Gonna get rid of some rayguns (all Art Asylum/Diamond Select, ones in boxes have never been opened) to pay off some bills. Eventually ebay, but if anyone wants to email me offers…
Gonna get rid of some rayguns (all Art Asylum/Diamond Select, ones in boxes have never been opened) to pay off some bills. Eventually ebay, but if anyone wants to email me offers…
Speedbump died last night.
Buttons has what now seems to be a permanent issue with his innards. As a consequence, from here on out once a week or so I’ll quarantine him in a room in the basement so I can make sure that he eats his food, and poops properly. None of the cats think this arrangement is proper; when the door’s closed he wants out, the other cats want in. When the door opens, the other cats come rushing down the basement stairs to try to get in the room.
Last night I left the room and went up the stairs in the darkness… and found Speedbump laying at the top of the stairs. Billy and Banshee were running around as normal. Speedbump was not breathing, no heartbeat, unresponsive. As I examined him, he started slowly peeing. I rushed him to the emergency vet, but he was truly gone at that point. The vets examined him and found no signs of trauma, choking, infectious illness or poison. Their best guess is that he had a heart attack or threw a clot, both of which cats are apparently distressingly prone to.
The evidence suggests that when he heard the basement door open, he came running and simply fell over dead. It was quick and non-theatrical; he made no sound that I heard, and Billy and Banshee did not seem to pay him much mind. Previous experiences with live cats coming across dead cats has been traumatic, so whatever happened to Speedbump was fast and silent. I suspect I missed him by *seconds,* not that I could have done anything but freak out. Which I kinda ended up doing anyway.
If I had known that one of my cats was going to suddenly die, I would have been quite certain that it would have been Buttons, as he has been unwell for a while. But Speedbump was normal and lively only an hour before, giving no signs of distress.
He went quickly, and, it seems, pretty much painlessly. That, at least, is a relief.
A photo from a month ago: Speedbump watching Billy look out at the snow.
My last photo of Speedbump from a few days ago, sacked out with Buttons. He and Buttons were buddies; I imagine Buttons will soon come to miss him.
All in all… WTF.
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.
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.
Long story short: I’ve been a *casual* watcher of “Dr. Who” for 40+ years. From watching it from time to time on PBS back in the 80s – the Tom Baker era, mostly – to catching the revived version in more recent years, I would generally find it amusing if somewhat baffling. The fact that not only was it stories set over multiple episodes, meaning you’re in the dark if you’ve missed any, but that it was terribly *British* meant that it just didn’t quite hit for me. But still, I liked it well enough, and I respect the IP and the fandom.
But not everyone respects the IP or the fandom. This includes the makers of the show these days.
One thing I could always expect from any iteration of The Doctor would be that he was some flavor of “British Man.” Generally some variant of the Brit known as the “boffin,” a weird eccentric science type. But then came the “insufferably smug British woman” variant of the Doctor. And next up… gay sub-Saharan African Doctor, which seems to be meant specifically to annoy the long-time fans. So, yeah, I haven’t felt the urge to watch Dr. Who in a good long while. Recent events have not changed that. In fact, recent efforts by the makers of the show to gaslight fans of the show make me actively uninterested.
The latest nonsense has been the race swapping of historical figure Isaac Newton. For a British show to *intentionally* replace an important English historical figure with an Indian actor seems at best odd, at worst part of a wider ongoing and undeniable effort to replace the English within their own history. But the people behind this have themselves a new strategy to defend their decisions from those who don’t like it:
Behold: pointing out that Newton was English, or Cleopatra was Greek, or Hannibal was Phoenician, has gone from merely being a racist position to now “villainizing minorities.” If you say that so-and-so wasn’t black or Indian or whatever, you are now equating blacks or Indians or whatever with criminals. It is dishonest, it is unhinged, it doesn’t make sense, but it’s what they’ve got.
That’s their argument against those who point out the folly and malignity of race swapping historical figures. What’s their argument *for* doing this? The Dr. Who casting director says:
“It then becomes even more important to give people a voice and for people to be represented, especially for young people growing up who might be trans or from any minority. If they can see themselves on screen, then that can be a huge lifeline for some people. That can make them feel part of the world, which indeed they are.” … “Growing up as a gay man, I’m as aware as anybody else of how this stuff makes you feel when you see it. “
Uh-huh. So he likes to see his little subset “represented.” But he somehow doesn’t understand – or pretends not to – how a large *majority* of people do not like to watch their “representation” getting not just erased, but culturally appropriated and colonized by outsiders who didn’t earn it, don’t deserve it and don’t fit in it.
Turns out two of the propellant tanks for the fourth stage of the final Vega launch vehicle – a European launcher that first flew in 2012, designed for small payloads – went missing. That’s kinda inexcusable and inexplicable. But at least they found them. That’s good, right? Well…
They had been crushed and were found alongside metal scraps in a landfill.
