on Wikipedia - working from Data source: HORIZONS System, JPL, NASA.

3D model of the same

Heaven’s Gate website, which is still active.

How to report a comet: https://skyandtelescope.org/observing/how-to-report-a-comet-discovery/

[doorstoplord]

I want to gush about something that’s exciting but it also feels kinda gauche and inappropriate so I’ll put it under the cut

I’m inheriting my grandparents car.

My grandparents had to pass for this to happen, and I do wish I had grandma and grandpa more than I want this car. But I’m glad that this car is happening. I also want to be aware that inheriting something like a nice used car is a sign of extreme privilege and I don’t want to take that lightly.

I want to explain the reasons for excitement in contrast with my current car. And I want to differentiate them by name.

My current car is named Gladys. She’s also a small SUV. My new car will be named Henry, after what my grandpa called his cane in his later years. I didn’t want to outright name it after my grandparents, but i still wanted to honor their memory through the car, and I think that this is a good way to do that.

I will first describe Gladys. Gladys is a 2011 Hyundai Tucson. I have had her for 6 years. I got her after someone totaled the car I bought from my dad a week after I got it. I WAS NOT IN that car, and I think the fact I couldn’t name that car was a bad omen. All my other cars were named swiftly except the one that got totaled. But from this situation, I got Gladys.

Gladys came to me right before the pandemic hit. A few things happened with the pandemic, namely that I had to move back in with my parents because of being furloughed from my job at the time. My relationship with my parents was and is not the best and I find that constant interaction with them dims my mental health. So I needed to get out and get out often, but with the pandemic at its height It wasn’t like I could go to a cafe or a library. But I could go out in my car to a park or something. Simultaneously I was interested in vanlife and camping content at the time, and while I knew I couldn’t get a van or a camper any time soon, I knew that Gladys was an SUV which offered more space than the sedan I had previously.

Over the years, Gladys became a safe haven for me. If I needed to get out, go on a vacation, spend time with Jax, Gladys facilitated that in a rather inexpensive and accessible way. I could set up in the back. I could cook, I could draw, I could watch movies, I could hang out, I could sleep, I could read, and I could safely hang out with Jax all in the back of Gladys. Gladys has been a constant source of comfort.

But Gladys is not a strong car. Hyundai’s made at the time Gladys was made are prone to theft due to the way they’re built. The AC gave out after a year or so of use, which was necessary because my room at my parents house was inordinately hot and I used Gladys to escape that. An issue arose with the timing belt and the mechanic said that there was so much that COULD be wrong with Gladys that it wasn’t worth it to try and fix her, and that she could no longer handle interstate travel severely limiting my options. I still love Gladys. I still take her to the park. I went camping with her last year taking the backroads to get to a park only about an hour or so away.

But Gladys is dying. Gladys is on her last legs.

Enter Henry. Henry is a newer Ford small SUV and that’s all I’ll say, but it’s a similar size and build to Gladys while being a newer model, nicer features, and because my grandparents didn’t travel so much in their later years, it has incredibly low mileage. It also has a higher towing capacity than Gladys did, which allows me to look at buying a small camper trailer down the line. I must confess to browsing Facebook marketplace for teardrop and popup campers daily.

I do want to set up Henry like I set up Gladys. I want Henry to continue the safety and escape that Gladys has so generously offered me. My mom describes my grandparents taking her and her siblings camping in a little pop up every summer all over the United States, and I’d like to think my grandparents would be thrilled about me using their car to continue adventuring and getting out.

I’m so hoping that this is good. I’m so hoping for positivity and safety and comfort. I’m so excited.

Thanks for reading this rant.

I get to get Henry today! Finally!

[douglasfur365]

@desertreak, and @silverwilddesign 2023

For various reasons mortality influenced a lot of the work I made in 2023, at times I planned shoots unrelated to just to give myself a break. But everything was leading up to this shoot. The concept of what gets left behind on earth was very present in my mind. I think the first element I knew I needed was the cholla skeleton, then I thought how interesting it would be to pair that with seashells from the Salish Sea, the tulle was a textural choice that was rooted in funeral veils. But those are just objects, @desertfreak and @silverwilddesign were the final piece to this project, they were more than what you see in the images, they were true collaborators helping build this entire concept.

[allthecanadianpolitics]

Hyundai and Kia have issued a recall for several vehicle models and are urging drivers to park away from buildings due to the risk that the issue could start a fire. Hyundai says the recall involves 326,942 vehicles in Canada and 1,642,551 vehicles in the U.S. Hyundai's recalled vehicles(opens in a new tab) include certain 2010-15 models of the Accent, Elantra, Tucson, Sante Fe and others. According to the notice, the Anti-Lock Brake System (ABS) in the vehicles could leak brake fluid and cause an electrical short over time, which may start a fire while the car is parked or driving.

Continue Reading.

Tagging: @politicsofcanada

Date of article: September 27th, 2023.

