"85 seconds!" Said the Ticktockman -- Dennis Hartley

[erronis]

https://digbysblog.net/2026/01/31/85-seconds-said-the-ticktockman/

[after learning of the Doomsday Machine]

President Merkin Muffley: But this is absolute madness, Ambassador! Why should you *build* such a thing?

Ambassador de Sadesky: There were those of us who fought against it, but in the end we could not keep up with the expense involved in the arms race, the space race, and the peace race. At the same time our people grumbled for more nylons and washing machines. Our doomsday scheme cost us just a small fraction of what we had been spending on defense in a single year. The deciding factor was when we learned that your country was working along similar lines, and we were afraid of a doomsday gap.

President Merkin Muffley: This is preposterous. I've never approved of anything like that.

Ambassador de Sadesky: Our source was the New York Times.

-- from Dr. Strangelove: Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb; screenplay by Stanley Kubrick, Terry Southern and Peter George

In the midst of what has been a rather busy news week, you may have missed this tidbit:

Venezuela's defence minister has accused the United States of using the country as a "weapons laboratory" during the abduction of President Nicolas Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, on January 3.

Vladimir Padrino Lopez said last week that the US had used Venezuela as a testing ground for "advanced military technologies" that rely on artificial intelligence and weaponry never used before, according to the Venezuelan newspaper El Universal.

On Sunday, US President Donald Trump told the New York Post that US forces had indeed used a weapon he referred to as "the discombobulator".

"I'm not allowed to talk about it," he said, adding that the weapon "made equipment not work" during the operation.

Details of the US military mission to abduct Maduro have not been made public, but the US has been known to use weapons to disorient soldiers and guards or disable equipment and infrastructure in the past. [...]

Days after Maduro's abduction, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt reposted comments that appeared to have been posted on X by a Venezuelan security guard. He wrote that the US had "launched something" during the operation that "was like a very intense sound wave".

"Suddenly, I felt like my head was exploding from the inside," the security guard wrote. "We all started bleeding from the nose. Some were vomiting blood. We fell to the ground, unable to move."

Al Jazeera has not been able to verify this account.

The "Discombobulator". Fanciful term. Like ...a "Doomsday Machine"?

. . .

A great discussion of the making of "Dr. Strangelove" in the full article.

[surfered]

1. Precious bodily fluids...