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Buttons update

Feb 082024

Good news: no cancer for Buttons. Bad news: he’s old, his colon is starting to malfunction. Things back up & turn rock hard (& apparently look like tumors on X-rays) due to some nerve problem or other. This requires a change in diet, which is a problem since his diet is special & keeps him from other problems (crystals in his urine).

After a system flush and several days of stool softener and wet food, he is very clearly feeling far better; he’s a happier cat and almost aggressively affectionate. But he’s still in quarantine… not because he’s infectious, but because I need to make sure he eats his food and not the other cats (and they eat their own and not his) and that he poops as he should. This separation is offensive to *all* of the cats. Not, I think, because they have a burning desire to share each others company; they’re just outraged at being blocked from going wherever they want.

Going to move the Men In Black raygun to ebay.

A sci-fi raygun for a vet bill…

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Feb 052024

This AM I took Buttons to the vet yet again. X-Ray showed something I really wish it hadn’t; I’m left waiting for a few hours while they do more detailed looking to see if it is indeed cancer. If it is… doesn’t seem like there’s much left to do. The bill is already high, so it’s time to raise funds.

Who wants a “Standard Issue Agent Sidearm” replica from “Men In Black,” made by Factory Entertainment over a decade ago. It’s solidly made from aluminum with working sound & lights. This is a full-scale replica, fairly heavy and actually feels almost like a real sidearm. None currently on ebay; I’ve seen them go for over $800. I’ll let this go for $600 plus postage. If interested, send me an email or comment below. If someone wants to offer more than $60, I’m certainly open to that.

Home made long range laser weapon

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Jan 262024

Styropyro takes a an off the shelf 2 kilowatt fiber laser welder/rust remover and makes it a long range laser sniper weapon. There are a number of issues… the mount is rickety and there’s no scope, primarily. But it’s remarkably capable, burning holes relatively quickly through steel plate and cinderblocks.

This would seem to indicate that a refined version with a better mount, better aim and a much faster reaction time/slew rate would serve as a dandy anti-drone system, easily mounted to something like a Hummer, small truck or as an add-on to armored vehicles. If one kid out in the boonies can do this on a YouTuber budget, I’m left to wonder why the Russian military *hasn’t* done it on a large scale.

Orion Space Battleship

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Jan 222024

With all the little publications I’ve written and illustrated, and all the years of blogging ABSOLUTELY BRILLIANT political opinions and the like, it seems that at least *one* of my efforts will go down through the ages: my design for the Orion Battleship. We know to a fair certainty that such a craft was designed in the early 1960s, and that a mockup the size of a car was built; we know some of the components and features of that design. But other than that… we don’t know much. The overall size and configuration are unknown. So, fifteen years ago when I was working on an article for Aerospace Projects Review about large Orion vehicles, I went ahead and made a speculative reconstruction design. I did my best with what was available… and in the years since, nothing seems to have come out to refute the design. I do not contend that the design is an accurate reconstruction; I was never able to get in touch with anyone who knew the Battleship design first-hand to confirm my reconstruction. I could well be *badly* wrong, especially since the descriptions of the original design tend to be second-hand. One day we might find out for sure.

But in the years since I showed my design to the world, I’ve seen it recreated here and there. It seems to be the accepted Actual Design.

Huh.

Behold:

That second video uses a model based on my design, more renders of which are HERE.

Shipbucket:

A purchasable 3D printed, lower fidelity copy of my design on Etsy:

My renders – unimpressive even by 2009 standards – even made it into meme format:

If you want to see the Orion Battleship as I designed it in its original format, check out Aerospace Projects Review issue V2N2.

Time for a new Iran-Iraq war?

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Jan 162024

Oh, joy:

Iran Attacks Israel’s ‘Headquarters of Spies’ in Iraq, as Some Missiles Land Near U.S. Consulate

Iran launched ballistic missiles at Erbil, Iraq, supposedly targeting a Mossad facility (which probably didn’t actually exist), with missiles landing near the US Consulate. Pretty sure Iraq would consider this an act of war. At least four civilians are reported dead, though no Americans, and no damage to the consulate.

Had the missiles actually struck the consulate, that would doubtless have been sufficient cause for the US Navy and/or Air Force to pay the Iranians a visit.