[bignaz8]

ARIZONA INTERESTING FACTS:

1. Arizona has 3,928 mountain peaks and summits, more mountains than any one of the other Mountain States (Colorado, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, Utah, and Wyoming).

2. All New England, plus the state of Pennsylvania would fit inside Arizona.

3. Arizona became the 48th state and last of the contiguous states on February 14, 1912, Valentine’s Day.

4. Arizona's disparate climate can yield both the highest temperature across the nation and the lowest temperature across the nation in the same day.

5. There are more wilderness areas in Arizona than in the entire Midwest. Arizona alone has 90 wilderness areas, while the Midwest has 50.

6. Arizona has 26 peaks that are more than 10,000 feet in elevation.

7. Arizona has the largest contiguous stand of Ponderosa pines in the world stretching from near Flagstaff along the Mogollon Rim to the White Mountains region.

8. Yuma, Arizona is the country's highest producer of winter vegetables, especially lettuce.

9. Arizona is the 6th largest state in the nation, covering 113,909 square miles.

10. Out of all the states in the U.S., Arizona has the largest percentage of its land designated as Indian lands.

11. The Five C's of Arizona's economy are: Cattle, Copper, Citrus, Cotton, and Climate.

12. More copper is mined in Arizona than all the other states combined The Morenci Mine is the largest copper producer in all of North America.

13. Clark Gable and Carole Lombard, two of the most prominent movie stars of Hollywood's Golden Age, were married on March 18, 1939, in Kingman, Arizona.

14. Covering 18,608 sq. miles, Coconino County is the second largest county by land area in the 48 contiguous United States.(San Bernardino County in California is the largest).

15. The world's largest solar telescope is located at Kitt Peak National Observatory in Sells, Arizona.

16. Bisbee, Arizona is known as the Queen of the Copper Mines because during its mining heyday it produced nearly 25 percent of the world's copper. It was the largest city in the Southwest between Saint Louis and San Francisco.

17. Billy the Kid killed his first man, Windy Cahill, in Bonita, Arizona.

18. Arizona grows enough cotton each year to make more than one pair of jeans for every person in the United States.

19. Famous labor leader and activist Cesar Chavez was born in Yuma.

20. In 1912, President William Howard Taft was ready to make Arizona a state on February 12, but it was Lincoln's birthday.

The next day, the 13th, was considered bad luck so they waited until the following day. That's how Arizona became known as the Valentine State.

21. When England's famous London Bridge was replaced in the 1960s, the original was purchased, dismantled, shipped stone by stone and reconstructed in Lake Havasu City, Arizona, where it still stands today.

22. Mount Lemmon, Tucson, in the Santa Catalina Mountains, is the southernmost ski resort in the United States.

23. Rooster Cogburn Ostrich Ranch in Picacho, Arizona is the largest privately-owned ostrich ranch in the world outside South Africa.

24. If you cut down a protected species of cactus in Arizona, you could spend more than a year in prison.

25. The world's largest to-scale collection of miniature airplane models is housed at the library at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in Prescott, Arizona.

26. The only place in the country where mail is delivered by mule is the village of Supai, located at the bottom of the Grand Canyon.

27. Located on Arizona's western border, Parker Dam is the deepest dam in the world at 320 feet.

28. South Mountain Park/Preserve in Phoenix is the largest municipal park in the country.

29. Palo Verde Nuclear Generating Station, located about 55 miles west of Phoenix, generates more electricity than any other U.S. power plant.

30. Oraibi, a Hopi village located in Navajo County, Arizona, dates back to before A.D. 1200 and is reputed to be the oldest continuously inhabited community in America.

31. Built by Del Webb in 1960, Sun City, Arizona was the first 55-plus active adult retirement community in the country.

32. Petrified wood is the official state fossil. The Petrified Forest in northeastern Arizona contains America's largest deposits of petrified wood.

33. Many of the founders of San Francisco in 1776 were Spanish colonists from Tubac, Arizona.

34. Phoenix originated in 1866 as a hay camp to supply military post Camp McDowell.

35. Rainfall averages for Arizona range from less than three inches in the deserts to more than 30 inches per year in the mountains.

36. Rising to a height of 12,643 feet, Humphreys Peak north of Flagstaff is the state's highest mountain.

37. Roadrunners are not just in cartoons! In Arizona, you'll see them running up to 17-mph away from their enemies.

38. The Saguaro cactus is the largest cactus found in the U.S. It can grow as high as a five-story building and is native to the Sonoran Desert, which stretches across southern Arizona.

39. Sandra Day O'Connor, the first woman appointed to the U.S. Supreme Court, grew up on a large family ranch near Duncan, Arizona.

40. The best-preserved meteor crater in the world is located near Winslow, Arizona.

41. The average state elevation is 4,000 feet.

42. The Navajo Nation spans 27,000 square miles across the states of Utah, Arizona and New Mexico, but its capital is seated in Window Rock, Arizona.

