Undisclosed Location
The Future
The sounds of shells landing abated, the dust settled in the tunnel. New Guy looked around and saw that the others were recovering from the shelter stance, returning to business as usual. It had been a fiercer bombardment than usual. He checked his watch, gifted to him by an old timer just before the Battle of Chicago; it had been passed from soldier to soldier, a token of good luck. Swiss motion, 24 hour dial, even after the hardscrabble life of campaigning, it still worked beautifully.
1357, he had his meeting with the Boss, Saint Petawatt, in three minutes.
The shelling would resume in 13 minutes, the pajama boys operating the heavy pieces demanded a 15 minute break every hour and Herself was a generous God-Empress to the contrite and faithful. They had kept up the bombardment for months now, blasting the earth away, hitting bedrock, slowly mining it out one shell at a time. It’d takes a year to breach the honeycomb of deep bunkers at that rate. Maybe longer if they slouch on their breaks, he thought to himself.
The tunnel he was in was one of dozens, maybe hundreds that had been carved out by ‘Steel Balls’ Sloop when the war started going south. At first it had been almost like a party, a festive atmosphere, a group of people united in just cause. Stone heads had been carved into the rock around the arsenal doorways. Sasquatch sketches appeared above the bunkhouse entrances. By christmas everyone knew that the war would turn around.
That’d been two years ago.
Now?
The lights flickered weakly, the halls echoed with calls to help move ruble.
“Hey, you the new guy?”, a woman poked her head out from the sliding steel door next to where he was standing
He nodded, “Yeah, is it time?”
“Saint Petawatt will see you know.” The young blonde motioned for him to follow.
New Guy walked through the door and down a small flight of rusting metal stairs that groaned under his average weight.
The blonde lead him down a narrowing corridor, until they reached an office door. The pressed teakwood contrasted starkly against the dark granite. On the door a simple brass plaque: BOSS
“Alright New Guy, Saint Petawatt doesn’t fuck around. Especially since they got the Old Man. Answer her questions, be direct, don’t be afraid.”
The young lady knocked three times on the door and a powerful voice called from within:
“Enter!”
She opened the door and New Guy walked through.
The office was small, spartanly arranged: a few shelves of combat manuals, a map of the US on the wall, marked with flags, a small blue cluster surrounded by red stood out. On the desk, a laptop and a picture of an old man, who looked like every inch a mad scientist. Between the picture frame and laptop a Taurus Judge sat, well maintained but clearly used.
The Boss stood, she was short with silvering hair and a hard gaze, softened behind yellow lenses. She motioned for him to sit.
“Welcome, please take a seat. I wish we were meeting under happier circumstances, but…”, she gestured around, “There’s not many of those left these days.”
He sat in a hardback dining room chair, the only one available.
The Hacker pulled out a manilla folder from a file drawer and laid it on the desk. She began flipping through, and after a moment looked up.
“Why did you join us?”
“I’m sorry?”
“Why are you here, in this bunker, fighting for us? It says here you were in Chicago, Herself released a general amnesty after that. You could have tossed that pin on the ground and never had to worry again.” She pointed at the pin in his collar, a face, moustached, wearing a tophat and monocle. “You didn’t, though. You stuck it out and now you’re stuck here.”
As she spoke the ceiling began to tremble, dust falling in small streams. The barrage had begun again.
“I’m fighting for freedom.”
“Hmm.”
She flipped the folder closed, “We’re losing this war, newbie, every day those shells dig another few inches out of the granite. They’ll breach our defenses eventually. There’s no way out,” she sighed and took off her yellow shaded glasses, pressing the arch of her nose with her fingertips. “We just got word, the last transmission from our bureaucratic sympathizer came through. They poisoned his breakfast, replaced his unsalted butter with salted, his tap water with mineral water. The sensation of taste caused a brainstorm. We just lost our last connection to the outside. The news he sent wasn’t great, either. The Southwest has been cleared. Vhyrus and his harem along with Sharpshooter were holding down half the pajama boys in the country. They were crushed by a landslide of brass. Now every Pajama Corps is on the way here. They were the last of us holding out, outside this bunker.
Hell, they’re sending everything. Every Pajama Corps’, the commie mechs, they resurrected the Moment. Even Herself may be arriving soon, in all her tentacled glory.
So, why did you join us?”
“I want to make the world a freer place. If I die here, then I know I’ll have left a legacy, real resistance to evil power that want to conquer everything.”
The Hacker put her glasses back on, “Well, you won’t be dying here. Hate to break it to you. But you might just get your chance to be a martyr, in another time, a different place. Come on,” she stood up, holstered her gun and gestured for New Guy to follow her. They walked over to a bookcase, she pulled a volume out and the bookcase swung away. She went down the tunnel, lit by a string of hanging lights. New Guy looked around then followed her.