2024 is off to a rollicking start. With an election in November, we can expect domestic terrorism to spike, with the usual assortments of riots and arson and insurrections that are given a pass. And with everyone recognizing how addlepated Biden is, and with worldwide chaos running rampant already, international incidents are doubtless also going to increase.

My “When Worlds Collide”

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Jan 142024

About 20 years ago I got it into my head to write a screenplay: an update of “When Worlds Collide,” based on the book from the 1930’s not the movie from 1951. When originally written, the question was “can we build a rocketship to fly to another planet?” My rewrite would set it a century later (mid/late 2030’s), when the question would be “how many rocketships can we build?” The arks would go not just to Bronson Beta but also to Mars, the Moon and asteroids, all of which would have already been visited by that point anyway. Nations, billionaires, corporations, organizations all slapping together ships of all sizes, to launch as many people, plants and critters as possible. The story would be otherwise much the same as the book.

The sequel, “After Worlds Collide” would remain possible. In the original, the Nazis and the Commies join forces to build their own ark and continue to be dicks on the new world. In my update, their place would be taken by, say, the ChiComs and the Jihadis… but again the story would be similar. One American ark lands on the new world, which they find to have once been populated, the original inhabitants having left a number of domed cities behind. The new world ends up in solar orbit, but an elliptical one… as far out as Mars, not quite as close in as Venus. So those domes cities will come in *damned* handy. But there are arks all over the place, with some working together, others working to take over.

Sadly, I never got around to writing the screenplay. News broke that Spielberg wanted to do a remake of his own and the idea of me writing a competing screenplay became monumentally stupid. Still, I’ve never forgotten the idea and I still think it has merit.

Another reason to sneer at the UN

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Jan 052024

United Nations moves to stop Alabama from carrying out America’s first nitrogen gas execution

“U.N. experts argue there has been no evidence to suggest that nitrogen gas would not “result in a painful and humiliating death.””

Oh FFS. Nitrogen asphyxiation has been dangerous in industry specifically *because* it’s painless. If you find yourself in a volume filled with carbon dioxide – a small room, a tank of some kind, whatever – you are *instantly* going to know it. Your lungs will object, you’ll cough, you’ll hold your breath… and you’ll try to get the hell out of there. If you find yourself in a volume filled with *poison* gas, you’ll try to evacuate even faster. But nitrogen? You feel nothing. Your lungs are used to nitrogen… about 80% of every breath you take is nitrogen. You’ll continue to breathe it in, and continue to expel oxygen with each breath, rapidly getting rid of the oxygen in your blood as you continue to respire normally, until you rather quickly slip into a peaceful unconsciousness, and soon *die.*

All evidence points to nitrogen being a peaceful and painless way to go. And consequently one of the less humiliating, unless you find not thrashing about and screaming in pain and terror humiliating. I imagine the actual goal is to simply stop executions, rather than having any legitimate objection to nitrogen. Because if this is carried out and shown to be what history has shown it should be – effective and painless – other governments might adopt it. Given that unlike lethal injection it quires little skill – just strapping on a mask, rather than finding veins and jamming needles into them – and uses cheap and easily available nitrogen gas rather than difficult to obtain chemicals, nitrogen executions should be relatively inexpensive. One argument might be that this will incentivize bad governments to execute more; but bad governments have little trouble with just shooting people they don’t like. The counterpoint is that taxpayers shouldn’t be overly burdened if clearly easier alternatives are available.

AI coming for our jobs…

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Dec 312023

Well, *some* of our jobs:

AI-created “virtual influencers” are stealing business from humans

Pink-haired Aitana Lopez is followed by more than 200,000 people on social media. She posts selfies from concerts and her bedroom, while tagging brands such as hair care line Olaplex and lingerie giant Victoria’s Secret.

Brands have paid about $1,000 a post for her to promote their products on social media—despite the fact that she is entirely fictional.

So… do we care?

If we are an influencer, sure. But this is one of the more socially worthless “jobs” out there. They add nothing to society; they learn few skills or trades useful for other more practical forms of employment. If all “influencers” were suddenly unemployed, there’d be tens/hundreds of thousands of talentless hacks suddenly dumped into the job market, competing for burger flipper roles against millions of new migrant voters. Sucks for them, I suppose.