43. The amount of copper utilized to make the copper dome atop Arizona's Capitol building is equivalent to the amount used in 4.8 million pennies.

44. Near Yuma, the Colorado River's elevation dips to 70 feet above sea level, making it the lowest point in the state.

45. The geographic center of Arizona is 55 miles southeast of Prescott near the community of Mayer.

46. You could pile four 1,300-foot skyscrapers on top of each other and they still would not reach the rim of the Grand Canyon.

47. The hottest temperature recorded in Arizona was 128 degrees at Lake Havasu City on June 29, 1994.

48. The coldest temperature recorded in Arizona was 40 degrees below zero at Hawley Lake on January 7, 1971.

49. A saguaro cactus can store up to nine tons of water.

50. The state of Massachusetts could fit inside Maricopa County (9,922 sq. miles).

51. The westernmost battle of the Civil War was fought at Picacho Pass on April 15, 1862 near Picacho Peak in Pinal County.

52. There are 11.2 million acres of National Forest in Arizona, and one-fourth of the state forested.

53. Wyatt Earp was neither the town marshal nor the sheriff in Tombstone at the time of the shoot-out at the O..K. Corral. His brother Virgil was the town marshal.

54. On June 6, 1936, the first barrel of tequila produced in the United States rolled off the production line in Nogales, Arizona.

55. The Sonoran Desert is the most biologically diverse desert in North America.

56. Bisbee is the Nation's Southernmost mile-high city.

57. The two largest man-made lakes in the U.S. are Lake Mead and Lake Powell, both located in Arizona.

58. The longest remaining intact section of Route 66 can be found in Arizona and runs from Seligman to Topock, a total of 157 unbroken miles.

59. The 13 stripes on the Arizona flag represent the 13 original colonies of the United States.

60. The negotiations for Geronimo's final surrender took place in Skeleton Canyon, near present day Douglas, Arizona, in 1886.

61. Prescott, Arizona is home to the world's oldest rodeo, and Payson, Arizona is home to the world's oldest continuous rodeo, both of which date back to the 1880's.

62. Kartchner Caverns, near Benson, Arizona, is a massive limestone cave with 13,000 feet of passages, two rooms as long as football fields, and one of the world's longest soda straw stalactites: measuring 21 feet 3 inches.

63. You can carry a loaded firearm on your person, no permit required.

64. Arizona has one of the lowest crime rates in the U.S.A.

[pacific-coast-hockey]

@ anon -

acknowledging that i got your message and am not posting it (thank you for your very kind and sweet words about me being ripshit mad about prospect development unprovoked) but did want say that for me when it comes to like learning prospect development, so much of it just came from watching ahl hockey pretty much exclusively from 2021-2024 - excluding the avs cup run, i think i watched less than 20 nhl games for three straight seasons combined and less than 5 that didn't involve seeing the sharks in person - and being able to see in close detail how the pacific division specifically develops their pipelines.

cut for length:

so for example, watching all these pacific division teams constantly has given me a pretty good eye for how they landed at the nhl level now - lak have a youth movement because the reign have been incredibly good at developing chemistry. dustin wolf is a beast bc he'd been fighting demons in stockton (and you can say the same for most of the goalies who came out of tucson for the yotes and are now successful league-wide.) i can also see why teams struggle to develop prospects -- among other things, san jose's goaltending prospects have never been balanced correctly between starts, san diego struggles to build a balanced team, vgk just drafts super weirdly and now henderson is kind of mid.

it's not all a 1:1 fit for what's happening in the ahl vs the nhl - if that were the case edmonton would have been calling up WAY more prospects from bakersfield than they did lmao - and there a lot of varying factors in development like, who gets stuck in the chl until they're overagers, who spends time in the ncaa and for how long, which european prospects get sent back to europe to continue developing for a year and then return. but at least at the ahl level -- i have watched so many gd games with the cuda against the same 10 teams each season, so you really start to notice patterns in the teams and see the ways teams either embrace or discourage that growth/those behaviors/the patterns.

and then that's not getting into how veterans and journeymen can define the team culture (toronto and rich clune, the barracuda and john mccarthy when he was a player) and how a lot of the success of a team AND (hot take) prospect development, can be chalked up to what kind of example the vets and journeymen are setting, how many vets you retain each year etc. cuda were a nightmare position two years ago when the entire vet corps walked. so much of the reason they struggled last year was, imho, no captain and a completely new veteran group that was completely blown over the problems that have been kind of endemic san jose. ([further hot take] i think that's why a lot of the kids stuck to simmer and knyzhov during games, because those guys had been in the soup for years and could model how to play in the system at the nhl level. )