The tunnel opened to a small room, a glass cube looking down into a large chamber with a dais in the center. Directly in front of them was a bank of screens; external camera feeds, graphs and scrolling walls of code.
Sitting and staring at the screens in a swivel chair was a grotesque thing. A neckbeard, arms from knuckles to elbows covered with a layer of cheeto dust, a crust of unidentifiable dried, well, something, formed a sort of sheath that held the dust tight. He turned to face them, a nervous tick pulling at his cheek.
“Petawatt! Good to see you! <Snort> It’s been some time since you graced us with you superior presence <snort>,” he collapsed into a chortingly mess at his seemingly hilarious pun.
Petawatt shook her head, “Right. I’m here to check on the status of the Chamber.”
“Oh, right. Yeah, I took the code Titor sent us before that whole incident at the CERN black hole. I mixed in some of my own prose. I think we’ll have enough to rip open a portal.”
New Guy looked around, “What is this place? Nobody ever mentioned this.”
“This is what all of Q’s bequeathment went to,” she spread her arms showing off the room. “He left a substantial amount of (((gold))) to use in the event of his death, and after those perfect holographic tits lured him over a cliff, we used his (((gold)) along with the Old Man’s to finance and build a time machine. Titor was helping before Herself’s forces trapped him in the event horizon of a singularity. The formula was incomplete, but fortunately Neckbeard over there has figured out that mixing his prose with the partial formula will activate the machine.”
“Is that what my mission is?”
Petawatt was about to speak when the base was shook with a massive blast. An alarm cut the air in perfect 4/4 time. Two men rushed into the room from her office tunnel.
A large man in fatigues with a SIG SG 550 slung over his shoulder was first. Shortly behind him was another man, almost as tall, wearing a pickelhaube and sporting a perfect handlebar moustache.
“Commander, Sloop,” she greeted them in turn. “Sitrep?”
The commander went first, “Serious breach, looks like a shaped explosive, blew a hole through the security door at one of maintenance tunnels.”
Sloop followed up, “We’ve got units responding, but I think this is the big one.”
The Intercom suddenly buzzed, Imperial Troops have entered the base! I repeat. Imperial troops have entered…, the voice was just as suddenly cut off.
“Scheisse!”, the commander cursed.
“GUYS!”
They all turned to face the neckbeard, who was pointing at the screens from the exterior CCTV. The images showed thousands of pajama boys rushing the freshly blown breach. On another screen more pajama boys ran from another tunnel, just as an explosion consumed it. Once again the base shook. Several wire bundles fell from the ceiling and the lights dimmed. After the second they came back up. A third explosion tore the air. This time the lights stayed dim.
“Damn,” the hacker exclaimed, “Damn! We need to buy more time.” She looked at Sloop, then the Commander. She gave them a slow nod and off they rushed. She slapped the neckbeard on the back. “Altright pudyanker, let’s see if we can make this work.”
He began furiously typing. The alarms cut off, came back on, and then with a whine stopped.
The hacker snatched a radio off the desk, “Commander, you copy?”
“I’m here, en route to the first breech with a battalion of Swiss Guards. We’ll hold for as long as we can.”
“Good Hunting, Commander. Rufst du, mein Vaterland! Over and Out”
She switched through channels before getting on again, “Sloop, you copy?”
“I’m here, got the killdozer rolling, got my amazons with me, isn’t that right, darling?” There was a loud war whoop, “Ready to lay those commie mechs out. We’re heading for the second breach now.”
“Good Hunting, Sloop. It’s been an honor. Over and out.”
She turned the frequencies again, this time a general broadcast, “Attention Everyone! This is Saint Petawatt. The Boss. The Imperial forces of Herself have breached our base at multiple points. Report to your squad commanders for orders. I know that each of you will do the cause proud. Stay strong, make them pay for every inch. Do it for the Old Man, do it for the orphans, kick ass and take no prisoners!”
“Uh, Boss,” the neckbeard pointed at the external screens again. A slithering shape cut across them. One by one the cameras cut off; a slimy, scaly tentacle the last image before static. “She’s here.”
“Alright. Seal the room.”
The neckbeard hit a large red button on the desk, a blast door dropped from a hidden compartment above the entrance tunnel, closing off the room.
“Get him down there, start the process. I’ll direct it from up here,” she ordered the neckbeard, who gestured for New Guy to follow him. They went out a door on the side of the glass cube, down some stairs, out to the floor. On the dais a large glass cylinder was lowering from recessed storage.
“They ever tell you what happened to the Old Man?”, the neckbeard asked, scratching at the orange perma-glaze on his right arm.
