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Jul 232017
 

So a regular guy off yonder over in Wales decides that he wants to create a crossover animation with the cast of “Archer” appearing on “Bob’s Burgers.” Seven months later, after a whole lot of animating and stitching together audio from the two shows, he produced this:

It seems that the “Bob’s Burgers” people saw this and promptly offered him a job.

Live the dream, buddy.

And because why not, here’s an officially created Archer/Kingsman crossover:

 Posted by at 7:36 pm
Jul 232017
 

After all the buildup, Valerian was just sorta… there. It was real pretty, to be sure, but the characters were bleah, the plot was almost incomprehensible, and it was just not terribly fun. I, like I’m sure millions of others, was hoping for a 21st century “Fifth Element,” with all the goofy wonderfulness, but Valerian just isn’t it.

Maybe it’s a good take on the original French graphic novel, but on it’s own… shrug. There were a few interesting ideas, like the multi-dimensional market (which, to be honest, makes nearly as much sense as a virtual reality market), but there were at least an equal number of inconsistencies and errors that yoinked me right out of the story. Alpha, the “City of a Thousand Planets,” is actually the International Space Station. The ISS is shown at the beginning slowly growing as more and more nations join up and add on; a kinda neat though unlikely idea. Then aliens show up and use the “Alpha” station as the place to introduce themselves, and they add on. And then more aliens, and more and more… Eventually Alpha gets too big to stay in Earth orbit and needs to be moved. OK, sure. But where is the gorram thing? At one point it’s described as having moved 700 million miles. Other times it seems to be lightyears away from anywhere.

Later in the movie, the heart of Alpha is shown, including some of the original ISS bits. One of which is an Apollo Command *AND* Service Module. The frak? This is then described as the “2005 Destiny module.” The frell? Sigh.

And in a trope  that can’t die soon enough, we’re treated to another smegging “love is one of the greatest powers in the universe blah, blah, blah” lectures near the end of the movie.

Those who’ve read my “Zaneverse” stories know that the male human lead is romantically interested in the female human lead. The same is true in Valerian, only much more openly so. But the chemistry is so lacking between the two that you Just Don’t Care.

Oh well.

 Posted by at 1:19 am
Jul 232017
 

“The Ark Encounter” always promised to be pure ridiculouslness, and it seems that things are starting to come to a head. Basically, it’s a sh!tshow of epic and hopefully legally actionable proportions.

The city of Williamstown, Kentucky, decided to charge a 50 cent “safety tax” to each ticket sold. The purpose of this tax is to pay for government services – police, ambulance, fire and so on – that a tourist “attraction” like this needs to have available to it. Such fees are common for theme parks and the like. Since Ark Encounter was sold to the city as a “For Profit” endeavor, it can (and should) be taxed. But Ken Hamm worked up a way around that… the Ark Encounter for-profit people sold the land to *themselves* for $10.  What was the point? Well, the for-profit Answers In Genesis that owned the land and which in turn is owned by Hamm sold the land to Crosswater Canyon, a religious non-profit organization… that Hamm also owns. And now that it’s a religious non-profit, it can’t be taxed.

Perfectly legal, but ultra-scumbaggery. Unsurprisingly, it has ticked off the city and state government who were sold this bill of goods as being a for-profit enterprise which would bring in bajillions of out of state tourists (it hasn’t) and spur the local economy (it hasn’t). And so…

Kentucky Officials Have Ended the $18 Million Tax Rebate Deal With Ark Encounter

The safety tax was expected to cost the Ark $700 grand a year. They tried to sleaze out of it, and lost themselves $18 million as a result.

Hmm.

 

So, who wants to prophesy how this is all going to end up? I foresee two possibilities of roughly equal likelihood;

1) The Ark winds up getting sold off and turned into a hotel, casino, something like that.

2) As things start to collapse, the Ark  burns to the ground. Hamm & company blame militant atheists for it, but a whole lot of folks figure it to be an inside job.The insurance companies are *really* interested in looking into how the fire started…

 Posted by at 12:43 am
Jul 222017
 

Since ComiCon is currently ongoing in San Diego, a lot of trailers for forthcoming movies and TV shows have been released. Some of ’em:

Westworld, season 2, which looks to continue to be spectacular.