and then even more specifically for me, i do not really give care about the draft - they're not my boys until they're MY boys, so the draft is none of my business lmao. i'm way more concerned with like -- okay, these are our newest lil guys so how are we developing them, where do they fit in our system...which then ends up being, over time, how is our system evolving, where are we failing them, where did this go wrong. some of it is unfixable from the start - a guy has been skating for his whole life one way and it's not nhl caliber and it's too late for him to change - and some of it systemic to the team - a guy is too short on a team that the new gm wants to be big - and some of it as a spectator makes no damn sense and the mind of gmmg is a mystery that i grow to detest more and more every day. why did we sign valtteri pulli and then call up henry thrun for an entire season. gmmg answer my phone calls i watched that man play in person 36 times i know he's better than henry by orders of magnitude. gmmg why did you block my number

i don't have a concluding thought here... tl;dr for me learning prospect development just came from being completely lost in the ahl sauce due to being a season ticketholder for the cuda and just watching the same ten teams over and over again. you get really familiar with prospect development when you're watching that much and you do start to get a broader view and realize that not all of a team's success can be chalked up to high draft picks and drafting well. there's so many factors outside of a teenager's natural talent that can make or break prospect development if the teenager isn't nhl-caliber out of the gate. and all of that can be a deciding factor in whether a team lets a prospect walk after their elc, or whether a prospect chooses to walk after their elc, or a european decides it's not worth the money sink to keep trying in north america, or a prospect requests a buy out because the minor leagues are a difficult league to play in financially, emotionally, and physically and they want to go home before their bodies get destroyed etc etc. that was not a tl;dr and also now it is 2am. thank you for asking feel free to write in anytime.

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Amazon’s financial shell game let it create an “impossible” monopoly

I'm on tour with my new, nationally bestselling novel The Bezzle! Catch me in TUCSON (Mar 9-10), then San Francisco (Mar 13), Anaheim, and more!

For the pro-monopoly crowd that absolutely dominated antitrust law from the Carter administration until 2020, Amazon presents a genuinely puzzling paradox: the company's monopoly power was never supposed to emerge, and if it did, it should have crumbled immediately.

Pro-monopoly economists embody Ely Devons's famous aphorism that "If economists wished to study the horse, they wouldn’t go and look at horses. They’d sit in their studies and say to themselves, ‘What would I do if I were a horse?’":

https://pluralistic.net/2022/10/27/economism/#what-would-i-do-if-i-were-a-horse

Rather than using the way the world actually works as their starting point for how to think about it, they build elaborate models out of abstract principles like "rational actors." The resulting mathematical models are so abstractly elegant that it's easy to forget that they're just imaginative exercises, disconnected from reality:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/04/03/all-models-are-wrong/#some-are-useful

These models predicted that it would be impossible for Amazon to attain monopoly power. Even if they became a monopoly – in the sense of dominating sales of various kinds of goods – the company still wouldn't get monopoly power.

For example, if Amazon tried to take over a category by selling goods below cost ("predatory pricing"), then rivals could just wait until the company got tired of losing money and put prices back up, and then those rivals could go back to competing. And if Amazon tried to keep the loss-leader going indefinitely by "cross-subsidizing" the losses with high-margin profits from some other part of its business, rivals could sell those high margin goods at a lower margin, which would lure away Amazon customers and cut the supply lines for the price war it was fighting with its discounted products.

That's what the model predicted, but it's not what happened in the real world. In the real world, Amazon was able use its access to the capital markets to embark on scorched-earth predatory pricing campaigns. When diapers.com refused to sell out to Amazon, the company casually committed $100m to selling diapers below cost. Diapers.com went bust, Amazon bought it for pennies on the dollar and shut it down:

https://www.theverge.com/2019/5/13/18563379/amazon-predatory-pricing-antitrust-law

Investors got the message: don't compete with Amazon. They can remain predatory longer than you can remain solvent.

Now, not everyone shared the antitrust establishment's confidence that Amazon couldn't create a durable monopoly with market power. In 2017, Lina Khan – then a third year law student – published "Amazon's Antitrust Paradox," a landmark paper arguing that Amazon had all the tools it needed to amass monopoly power:

https://www.yalelawjournal.org/note/amazons-antitrust-paradox

Today, Khan is chair of the FTC, and has brought a case against Amazon that builds on some of the theories from that paper. One outcome of that suit is an unprecedented look at Amazon's internal operations. But, as the Institute for Local Self-Reliance's Stacy Mitchell describes in a piece for The Atlantic, key pieces of information have been totally redacted in the court exhibits:

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2024/02/amazon-profits-antitrust-ftc/677580/

The most important missing datum: how much money Amazon makes from each of its lines of business. Amazon's own story is that it basically breaks even on its retail operation, and keeps the whole business afloat with profits from its AWS cloud computing division. This is an important narrative, because if it's true, then Amazon can't be forcing up retail prices, which is the crux of the FTC's case against the company.

Here's what we know for sure about Amazon's retail business. First: merchants can't live without Amazon. The majority of US households have Prime, and 90% of Prime households start their ecommerce searches on Amazon; if they find what they're looking for, they buy it and stop. Thus, merchants who don't sell on Amazon just don't sell. This is called "monopsony power" and it's a lot easier to maintain than monopoly power. For most manufacturers, a 10% overnight drop in sales is a catastrophe, so a retailer that commands even a 10% market-share can extract huge concessions from its suppliers. Amazon's share of most categories of goods is a lot higher than 10%!

