Sunday Overnight Open Thread - September 13, 2026

Howdy Hordelings! Welcome to the Sunday ONT. Appreciate you stopping by. Open thread, as always. Fashion and music, as always. What's on YOUR mind tonight?

[Top photo: Sunset Colors, Wasatch Mountains Utah (from EarthPorn on reddit)]

Lovely behavior from the people of "tolerance" and "coexist"

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Well played, cameraman!

The camera panning from the clock at 0:07 to Pierce Brosnan.

Absolute cinema. pic.twitter.com/GBjDETvKZg

— US Open Tennis (@usopen) September 13, 2026

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I did not expect to ever post anything about the Clancy trial. I changed my mind!

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Misuse of Flock cameras? As Ace says, I shan't believe it. I shannot.

Mayor Livid When Even More Police Are Arrested for Using Flock Database Inappropriately

Three more police officers have been arrested after using Automatic License Plate Readers supplied by the surveillance company Flock for non-law enforcement purposes.

In Savannah, Georgia, four police department workers were hauled into custody last Friday, when an investigation by the Georgia Bureau of Investigation uncovered they’d been abusing their city’s Flock system to track personal acquaintances and family members, WTOC reported.

Three of them were active police officers, while one of them was employed as a community service specialist. Two more employees had been fired weeks ago for similar offenses, WTOC notes, though they haven’t been arrested, and it’s not clear if an investigation is ongoing.

The incident has become a huge scandal for Savannah over the past few weeks, turning the historic Georgia city into a poster child for police abuse of AI-powered surveillance. Local officials aren’t happy, to put it lightly.

“To be totally honest, I’m disappointed,” Savannah mayor Van Johnson said, calling it a sad and sobering day for the city. “I’m p*ssed off about it.”

Anderson Co. deputy resigns amid investigation into misuse of Flock cameras

An Anderson County deputy has resigned after being brought under investigation for unauthorized use of Flock cameras.

According to the Anderson County Sheriff’s Office, Deputy Eric Center accessed the Flock camera system for “a purpose outside of the authorized reasons.”

Deputies said an internal affairs investigation was opened into the matter and, during that investigation, Center resigned from the sheriff’s office.

The sheriff’s office said they conferred with the 10th Circuit Solicitor’s Office regarding the case and it was determined that while the conducted violated agency policy, it did not warrant a criminal investigation.

This shit is really snowballing. Ridiculous.

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Hoover Dam is an engineering marvel. Built long before computers and calculators.

Here's a nerdy but interesting (to me, at least) article about the method used for pouring concrete and why it was done that way.

Hoover Dam was cast in columns because one solid pour would take 125 years to reach air temperature

A bucket holding eight cubic yards of concrete swung out over Black Canyon on a cable, dropped into a form, and opened. Seven men went in after it with shovels, rubber boots and pneumatic vibrators, spreading a mix so dry that it would take its initial set inside the bucket if the crane operator was slow. Threaded through the form, waiting, were coils of one-inch steel pipe.

The pipe was there because Bureau of Reclamation engineers had worked out what would happen if the dam were built the obvious way. Their calculation is published in Reclamation’s own account of the construction. A single continuous pour would have got so hot, it says, that the concrete would have taken 125 years to cool to the temperature of the air around it. The resulting stresses would have cracked the dam and crumbled it away. So the dam went up as a stack of separate columns instead, each one chilled from the inside while it set.

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Concrete placement in any one block was limited to five feet in 72 hours. That is a rate rule rather than a volume rule: it caps how fast heat can be added to any one part of the dam. Reclamation puts placement in the dam at roughly 160,000 cubic yards a month. The peak day was 10,462 cubic yards, a figure that includes some concrete placed in the intake towers and the powerplant, and the peak month slightly over 275,000 cubic yards.

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The 125 years is the most quoted figure in this story, and what it measures is narrower than the retellings suggest. It describes cooling to the temperature of the surrounding air. It says nothing about when the chemical reaction inside the cement finishes, and the two are different processes running on different clocks.