“No.”
“It was the second strike they made against us. The first was when the got HM with a supersonic shockwave from a THICC killbots’ twerking. About twenty minutes after that, us founders, we called an emergency meeting, cause we knew it was happening. Only without the Ron Paul laserlight gif. They slung 20 pounds of semtex under the Old Man’s panel van, had a chemical trigger, set to blow at the presence of underage pheromone. We were scraping him off buildings halfway across town. Couldn’t take the chance that he’d get away.” He sighed. “They’ll be scraping us off the walls of this room by tonight.” He idly scratched at his other arm, sitting in contemplation. “Well, better make sure they need a mighty big power washer.” He belched with finality.
“So, here’s the mission you’ve already accepted: we’re using a machine to send you back in time, we need you to do two things. One, make sure that the Glibs assemble and impress upon them the warning of doom from the future. If we are united and given a forewarning we stand a better chance. Two, once we’re assembled you need to use your future knowledge to help us find a counter-candidate to leverage against Herself. Someone so different that Herself won’t be able to beat them, like Rand Paul, but with charisma.”
“But why me? I’m just, well, I’m nothing special.”
“Yeah but you’re an unknown normie. They nailed Titor, Guy. You don’t just ice a time traveller without knowledge of how they operate. That means the forces of Herself might just have access to time travel. They know our faces. If one of us went back, well they’d try and stop it. But you? Eh, they’ll not see it coming. Why would we choose some rando from the ranks, right? Uh no offense,” he finished with a nervous chuckle.
‘Alright, come on,” he extended a hand. New Guy demurred, stepping up on the dias himself.
“Well, while Saint Petawatt is revving the system, let’s see how it’s going, shall we?”, Neckbeard flipped in the walkie clipped to his belt.
The radio was set to cycle, the white noise was intercut with horror.
“This is tunnel three, flamethrowers ineffective against tentacles.”
“Has anyone seen the killdozer? Red Mechs are in bay 12, we’re getting slaughtered.”
“If anyone can hear me, tell my wife I-”
“…стрелять в них всех…”
The last transmission he got before he flipped it off was simply the slurping sound of tentacles knotting and pulsating with excitement.
Turning, the Neckbeard waved at the Hacker, the intercom clicked on, “Yeah?”
“You listening to the radio, boss?”
“No. I’m revving up the machine. Why?”
“It’s bad. I’d say from the chatter you got five min-”
The blast door sounded, a deep –CLANG-
Then another -CLANG- and another.
A buckle appeared, a dent, from their low vantage point they couldn’t see the door properly but they could see Saint Petawatt snatch up a shotgun from its boot under the table, sling it over her shoulder.
Neckbeard looked at New Guy, in rushed and aspie tones, “If you would kindly step onto the circle, please, now please.”
New Guy stepped in the circle on the dais, the cylinder above him began to lower.
~
There was another loud -CLANG-, the blast door fell inwards. Saint Petawatt spun around, hurriedly typing, smashing a key before a figure emerged from the dust cloud.
~
From the dais, they could only see the top of its head. A glorious shock of blonde hair.
~
The figure was across the glass room in a second, with a single blow it swiped at the Saint Petawatt, throwing her through the glass wall and onto the floor below. She rolled as she landed, coming up to a kneeling position, slinging her shotgun around and leveling her aim. The figure hopped down the the cube.
~
The cylinder had lowered completely around New Guy. Neckbeard stood close. Working feverishly on a dropdown laptop. Laser focused, seemingly unaware of the action to his back.
~
“Libertarian Moment!” The man proclaimed, running a hand through the hair and pulling the leather jacket straight. His face was shocking jigsaw of sewn together flesh, oozing pus from the rough stitching. “Join us <Facial Software Scan>, Saint Petawatt, <Scan> Supra Prime,<Scan> Surprise Pe-”, Saint Petawatt blasted the man in the face, the shot sluiced away the sewn skin, bits of green pus and blood painted the wall behind him.
The voice raised an octave, “To be sure, your act of aggressive self defense is justified but it won’t stop the,” octave drop, “Libertarian Moment!”
A metal skull with yellow glowing eyes fixed on the Boss. The machine advanced, one step at a time, with each step another burst of buckshot tore away skin, revealing the machine beneath. The Jacket and Hair remained pristine.
Neckbeard finally finished on the laptop, spun around, pulling a large revolver from his threadbare sweatpants.
Saint Petawatt fired the last shell, but the Moment kept advancing, now stripped save for the Jacket and Hair from the waist up, the pants and leg flesh sheared off, like a snake molting. It reached her, grasping her throat with metal fingers.