What kind of monopsony power does Amazon wield? Well, for one thing, it is able to levy a huge tax on its sellers. Add up all the junk-fees Amazon charges its platform sellers and it comes out to 45-51%:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/04/25/greedflation/#commissar-bezos

Competitive businesses just don't have 45% margins! No one can afford to kick that much back to Amazon. What is a merchant to do? Sell on Amazon and you lose money on every sale. Don't sell on Amazon and you don't get any business.

The only answer: raise prices on Amazon. After all, Prime customers – the majority of Amazon's retail business – don't shop for competitive prices. If Amazon wants a 45% vig, you can raise your Amazon prices by a third and just about break even.

But Amazon is wise to that: they have a "most favored nation" rule that punishes suppliers who sell goods more cheaply in rival stores, or even on their own site. The punishments vary, from banishing your products to page ten million of search-results to simply kicking you off the platform. With publishers, Amazon reserves the right to lower the prices they set when listing their books, to match the lowest price on the web, and paying publishers less for each sale.

That means that suppliers who sell on Amazon (which is anyone who wants to stay in business) have to dramatically hike their prices on Amazon, and when they do, they also have to hike their prices everywhere else (no wonder Prime customers don't bother to search elsewhere for a better deal!).

Now, Amazon says this is all wrong. That 45-51% vig they claim from business customers is barely enough to break even. The company's profits – they insist – come from selling AWS cloud service. The retail operation is just a public service they provide to us with cross-subsidy from those fat AWS margins.

This is a hell of a claim. Last year, Amazon raked in $130 billion in seller fees. In other words: they booked more revenue from junk fees than Bank of America made through its whole operation. Amazon's junk fees add up to more than all of Meta's revenues:

https://s2.q4cdn.com/299287126/files/doc_financials/2023/q4/AMZN-Q4-2023-Earnings-Release.pdf

Amazon claims that none of this is profit – it's just covering their operating expenses. According to Amazon, its non-AWS units combined have a one percent profit margin.

Now, this is an eye-popping claim indeed. Amazon is a public company, which means that it has to make thorough quarterly and annual financial disclosures breaking down its profit and loss. You'd think that somewhere in those disclosures, we'd find some details.

You'd think so, but you'd be wrong. Amazon's disclosures do not break out profits and losses by segment. SEC rules actually require the company to make these per-segment disclosures:

https://scholarship.law.stjohns.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=3524&context=lawreview#:~:text=If%20a%20company%20has%20more,income%20taxes%20and%20extraordinary%20items.

That rule was enacted in 1966, out of concern that companies could use cross-subsidies to fund predatory pricing and other anticompetitive practices. But over the years, the SEC just…stopped enforcing the rule. Companies have "near total managerial discretion" to lump business units together and group their profits and losses in bloated, undifferentiated balance-sheet items:

https://www.ucl.ac.uk/bartlett/public-purpose/publications/2021/dec/crouching-tiger-hidden-dragons

As Mitchell points you, it's not just Amazon that flouts this rule. We don't know how much money Google makes on Youtube, or how much Apple makes from the App Store (Apple told a federal judge that this number doesn't exist). Warren Buffett – with significant interest in hundreds of companies across dozens of markets – only breaks out seven segments of profit-and-loss for Berkshire Hathaway.

Recall that there is one category of data from the FTC's antitrust case against Amazon that has been completely redacted. One guess which category that is! Yup, the profit-and-loss for its retail operation and other lines of business.

These redactions are the judge's fault, but the real fault lies with the SEC. Amazon is a public company. In exchange for access to the capital markets, it owes the public certain disclosures, which are set out in the SEC's rulebook. The SEC lets Amazon – and other gigantic companies – get away with a degree of secrecy that should disqualify it from offering stock to the public. As Mitchell says, SEC chairman Gary Gensler should adopt "new rules that more concretely define what qualifies as a segment and remove the discretion given to executives."

Amazon is the poster-child for monopoly run amok. As Yanis Varoufakis writes in Technofeudalism, Amazon has actually become a post-capitalist enterprise. Amazon doesn't make profits (money derived from selling goods); it makes rents (money charged to people who are seeking to make a profit):

https://pluralistic.net/2023/09/28/cloudalists/#cloud-capital

Profits are the defining characteristic of a capitalist economy; rents are the defining characteristic of feudalism. Amazon looks like a bazaar where thousands of merchants offer goods for sale to the public, but look harder and you discover that all those stallholders are totally controlled by Amazon. Amazon decides what goods they can sell, how much they cost, and whether a customer ever sees them. And then Amazon takes $0.45-51 out of every dollar. Amazon's "marketplace" isn't like a flea market, it's more like the interconnected shops on Disneyland's Main Street, USA: the sign over the door might say "20th Century Music Company" or "Emporium," but they're all just one store, run by one company.

