There was a House hearing, and the USSS director resigned.
There were no good answers provided in the hearing. Complacency and sloppiness of procedure seem to be the baseline answer, but pinpointing names of who exactly on the ground failed is difficult for the public.
Something I have encountered with protective situations, and which I haven't seen addressed anywhere regarding Trump is why the sightline to the buildings weren't simply blocked.
It is impossible to secure every single location, but if there is a cluster of buildings, you park a semi-truck and trailer in the line of sight (or put up a green fence, or whatever) and then you have the much easier job of securing your blocking.
But I guess that's a really in the weeds.
There are rollable protective glass shields, as an example. In a few minutes I was able to find some rated up to UL 8, which is able to stop 7.62x51, and very easily to stop the lesser 5.56mm. I'm not seriously looking to buy these, so I'm sure I've looked into it much less than the USSS.
UL 8 isn't rated for .30-06, but will block at least a great majority of possible firearms.
Fair use is determined in a court. If somebody sues you, you can't just say "Nah actually it's fair use" and then not show up to court.
The C&D letter wasn't a lawsuit yet, but a warning that one would be coming. The mod team had the choice of complying or going to court, which costs time and money. In court, even if they ended up winning, it's not guaranteed that the dev team would be granted legal fees. Atop that, who wants to spend the next few months to years stressing on a court fight?
It's an unfortunately lopsided situation where a C&D is enough to make most small time projects fold at the prospect of even having to go to court.
It's a soggy piece of cardboard that "they" give you at birth and you have to hold onto it with your tiny baby hand, and then you have to keep it until you're like 90 years old. If this soggy, easy to lose or destroy card gets lost or destroyed you have to prove to the magically animated statue of Abraham Lincoln himself that you're American to get a replacement.
This card is explicitly not an ID card, but the only thing it ever gets used for is as an ID card.
It seems that opinions on the movie are quite...split down the middle.
Ben Stiller seems to have a track record of playing characters where he is the butt of the jokes and I really appreciate that. His catalog of roles is a great starting point for a list of comedy gold movies.
This is blasphemy, but I prefer Ronin for my fix of a 90s crime movie with grounded, high planning gunfights.
Heat has fantastic gunfights. The the opening hit on the armored truck and the bank heist shootout is top notch, but I literally can't remember the rest of the movie.
Ronin's plot and quiet moments are as engaging as the shootouts.
[Long, overly serious rant about the meaning of the Fallout monologue, and how it applied to humanity's inherent violence rather than the specific means]
That one rusty door opening sound.
Random Trek Review: I am going to review random episodes of Trek shows using an online tool. I decided to start with random episodes of Voyager.
https://people.duke.edu/~noor/trek.html
It picked S04E07 ‘Scientific Method’.
The episode had something of an awkward start with Seven conducting unapproved “upgrades” inside the ship and getting a tisk tisking from Torres about working as a team.
This scene was followed by Torres having a secret rendezvous with Tom Paris. This episode is the beginning of their romantic relationship, and the episode wastes no time showing them aggressively sucking face. This was actually the plot teaser, as the two were being watched by some sort of mysterious malevolent pervert. At first we might suspect it is Rick Berman, but the episode soon reveals the truth.
Not long after, Chakotey and Neelix both fall ill in separate incidents. Chakotey ages rapidly and Neelix takes on traits of his grandfather’s species.
All the while Janeway is suffering from intense headaches which are making her surly and quick tempered.
The Doctor discovers the truth- It’s aliens.
Invisible aliens are aboard Voyager and performing medical experiments on the crew.
The aliens mostly disable the Doc, but he manages to communicate with Seven, who is then able to reveal the aliens’ existence to Janeway.
Janeway after long suffering from the alien induced headaches, quickly goes full Insaneway and steers Voyager into a sun, locking the controls unless the aliens leave. They do, and Voyager pulls out of its suicide course just in time.
This episode was immediately recognizable to me because the visuals of it are quite striking. They have lived inside my head ever since the first time I caught this episode on TV. The image of invisible aliens needling the crew with mysterious experiments is very creepy. This was an early example of the Doc and Seven working together to carry the show, which was unexpected so early. The makeup effects to age Chakotey weren’t exactly realistic, but they were very well done in a kind of over the top theatrical way. As for any kind of high concept idea or moral dilemma, I don’t really think the episode had any. There was an attempt by the alien’s dialog to create one as the alien mentioned that what they were doing to Voyager’s crew was medical research that would help it’s people, but the benefits were so nebulously defined and the refusal of Voyager to participate didn’t seem like it would ruin the only chance at survival for the aliens. It seemed more like Voyager was a test subject of opportunity, which made the refusal to cooperate a moral slam dunk. For added measure the alien, bizarrely assured Janeway that it wouldn’t kill very many crew members and would “merely” cripple most of them for life. Just in case anyone in the audience didn’t know who to root for. Janeway’s plan of steering Voyager into the sun didn’t seem particularly clever. It wasn’t a bluff. It wasn’t a fakeout. By all indications, she was really going to do it.
At least Tom and B'Elanna got a nice closing moment sharing a healthy salad at the end.
And?