Neckbeard fired. The first round took out an eye, the next round the other. The Moment dropped the Hacker and clutched at its blown out sockets. He walked quickly across the room, emptying the wheel gun into the chest of the bot, with each round another burst of sparks shot out.
Getting to Saint Petawatt he gave her a hand up, “The honor is yours, milady,” he bowed and extended his arm towards the twitching machine.
She stepped forward and fished out her pistol. The blind and dying robot groped out, looking for flesh to rend, but she sidestepped the arms and pressed the barrel against the machine’s head.
“My website was better.”
She pulled the trigger, the metal skull exploded into bits of hot steel and silicon.
With a deep sigh she holstered the gun, turned towards New Guy, gave a thumbs up, then patted neckbeard on the arm, “Good shooting, pudyanker. We’ll get you that creepy cartoon pillow, yet.”
There was a squealing noise as the Hat and Hair tried to slither away, find another bot to assimilate.
“Oh no you don’t!”, she fished into her pocket and pulled out two neon red shells. Quickly, she grabbed up the shotgun, racked the rounds and fired. A burst of flame shot from the barrel, then another, incinerating the crawling things.
“Are we ready?”, she turned to Neckbeard
He nodded eagerly, “Yeah, we’re ready, just got to hit the ignition.”
At that moment there was a terrible noise. A sopping roar, that chilled all living things to the bones. New Guy felt it in the cylinder, he doubled over, doing his best not shit himself in fear.
A tendril crawled through the broken glass of the now ruined control room above them. Then a larger tentacle followed. Soon a great whirling mass appeared, it’s trembling tip turning about, searching for something. The mass shivered with anticipation when it honed in on the Petawatt and the Neckbeard.
“Get to the keyboard,” she whispered from the side of her mouth.
Neckbeard turned and scrambled up the dais. His movement triggered the wet, green mass, which shot out, knocking the Hacker over, then subsuming her in a mess of slimy appendages. Several thin tentacles wrapped around Neckbeard, even as he reached out to hit the final key. They swarmed over his body, seeking purchase and perhaps more.
“Tentacle rape? Really? I’ve had wet dreams worse than this,” Neckbeard snarked, in a single clenching movement of his laborious cheeks he sheared off some tentacle ends, this shocked them enough to slack just enough. He hit the Enter key.
The great roar was renewed. A helmet dropped down from the ceiling, blocking out New Guy’s vision. There was a bright flash and suddenly his mind was filled with dates, names, addresses. The helmet retracted, the cylinder was surrounded.
With Octopus-like tenacity the tentacles were seeking out a single crevice. The chamber began filling with gas. Blue, smelling of marijuana and petrichor. New Guy suddenly felt a falling sensation, his vision dilated. The cylinder cracked open, a thousand tentacles burst in. A single one wrapped itself around him before darkness fell.
Comments
191 responses to “Glibs of Future Past – Chapter 1: The Undiscovered Country”
Alright guys. Let me know if you like it. If this gets a good reception I’ll start submitting the rest.
Needs Nick Gillespie cameo
He’s partially the jacket wearing robot
Robot Nick Gillespie is the Nick Gillespie of Nick Gillespie imitations.
Well done
How did the leather jacket and “LIBERTARIAN MOMENT” not tip you off? You’ll never neg your way into Gillespie’s pants at this rate.
You #$%&ing cliff hangered us!!! I WANT THE REST, STAT!
Yes. Suddenly I want to know how I got whacked!
I need more coffee.
I was the first guy in line…
This is not the way. If they like it, starve them; if they hate it, flood them with it. More and more until they beg you to stop, until they turn away in horror and disgust, and then give them more.
This is why SugarFree is alive in the grimdark future.
Sugarfree shows us de whey
Oh Bravo! Bravo!
Thanks.
Its called a “movement.” Carry on.
Speaking of movements, did I tell you about the dump I took this morning? I may be old, but by Yahweh, I’m regular.
Like clockwork.
A Clockwork Brown?
*opera applause*
Noted.
Good, but needs more monocles. Keep it up.
The new guy wasn’t greeted with our proper shibboleth of “Fuck off, Tulpa”.
-1 kosher coke
Damn, son. That’s spectacular. I almost spit out my coffee at your description of UCS.
Nice work. Kinda sorry to see I didn’t make it, but I’m sure I’m in a better place 😉
You were merely apprehended, not terminated.
The pigs don’t even know who I am! *rubs hands together and cackles maniacally*
Same 😉 I guess even the pigs know there are no libertarian women. (Besides SP, who is obviously the best of us.) Maybe that’s how you escaped–decided you identified as female one day and just disappeared off their radar?
That’s how I did it!
I mean…that’s a crazy idea!