But after the “influencers” will come the TV news anchors, actors, singers. Some have argued that people will prefer actual humans to AI for such things, but evidence is mounting to the contrary. And at some point soon (if not already) it’ll be impossible to tell the difference, and *very* difficult to confirm that an AI isn’t real, especially if those controlling it want people to think said AI is a real person.

The worst opinion piece you’ll read today

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Dec 232023

Tech Billionaires Need to Stop Trying to Make the Science Fiction They Grew Up on Real

Today’s Silicon Valley billionaires grew up reading classic American science fiction. Now they’re trying to make it come true, embodying a dangerous political outlook

This was written by Charles Stross, a sci-fi author whose work I tend to like. I kinda understand why he has reached the conclusion that he has… a *lot* of his work is heavily Lovecraftian, with the universe laden with horrible, horrible things. If you believe that the universe truly is filled with cosmic horrors just waiting at the edges for some fool to go poking at them, then of course you’re want to prevent people from pushing forward. You will, instead, live by this quote from Lovecraft himself (from “The Call of Cthulhu”):

“The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents. We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far. The sciences, each straining in its own direction, have hitherto harmed us little; but some day the piecing together of dissociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality, and of our frightful position therein, that we shall either go mad from the revelation or flee from the light into the peace and safety of a new dark age.”

But the thing is… those horrible things are out there anyway. You can’t hide from them. They’ll come and getcha. If we are to avoid colonizing space because “imperialism” is wrong, then we’ll be simply stepped on by the next imperialist species over. If you are afraid of the consequences of AI – and there are valid concerns – taking that tech away from Our Guys and leaving it in the hands of the likes of the Chinese Communists *guarantees* that some form of AI is going to come along and take a giant dump on us. If you want to stop “eugenics” because there’s been some bad history and because it could maybe lead to bad things, you’re stranding us in the reality we’re now facing of ongoing dysgenics which is *already* screwing society.

In particular the argument against space colonization is just vacuous and insane. The benefits are damn near infinite. The risk are comparatively minimal. If over the next millennium we lose a million habitats to a hard learning curve, taking with them a trillion lives… it will be a small price to pay to bring life to a trillion worldlets just within this single solar system.

Yeah, sci-fi provides warnings of potential bad futures. But it also provides innumerable examples of futures we *want* to bring about. Focusing solely on the dystopias of sci-fi is black-pilled doomerism at its worst. For every “1984” or “Brave New World” or “Star Trek Discovery” that show horrible worlds filled with horrible people living in horrible societies, there are “2001” and “Star Trek” and “Star Trek the Next Generation” and “Stargate SG-1” and “The Orville” and even “The Expanse.” The thing is… “bad” always sells better than “good,” because “bad” tends to have more interesting drama. Imagine any sort of plotline. What’ll be more interesting, or at least easier to write interesting: the story without some sort of villain or disaster, or the one where there aren’t such antagonists? A movie about, say, an architect designing and building his dream building, whatever it might happen to be, will almost certainly have competitors trying to sabotage it, or bureaucrats grinding it down, or local activists trying to stop it, or earthquakes, storms, floods, fires, asteroid impacts or alien invasions trying to trash it. So the fact that sci-fi – like *every* literary genre – includes Very Bad Things from time to time is no reason to avoid trying to see the best of sci-fi brought to life, anymore than heartbreak and rivals in romance stories are reasons to avoid trying to find love.

Sometimes, just sometimes… remakes work

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Dec 182023

Movie and TV remakes are often garbage. But covers of songs? Sometimes the remake is a triumph. Some examples:

“My Body Is A Cage” by Arcade Fire, then covered by Peter Gabriel.

“Smooth Criminal” by Michael Jackson… then perfected by Alien Ant Farm.

“Hurt” by Nine Inch Nails. It was good… but what Johnny Cash did with it is astonishing.

“Tainted Love” by Gloria Jones from 1964 was utterly eclipsed by “Soft Cell’s” 1981 cover.

Cylon and Garfunkel’s “Sound of Silence” is peak 60’s pretentiousness. But Disturbed’s remake kicks substantial ass.

David Bowie’s “Heroes” is OK. Peter Gabriels’ cover gives it emotional depth wholly lacking in the original.

And… what the heck. “All Along The Watchtower” by Bob Dyna was meh, the Jimi Hendrix cover was pretty good, but Bear McCreary reworked it into the best season-ending cliffhanger music ever.

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