It is also a calculation. Nobody poured Hoover Dam in a single lift and watched it cool. Reclamation’s engineers computed what would have happened if anyone had, and then designed the job so that nobody would. Reclamation’s construction answers record the cooling of the dam as completed in March 1935. That is about 21 months after the first concrete went into the dam on 6 June 1933, and two to three months before the last was placed on 29 May 1935. That timing is our arithmetic on Reclamation’s dates.

Kewl? Or nah?

'Ette Couture (Courtesy of Piper)

It's that time of the week - when we turn the ONT over to our good friend Piper for a bit. Here's this week's fashion pr0n.

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A Clean Line and a Slightly Raised Eyebrow — and the difference a little discipline makes

At the White House Historical Association’s 2026 Presidential Sites Summit, First Lady Melania Trump stepped to the Rose Garden podium in a look that did what her best public dressing always does: it looked simple until you looked twice. The dress was Dior’s mid-length blazer dress in black virgin wool and cotton bouclé. Sleeveless, double-breasted, notch-lapelled, worn without its belt but with the house’s horn buttons.

And then the shoes. Oh my goodness, the shoes. They were Manolo Blahnik’s BB pumps in a black-and-white grid from the 2023 collection. Pointed toe. Stiletto. A grid pump does not need a complicated outfit. It needs a clean line and enough quiet around it.

The Rose Garden outfit was a proportion look. A graphic Manolo finished a black line by arriving last, saying one thing, and stopping.

Elsewhere in First Family Fashion, Donald Trump Jr. and new wife Bettina joined POTUS in western Ireland for the Irish Open. We may still look a little side-eyed at this marriage, but Bettina does seem to understand how to dress for her role a bit better than Kimberly Guilfoyle. That is not gossip. That is wardrobe discussion. A southern lady knows the difference.

Upon disembarking from the plane, Bettina wore a Burberry Classic Trench, I think this is the long Waterloo style. She carried a quilted Bottega Veneta Andiamo Small Intrecciato top-handle bag in black and Chanel calfskin ballet flats in black quilted leather. The sunglasses are Gucci flat-top frames in black. Travel dressing with its manners on.

Bettina was also introduced to Ireland’s President Catherine Connolly. She nailed this fall’s trends with a gorgeous Roland Mouret long-sleeve crepe midi dress in emerald green. The coat is a Scanlan Theodore tailored coat in sand. Bettina remembered that green and camel still do the Lord’s work. The shoes are Manolo Blahnik Maysli suede buckle slingback pumps in emerald green, and the sunglasses are Dior 30Montaigne S8U in black. The bag is the same from above. Matching the green pump to the green dress without turning into a Christmas ornament takes a steady hand. She had one.

And as something really fun, here is a link sent to me by Biden’s Dog for everyone to enjoy.

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Thanks, Piper!

The rest of you - Don't forget to check out Piper's X page.

DJ Doof - Feeling Lonely Edition

Weekly commenter stats for week of 09-13-2026

AoSHQ Commenter Statistics:
Posts : 86
Comments : 23368
Unique hashes : 1440

Top 10 commenters:
1 [604 comments] 'Braenyard - some Absent Friends are more equal than others _' [85.78 posts/day]
2 [521 comments] 'Sponge - F*ck Cancer'
3 [370 comments] '...'
4 [356 comments] 'San Franpsycho'
5 [350 comments] 'Comrade Flounder, Disinformation Demon'
6 [324 comments] 'TheJamesMadison, discovering British horror with Hammer Films'
7 [308 comments] 'm'
8 [305 comments] 'Common Tater'
9 [296 comments] 'jim (in Kalifornia)'
10 [290 comments] 'man'

Top 10 sockpuppeteers:
1 [230 names] 'Watch Your Step' [32.66 unique names/day]
2 [220 names] 'Harold Melbin and the Blue Notes, feat. Teddy Pendergrass'
3 [122 names] 'Quarter Twenty'
4 [59 names] 'Trying to get something started'
5 [55 names] 'Practical Government Official'
6 [38 names] 'The Grateful - R'
7 [28 names] 'Duncanthrax'
8 [27 names] 'fd'
9 [25 names] 'Count de Monet'
10 [23 names] 'Stamp Out The Virus Of Marxism'

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