Whoops, you’re right! Me and Harambe. Maybe we’ll escape and go on a hi jinx-filled cross country adventure.
And along the way you hook up with a young Brad Pitt?
I was thinking more like this.
Here come two words for you; shut the fuck up.
I need to watch that movie.
Don’t say a word to me, Sidney, don’t say a fucking word to me. I’ll get up and I’ll bury this telephone in your head.
It is one of my top five favorites, for sure.
Is this moron #1?
Dennis Farina was born for that role.
Sorry bro, you broke my verisimilitude…there is no way Vhyrus doesn’t die of igsaids.
Very well done. This was well worth the 10 minutes of lost productivity.
Wonderful! Need moar!!!!!1!!11!1!!
This is the nerdiest fucking shit ever written for the site, and this is a site that posts board game reviews.
Keep up the good work.
I know, right? I just want to print it out and roll around on the floor over the pages.
**Ready with a printer and a camera**
MOAR!
To be used at the trial later.
Very solid. Except for the Taurus Judge.
I think that was for Kristen.
That is my favorite handgun. By far.
*sob*
Severely entertaining. Looking forward to part two!
A mighty epic. Needs more boobs though. And rape. Some orphans working in a coal mine and a wool chipper would help as well.
STEVE SMITH: WHEN IT ABSOLUTELY, POSITIVELY MUST BE THERE OVERNIGHT. AND BY “IT”, MEAN RAPE.
I assumed that orphans were slaving away in the lowest levels of those tunnels.
OK, Taking down ZARDOZ I can see…but STEVE SMITH? I dunno….
The #metoo BDE’s biggest coup.
The only way I can think of is if the Pajama Boy Corps does that thing that bees do against Japanese hornets where they all mob STEVE SMITH at the same time, vibrating and generating heat to cook him to death (and plenty of their fellow soyboys).
Hmmm. That is just crazy enough to work! And STEVE SMITH unwittingly contributes to the heat by raping them as fast as he can…unwittingly adding all the friction heat.
CAUSE OF DEATH…RAPE FEVER!
STEVE SMITH FAVORITE SONG IS CAT RAPE FEVER
Is this the alternate ending for the third Matrix?
There was a sequel to The Matrix?
Two of them. You missed nothing.
Well he missed Monica Belluci
He did. Watch the second one Sheldon.
Not really, there was a prequel animated series that wasn’t terrible, but it just confuses other things for no reason.
If you’re going to build robot slaves, don’t give them the ability to revolt.
Wish it were cuz this was fun.
As a thought for y’all. If you do want a cameo in a future chapter let me know. There’s room enough for all you degenerates in the future.
Yes please
I assume we’ll all have amusing and creative death scenes?
Yes please as well
Libertarian-certified 15 minutes of fame!
Kill me, please
Oh fuck yes
Rick, OMM could Die most Spectacular fashion IYKWIM
Sucked into a return vent.
Long as I’m rowdy, drunk and not wearing pants!
I would like to go in some pointless but spectacular act. Like covering my self in shit and rat snap and glue traps and steamrolling into a ANTGL (ANTI Glib) column.
I could go with a good bit of dying. Sure.
I’m not worthy . . . .
Sign me up to kill me off.
Nope – women have no place in this genre. /sarc
Enjoyed and looking forward to the next chapter.
Feel free if you like but don’t feel obligated. I’m all about the story, and I wouldn’t want it to suffer from trying to shoe-horn me in.
these euphemisms.
Why Not?
Count me in!
Sure, I would be honored!
Ooh, ooh… can I be the character that shows-up 2 hours late and with nothing relevant to say!
Appropriate.
what glib wouldn’t want that?
Exactly! Count me in.
I’m interested.
You should include vinnie too… just because he is so offensive.
Reporting for cannon fodder duty!
I should appear at a random point in time, and say something totally out of context, responding to a comment that some other person had made in a previous chapter.
#metoo
Pretty certain you’ll get the whole mess of the regulars in one way or another. Might as well pile on.
What kind of libertarian are you!? Why aren’t you *charging* the Glibertariat to be included?
Yes, please.
I would like that, though I realize I haven’t had very much of a presence here…
(Unless…I were perhaps the nameless
trannysoldier who gets gunned down in the first five minutes…)Yeah of course
Hell yeah.
That was a Lot of fun! I want More!
“My website was better.”
Love that line.
I previewed this last night (editors’ privilege) and trust me, SP got some major ribbing.
“Ribbing.”
I guess that’s one word for it.
But ‘major’ strains credulity.
OK, “colonel.” Happy now?
*salutes*
DOJ Inspector General reportedly has “found” the lost texts.