And because Amazon has so much control over its sellers, it is able to exercise power over its buyers. Amazon's search results push down the best deals on the platform and promote results from more expensive, lower-quality items whose sellers have paid a fortune for an "ad" (not really an ad, but rather the top spot in search listings):

https://pluralistic.net/2023/11/29/aethelred-the-unready/#not-one-penny-for-tribute

This is "Amazon's pricing paradox." Amazon can claim that it offers low-priced, high-quality goods on the platform, but it makes $38b/year pushing those good deals way, way down in its search results. The top result for your Amazon search averages 29% more expensive than the best deal Amazon offers. Buy something from those first four spots and you'll pay a 25% premium. On average, you need to pick the seventeenth item on the search results page to get the best deal:

https://scholarship.law.bu.edu/faculty_scholarship/3645/

For 40 years, pro-monopoly economists claimed that it would be impossible for Amazon to attain monopoly power over buyers and sellers. Today, Amazon exercises that power so thoroughly that its junk-fee revenues alone exceed the total revenues of Bank of America. Amazon's story – that these fees barely stretch to covering its costs – assumes a nearly inconceivable level of credulity in its audience. Regrettably – for the human race – there is a cohort of senior, highly respected economists who possess this degree of credulity and more.

Of course, there's an easy way to settle the argument: Amazon could just comply with SEC regs and break out its P&L for its e-commerce operation. I assure you, they're not hiding this data because they think you'll be pleasantly surprised when they do and they don't want to spoil the moment.

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/03/01/managerial-discretion/#junk-fees

Image: Doc Searls (modified) https://www.flickr.com/photos/docsearls/4863121221/

CC BY 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/

[spacetimewithstuartgary]

Niagara fireball event leads to discovery of tiniest known asteroid

In an international study led by Western University and Lowell Observatory, scientists describe a pioneering, integrative approach for studying near-Earth asteroids based largely on a November 2022 fireball event that dropped meteorites in the Niagara region.

The space scientists determined the composition and size of Asteroid 2022 WJ1 (WJ1) before it fractured upon entering Earth's atmosphere by comparing Arizona-based telescopic observations to video captured by Western's Southern Ontario Meteor Network cameras of the fireball (an unusually bright meteor) on November 19, 2022.

The study, published today in The Planetary Science Journal, is significant not only because it reveals key details about WJ1, the smallest asteroid in space to be characterized to date, but also for establishing the methodology for studying other space objects that impact Earth. This is the first time telescope observation and camera captures have been used to study the same space object.

The size of WJ1 was determined with the 4.3-meter Lowell Discovery Telescope (LDT) in Arizona. Observations from the LDT show the surface of WJ1 was rich in silica, meaning it had a medium-to-high albedo (reflected light). Astronomers use the reflected light to calculate the diameter, which was in the range of 40 to 60 cm (16 to 27 inches), making it the smallest asteroid on record.

Combining two techniques

"This is only the sixth asteroid discovered before impact," said Denis Vida, Western physics and astronomy adjunct professor. "Our new approach, discovering an asteroid through space observation and then subsequently observing it with cameras from the ground, allowed us to confirm that our estimates match well to estimates derived using a completely different approach."

Using Western's meteor camera network, Western space scientists captured the asteroid as it entered the atmosphere above London ending near St. Catharines. Modeling based on Western's fireball observations gives the same initial diameter and composition estimate of the asteroid as was found by LDT. The fireball network and telescopic methods also tightly agree on the determination of WJ1's orbit prior to its arrival on Earth.

"This is only the second time that an asteroid has been meaningfully characterized with telescopes prior to it impacting the Earth," said Teddy Kareta, postdoctoral associate, Lowell Observatory. "It's a testament to our good luck and preparation, but it's also due to the community that cares about keeping the Earth safe from these impactors learning to work together better."

The telescopic and fireball camera data both suggest WJ1 fits into the S-chondrite category of astronomical objects, which are stony bodies rich in silica (thus the "S" designation). They are among the oldest bodies in the solar system and comprise the most common type of meteorite to hit Earth.

"This first-ever comparison between telescopic and fireball camera data is extremely exciting, and means we'll be able to characterize the next asteroid to impact the Earth in even better detail," said Kareta.

Likely, not all WJ1's fragments burned up in Earth's atmosphere. While initial meteorite searches and some Niagara region residents have searched for meteorite pieces, none have been found so far. Much of the predicted fall area is underwater in Lake Ontario. For the fall area on land, there are no plans to do any further official searching.

"Two years on, any meteorites that fell on land will have blended in with the landscape," said Phil McCausland, a Western Earth sciences adjunct professor and Meteor Physics Group researcher. "That said, there are people in the area who are searching and know what to look for. We may still get lucky and find a meteorite or two from this fall in the coming months and years."