Whoopsie.
Even better: as this is the *last* flight of a Vega, the production lines are long since shut down. So in order to pull off the planned 2024 launch, either tanks from pre-2012 ground tests will be scrounged – assuming they’re still in good enough shape – or a whole different unqualified-for-Vega upper stage will be used.
Maybe just fly on a Falcon.
Hey, how about standing in some red fuming nitric acid fumes? is that not enough for you? How about a dousing from a nitric acid geyser?
Un camion pieno di acido nitrico esplode. pic.twitter.com/GRgt4Zdv4P
— ANTONIO (@blusewillis2) November 14, 2023
Due to a law rushed through last year, if Illinoisans don’t register their perfectly legal and common firearm (referred to inaccurately as “assault weapons”) by January 1 2024 they could get in trouble. But there’s a little wrinkle… the “Firearm Owners Protection Act” of 1986. The FOPA has a lot of problems, but it also has a fun little provision:
No such rule or regulation prescribed after the date of the enactment of the Firearms Owners’ Protection Act may require that records required to be maintained under this chapter or any portion of the contents of such records, be recorded at or transferred to a facility owned, managed, or controlled by the United States or any State or any political subdivision thereof, nor that any system of registration of firearms, firearms owners, or firearms transactions or dispositions be established. Nothing in this section expands or restricts the Secretary’s [1] authority to inquire into the disposition of any firearm in the course of a criminal investigation.
Huh. No system of registration is to be established by the US, any state or political subdivision. A gun registry is *illegal* under Federal law.
So, tell me where I’m wrong: if you know a firearm registry is illegal, you knowingly violate the law if you register your gun. So if its a choice between obeying the Illinois state law or the US Federal law… isn’t it legally safer to not violate US law? Doesn’t registering your firearm make you an accessory to breaking a Federal law?
A good question to ask is why would a government pass a law they know to be not only illegal under federal law but downright unConstitutional. Well, it’s always worth considering that the people who do these sort of things tend to have an amazing mix of arrogance and stupidity, leading to monumental incompetence. But it’s also worth considering that the idea may well be to set up the system of laws so that not only is virtually everyone in violation of *something,* they all know it. This will necessarily have the effect of reducing respect for rule of law. It seems counter-intuitive that the government would want to bake a lack of respect for the rule of law into the population… but it makes sense once you realize that a lot of government types are in it for *power.* A population that no longer expects or even wants to obey the law will just naturally expect all manner of corruption from their “leaders.”
It’s many a year since I’ve driven through Denver. Last time I came close was 2019, when i drove *around* Denver and found it to be a horrible traffic nightmare; driving through it seemed like utter insanity. Apparently the years have not improved the situation any.
I came downtown for the dinner but I stayed for the driver
byu/cyrpious inAbruptChaos
Guess what state is that? pic.twitter.com/b3XKbf2ze5
— I Meme Therefore I Am 🇺🇸 (@ImMeme0) November 8, 2023
I think that’s a Bentley. Aren’t they kinda expensive? I’m not sure the insurance company is going to take too kindly to the claims here.
I’ve long counseled American Jews to get armed and trained, because their “friends” on the political left will sooner or later throw them to the wolves. That day seems to be right about here, if not in fact yesterday.
Anyway, this happened today:
One “Ruba Almaghtheh” rammed her car into the Indianapolis school, which had a single adult and four little kids in it. She damaged her car and scored herself attention and felony charges, but didn’t seem to actually injure anyone. Why’d she do it? Because it was the “Israelite School of Universal and Practical Knowledge,” and some people are kinda psycho in their hatred of Jews.
But here’s the kicker: the”Israelite School of Universal and Practical Knowledge” isn’t Jewish… it’s “Black Hebrew Israelites.” These are black supremacists who have culturally appropriated some texts, names, clothes and ideas, but are about as Jewish as the average Fed glowie advocating online for violent rebellion is actually a Trump supporter. In one of those fantastic “make it make sense” moments, they are an offshoot of the “Israelite Church of God in Jesus Christ.” They are so whackadoodle that even the Southern Poverty Law Center, which hates to even suggest that there can be such a thing as anti-white racism, has labeled them a hate group.
So… Palestine-supporters vs black supremacists? I want this show to go on for seven seasons and at least three movies.
And in other news, Palestine supporters are now outright murdering Israel supporters on American streets.
BREAKING: A pro-Palestine protester has been arrested after killing a 65 year old Jewish man by hitting him over the head with a megaphone during a verbal altercation in the Thousand Oaks area of LA.
The man suffered from a brain hemorrhage as a result & succumbed to his… pic.twitter.com/sCY4MgraGB— Leftism (@LeftismForU) November 7, 2023
And in other news…
Enemy missiles have been shot down before. Missiles in space have been shot down before. But this is the first time an enemy missile has been shot down in space.