Thor: Ragnarok, which looks like more fun than it has a right to be:

Stranger Things, Season 2. GIMME NOW

Star Trek: Discovery, which continues the downward spiral by turning the main character into not just someone who knows Sarek (Spocks father) but was actually adopted by him… making her Spocks human sister. Which he and Sarek failed to mention EVER.

Since STD will only be available in the United States on CBS All Access – which is six bucks a month just to watch CBS shows, of which STD: Lensflare is probably the only one most people will give a damn about – I don’t expect too many people will actually watch the whole first (and potentially only) season.

On the other hand…this autumn *does* see the appearance of a Star Trek show people can actually watch, and that actually looks good: The Orville dropped another trailer. GIMME NOW.

 

 

 Posted by at 10:44 pm
Jul 212017
 

Community Colleges Call for End to Algebra Requirement, Say it’s a “Civil Rights” Issue

Due to a combination of a crappy California educational system that has chosen to not do an adequate job of educating students in the basics, and various sub-cultures that do not stress the importance of intellectual achievement, the chancellor of California’s community college system, one Eloy (as opposed to Morlock) Oakley has decided that it would be best if the California community college system did away with the algebra requirement.

On one hand, this would not affect those who actually want to get a STEM degree; they’d still need proficiency in basic math. But it would make it easier for other “students” to get crappy, useless non-STEM degrees in vacuous subjects like Grievance Studies or Identity Politics or STEM Derision. It would make it easier for kids who got something no sane person would consider to be a valid education in the public schools to get a “degree” from the glorified daycares known as “post-STEM community colleges.”

 Posted by at 8:32 pm
Jul 212017
 

You know how it’s all kinds of popular these days to complain that Hollywood doesn’t produce anything new? How everything is either a reboot or a sequel? Well… here y’all go, “Bright,” coming to Netflix in December. The plot? Will Smith is an LAPD cop with a new partner. Yawn, seen it. The partner, however, is an ork. LA is loaded with orks and elves and fairies and magic and gangbangers and whatnot. It actually looks fairly entertaining.

 Posted by at 2:38 am
Jul 202017
 

A few weeks back I posted an old Chrysler ad I found online. The image quality was ok, but kinda small. Subsequently I found a copy on ebay, bought it, scanned it and cleaned it. I’ve posted the full-rez, fully cleaned version of the ad to the 2017-07 APR Extras folder on Dropbox, available for free for all APR patrons at the $4 level and above. The full rez image is 4043×6270 pixels, or 13.5×20.9 inches at 300 dpi. It could probably be safely printed off at 200 dpi, giving 20.2X32.35 inches.

Here’s a dinkyscale version of the new scan:

And here, because I want y’all to know that these things take time and effort, are some full-size crops from both the final version and the raw scan, showing the improvement in image quality. Some of it is done via a few keystrokes, such as tweaking the rightness and contrast, but erasing thousands of little specks and fixing flaws? That’s all genuine artisanal hand-made old-school photoshoppery craftsmanship.

 

If you are interested in accessing these and other aerospace historical goodies, consider signing up for the APR Patreon.

 

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 Posted by at 4:49 pm
Jul 202017
 

Because why not, I’ve written a short story. Not sure if it’s any good or not, so I’m hoping to find three martyrs volunteers willing to give it a read and give me feedback. There are two things:

  1. Ya gotta be willing to reply back here with your general impressions after you’ve read it. It hasn’t really been edited yet… I scribbled it out in a day, and I’m sure it’s chock full o’ grammar errors. Just looking for “I would read more of this” or “meh” or “that sucked ass” or “take my money,” stuff like that. And any other comments.
  2. Ya gotta be a fan of Lovecraft, and reasonably knowledgeable in the Lovecraftian basics. Otherwise, this just won’t make much sense. This isn’t “Lovecraftian in tone or theme,” it’s an outright shameless pastiche.

I’ve been poking away at the next Pax Orionis story, but this one sort of popped into my head and I had to scribble it down. If interested, comment. First three volunteers get to read free fiction.

 Posted by at 4:28 am
Jul 192017
 

Through the use of cats, humor and profanity, exurb1a explains the limitations that our brains put on understanding the universe… and how those limits might grow. There’s a good line about how our descendants might grow in capacity and learn things we alive now would be wholly incapable of understanding… “they couldn’t have gotten there without us, but they’ll get there without us.”

 Posted by at 11:16 pm