A fortuitous path

WJ1 was first discovered by the Catalina Sky Survey in Tucson, Arizona in November 2022. Soon after, astronomers predicted the object would impact Earth within three hours. This offered just enough time for scientists to telescopically observe the object while it was still in space. It also gave astronomers time to gather the asteroid's precise position and motion to refine its orbit.

Together, those factors allowed for a more accurate determination of where the asteroid would enter Earth's atmosphere—over the Great Lakes, on the border of the United States and Canada. The predicted impact site proved fortuitous, falling right in the middle of Western's network of meteor-observing cameras in the same region.

The few hours of advance warning about the asteroid impact allowed several members of the Western Meteor Physics Group and Western's Institute for Earth and Space Exploration time to drive and find clear weather to watch the incoming object, the first time in history that observers were alerted to see a natural fireball.

Western physics and astronomy professor Paul Wiegert, a co-author on the study, was alerted early enough to see the fireball around 3:30 a.m.

"I watched from Brescia Hill on the Western campus. Though cold and windy, the hill had a clear view to the east, where I expected to see only a distant flash. Then the fireball suddenly appeared, passing almost overhead. It was easily visible between broken clouds and noticeably orange-red," Wiegert said following the event.

The LDT, stationed near Flagstaff, Ariz., was ideal for telescope viewing. Its capacity for rapid and stable tracking meant it could keep up with small and fast-moving near-Earth asteroids. Kareta, who just happened to be scheduled to observe with the LDT that night, imaged the asteroid with his team for about one hour before it was lost in the shadow of Earth.

"At the time that we lost the asteroid—when it got too dim to be seen in our images—we had the telescope moving at five degrees per second to try to keep up with it. That's fast enough that most other telescopes would have had to give up considerably earlier," said Kareta.

"It's tremendously fortuitous that this asteroid happened to fly over Arizona's dark skies at night before burning up over Western's excellent camera network. It's hard to imagine better circumstances to do this kind of research."

TOP IMAGE: A timelapse image of the fireball event from start to finish. Credit: Western Meteor Group

LOWER IMAGE: A sequence of three images showing 2022 WJ1 streaking through the LMI field of view. Each of the individual streaks are how far WJ1 moved in an individual ten-second-long image. Credit: Teddy Kareta/Lowell Observatory

[skz-pixie]

~♪~ !! BASIC !!

STAGE NAME -  Pixie | 픽시

BIRTH NAME – Fei Kai

LEGAL NAME – Fei Kai

KOREAN NAME -  Pei Kai | 카이페이

CHINESE NAME – Fei Kai | 凱飛

ENGLISH NAME – Kai Fei

NICKNAMES – Fairy, Katy, nation’s girlfriend

BIRTHDAY – November 8th, 1999

ZODIAC – Scorpio | Pig

BIRTHPLACE – Changsha, Hunan Province, China

HOMETOWN – Tucson, Arizona

ETHNICITY - Asian (Korean/Japanese on her mother's side - Chinese on her father's)

NATIONALITY – Chinese

LANGUAGES – Native: Chinese (Mandarin), Korean, English. Fluent: Thai, Japanese, Hindi. Learning: Spanish, Indonesian, Chinese (Cantonese)

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

~♪~ !! PHYSICAL !!

HEIGHT – 160 cm | 5’3”

WEIGHT – 40 kg | 88 lbs

BLOOD TYPE – O-

PIERCINGS – Both lobe piercings, tongue

TATTOOS - None

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

~♪~ !! CLAIMS !!

FACE CLAIM – Jung Wheein and Hwang Yeji

VOCAL CLAIM – Jung Wheein

VOCAL CLAIM - Chuu

DANCE CLAIM – Redy

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

~♪~ !! STATICS !!

DANCE : 9.5/10

VOCAL :10 /10

RAP : 8/10

STAGE PRESENCE : 9/10

VARIETY : 7/10

SONGWRITING : 9/10

PRODUCING : 8.5/10

CHREOGRAPHY : 5/10

ACTING : 9/10

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

~♪~ !! CAREER !!

PROFESSION - Idol

GROUP - Stray Kids

LABEL- CUBE ENTERTAINMENT (Former)JYP ENTERTAINMENT (CURRENT)

TRAINING PERIOD – 4 years total (2 Cube, 2  JYP)

UNIT - Vocalracha

SKZOO ANIMAL - Animal -> Peacock, Name -> Blues

REPRESENTATIVE EMOJIS -  🦚, ⏳

INDIVIDUAL FANDOM - Feiries

SIGNATURE -

She lived in Korea until the age of 3 after her parents fled China to have more children

She has an older brother, a younger brother, and a younger sister, along with 2 nieces and a nephew

Her parents are rich – her father is the head of the American wing of Samsung and her mother is a Patent Attorney

She had a pet macaw as a child, but it passed when she turned 7 due to old age

Her father always worked from home, so Kai is closer with her father

She was kidnapped for 4 hours when she was 6 years old

Was a biter until the age of 7

Her little sister debuted in the girl group IVE

Her older brother is a Neurosurgeon

Her little brother debuted in the boygroup ENHYPEN in 2020

Was scouted as a child model but her parents refused to put their 5 year old in makeup

Is very close with her family

She has several pain inducing conditions - Type 1 diabetes, Lupus, CFS and CPS, and endometriosis. She is in remission for Lupus, but the public does know about all of the disorders. She also is outspoken about her ED, and encouraging people to eat what they need.