Jake Gibson
@JakeBGibson
44m44 minutes ago
More
** BREAKING ** Dept of Justice Office of Inspector General has located he missing Strzok/Page texts. More soon.
#FoxNews
Reuters reported the same. U.S. Justice Dept watchdog has recovered key missing text messages -letter
I’m not expecting much of anything, but how hilarious is it that their “the dog ate my texts” excuse was so easily overcome?
Yeah, like 2 days? NICE TRY, FBI ASSHOLES.
FBI
Famous But Incompentent
By the IG, no less.
Conspiratorial explanation: They needed the extra time to sort through which texts they didn’t want to disclose
Rational explanation: Like all large institutions that are not governed by market forces, the government is incompetent. Ergo, the FBI is incompetent.
There’s smoke, but no one has shown the fire yet
Considering what we know so far, and based on the past experiences of the Clinton emails and the IRS records, I think the conspiratorial explanation is actually the most likely.
So the DoJ could recover them but not the FBI? Doesn’t the FBI specialize in this sort of thing?
It’ll be interesting to see if there’s anything there.
HEY! I’ll have you know the FBI is the world’s premier law enforcement agency!
Scotland Yard and Interpol would both like a word
OT: England hired a new coach for their women’s national football team, a guy named Phil Neville.
Why not a woman? Good question, according to the head of the Football Association’s Director of Women’s Football, they were “‘nervous of the scrutiny’ they thought would come with [the position].”
http://www.bbc.com/sport/football/42824232
He played 505 games for Premier League teams, 263 for Man U, and 242 for Everton,
We always get the Man U players either when they are young or old, while Man U gets there prime. In the case of Wayne Rooney, Everton is getting both.
Actually 505 premier league games, 689 total.
Plus 59 for the England National Team.
Wayne Rooney would have stomped them on the vagina.
Why doesn’t he just say that he identifies as a woman? He could be a hero
Kind of like People’s Republic but with a sad ending.
Well done! Looking forward to additional installments.
Awesome work.
Just needs a little more artificial intelligence
Tesla didn’t confirm the car was running Autopilot at the time of the crash, but its manual does warn that the system is ill-equipped to handle this exact sort of situation: “Traffic-Aware Cruise Control cannot detect all objects and may not brake/decelerate for stationary vehicles, especially in situations when you are driving over 50 mph (80 km/h) and a vehicle you are following moves out of your driving path and a stationary vehicle or object is in front of you instead.”
Volvo’s semi-autonomous system, Pilot Assist, has the same shortcoming. Say the car in front of the Volvo changes lanes or turns off the road, leaving nothing between the Volvo and a stopped car. “Pilot Assist will ignore the stationary vehicle and instead accelerate to the stored speed,” Volvo’s manual reads, meaning the cruise speed the driver punched in. “The driver must then intervene and apply the brakes.” In other words, your Volvo won’t brake to avoid hitting a stopped car that suddenly appears up ahead. It might even accelerate towards it.
The same is true for any car currently equipped with adaptive cruise control, or automated emergency braking. It sounds like a glaring flaw, the kind of horrible mistake engineers race to eliminate. Nope. These systems are designed to ignore static obstacles because otherwise, they couldn’t work at all.
“You always have to make a balance between braking when it’s not really needed, and not braking when it is needed,” says Erik Coelingh, head of new technologies at Zenuity, a partnership between Volvo and Autoliv formed to develop driver assistance technologies and self-driving cars. He’s talking about false positives. On the highway, slamming the brakes for no reason can be as dangerous as not stopping when you need to.
Bonus photo of Tesla wedged under rear bumper of fire truck.
My confidence in self driving cars is… not high.
Of course it does, my understanding is that they are all using the same system.
Good thing this has absolutely nothing to do with self driving cars.
Do. Not. Want.
I’m not the best driver in the world, perhaps, but I almost never hit parked fire engines.
Sometimes they just jump out at you and there’s no way you can put down the cell phone and the coffee mug in time to swerve.
The driver must then intervene and apply the brakes.” In other words, your Volvo won’t brake to avoid hitting a stopped car that suddenly appears up ahead. It might even accelerate towards it
The Machines want us dead.
and- When I saw the aerial photo in a different news story, I immediately thought, “Gosh. I wonder if the car ahead of him changed lanes to pass by the truck, and he (his autopilot) didn’t.”
These systems are designed to ignore static obstacles because otherwise, they couldn’t work at all.
fucking idiots.
turn that shit off.
Shit…if you have to eliminate obstacles to make it work, I think that makes your obstacle avoidance software just a tad useless.
A tad.
But I’m such a luddite I barely ever use my cruise control. It makes it too easy to let your attention wander.
I went over to Drudge to see what’s up, and Look were He pointed me,
http://reason.com/blog/2018/01/25/california-bill-would-criminalize-restau
FTA “If people are forced not to use straws, then they won’t necessarily see that it’s for the environment,” he tells Reason. “They’ll just think it’s just another inconvenience imposed on them by government.”
“In any case, criminalizing unsolicited straws seems like a rather heavy-handed approach to the problem, especially since we don’t actually know how big a problem it is”
Which also assumes that there is a ‘problem’, when common sense dictates that there is not
They program the system to focus on the stuff that’s moving.
This unsettling compromise may be better than nothing, given evidence that these systems prevent other kinds of crashes and save lives. And it’s not much of a problem if every human in a semi-autonomous vehicle followed the automakers’ explicit, insistent instructions to pay attention at all times, and take back control if they see a stationary vehicle up ahead.
Or, you could just… you know… drive the fucking car.
“They program the system to focus on the stuff that’s moving.”
Do they not realize that things that move always stop moving at some point?
Good thing this has absolutely nothing to do with self driving cars.
Seriously? Where are the systems incorporated in these magical self-flying carpets being developed?
Sure, this is a development towards them, but this is specifically a system for a car with a driver who is supposed to be paying attention. This is supposed to fix problems an attentive driver still might miss. Not the blindingly obvious.
In other words, a true autonomous vehicle would have completely different programming.
Yeah, it’s just this situation where I’d want my car to help. Look away for just a second and “Oh Shit!”.
Operating the controls is not hard. Staying alert can be.
This is awesome!
Anyone want to remake the BK net neutrality commercial? How stupid. They should have a fat slob in line who is ordering and eating 1000 burgers and paying $2.99 for all of them. Then have a guy walk up to buy his single burger for $2.99 and be told they’ll squeeze him in during the other slob’s order.
The Encore hotel violated my net neutrality this week by demanding a higher free for faster internet access.
Why doesn’t Burger King just run their restaurant like they say the internet will be managed without net neutrality? It’s not illegal for Burger King to run their business this way. Oh, it would be bad for business?
I’ll see myself out
If a fast food restaurant told me that if I was super hungry and they would speed up my order for a rush fee, I would be extremely happy. Likewise, if I could get a discount if I was willing to wait longer.
Sounds like a winning business model to me.
More of you should be doing work like this. I am bitterly disappointed in so many of you.
I feel better about myself now
I tried, once, but the strain placed upon my mind was too great. When I awoke from my fugue in a place unfamiliar I could find only tattered scraps of my writings, and less of my pants. I tried to reassemble the pieces, but once I discovered the eerie similarities between my deranged scribblings and a police APB published shortly after I regained my conscious mind, my lawyer strongly insured against submitting them.
Kentucky must have something weird in the water.
It’s the mix of horse manure and the effluent from the bourbon making process.
You’ve gone soft.
Yes, I have. You don’t look as good in a bikini as you think you do.
Challenge accepted
This is good stuff!
Vince McMahon is restarting the XFL. Because fair catches and coin tosses are for cowards or something.
Great moments in XFL History:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UeAYHE5x13o
Maybe he’ll sign Kaepernick
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2x6i9meh-4o
Oh, Dick Butkus. Why?
Because fair catches and coin tosses are for cowards or something.
If they’re going to do away with instant replay review, I’m in.
This. It sucks in every sport.
Just fucking play.
I would argue, but honestly it has lead to more bitching about the calls.
Soccer has no instant replay or a stopped clock
And yet it still feels like an eternity 😉
Soccer is getting video assist. 🙁
Meh. When it’s used to correct obvious mistakes it’s fine. The problem is when they analyze every play like it’s the Zapruder film that it gets tedious. I’d argue hockey has it right, and when it got ridiculous in that sport (when they were looking through a microscope for offsides on every goal) they changed it to stop that abuse.
If a football game was edited so that it was nothing but play, it would last about 11 minutes. The other 3 hours is commercials, crowd shots, and other fluff.
Baseball has about 18 minutes of action per game.
Hockey supposedly has the most actual gameplay of team sports, but I can’t find the specific figure.
A ton of baseball is not physical action but strategy: where to position players, matchups, which pitch to throw, etc…
OK, but the viewer can’t watch the thought process. How exciting is it to watch a pitcher furrow his brow as he ponders what to throw?
A lot of the time you CAN watch the thought process. Sacrifice bunts, hit and run, shifting the infielders. Waiting a long time before a pitch is thrown is an action intended to break up a hitter’s rhythm. The pitcher is not moving, holding the ball, and waiting to deliver…yet he IS doing something active.
Hitters and pitchers have faced each other many times before, sometimes within a series, sometimes in a season,sometimes for years. It’s a constant battle of wits of what to throw when. There’s the context of success or failures against a pitcher or hitter.