She used to do mukbangs for a VERY short period of time (1 livestream) until she found out about her diabetes late, having found out at 21 years old. She just thought it was normal to pass out after meals. She found out about her lupus just 2 months later from a flare up.

Taglist: @mynameisnotlaura, @palindrome969, @treehouse-mouse, @galaxy4489

Masterlist link --> click here

[douglasfur365]

No.13 Haiden 2024

This brings me to my last shoot of 2024. Remember when I mentioned a few posts ago I love when people reach out, well, for the record I love working with people who know what they want. I enjoy the process of art directing a shoot, but I was right in the middle of working on one when Haiden and I did this and to have her come in with such confidence about what she wanted from wardrobe on down was wonderful. On top of that she had such a way with posing that frankly made my job simple. I edited and delivered almost double the promised about, entirely because I just could not decide and it hurt my heart to leave certain shots out. So Haiden really brought it, but I was also give a big thanks because while editing these images I was inspired to take the basis of these and run with a concept that might just be my major focus in 2025 and I cannot wait.

[takeiteasyonmeimstilllearning]

hot take on a real life Jigen

I know that Monkey punch modeled Jigen on James Coburn, but hear me out. Robert Mitchum is Jigens spirit animal.

1stly, voice. They have the same timber. (Idk what else to call it) I would definitely say epcar and Mitchum are in the same category. Kobayashi is similar too but he is more animated, going into falsetto and such. I also think if jigen sang he would be baritone and talk-sing his way through lyrics.

2ndly, Mitchum's grumpy old man vibe just radiate Jigen imo.

Mitchum quotes:

They got so they wanted me to take some of my clothes off in the pictures. I objected to this, so I put on some weight and looked like a Bulgarian wrestler when I took my shirt off.

The only difference between me and my fellow actors is that I've spent more time in jail.

I gave up being serious about making pictures around the time I made a film with Greer Garson and she took a hundred and twenty-five takes to say no.

[on his acting talents] Listen. I got three expressions: looking left, looking right and looking straight ahead.

People think I have an interesting walk. Hell, I'm just trying to hold my gut in.

When I drop dead and they rush to the drawer, there's going to be nothing in it but a note saying 'later'.

I never take any notice of reviews - unless a critic has thought up some new way of describing me. That old one about my lizard eyes and anteater nose and the way I sleep my way through pictures is so hackneyed now.

Years ago, I saved up a million dollars from acting, a lot of money in those days, and I spent it all on a horse farm in Tucson. Now when I go down there, I look at that place and I realize my whole acting career adds up to a million dollars worth of horse shit.

I never changed anything, except my socks and my underwear. And I never did anything to glorify myself or improve my lot. I took what came and did the best I could with it.

[asked what jail was like] It's like Palm Springs without the riff-raff.

John Wayne had four-inch lifts in his shoes. He had the overheads on his boat accommodated to fit him. He had a special roof put in his station wagon. The son-of-a-bitch, they probably buried him in his goddamn lifts.

There just isn't any pleasing some people. The trick is to stop trying.

Sure I was glad to see John Wayne win the Oscar. I'm always glad to see the fat lady win the Cadillac on television, too.

I kept the same suit for six years - and the same dialog. We just changed the title of the picture and the leading lady.

[asked why he took on an 18-hour mini-series] It promised a year of free lunches.

How do I keep fit? I lay down a lot.

[1969] How the hell did I get into this picture anyway? I kept reading in the papers that I was going to do it, but when they sent me the script I just tossed it on the heap with the rest of them. But somehow, one Monday morning, here I was. How the hell do these things happen to a man?

[1948] I'm a natural hermit. I've been in constant motion of escape all my life. I never really found the right corner to hide in.

[1968] The Rin Tin Tin method is good enough for me. That dog never worried about motivation or concepts and all that junk.

[on working with Faye Dunaway] When I got here I walked in thinking I was a star and then I found I was supposed to do everything the way she says. Listen, I'm not going to take any temperamental whims from anyone, I just take a long walk and cool off. If I didn't do that, I know I'd wind up dumping her on her derrière.

[asked what he looks for in a script before accepting a job] Days off.

[on Jane Russell] Miss Russell was a very strong character. Very good-humored when she wasn't being cranky.

They think I don't know my lines. That's not true. I'm just too drunk to say 'em.

Look me dead in the eye and Tell me this isn't jigen