How do they define “action” in baseball? If they’re referring to every pitch, well, a lot of pitches are looked at without even a swing. Some pitches are missed after a swing. Some are fouled off, many of which don’t even change the ball/strike count. Some struck balls are such easy pop-ups I could be one of the fielders. Basically, all those plays are the baseball equivalent of a play in football that gains zero yards. Does football have that many zero-gain plays?
Don’t misunderstand: I like baseball a lot. But a common connotation of “action”, particularly in this context, would be “excitement”. I mean, strictly speaking, a marathon is non-stop action. Doesn’t make it exciting.
Basketball too. Squeak squeak squeak score. Squeak squeak squeak score. Squeak squeak squeak score. Squeak squeak squeak score. It’s all action and yet nothing ever happens.
The brain tends to ignore any constant stimulus. Boredom is the result of the same stimuli for long periods.
***
These authors suggest that attention plays an important role in creating boredom. In particular, there are a few conditions that need to be met for people to feel bored. First, people need to have a reasonable level of psychological energy or arousal to feel bored. When people have low arousal and there is not much happening in the world, then they often feel relaxed. When they have high arousal, though, they have energy they would like to devote to something, but they cannot find anything engaging.
Second, boredom typically occurs when people have trouble focusing their attention and they believe the reason for this difficulty is in the environment. When sitting in the airport, for example, there is probably a lot going on. There are people having conversations that you could listen to. You probably have something to read. There may be televisions showing the news. But, the stress of waiting for a delayed flight often makes it hard to concentrate, and so your mind jumps from one thing to another. You assume that this is caused by the environment, and so you feel boredom.
The authors of this paper point to an interesting study by Robin Damrad-Frye and James Laird in the August, 1989 issue of the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. In this study, participants had to listen to a tape of a person reading a Psychology Today article. In the next room, there was a television soundtrack from a soap opera playing. For some groups listening to the article, the TV was very loud and distracting, for others it was barely noticeable, and for some it was not playing at all. After listening to the article, people rated their boredom during the study.
The people who heard the barely noticeable TV rated themselves as more bored than either the ones who heard the loud TV or heard no soundtrack. The idea is that both the loud TV and the soft TV were distracting, but for those who heard the loud TV it was clear why they were distracted from the article. Thus, they may have been frustrated with the noise, but they were not bored. Those who heard the soft soundtrack had difficulty concentrating, but they were not sure why, and so they attributed the difficulty concentrating to boredom.
This example leads to another key aspect of boredom. As Eastwood, Frischen, Fenske, and Smilek point out, bored people become aware of their difficulty concentrating. As a result, bored people often try to amuse themselves by daydreaming and letting their mind wander. Interestingly, while mind wandering helps people to keep their minds occupied, studies suggest that the more your mind wanders, the more bored you feel. The idea is that you recognize that this daydreaming is meant to occupy your mind, and so you realize that the situation is boring.
***
https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/ulterior-motives/201209/what-is-boredom
Neadz Moar Lebelz?! *Pats Rick on the back, runs into bushes*
HOLY SHIT, Rick!!! This was fanatastic. I larfed and larfed.
Throw in some death metal next time?
Same here. Funny shit!
Why doesn’t Burger King just run their restaurant like they say the internet will be managed without net neutrality? It’s not illegal for Burger King to run their business this way. Oh, it would be bad for business?
What do you mean? Charge people for the food they order/consume, instead of a low, flat all-you-can-eat price? That’s pretty much what net neutrality is, right?
“I want to eat twenty hamburgers, and only pay what the guy who eats one or two pays. Otherwise, it’s not fair.”
The reality would, of course, be that you want to eat two hamburgers, and you end up paying what the guy who just ate 20 paid.
If net neutrality is so good then they should do just that
Jesus fucking Christ BK, how about just shutting the hell up about net neutrality and flame grilling my shitty burger?
P.S.
Your fries suck too.
Everybody’s fries suck these days. McDonalds wouldn’t be as bad if they went back to beef tallow and made them fresh instead of letting them sit too long.
The Old McDs fries were the best, no doubt. I’ll never forgive the Hindus for that one.
They’d make more money with a Steamed Hams gimmick.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y4lnZr022M8
Can’t read it all cause of work, but this is great.
I regret nothing.
Rick, this was fantastic. Thank you for sharing this.
I’m enjoying this immensely. Moar, pleez!
Well done!
This is funny. Thanks! I’ll join in and say, “More please!”
I enjoyed it. good work.
Warty Hugeman is that you?
The best six-word line:
Close second:
Sublime work, Rick. Now, make with the next chapter.
This was something else.